A few years ago I volunteered to serve on a church-wide committee of my denomination, the kind that meets in the big corporate meeting room, a glass-and-steel box that looks like all the other corporate boxes near major airports. It…
Read MoreA Discerner’s Guide to Congregational Governance
The envelope please! Runner-up for Most Influential Book as rated by American clergy is … “Ladies and gentlemen, will it be a book on spiritual practices? Biblical studies? The ever-popular ‘How to Blame Lay Leaders’? No, the topic of the…
Read MoreBecoming Mutually Accountable: Strengthening Clergy and Congregations through Evaluation
Assessment is often viewed as a dirty word, but it is a necessity and even a positive tool. Without it we don’t know how to measure what has happened to us, through us, or around us. Assessment, or evaluation, is…
Read MoreLeaving Behind Left Behind: Reclaiming the Book of Revelation in a World Left Behind
When you spend year after year preaching, teaching, and worshipping in a church, there are patterns that emerge. Listen to enough sermons and Sunday school lessons and one pattern becomes obvious: more often than not, the Book of Revelation is…
Read MoreWhatever Happened to Humility? Rediscovering a Misunderstood Leadership Strength
Can we be humble and still be leaders? As a pastor given the charge to lead a congregation, this is a question that has consumed me for more than two decades. I’ve been curious about the connection between humility and…
Read MoreCongregations Magazine, Spring 2007
Humble Leadership: The Forgotten Strength? Contents IN FOCUS: What Happened to Humility? Pastor, author, and seminary professor N. Graham Standish explores the misunderstood strengths of leadership grounded in humility Leaving Behind Left Behind New Testament expert Fred Schmidt offers an…
Read MoreCongregations Magazine, Fall 2006
Transition into Ministry Contents IN FOCUS: Emerging as Ministers Thirteen young clergy share the poignant and inspiring stories of their first steps on the path to pastoral ministry. Experimenting with the Transition into Ministry James P. Wind, president of the…
Read MoreCongregations Magazine, Summer 2006
The Good Fight: Transforming Congregational Conflict Contents IN FOCUS: Leading into the Promised Land Alban Institute senior consultant Susan Nienaber shares the inspiring stories of congregations who chose to heal after trauma and conflict A Pioneering Spirit Kathryn Palen, director…
Read MoreCongregations Magazine, Winter 2007
Worship that Connects Contents IN FOCUS: Worship as a Vision-Building Work of God Brian Paulson, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville, Illinois, explores the power of worship to shape, vision, generate change, and announce the activity of God in…
Read MoreHumble Leadership
Traditionally, humility is understood as a virtue. And humility is a Christian virtue because, like all other virtues, the practice of humility opens us to Christ’s presence; or more specifically, it enables us to pay attention to Christ’s presence and…
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