Blog
The 2009 Congregational Economic Impact Study has just been released jointly by the Alban Institute and the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University. The report indicates that the large congregation is weathering this financial crisis better than the small to mid-sized congregation. “Growth congregations,” those where attendance […]
Read MoreAssimilation and Diversity Differences in the Large Church
Read MoreA client congregation is preparing for an upcoming pastoral transition. As part of that preparation we determined that it would be good to “tell the stories” of previous pastoral transitions, in the hopes of surfacing unstated assumptions and previous lessons learned in times of leadership transition. We began by recollecting the story of a pastoral […]
Read MoreRemember Whack-a-Mole? It’s an amusement park or pinball arcade game that features seven “moles” that pop up through holes in a game board directly in front of the player. Each player is given a club- “a mole whacker.” As the game starts, moles pop up through the holes at random. The object of the game […]
Read MoreAt Alban we do a lot of strategic planning consulting work in congregations, under the umbrella of Holy Conversations. Increasingly, in my practice I find myself steering clients away from writing an official mission statement as part of the planning process. My reasons for discouraging the practice are three-fold: 1) For most of us, the […]
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