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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“The sermon today is the Rector’s annual report,” joked the Reverend Bruce Freeman at Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal) in Cincinnati, “where I wrap my message in a sermon so that you think you are getting a real sermon!” It…

In our years with the practice of testimony, one of the most valuable things for me was hearing how people perceive their church. With testimony, you encourage members to reflect back to you their vision of the church, and in…

The context in which we do ministry today is radically different from the prevailing context at the time some of us entered ministry a couple of decades ago. Once we catch on to that fact, we begin to see why…