“I love empowering people to take leadership,” she says. “My mission is to develop leaders.” And she does that a lot. She is the Senior Program Director for Leadership for the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF), where she works to equip Episcopal congregations to build the leadership abilities of their clergy and lay members.

Anne Ditzler

Ditzler was one of the trainers at the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane Organizing for Mission (OFM) training in January of this year. Organizing for Mission is the newest effort of the Spokane Diocese to develop leadership among people of faith and raise funds to alleviate poverty and hunger.

She says the ECF sees Organizing for Mission as a potential part of a larger, broader initiative to train church leadership nationwide. “We see this kind of organizing model to strengthen the church on the inside and outside wherever that body of people is gathered,” Ditzler says.

At the training, Ditzler taught on two key aspects of leadership and organizing: strategy and relationships.

“Strategy is about figuring out how you can turn the resources you have into the resources you need,” says Ditzler. She says those resources might be people’s time, talents, or their personal relationships in the community.

Relationships in OFM, Ditzler says, are a crucial part of strategy in OFM. “Committed relationships are the glue that keeps an organization together,” she says. In the January OFM training, Ditzler taught trainees how to identify values they share with others they know, learn about shared interest among those they have relationships with, and spotting a willingness to share resources in common to accomplish those goals.

As OFM’s first Lenten campaign wraps up, Ditzler says she is excited to see congregations work together — and others outside of the Spokane Diocese are taking notice. “We are in the mode of learning and encouraging what is happening in Spokane, so we can share that success with the wider church,” she says. “We’re really excited about how this will work inside and outside church walls. We see this kind of organizing model strengthening the church as a whole.”

The future of Organizing for Mission is yet to be determined, but Ditzler believes it is sure to serve as the foundation for a larger purpose inside and outside the Church. “I’m really excited to see a group of congregations come together in the Spokane Diocese,” she says. “Sometimes in congregations we can become a little isolated. What’s exciting to me is that big congregations and little congregations come together. It will make a big impact on the world.”

We have nearly reached the end of Organizing for Mission’s inaugural Lenten campaign, and with it, the end of this series. Stay tuned next week, when we will recap OFM, discovering how it has impacted individuals, congregations, and our Diocese.