The first position I took as a solo pastor was in a suburban, pastoral-sized congregation with two Sunday services and a combined attendance of one-hundred-forty people. The parish had always had male senior pastors until the female interim, who was…
Read MoreMinistry in Hard Times
During the Great Depression, my grandfather lost his job and started a new company. His friends had enjoyed his Christmas gifts of homemade candied fruit–the kind used in fruitcakes–and encouraged him to turn what had been a hobby into a…
Read MoreNarrative Leadership in Changing Times
I recently traveled to a charming clapboard church in the middle of an East Coast city to visit with an interim minister nearing the end of a two-year term. “These are good people,” this gifted pastor and preacher told me,…
Read MoreMeet Me in the Middle
There are plenty of Christians who feel theologically and spiritually displaced. They feel lost in the middle between the noisy extremes of religion and politics and long to feel at home right where they are. They sense that it is…
Read MoreBlessed are the Poor in Spirit
For Christopher Wendell, the first beatitude–“blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”–is about a third way of seeing poverty and wealth: instead of ignoring the divisions that wealth and poverty create or being paralyzed…
Read MoreWho Locked the Gates?
Over the years I have heard countless painful stories about how people new to a congregation couldn’t get through the “gates” of the church–those implicit codes and requirements that those of us “inside” the church unwittingly embody and construct as…
Read MoreWorship Is Mission
My mandate was clear when they called me to be their pastor: “Help our church to grow.” Looking back, I was very naive. It honestly never occurred to me that the members of a congregation would, on the one hand,…
Read MoreThe Bivocational Congregation: Tomorrow’s Church?
Any garden-variety atheist, agnostic, or even religiously indifferent materialist knows that if—and we do mean if—the church is to survive well into the future in the northern hemisphere it won’t be through a linear extension of today’s church. (The only…
Read MoreAsk Alban: Core Competencies of Large Church Leadership
Q: Do I have what it takes to effectively lead a large congregation? A: A common assumption is that you can learn the skill sets you need to successfully lead a large congregation by serving well in a variety of…
Read MoreCENTERview: Including Laity in Education Events Empowers Congregations
At the Center for Congregations, we believe that congregations are learning organizations—that they have the capacity to learn and change. They are communities of leaders and teachers, students and learners, and educational events are great learning tools for them. Attending…
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