While there may be something to the idea that as ministers we should always feel like we are “in over our head” (or else we may not be taking our calling seriously enough), there is no point in drowning! Joining…

It was sometime in 1993 that I finally verbalized a thought that had been gradually forming in my mind for a number of years. I just blurted it out in the middle of a church board meeting. When I said…

As a church leader and writer, I often feel I’m in the midst of converging streams, trying to sort out the flowing torrents. The currents course so quickly that I find it hard to keep up with it all. Technological…

Advent, Lent, and pre-Pentecost are each unique seasons into which a wide variety of congregational and individual stories can be gathered. While waiting and yearning, we find common threads of relinquishment in each. We let go in each season in…

Theological field education helps you, the student, build many important habits, not the least of which is ministerial reflection. Reflective practices make you more effective in leading faith communities. Ministers who build patterns of contemplation learn to listen carefully to…

A pastor contemplating retirement has a personal and professional history. In many ways a minister’s retirement is the reverse image of her or his first congregational call. Decades earlier, he or she walked to the pulpit with fear and trembling,…

Jesus’s farewell words to his disciples recorded in the Gospel of John may contain both the most comprehensive and the simplest description of the call to fruitfulness in pastoral leadership. “You did not choose me but I chose you. And…

The tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks comes later this year. There will, no doubt, be much attention paid to this marker in time, and much review of what we have learned and where we now stand. Many…

In olden times, we like to think, society accorded great authority to clergy. Whether or not this rosy generalization stands up to scrutiny (it does not), we mainstream clergy certainly have lost some of the cachet our counterparts enjoyed from…

Loyalty to religious congregations may seem to be waning among some people and many articulate their concern as a suspicion of the “organizational” aspects of religious communities or their leaders. This outlook might get expressed in a variety of ways,…