Management as Mission · Leadership Lab
Managing the parish is part of the mission.
Not a distraction from it.
A monthly lab where leaders of parishes, schools, dioceses, and ministries learn to lead well together. You leave each session with one new tool, peers who understand the work, and the app to put it into practice before the next one.
Watch: What We Offer (2 min)
The part nobody prepared you for
You were formed for the mission: the sacraments, the preaching, the care of souls.
Then came the budget. The staffing. The building. The volunteer who is starting to look burned out.
There was no course for this in seminary, and there's rarely one after. So it gets figured out alone, at night, between everything else, with no one to ask who understands both the management problem and the parish it lives in.
After years of this work, here is what we believe: managing a parish well is not a tax on the mission. It is the mission. How you steward people and resources forms them, and it forms you.
The Leadership Lab
One hour a month. Built to change how the other 170 go.
You work this hour; you don't watch it. Ten minutes of teaching, then the rest goes to practice: real situations, role play, feedback from peers who sit in the same chair you do. The skill compounds month over month. And where a course would end, this keeps going, because the people you practice with become the people you call.
- BeginsSeptember 2026, enrolling now
- RhythmMonthly, live on Google Meet, 60 minutes, recorded if you miss one
- Commitment12-month membership
- BetweenPre-reading before each session; the JOA app to apply it after
- The roomMembers talking to members: leaders who understand both the work and the parish
Year One
- Setting objectives for your team
- Delegation & accountability
- Time management & weekly planning
- Running effective team meetings
- Running effective 1:1s
- Leadership communication
- Motivating staff & volunteers
- Coaching your people
- Problem solving
- Management decision making
- Conflict resolution
- Career & vocation conversations
The JOA App
The Lab teaches the tool. The app puts it to work.
Every Leadership Lab seat includes the JOA app, so what you practice in the session doesn't stay in your notes. It becomes a working draft the same day.
Prefer to start with the app alone? It's available on its own: see pricing below. Members sign in at app.johnoberg.com.
- 1Photograph the worksheet you filled in: the assessment, the plan, the one-page tool.
- 2Drop it into the app. It reads your handwriting and your situation, not a generic template.
- 3Get a working draft back, plus coaching to refine it between sessions.
In their words
Leaders who stopped figuring it out alone
“If someone were to ask me, ‘Father, what is the single most important thing I can do to help priests?’ I would respond by saying ‘Outside of prayer, these roundtable groups.’ Few things have changed my life and helped my vocation like the roundtable and Kristian’s accompaniment.”
“I did not receive any training in administration or management in the seminary, but I was quickly named a pastor and had to figure it out. The roundtable gives me the feedback I need to know if what I’m doing is the best practice or if there is a better way.”
“When I was first made pastor, I had zero training, and I didn’t know what I was doing. The task was huge and overwhelming. Through the roundtable and coaching, with other priests who have the same problems and concerns, I’ve felt so much more confident about my role here in the parish.”
“This was the tool that helped me the most in my first year as a pastor. At first I was afraid I wouldn’t get a return on my investment, but before I was stuck and now I see that we are moving forward as a parish.”
From our facilitated Catholic leadership roundtables, which use the same peer-and-practice approach the Leadership Lab is built on.
Why we do this
Management is a mission field.
The Church has a long record of innovation; she built hospitals and schools before anyone else did. John Oberg and Kristian Jaloway started the Leadership Lab on the conviction that she can do it again, and that it starts with equipping her leaders for the work nobody trained them for. Hear John tell the story in his own words.
Enrollment
Two ways to start
- Full JOA app access
- Photograph-and-drop your worksheets
- Coaching on your drafts, on your schedule
- Upgrade to the Lab anytime
- Everything in the app
- 12 monthly live Lab sessions
- Pre-reading, tools & templates each month
- A peer community that knows parish life
Part of a group or diocesan program? Your code applies at checkout.
Not sure which fits your organization?
Book a short callNot the season?
Take something useful with you.
Our paper on putting technology to work for the mission instead of the other way around. It costs nothing, and the door stays open whenever you're ready.
Read: Technology for the Mission