Congregations cannot exist without finances, priorities, leadership, worship, and decision making, yet these five aspects breed the most conflict between church members and clergy.
Field education is an opportunity for students to develop ministry skills, practice ministerial reflection, discern their call, experience professional collegiality, and undergo personal transformation.
Discover inspiring, practical ways your board can make its meetings become opportunities for deepening faith, developing leadership, and church renewal.
Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry invites pastors to embody their deepest beliefs in the routine and surprising tasks of ministry.
A large and growing number of congregations are setting up church-based nonprofit organizations in order to operate community development or educational programs.
Listeners do love their pastors and they agree with the sermon content they hear,' Lori Carrell once explained to a group of pastors, 'but most sermons don't ask for change, and most listeners don't experience spiritual growth as a result of the sermon.
Mead explores what church growth and evangelism really mean in a time when it is mathematically impossible for every congregation to achieve significant numerical growth.
Not only do new church starts in significant numbers bring systemic change and renewal to mainline denominations, but new church development brings similar change to individual aging congregations in their vicinity.
A congregation communicates its heart and soul through words, photos, actions, programs, architecture, decor, the arts, and countless other aspects of congregational life.
Congregations cannot exist without finances, priorities, leadership, worship, and decision making, yet these five aspects breed the most conflict between church members and clergy.
Projects That Matter introduces project leaders and teams to the five basic elements of project design and describes in detail a six-step process for designing and implementing a project evaluation and disseminating evaluation findings.
"e;Today we are awash in computerized Bible games, pastoral care software, and church management systems with members' personal information and giving records,"e; observe authors Spiegel, Armstrong, and Bill, but "e;too often we blindly accept and use technology without asking the big questions.
Twenty years after Critical Moment of Ministry was first published, Loren Mead returns to his groundbreaking work on one of the most important times in a congregation's life-the time between one pastor's leaving and another's arrival.
Roy Oswald, who ministers to pastors with great compassion, perceptiveness, and skill, now brings eight more years of field experience to an updated edition of "e;New Beginnings.
Clergy, worship or music committees, organists, and choir or music directors will find this a practical and invaluable guide to the role and power of music to express and form faith.
High quality publications and public relations will enhance a congregation's overall ministry by promoting strong stewardship, effective evangelism, and exciting parish education.
Planning can be challenging in the contemporary congregation, where people share a common faith and values but may have very different preferences and needs.
Today the Christian faith is moving through one of the greatest sea changes in its two thousand year history, and we can no longer assume we know exactly what kind of animal preaching is or ought to be.
Mead presents five key challenges facing today's churches-and how they represent opportunities for the evolutionary, transformative changes he believes must take place in congregations if the church is to remain a viable institution into the twenty-first century.
In our rapidly evolving religious scene, congregations that are open to continuous learning and willing to respond to external and internal change, will be the ones that achieve new vitality and health.
For five years, Alban Institute senior consultant Susan Beaumont has been giving voice to the organizational and leadership demands of large congregations.
Nationally known for his work and teaching on clergy development, Oswald integrates research and experience into a liberating perspective on the pastoral calling.
Since its inception, the Alban Institute has earned a reputation as a leader in addressing congregational conflict management issues through its research, consulting services, educational events, and particularly its publications.
Beginning Ministry Together is about the transition period between the announcement that one pastor is leaving and the time when another pastor is well settled.
I can only shake my head in the face of the irony that all too often the very place where we look for life and health, the very place where we expect to nurture and deepen a loving relationship with God, can cause so many to experience the exact opposite.
Like many clergy, Marcia Barnes Bailey began her work as an ordained leader with a vision of the pastor as leader extraordinaire, empowered by education, authority, position, and resources.
Field education is an opportunity for students to develop ministry skills, practice ministerial reflection, discern their call, experience professional collegiality, and undergo personal transformation.
