The Ministry Collaborative Podcast: Highlights from Our First Year
Eight friends and family members gathered recently for a holiday meal. As the meal went on, conversation drifted into talk of everyone’s jobs. A young woman who had just started her first job after graduate school shared about loving the work but struggling with the lack...
One of the challenges for those who serve on church boards is that, well, it is all so church-focused. The people in church ask you about the progress of this church thing or the problem with that church thing. You talk with your fellow leaders...
Let’s face it, finding or keeping one’s balance has never been the easiest thing in the month of December. Calendars crowd us with events. Cultural expectations for comfort and joy abound, keeping everyone too busy to have much of either. All the markers of the...
Just as most pastors and church board members were easing into a few Thanksgiving days of leisure and the anticipation of a “more normal Advent,” news of Omicron filled our feeds. The groans and exclamations—"Not again!”—could be heard everywhere. Certainly, it was the most common...
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! - Isaiah 58:1 About the last thing most pastors feel like right now – along with their church boards – is a trumpet. Worn down by months of uncertainty, discord over masks and more,...
For many congregations, the counting season has begun. Boards and committees are trying to determine the dollar amount of incoming pledges, gifts, and commitments for 2022. This has never been an exact or scientific process, and the past two pandemic years have stirred in huge...
Nearly fifty years ago, Studs Terkel published his landmark oral history Working, in which he observed: “Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.” Jobs are not big enough for...
During a conversation with a cohort of working pastors this week, we posed the following question: What makes it hard for you to go deeper with your leadership circle? What stands in the way of ‘digging a deeper well’ with these crucial leaders? What we heard in...
Is this your sign-up sheet before—or after—it has been circulated? If you quickly shouted “Both!” you are not alone. Churches live on sign-up sheets. We have sign-up sheets for ushering, for assisting in the nursery, for providing sanctuary flowers, for helping prepare communion, for helping serve communion,...
