The churches of the North Central Collective hold the church as central to the plan of God to minister in the world today. This comes with a number of responsibilities for the church, one of which is the development of leaders to serve in the church. We believe that churches, operating in community and relying on one another, are capable of training leaders for every position needed by the church and by the local network of churches, without needing to outsource that task to external bodies governed by secular standards. This is done by applying two complementary standards; one governs the way the church can provide such training, and the other governs the content of that training.

SPADE operates as an apprenticeship, where a potential future leader is paired with an established leader, who works with guides from multiple churches in the network to ensure the apprentice gets wise leading and experience putting their education into practice in an active church, and the churches of the network each get opportunity to invest in the apprentice and a lesser demand to meet all their educational needs.

 The name of the program comes from the primary scope of its content. Apprentices are equipped with the Skills to carry out the work of their calling, Paradigm Alignment to ensure they understand the principles that direct the life of the church and her members, Disciplines that ensure their heart and mind are deeply rooted in relationship with God, and Education that gives them the theological understanding they will need to work as leaders in a church. Every resource used by the North Central Collective churches to train and develop apprentices is considered based on its ability to strengthen one of those four demands and equip the apprentice for the specific role they will serve in the church. The actual content each individual apprentice engages is personalized based on a core set of demands determined by their pathway and a careful consideration of their own gifts and personality to determine how they will be practicing their role. For instance, someone going through the Deacon pathway with a skill set and heart that suit the work of handling church finances will have the same core requirements as another Deacon apprentice with a skill set and heart suited for leading youth ministries, but their personalized skill and education training will be vastly different; in fact, even two Deacon apprentices destined for youth ministry with personalities that make their approach to youth differ may find subtle differences in some of the skills they will develop.

 Candidates must have the support of their church leadership in order to be considered for any SPADE pathway.

SPADE Pathways

Network Leader Pathway

• Network Leader: This pathway is for individuals who will be trained to serve as leaders on the network level. This includes those being prepared for a role on our Apostolic Team as well as those being equipped to establish a new network of churches outside the geographic scope of the North Central Collective.