With the November elections behind us, we are on the cusp of the transition from the 109th to the 110th Congress, and the temptation for many of us is to forget about politics for awhile. The signs along our roadways…
Read MoreStaying in Church
Barbara Brown Taylor was not the first of my friends to leave pastoral ministry and she has not been the last, but she is the first to write a book about her decision to leave. Her memoir, Leaving Church, is…
Read MoreThe Sacred Responsibility: Supporting the Pastor We Have Called to Serve Us
Responsibility for congregational health lies with both congregation and pastor, but many congregations fail to recognize the sacred responsibility they have to the pastor called to shepherd them. Evidence of this failure can be seen in the alarming number of…
Read MoreNot Sure I Want to Be Back: Thoughts on Returning from Sabbatical
I call it post-sabbatical stress syndrome, or psss. I have it bad and I’m struggling to figure out just what the cure might me. PSSS struck the Day last September when I returned home from a three-month sabbatical, my first…
Read MoreGod Wants You! How Military-Style Recruitment Tactics Can Help—or Harm—the Church
There are about 70,000 marines and army soldiers who are trained for frontline combat; in the language of the Pentagon, they represent the “tip of the spear” in military engagement.1 Interestingly, there is about an equal number of ordained mainline…
Read MoreRestoring Our Contemplative Gaze: Congregational Transformation through the Arts
“When it comes to spiritual experience, words are often woefully inadequate. For that matter, neither do images or any of the arts fully convey the Great Mystery. Even so, there are some practices that improve our chances. When we open…
Read MorePreaching as Practice: Techniques to Help Your Whole Congregation Share Their Faith during Your Sermon
At a workshop we recently led at a national gathering of UCC and Disciples women, we threw out a number of questions to get a conversation about evangelism rolling. Our questions were sincere, but somehow they got the room laughing….
Read MoreWorship as a Vision-Building Work of God
Spiritual vitality and newfound creativity are natural outcomes when God-centered congregational vision finds expression in worship. Over the years, my worship planning with colleagues would wander and weave through holy texts and themes with only an occasional nod toward local…
Read MorePreparing Ourselves for Worship
Few of us give much thought to entering worship. On most Sundays, we consider ourselves fortunate to get out of bed, locate suitable clothing, swallow some coffee, and glance at the newspaper before scrambling out the door, driving to church,…
Read MoreLiving the Story
For three years, I researched vital mainline Protestant congregations. Armed with a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., I studied fifty churches to determine if there existed a common pattern of spiritual vibrancy and shared practices that strengthened communal life. Sifting through thousands…
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