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In a previous issue of Leading Ideas, Robert K. Martin connects pastoral leadership with gardening. One look at a neighbor’s garden reminds him that the bulbs he took care to put away the previous summer would not be their glorious selves that spring because they were still in the basement. Many other things were done but there would be no blooms for Easter. What is not planted will not grow – nature is clear on this. And we should take it as a lesson for the church and all its leadership. Congregations and their leaders are to the next generation of pastors what gardens and gardeners are to tulips. They are living systems in which labor in one season brings new life in another. For more than 50 years, the Fund for Theological Education has worked to assure that the next generation of leadership for the church and the academy is “planted” by identifying and encouraging young people to explore the vocation of ministry, and by providing fellowships to support their seminary and doctoral studies. More recently, the Fund’s Calling Congregations initiative has turned its attention to the “garden,” that is, to the congregations that grow leaders.
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Book Review The Multi-Site Church Revolution The multi-site church approach is not a new one, but one that is rapidly growing in appeal, according to the authors of The Multi-Site Church Revolution. The revolution is not in the church’s desire to reach people for Christ, but in the variety of methods congregations employ to reach beyond their walls. For multi-site churches, geography is no longer the defining factor in which church only happens on Sunday morning in the church sanctuary in the church building. What is revolutionary about the multi-site church is its ability to grow beyond the limitations of one service in one building, connecting multiple congregations that share a common vision, budget, leadership, and board. |
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| The Right Question | |||||||||||
When a church decides to add a staff person for a particular ministry area, they often will focus the position description and announcement around tasks they want this person to do. A more helpful approach might be to begin with the purpose of adding the position and go from there, using these questions as a way of describing the position: What do we expect to be different in our church
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Editors: Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel Copyright © 2007 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright). |
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