Resources
Organic Leadership Training
The research behind MPC’s approach to house church leadership — and a bridge to training for the wider Keys.
Doctoral dissertation
Organic Leadership Training
Dr. David Glenn Bailey, Organic Leadership Training: A Training and Assessment Program for Potential House Church Leaders (D.Min., Liberty University John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, 2023).
Abstract
What the Project Studied
This action research thesis project engaged non-professionally trained Christians who worked through the early stages of Christian leadership development and house church planting. The project utilized a six-week training program in which participants hosted a prayer meeting, chose a confession, led a Bible study, designed an outreach ministry, hosted a worship meeting, and drafted future house church resolutions and a community rule. The participants engaged in a weekly targeted spiritual discipline to foster spiritual formation. Data were collected through journaling, entrance and exit questionnaires, activity guides, post-activity questionnaires, and participant-observations. The research indicates that organic leadership training inspires confidence in emergent leaders and is valuable in developing leadership competencies. The research also indicates that Christian leaders in the early stages of their development benefit from a small, personal environment like a home and support and encouragement provided by an experienced leader. The program was designed with participant experimentation in mind illuminating unique solutions to house church planting challenges. This approach also fostered greater self-awareness of the participant’s leadership style. In conclusion, organic leadership training combined with the simple ecclesiastical environment of the home offers an excellent strategy for competency development, leadership assessment, and low-cost, low-risk church planting.
Why read it
Who This Serves
- Emerging leaders See a practical path from ordinary Christian maturity toward hosting prayer, teaching Scripture, shaping outreach, and leading worship in a home setting.
- House church practitioners Understand why small, personal environments and mentor support matter for early-stage leadership — and how a community rule keeps fellowship distinctly Christian.
- Pastors and trainers Explore an alternative to platform-heavy leadership pipelines: experiential, mentor-apprentice formation rooted in the home and the local church.
- Neighbors in the Keys Learn why a house church network is a fitting response to life here — high cost of living, limited construction, and a call to faithful, low-overhead mission.
In practice
How the Dissertation Shapes MPC
Marathon Presbyterian Church is the ministry context of the project. The thesis does not sit on a shelf apart from the church — it describes and reinforces how MPC is ordered.
- Elders who pastor house churches Gatherings remain small, Word-centered, and participatory. Every elder pastors in the network — the early-church pattern of oversight joined to household shepherding.
- Organic Leadership Training in practice OLT is not only researched here — it is lived here. Members are trained for real ministry, and future house church pastors are formed organically through mentor-apprentice life, spiritual disciplines, and supervised ministry tasks.
- Confession and mission Scripture first, Westminster Confession (1647) as secondary standard, and a clear call to discipleship, evangelism, teaching, unity, and love.
Bible College
How It Connects to BCFK
The same convictions — Scripture, spiritual formation, and training leaders for real ministry — also inform Bible College of the Florida Keys (BCFK).
Where MPC practices house church life in Marathon, BCFK offers a place for students and servants in the Florida Keys to grow in biblical knowledge and ministry readiness. The dissertation’s emphasis on mentor-supported, competency- building formation aligns with that educational aim: leaders who can pray, teach, serve, and plant faithfully without waiting on a complex institutional machine.
Members of Marathon Presbyterian Church also receive access to the BCFK library — a concrete bridge between congregational life and serious study of Scripture and theology.
If you are exploring theological study in the Keys, visit bcfk.org.