A friend who sometimes calls herself a ‘serial parishioner’ tells the story of visiting churches in her midwestern community some years ago. I went to the United Church of Christ for several months. When I expressed interest in joining, the pastor replied: We’re so glad you’re...
“The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then...
Pastors and church leaders are quick to assert that they are not in competition with other churches. But most will admit that, while they aren’t trying to compete, they do feel pressure to “keep up.” This leads to many spiritual ailments: distraction, envy, disappointment, and—most...
One of the traps we see ministries falling into revolves around this set of assumptions: We have the youth ministry lane, the worship lane, the adult education lane, the missions lane, the communications lane, and so on. And then an individual, group, or committee is...
Where does imagination enter into our work? How do we learn to see new possibilities in the resources available to our congregation? Who teaches us how to imagine our church life together? What possibilities do they help us to see? We think these are great questions...
These two charts (among many others!) have been very helpful to me for understanding why so many ministries struggle with collaboration even while rightly naming it as a priority. Simply put, we tend to talk a lot about collaboration without describing what we actually mean by...
In church life, January--not April--can seem like the cruelest month. All the routine meetings, tasks, and assignments that everyone deferred in December land back on the calendar with a thud. And there are budgets to finalize, and often congregational annual meetings, and sometimes new board...
For many of us 2020 has started the same as any other year with an endless list of task, chores, errands and to-do’s. No matter how we ended 2019, 2020 demands that some things must be done. As for pastors and church leaders, there are...
Most of us learned a certain way of doing chores: we were told to get through with all the “compulsory things” and then we would be “rewarded “ with something fun or meaningful. First the mundane, then the meaningful. I think we’ve imported this approach into ministry. ...