Alban Institute’s weekly offering looks at research about the skills congregational clergy need to handle conflict and their own emotions in tough situations.
…ministerial reflection is the crucial key to all of the work of ministry. For only through careful consideration can you put together pieces that otherwise seem disjointed, irrelevant, or confusing. Reflection enables you to weave the integrative thread that you then will offer to the community
Sometimes constituents in religious organizations express discomfort with planning, because they fear it will lead to closed, over-structured programs. This concern is legitimate, but rather than avoid planning to ensure that we remain open to change, we can build into programs disciplines that help us remain open to the Holy Spirit’s work.
Over the past several days we’ve heard a lot about how the church’s leadership structures need to be more nimble: structurally, maybe, as well as intellectually and spiritually. So we offer the following meditation on what it means to be agile.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on the challenge and importance of building a church that’s agile, nimble and–yes–deals in deadlines.
As part of their worship, congregations rightly recognize all the ways people serve Christ’s church in the congregation. They may install church boards, publicly thank the choir, and pray for Sunday school teachers, but congregations are often less intentional and explicit about publicly recognizing and honoring daily work as service to God.
He was one deeply convicted that The Episcopal Church was a place capable of having a wide, fair, giving, and intellectually honest conversation about faith and the politics of faith.
Throw a little light on the first follower of any old idea, and you could soon have a full-blown movement.
Ministries often create complex and cumbersome personnel policies to handle the small number of difficult employees who challenge, stretch, or cheat the system. These policies don’t even protect us from confrontation, because the very people we seek to avoid are often the ones who will not change without direct correction.