Books, teaching, and speaking that equip clergy and lay leaders with clarity, resilience, and spiritual depth in a demanding calling.
Since 2005, Clara King has been researching and fostering vitality in the Church, emboldening leaders just like you.
Drawing from adaptive leadership, and years of ministry experience, she speaks honestly about the challenges of the church today, and offers practical encouragement grounded in Scripture and a living faith.
Leadership can be faithful, life-giving, and transformative, in the midst of the challenges that congregations face today.
Rev. Clara King is a priest, teacher, and researcher focused on church leadership, spiritual formation, and the inner life of those who serve in ministry.
Her work sits at the intersection of adaptive leadership, practical theology, and lived experience, offering a hopeful message for people navigating responsibility, uncertainty, and conflict within the Church.
Every congregation today, and every Christian leader, is facing a moment of profound ambiguity. We must create space to listen, discern, and experiment with new possibilities for faithful leadership.
I work with clergy, congregations, and church leaders who are navigating this complexity, embracing change, and seeking healthier, more faithful ways to lead during a generational transition.
A contribution to the ongoing conversation about pastoral identity, this edited volume explores how congregational leadership is changing in response to a changing church.
In Chapter 4, “Sharing the Call: Beyond Clericalism,” Clara King explores how clericalism dominates our imagination about church, even though it is bad for clergy and congregations. Contrasting clericalism with a vision of shared ministry, she helps us imagine church life beyond clericalism, and how to overcome the obstacles that lie along the way.
Clara King’s work focuses on church leadership, adaptive change, and the lived realities of ministry in the church today.
Her published work includes peer-reviewed research on clericalism and post-clerical leadership models and ongoing presentations within academic and church leadership settings.
Her doctoral research focused on the challenges of teaching adaptive leadership effectively within the church. She designed a new, research-based one-day workshop on adaptive leadership to clergy, and tested it with ten groups of clergy across Canada, from the Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches. The result is a validated theory of change and theory of action for teaching and evaluating adaptive leadership with clergy. Of particular relevance for leadership educators, program designers, and grant-makers in the church, her doctoral research will be published in 2027.
Ideas shaped in conversation with churches, academy, and those doing the work.
Clara speaks at churches, conferences, and leadership retreats, creating space for honest conversation about the adaptive challenges of the church today, where God can be found in all the mess, the need to build a culture of discernment, and faith-formation of leaders.
Prior Topics:
Researching the Future of Church Leadership
