Many new board members expect board participation will be an opportunity for personal faith development only to find a long, parliamentary-ordered, business-as-usual meeting. While asking for bread, they felt they had been given a stone. “Stonelike” boards are those that…

What is a mystic? Theologians have tried to define mystics for centuries. Unfortunately, most mistakenly define mystics according to their ascetic lifestyles, prayer practices, or mystical experiences and visions. These are not what define mystics. They are a by-product of…

A focus of our work at Alban is facilitating congregations and their leaders in the development of “changed imaginations.” This was certainly a goal of a recent Alban seminar for clergy. One of the tools that we used to move…

Dialogue and deliberation is a new movement in our country that is having and will have a huge impact on congregational and denominational life. Take, for example, these two fictional cases: Case #1 The denomination has asked every local congregation…

“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag notes. “Although we prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at…

Many congregations spend considerable time in the creation of job descriptions without asking the fundamental questions required to effectively design a staff role. Robert Simmons of the Harvard Business School recommends addressing these four basic questions in the design of…

Doing pastoral evaluations that are helpful to both pastor and church can be very tricky, especially in churches that tend to have unclear goals and volunteer leaders who don’t always see and know all that their church and their clergy…

Our early experiences of prayer and subsequent teachings about prayer have created in us a set of beliefs. A praying congregation helps people examine their beliefs about prayer and encourages them to hold on to the ones that are true…

How often have you heard a new pastor, priest, or rabbi say, “Seminary was fabulous, even life-changing, but it didn’t prepare me for what I face in the local congregation”? Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement…

All church bodies try to be sure that congregations have a variety of resources and resource people for when the change-of-pastor time comes. For several months or even a year or two, you will need these resources on a regular…