Fr. Ed Fride’s church, Christ The King Parish, is recognized in Sherry Weddell’s book “Forming Intentional Disciples” as the Best Church in America at making intentional disciples. Despite great preaching, vibrant worship and intentionally forming the disciples they had, they realized that they were stagnating and making few new disciples.

The pastor was very engaged in ministry, but not engaged in leading his staff well. Priests most often aren’t trained to lead their staff. In order for them to really breakthrough and grow, Fr. Ed would have to experience a real paradigm shift in how he approached the leadership of his key people. A whole new leadership approach would have to be learned and implemented.

Ron helped Fr. Ed change his approach from: “I hire good people, and if there’s a fire, they’ll call me” to “I need to be much more actively involved with my key leaders, especially in terms of supporting and caring for them.” As natural attrition happened on staff, they were able to hire high-capacity leaders and now did so with an eye toward their overall leadership potential. Their leadership team became a hybrid of staff and volunteers. The parish launched Alpha and Connect Groups. Ron helped the pastor wrestle through the difficulty of new expectations and behaviors that decreased his time in pastoral ministry but which helped him be much more effective in supporting key staff members. Ron taught them both how to have effective one-on-one meetings, especially concerning crucial conversations, as well as critical team meetings. As leaders were empowered together, they formed a structure of support for staff and key volunteers.

Staff morale grew healthier as Fr. Ed evolved as a leader who invested more time in his key people. A caring and supportive key deacon at his church testified enthusiastically that, "Fr. Ed had grown more as a leader with 2 years of coaching, than in the previous 20+ years of serving in that parish." The pastor earned the trust of his staff and leadership team members by being more reliable and accountable, and the confidence they had in their decision making grew as a team. They redefined their primary "customer", which changed the focus of their mission as a parish. The structure made sure that staff and key leaders were supported, empowered, and focused on results. That enabled the pastor to be much more effective as the leader his parish needed him to be.