Being Spiritually Grounded—one of the recommended leadership development competencies—includes: A clear, positive understanding and personal practice of one’s own faith in our liberal religious tradition. Being able to “translate” and not be reactive to the language, beliefs or practices...

Congregational leaders today are facing challenges that have no easy answers or quick fixes. Developing practices that enable the congregation to use its collective wisdom to experiment with different ideas and approaches....

Because our congregations run on money, it's tempting to bring--along with it--assumptions about how money operates in other parts of our lives.  We go to work and we get a paycheck.  We pay the electric bill and the power company keeps our lights on. We pay at the first window...

Let me share a fable of two congregations. ...

It usually starts with one person with the beginning of an audacious idea.  It has enough form so that others can visualize the possibilities.  It also has enough open possibilities that others can see where they can bring their creativity and energy to help co-create it.  And woven...

What does it mean to be a member in a congregation? How much can we ask of members?  I believe that membership should signify a commitment to the congregation and it's mission as expressed by the Rev. Michael Piazza. ...

Once upon a time there was a congregation that wanted a mission statement. They appointed a committee that worked hard. They held cottage meetings, World Café conversations, and got a real sense of the identity of the congregation, who they were as a "whole"—or their "center." It became time to...

I often use General Motors as an example of the top-down model of organization and leadership that is the opposite of what our congregations need to be nimble and vital (and I might add, attractive to Gen-Xers and Millennials). A story from Bloomberg "GM Recalls Stalled in 10 Years of Committee...

Young Adult ministry has been a challenge for congregations of all liberal protestant denominations for decades but the game is changing in ways we couldn't have imagined back in the post WWII church building boom. There has been a lively conversation on the UU-Leaders email list about how to...

Has something like this ever happened to you when you're travelling during the summer and decide to check out the local UU congregation? You check their website, find out the service time and see that the topic is "The Secret Life of Bees," the title of one of your favorite novels.  But...

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All the world's a game....and we are just players... This paraphrase of the line from Shakespeare's As You Like It comes to mind as I am reading Jane McGonigal's book...

I spent several days hiking in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia for my vacation. (It was a good opportunity to get away from the technology that is my constant companion during the rest of the year, since there are few cell phone towers in those mountains.) Many of the trails we...

One of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs (YouTube) begins: Every picture has its shadows And it has some source of light Blindness, blindness and sight… When I talk about leadership qualities, I find that many of the qualities can be either strengths or weaknesses—or somewhere on a continuum...

How many of our congregations offer programming that isn't working, or has only a very small group of the "usual suspects" participating?

The world around us is changing at an exponential rate, so it is often difficult to respond to the new reality. What is true for individuals is even more true for institutions, including our “living tradition” Unitarian Universalist congregations. I’m not saying this to scold or to shame, but...

What is the future of Unitarian Universalist congregations? Are we slowly declining, as hinted at in the article UUA membership and attendance declined in 2011 in the UU World? Or are we at the cusp of societal changes where we can be A Religion for Our Time? I believe that Unitarian Universalism...