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Faith & Leadership offers original content about Christian institutions and leaders, as well as other disciplines. You can sort content by these categories and filter by these categories when browsing the site.

Essays

Thoughtful personal reflections from a variety of perspectives about issues relevant to Christian leaders

Why do you do what you do?

By David L. Odom Executive director, Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

Answering this question in an articulate way creates a hunger to know the answers to other strategic questions.

What are you reading this summer?

By Nathan Kirkpatrick Principal, Saison Consulting, LLC

Share the books you recommend that might help your colleagues and congregations live in healthy and holy ways.

Hope Morgan Ward: Lead with questions

A bishop in the United Methodist Church describes the importance of learning to embrace questions as part of faithful leadership.

By Hope Morgan Ward UMC bishop

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Ed Moore: Godzilla to Caiaphas

The new version of “Godzilla” reminds a pastor that stories are always in danger of being sanitized, whether a monster movie warning of atomic danger or the sacred story of Jesus.

By Ed Moore Retired United Methodist elder

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Resources for Pentecost

Reflect on Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit with essays and sermons from Faith & Leadership by C. Kavin Rowe, Jo Bailey Wells, Michael Jinkins and others.

Busy isn’t always better

By Alaina Kleinbeck Associate Executive Director, Coordination Programs

The schedule of a conference or meeting is the curriculum. Unstructured time allows introverts to escape, active sorts to move, and external processors to get a cup of coffee together and make sense of the sessions.

Learning to walk in the dark

By Gretchen E. Ziegenhals Spiritual director and retreat leader

Barbara Brown Taylor’s book on darkness invites us to lean into the spaces without light, to sit and be quiet, to experience the presence of God.

Making choices

By David L. Odom Executive director, Leadership Education at Duke Divinity

Strategy isn’t about coming up with cool ideas. It’s about making disciplined choices in response to key questions.

Ignore the changing world at your own peril

By Nathan Kirkpatrick Principal, Saison Consulting, LLC

Are you paying enough attention to the trends affecting your institution and the world in which you work? Would you and your colleagues even agree on the ways in which the world is changing?

Hunched over our desks, we become sedentary and isolated

What practices might help us to look away from immediate tasks to stretch into something new and creative?

By Alaina Kleinbeck Associate Executive Director, Coordination Programs

Image link to article: Hunched over our desks, we become sedentary and isolated