A year ago, I made the jump from pastoring a local church to running a center at a small denominationally-affiliated college. While I was well-versed in the conversations around church vitality, the world of higher education has been relatively new to me. What I've learned over the last year is that cultivating thriving congregations and thriving small private colleges are not dissimilar. Both have obvious goals, adapted to for their specific contexts. Colleges exist to educate students to succeed in life; churches exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Both institutions are caught in a changing culture. Small colleges are confronting growing questions around the value of the college degree, along growing concern around student-debt. Churches are dealing with a society that is shifting away from church as a cultural norm, and institutional distrust brought on by politics and scandals of abuse. Both are complex institutions, balancing multiple constituencies, tight budgets, and few easily solved problems. Having spent time in both worlds, I think that churches could learn two important lessons from small colleges who are navigating the same waters. First, students (members) aren't the problem, and second, what and how we measure our mission matters. |
| | FROM OUR ARCHIVE: LEARNING FROM ORGANIZATIONS BEYOND THE CHURCH |
A seminary professor at Vancouver School of Theology Jason draws lessons for today's church leaders from "Teaching As Leadership," a new book that seeks to identify the qualities of an effective teacher.
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It might sound far-fetched to look for Christian leadership lessons in the emergency room, but two brothers -- one a university chaplain, the other a doctor -- find similarities in how to achieve excellence in both settings.
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Change isn't always easy or intuitive. How Your Congregation Learns introduces churches and leaders --both lay and ordained -- to the process of the learning journey. By understanding learning dynamics and working to become a learning community, the congregation will be able to move more purposefully to achieve its goals.
Congregations face many kinds of challenges. Some are mundane: the roof leaks; the parking lot needs repaving; the microphones don't work well. Some tests are transcendent: How should lives be honored? What is God calling the congregation to do and be? How can generosity be taught? Throughout life people face challenges for which they are not prepared-the death of a parent, a new job offer, making a decision about where to live. So it goes that congregational leaders face challenges that are just beyond the grasp of their abilities. This book addresses the just-beyond-the-grasp challenges and shows how real congregations can learn from them.
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