The Ministry Collaborative Podcast: Highlights from Our First Year
In a season when ministry can feel like it demands constant creativity, urgency, and reinvention, these recent reflections offer something steadier, and ultimately more sustaining. Together, they point us back to the core of our calling: to trust what is already true, to recognize God at...
Our TMC team continues to explore what this moment requires of ministry leaders. Not louder voices, not faster movement, not better branding, but something deeper. We are not short on passion. If anything, passion is everywhere, urgent, reactive, constant. But as Adam Mixon reminds us, “the...
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Recent reflections from our TMC community help us consider what we may be losing when optimization, urgency, and constant motion become the norm. In “Unoptimized Church,” Adam challenges the church’s quiet infatuation with efficiency and spectacle. Rather than pushing for reinvention, he calls leaders back to...
Throughout The Ministry Collaborative’s decade-plus work alongside clergy in Scotland, we were fortunate to be guided by and learn from two gifted pastors, Arthur Christie and Peter Neilson. In recent correspondence with Peter, he shared the following reflection. What I have learned most in our...
Over the past few months, The Ministry Collaborative has released podcasts for a series called, When Politics Is Upstream of Faith. Our hope is to help pastors, leaders, and congregations reflect on what it means to be the Church in this political season and time...
The Ministry Collaborative is committed to developing pastors, ministry leaders, and congregations for creative leadership. Our focus isn’t simply on “skilling up.” Rather, we recognize and seek to address the need for growth at a much deeper level where things like sustainability, adaptivity, and intuition...
This week’s prompt, once again, focuses on the tension most ministry contexts face as they discern what elements of ministry are fundamental, “anchoring,” and worth sustaining (at least for now!), and what elements might need to be adjusted, shifted, or even dropped. This type of...
Like many others, TMC is acutely interested in how leadership models are rapidly evolving, what this requires, and what it might mean for the future of ministry more broadly. A key component in this exploration revolves around spiritual maturity, wisdom, and faithfulness. Developing leaders who...
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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