If your congregation is looking for high-quality, low-cost (most are free!) liturgical art, you’ll want to check out suntreeriver design at http://suntreeriverdesign.blogspot.com/. The 2012 Lenten has just been posted. Every piece that you see online is available for your congregation to use free of charge so long as you credit ©suntreeriver design.Images are searchable by season from the hyperlinked tags on the site.If you’d like high resolution, printable pdfs (though the jpgs on the...
Nine congregational teams gathered in New Albany's Culbertson Baptist Church to begin planning for Sustainable Youth Ministry, a four-part learning opportunity hosted in southeast Indiana. Getting "unstuck" and "affirming your team" were among the discussion items. Congregational youth leaders networked, role played, scheduled coaching sessions with Youth Ministries Architects, and began laying foundations for a sustainable ministry plan.
"Parents are the most important factor in the healthy development and faith formation of their children and adolescents!” - “Parents and Faith Formation.” Lifelong Faith, Fall 2011, Vol. 5.3, p. 2.
So, what is your congregation doing to help parents learn how to nurture faith in their children?...
Southwest Center Director Wendy McCormick talks about the congregational assessment process and the importance of communication among members, clergy and staff. McCormick's article Let's Survey the Congregation is featured in the latest issue of Congregations magazine. Click here to see the full article. For additional information on congregational assessment tools, click here to download the Center's Using Survey Assessment Tools.
The two small words under the homepage title are “seek” and “understand.” The site is simply called Patheos.com. What makes the site unique is its comprehensiveness. It strives to be in touch with most of the major religious traditions through a series of blogs, studies, book reviews, religious portals, news items, faith-tradition experts and features. There is also a book club and a newsletter. This website touts the idea of “balanced views of religion and spirituality.” There is...
Anyone who's ever attended a Center for Congregations technology event knows we preach security as one of the most important (if not the most important) facets of technology management. Passwords are often the point of least security as illustrated in this article from PC Magazine of the 25 worst passwords. They point out that many of these have been on their list for years. If you recognize any of them it's time to make a change!
Congregations are sometimes guilty of viewing their physical facility chiefly as a budget-eating monster, and often look to facilities maintenance as a prime area for cutting costs. One casualty of this approach may be regular preventive maintenance. Tim Cool of Cool Solutions Group in Charlotte defines preventive maintenance as, “a series of actions that are performed on either a time-based schedule or a schedule based on ‘run-time’ or use. These actions are designed to detect,...
If you’re interested in what’s going on religiously in American, check out http://religioninsights.org/ At the “Insights into Religion” website you’ll find insights into religious practices, surveys, congregational resources and more. For example, you can read the results of the new Faith Communities Today (FACT) report or listen to an interview with Krista Tippett, the host of the insightful public radio program Krista Tippett on Being. The organizations and projects...
As part of the new health care legislation, a tax credit is available to small businesses that pay health care insurance premiums for their employees. If your congregation pays for these benefits for your staff, you may well qualify. Stipulations include: the organization must have fewer than 25 employees, the organization must pay at least 50% of the health insurance premium for its staff members, and the average annual wages paid to all staff can’t exceed $50,000. The...
Faith Communities Today is an ongoing series of research surveys that explore congregational life in America. Surveys conducted in 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2010 enable information about U.S. congregations to be tracked over time. Recently a report of the 2010 survey findings were released. These findings are organized in the following categories:Innovative worshipReligion Goes ElectronicRacial/Ethnic CongregationsMember-oriented and Mission-oriented...
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