Forty years after starting the Alban Institute, Loren Mead is still convinced that the local church is “where the rubber meets the road.”
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
Long before we became a world-class research university, certainly before we had basketball teams worthy of note, Duke University – and our precursor institutions, Trinity College, Normal College and Union Institute – were training persons to serve congregations. Like many…
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Self-care is not selfish
On the long list of items that must be done every day, pastors often put themselves last.
Read MoreThe Jazz Church
I like jazz. Not so much smooth jazz or the modal jazz popular among many modern jazz artists, but the progressive jazz fusion of the 1970s and early 1980s. This jazz was inspired by Miles Davis’s ground-breaking albums—Bitches’ Brew, Sketches…
Read MoreBook Review: How Music Works
How Music Works DAVID BYRNE San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2013 “Everything started with a sound. ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ the Bible tells us. We are told it was the sound of God’s voice that caused Nothing…
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Moving From Leadership 1.0 to 2.0
Not only has the Internet, particularly social media, changed the way we operate, but we can use it as a lens to view congregational leadership from a different perspective, a network perspective. Digital strategists talk about the development of the…
Read MoreThe Next American Reformation?
Book review What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution GAR ALPEROVITZ White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013 I am not a political economist. I am, however, someone who often thinks in…
Read MoreA Time of Change . . . A Time of Hope
As I have begun my work as a Field Consultant for the Alban Institute, I am finding pretty much what we all know: many congregations face difficult challenges in our changing times. And yet, it is crucial to note that…
Read MoreCourage Under Fire: Once the decision to fire an employee has been made
I was not surprised by the call. I knew that this pastor had been struggling for some time with a problem employee that he could not bring himself to fire. The employee was at times brilliant in her work, fulfilling…
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Pastoral Transitions in the Age of Social Media
Social media has changed many aspects of our lives and how we engage with others. We shop differently, research differently, communicate differently, and we experience community differently. Many of us broadcast our lives through status updates, photos of coffee and…
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