the leadership school...
Pastor, are you ready to inspire, challenge, and revitalize your lay leaders with an empowering and dynamic training event designed to stimulate the growth of your congregational leadership? If your answer is “absolutely!”, then allow me to share my training program: The Leadership School: Practical Tools for Highly Effective Lay Leaders.
The Leadership School consists of four intensive and interdependent workshops key to the development of your lay leadership. The first workshop is Imagining Missional Congregations, the second is Inspiring Transformational Leaders, the third is Cultivating Passionate Marriages, and the fourth workshop is Building Financial Excellence.
Why these four topics? Because after more than 30 years of pastoral ministry training hundreds of lay leaders in diverse settings, I have come to the following conclusion: having a deeper understanding of these four interdependent topics—the church, leadership, marriage, and money—is fundamental to the growth, integrity, and future of the Church and Christian leadership in the 21st century.
The Leadership School workshops are practical presentations with real-life application and intense theological reflection. The typical program consists of four sessions over two Saturdays (AM and PM) or four sessions over four Saturdays (AM or PM). However, we can always consider other options depending on what you deem appropriate for your context and busy schedule.
The Imagining Missional Congregations workshop is designed to help lay leaders recognize and foster the profile of a highly missional, transformative, and effective congregation, now more than ever. In this workshop, we focus on the call to rediscover the "Missio Dei" of the church within the contours of the congregation’s current context. We will explore how faith communities today are transforming their churches into spaces of hope in today's world and within the environments of their specific contexts. We will learn to develop biblical options and strategies to turn the Great Commission into an incarnational reality in the model of the Triune God of our redemption.
The Inspiring Transformational Leaders workshop focuses on developing healthy leadership models, styles, and skills (especially in teams), based on the model of Jesus of Nazareth. In this workshop, I combine over 30 years of congregational and military pastoral experience with the best resources in the study of leadership. The fundamental premise of this workshop is simple: no one is born a "great leader," but a great leader is one who develops and then nurtures, over the long term, their own set of transformational leadership traits.
The Cultivating Passionate Marriages workshop (co-led with my wife, Zaida) is designed to help lay leaders discover a transformative model of marriage. This model is based on absolute equality, deeper and healthier emotional connection and affection, practical conflict resolution strategies, and much more. In our immersive marriage workshop, we combine our 45 years of marital experience and mutual discoveries with the practical insights of some of the best resources in the marriage enrichment community.
The Building Financial Excellence workshop explores a variety of resources, practices, and tools to ensure financial excellence from a biblical perspective. Topics will include, among others: how to manage our finances "the Jesus way"...how to build and improve our credit to become "credit kings"...how to invest in real estate without being a millionaire...how to manage "Mr. Debt"...and how to break free from the yokes that hinder the financial excellence of a working, middle-income family.
Let's connect and plan a transformative event! Click the button below to email me and start the conversation and get your questions answered. It would be an honor for me.
who is luis?
Luis is a retired pastor with a deep passion for church lay leadership training and development.
He graduated from the University of Massachusetts (Lowell, MA) with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and from Eden Theological Seminary (St. Louis, MO) with a Master of Divinity. Luis has additional advanced training in interim ministry, strategic planning, and executive coaching. He is currently a student in the Doctor of Ministry program in Creative Leadership at Central Seminary (Kansas City, KS).
After graduating from seminary, Luis served simultaneously for over 30 years in two ministry settings. The first setting included the development of a new Hispanic mission in St. Louis, MO, followed by eight interim ministries in two denominations: the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA). His second setting was as a Navy Chaplain (both active and reserve) in a variety of commands on land, at sea, and abroad. In 2020, he retired with the rank of Navy Captain (06) after 25 years as a military chaplain. His ministry experience also included teaching stints as a homiletics and biblical studies instructor for several years in the former Latino/Latina Studies Program at Asbury Theological Seminary (Orlando).
Luis is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and he and his wife (Dr. Zaida Maldonado) worship at a Spanish-speaking Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation in Orlando. His early Christian roots reside in the Pentecostal tradition and his faith connections are multidenominational. He now continues his passion for ministry by leading leadership training and development workshops through his ministry, Evangel Strategies. When able, Luis also provides pulpit supply/preaching services in a wide variety of Christian denominations.
He loves traveling (currently 46 countries), investing in real estate, and spending time with the most important people in his life. His favorite titles are "husband," "father," and "buedo" (grandfather).