Leadership
Conflict in Ministry Marriage: Challenging Your Husband with Respect
Letting a fallen sinner lead is always difficult – and sometimes no easier when he’s your husband AND the pastor of your church. It’s often confusing and frustrating for us, as pastors’ wives, to know how to support our husbands when we question a decision he has made. We sometimes struggle to know who is…
Read MoreAlpha as a Way to Build Community
In the two previous installments of this series on Alpha ministry in the local church, I’ve looked at Alpha as an evangelism tool and as a discipleship tool. Now, let’s consider Alpha as a community-building tool. Once a church grows beyond “family size,” in which Sunday morning attendance ranges from 3 to 75, it often…
Read MoreAlpha as a Discipleship Tool
Jesus’ model of discipleship involved both teaching and on-the-job training in ministry. The content of his teaching centered on the meaning of the Kingdom of God; his training of his disciples immersed them in actual ministry to others in His name, with the power and authority of His Kingdom. In my experience, much of the…
Read MoreA Pastor’s Relationship with the Church
We typically describe a pastor’s relationship to his people in leadership terms, such as shepherd or overseer, and rightly so, but leadership authority Ronald A. Heifetz offers us a new description. He claims that leading institutional change is a process of “disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.” This is a profound observation. In…
Read MoreConflict in the Church – Part 2 Managing Conflict
When I first experienced intense church conflict, it took me by surprise. I had never known anything like it in my life. As I related in Part 1 of this series, Minimizing Conflict, the clash occurred in the tenth year of my first pastorate. A small but influential group of long-time parishioners, mostly from one…
Read MoreConflict in the Church – Part 1: Minimizing Conflict
Conflict reared its ugly head during my tenth year as pastor of a mainline Congregational church. Prior to my arrival a decade earlier, the church been in steep decline for 30 years, and when I arrived, it was functioning more like a country club. The message from the pulpit was increasingly theologically liberal. Because this…
Read MoreIs There a Grandparent Role in the Church?
On April 24, 2012, I became a grandparent for the first time. Prior to my grandson being born, I began asking other grandparents what it was like to be a grandparent. All I ever got was “it’s fun.” I replied, “but being a parent was fun, so what do you mean by it’s fun?” But…
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