Dan Hotchkiss, author and congregational consultant
Posted in Congregations on Feb 7th, 2012
Chris Yaw, an Episcopal priest whose prior career was in broadcasting, has launched ChurchNext , an invaluable site that brings the latest practical wisdom from church writers, thinkers, and consultants. Chris is persuasive: I know it because he has twice talked me into spending an hour with him on-camera, first for an interview you can [...]
Posted in Congregations, Finance on Jul 8th, 2011
Most eligible churches, synagogues, and related organizations have already missed out on an new tax credit in the 2010 tax year, but should prepare to take advantage of it for the current year. The new credit, which will refund up to 25% of the cost of health insurance premiums paid by the congregation, is part [...]
Posted in Congregations on Jul 7th, 2011
“Is it wise to hire a member?” When hiring staff, congregation leaders often ask this question. Hiring members has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that members are apt to be familiar with the congregation, committed to its mission, and used to working hard without pay. The drawbacks are that a former lay leader [...]
Posted in Congregations on May 30th, 2011
No sooner had the Puritans set foot on the shores of New England than they began to grapple with some of the same church-state questions we still deal with in our churches. Most of the early Puritans, for instance, believed that ministry should be supported by voluntary gifts, and shun dependence on the state. This [...]
Posted in Congregations on Jan 31st, 2011
In olden times, we like to think, society accorded great authority to clergy. Whether or not this rosy generalization stands up to scrutiny (it does not), we mainstream clergy certainly have lost some of the cachet our counterparts enjoyed from 1945 to 1965 or so. Many people then believed attending and supporting congregations to be [...]
Posted in Congregations on Nov 10th, 2010
Many people flinch at the mention of evaluation, and with reason. In congregations, staff evaluation often is conducted as a popularity poll with anonymous respondents rating staff performance on the basis of subjective impressions. In effect, the staff members answer to hundreds of semi-invisible bosses who can invent new things to blame them for at [...]
Posted in Board governance, Congregations, Staff on Jul 21st, 2010
When board- and committee-centered congregations engage paid staff, they sometimes struggle to find language to describe how staff members should relate to one another and to the rest of the organization. Especially if the staff person leads a program area like education, music, or youth work, which is “owned” by a committee, it seems natural [...]
Posted in Congregations on Jul 7th, 2010
Congregations almost always say they want to grow, but I’ve come to doubt that many really do. The more accurately people picture how a congregation changes when it grows from family-sized to pastoral, program, corporate and beyond, the more clearly they see that growth means losing the worshiping community they know and love and trading [...]
Posted in Board governance, Congregations on Apr 1st, 2010
“How is your model different from the Carver model?” Since Governance and Ministry came out, I hear this question now and then, especially from people in the United Church of Canada, the Mennonite Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association, where John Carver’s Policy Governance is widely known. I have benefited from John Carver’s writings and agree [...]
Posted in Board governance, Congregations on Mar 10th, 2010
One of the interesting things about Governance and Ministry is the interest it has generated across the religious spectrum–I’ve heard from Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Orthodox Jews as well as Unitarians, Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ. Most recently, I enjoyed reading a recent post by Art Scherer of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. [...]
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