When Shared Learning Meets Timely Need: Reflections from CBFNC’s Helping Churches Thrive Creative Workshop Retreat
In November, more than 120 congregational leaders and clergy from across North Carolina and Virginia gathered for CBFNC’s Helping Churches Thrive Creative Workshop Retreat—two days designed to do one essential thing well: equip churches for the real challenges they are facing right now.
Participants represented over 20 congregations and included deacons, finance committee members, personnel and properties teams, and ministry staff. They arrived carrying questions about sustainability, leadership, conflict, change, and faithfulness in a rapidly shifting landscape—and they left with renewed clarity, practical tools, and a deeper sense that they are not navigating these challenges alone.
Learning That Was Practical, Honest, and Hope-Filled
The retreat centered on five learning tracks, each grounded in the lived realities of congregational life and led by trusted pastors, practitioners, and denominational leaders.
- Legal – Abuse Prevention and Response was led by Jason Cogdill, CBFNC legal resources partner, and Jay Kieve, CBF Global Abuse Prevention and Response advocate and director of Ministerial Transitions. Together, they guided leaders through essential legal considerations, power dynamics, and faithful practices for protecting congregations and vulnerable individuals.
- Finance & Property – Building Use, Legacy Giving, Financial Resources, Aging Buildings brought together leaders including Larry Hovis, Jack Glasgow, Jim Hylton, Emily Hull McGee, Jeanne Baucom, Scott Hudgins, and Bradly Boberg. This track explored stewardship, sustainability, and creative approaches to facilities and financial resources in a changing church landscape.
- Personnel – Healthy Hiring Practices, Personnel Structures, Personnel Handbooks was led by Lou Ann Gilliam, Jay Kieve, Dennis Foust, David Hull, and Larry McAlister, focusing on building healthy staff cultures, clear structures, and faithful evaluation practices.
- Congregational Leadership – Volunteer Selection and Training, Spiritual Formation of Leaders featured leadership from Matt Cook, Jack Glasgow, and Larry Hovis, centering on new models of leadership, intergenerational engagement, and the spiritual formation of lay leaders.
- The Theological and Organizational Psychology Dynamics of Leading Change and Navigating Conflict, designed for ministry staff and deacons, was led by Andy Hale, CBFNC associate executive coordinator. This track invited leaders to reflect on trust, communication, grief, and conflict through both theological and organizational lenses.
Across all five tracks, participants consistently named the content as timely, practical, and encouraging. Over and over again, we heard that this retreat was “exactly what our church needed,” offering tools leaders could take home and use with their teams right away.
Plenary Conversations That Named Reality
The retreat also featured three plenary sessions focused on leading change and navigating conflict, intentionally lifting up both pastoral and lay perspectives.
- Plenary Session One was led by Chris Chapman, pastor of First Baptist Church, Raleigh, and Gary Knight, entrepreneur and congregational leader at First Baptist on Fifth, Winston-Salem.
- Plenary Session Two featured David Niblock, legal mediator and deacon at Ardmore Baptist Church, and Alison Farrah, pastor of First Baptist Church, Hamlet.
- Plenary Session Three was led by Stacy Nowell, pastor of First Baptist Church, Huntersville.
These plenary conversations created space to name the realities many leaders are experiencing—anxiety around change, conflict fatigue, and the weight of leadership—while also offering hope rooted in trust, communication, and shared purpose.
The Power of Shared Learning
Over and over again, feedback from CBFNC’s Helping Churches Thrive Creative Workshop Retreat returned to one theme: the gift of shared learning.
Participants spoke of the encouragement that came from sitting at tables with leaders from different congregations, discovering common challenges, and exchanging wisdom born from experience. For many, the retreat was not just about gaining information, but about rediscovering hope—hope rooted in community, collaboration, and the reminder that God continues to work in and through local churches.
As one participant shared, the retreat offered both “practical help and deep encouragement,” a combination that feels especially vital in this season of ministry.
Looking Ahead
As we look ahead, we are already preparing for the next gathering of CBFNC’s Helping Churches Thrive Creative Workshop Retreat.
Please mark your calendars now: November 13–14, 2026.
We hope you will consider bringing a team from your congregation—including deacons, ministry staff, and committee leaders such as finance, properties, personnel, and other congregational leadership groups. These retreats are designed for shared learning across roles, recognizing that churches thrive when leaders learn, discern, and imagine faithful ways forward together.
More details about the 2026 retreat will be shared in the months ahead. We look forward to continuing this journey of practical learning, honest conversation, and hopeful leadership alongside congregations across our region.
