HOW TO GET THE MAXIMUM BANG OUT OF A LEADER RETREAT

It's January and the season for leader retreats. New board members, new lead team members, and established teams needing to vision for another year! We have all suffered through some lame and tedious retreats. And most of us have been involved in some really productive ones.

CATCHING ON TO ADVENT

Advent has long been a somewhat puzzling season to me. We start out focusing on Second Coming (of all things), and then switch to Mary and Joseph narratives, and finally bring out the Wiseman the week after the Christmas tree comes down. Most mainline Christians are not oriented to keep an eye open for a literal Second Coming of Christ.   But we are oriented to a shopping season that introduces Nativity images and Christmas Carols around Thanksgiving... and so it all just gets kind of fuzzy-weird.