Over the next several weeks we'll be reflecting on how congregations and other ministry contexts serve as spaces of trust-building, mending social fabric, and faith formation that joins people in hope across difference. Here, I want to consider for a moment what an expression of prophetic...
We had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours recently with a gifted group of church board leaders. Among the several questions we discussed with this group, one seemed to register most deeply, judging by people’s widespread sighs, forward leans, and nods of assent. How...
The Ministry Collaborative program staff (Jennifer Watley Maxell, Mark Ramsey, Adam Borneman, and Adam Mixon) talk about the prioritizing humility and compromise, examining a community's personality, and the trap of sorting ourselves. Click here to read Adam Borneman's blog post, "The Front Porch, the Living Room,...
A couple years ago when I started the Digital Hospitality Retreats as an experiment, the driving need I imagined was people needed space to connect with God in the midst of the unknown. We were just entering the widespread pandemic of COVID-19, shelter-in-place, school at...
The history of exploration is punctuated by accounts of those who sought to forge a new path, only to find that what they thought was the endpoint turned out to be just a stop along the way. Scaling one of the world’s highest peaks for...
Program Curator Jennifer Watley Maxell talks with the Rev. Dr. Carol Lynn Patterson (First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens, NJ) about committing ourselves to things that give us joy, and finding faith formation within community, and the importance of Sabbath rest....
I like how Eugene Peterson translates this section of Hebrews 13: 10-12 The altar from which God gives us the gift of himself is not for exploitation by insiders who grab and loot. In the old system, the animals are killed and the bodies disposed of outside...
Not long ago, we asked a board member of a Protestant church, “What is it like to serve on your church board?” After a pause, she replied, “It’s pretty much like the times I have to go to the DMV to get my driver’s license...
Program Director Adam Borneman speaks with the Rev. Laura Murray about ministry in the digital space, hospitality without attachments, and rethinking the centrality of the pulpit in faith formation....