Fall is that season in which church boards turn their attention toward the deeper, more perennial questions of church life. What should we do next? And how can we reach more people? These well-intentioned discussions often revolve around adding new programs, improving programs already in place,...
An unlikely pair of writers put courage in the foreground of their thinking about how to live a virtuous life. Maya Angelou memorably said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” C.S. Lewis made a...
Annie Dillard died last week. We remembered her with appreciation, and we also learned with some surprise that a very different kind of writer, Eudora Welty, had been chosen by The New York Times to review Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek when it first appeared...
Last week we sat in silence with John Cage, listening to 4 minutes and 33 seconds of a pianist doing nothing, so the audience could hear everything. That cough two rows back. The radiator ticking. Somebody's stomach growling. Cage wasn't hiding from sound. He was...
American composer John Cage (1912-1992) wrote pieces of music to be played on a variety of objects, including flowerpots, scrapped hoods of old cars, and other pieces of junk. Then he began tinkering with a piano, shoving objects under the strings, including screws, bolts, spoons,...
We weren’t going to write Digging a Deeper Well this week…until a Seth Godin post dropped into our inbox. We’ve been writing about intentionality in ministry of late, and last week we noted the need to intentionally go “one by one by one” in leading...
Less than halfway through Act One of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman’s wife Linda, seeing him stumble toward oblivion, cries out forcefully to their two distracted sons: I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His...
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver wrote these lines, sometimes titled “Instructions for Living,” when she was approaching her eighth decade of life. Last month, Jonathan Haidt invoked them to frame his NYU commencement address on the importance of “treasuring” one’s attention. We think that...
If your church board feels tired and confused from time to time, trust that you are in good company. Compared to what church boards dealt with in earlier decades, today’s leaders are facing a tsunami of challenges across the world and inside the church. In a...
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I was the Facilitator for the first New York City cohort, and at the time, I was working in theological education on Christian leadership formation, so it seemed like a natural fit. What I discovered, though, was something quite different from my “day job.” While the content and topics of the curriculum was a crucial part of our gatherings, it was the community of mutual care and support that made the content relevant, not the other way around. And second, having three years of strong bonding created an extraordinarily resilient community that, in turn, was able to build up resilience in our leaders. I think every member of my cohort went through significant seasons of both joy and heartache, professionally and vocationally, during our time. And the cohort, in turn, lived out the exhortation of Romans 12:15, “rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep,” with a depth and integrity that I have rarely experienced, and often doing both in the same gathering. It was a privilege and a blessing to me and my own faith and ministry to be their facilitator, and I am eternally grateful to the Ministry Collaborative for calling me to that work!”
“It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It was unique to my particular situation. It was needed, appreciated and healing. It was affirming. Most valuable was the unspoken understanding of what we all were facing in our ministry context. There was a sense that we could finish each other’s sentences. Solidarity and empathy.”
Graduation Date:
May 23, 2021
“It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It was unique to my particular situation. It was needed, appreciated and healing. It was affirming. Most valuable was the unspoken understanding of what we all were facing in our ministry context. There was a sense that we could finish each other’s sentences. Solidarity and empathy.”
Graduation Date:
May 23, 2021
“I truly looked forward to this every week. The discussion topics, activities, and small group conversations were all very rich and meaningful. This experience gave me space to reflect on what’s happening right now in my congregation and community. It helped me to think about what might be next in my own ministry. It offered some very concrete ways I might work on equipping leaders in my congregation. I really enjoyed meeting colleagues from different places, denominations, and contexts–and learning from their experiences and reflections. I also appreciated hearing further conversation and reinforcement in the podcasts.”
Graduation Date:
July 14, 2021
“The experience was, in one word, enriching. It was timely as well. I was at a critical point in my own ministry and this literally breathed life back into me. The time went by so fast that I didn’t even realize two months had passed. To be able to share that type of camaraderie with other preachers, and realize that my struggles are not isolated, was liberating.”
Graduation Date:
March 18, 2021
“It was great to find confirmation and affirmation of my ministry through the voices of other pastors. I particularly enjoyed the focused time on talking about each of us as individuals and pastors, and not so much on what our churches look like.”
Graduation Date:
January 31st, 2020