In a congregation getting started on a Church Wellness Project, teams are preparing to gather information from their fellow members. They will interview young adults, newcomers who joined, visitors who didn’t stay, former members, current and former leaders, and people engaged in various ministries, as well as staff.
Mark Twain once said “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those who do not.” This week we begin a three-part series of articles by Edwin Barron on two kinds of churches. They reflect great research and offer lots of insights.
Of the seven factors that nurture health in a congregation, perhaps the hardest to embrace is “Listening Church.”
I had been pondering it all summer, but it didn’t hit me full force until I saw it juxtaposed so starkly. There, lying on my nightstand, were two bookmarks. Not exactly earth shaking, I hear you say. True.
After a blood-gushing fight to the end, a 389-year-old U.S. monster perished Nov. 4, 2008.
Yes, American slavery finally expired.
Of course, in 1865, when most states ratified the 13th Amendment, Congress had declared it dead. Mississippi's legislature was the holdout, managing to delay ratification until 1995!
A healthy congregation will try to live on two levels at once: the overarching and future-oriented, and the basics of doing day-to-day ministry.
In times of economic upheaval, everybody gets inconvenienced. Most feel anxious. Some — a minority — actually lose their jobs, their homes, their savings, even their hope. Their plight often goes unnoticed.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled cycle of reporting to direct our attention to you. Older folks speak often of you as “the church of the future;” at other times they amend their words with: “The youth ARE the church right now.”
As financial distress spreads from Wall Street to Main Street, ushering in a recession likely to be long, churches have two fundamental responsibilities.
A Presbyterian church leader looked at possible avenues for seeking health in his large Southern congregation and asked, “Where do we start?”
As Michael Lindvall reminds us in this week’s Benedictory column, history should be a “distant mirror” that helps us see ourselves and our times more accurately. This week’s issue of the Outlook turns our eyes to what may be the clearest mirror into which we Presbyterians are inclined to gaze: the life and writings of John Calvin.
“We’re narrowing our list of priorities,” a church leader said the other day.
(RNS) NEW YORK — Here in America’s financial capital, Sunday (Sept. 14) was normal in most respects. Streets were filled with shoppers, parks with strollers and picnickers, and homes with people watching the Jets lose and the Giants win. But our always-on communications brought a steady stream of sobering news from emergency talks on Wall Street.
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). If ever there were a living example of the Romans 7 dilemma, it is parading before us daily on the campaign trail. Two great men, both aspiring to be the 44th president of the United States, are behaving in ways that flat-out contradict so much of what they have promoted throughout their careers.
Church planning processes and planners tend to spend too much devising plans and too little time listening for needs.
October: Pastor Appreciation Month. Just the kind of thing Hallmark would invent to sell more cards.
Nurturing a healthy congregation comes requires balance, not putting all of your energy and resources into a single program or objective.
Did you notice, in the Sept. 1 edition of the Outlook, the curious juxtaposition of our extolling the Presbyterian way of life, while half the news section focused on the Anglican way of life? No, I wouldn’t trade our elders and deacons for their bishops. But those bishops were making news.
In a recent budget discussion, I noted that the future of our church didn’t depend on spending. We can’t buy health or growth or a mission worth pursuing. Instead, we must encourage people to give away their lives on behalf of others. That will include money, but the heart of it won’t be expense items. The heart will be community, acceptance, sharing, listening, engaging, loving.
In the midst of chaos strong leaders take time to see beyond worrisome symptoms and distressing situations by recognizing emerging opportunities and rising leaders.
Seminaries: the schools you hate to love.
Most pastors deeply appreciate their respective theological alma maters (see report on p. 10). They thank God for the superior scholarship, for their favorite faculty-mentors’ attentiveness, and for the community spirit they experienced.
I must have Beijing on my mind. But if you can stand a sports metaphor, church management is more like a basketball game than a gymnastics exercise.
So where does that road go that’s paved with good intentions?
Measuring results might seem dull ministry compared to membership development, leadership development, spiritual development, and other hands-on ministries of the healthy church.
Sister elder, brother deacon, do you get it? Do you understand how radical it is for you to have been ordained to your position of leadership?
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