Seminary students and their seminar teacher created a list of eight key characteristics of effective leadership in congregational ministry.
Not instruction, but provocation: listening to the ‘taught’
Across four decades, listening to students (“those who are taught”) has provoked me to action and insight I might otherwise have dodged. When students have moved classes from instruction to provocation, I’ve not only been awakened, I’ve often been reborn.
Under the teaching tree, counting planes and keeping vigil with Brother Raul
The form keeps shifting, but the outcome has remained constant for generations. Those on the bottom of the hierarchy have calamity visited upon body and spirit and household. The trouble – racism, greed, violence – crushes people.
Embracing curiosity: Asking good questions is a crucial index of faith
Surely life is far more interesting and faithful if we explore how this world works and our spiritual place within it, especially the relationship between divine and human agency.
Making a ‘faith bet’: Discerning God’s will includes ‘rolling the dice’
In our journey to know God’s will, after we have prayed, sought appropriate counsel, considered circumstances, studied scripture and used the brains given to us by God, we eventually have to “put our money down” and make a faith bet.
Two key steps for youth ministry in an age of anxiety
Autonomy breeds resiliency in kids and in their individual expressions of Christianity, especially when these kids are rooted in congregations brimming over with institutional warmth and opportunities for non-parental intergenerational relationships.
Florence is a reminder: does your church have a preparation checklist for severe weather?
Churches are often wonderful in terms of mobilizing volunteers after a storm, but Hurricane Florence got me thinking: How can my church be a presence for good in the lead-up to the storm?
For some, that cross you’re wearing may be a negative symbol
For a lot of folks these days, that cross on your necklace might as well be a neon billboard declaring that the sermon being preached to everyone you meet is saying, “We don’t want people like you in the Church.”
Israel and Palestine: historic tensions exacerbated by poorly-informed Christian theology
A popularized theological perspective jumps right past what Jesus said and did and leaps right into the arms of a literalistic version of Revelation that views “end times” as a highly marketable concept for well-meaning Christians. What is being peddled creates broad theological confusion and ultimately wreaks geopolitical havoc.
I am part of the resistance inside the American church
The church is facing a test unlike any faced in the modern era. It’s not just that the church is bitterly divided over politics. The dilemma is that not nearly enough of the church’s leadership is working diligently from within to frustrate the church’s worst inclinations.
What it will take to reach the ‘lost coins’ in our culture
We can all probably think of friends, family members or coworkers who are lost sheep (who don’t know any better) and lost sons (those willfully and destructively rebelling). But do you know any lost coins? I do.
We’re prone to judgment, but mercy needs to ‘speak the first word’
This perhaps is the most confounding thing about God: why God chooses mercy over judgment. We want God to punish the bad – now – and put the world to rights. We want a clear signal that God is at least as moral as we are. Yet, God keeps giving people time to change, so that mercy may triumph.