Letting grace guide how we welcome newcomers
A pastor notices how small gestures can help visitors breathe — and feel the grace of God — from the moment they step through the door.
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Rebecca Brune: How do you create a church culture that supports people with mental health challenges?
Many people who struggle with mental wellness turn to their pastors for help, but often those clergy aren’t equipped to support them. The Congregational Collective aims to bridge that gap by helping congregations and clergy help others.
Ryan Burge and Tony Jones: Understanding people’s engagement with religion is far more nuanced than current conversations would indicate
Two of the nation’s leading experts on people who have disengaged from organized religion say that trend is both more complex and simpler than some church leaders realize.
James Fawcett: Learning to be with others as God is with us
Being With, a 10-week course based on the theology of the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, models the message it seeks to impart.
How do you care for federal workers losing their livelihoods and vocations?
Soup, a reserve fund and protests — these are some ways that a church in Atlanta is responding to families reliant on jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Link to author David Lewicki
By
David Lewicki
Co-pastor, North Decatur Presbyterian Church
A food ministry in a tiny, rural town has helped hold a United Methodist church together across denominational divides
Volunteers from a small North Carolina church feed their neighbors each week with a hot meal and companionship in an outsize effort to the community.
Link to author Yonat Shimron
By
Yonat Shimron
Journalist
A note to pastors from a visitor in your pews
Writing from her perspective as a former pastor and now frequent church visitor, an associate director for Leadership Education at Duke Divinity’s Thriving Congregations Coordination Program suggests simple, concrete ways to welcome the visiting stranger.
Link to author Sarah E. Forsyth
By
Sarah E. Forsyth
Associate Director, Thriving Congregations Coordination Program
A church offers training in faith and finance
Kingdom Fellowship AME Church helps its members thrive through financial literacy classes that help build economic stability and faithful generosity.
Link to author Leslie Quander Wooldridge
By
Leslie Quander Wooldridge
Journalist
Churches became one-stop shops at the height of COVID-19, but that is not sustainable
The pandemic pushed clergy into multiple new roles, and they responded. Now some of that work should be redirected to people better trained to do it, writes a director of grants for Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Link to author Victoria Atkinson White
By
Victoria Atkinson White
Vice President for Grants and Programs, Church Benefits Association
Dignity and respect are the key to a multimillion-dollar ministry supported by a successful thrift shop
Dorcas Ministries attracts hundreds of volunteers who work at its secondhand store — and believe in its larger mission as one of the region’s premier social welfare agencies.
Link to author Yonat Shimron
By
Yonat Shimron
Journalist
Celeste Kennel-Shank: ‘It was the safest place I knew as a child.’
A pastor and journalist tells the story of the Community of Christ in Washington, D.C., in which she grew up. It was a five-decade-long experiment in living and worshipping in a neighborhood parish that intentionally ended in 2016.
