Learning the lessons from the past year; wisdom from 12 leaders
| | | | | It was one year ago today ... |
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It was one year ago today that COVID-19 was first mentioned in the Alban Weekly. Now, as then, we depend on our colleagues at Faith & Leadership to help us think about the opportunities, challenges, griefs and -- yes -- moments of joy of congregational leadership in a year of pandemic. Recently, our colleagues asked twelve church and ministry leaders from around the United States what they have learned across this year. While the twelve perspectives are different, there is one overarching theme: the church world faces a moral reckoning, and it cannot run and hide; for whether this crisis or another, there will be trials that test faith communitiesâ professions of faith and love. Welcome to the Weekly.Â
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Tyler Sit: "Compounding traumas and crises"Â The founder and senior pastor of New City Church in Minneapolis offers perspective on the year's "compounding traumas and crises."Â |
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Sidney Williams Jr.: "You can't keep making excuses" The president and CEO of Crossing Capital Group and the senior pastor of Bethel Church of Morristown says that the pandemic has shown that leaders can -- and need to -- do something. |
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Robert Rueda: "The greater good"The Baptist campus minister at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley says that, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the future belongs to the young. |
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Resources for leaders during the pandemic
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How Your Congregation Learns: The Learning Journey from Challenge to Achievement
by Tim Shapiro
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Change isnât always easy or intuitive. How Your Congregation Learns introduces churches and leaders â both lay and ordained â 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 donât 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 â 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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Mary Oliver once wrote of a walk in nature: "Oh, good scholar, / I say to myself, / how can you help / but grow wise / with such teachings?" In the company of the twelve leaders that Faith & Leadership interviewed, her words are mine. How can we help but grow wise from such teachers? It's worth saying that the most important question for many of us may not be what others are learning but what we are learning through this year. We've prompted that question many times in the Weekly in the last twelve months and do so again here. Perhaps you could create your own Faith & Leadership-like collection of pandemic-era wisdom from your lay leaders, members and friends. Harvesting that wisdom, how can we help but grow wise together?Â
We'll see you next week, and in the meantime, peace!Â
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Managing Director, Alban at Duke Divinity |
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| | | | alban.org // [email protected] |
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