Congregational innovation

How do I know whether my church is ready to innovate?

Creative churches don’t panic when things go wrong. They pivot. But how do you know whether your church is prepared for it? writes an innovation consultant.

By Carmelle Beaugelin Innovation consultant and visual artist

Image link to article: How do I know whether my church is ready to innovate?

A faith-based design lab teaches churches how to help their communities flourish

With the help of The Impact Guild design lab, a church in San Antonio is able to dream big and start small as it leverages little-used assets for the neighborhood.

By Emily Starbuck Gerson Journalist

Image link to article: A faith-based design lab teaches churches how to help their communities flourish

Incubator for discipleship

Rather than investing in a single, institutionally driven project, an Austin church is inviting parishioners to come up with innovative ways to serve their city — and providing initial funding.

By Edie Gross Journalist

Image link to article: Incubator for discipleship

How our pandemic experience might help the church engage “nones” and “dones”

Let’s leverage a year of forced innovation to be church in a way that attracts people who really are done with religion, writes a minister at a Greenwich Village church.

By Alexis Lillie Minister, The Church of the Village

Image link to article: How our pandemic experience might help the church engage “nones” and “dones”

Let's re-envision "normal"

Along with the hard lessons of the pandemic, churches have learned things that can make them healthier for clergy and congregants, a pastor writes.

By Alex Shea Will Associate Pastor, South Church

Image link to article: Let's re-envision "normal"

Eat. Pray. Skate: A skateboarding ministry offers unconditional love to teens

Serious JuJu is a ministry that meets young people where they are -- in a skate park.

By Katie Cantrell Journalist

Image link to article: Eat. Pray. Skate: A skateboarding ministry offers unconditional love to teens

The Practicing Church in Shoreline, Washington, seeks to live out its faith in the neighborhood

Borrowing from the Roman Catholic tradition of the parish, the pastor of a Vineyard house church focuses on serving the geographical area in which the church is located.

By Yonat Shimron Journalist

Image link to article: The Practicing Church in Shoreline, Washington, seeks to live out its faith in the neighborhood

A merged congregation bonds over a project to honor the freed and enslaved Africans buried in its cemetery

A historic, predominantly Black congregation in New Jersey seeks to learn the names and stories of more than 300 unidentified souls buried in unmarked graves.

By Genine Babakian Journalist

Image link to article: A merged congregation bonds over a project to honor the freed and enslaved Africans buried in its cemetery

It's time to talk about Advent in a pandemic

If congregations begin to consider what Advent and Christmas might look like online, they will have time to imagine and plan together, writes a managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.

By Nathan Kirkpatrick Principal, Saison Consulting, LLC

Image link to article: It's time to talk about Advent in a pandemic

The pastoral challenge of a Brooklyn church and COVID-19

From one of the pandemic’s epicenters, a minister describes his congregation’s experience through death and new life over the last four months.

By Gary V. Simpson Leading Pastor, Concord Baptist Church of Christ

Image link to article: The pastoral challenge of a Brooklyn church and COVID-19

How to think about what's next when the future is unclear

COVID-19 presents us with overwhelming daily challenges, but we must also begin to consider what's ahead, writes a managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.