Tag Archives: missional leadership

Why your church should pay for your minister’s education

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Mark Love

In recruiting students for our master’s program, the number one reason students give for not pursuing graduate ministry training is that they don’t want to rack up more debt. What they’re telling me is that they are still paying on … Continue reading →

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Loving as Knowing and thoughts about ministry preparation

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Mark Love

What if theology were about God, not just the history of ideas about God? And what if ministry training was about pursuing God and not just knowing things about God or acquiring skills related to the public tasks of ministry? … Continue reading →

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Three Smooth Stones: Am I Making Ministry too Complex?

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Mark Love

So, I’ve had an imaginary dialogue partner as I’ve written the last three posts on action-reflection-articulation, managing polarities, and myth and parable. And this imaginary partner says, “Hey, smarty pants. You don’t have to know any of these things to … Continue reading →

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Three Smooth Stones: Myth and Parable

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Mark Love

Anderson and Foley’s outstanding book, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, brought clarity to my work as a minister in ways few other books have. In it, they argue that narrative and ritual are primal ways that humans make meaning. In other … Continue reading →

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Three Smooth Stones: Managing Polarities

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Mark Love

Nearly a decade ago, I started collaborating with Pat Keifert, a theology prof at Luther Seminary and president of Church Innovations, and a leading voice in the missional church conversation. Part of that collaboration includes consulting work in a process … Continue reading →

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Three Smooth Stones: Action-Reflection-Articulation

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Mark Love

I worked for six years with Bill Hunt, who was our youth minister at the East County Church of Christ. Bill had studied with David Wray at ACU, one of the best churchmen I know, and had learned from him … Continue reading →

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Three Smooth Stones for Ministry

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Mark Love

Ministry is not a science, at least not the way I think about it. As my friends, Ryan and Jess Woods, put it. Ministry is about the two most unpredictable forces in the world–the Spirit of God and human beings. … Continue reading →

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Leaving Room for the Spirit: Practices of Spaciousness

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Mark Love

In my last post, I suggested that it takes spaciousness or roominess for a community of faith to discern the moving of the Spirit and gave a few examples of how that space might be collapsed. A few of you … Continue reading →

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Rubel Shelly and the Drama of Discernment

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Mark Love

At our conference, Streaming, a few weeks ago we focused on issues related to discernment. And some of our speakers focused on the large discernment narratives in Scripture, other on key theological notions. For instance, Luke Johnson dealt with the … Continue reading →

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Video: Ryan Woods Talks About His Graduate Education

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Mark Love

Ryan Woods graduated with a Masters in Missional Leadership degree, the program I direct, a little over a year before he died. Not long after his diagnosis of cancer, I taped an interview with Ryan and he talked at length … Continue reading →

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