by James P. Wind A large portion of American congregations get their pastors from seminaries. To be sure, these theological schools are not the only route into ordained congregational ministry and they are not the solitary shapers of their graduates. Some…
Read MoreThe Beloved Community
by Martin Davis Good Friday is a busy time in metropolitan Detroit, a community in which half the population is aligned with the Catholic Church. In 2010, the Holy Day was busier than most. Terry Jones, the Florida-based leader of the…
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Spiritual Dissonance: When Conflict between Clergy and Congregation Is about Vocation
by Diane J. Strickland Some years ago I attended a worship service in which the organist played the music for one anthem while the choir opened their music and sang a completely different one. At first it sounded like the performance…
Read MoreForty Years of Sermons
by Jean Alexander It’s a question most retiring clergy have to face: What to do with all those years of sermons? In fact, one colleague, whose church tragically burned down with his forty years of sermons in it, confessed how relieved…
Read MoreShepherding SBNR Sheep: How to Create a Church for the Spiritual but Not Religious
by N. Graham Standish I’ve been a pastor for 24 years. Still, I privately classify myself as being “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). I know it doesn’t make sense, but somehow it feels right. No matter how long I’ve been the…
Read MoreCongregations 2013 Issue 1
Alban members receive a subscription to Congregations, our award-winning magazine. Our mission is to provide clergy and lay leaders with practical, research-based information and ideas for effective ministry as they grapple with an ever-changing environment. Congregations is sent quarterly to…
Read MoreResilient Congregations
Q: You wrote an article in the Summer 2006 issue of Congregations titled “Leading into the Promised Land: Effective Lay Leadership in Resilient Congregations.” Given the ongoing realities of mainline decline, has your thinking about congregational resilience changed in…
Read MoreTen Assumptions of Appreciative Inquiry
by Mark Lau Branson Many forms of organizational development assume that the job of leaders is to find the problems and fix them. Perhaps members observe that their church has a declining membership, a changing neighborhood, and a dearth of…
Read MoreSigns of Vitality
What does small church vitality look like? To be sure, there is no one definition, and the variations on small church vitality are as numerous as the congregations themselves. Some are located in areas where numerical growth is possible and…
Read MoreCulture Streams
Culture is made of many different streams. These streams are like creeks and rivers, in that they flow in, around, and through the pond that makes up your church’s ministry setting. Cultural streams come in various sizes, from the tiny…
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