This webinar explores the spiritual, emotional, relational, and practical preparation needed for retirement from pastoral ministry. Featuring Fred Lien, the session addresses identity, grief, communication, financial planning, and family impact, offering guidance for pastors discerning or entering a new season of ministry.

This webinar provides practical guidance for churches navigating pastoral transition. It outlines clear guidelines for preparation, communication, and boundary-setting, and includes reflections from pastors who have experienced leadership succession firsthand.

Leaving Well is a guide from the Saint Paul Area Synod (ELCA) offering theological grounding and practical guidelines for pastors and deacons retiring from a congregation. It outlines boundary expectations, transition practices, and emotional preparation. While written for use within the ELCA, the principles and practices outlined offer a helpful framework for any leader seeking to support healthy pastoral transitions.

The CRC Retirement Roadmap is a collection of articles offering theological reflection and practical guidance for leaders transitioning into retirement. It addresses preparation, financial and logistical planning, relational dynamics, emotional health, identity shifts, and life after full-time ministry, with additional guidance for lay leaders supporting the transition.

The Workbook for Retiring Well offers practical guidance and structured reflection for pastors preparing for retirement. It includes transition planning steps, a retirement timeline, boundary covenant models, and extensive wellbeing questions covering relational, financial, emotional, physical, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of life after active ministry.

Closing Well—Continuing Strong is a retirement planning and transition guide for pastors and their spouses. It includes spiritual reflection exercises, financial planning worksheets, guidance for shaping final years of ministry, farewell and succession planning, boundary-setting after retirement, and a section for lay leaders supporting the transition.

The Mental Health Sunday Toolkit from Hope Made Strong is a free, customizable resource designed to help churches host a focused service addressing mental health. It includes sermon notes, digital assets, a 5-day devotional, small group curriculum, and ongoing ministry ideas. Created by a ministry specializing in equipping churches for sustainable care, the toolkit offers practical, biblically grounded materials to reduce stigma, foster community, and support ongoing mental health conversations within congregational life.

The Studio from the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities is a guided organizational assessment designed to help Christian ministries strengthen governance, leadership alignment, strategy, and operational health. Through a multi-participant online assessment, a detailed report, a facilitated debrief, and curated resources, ministries gain clear insight into how their organization is functioning and where growth is needed. By engaging leaders, managers, and board members together, The Studio supports alignment, informed decision-making, and practical action planning for long-term mission effectiveness.

Ministry leaders can use Wonderhunt’s Easter films as sermon starters, discussion catalysts in small groups, or midweek reflection tools during Holy Week.

Digital ministry leaders can schedule the graphics and short clips to create a cohesive online Easter presence. For volunteer or family ministries, the films work well for intergenerational gatherings where shared viewing leads naturally into conversation and prayer.

Bible Search & Rescue is an online resource designed to help ministry leaders and learners engage Scripture with greater depth and clarity. Drawing from biblical scholarship, it provides accessible explanations of Scripture’s historical context, meaning, and interpretation, while also addressing common misunderstandings about biblical texts. The site includes written resources, a searchable index of topics, and a podcast that explores how careful study can shape faithful leadership and thoughtful discipleship.

Practicing the Way is a free set of tools and courses that helps people build a sustainable prayer and devotional life by practicing the habits of Jesus—without the pressure, noise, or “one more thing” energy of the Christian marketplace.

CIECR is a Canadian-based church research institute offering data, tools, and insights that help leaders understand what is actually happening in churches across Canada and make more grounded, informed decisions.

Living the Questions offers video-based curriculum for congregations and groups looking to explore Christianity in a more open, thoughtful, and relational way, especially for people wrestling with faith, doubt, and belonging.

Geez is a nonprofit, ad-free print magazine exploring faith, justice, art, and activism for people on the edges of church life. It offers thoughtful storytelling and prophetic imagination that helps leaders engage questions of justice, culture, and faith beyond institutional church language.

Homebrewed Christianity is a long-running podcast and theology platform hosted by Tripp Fuller that brings serious theological conversation into accessible, curious, and often playful dialogue. Through interviews, panels, and audio essays, the show explores faith, scripture, politics, culture, and the church’s public witness—especially from progressive, ecumenical, and academically informed perspectives. It’s a practical resource for ministry leaders who want help thinking theologically about real-world issues without pretending the questions are easy or the answers are settled.

StoryBrand is a practical framework for clarifying how an organization talks about who it is and why it matters. For churches, it can be especially helpful in naming congregational identity, telling faith stories clearly, and communicating purpose without relying on vague or overused church language. The process helps leaders articulate who their community is in their context and carry that clarity into preaching, storytelling, websites, and printed materials.

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research organization that produces reliable data on religion, culture, politics, and social trends shaping public life. For ministry leaders, it functions as a reality check—offering well-researched insight into what people believe, how those beliefs are changing, and how faith intersects with wider cultural shifts. Pew doesn’t tell you what to think or do, but it gives you solid information to help you interpret your context more clearly and make better-informed decisions in preaching, teaching, and leadership.

Faith Today is a long-standing Canadian magazine and podcast offering thoughtful journalism, analysis, and conversations about Christian life, ministry, and culture in Canada, with a particular lens on evangelical communities.

Worship 101 is a practical and encouraging guide for anyone asked to lead worship — especially lay leaders and those without formal training. Written by Anne Miller and published through Seeds of Grace Resources in partnership with Knox College’s Centre for Lifelong Learning, the resource helps worship leaders understand the flow, purpose, and spirit of Christian worship. It offers theological grounding, practical tools, and reproducible checklists to make planning and leading services both approachable and Spirit-led.

Canadian Virtual Hospice is Canada’s leading online hub for compassionate, evidence-informed support related to serious illness, palliative care, death, and grief. It offers free tools, videos, and learning modules created with people who have lived experience, alongside clinicians, spiritual care providers, and researchers. From practical caregiving guidance to culturally responsive resources and specialized grief supports for all ages, the platform equips individuals, families, and ministry leaders with reliable information they can trust—anytime, anywhere.