Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Rockies

Maintaining Ministers in Ministry

The Center

Resources for Clergy

Resources for Churches

Center News and Pictures

The Center for Pastoral Effectiveness is a 501c3 non-profit organization.
For immediate information or feedback: Contact Bill Selby at integrity4u@comcast.net - or call 1-303-521-3850.
   
 

Celebrating 

our 

23rd Anniversary

First things first!  If you feel like you need support, personal and/or professional, please call or text 303-521-3850, or email at integrity4u@comcast.net




Find out why over  1200 clergy and leaders have attended the Center and continue to describe the Center experience as
"the most valuable continuing education experience!"


What makes the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness such a valuable resource since 1999?  Watch 24 hour news and you will get a reason.  There's lots of anxiety out there!   Start with the Covid-19!  Who knows what this will mean for leaders.  How is that going to change the face of the church? Add to that the elections approaching and then consider economics, water issues, sexual topics, ISIS. You hear it! You feel it!  And so do the people in your church.  That anxiety always ends up at the door of you as their clergy leader!  It is absolutely imperative that you as a clergy leader reflect on how you can deal with this anxiety because, most of the time, that anxiety will get focused, even fixated, on you.  There has never been a more important time for connecting to the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness.

This is a process that, if integrated into your ministry, can assist you in "responding" to all that reactivity rather than "reacting" to it.  And there is a leadership process that can help you manage yourself and maintain healthy leadership with your church and your family.

The Center was created to Maintain Ministers (You) in Ministry by focusing on Family Systems thinking.  The Center is a "pastoral" model.  The pastoral role is uniquely different than any other leadership model.  Sure, it includes administrating, preaching, leading, fascilitating but there is something more, something deeper to this role.  The Center connects to that!  The Center was designed BY a minister FOR ministers!  You won't regret this journey.

The Center includes six three-day retreats spread over 18 months.  It costs only $1980 with payments spread over the same period.   
The Clergy & Spouse Retreat fee is $650.
The District Superintendent and Conference Leaders Retreat Fee is TBA.

Take a look at the opportunities coming up.
Continuing Centers  
Next Live Retreats
Colorado Track l- Retreat 5 of 6 Mar 20-22, 2023 Highlands Ranch CO 
Bill Selby, Mentor, Derf Bergman, Asst Mentor

Colorado Track l- Retreat 2 of 6 Mar 22-24, 2023 Highlands Ranch CO
Bill Selby, Mentor

Great Plains Track l - Feb 27-28, 2023 Retreat 4 of 6 Concordia KS  
Kelly Karges, Mentor

UMC Discipleship Resources Ldrshp -Track I Retreat 2 of 6 
Mar 7-9, 2023  CO Springs
Bill Selby, Mentor
Track II - Retreat 2 of 6 Jan 17-19, 2023 CO Springs
Bill Selby, Mentor

Track II - Retreat 4 of 6, 2023 CO Springs 
Bill Selby, Mentor

Track III #4 Retreat  6 of 6 April 18-20, 2023  CO Springs
Bill Selby, Mentor

Track III 3M Next Retreat, July 25-27, 2023 CO Springs
Bill Selby, Mentor

  
  New Track I Centers

Retreat 1 of 6, Fall 2023 Colorado Springs
Derf Bergman, Mentor

  Retreat 1 of 6  Fall 2023, Concordia KS
Karges Mentor


Don't find a Center near you?  Then plan one! Just get 8 of your colleagues to join you and 
we will bring it to you.  Email integrity4u@comcast.net to find out more.


New Track II Center
     
Retreat 1 of 6, Fall 2023  Colorado

 New Track III Center
 Retreat 1 of 6, Track III #5  Fall 2023 Colorado


Clergy & Spouse Retreat
Franciscan Retreat, Colorado Springs, CO  TBD

This is a very special retreat for clergy and their spouse.  It is an opportunity for both people to gain an understanding of how ministry is an emotional system of three families, their own, each of the families IN the church, and the family OF the church.  Couples can begin to appreciate how emotional enmeshment occurs and how the church gets triangulated into the familiy and can undermine both couple and children.  Developing both an understanding of the system as well as some emotional tools will be refreshing.  This is also a "retreat" at which couples can relax and reaffirm the relationship at a wonderful retreat setting which is "away" yet very "accessible."  Give your relationship and one another a gift by attending this retreat.  
This resource has a limited registration of only eight couples.
The Center at a Glance
"If ministry were that simple!"



When meeting with clergy in one of our current Centers for Pastoral Effectiveness, I was struck by just how complicated ministry is.  During my tenure the expectations for clergy has seemed to expand, financial pressures seem to have grown, the anxieties of people have seemed to have gotten more enmeshed in the system.  No longer does it seem that being "called to ministry" and wanting to be a "good and faithful servant" to our people is enough.

Members of the smallest of churches are far more aware of what is "out there" than when I began in a small church in Indiana.  The feelings may be parochial but the attitude cosmopolitan.  Sunday's worship expectations of the young are influenced by high tech, high energy, and high life, while many of the people in our churches still struggle to change the flashing 12:00 on the  "VCR."  Just how can a minister meet all the needs while remaining true to the high calling of being spiritually and emotionally present in times of trauma or the celebrations of life?  Add to that the calling of clergy to "preach prophetically" which many times means bringing up very uncomfortable issues within the church as well as society.  That all adds up to a lot of anxious people in the pews and a lot of reactivity within the system.  So what do we do?

Well, it begins with YOU, the leader.  Are you the non-anxious presence in the system we call the church?

When someone is complaining about the latest hymn, another about "those people no longer in church," and still others wanting you to be more "spiritual" or "dynamic" to get "those young families we want" but with no changes to "their" worship, it is very difficult to be a non-anxious presence. 

But this is the purpose of the Center, to assist you to be more healthy as a leader, to grow in your awareness of what raises your anxiety level, and to be more prepared to deal with the anxieties of others while continuing to follow your vision as minister.

As you plan your  continuing education, I invite you to consider attending one of the new Centers that are announced above.  
Over 600 Center Alumni agree that you will not regret the decision.


Clergy, you need to consider the Center when....
  You don't think you could ever find the time!
  You struggle to balance the needs of yourself, your personal life, including family and/or friends, with the needs of each family in and the
     family of the church.
  You have recently moved to a different appointment, especially a different size or type of appointment.
  You are in or around your first, tenth, twentieth, or thirtieth year of ministry.
  You feel excied about attending such a Center.
  You feel apprehensive about attending such a Center.
  You have recently experienced a major life-change, or trauma or move.

Review the rest of our website for more information regarding the Center for Clergy and Professional Coaching for Clergy along with our resources for  churches including some powerful seminars as well as personal consultations. 
                                                                                                                                                         Peace,  
                                                                                                                                                         Bill Selby
Put your name on a list, just email integrity4u@comcast.net.
Bill Selby, Center Mentor

Rev.Bill Selby, creator of the Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Rockies is the Center's Mentor. Bill's professional background includes engineering, higher education, and pastoral ministry. He has studied and used Family Systems theory since the 1970s. Ordained in 1974 in the South Indiana Conference of the United Methodist Church, he served a small country church and then a church in a county seat community. He became a member of the Rocky Mountain Conference (UMC) in 1983 and was appointed to 1st UMC in Casper, WY.

His last church assignment was a new church "re-start," St. Luke's UMC in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, in 1987.  It was there that he integrated most fully "Family Systems" into his ministry as he worked to grow a church that was dealing with heavy financial debt, economic downturns, and church families under tremendous stress.

In 1995, he left his first love, church pastoral ministry, with a vision to create an Extension Ministry of and for the church. This became known as Growth With Integrity Resources. The goal of this new ministry was to provide vital resources that clergy and churches need today - while keeping integrity in their ministry and mission. The Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Rockies is the cornerstone resource offered by Growth With Integrity Resources. Bill spent 4 years in intensive study and planning to develop the Center. After 3 successful years of leading Centers, The Center for Pastoral Effectiveness of the Rockies became a separate non-profit corporation with the goal of widening its scope to include clergy and religious leaders of all denominations throughout the western United States.  Since 1999, over 500 clergy have become Center "believers" and alumni or are presently enrolled.  Center sites are or have been in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa with clergy from the United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Episcopal, United Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and American Baptist denominations.


The Center also expanded to provide a variety of resources for the local church and leadership found on this web site.


Bill comes from the small town, Orion, Illinois. He married the girl across the street, Sherilee in 1965.  They have created and acquired a unique "family" whom they cherish dearly.