Thank you for joining us for a fantastic kickoff event punctuated by beautiful weather, inspirational speakers, and wonderful conversation about how to enhance our leadership skills to better serve our community!

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Bishop Scharfenberger welcomed us by stating that this Institute is ‘a prayer answered’ and urged us to consider traumas experienced by those we serve – traumas such as sexual abuse, drug addiction, homelessness and many others – and the impact that those traumas have on how people work and interact with each other. Only by truly understanding people through their own perspective can we begin to lead them.

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President of Siena College, Chris Gibson, challenged us as leaders to not only look for problems to be solved but to also look for opportunities to pursue. Great leaders, he noted, are always looking for ways to enhance their own skills and help their organizations and communities improve.

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Our invited speaker, Mike Saccocia, Executive Director City Mission of Schenectady, inspired us with his discussion of influence leadership. He notes that we can all be leaders, no matter our position or power, if we listen, look, learn, link and lead. So much of leader success comes from listening, looking and learning. In fact, Mike notes that Jesus spent thirty years of his life living among those he would one day lead, listening to their concerns and learning from their perspective, and only three years leading.  

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We then spent time in our teams setting goals for team growth and then identifying ways that we can grow as individuals to support team success.

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What a wonderful evening together! We so look forward to the next six sessions of the Institute for Pastoral Leaders.