Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: When is the Right Time to Close Our Doors?" for Monday, 27 February 2017
When is the right time to close our doors? by Sarai Rice
THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT THE ANSWER
We live in anxious times, and one of the things that makes small congregations especially anxious is the fear that they might need to close. As members watch their Sunday morning worship attendance dwindle, someone usually starts "running the numbers," trying to determine how long they can continue before the money runs out and they're forced to close.
There's another way to look at the end of life as we know it, at least for congregations. Rather than making decisions out of anxiety and a sense of ever-diminishing options, what if we could operate instead out of an ongoing awareness of God's blessings and an eager curiosity about how we can still multiply them, even as we close?
Multiplying Blessings
For example, I'm aware of a congregation that continued to write checks to the pastor, knowing that he would not cash them, because they were not ready to admit there was no money in the bank. What if, instead of continuing to spend up to and past the point where everything was gone, the congregation had decided to stop when there was still enough money to provide a severance package for every employee? Their last dollars would have been an unexpected blessing rather than a series of bad checks.
Another congregation was required to close when the judicatory realized that the board had not met because no one was left who could serve. What if, instead of waiting until the congregation had turned to dry bones, the congregation had decided to stop when it still had enough energy to celebrate its history and accomplishments? The last bit of energy could have been spent on festivities rather than on guilt.
I'm working with a congregation whose building is in a sad but familiar state-water damage, peeling paint, worn carpet, falling ceilings, crumbling sidewalks. Its members have hung on and done their best, but eventually there weren't enough resources to keep everything repaired. What if, instead of letting the building crumble, the congregation had decided to stop when it was still in good condition? They might have sold the building and converted their biggest asset into cash to endow their favorite missions.
When is the Right Time to Close Our Doors?by Sarai Rice
R. Callender, WikimediaWe live in anxious times, and one of the things that makes small congregations especially anxious is the fear that they might need to close. As members watch their Sunday morning worship attendance dwindle, someone usually starts “running the numbers,” trying to determine how long they can continue before the money runs out and they’re forced to close.There’s another way to look at the end of life as we know it, at least for congregations. Rather than making decisions out of anxiety and a sense of ever-diminishing options, what if we could operate instead out of an ongoing awareness of God’s blessings and an eager curiosity about how we can still multiply them, even as we close?
Multiplying Blessings
For example, I’m aware of a congregation that continued to write checks to the pastor, knowing that he would not cash them, because they were not ready to admit there was no money in the bank. What if, instead of continuing to spend up to and past the point where everything was gone, the congregation had decided to stop when there was still enough money to provide a severance package for every employee? Their last dollars would have been an unexpected blessing rather than a series of bad checks.
Another congregation was required to close when the judicatory realized that the board had not met because no one was left who could serve. What if, instead of waiting until the congregation had turned to dry bones, the congregation had decided to stop when it still had enouth energy to celebrate its history and accomplishments? The last bit of energy could have been spent on festivities rather than on guilt.
I’m working with a congregation whose building is in a sad but familiar state—water damage, peeling paint, worn carpet, falling ceilings, crumbling sidewalks. Its members have hung on and done their best, but eventually there weren’t enough resources to keep everything repaired. What if, instead of letting the building crumble, the congregation had decided to stop when it was still in good condition? They might have sold the building and converted their biggest asset into cash to endow their favorite missions.
This same congregation was intentionally located, 125 years ago, in a working-class neighborhood, but the neighborhood has gone downhill in recent years. Now most of the homes are rental units in poor condition, and the congregation no longer feels connected to the neighborhood. They tried to work with an ethnic congregation, but the relationship didn’t last and the congregation couldn’t imagine an alternative. What if, instead of failing to find a vision for ministry in their neighborhood because it no longer fit their image of their church, the congregation had stopped before the building was too worn and looked around for someone who could hear God’s call in that neighborhood? The congregation might have gifted its building and remaining assets to a congregation with a vision for the area’s renewal and rebirth.
If We Can’t, Who Will?
We all know congregations that can’t seem to keep up with current trends in hospitality. For some congregations, it was a decision decades ago to not build a parking lot. For others, it’s an ongoing decision to protect the sanctuary carpet from coffee at the expense of visitors who want to carry their favorite beverage into worship. What if, instead of making decisions that will inevitably turn people away, we decide to stop being a congregation as soon as we realize that we aren’t willing to change in ways that welcome newcomers? We could turn the building over to an emerging congregation that knows how to reach out to newer kinds of Christians (and that may even be willing to put up with us?)
My point is simple: we should stop sooner. A few congregations may dwindle down and still find a way forward, but most congregations, like most people, come to an inevitable end. At some point, most congregations die. What if, before that happens, we find a way to give the congregation’s resources to someone else rather than hanging on until there is nothing left? What if we close when we can still celebrate rather than when we’ve been ground down by exhaustion and despair? What if we offer up everything we have as an opportunity for someone else’s new life? Wouldn’t that be a better, more faithful, more gracious way to think about closing?
[Sarai Rice consults with congregations on a variety of issues including planning, program development, and governance, and offers coaching for clergy and lay leaders. She has a passion for work across the lines of faith traditions, especially in areas involving community ministry and social justice, as well as a deep commitment to the notion that human institutions should work well for the people they serve.]
Read more from Sarai Rice »
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: CLOSING STRATEGICALLY
A good death: A pastor reflects on her church's closure
Carr United Methodist Church's new pastor arrived fresh out of divinity school, filled with passion and impatience. But her real ministry, she soon discovered, would be to help the church give up its life for the sake of the gospel.
Fauth & Leadershio
CONGREGATIONS
Cheryl M. Lawrence: A good death
Carr UMC's new pastor arrived fresh out of divinity school, filled with passion and impatience. But her real ministry, she soon discovered, would be to help the church give up its life for the sake of the gospel.
The first time I stepped inside the sanctuary of Carr United Methodist Church, the dark beauty of the worship space took my breath away. It exuded an air of both wealth and decline.
The cavernous room was washed in royal blue and ruby red from the stained-glass windows. In the dim light, I could see row upon row of dark wood pews and two balconies. There was a communion rail with worn kneeling pads, a tall communion table, faded green paraments, and a high and exalted pulpit.
I never expected my first pastoral appointment to be in a church of such beauty. Little did I know that my tenure would end in the church giving its life for the sake of the gospel.
Fear of the neighborhood around the building played a part in the congregation’s decision, as well as a weary acknowledgment that 40 people could no longer maintain the old building or engage in fruitful ministry in that location. Yet they wanted to leave a legacy.
Over and above everything was Jesus Christ, who seemed to be calling the church to follow their crucified Lord by giving themselves away in love.
Fifty years earlier, Carr United Methodist Church in east Durham, N.C., was a big, busy neighborhood church. But times changed, the neighborhood changed, and the church did not.
Letting go was not easy. My teenage daughter identified the situation well, after about a month: “Mom, these people are so sad.”
Some members denied that anything was wrong, but most knew what was happening. They despaired over the all-but-certain prospect of becoming one more boarded-up inner-city church.
Into this situation arrived the new pastor, fresh out of divinity school and filled with passion and impatience.
I immediately set about fixing things. Resurrect the finance committee! Get a new treasurer! Consolidate the accounts! Sell the unused church vans! Raise the payment on the rented parsonage! Retire the 80-year-old secretary! (The last one took a long time to accomplish, and in retrospect, it’s a wonder I wasn’t tossed out.)
But our path to new life wasn’t to be found in financial fixes. Instead, it began when a series of other small congregations approached us about sharing our space. Initially, a nondenominational African-American church asked to worship in our sanctuary on Sunday evenings and provided a monthly offering to cover utilities.
Soon, a large Baptist church knocked on our door, asking for space to teach English as a Second Language to the many Spanish-speaking residents of the neighborhood. If we weren’t able to engage in ministry with the neighborhood, the church decided, then we could at least welcome those churches who were. The offerings didn’t hurt, of course.
Meanwhile, I preached, taught, led committee meetings and offered public prayers that relentlessly asked: Where is God leading us? How can a congregation of good-hearted, elderly Christians reach out with the love of Christ to the least, last and lost?
It didn’t help that the least, last and lost kept stealing the copper out of the air conditioning units, or that the police broke up a crack house three doors down the street, or that a drive-by shooting resulted in a car crashing into the parking lot as people were leaving worship.
Gradually, I began to envision Carr as a multi-denominational, multicultural center of Christian worship: many churches in one building.
Not everyone caught the vision, though, and ultimately, God’s vision turned out to be much different from my own. Carr’s few members never completely agreed about anything, and despite my dreams, Carr and the other two churches didn’t have a lot of contact with one another.
Yet thanks to that experience, we were primed and ready when we heard that Shepherd’s House, a new-church start of people from Zimbabwe, needed space. The idea of an immigrant church worshipping in our building was both exhilarating and frightening. Shepherd’s House wasn’t just one more church -- they were United Methodists -- and they already had more than double Carr’s Sunday attendance.
But they wanted to worship at 11 a.m., the same time we did. Where would they worship? Certainly not with Carr; their service was conducted in Shona, the language of Zimbabwe. Our worship styles were literally worlds apart.
Our building had plenty of space on the first floor, but it was in disrepair. With an offer of financial support from a suburban United Methodist church, Carr members readily approved a project to create space for Shepherd’s House on our first and third floors.
After a year of construction, on a beautiful spring day, the Zimbabwean congregation moved in on schedule. For the next year, Carr’s congregation worshipped in the second-floor sanctuary, sandwiched between the Shepherd’s House adults one floor below and their children’s church one floor above.
Our churches shared the fellowship hall, bathrooms and parking lot. The Shepherd’s House children ran up and down the stairs constantly, and I often heard African drums while I preached.
The two churches invited one another to fellowship meals, including a feast of traditional African food and an outdoor cookout. We held several joint worship services, including one on Christmas Eve, with communion and “Silent Night” in both English and Shona.
It was a challenging and exciting time. One moment I would be overcome with joy at all the wonderful things that were happening, and the next, nauseated by the thought of all that could go wrong.
But eventually, the worst, at least from Carr’s perspective, began to happen. Shepherd’s House outgrew their worship space while Carr continued to shrink, as aging members died.
Clearly, it made no sense for a thriving congregation to be squashed in their worship space while 30 people knocked around upstairs in a sanctuary built for 500. I had not foreseen this happening so quickly; when I prayed that God would fill the church pews, I had meant Carr’s pews.
Thus, Carr began a difficult process of prayer and discernment. We prayed, and we talked -- and not always in pleasant ways.
Again and again, we kept coming back to Mark 8:34-35:
“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’” (NRSV).For decades, Carr had tried to save its own life and had experienced nothing but slow death. We asked ourselves: What would it mean for a church to lose its life for the sake of the gospel? What would it mean for a whole church to take up a cross and follow our crucified Savior?
We were stuck somewhere between life and death. But the logjam broke when an outside person trained in conflict resolution volunteered a Saturday to help us uncover what was really important to our church -- and what wasn’t. She assigned me a task: to stay silent.
That day was a turning point. She was able to establish that most members cared more about their relationships with one another and leaving behind a United Methodist legacy than hanging on to a building.
Two months later, Carr officers requested an official vote to put the matter to rest, one way or another. When the vote came, a majority of Carr members decided that Shepherd’s House was the right church for that location. They voted to give it all -- building, furnishings and next-door parsonage -- to Shepherd’s House. Carr would relocate to another church in Durham.
After worshipping for two years in borrowed space, Carr closed, dovetailing gently into the church that had invited us to worship in their old sanctuary. It was a good death, giving way to new life in surprising ways.
Read more from Cheryl Lawrence »
A resurrection story
Congregations that are contemplating closing are entering a cycle best known to Christians in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. Thus, they must face the possibility of their death head on -- with the accompanying dynamics of fear, mistrust, denial, betrayal, guilt, posturing, and hope.
A Resurrection Story
Carr UMC's new pastor arrived fresh out of divinity school, filled with passion and impatience. But her real ministry, she soon discovered, would be to help the church give up its life for the sake of the gospel.
The first time I stepped inside the sanctuary of Carr United Methodist Church, the dark beauty of the worship space took my breath away. It exuded an air of both wealth and decline.
The cavernous room was washed in royal blue and ruby red from the stained-glass windows. In the dim light, I could see row upon row of dark wood pews and two balconies. There was a communion rail with worn kneeling pads, a tall communion table, faded green paraments, and a high and exalted pulpit.
I never expected my first pastoral appointment to be in a church of such beauty. Little did I know that my tenure would end in the church giving its life for the sake of the gospel.
Fear of the neighborhood around the building played a part in the congregation’s decision, as well as a weary acknowledgment that 40 people could no longer maintain the old building or engage in fruitful ministry in that location. Yet they wanted to leave a legacy.
Over and above everything was Jesus Christ, who seemed to be calling the church to follow their crucified Lord by giving themselves away in love.
Fifty years earlier, Carr United Methodist Church in east Durham, N.C., was a big, busy neighborhood church. But times changed, the neighborhood changed, and the church did not.
Letting go was not easy. My teenage daughter identified the situation well, after about a month: “Mom, these people are so sad.”
Some members denied that anything was wrong, but most knew what was happening. They despaired over the all-but-certain prospect of becoming one more boarded-up inner-city church.
Into this situation arrived the new pastor, fresh out of divinity school and filled with passion and impatience.
I immediately set about fixing things. Resurrect the finance committee! Get a new treasurer! Consolidate the accounts! Sell the unused church vans! Raise the payment on the rented parsonage! Retire the 80-year-old secretary! (The last one took a long time to accomplish, and in retrospect, it’s a wonder I wasn’t tossed out.)
But our path to new life wasn’t to be found in financial fixes. Instead, it began when a series of other small congregations approached us about sharing our space. Initially, a nondenominational African-American church asked to worship in our sanctuary on Sunday evenings and provided a monthly offering to cover utilities.
Soon, a large Baptist church knocked on our door, asking for space to teach English as a Second Language to the many Spanish-speaking residents of the neighborhood. If we weren’t able to engage in ministry with the neighborhood, the church decided, then we could at least welcome those churches who were. The offerings didn’t hurt, of course.
Meanwhile, I preached, taught, led committee meetings and offered public prayers that relentlessly asked: Where is God leading us? How can a congregation of good-hearted, elderly Christians reach out with the love of Christ to the least, last and lost?
It didn’t help that the least, last and lost kept stealing the copper out of the air conditioning units, or that the police broke up a crack house three doors down the street, or that a drive-by shooting resulted in a car crashing into the parking lot as people were leaving worship.
Gradually, I began to envision Carr as a multi-denominational, multicultural center of Christian worship: many churches in one building.
Not everyone caught the vision, though, and ultimately, God’s vision turned out to be much different from my own. Carr’s few members never completely agreed about anything, and despite my dreams, Carr and the other two churches didn’t have a lot of contact with one another.
Yet thanks to that experience, we were primed and ready when we heard that Shepherd’s House, a new-church start of people from Zimbabwe, needed space. The idea of an immigrant church worshipping in our building was both exhilarating and frightening. Shepherd’s House wasn’t just one more church -- they were United Methodists -- and they already had more than double Carr’s Sunday attendance.
But they wanted to worship at 11 a.m., the same time we did. Where would they worship? Certainly not with Carr; their service was conducted in Shona, the language of Zimbabwe. Our worship styles were literally worlds apart.
Our building had plenty of space on the first floor, but it was in disrepair. With an offer of financial support from a suburban United Methodist church, Carr members readily approved a project to create space for Shepherd’s House on our first and third floors.
After a year of construction, on a beautiful spring day, the Zimbabwean congregation moved in on schedule. For the next year, Carr’s congregation worshipped in the second-floor sanctuary, sandwiched between the Shepherd’s House adults one floor below and their children’s church one floor above.
Our churches shared the fellowship hall, bathrooms and parking lot. The Shepherd’s House children ran up and down the stairs constantly, and I often heard African drums while I preached.
The two churches invited one another to fellowship meals, including a feast of traditional African food and an outdoor cookout. We held several joint worship services, including one on Christmas Eve, with communion and “Silent Night” in both English and Shona.
It was a challenging and exciting time. One moment I would be overcome with joy at all the wonderful things that were happening, and the next, nauseated by the thought of all that could go wrong.
But eventually, the worst, at least from Carr’s perspective, began to happen. Shepherd’s House outgrew their worship space while Carr continued to shrink, as aging members died.
Clearly, it made no sense for a thriving congregation to be squashed in their worship space while 30 people knocked around upstairs in a sanctuary built for 500. I had not foreseen this happening so quickly; when I prayed that God would fill the church pews, I had meant Carr’s pews.
Thus, Carr began a difficult process of prayer and discernment. We prayed, and we talked -- and not always in pleasant ways.
Again and again, we kept coming back to Mark 8:34-35:
“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’” (NRSV).For decades, Carr had tried to save its own life and had experienced nothing but slow death. We asked ourselves: What would it mean for a church to lose its life for the sake of the gospel? What would it mean for a whole church to take up a cross and follow our crucified Savior?
We were stuck somewhere between life and death. But the logjam broke when an outside person trained in conflict resolution volunteered a Saturday to help us uncover what was really important to our church -- and what wasn’t. She assigned me a task: to stay silent.
That day was a turning point. She was able to establish that most members cared more about their relationships with one another and leaving behind a United Methodist legacy than hanging on to a building.
Two months later, Carr officers requested an official vote to put the matter to rest, one way or another. When the vote came, a majority of Carr members decided that Shepherd’s House was the right church for that location. They voted to give it all -- building, furnishings and next-door parsonage -- to Shepherd’s House. Carr would relocate to another church in Durham.
After worshipping for two years in borrowed space, Carr closed, dovetailing gently into the church that had invited us to worship in their old sanctuary. It was a good death, giving way to new life in surprising ways.
Read more from Cheryl Lawrence »
A resurrection story
Congregations that are contemplating closing are entering a cycle best known to Christians in Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. Thus, they must face the possibility of their death head on -- with the accompanying dynamics of fear, mistrust, denial, betrayal, guilt, posturing, and hope.
A Resurrection Story
While looking at the stories of churches that have contemplated the possibility of closing their doors and ending life as they have known it, I am struck with how many of their stories fit into the season of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter. These congregations face the possibility of death head on—with the accompanying dynamics of fear, mistrust, denial, betrayal, guilt, posturing, and hope. Just as Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and spoke openly with his disciples about his impending death, these churches pull back the curtain of silence and denial to consider the possibility of dying with dignity, closing with compassion, ending with strength, and sometimes even transitioning into new life.
When Father Thomas Murphy became bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings in Montana, he inherited a number of small, struggling, mission outposts that had been created across the years to serve outlying communities of miners, farmers, and ranchers. He saw the need to close these missions but did not want to impose a decision upon them that would destroy their spirit. He invited several sisters from the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose motherhouse was located in Dubuque, Iowa, to come to the diocese and serve as pastoral administrators of small parishes. He also assigned them to lead several of the struggling missions in order to help those churches explore their future, which could include the option of closing. If they were to close, Bishop Murphy wanted them to end with hope.
Sister Deanna Carr was assigned to three outposts near Great Falls: the missions of St. Francis Xavier in Eden, St. Paul in Sand Coulee, and Saints Cyril and Methodius Church in Stockett. The church and missions had originally been established to serve Eastern Europeans who had come to Montana to work in the mines. But those mines were long since gone, and now the area was impoverished, with the remaining population trying to eke out an existence from small farms and a few livestock. Their churches were surely walking in the valley of the shadow of death.
Sister Deanna patiently began to initiate conversations about the future of the missions and parish at a number of levels, both informal and formal. She created an environment where people could talk freely without being judged. People did have creative ideas. She allowed those ideas to surface as members attempted to move toward consensus. She wanted them to own the decision they would eventually make by collaborative sharing and thinking rather than by reacting to an imposed edict from the outside.
Parishioners realized that closing a church would call for a great deal of letting go. They were deeply attached to their building and its contents, for which they had given and worked across the years. Father Ted Szudera, who currently serves as priest to Holy Trinity parish, has listened to people converse about those former days of hard decision making. He says that they organize their stories around one word that always comes up—sacrifice. They knew the names of people who had given the pews, altar rails, statues, and specific fixtures. A favorite uncle may have created a handiwork that was important to all.
So how did these three faith communities come to eventually give up their preciously held identities and investments of time and money they had each made over the years? Sister Deanna points to three factors: (1) The people were down to earth and practical in nature. They did not try to put on airs to impress each other or the other churches. They were plainspoken folks who could discern the obvious, given their declining numbers. (2) The diocese had a shortage of priests, and the people’s needs were not adequately being met. (3) The process of considering their future was greatly enhanced by the presence of a retired priest, Father Martin Werner. Whereas Sister Deanna, who led the conversations, was considered an outsider, Father Werner was the consummate insider, and the bishop had requested that he sit in on the deliberations. Everyone knew him and loved him. He employed a charming sense of humor, which became a real gift when matters became tense. He blessed their explorations and eventual conclusions.
Many informal conversations took place in local settings. And formal conversations took place with Father Werner and Sister Deanna present in a newly organized parish council, which offered a gracious space where people from all three communities could struggle together. They were able to tell and recite their unique stories. Issues common to all three communities were exchanged and considered at that table. Any eventual outcome and future relationship would need to be based on a deepening trust. Father Ted reports that years after the birth of the new parish, strong and effective pastoral parish council and finance council systems continue to function—legacies of those days of working together in trust building through the bonds of faith, hope, and love.
Facing the closure of three historic churches led them down a difficult path with Good Friday—type dynamics. But the council and three faith communities also came to rest in an Easter hope. They generated new visions for a common future. They decided to close all three churches and to establish a single new parish in Centerville, directly across from a school.
The new parish needed a name, and they discerned that as well. It would be Holy Trinity Parish in Centerville. Selecting Trinity as a name seemed obvious due to the fact that the people were drawn from three worship points. But the significance of the name Trinity surfaced from a well of deep spiritual water. While telling their stories, they affirmed that they were founded by a loving, creating God. They had been fed and nurtured across the years by the grace of Christ, and they yearned for a new common life empowered by the Spirit.
Although after the new parish was created, they met in a gymnasium for Sunday worship, the heart of their spiritual life centered in the eucharistic chapel, which housed the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament and was the locus for daily prayer. That chapel also housed the icon around which their life centered—the icon of the Trinity. That icon presents Abraham welcoming the strangers, a familiar story to Roman Catholic adherents.
The most visible demonstration of the three parishes’ deaths and their resurrection as Holy Trinity Parish occurred when they took the three church bells from the former missions, assembled them in a tower, and raised them together. The three bells could have been melted and recast into one new bell, but each bell was allowed to peal its distinct tone and contribute to a miraculously harmonious blend. Trinity resonates through the new church.
____________________________________________
Adapted from The Wisdom of the Seasons: How the Church Year Helps Us Understand Our Congregational Stories by Charles M. Olsen. Copyright © 2009 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Read more from Charles M. Olsen »
A Brooklyn church temporarily shuts down its hunger ministry in order to sustain it
Closing the food pantry and meal program for two months allowed staff and volunteers at Greenpoint Reformed Church to reorganize and professionalize its hunger ministry.
When Father Thomas Murphy became bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings in Montana, he inherited a number of small, struggling, mission outposts that had been created across the years to serve outlying communities of miners, farmers, and ranchers. He saw the need to close these missions but did not want to impose a decision upon them that would destroy their spirit. He invited several sisters from the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose motherhouse was located in Dubuque, Iowa, to come to the diocese and serve as pastoral administrators of small parishes. He also assigned them to lead several of the struggling missions in order to help those churches explore their future, which could include the option of closing. If they were to close, Bishop Murphy wanted them to end with hope.
Sister Deanna Carr was assigned to three outposts near Great Falls: the missions of St. Francis Xavier in Eden, St. Paul in Sand Coulee, and Saints Cyril and Methodius Church in Stockett. The church and missions had originally been established to serve Eastern Europeans who had come to Montana to work in the mines. But those mines were long since gone, and now the area was impoverished, with the remaining population trying to eke out an existence from small farms and a few livestock. Their churches were surely walking in the valley of the shadow of death.
Sister Deanna patiently began to initiate conversations about the future of the missions and parish at a number of levels, both informal and formal. She created an environment where people could talk freely without being judged. People did have creative ideas. She allowed those ideas to surface as members attempted to move toward consensus. She wanted them to own the decision they would eventually make by collaborative sharing and thinking rather than by reacting to an imposed edict from the outside.
Parishioners realized that closing a church would call for a great deal of letting go. They were deeply attached to their building and its contents, for which they had given and worked across the years. Father Ted Szudera, who currently serves as priest to Holy Trinity parish, has listened to people converse about those former days of hard decision making. He says that they organize their stories around one word that always comes up—sacrifice. They knew the names of people who had given the pews, altar rails, statues, and specific fixtures. A favorite uncle may have created a handiwork that was important to all.
So how did these three faith communities come to eventually give up their preciously held identities and investments of time and money they had each made over the years? Sister Deanna points to three factors: (1) The people were down to earth and practical in nature. They did not try to put on airs to impress each other or the other churches. They were plainspoken folks who could discern the obvious, given their declining numbers. (2) The diocese had a shortage of priests, and the people’s needs were not adequately being met. (3) The process of considering their future was greatly enhanced by the presence of a retired priest, Father Martin Werner. Whereas Sister Deanna, who led the conversations, was considered an outsider, Father Werner was the consummate insider, and the bishop had requested that he sit in on the deliberations. Everyone knew him and loved him. He employed a charming sense of humor, which became a real gift when matters became tense. He blessed their explorations and eventual conclusions.
Many informal conversations took place in local settings. And formal conversations took place with Father Werner and Sister Deanna present in a newly organized parish council, which offered a gracious space where people from all three communities could struggle together. They were able to tell and recite their unique stories. Issues common to all three communities were exchanged and considered at that table. Any eventual outcome and future relationship would need to be based on a deepening trust. Father Ted reports that years after the birth of the new parish, strong and effective pastoral parish council and finance council systems continue to function—legacies of those days of working together in trust building through the bonds of faith, hope, and love.
Facing the closure of three historic churches led them down a difficult path with Good Friday—type dynamics. But the council and three faith communities also came to rest in an Easter hope. They generated new visions for a common future. They decided to close all three churches and to establish a single new parish in Centerville, directly across from a school.
The new parish needed a name, and they discerned that as well. It would be Holy Trinity Parish in Centerville. Selecting Trinity as a name seemed obvious due to the fact that the people were drawn from three worship points. But the significance of the name Trinity surfaced from a well of deep spiritual water. While telling their stories, they affirmed that they were founded by a loving, creating God. They had been fed and nurtured across the years by the grace of Christ, and they yearned for a new common life empowered by the Spirit.
Although after the new parish was created, they met in a gymnasium for Sunday worship, the heart of their spiritual life centered in the eucharistic chapel, which housed the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament and was the locus for daily prayer. That chapel also housed the icon around which their life centered—the icon of the Trinity. That icon presents Abraham welcoming the strangers, a familiar story to Roman Catholic adherents.
The most visible demonstration of the three parishes’ deaths and their resurrection as Holy Trinity Parish occurred when they took the three church bells from the former missions, assembled them in a tower, and raised them together. The three bells could have been melted and recast into one new bell, but each bell was allowed to peal its distinct tone and contribute to a miraculously harmonious blend. Trinity resonates through the new church.
____________________________________________
Adapted from The Wisdom of the Seasons: How the Church Year Helps Us Understand Our Congregational Stories by Charles M. Olsen. Copyright © 2009 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
Read more from Charles M. Olsen »
A Brooklyn church temporarily shuts down its hunger ministry in order to sustain it
Closing the food pantry and meal program for two months allowed staff and volunteers at Greenpoint Reformed Church to reorganize and professionalize its hunger ministry.
Faith & Leadership
MISSIONS & EVANGELISM, MANAGEMENT
A Brooklyn church temporarily shuts down its hunger ministry in order to sustain it
The food -- and the system -- have improved since Greenpoint Reformed Church took a break and revamped its hunger ministry. Photo courtesy of Greenpoint Reformed Church
Closing the food pantry and meal program for two months allowed staff and volunteers at Greenpoint Reformed Church to reorganize and professionalize its hunger ministry.
On a recent Wednesday evening in Brooklyn, diners streamed in for the weekly meal at Greenpoint Reformed Church. Dozens of guests, many elderly, grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to wait while volunteers put the finishing touches on the evening repast in the kitchen.
One worker tossed a mound of kale with orange marmalade dressing while her salad partner chopped organic apple slices to uniform perfection. Giant trays of meatballs were pulled from the oven, making room for the garlic bread going in. The first course -- a steaming kettle of potato leek soup -- was carried to the serving table, where four volunteers were at the ready with ladles and tongs.
They scrambled for funds and worried about running out of food. Some weeks, they had nothing but tomato paste to hand out to food pantry latecomers. And while a small but committed army of volunteers continued to show up week after week, the cracks in the system were deepening. There was bickering in the ranks, among clients and volunteers.
Near the breaking point, the Rev. Ann Kansfield decided to take a radical step: shut down the hunger ministry for two months to reboot and rethink the program. It meant angering some volunteers and turning away hundreds of hungry people. But, Kansfield said, things couldn’t go on the way they were.
“We started as a band of people in a church, and the program was small enough for us to manage,” said Kansfield, who has served as pastor at Greenpoint Reformed Church since 2003. “But it wasn’t scalable.”
Trying to meet community needs
Shortly after Kansfield took up residence above the church, people started ringing her doorbell, asking for food.
A predominantly working-class Polish neighborhood, Greenpoint is not an obvious location of food insecurity, but many of its elderly residents have a hard time making ends meet.
And although it is just across the river from midtown Manhattan, the neighborhood is fairly isolated. The only subway line that serves Greenpoint is the G train, the only line in all of New York City that does not enter Manhattan. There is also limited access to social services.
So when the church received an anonymous grant to serve the neighborhood, they decided to start a weekly soup kitchen and food pantry. The Hunger Program was launched in 2007.
Volunteers fill food orders for clients in the revamped food pantry. Photo by Genine Babakian
In one sense, the program was wildly successful. Clients poured in after the recession hit in 2008, followed by Hurricane Sandy, which took a heavy toll. Within the first four years of the program, the number of people coming to the pantry doubled every year.
“We started as a small church thinking we’d be feeding 25 people, but before we knew it, we were serving up to 800 every month,” Kansfield said. “I had to figure out a way to feed them.”
Greenpoint Reformed Church was overwhelmed by the needs of its community, yet it responded by doing less. Would your organization respond in the same way? Why or why not?
But the escalating number of clients overwhelmed the loosely organized, ragtag system, and the lack of rules for volunteers and clients added even more stress.
“When you are a church, you often feel like you have to say yes to everything,” Kansfield said. When certain clients asked for more food or visited the pantry when it wasn’t their appointed day, for example, some of the volunteers would oblige them -- a practice that was noticed by those who did not get special treatment.
“We were crying out for boundaries,” Kansfield said.
In addition, the chef who made the weekly meal committed suicide, a devastating loss that the Hunger Program volunteers did not have time to process and mourn. The vacancy she left -- together with stretched funds and declining morale -- had an impact on the quality of the food.
The joy of meeting a need disappeared, replaced by stress. Kansfield found herself hating to be around the church on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when meals and food were distributed.
Stopping in their tracks
Kansfield made some changes that eased the situation. Hiring a part-time seminarian brought some relief. They scaled back food pantry visits to one Thursday a month, rather than weekly -- a practice many pantries follow. That offered some breathing room, but it did not last long.
In the spring of 2016, the seminary student was moving on. That gave Kansfield and her team the opportunity to draft a job description for the program manager -- something they had never done before -- and think about the skills they needed to bring more order to the program.
They found a capable candidate in Joan Benefiel, a local sculptor with an eclectic résumé and applicable skills.
If one only measured the Greenpoint Hunger Program in terms of numbers, it was a success; if measured in terms of sustainability, it was a failure. How do you measure success and failure? Could you adopt different metrics?
But hiring a new manager was not enough to fix a broken system. Kansfield gathered her volunteers and announced they would be closing down for two months over the summer.
“We called it a working sabbatical,” she said.
After giving two weeks’ notice, they closed in June. Some of the volunteers were angry and left the program. Others -- like Conner -- were distraught.
“It nearly killed me,” said Conner, who is so involved in helping the community that he’s learned some Polish to communicate with clients who do not speak English. But he was among those who rolled up their sleeves and tried to figure out how to make the program sustainable.
Kansfield, for her part, tried to keep volunteers in the loop as much as possible.
Have you ever faced such anger? How did you respond?
They had plenty of work to do during those two months off. They cleaned out the kitchen and got it up to code. They installed locks on the cabinets -- not to prevent theft, but to keep people from depositing their discarded goods and adding to the clutter. They visited other food pantries and investigated best practices. They drafted volunteer guidelines.
They found a professional chef on Craigslist, who volunteers every Wednesday, creating an impromptu menu with the goods at hand.
“We made a list of what we wanted to change. We wanted rules. An orientation for volunteers. We wanted everyone -- clients and volunteers -- to obey the rules; we wanted to adopt an inventory process; we wanted to treat people fairly but not be pushovers,” Kansfield said.
Benefiel was grateful for the time she had during the reboot to visit other pantries throughout New York City. They received a $25,000 grant in January, which helped provide a financial cushion for the project.
When she spoke to their program managers and told them about Greenpoint’s temporary closure, many of them were actually jealous, she said. Jealous of the time to think.
“Once you are in the middle of things, it is hard to stop and take a look at what you are doing,” Benefiel said.
Taking a break to fix what’s wrong can be a good strategy, said Paul Bloom, a social marketing expert at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship who wrote a book on scaling for social ventures.
Do you anticipate that you will face the issue of scaling one of your projects? If so, how could you address it before you reach the breaking point?
“Failure stories can be more instructive than success stories,” he said. “Stopping in your tracks is a good idea to do some strategic thinking and planning -- a very sound way to approach it.”
Changes bring order to chaos
One of the changes Benefiel introduced was a digital inventory and registration system.
To receive food, clients give their name, address and age. While visitors do not have to show need in order to get food assistance, the new system does keep track of the frequency of visits as each guest checks in.
Volunteers check in clients in the sanctuary.
Photo by Genine Babakian
And to avoid favoritism, the system separates clients from those who fill the orders. With the system’s mobile app, pantry guests are able to shop digitally, making selections on a hand-held screen.
Another important element, Benefiel said, was keeping the barriers to service and volunteering low.
“Some organizations spend an hour on intake with one client, while others take a name and that’s it,” she said. “We are on the less-invasive side, and I wanted to keep the same approach.”
But the working sabbatical was not without repercussions. The program lost volunteers, as well as donors. They had to pull out of their CSA membership for the year, losing access to that weekly source of fruits and vegetables.
There have been plenty of bumps in the road, Kansfield admits with characteristic good humor. A week after the digital system was introduced, for example, a glitch in the app sent food pantry volunteers scurrying to fill orders.
“You fix one vulnerability and you expose the next one,” Kansfield said, with a laugh. “You think you’re going to change everything with this one fix, but then … wait, there’s more!”
Clients slowly return
When the Hunger Program reopened in August, it had far fewer clients and volunteers than it had earlier in the year. By October, they were cooking weekly dinners for around 60 people, and more of the regulars were starting to come back.
Conner believes that that number will continue to rise as word gets out around the neighborhood. He was among the first volunteers to return when the program reopened.
“I was so happy, I cried,” he said, during one of the recent evening meals, where he was greeting all the guests and making sure they had enough to eat. “These are my people.”
Volunteers and clients are returning for meals. Photo courtesy of Greenpoint Reformed Church
Across the hall from where Conner was helping with the evening meal, Benefiel was in the sanctuary getting ready for the food pantry the following day. A band of volunteers was sorting sacks of onions, potatoes and carrots. Bins of rice occupied the front rows of pews, while boxes and bags of fruits and vegetables filled the back ones.
In spite of the occasional snag, Rob Dorler -- a volunteer at the food pantry since February -- said he thought everything was more orderly under the new system.
A resident of the community, Dorler has been with the Greenpoint program since before the reboot, and he thinks the decision to shut down was sound, even if the transition wasn’t worry-free.
Three months in, Kansfield thinks that everyone -- staff, volunteers and clients alike -- is thankful for the change. And new volunteers continue to pour in. But more importantly for Kansfield, her sense of joy in overseeing the Hunger Program has returned. “I love being around on Wednesdays and Thursdays now,” she said.
“I never would have thought that managing a soup kitchen requires every last ounce of skill and brains that I have,” she said. “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Questions to consider:
MISSIONS & EVANGELISM, MANAGEMENT
A Brooklyn church temporarily shuts down its hunger ministry in order to sustain it
The food -- and the system -- have improved since Greenpoint Reformed Church took a break and revamped its hunger ministry. Photo courtesy of Greenpoint Reformed Church
Closing the food pantry and meal program for two months allowed staff and volunteers at Greenpoint Reformed Church to reorganize and professionalize its hunger ministry.
On a recent Wednesday evening in Brooklyn, diners streamed in for the weekly meal at Greenpoint Reformed Church. Dozens of guests, many elderly, grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to wait while volunteers put the finishing touches on the evening repast in the kitchen.
One worker tossed a mound of kale with orange marmalade dressing while her salad partner chopped organic apple slices to uniform perfection. Giant trays of meatballs were pulled from the oven, making room for the garlic bread going in. The first course -- a steaming kettle of potato leek soup -- was carried to the serving table, where four volunteers were at the ready with ladles and tongs.
Serving fresh, healthy food is a priority.
Photo courtesy of Greenpoint Reformed Church
“This is the best meal in town,” said Jayson Conner, a longtime volunteer at the Greenpoint Hunger Program(link is external), who was directing traffic and making sure that everyone got a plate before he started eating his own meal.
But that wasn’t always the case. Six months ago, the Greenpoint Hunger Program was struggling for survival -- a victim of its own success. Overwhelmed by the rising tide of clients, the staff and volunteers were pushed beyond capacity.They scrambled for funds and worried about running out of food. Some weeks, they had nothing but tomato paste to hand out to food pantry latecomers. And while a small but committed army of volunteers continued to show up week after week, the cracks in the system were deepening. There was bickering in the ranks, among clients and volunteers.
Near the breaking point, the Rev. Ann Kansfield decided to take a radical step: shut down the hunger ministry for two months to reboot and rethink the program. It meant angering some volunteers and turning away hundreds of hungry people. But, Kansfield said, things couldn’t go on the way they were.
“We started as a band of people in a church, and the program was small enough for us to manage,” said Kansfield, who has served as pastor at Greenpoint Reformed Church since 2003. “But it wasn’t scalable.”
Trying to meet community needs
Shortly after Kansfield took up residence above the church, people started ringing her doorbell, asking for food.
A predominantly working-class Polish neighborhood, Greenpoint is not an obvious location of food insecurity, but many of its elderly residents have a hard time making ends meet.
The Rev. Ann Kansfield uses the iPad system.
Photo by Genine Babakian
“Greenpoint has a 36 percent poverty rate,” Kansfield said. “Some of the elderly residents have to choose between buying medicines or buying food.”And although it is just across the river from midtown Manhattan, the neighborhood is fairly isolated. The only subway line that serves Greenpoint is the G train, the only line in all of New York City that does not enter Manhattan. There is also limited access to social services.
So when the church received an anonymous grant to serve the neighborhood, they decided to start a weekly soup kitchen and food pantry. The Hunger Program was launched in 2007.
Volunteers fill food orders for clients in the revamped food pantry. Photo by Genine Babakian
In one sense, the program was wildly successful. Clients poured in after the recession hit in 2008, followed by Hurricane Sandy, which took a heavy toll. Within the first four years of the program, the number of people coming to the pantry doubled every year.
“We started as a small church thinking we’d be feeding 25 people, but before we knew it, we were serving up to 800 every month,” Kansfield said. “I had to figure out a way to feed them.”
Greenpoint Reformed Church was overwhelmed by the needs of its community, yet it responded by doing less. Would your organization respond in the same way? Why or why not?
But the escalating number of clients overwhelmed the loosely organized, ragtag system, and the lack of rules for volunteers and clients added even more stress.
“When you are a church, you often feel like you have to say yes to everything,” Kansfield said. When certain clients asked for more food or visited the pantry when it wasn’t their appointed day, for example, some of the volunteers would oblige them -- a practice that was noticed by those who did not get special treatment.
“We were crying out for boundaries,” Kansfield said.
In addition, the chef who made the weekly meal committed suicide, a devastating loss that the Hunger Program volunteers did not have time to process and mourn. The vacancy she left -- together with stretched funds and declining morale -- had an impact on the quality of the food.
The joy of meeting a need disappeared, replaced by stress. Kansfield found herself hating to be around the church on Wednesdays and Thursdays, when meals and food were distributed.
Stopping in their tracks
Kansfield made some changes that eased the situation. Hiring a part-time seminarian brought some relief. They scaled back food pantry visits to one Thursday a month, rather than weekly -- a practice many pantries follow. That offered some breathing room, but it did not last long.
In the spring of 2016, the seminary student was moving on. That gave Kansfield and her team the opportunity to draft a job description for the program manager -- something they had never done before -- and think about the skills they needed to bring more order to the program.
They found a capable candidate in Joan Benefiel, a local sculptor with an eclectic résumé and applicable skills.
If one only measured the Greenpoint Hunger Program in terms of numbers, it was a success; if measured in terms of sustainability, it was a failure. How do you measure success and failure? Could you adopt different metrics?
But hiring a new manager was not enough to fix a broken system. Kansfield gathered her volunteers and announced they would be closing down for two months over the summer.
“We called it a working sabbatical,” she said.
After giving two weeks’ notice, they closed in June. Some of the volunteers were angry and left the program. Others -- like Conner -- were distraught.
“It nearly killed me,” said Conner, who is so involved in helping the community that he’s learned some Polish to communicate with clients who do not speak English. But he was among those who rolled up their sleeves and tried to figure out how to make the program sustainable.
Kansfield, for her part, tried to keep volunteers in the loop as much as possible.
Have you ever faced such anger? How did you respond?
They had plenty of work to do during those two months off. They cleaned out the kitchen and got it up to code. They installed locks on the cabinets -- not to prevent theft, but to keep people from depositing their discarded goods and adding to the clutter. They visited other food pantries and investigated best practices. They drafted volunteer guidelines.
They found a professional chef on Craigslist, who volunteers every Wednesday, creating an impromptu menu with the goods at hand.
“We made a list of what we wanted to change. We wanted rules. An orientation for volunteers. We wanted everyone -- clients and volunteers -- to obey the rules; we wanted to adopt an inventory process; we wanted to treat people fairly but not be pushovers,” Kansfield said.
Benefiel was grateful for the time she had during the reboot to visit other pantries throughout New York City. They received a $25,000 grant in January, which helped provide a financial cushion for the project.
When she spoke to their program managers and told them about Greenpoint’s temporary closure, many of them were actually jealous, she said. Jealous of the time to think.
“Once you are in the middle of things, it is hard to stop and take a look at what you are doing,” Benefiel said.
Taking a break to fix what’s wrong can be a good strategy, said Paul Bloom, a social marketing expert at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship who wrote a book on scaling for social ventures.
Do you anticipate that you will face the issue of scaling one of your projects? If so, how could you address it before you reach the breaking point?
“Failure stories can be more instructive than success stories,” he said. “Stopping in your tracks is a good idea to do some strategic thinking and planning -- a very sound way to approach it.”
Changes bring order to chaos
One of the changes Benefiel introduced was a digital inventory and registration system.
To receive food, clients give their name, address and age. While visitors do not have to show need in order to get food assistance, the new system does keep track of the frequency of visits as each guest checks in.
Volunteers check in clients in the sanctuary.
Photo by Genine Babakian
And to avoid favoritism, the system separates clients from those who fill the orders. With the system’s mobile app, pantry guests are able to shop digitally, making selections on a hand-held screen.
Another important element, Benefiel said, was keeping the barriers to service and volunteering low.
“Some organizations spend an hour on intake with one client, while others take a name and that’s it,” she said. “We are on the less-invasive side, and I wanted to keep the same approach.”
But the working sabbatical was not without repercussions. The program lost volunteers, as well as donors. They had to pull out of their CSA membership for the year, losing access to that weekly source of fruits and vegetables.
There have been plenty of bumps in the road, Kansfield admits with characteristic good humor. A week after the digital system was introduced, for example, a glitch in the app sent food pantry volunteers scurrying to fill orders.
“You fix one vulnerability and you expose the next one,” Kansfield said, with a laugh. “You think you’re going to change everything with this one fix, but then … wait, there’s more!”
Clients slowly return
When the Hunger Program reopened in August, it had far fewer clients and volunteers than it had earlier in the year. By October, they were cooking weekly dinners for around 60 people, and more of the regulars were starting to come back.
Conner believes that that number will continue to rise as word gets out around the neighborhood. He was among the first volunteers to return when the program reopened.
“I was so happy, I cried,” he said, during one of the recent evening meals, where he was greeting all the guests and making sure they had enough to eat. “These are my people.”
Volunteers and clients are returning for meals. Photo courtesy of Greenpoint Reformed Church
Across the hall from where Conner was helping with the evening meal, Benefiel was in the sanctuary getting ready for the food pantry the following day. A band of volunteers was sorting sacks of onions, potatoes and carrots. Bins of rice occupied the front rows of pews, while boxes and bags of fruits and vegetables filled the back ones.
In spite of the occasional snag, Rob Dorler -- a volunteer at the food pantry since February -- said he thought everything was more orderly under the new system.
A resident of the community, Dorler has been with the Greenpoint program since before the reboot, and he thinks the decision to shut down was sound, even if the transition wasn’t worry-free.
Three months in, Kansfield thinks that everyone -- staff, volunteers and clients alike -- is thankful for the change. And new volunteers continue to pour in. But more importantly for Kansfield, her sense of joy in overseeing the Hunger Program has returned. “I love being around on Wednesdays and Thursdays now,” she said.
“I never would have thought that managing a soup kitchen requires every last ounce of skill and brains that I have,” she said. “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Questions to consider:
- Greenpoint Reformed Church was overwhelmed by the needs of its community, yet it responded by temporarily doing less. Would your organization respond in the same way? Why or why not?
- If one only measured the Greenpoint Hunger Program in terms of numbers, it was a success; if measured in terms of sustainability, it was a failure. How do you measure success and failure in your ministry? Could you adopt different measures to more accurately assess what is going on?
- The Rev. Ann Kansfield risked angering volunteers, donors and clients by temporarily closing the hunger ministry. Have you ever faced such anger? How did you respond?
- The dilemma Kansfield faced was one of scaling -- taking a small project and growing it exponentially. Do you anticipate this issue in one of your projects? If so, how could you address it before you reach the breaking point?
Read more about Greenpoint Reformed Church »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter Whatby Peter Steinke
Anxious times call for steady leadership. When tensions emerge in a congregation, its leaders cannot be as anxious as the people they serve. To remain effective, congregational leaders must control their own uneasiness. This takes self-awareness and confidence to manage relationships and influence behaviors. Knowing how to deal with anxiety and how to work through complex challenges can lead a congregation to new insights, growth, and vitality. Anxious times hold not only the potential for loss but also for creation, important learnings, and changes that will strengthen the congregation.
With this book, internationally respected consultant Peter Steinke goes deeper into the requirements of effective congregational leadership. Born from the wisdom of Steinke's distinguished career, this new volume will both enlighten and embolden leaders. Steinke inspires courage in leaders to maintain the course, unearth secrets, resist sabotage, withstand fury, and overcome timidity or doubts. His insights, illustrations, and provocations will carry leaders through rough times, provide clarity during confusing times, and uplift them in joyous times.
Learn more and order the book »
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter Whatby Peter SteinkeAnxious times call for steady leadership. When tensions emerge in a congregation, its leaders cannot be as anxious as the people they serve. To remain effective, congregational leaders must control their own uneasiness. This takes self-awareness and confidence to manage relationships and influence behaviors. Knowing how to deal with anxiety and how to work through complex challenges can lead a congregation to new insights, growth, and vitality. Anxious times hold not only the potential for loss but also for creation, important learnings, and changes that will strengthen the congregation.
With this book, internationally respected consultant Peter Steinke goes deeper into the requirements of effective congregational leadership. Born from the wisdom of Steinke's distinguished career, this new volume will both enlighten and embolden leaders. Steinke inspires courage in leaders to maintain the course, unearth secrets, resist sabotage, withstand fury, and overcome timidity or doubts. His insights, illustrations, and provocations will carry leaders through rough times, provide clarity during confusing times, and uplift them in joyous times.
Learn more and order the book »
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1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
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VISIT OUR WEBSITE
Alban at Duke Divinity School
1121 West Chapel Hill Street, Suite 101
Durham, North Carolina 27701, United States
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