The Columbia Partnership

The Hunt for Green October

 

Download now or preview on posterous

Swint,_The_Hunt_for_Green_October,_August_30,_2010_Edition.pdf (37 KB)

Questioning the Budgeting/Stewardship Cycle

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Ruben Swint, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 404.314.7273, E-mail: RSwint@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

Listen to the Travel Free Learning Dialogue featuring Ruben Swint on this article:

TFL Dialogue, Ruben Swint on The Hunt for Green October

How will your time and energy be spent at church this fall? With the summer ending, school back in session and vacations over, church life returns to regular ministry, activities and events. Attendance goes up. Giving strengthens. Sermon series are launched. Bible study begins with a new curriculum. The normal rhythm of church life returns. With all that occurs during the fall months, will you also be hunting for a green October?

If you serve a congregation with traditional church heritage or characteristics, you will likely be involved in the hunt for a green October. You will participate in a budget planning and approval process, a push for year-end contributions to cover this year’s ministry costs, and/or a stewardship campaign to pledge next year’s budget. All three processes usually occur in the fall and you may not be looking forward to any of them.

The Resurrection of Middle Judicatories

Download Hamm, The Resurrection of Middle Judicatories, August 30, 2010 Edition

Travel Free Learning Article

By Dick Hamm, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 317-490-1968, E-mail: DHamm@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Website: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

In the first article in this series, The Death of Middle Judicatories, I laid out some challenges killing middle judicatories, beyond the reduced financial support they are receiving. The same cultural forces that are killing national/international denominations and congregations, and that have rendered the hub and spoke model ineffective, are at work in middle judicatories as well. These include the breakdown of connection between congregations and colleagues; the loss of denominational loyalty; the multiplicity of perspectives in the culture and in church life; the failure to adopt more relevant models of governance; the increase in destructive conflicts in congregations; and the list goes on.

The old hub and spoke model is not only failing, it is also killing the middle judicatory executives who try to make the middle judicatory work. Heroes seem to make the old model work for a while. Ultimately they fail, leaving an impossible act to follow for their successors. Slaves dutifully try to meet the multitudinous demands of the hub and spoke middle judicatories, but end up spent and burned out. Only change agents, dedicated to changing from the hub and spoke model to something more relevant, can truly succeed as middle judicatory executives these days, and being a change agent is no easy undertaking.

The Death of Middle Judicatories

 

Download now or preview on posterous

Hamm,_The_Death_of_MIddle_Judicatories,_8.23.10_Edition.pdf (42 KB)

A Travel Free Learning Article                                                                                                               

Listen to recording of Dick Hamm talking about this article. Click below: 

August 25th, Dick Hamm on Death of Middle Judicatories

By Dick Hamm, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 317.490.1968, E-mail: DHamm@TheColumiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

We probably should have seen it coming. I have been aware of it and ringing the alarm in my own denomination for fifteen years or so, but that is no claim to genius. It has been coming for forty years in many denominations. What is it? It is the death of middle judicatories. The same cultural forces that have been killing so many denominations and congregations are decimating middle judicatories too. [Note: These observations are also applicable to other categories of regional denominational organizations such as districts, conferences, state conventions, annual conferences, etc.]

Hopeful Imagination: Transformation Can Happen—Even Downtown

Story and photos by Tony W. Cartledge, Contributing Editor, Baptists Today

[For more information about the event highlighted in this story go to www.HopefulImagination.info.

WILMINGTON, N.C. — Transformation doesn’t happen overnight, especially for a sizable downtown church with a lengthy history and traditions to match. But transformation can happen, and when it does, amazing things follow in its wake.

First Baptist Church of Wilmington was not unlike many older downtown churches when Mike Queen became pastor 24 years ago. Its historic twin spires were firmly planted in the downtown area, but it was in some ways an island unto itself, disconnected from the surrounding community.

Reframing Christian Education in an Increasingly Secular Culture

Download now or preview on posterous

Hammett._Reframing_CE_in_an_Increasingly_Secular_Culture,_8.16.10_Edition.pdf (46 KB)

From Indoctrination to Inquiry

A Travel Free Learning Article

By Eddie Hammett, Ministry Partner with The Columbia Partnership

Voice: 828.458.8954, E-mail: EHammett@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org

As a seminary trained professional Christian educator for the last 30 years I am wondering if I could reframe religious education for this increasingly secular age what would I suggest to local churches, denominations, families, communities and individuals who are seekers or those who are seasoned believers?

What causes me to even explore such a mammoth task? That’s pretty easy for me, and maybe threatening to others. To put it simply, research and experience tells me that much of what we have been about in religious education over the past five decades has not worked very well. Millions of meetings, millions of dollars spent, millions of quarterlies and educational resources purchased, millions of prayers prayed, millions of worship encounters engaged, millions of hours of classroom dialogue, millions of DVD’s and websites viewed. Now we face countless families broken by severed relationships, not to mention that very few believers’ lives are transformed significantly, biblical illiteracy is evident on every turn and worse yet the culture we are experiencing is less and less interested in participating in what we call church.