For Growing Generosity in Your Congregation

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Ruben Swint, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 404.314.7273, E-mail: RSwint@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Conviction is a fixed or firm belief. Success in growing generosity in your congregation is limited by or empowered by your fixed or firm beliefs; by your convictions. Convictions have great influence on whether a congregation will reduce ministry, struggle to maintain ministry, or expand ministry in times when the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people are soaring.

A congregation’s ministers and lay leaders are the stewards of congregational convictions. How leaders teach, write, listen, preach, plan and act portrays the convictions that they hold. And it is their acted upon, convictions that result in reducing, maintaining or expanding ministry.

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A Story of Mission and Possibility

A Travel Free Learning Article

by Ken Kessler, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 804.338.5058, E-mail: KKessler@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Do you remember the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? The movie that Walt Disney made was a favorite of my boys when they were small children. Do you remember the characters?

· Snow White: the innocent, beautiful princess who is banished to the woods by her evil stepmother, the Queen.

• The Wicked Queen: the jealous and envious stepmother who is always concerned about her beauty.
• The Dwarfs: Happy, Bashful, Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Doc, and Sneezy are Snow White’s companions in the woods as she survives the evil shenanigans of the Wicked Queen.
• Prince Charming: the young prince who plants the kiss that awakens Snow White for her deathly stupor, and with whom she lives happily after.

It’s a cute story that warms our hearts and makes us feel good all over. It has been adapted and changed from the original story by Brothers Grimm by the Disney culture.

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A Synergy of Vision, Relationships, Programs, and Management

A Travel Free Learning Article

By George Bullard, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 803.622.0923, E-mail: GBullard@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Summit Heights is a FaithSoaring Church. Christ the King is not. Nesmith, a smaller membership congregation, is a FaithSoaring Church. Lake Avenue is trying to be. We do not know yet if Midtown will be a FaithSoaring Church. Trinity once was a FaithSoaring Church, but not anymore. First is struggling to understand what FaithSoaring is all about.

FaithSoaring Churches are congregations who choose to soar with faith beyond ordinary ministry toward extraordinary ministry in a quest to achieve exceptional ministry. They respond to the pulling of God and journey to places of inspiration, imagination, and innovation. They lead their congregations through processes of missional formation and engagement that continually transforms the capacity of congregations to reach their full kingdom potential.

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Click here to download:

Straub,_Write_Before_Christmas,_11.14.11_Edition.pdf (65 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Straub,_Write_Before_Christmas,_11.14.11_Edition.pdf (65 KB)

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Gary Straub, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 502.320.4336 Email: GStraub@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

[Download files that go with this article at www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org.] 

As Thanksgiving approaches, your congregation may have a lot for which thanksgiving is due. It doesn’t take long to assess all the good reasons that imaginative ministries were launched on a shoestring, hurting families quietly helped, and audacious mission project finished in the black because generous volunteers gave even more than time and talent. Most all of the ministry numbers that measure affectivity are showing up on the hallelujah side of the ledger, except one: additions.

While there is a steady flow of first time guests and an astonishing percentage of returning guests, year-end approaches with no appropriate tools or strategy for gathering up these potential commitments in a simple, personal, and meaningful way. Many congregations have an identifiable group of folks who continue to attend worship, participate in activities, and to all appearances seem quite interested in the congregation but haven’t yet joined. Here is a simple, straight-forward approach to the matter: ask!

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Self-Care in Demanding Times

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Gary Straub, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 502.320.4336 Email: GStraub@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Subscribe to the Travel Free Learning Articles: Text "TCP" to 22828

Ministry can be as rewarding as it is stressful; never more so than in those critical kairos moments of congregational transition and transformation.

When crunch time comes, how do we as leaders of congregational transformation continue to be transformed? This concern is particularly poignant when transformation wracks our church family system with anxiety and leaves our core leader’s equilibrium unsettled. Transformation reads well in textbook form, but when we actually hit that stretch of the journey when the tectonic plates are shifting beneath the pews it is not uncommon for primordial fears of reactionary chaos to shake our own inner peace. “Steady On” is superb navigational advice; but no easy course to steer the good gospel ship when it is your watch at the helm.

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Possibilities, Potential and Power

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Eddie Hammett, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 828.458.8954, E-mail: EHammett@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Subscribe to the Travel Free Learning Articles: Text "TCP" to 22828

Who are the unchurched believers in your community? How do you define unchurched believers? How do you locate unchurched believers? What are the possibilities, potential and power in this ministry?

As the author of Spiritual Leadership in a Secular Age: Building Bridges Instead of Barriers I was invited to facilitate a group of unchurched believers. They explained to me they are persons with a serious spiritual appetite, curiosity, and appreciation of supreme powers greater than themselves. They continued their self description by declaring a growing skepticism and disinterest in the institutional church, but searching for a community that nurtures their faith, hope and love in ways that impacts their world in ways that would be pleasing to God.

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Radical Transformation

A Travel Free Learning Manuscript

By George Bullard, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 803.622.0923, E-mail: GBullard@TheColumbiaPartnership.orgm Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Introduction

Hazelwood Church needed radical transformation. In one sense, the radical transformation needed to start with upgrading their facilities. Most of their building space was more than 100 years old. As is typical of older buildings, their restrooms were the size of a postage stamp and had no hot water running to them. Handicapped access to gain entrance to the buildings was practically nonexistent. The inside of the buildings had multiple levels, steep stairs, and no elevator.

In another sense, the radical transformation of Hazelwood needed to begin with reinventing the congregation by starting with a clean sheet of paper and writing a new ministry plan involving vision, missional formation, missional engagement, and lean management systems that are empowering. Its programs, ministries, and activities were fine for the 1950s and perhaps as recently as the 1970s, but way out of date for the current decade.

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Strategic Leadership Coaching is a service offered by The Columbia Partnership through its Coaching Leaders Team. Primary team members are Eddie Hammett, Ken Kessler, and Suzanne Goebel. Here is a brochure that explains their services. To connect with them contact Client.Care@TheColumbiaPartnership.org or call Eddie Hammett at 828.458.8954.

Click here to download:

Strategic_Leadership_Coaching_Brochure,_October_2011.pdf (319 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Strategic_Leadership_Coaching_Brochure,_October_2011.pdf (319 KB)

Old Dogs Must Learn New Tricks

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Dick Hamm, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 317.490.1968, E-mail: DHamm@TheColumiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

1968 is a hinge point in American history and in the history of the American church. I think of the decades before 1968 as being modern, while the years after 1968 are better described as post-modern. It’s not that there is a total disconnect between pre- and post- 1968. Some things—well a few things—have gone on much the same after 1968, but there are so many things that have changed since 1968 that post-1968 can justifiably be thought of as a new and separate era.

Many churches in North America were either started or reshaped by and for the Silent and Builder generations (born between 1915 and 1945) during the 20 years or so before 1968. Thus they bear the marks of the modern era. Many of us doing ministry today were brought up in these same congregations and were taught how to do ministry by members of the Silent and Builder generations. This means that for ministry today, modern is our default approach rather than post-modern.

As one of these old dogs—I’m an early Boomer—I had to learn and must continually learn new tricks: new ways of looking at the world, new ways of responding to the world, new ways of doing ministry and church. Let me give a few examples.

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Walking New People into the Life of Your Church

A Travel Free Learning Article

By William T. McConnell, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 513.266.0961, E-mail: BMcConnell@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Over the years I have been involved in ministry in the local church, I have read many books and attended many seminars on attracting visitors, assimilating new members and closing the back door to retain members. In many approaches each of these segments are treated as free-standing programs and ministries. It is my belief that to be effective they must be linked and seen as a whole. They must be understood as a process and presented as a path.

Many of us involved in ministry have learned the place to begin planning is at the end point. We know we must first decide where we want to end up before we can begin. Wisdom tells us that with an eye on the goal we develop a path or a process that leads us to that goal.

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