Lay people have always filled important leadership roles in the church, from worship to congregational care. This reality is only becoming more pronounced as the landscape shifts toward a “mixed ecology” of inherited and emerging forms of Christian practice and community. From youth ministry to stewardship, passionate lay people answer the Holy Spirit’s call to […]
Season four of the Pivot podcast from Faith+Lead provides lessons and stories from church leaders who are igniting imagination, creating collaborations, launching experiments, and dreaming of new possibilities for God’s church. The podcast focuses on two questions: How might we use the uncertainty and disruption of this time to reimagine church, ministry, and leadership? And […]
I’ve been reflecting recently on the way that Scripture reveals over and over again the boundless creativity of our God. From the very first words of Genesis, God is always doing a new thing, leading God’s people into a future that is beyond our imagining. Of course, we don’t make it easy. Instead of trusting […]
A fact I love to share is that “seminary” comes from the Latin for “seed bed.” The metaphor is perhaps particularly appropriate in this season of green abundance here in Minnesota, but it has deep roots.
Andrew Root, Carrie Olson Baalson professor of youth and family ministry, and Blair D. Bertrand are the authors of “When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation,” published by Brazos Press in May 2023. In it, they ask: What if the solution for the decline of today’s church isn’t more money, people, programs, innovation, or busyness? What if the answer is to stop and wait on God?
Larry L. Rasmussen ’65 M.Div. is the author of “The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing,” with foreword by Terry Tempest Williams (Broadleaf Books 2022). Rasmussen is the Reinhold Niebuhr professor emeritus of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary. As a grandfather and a scholar of faith-based earth ethics, […]