PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
 
As bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, the Rt. Rev. Ian T. Douglas takes seriously his administrative duties.

But, he says, he also enjoys "throwing all things up in the air, causing chaos, inviting imagination and encouraging folk, particularly by virtue of their baptism."

Specifically, he points to efforts, at both the diocesan and the parish level, to send Christians out into the world, open to the work of the Spirit.

"How do we join in that faithfully, and what does it mean to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus today, who is sent into the world as an apostle to join God in God's mission?" he said.
Douglas, who was elected bishop in 2009, serves approximately 168 parishes and faith communities in the state of Connecticut.

Prior to that, he was the Angus Dun Professor of Mission and World Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He earned an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in missiology from Boston University.

Douglas was recently interviewed by our colleagues at Faith & Leadership during his visit to Duke Divinity School. 

 
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: THE MISSION OF GOD
Recovering reconciliation as the mission of God
In 2009, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice authored Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing based on their work as co-directors of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation. In this excerpt, they offer ten theses for recovering reconciliation as the mission of God.
 
Mission creep 
Even when institutions and congregations know their mission, there is the real possibility of mission creep -- that unintended loss of focus because of the creation or adoption of programs or agendas outside their core mission.
 
 
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

We resist change less when we associate it with mission and fortify it with hope. 

So argues Peter Steinke in his fourth book, A Door Set Open, as he explores the relationship between the challenges of change and our own responses to new ideas and experiences. Steinke builds on a seldom-explored principle posited by the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman: the 'hostility of the environment' is proportionate to the 'response of the organism.' The key, Steinke says, is not the number or strength of the stressors in the system--anxiety, poor conditions, deteriorating values--but the response of the individual or organization to 'what is there.' 

Drawing on Bowen system theory and a theology of hope, as well as his experience working with more than two hundred congregations, Steinke makes the case that the church has entered an era of great opportunity. Theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch said the church had closed down the office of eschatology. Steinke reopens it and draws our attention to God's future, to a vision of hope for the people of God. The door is set open for exploration and new creation.

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