| | | | | | | | | | | | PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Let's face it: all of us inhabit institutions that we would have built differently. We inherited policies and procedures and even physical plants with aspects that we'd happily do without. Sometimes we bristle under the constraints put upon us by founders and historical bodies that could know nothing of our contemporary challenges.
Many of us have probably daydreamed what it would be like to be free of such constraints -- to "re-imagine" the institution from scratch. Then, we tell ourselves, we'd really be free to push forward our mission and vision. But now, in the real world, these constraints are like millstones, anchors dragging on the bottom as we try to steer the ship forward into new waters.
Could we ever imagine receiving such constraints as gifts? Indeed, is it possible that the constraints of handed-down traditions could be catalysts for creativity and imagination?
I was recently struck by something of a parable in this regard. In May, after a protracted -- and very public -- legal battle, the Barnes Foundation, a Philadelphia fine-arts institution, opened a new building on that city's famous "museum row." Called the Barnes Philadelphia, the new museum houses Albert Barnes' world-class collection of modern art, moved there from its former suburban home in Lower Merion, Pa. The legal wrangling need not detain us here. It's the result that yields an interesting case study of "traditioned innovation."
Read more from James K.A. Smith » |
| IDEAS THAT IMPACT: MINISTRY CONSTRAINTS
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In holding together scarcity and abundance, leaning into constraints even as we focus on bolder ambitions, we will discover the greatest opportunities for transformation, writes the executive vice president and provost at Baylor University.
Read more from L. Gregory Jones » |
Yes, money is essential to the life of any church or organization, but it is other forms of capital that really build the community of faith, says a Houston leadership consultant and UMC layperson. Read more from Laura Nichol »
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What are the most burdensome constraints of your work in ministry, and how might you re-imagine them as opportunities for innovation?
Read more from Brendan Case »
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| | ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
In Dying We Are Born: The Challenge and Hope for Congregations by Peter Bush
Deeply ingrained in Western culture, and in the minds of most church leaders, is the belief that there is a solution to every problem.
Peter Bush offers a powerful challenge to this approach, arguing that for new life, energy, and passion to arise in congregations, they must die -- die to one way of being the church in order that a new way may rise. Bush identifies two types of dying congregations. Some congregations need to close their doors, bringing to an end years of ministry. Other congregations need to dramatically change their culture and ways of doing ministry. Such change may not entail literally closing the congregation's doors, but it will require people giving up deeply held understandings of the life and purpose of the congregation. All congregations, Bush contends, even ones that see themselves as healthy, need to be prepared to die, to take up their cross, so God can make them alive.
A skillful storyteller, Bush shows readers why churches must confront their mortality. He examines the role of the prophetic leader, who proclaims both the congregation's death and its resurrection. He explores spiritual practices and the habits of wonder, remember, and risk taking for congregations that know they are dying--or need to die. Only by dying, Bush says, will a congregation find resurrection life, given by God who raises the dead to life.
Learn more and order the book » |
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