Which Alban Weekly articles were the most read during 2012? The combination of a good title, compelling content, and, frequently, sharing on social media helped make these 10 articles the most popular among our readers. Thanks to all who shared these and other articles on their Facebook pages, wrote about them in their blogs, or forwarded them to their friends. This week, we offer links to these articles for those who missed them the first time or want to read them again, and some discounts on some of the books they were adapted from for those who want to go deeper.     

10. Healthy Practices for Practicing Balance
By David Edman Gray. From Practicing Balance: How Congregations Can Support Harmony in Work and Life    

9. Is the Pastor Here?  
By Melissa Lynn DeRosia, Marianne J. Grano, Amy Morgan, and Amanda Adams Riley. From The Girlfriends’ Clergy Companion: Surviving and Thriving in Ministry   

8. The Challenge to Change   
By Karen McClintock. From Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations     

7. A Backdrop of Loss  
By Kenneth McFaydon. From Strategic Leadership for a Change: Facing Our Losses, Finding Our Future    

6. Putting How before What  
By Stephen Chapin Garner with Jerry Thornell. From Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality   

5. The Problem Trap  
By Larry Peers. From Congregations    

4. A Question of Growth  
By Stephen Chapin Garner with Jerry Thornell. From Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality     

3. Fundraising Beliefs  
By Dan Hotchkiss. From Dan’s column, Uncoventional Wisdom, which appears in each issue of Congregations  

2. What’s the Problem?  
By Susan Beaumont, author of Inside the Large Congregation. An Alban Weekly original.     

1. The Budget Isn’t Really That Important  
By Michael Durrall. From Creating Congregations of Generous People   

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Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality    
by Stephen Chapin Garner and Jerry Thornell    

In  Scattering Seeds: Cultivating Church Vitality , Stephen Chapin Garner and Jerry Thornell share the story of their home congregation, the United Church of Christ in Norwell, MA. This average congregation has approached congregational life in a not-so-average way. Garner and Thornell don’t claim to have the secret to church growth and vitality, but in sharing the story of their simple church in New England, they give hope and innovative ideas to congregations in regions all over the country.     

Creating Congregations of Generous People    
by Michael Durall  

Asking parishioners for money is very different from creating congregations of generous people. In this provocative book, stewardship consultant Michael Durall argues convincingly that annual pledge drives inadvertently perpetuate low-level and same-level giving in congregations. Written with the voice of experience, this book will help clergy and lay leaders initiate and sustain effective stewardship programs. Durall believes that asking for money eventually becomes routine, even tedious-but creating a congregation of generous people becomes ever more meaningful with passing time .      

Strategic Leadership for a Change: Facing Our Losses, Finding Our Future    
by Kenneth J. McFayden   

Strategic Leadership for a Change provides congregational leaders with new insights and tools for understanding the relationships among change, attachment, loss, and grief. It also helps leaders facilitate the process of grieving, comprehend the centrality of vision, and demonstrate theological reflection in the midst of change, loss, grief, and attaching anew. All this occurs as the congregation aligns its vision with God’s and understands processes of change as processes of fulfillment .              

Shame-Less Lives, Grace-Full Congregations         
by Karen A. McClintock  

In Shame-less Lives, Grace-full Congregations, author Karen McClintock invites readers to become shame-less, so they can assist others in a congregational system to find a life of joy and grace. With skilled storytelling and gentle humor, McClintock takes readers on a journey in which we learn to recognize the many forms shame takes and explore and heal the shame of our own upbringing, particularly the shame-laden messages within our own religious teachings and practices.    

The Girlfriends’ Clergy Companion: Surviving and Thriving in Ministry     by Melissa Lynn DeRosia, Marianne J. Grano, Amy Morgan, and Amamda Adams Riley    

As increasing numbers of young women are discerning a call to ministry, entering seminary, graduating, and searching for the call to a parish or other ministry setting, they need to be aware of the realities that face them. The Girlfriends’ Clergy Companion is about the nitty gritty of ministry for young female clergy—how to maintain a sense of personal style, what it’s really like to be a solo pastor, how to date, what to do when they’re ready to quit.            

Practicing Balance: How Congregations Can Support Harmony in Work and Life   
by David Edman Gray  

 Work-life imbalance is a problem that has personal, national, and religious implications. Millions of Americans sense that they are rushing through life and that their work and non-work lives compete with one another. Many of us are harming our health through overwork. David Gray’s Practicing Balance demonstrates why congregational leaders should take work-life imbalance seriously.   

 

 

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