COMMUTER SPECIAL: $175 INCLUDES ALL MEALS!
The seminar runs from
9 a.m. - 4 p.m. on the first day and 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. on the second day.
Size transitions are critical moments in the life of a congregation.
One size transition in particular poses special difficulties. When average Sunday attendance (including children and teachers) regularly exceeds about 150, anxiety usually rises. The single “cell” of ministry and fellowship, organized around the pastor, has reached its capacity.
Sustained growth is unlikely to occur unless the congregation learns how to organize its life and ministry in a different way--including a shift to “multi-cell” functioning, formation of an effective team of program leaders, and development of new practices for building relationship and providing pastoral care. This is an uncomfortable zone, usually marked by profound ambivalence. The congregation is too big for its previous patterns of ministry and interaction, but does not yet have “critical mass” to enjoy the real benefits of the next size up. This seminar will highlight the dynamics of the pastoral-to=program shift and help leaders to navigate wisely within this transition zone.
Join Alban senior-consultant Alice Mann, author of Raising the Roof: The Pastoral-to-Program Size Transition, to learn how to leaders in mid-size congregations can identify transition dynamics, address obstacles to growth, and lead a process of discernment about the congregation’s calling in relation to size and numerical growth.
You will leave with:
- An understanding of key factors that affect a congregation’s progress through pastoral-to-program transition zone
- Self-assessment of your particular congregation’s barriers to numerical growth, using the System Change Index
- Guidance on addressing several key barriers—sense of vocation to reach others; adding a worship service; staffing for growth; overcoming space limitations
- Tools for exploring your congregation’s history, community context, tacit sense of purpose, and attitudes about size.
- Awareness of three basic choices a leader has about where to focus attention—working directly on identified barriers; facilitating a process of learning and discernment; or revisiting issues of personal call.
- An action plan based on one of the three basic leader choices.
Seminar preparation will include reading assignments and data-gathering.
About Alice Mann
Alban senior-consultant
Alice Mann
, author of
Raising the Roof: The Pastoral-to-Program Size Transition
, served for two decades in the dual roles of local pastor and nationally recognized consultant-trainer in the field of congregational development before joining the staff of the Alban Institute in1995. She helps congregations work with challenges such as finding new vitality and strategic direction, incorporating new members, breaking through size plateaus, and discovering options in periods of decline, She also helps denominational bodies to defile their roles in growth and revitalization. Her newest work focuses on how people of faith—individually and as congregations—contribute to a meaingful “sense of place” in the communities where they live and work.
Read the Alban Stories:
Raising the Roof
and
Raising the Roof, a Case Study