The College of Pastoral Leaders

By Melissa Wiginton

No one knows what it is like to be a pastor but another pastor. Who else stands each week to speak to a gathering of people whose deepest individual secrets they hold? Who relies completely on voluntary gifts for their salaries—gifts from the very people they must at times challenge? The responsibility to bear a fresh and truthful word of God comes week after relentless week.

Pastors rely on each other to normalize their unique challenges and to inspire perseverance in difficult times. Together, they may help one reclaim a call that seems lost or replenish a depleted imagination. They celebrate the joys outsiders may not even see. They share funny, poignant, outrageous, or miraculous stories knowing they will be understood.

We all want friends, but a pastor’s need for relationship with similar others speaks of profound life-preserving reality. In Flourishing in Ministry: How to Cultivate Clergy Wellbeing, Matt Bloom argues that pastors who thrive rely on a trusted community of other pastors for the accountability, coping, and ongoing learning that marks the pastoral life.

The College of Pastoral Leaders (CPL) supports pastoral colleague groups to do just those things. CPL makes two-year, $10,000 grants to small groups of pastors to pursue a self-designed program for renewal, vitality, and pastoral excellence. CPL’s grants have benefitted more than 130 cohorts since its founding in 2002: we serve the church by helping pastors flourish.