Late spring / early summer is a busy season in the life of the United Church of Christ—many annual meetings are taking place within conferences and associations. I was privileged to attend one such meeting and offer a keynote and workshop for the Minnesota Conference annual gathering in June. The theme of the meeting was…
This week’s article is written by Rev. Elizabeth Dilley, the UCC’s Minister for Ministers in Local Churches. Learn more about the work of Elizabeth and her colleagues at http://www.ucc.org/ministers. One persistent concern that the Ministerial Excellence, Support and Authorization (MESA) team hears in the church is about the future of ministry. Specifically, given all the…
This week’s post is written by the Rev. Dr. Gail Cafferata, an Episcopal priest and sociologist of religion whose current research focuses on pastors who close churches. Learn more about Gail in her bio below. …Just as we are mortal, so are churches. They have life cycles…they will come to an end, and that is…
This week’s post is written by three widely-celebrated ministers and teachers: Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Zikmund, Rev. Dr. Carolyn Call, and Rev. Kathy Clark. We are grateful for their thoughtful and timely reflections. You can learn more about each of these authors at the end of this article. How do we know when learning has…
This week’s post is written by the Rev. Dr. Patrick G. Duggan, Executive Director of the United Church of Christ Church Building & Loan Fund. Since 1995, Rev. Dr. Duggan has also served as senior pastor of the Congregational Church of South Hempstead in South Hempstead, New York. Recently I read the journal from a…
I’m not a “numbers” person by nature. It takes a lot of energy for me to engage in statistical analysis, and it almost always involves taking my stats textbooks from the bookshelf and pouring over step-by-step instructions on performing certain statistical tests. In many ways, though, numbers seem easy –– they are fixed, tangible things,…
Last week, a Religion New Service blog article caught the attention of many clergy in both mainline and evangelical circles. Tobin Grant reported on the disparities in pay between male and female clergy—analyzed for the first time by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this year—which highlighted that the gender disparity in pay for clergywomen amounts…
At the end of every year, I take the time to share some of our most memorable posts from the past twelve months. This year, I’m highlighting a few of our most viewed articles. The following post is from September 28 and is a reminder and a challenge to reach out to the oldest among us. This post…
At the end of every year, I take the time to share some of our most memorable posts from the past twelve months. This year, I’m highlighting a few of our most viewed articles. The following post is from April 13 and responds to a report released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center. This,…
At the end of every year, I take the time to share some of our most memorable posts from the past twelve months. This year, I’m highlighting a few of our most viewed articles. The following post is from August 10 and tied the record for most views this year. Enjoy! Mustard Seed Church by…
Vital Signs and Statistics 