The Ministry Collaborative Podcast: Highlights from Our First Year
Big goals… to change things… working together. After 60+ weeks of lockdowns, quarantines, and uncertainties, things are re-opening at a speed few of us would have guessed even a month ago. Church boards can be forgiven for being caught both exhausted and unprepared. We are already hearing from...
She was a French philosopher, a mystic, and a political activist. As her life progressed, she moved deeper into philosophy and became more religious. When Simone Weil died at age 34 in the midst of World War II, Albert Camus described her as “the only...
Most of us probably haven’t given much thought to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town since, maybe, it was the spring play during our high school years. That is, until Tom Long’s review of Howard Sherman’s new book, Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the...
“What you are writing is helpful – it is something for us to aspire to – but this is too hard, too challenging right now.” “I’d love to have my church board spend a generous amount of time talking of larger topics of God’s imagination, but...
Every church board faces hard choices at its meetings. Beginning with how to structure the meeting itself. Choice One is to spend time… …on the minutes from the previous meeting, correcting typos and the list of excused absences; …making one board member uncomfortably read some mild piece they...
Exactly one month ago today, Gallup published significant data on church membership in a report bluntly titled U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time. Highlights from Gallup’s polling include the following: 47% of Americans report that they belong to a house of worship (a category...
In his wise and insightful New York Times piece titled “The Unsettling Power of Easter,” Esau McCaulley recalls an Easter of his youth. I grew up in the Southern Black church tradition, where Easter was the opportunity to don your best outfit. The yellow and red...
It feels a lot like we have been in a darkened movie theater for the last year, watching the same pandemic picture show play over and over and over again…and now have walked out into bright light. Our eyes are struggling to adjust and refocus. For...
It must be hard to contemplate the breadth and depth of your church board agenda right now. New protocols for meeting in person, staying safe, being ready to contact-trace if needed, and tracking vaccination levels. But also, in-person worship (or when can we do that?)...
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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