Tom Shapiro on How Congregations Learn

This week’s ‘Alban Weekly’ is by Tom Shapiro on ‘How Your Congregation Learns’.

He starts by noting the significance of ongoing learning, of knowing how one’s congregation learns, before outlining a learning framework of seven overarching behaviours observed by the The Indianapolis Center for Congregations, which ‘apply to almost any congregational challenge’:

(1) Congregations that learn well find and use outside resources.

(2) Congregations that learn well live within a worldview of theological coherence.

(3) Congregations that learn well ask open-ended questions and practice active listening.

(4) Congregations learn well when clergy and laity learn together.

(5) Congregations learn well by attending to rites of passages.

(6) Congregations learn well when they slow things down.

(7) Congregations learn well when they say ‘no’ and say ‘yes’.