THE DEVELOPMENT OF FLOURISHING LEADERS, INC.
Since 2004, Dr. Kris Miller and teams of counselors, spiritual directors, life coaches, massage therapists, dietitians, financial consultants, and other care-givers have facilitated the “Pastor’s Sabbath Retreats” (PSRs) as a ministry of Vineyard USA. The PSRs are intensive, ten-day retreats with three months of follow-up care for senior pastors who have been in various forms of crisis, burn-out, and transition. Twice per year, the PSRs immersed these care-givers in the lives of spiritual leaders, teaching them what factors cause leaders to thrive as well as those that cause them to decline.
After nine years of growing awareness, insight, and conviction, Flourish was born in 2013 to offer other opportunities beyond the PSR for the healing and formation of Christian leaders in many streams of the Church; and to provide the same type of multi-disciplinary, coordinated care anytime, anywhere.
In 2018, Flourish became Flourishing Leaders Inc., securing its non-profit status as a 501(c)3 organization in 2019. Our mission is the healing, formation, and well-being of Christian leaders. We offer personal care, intensive retreats, and formational cohorts for individuals and small groups of leaders. Flourishing Leaders also offers its services to movements and denominations of the Church in the form of an “Employee Assistance Program” (EAP).
DR. KRIS MILLER
Kris Miller is the founder and director of Flourishing Leaders, Inc, a non-profit organization. God used a broken family of origin and back-to-back church crises in his twenties to plant in Kris a deep passion for the healing, formation, and well-being of leaders. He has over 25 years of ministry experience as a pastor, professor, and administrator. For eleven of those years, Kris worked for Vineyard USA as a theologian and leader of their “Pastor’s Sabbath Retreats.” He has taught as an adjunct professor for Fuller Theological Seminary’s regional campuses, teaching systematic theology in Houston and Colorado Springs. He is now professor of theology and spiritual formation at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, directing their Institute for Christian Spirituality. He has a B.A. in biblical studies, M.Div., a M.A. in historical theology, and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Durham University (UK). His doctoral research on the knowledge of God included attention to the relationship between theology and the sciences, which now informs his vision of human flourishing. He has served as a spiritual director to many senior leaders since 2006.