• Hope is not about empty wishing. Hope is the ability to see a different future and to act in ways that make that future a reality. Alban offers all kinds of assistance and reflections on congregational life that will help you move through challenging, even difficult, times with a sense of meaning and hope.

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  • ArticleAre You Nurturing Life?Nurturing the Tree of Life

    Young adults today long for spiritual communities where they are formed through preaching, testimony, and prayer, and where they are fed. The mainline denominational church, Carol Howard Merritt says, has everything it needs to minister to younger generations.

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  • BookImagining ChurchWho Locked the Gates?

    Hope is powered by the imagination and in turn powers the transformation that reshapes a congregation. Imagining Church explores how God is at work in the imagination, and how we can participate with God in creating a more hopeful future for our congregations.

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  • ArticleGetting Un-StuckGetting ‘Un-Stuck’

    Larry Peers works with many congregations who feel “stuck” in one way of being and doing. Out of that experience, he has developed a number of questions and exercises that help a congregation move through the “stuckness” into a new, more faithful way, of being and doing.

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  • BookIt Is Not Too LateIt’s Not Too Late

    Small steps are the core actions from which hopeful change is created. What's small becomes big; what's ordinary becomes extraordinary; what's invisible becomes hard to ignore. Your smallest hopeful actions are part of a large movement that is ultimately powerful.

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  • Article10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reduce Anxiety10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Reduce Anxiety

    Feeling anxious (about membership, vitality, finances, whatever)? Anxiety is real, but it does not have to be debilitating. You can diminish its impact on you and your congregation with some straightforward steps recommended by Susan Beaumont. Go ahead. Try one!

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  • ArticleThe Turnaround ChurchTurning Toward Life

    Not all churches can or should turn around. But some feel led to try – out of a will to live and a strong sense of God’s call. Read about how one congregation’s experience has inspired it to refer to itself as "a new church start in an old church building."

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  • ArticleDo You Know the Benefits of Asset-Based Planning?The Benefits of Asset-Based Planning

    For at least a decade, loving and critical church leaders have pointed out that the “presumption of neediness” that has guided several generations of pastors and thousands of mission statements is essentially flawed. Bob Sitze tells us about a better way.

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