Remembering Loren Mead and his love for congregations
The first time I had lunch with the Rev. Loren Mead was in late 2013, just hours after I had left a presidential search interview with the Alban Institute board. He counseled me not to take the job.
Loren, who died May 5, founded the institute in 1974 and served as its CEO for 20 years.
He had retired in 1994 and stayed busy writing, speaking and consulting. He had been living in a retirement community and caring for his ailing wife up until early 2013, when she died. He had had little contact with the institute's leadership since retirement.
I was stunned that he would advise me not to take up his work.
As Loren talked about the institute, it became clear that although he had had several partners in developing Alban -- including Speed Leas and Roy Oswald -- he himself had felt a heavy burden to sustain the organization during his 20-year tenure. Loren had concluded that Alban was not financially sustainable. He did not think anyone should take the job.
Before that lunch, I hadn't known Loren personally, but he had articulated insights and developed resources that had guided me at every stage of my ministry. When I graduated from seminary, a friend counseled me that Alban was the best resource for a new pastor. I paid for a membership and started reading the newsletter, Action Information, from cover to cover. I bought Alban books and attended several Alban seminars.
I learned about how a congregation's size influences how it behaves. I learned skills in managing conflict and leading planning processes. When Loren retired, there were 8,500 people like me who paid for memberships to receive practical guidance in how congregations work. Later, I led one of a handful of regional consulting and training organizations that provided Alban-style services. Our organization was not part of Alban, but we depended on Alban's consultants and books for training and inspiration.
Photo courtesy of the Mead familyThe founder of the Alban Institute, who died May 5, led a 40-year crusade to encourage the church to recognize the significance of congregations.
The first time I had lunch with the Rev. Loren Mead was in late 2013, just hours after I had left a presidential search interview with the Alban Institute board. He counseled me not to take the job.
Loren, who died May 5(link is external), founded the institute in 1974 and served as its CEO for 20 years.
He had retired in 1994 and stayed busy writing, speaking and consulting. He had been living in a retirement community and caring for his ailing wife up until early 2013, when she died. He had had little contact with the institute’s leadership since retirement.
I was stunned that he would advise me not to take up his work.
As Loren talked about the institute, it became clear that although he had had several partners in developing Alban -- including Speed Leas and Roy Oswald -- he himself had felt a heavy burden to sustain the organization during his 20-year tenure. Loren had concluded that Alban was not financially sustainable. He did not think anyone should take the job.
Before that lunch, I hadn’t known Loren personally, but he had articulated insights and developed resources that had guided me at every stage of my ministry. When I graduated from seminary, a friend counseled me that Alban was the best resource for a new pastor. I paid for a membership and started reading the newsletter, Action Information, from cover to cover. I bought Alban books and attended several Alban seminars.
I learned about how a congregation’s size influences how it behaves. I learned skills in managing conflict and leading planning processes. When Loren retired, there were 8,500 people like me who paid for memberships to receive practical guidance in how congregations work. Later, I led one of a handful of regional consulting and training organizations that provided Alban-style services. Our organization was not part of Alban, but we depended on Alban’s consultants and books for training and inspiration.
It is a bit difficult to imagine now, but Loren led a 40-year crusade to influence the church to recognize the significance of congregations. When he started Project Test Pattern, the research project for the Episcopal Church that preceded Alban’s founding, most religious leaders had an instrumental view of congregations. They believed that these local units exist to support the important work of denominations. Because of Loren’s widespread influence, many denominations have flipped the script and now see their work as supporting the vitality of congregations.
Congregations, too, now have a different view of themselves. They steer their own courses. They look to other congregations for resources and insight. Loren was one of a handful of people who helped congregations learn from their own work.
Loren pioneered the use of organizational consulting as a tool to understand and strengthen congregations. He knew that congregations are very complex social systems that deserve careful study. Alban Institute consultants put social science and business frameworks to use in helping congregations. Loren and his colleagues reflected theologically and practically on the insights gleaned from theories like polarity management and models of strategic planning. Loren cooperated with scholars in establishing the field of congregational studies to increase the number of theologically sound tools that congregations could use.
Loren was also concerned about the larger systems in which congregations often live. When I arrived at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, which focuses on strengthening Christian institutions, a handwritten letter from him was waiting on my desk. He wrote that such work is just as vital as directly serving congregations. In more recent years, he continued to believe that congregations are the key organization in the church, but that other organizations and resources are needed as well.
Recently, I have realized that Loren did not champion congregations as an end unto themselves. He had seen the devastating impact, for example, of white supremacy in the congregations of his youth. He was concerned that all people flourish. He believed that healthy families and congregations are vital to human flourishing.
In 2014, the Alban Institute closed and gave Duke University its legacy.(link is external) Over the years, Loren visited with my colleagues and me to advise us on Alban’s next stage and challenge us to dive deeper to understand congregations.
Six weeks before he died, I visited him for the final time. He was frustrated that the church has so much important work to do in this moment and yet is distracted by focusing on organizational survival. He saw the increasing challenges congregations face and worried that he was leaving too much undone.
Loren is not alone with such worries. Many Christian leaders, including me, see the significance of Christian witness for this time. But the intensity of his emotion was striking; he continued to love congregations and push them -- and all of us -- to be more of what God intends. I am grateful for his witness and advice.
TRIBUTES TO LOREN MEAD
... I stepped most directly into Loren's legacy in 1995, when I joined the staff of the Alban Institute, shortly after his retirement as President. Wherever I went for work, in North America or around the world, I was always preceded by the reputation Loren had built for clear thinking, disciplined exploration of tough practical issues, and an undying passion for the health and effectiveness of congregations. For these personal blessings, and on behalf of all the places I have served, I say: "Thank you, Loren."
Alice Mann
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead, while starting up the Alban Institute, was like a Jungle fighter, who strapped the Institute on his back and hacked it through any obstacle that got in the way. A few times he almost had to give it up because he hit some major setbacks, many of them financial, but he made it through. ... There were many attempts in other parts of the world, many in Canada, where people tried to duplicate what Alban did----that never got off the ground. That is because they didn't have a Loren Mead to get them started.
Roy Oswald
Alban author and former senior consultant
As the era of rapid church growth wound down at the end of the 1960s, Loren Mead was one of the first to see that the church was losing not just numbers but a privileged position in the culture. In response, he was determined to use human and organizational sciences to help leaders understand the church as an organization and to become more effective. In the process, Mead built the Alban Institute -- an interfaith community of clergy, lay leaders, consultants, researchers and writers -- who saw that many of the challenges for congregations crossed lines of theology and polity, and so did many of the most helpful solutions.
Dan Hotchkiss
Alban author and former senior consultant
As the era of rapid church growth wound down at the end of the 1960s, Loren Mead was one of the first to see that the church was losing not just numbers but a privileged position in the culture. In response, he was determined to use human and organizational sciences to help leaders understand the church as an organization and to become more effective. In the process, Mead built the Alban Institute — an interfaith community of clergy, lay leaders, consultants, researchers and writers — who saw that many of the challenges for congregations crossed lines of theology and polity, and so did many of the most helpful solutions.
Dan Hotchkiss
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren was a prolific author of several books – each one a powerful story that shared his extraordinary wisdom on the significance of a new vision for congregations and the church fulfilling God’s call to renew His church.
Rolf Janke
editor of Alban Books at Rowman & LIttlefield
When I was in seminary in the early 1970’s, the Episcopal Church had just published the findings of Loren Mead’s “Project Test Pattern” research project. He was traveling around the country, encouraging dioceses like mine to train and deploy networks of parish consultants who would be equipped to assist congregations grappling with a wide range of challenges. Through a regional training network called MATC, I was one of the first six leaders from the Diocese of Pennsylvania to complete a six-week consultant training program and serve as a member of the new Diocesan Consultant Network. From that first connection onward, the names Loren Mead and The Alban Institute remained foundational to the field of congregational development, and to my own vocational life as a pastor and consultant. I stepped most directly into Loren’s legacy in 1995, when I joined the staff of the Alban Institute, shortly after his retirement as President. Wherever I went for work, in North America or around the world, I was always preceded by the reputation Loren had built for clear thinking, disciplined exploration of tough practical issues, and an undying passion for the health and effectiveness of congregations. For these personal blessings, and on behalf of all the places I have served, I say: “Thank you, Loren.”
Alice Mann
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead, while starting up the Alban Institute, was like a Jungle fighter, who strapped the Institute on his back and hacked it through any obstacle that got in the way. A few times he almost had to give it up because he hit some major setbacks, many of them financial, but he made it through.
Loren has a major conviction, which never surfaced before his time, that the issue is congregations. They are the major centers of Christianity in this country. He did everything he could to see to it that they remained healthy and thriving.
I consider Loren one of my key mentors is my career as an Alban Senior consultant. Without him my career as a church leader would not have emerged. I fondly recall our meetings every Friday afternoon when I was in town, and we brainstormed new research that would help congregations stay viable. It often was the highlight of my week. We could think of more ideas than we could possible explore. At any social event with Alban folk, they used to constantly call us on talking shop and considering more opportunities for research. This used to turn an Alban party into more options for future work. “Cool it guys—have another drink—and lets try to have some fun together.”
There were many attempts in other parts of the world, many in Canada, where people tried to duplicate what Alban did—-that never got off the ground. That is because they didn’t have a Loren Mead to get them started.
I will miss him and his sense of humor—always open to see other possibilities in congregational life.
Roy Oswald
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead was one of the most influential Christian leaders of his generation, not only for his incisive analysis about the contemporary challenges of the church, but for his visionary perspective and his willingness to ask the hard questions around what we imagine the future church will look like. His work touched the life and mission of churches of every denomination throughout the United States and across the globe. His devotion to the congregation as the particular locus of the church’s mission and his commitment to clergy and lay leadership working in partnership were unwavering.
Sam Rodman
Bishop, The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina (Mead was a priest in the Diocese of North Carolina before founding the Alban Institute)
More than any other single person, Loren Mead put the local congregation back on the agenda of Protestant denominations in the US. During the 1960s, both church officials and theological academics looked down on local churches, viewing them as conventional, disengaged organizations that were impeding rather than furthering social progress and cultural change. Loren created the Alban Institute to counter that view and to replace some of the resources that national denominations were no longer providing. The Institute’s services and publications, focused on conflict, transition and other growing edges of church life, were not only invaluable to congregations. They also stimulated the growth of a bevy of helping organizations that, along with Alban at Duke, carry on its work today. In good measure as a result of their work, denominations and seminaries now are fully aware, as Loren always was, that the local community of believers is the indispensable center of the Christian church.
Loren’s greatest fear, expressed to me in our last conversation, was that he would be remembered as merely a technician of congregational life—a “tinkerer,” in his words. He did care that congregations run well, but his commitment was much more profound than that. He wanted churches to be strong enough to participate, indeed, to lead, in the world-changing projects of our time, especially the cause of racial justice, which he, a southerner, promoted from his youth until his dying days. Loren’s life-long devotion to the church and his seriousness of purpose will be widely and deeply missed.
Barbara Wheeler
former director of Auburn’s Center for the Study of Theological Education
Loren Mead was a rare truth teller, straight talker, innovator, and friend of American congregations and their leaders. When many were writing off congregations as subject to “suburban captivity,” he chose to stand up for them and try to provide practical resources that could really help them face the challenges of American modernity. Throughout his career he claimed that the lived reality of the local parish, synagogue, or congregation was where the dynamic interaction between faith and daily life most powerfully took place.
Loren had a unique ability to identify the pressure points in congregational life, places where the right action or intervention could make a real difference. His focus on the transition moments in the pastoral career, on creating processes and environments in congregational life where healthier patterns of interaction and leadership could be formed helped many congregations and clergy find ways to move forward. HIs insights and strategies were so compelling that many embraced them. Some imitated his work. More than a few built on it and carried it beyond his initial efforts.
When he began his work in the 60s and 70s, the resources for congregational leaders were scarce and often less than helpful. Through the Alban Institute, he built a small cadre of congregational consultants that quickly spawned many imitators and competitors, pioneered in a new kind of practical literature that now flows through many publishers and online sites, built networks of innovation and practice like those among interim ministers and endowed parishes, and encouraged clergy to learn not just from seminary faculty but also from each other. In an era of great disruption in national and religious life, these efforts sustained and strengthened more American congregations than any of us know.
Those of us who belong to a congregation, those of us who serve them as leaders, and those of us who care about their flourishing have many reasons to give thanks for the life of this rare kind of priest. After all his pushing, it is time for him to Rest In Peace and for the rest of us to push further.
James P. Wind
former president of the Alban Institute
MEAD IN WRITING: THE ONCE & FUTURE CHURCH
The Once and Future Church Collectionby Loren B. MeadIn 1991, The Once and Future Church by Alban Institute founder and former president Loren B. Mead created an instant sensation in congregational circles with its prophetic insights into the life of the church in a post-Christendom era. Still often-quoted and in demand, the book stands as Alban's all-time best seller. Two subsequent titles, Transforming Congregations for the Future and Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church, extended Mead's original vision with similar success.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Once and Future Church, Alban released all three of these books as a single, special edition hardcover. In addition to these classic texts in beautiful, newly designed formats, this collection features an interview with Loren Mead discussing how his views have changed since the books' first publications and his current thoughts on directions for the church in the twenty-first century.
Learn more and order the book »
The first time I had lunch with the Rev. Loren Mead was in late 2013, just hours after I had left a presidential search interview with the Alban Institute board. He counseled me not to take the job.
Loren, who died May 5, founded the institute in 1974 and served as its CEO for 20 years.
He had retired in 1994 and stayed busy writing, speaking and consulting. He had been living in a retirement community and caring for his ailing wife up until early 2013, when she died. He had had little contact with the institute's leadership since retirement.
I was stunned that he would advise me not to take up his work.
As Loren talked about the institute, it became clear that although he had had several partners in developing Alban -- including Speed Leas and Roy Oswald -- he himself had felt a heavy burden to sustain the organization during his 20-year tenure. Loren had concluded that Alban was not financially sustainable. He did not think anyone should take the job.
Before that lunch, I hadn't known Loren personally, but he had articulated insights and developed resources that had guided me at every stage of my ministry. When I graduated from seminary, a friend counseled me that Alban was the best resource for a new pastor. I paid for a membership and started reading the newsletter, Action Information, from cover to cover. I bought Alban books and attended several Alban seminars.
I learned about how a congregation's size influences how it behaves. I learned skills in managing conflict and leading planning processes. When Loren retired, there were 8,500 people like me who paid for memberships to receive practical guidance in how congregations work. Later, I led one of a handful of regional consulting and training organizations that provided Alban-style services. Our organization was not part of Alban, but we depended on Alban's consultants and books for training and inspiration.
Photo courtesy of the Mead familyThe founder of the Alban Institute, who died May 5, led a 40-year crusade to encourage the church to recognize the significance of congregations.
The first time I had lunch with the Rev. Loren Mead was in late 2013, just hours after I had left a presidential search interview with the Alban Institute board. He counseled me not to take the job.
Loren, who died May 5(link is external), founded the institute in 1974 and served as its CEO for 20 years.
He had retired in 1994 and stayed busy writing, speaking and consulting. He had been living in a retirement community and caring for his ailing wife up until early 2013, when she died. He had had little contact with the institute’s leadership since retirement.
I was stunned that he would advise me not to take up his work.
As Loren talked about the institute, it became clear that although he had had several partners in developing Alban -- including Speed Leas and Roy Oswald -- he himself had felt a heavy burden to sustain the organization during his 20-year tenure. Loren had concluded that Alban was not financially sustainable. He did not think anyone should take the job.
Before that lunch, I hadn’t known Loren personally, but he had articulated insights and developed resources that had guided me at every stage of my ministry. When I graduated from seminary, a friend counseled me that Alban was the best resource for a new pastor. I paid for a membership and started reading the newsletter, Action Information, from cover to cover. I bought Alban books and attended several Alban seminars.
I learned about how a congregation’s size influences how it behaves. I learned skills in managing conflict and leading planning processes. When Loren retired, there were 8,500 people like me who paid for memberships to receive practical guidance in how congregations work. Later, I led one of a handful of regional consulting and training organizations that provided Alban-style services. Our organization was not part of Alban, but we depended on Alban’s consultants and books for training and inspiration.
It is a bit difficult to imagine now, but Loren led a 40-year crusade to influence the church to recognize the significance of congregations. When he started Project Test Pattern, the research project for the Episcopal Church that preceded Alban’s founding, most religious leaders had an instrumental view of congregations. They believed that these local units exist to support the important work of denominations. Because of Loren’s widespread influence, many denominations have flipped the script and now see their work as supporting the vitality of congregations.
Congregations, too, now have a different view of themselves. They steer their own courses. They look to other congregations for resources and insight. Loren was one of a handful of people who helped congregations learn from their own work.
Loren pioneered the use of organizational consulting as a tool to understand and strengthen congregations. He knew that congregations are very complex social systems that deserve careful study. Alban Institute consultants put social science and business frameworks to use in helping congregations. Loren and his colleagues reflected theologically and practically on the insights gleaned from theories like polarity management and models of strategic planning. Loren cooperated with scholars in establishing the field of congregational studies to increase the number of theologically sound tools that congregations could use.
Loren was also concerned about the larger systems in which congregations often live. When I arrived at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, which focuses on strengthening Christian institutions, a handwritten letter from him was waiting on my desk. He wrote that such work is just as vital as directly serving congregations. In more recent years, he continued to believe that congregations are the key organization in the church, but that other organizations and resources are needed as well.
Recently, I have realized that Loren did not champion congregations as an end unto themselves. He had seen the devastating impact, for example, of white supremacy in the congregations of his youth. He was concerned that all people flourish. He believed that healthy families and congregations are vital to human flourishing.
In 2014, the Alban Institute closed and gave Duke University its legacy.(link is external) Over the years, Loren visited with my colleagues and me to advise us on Alban’s next stage and challenge us to dive deeper to understand congregations.
Six weeks before he died, I visited him for the final time. He was frustrated that the church has so much important work to do in this moment and yet is distracted by focusing on organizational survival. He saw the increasing challenges congregations face and worried that he was leaving too much undone.
Loren is not alone with such worries. Many Christian leaders, including me, see the significance of Christian witness for this time. But the intensity of his emotion was striking; he continued to love congregations and push them -- and all of us -- to be more of what God intends. I am grateful for his witness and advice.
TRIBUTES TO LOREN MEAD
... I stepped most directly into Loren's legacy in 1995, when I joined the staff of the Alban Institute, shortly after his retirement as President. Wherever I went for work, in North America or around the world, I was always preceded by the reputation Loren had built for clear thinking, disciplined exploration of tough practical issues, and an undying passion for the health and effectiveness of congregations. For these personal blessings, and on behalf of all the places I have served, I say: "Thank you, Loren."
Alice Mann
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead, while starting up the Alban Institute, was like a Jungle fighter, who strapped the Institute on his back and hacked it through any obstacle that got in the way. A few times he almost had to give it up because he hit some major setbacks, many of them financial, but he made it through. ... There were many attempts in other parts of the world, many in Canada, where people tried to duplicate what Alban did----that never got off the ground. That is because they didn't have a Loren Mead to get them started.
Roy Oswald
Alban author and former senior consultant
As the era of rapid church growth wound down at the end of the 1960s, Loren Mead was one of the first to see that the church was losing not just numbers but a privileged position in the culture. In response, he was determined to use human and organizational sciences to help leaders understand the church as an organization and to become more effective. In the process, Mead built the Alban Institute -- an interfaith community of clergy, lay leaders, consultants, researchers and writers -- who saw that many of the challenges for congregations crossed lines of theology and polity, and so did many of the most helpful solutions.
Dan Hotchkiss
Alban author and former senior consultant
Dan Hotchkiss
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren was a prolific author of several books – each one a powerful story that shared his extraordinary wisdom on the significance of a new vision for congregations and the church fulfilling God’s call to renew His church.
Rolf Janke
editor of Alban Books at Rowman & LIttlefield
When I was in seminary in the early 1970’s, the Episcopal Church had just published the findings of Loren Mead’s “Project Test Pattern” research project. He was traveling around the country, encouraging dioceses like mine to train and deploy networks of parish consultants who would be equipped to assist congregations grappling with a wide range of challenges. Through a regional training network called MATC, I was one of the first six leaders from the Diocese of Pennsylvania to complete a six-week consultant training program and serve as a member of the new Diocesan Consultant Network. From that first connection onward, the names Loren Mead and The Alban Institute remained foundational to the field of congregational development, and to my own vocational life as a pastor and consultant. I stepped most directly into Loren’s legacy in 1995, when I joined the staff of the Alban Institute, shortly after his retirement as President. Wherever I went for work, in North America or around the world, I was always preceded by the reputation Loren had built for clear thinking, disciplined exploration of tough practical issues, and an undying passion for the health and effectiveness of congregations. For these personal blessings, and on behalf of all the places I have served, I say: “Thank you, Loren.”
Alice Mann
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead, while starting up the Alban Institute, was like a Jungle fighter, who strapped the Institute on his back and hacked it through any obstacle that got in the way. A few times he almost had to give it up because he hit some major setbacks, many of them financial, but he made it through.
Loren has a major conviction, which never surfaced before his time, that the issue is congregations. They are the major centers of Christianity in this country. He did everything he could to see to it that they remained healthy and thriving.
I consider Loren one of my key mentors is my career as an Alban Senior consultant. Without him my career as a church leader would not have emerged. I fondly recall our meetings every Friday afternoon when I was in town, and we brainstormed new research that would help congregations stay viable. It often was the highlight of my week. We could think of more ideas than we could possible explore. At any social event with Alban folk, they used to constantly call us on talking shop and considering more opportunities for research. This used to turn an Alban party into more options for future work. “Cool it guys—have another drink—and lets try to have some fun together.”
There were many attempts in other parts of the world, many in Canada, where people tried to duplicate what Alban did—-that never got off the ground. That is because they didn’t have a Loren Mead to get them started.
I will miss him and his sense of humor—always open to see other possibilities in congregational life.
Roy Oswald
Alban author and former senior consultant
Loren Mead was one of the most influential Christian leaders of his generation, not only for his incisive analysis about the contemporary challenges of the church, but for his visionary perspective and his willingness to ask the hard questions around what we imagine the future church will look like. His work touched the life and mission of churches of every denomination throughout the United States and across the globe. His devotion to the congregation as the particular locus of the church’s mission and his commitment to clergy and lay leadership working in partnership were unwavering.
Sam Rodman
Bishop, The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina (Mead was a priest in the Diocese of North Carolina before founding the Alban Institute)
More than any other single person, Loren Mead put the local congregation back on the agenda of Protestant denominations in the US. During the 1960s, both church officials and theological academics looked down on local churches, viewing them as conventional, disengaged organizations that were impeding rather than furthering social progress and cultural change. Loren created the Alban Institute to counter that view and to replace some of the resources that national denominations were no longer providing. The Institute’s services and publications, focused on conflict, transition and other growing edges of church life, were not only invaluable to congregations. They also stimulated the growth of a bevy of helping organizations that, along with Alban at Duke, carry on its work today. In good measure as a result of their work, denominations and seminaries now are fully aware, as Loren always was, that the local community of believers is the indispensable center of the Christian church.
Loren’s greatest fear, expressed to me in our last conversation, was that he would be remembered as merely a technician of congregational life—a “tinkerer,” in his words. He did care that congregations run well, but his commitment was much more profound than that. He wanted churches to be strong enough to participate, indeed, to lead, in the world-changing projects of our time, especially the cause of racial justice, which he, a southerner, promoted from his youth until his dying days. Loren’s life-long devotion to the church and his seriousness of purpose will be widely and deeply missed.
Barbara Wheeler
former director of Auburn’s Center for the Study of Theological Education
Loren Mead was a rare truth teller, straight talker, innovator, and friend of American congregations and their leaders. When many were writing off congregations as subject to “suburban captivity,” he chose to stand up for them and try to provide practical resources that could really help them face the challenges of American modernity. Throughout his career he claimed that the lived reality of the local parish, synagogue, or congregation was where the dynamic interaction between faith and daily life most powerfully took place.
Loren had a unique ability to identify the pressure points in congregational life, places where the right action or intervention could make a real difference. His focus on the transition moments in the pastoral career, on creating processes and environments in congregational life where healthier patterns of interaction and leadership could be formed helped many congregations and clergy find ways to move forward. HIs insights and strategies were so compelling that many embraced them. Some imitated his work. More than a few built on it and carried it beyond his initial efforts.
When he began his work in the 60s and 70s, the resources for congregational leaders were scarce and often less than helpful. Through the Alban Institute, he built a small cadre of congregational consultants that quickly spawned many imitators and competitors, pioneered in a new kind of practical literature that now flows through many publishers and online sites, built networks of innovation and practice like those among interim ministers and endowed parishes, and encouraged clergy to learn not just from seminary faculty but also from each other. In an era of great disruption in national and religious life, these efforts sustained and strengthened more American congregations than any of us know.
Those of us who belong to a congregation, those of us who serve them as leaders, and those of us who care about their flourishing have many reasons to give thanks for the life of this rare kind of priest. After all his pushing, it is time for him to Rest In Peace and for the rest of us to push further.
James P. Wind
former president of the Alban Institute
MEAD IN WRITING: THE ONCE & FUTURE CHURCH
The Once and Future Church Collectionby Loren B. MeadIn 1991, The Once and Future Church by Alban Institute founder and former president Loren B. Mead created an instant sensation in congregational circles with its prophetic insights into the life of the church in a post-Christendom era. Still often-quoted and in demand, the book stands as Alban's all-time best seller. Two subsequent titles, Transforming Congregations for the Future and Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church, extended Mead's original vision with similar success. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Once and Future Church, Alban released all three of these books as a single, special edition hardcover. In addition to these classic texts in beautiful, newly designed formats, this collection features an interview with Loren Mead discussing how his views have changed since the books' first publications and his current thoughts on directions for the church in the twenty-first century.
Learn more and order the book »
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