“This stuff is way too churchy!” the marketing director proclaimed as my wife and I sat down to discuss how to tell the community that a new congregation was being formed in Naples, Florida. “Too churchy!” she advised as we…
Read MoreBecoming Mutually Accountable: Strengthening Clergy and Congregations through Evaluation
Assessment is often viewed as a dirty word, but it is a necessity and even a positive tool. Without it we don’t know how to measure what has happened to us, through us, or around us. Assessment, or evaluation, is…
Read MoreThe First Five Years: Four Programs Offering Support to New Pastors
The first five years of parish ministry set an entire ministry. The habits, the inclinations, the dispositions, the way of understanding vocation is set in those first five years, and it lasts.1 That core belief—or a similar variation—is at the…
Read MoreDimensions of Pastoral Authority
After intense years of study and sacrifice, he turned in his last seminary papers. The master of divinity diploma is framed, ready for hanging. Behind him also are the yearly meetings with the denominational committee whose interrogations earnestly and prayerfully…
Read MoreA Matter of the Heart: Pastor John Wimberly Shares How His Passions Have Shaped His Lifelong Learning Agenda
Over the past 22 years, continuing education has been a big part of my life: I earned a Ph.D. in systematic theology, mastered the art of creating wheelthrown ceramic pots, and completed an Executive MBA program. During that time, I…
Read MoreBecoming a Clergy Mother: A Study of How Motherhood Changes Ministry
by Pamela Cooper-White Images of birth have long held power and meaning in Christian theology. Indeed, the sacrament of baptism has birth as its central metaphor. What more powerful image of the flowering of human sexuality into birth than the ritual…
Read MoreThe Leading Edge: From Experiments to Movements
by James P. Wind As many readers of Congregations will recall, in 2008, the Alban Institute published a Special Report called Becoming a Pastor: Reflections on the Transition into Ministry. It was the first public report on a decade long initiative, funded…
Read MoreReshaping the Transition into Ministry
A promising set of new experiments has the potential to make a collective impact on the way people enter pastoral ministry in the twenty-first century. The Transition into Ministry initiative (TiM)—an effort funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and participated in…
Read MoreA Strong Start: Transition into Ministry Program Aims at Helping Young Ministers Thrive
In 2001, the Alban Institute published an issue of Congregations highlighting the significant decline in the number of young people (those in their twenties and thirties) choosing pastoral ministry as their vocation. At the time, this precipitous decline in mainline…
Read MoreThema Bryant: Bridging Theology and Psychology
In the final episode of the first season of “Leading and Thriving in the Church,” Prince talks with Dr. Thema Bryant, the 2023 president of the American Psychological Association (APA).
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