Category: Healing / Grief Work

Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Death and Dying, Healing / Grief Work, Hospitality, Leadership Development, Mission and Vision, Pastoral Care, Stewardship Tagged with

8 min 18 s

Rev. Dr. Jill H. Small

  • I was encountering a lot of aging congregations in aging buildings…
  • The science of Place Identity
  • Helping a congregation have a conversation about their “stuff”
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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Healing / Grief Work, Leadership Development, Managing Expectations, Mission and Vision, Self-Care Tagged with

8 min 23 s

Rev. Dr. Jill H. Small

  • The work of an Interim Minister: helping the congregation to understand what you do
  • Managing the relentless demands…
  • “I’m not Moses, but…” (Setting up the next settled pastor for success)
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Posted in Buildings and Property, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, External Relations, Healing / Grief Work, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Mission and Vision Tagged with

15 min 33 s

Rev. Dr. Todd Grant Yonkman

  • An inspiring story of a church that sold its building and joined the community;
  • Shift from, “The church is falling apart,” to, “The church is falling open;”
  • Wisdom about the twists and turns of a building sale;
  • The shift from a downsizing to a restart;
  • Selling a building is highly context dependent;
  • Renovating the building without reconnecting with the community is futile;
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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, External Relations, Faith Formation, Healing / Grief Work, Managing Expectations, Self-Care Tagged with

10 min 59 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • Is the church over?
  • Is this great experiment that was started by Jesus – this experiment that the Holy Spirit exploded on Pentecost – is it really over?
  • Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question….
  • If our role isn’t to preserve the Church, what is it?
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Posted in Change Management, Church Growth & Vitality, Conflict Management, Healing / Grief Work, Leadership Development, Pastoral Care, Self-Care Tagged with

10 min 50 s

Rev. Pegi Ridout

  • The difficulty with conflict isn’t that we have it, it’s that we don’t know how to do it well.
  • How do we treat conflict as gift? How do we get there?
  • Respectful communication guidelines developed by Eric Law at the Kaleidoscope Institute
  • trust, respect, listen, then speak.
  • Conflict skills/muscles are built through practice;
  • Pegi’s 3 types of practice for building our conflict muscles;
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Posted in Boundaries, Church Growth & Vitality, Conflict Management, Healing / Grief Work, Leadership Development, Pastoral Care, Self-Care Tagged with

11 min 59 s

Rev. Pegi Ridout

  • Why understanding and managing bullying behavior effectively is so critical to the health of a congregation;
  • Pegi’s 3 types of church bullies (Canaries, Porcupines, Skunks)
  • Strategies for dealing with each type of bully;
  • Some bullies have an important message for the congregation;
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Posted in Church Growth & Vitality, Conflict Management, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Governance, Healing / Grief Work Tagged with

24 min 13 s

Rev. Doug Bixby

The trust vs. mistrust stage of pastoral ministry

A new pastor arrives in the middle of the “movie” of a congregation’s life

Avoid triangulation, not conflict;

Interim time can allow the congregation to catch its breath;

During the interim time does the congregation primarily need healing or helping?

Giving authority without responsibility invites the church monster to rear its head;

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Posted in Assessments and Evaluations, Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, External Relations, Faith Formation, Healing / Grief Work, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Mission and Vision, Stewardship Tagged with

16 min 07 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • Does your church have more property than it needs? Is much of your building unused most of the time? If so, you have lots of company! Many churches have significant real estate that’s fallow – unused – and yet they continue to pay for its upkeep. Of course, no one likes this situation or planned for this reality, yet churches often have difficulty moving forward. Put differently, churches often struggle to incorporate their property into a realistic understanding of their current mission and purpose as a faith community. Rev. Dr. Shelly Stackhouse, a long-experienced interim minister and now the Senior Director of Programs for the non-profit, “Partners for Sacred Places,” offers some key questions and a process to help such churches move forward in this episode titled, “Your Church Property Has a Mission Too.”

Does Your Church Have a Mission Statement for Its Property?

Interim ministers have the opportunity (obligation?) to help a congregation begin to assess their situation with their property;

  • How is our property being used?
  • How often?
  • Who’s using it?
  • What spaces could be used more fully?
  • What property should we offload? How and to whom?

Developing a mission statement for your property;

Understanding property as part of your mission – start by going room to room…

There are people in the wider community who are stakeholders in your property;

Honoring the grief in letting go of unused property;

It’s in the telling of stories that people come to feel the past has been honored, and then are open to a different future;

Listen or Read Now!