Q: How can we expand our leadership circle? We keep seeing the same people volunteer. A: Most congregations dramatically underutilize their leadership gifts. Stagnation of the leadership pool is neither healthy nor inevitable, and it does little to move the…
Read MoreThe Leading Edge: Seeing the Drama of Leadership
For years the Alban Institute has encouraged clergy and other congregational leaders to build personal support systems. Over the years these systems have taken many forms, involving therapists, physicians, spiritual directors, financial advisors, mentors, friendship groups, peer learning groups, and…
Read MoreEntering The Twilight Zone: Ministry in the Wake of Clergy Sexual Misconduct
You are going to have to deal with their troubled history,” the district superintendent told me in what would become a familiar litany during my four years of ministry as an “after-pastor.” I was about to become the minister of…
Read MoreLearning from Nonprofits*: How Church Boards Can Benefit From Secular Practices
The board meeting has already been underway for two and a half hours when the chairperson stifles a yawn and glances at her watch: 9:30 p.m. “Does anyone have any new business?” she asks. “I have something,” says one board…
Read MoreThe Synagogue Leadership Agenda: Redesigning Boards to Unleash Congregational Energy
My clients know I was a business executive before I was a congregational consultant, so when I arrive at a synagogue to teach a workshop it is not uncommon for the treasurer to corner me in the hall and say,…
Read MoreLeading from the Bottom Up: Bureaucracy and Adhocracy
I have worked with a number of churches who have revitalized themselves through a steady and consistent focus on lay vocation (see “Living from the Inside Out,” Fall 2004 issue). However, these promising episodes of energy and new life could…
Read MoreA Congregation of Mystics: Re-Igniting Our Passion for Encountering and Experiencing God
I’ve always felt something has been lacking from our modern churches, something essential. Growing up I acutely felt this lack, which drove me to leave the church at 15. People like me thirsted for spiritual water, an oasis in the…
Read MoreThe Leading Edge: Remembering a Bishop
For the past year I have been tracking a quiet little project going on in Washington, D.C. A small group of people with very large memories had decided to remember John T. Walker, the Sixth Bishop of the Washington, D.C….
Read MoreTo Wear or Not To Wear: Questions for the Gen X Ministers
I just want you to know,” said a member of the search committee to me after she extended the committee’s invitation to be their candidate for pastor, “that there were a couple of people on the search committee who had…
Read MorePracticing Our Faith in a Digital Age
One Sunday afternoon, a teenager in my congregation woke up terribly depressed. She decided to end her life. She wrote a simple will, but it was not on a piece of paper. Instead, she e-mailed it to her friends. She…
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