The Ministry Collaborative

05/27/2026

New podcast episode! 🎙️

“The Yearning Beyond Their Walls: A Round Table Conversation on Recent Church Attendance Data”

https://mministry.org/podcast/the-yearning-beyond-their-walls-a-round-table-conversation-on-recent-church-attendance-data/

TMC Program Staff Ryan Bonfiglio, Adam Mixon, Mark Ramsey, and Adam Borneman discuss the April data from the ⁠Hartford Center for Religion Research⁠ (https://hirr.hartfordinternational.edu) on church attendance trends, as well as what it might – and most certainly doesn’t – tell us about ministry today.

⁠Read the April, 2026, Report⁠ (https://www.covidreligionresearch.org/research/national-survey-research/signs-of-rebound-amid-uneven-recovery-the-changing-congregational-landscape/)

Episode Transcript (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/05-27-26.pdf).

Listen now! 🎧

05/26/2026

“Inefficiency, Inconvenience, and Interruption: Gospel Witness in the ‘Age of the Actual’” - Adam
Borneman

https://mministry.org/inefficiency-inconvenience-and-interruption-gospel-witness-in-the-age-of-the-actual/

“Our systems are trained to ask, ‘Is this worth the time and investment?’ Jesus keeps asking, ‘Is this one worth my Father’s love?’ The real calculus is not ‘What will this do for the bottom line?’
but ‘Who is missing from the table, and what are we willing to set aside so that we can all feast together?’

We are therefore faced with challenging questions that cannot remain hypothetical but must be made concrete: which meetings, which line items, which long-standing programs are we willing to sacrifice to be interruptible, inconvenienced, and faithfully inefficient? Which forms of polish and control can we relinquish in order to pursue a deeper gospel witness that might be interpreted by some as a ‘waste’ of time, energy, and resources?

Witness in an age of the actual will sound simple and costly: you can call, you can come by, we will be here, we will call you by name. This has to be true not only of congregations but of the individuals who participate in congregational life, deciding each day whether their lives will be interruptible, available, and a little less optimized than the culture demands. If a congregation cannot wrestle honestly with these costs in its own neighborhood, the message probably won’t matter. In our ‘communicational crisis,’ the world is understandably less interested in messages, statements, and performative slogans. What it is still wondering is whether anyone is willing to live without the protective distance that keeps us from one another.

Taken together, inefficiency, inconvenience, and interruption point toward an alternative imagination of witness, suggesting that a congregation’s calling in the community is not first to market itself effectively or implement impressive initiatives, but to become a people with whom neighbors can share in our inescapably fraught, gritty, complex human reality. This will mean listening before speaking, joining what is already happening before starting something new, and valuing forms of faithfulness that are difficult to quantify. It will mean refusing to treat neighbors as audiences, constituents, clients, recipients, or even potential congregation members, learning instead to receive them as fellow laborers in a shared place and time for the common good.”

Read today’s blog post in its entirety by clicking the link above ⬆️

05/21/2026

New podcast episode!

“An Actual Encounter with the Resurrected Savior: A Round Table Conversation on Witness”

https://mministry.org/podcast/an-actual-encounter-with-the-resurrected-savior-a-round-table-conversation-on-witness/

TMC Program Staff Mark Ramsey, Adam Mixon, Ryan Bonfiglio, and Adam Borneman discuss the importance of bearing witness to both injustice and joy, why resurrection calls us to solidarity with those who suffer, and how prophetic preaching ought to be marked by energizing hope.

Episode Transcript (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/05-20-26.pdf).

05/19/2026

“Out of Place, Into Purpose: Creative Dislocation and the Deepening of Our Connections, Calling, and Capacity for Ministry” - Amy Valdez Barker

https://mministry.org/out-of-place-into-purpose-creative-dislocation-and-the-deepening-of-our-connections-calling-and-capacity-for-ministry/

Recently, I had the opportunity to join one of our TMC cohorts on a visit to Greece where we explored the Holy Spirit’s work through Paul and his colleagues in Macedonia with the Jews in diaspora.

As I looked back at the hundreds of photographs I captured, it reminded me of the hours of laughter, the touching moments of reflection, and the transformational encounters we had as we took this trip during the Eastern Orthodox Holy Week. We were blessed to have this experience between the traditional Catholic/Protestant Easter Sunday and the Greek Eastern Orthodox Easter Sunday. Our hosts shared with us how Easter is experienced in Greece and how almost everyone in the community rallies together to acknowledge and celebrate the resurrection. Our group was basking in the grace of experiencing Easter as a participant, not as a leader worried about the details of the rituals we were leading.

On Good Friday, there is a tradition of the Epitaphios ritual where hundreds and thousands of people across the country pour out into the streets to watch the parade of the symbols of Christ’s burial. Our group joined them, curious about this ritual that atheists, agnostics, and marginally religious people joined in to get a glimpse of the bier that was adorned with flowers and candles and herbs representing the sacrifice of Christ for all. It subtly disrupted many of the assumptions we tend to carry about the relationship of congregations, seekers, and the broader community.

In the ancient archaeological site of Philippi, we walked where Paul walked daily, through the Agora and to the Basilica to pray. Here, Paul encountered the female slave whose owners had him and Silas seized and sent to prison because they healed her (Acts 16:16-24). Our cohort gathered around the prison cell where Paul and Silas had been kept in captivity. One of our cohort members read the passage and then reflected upon those in the U.S. who had been held in captivity and especially those who had died while in those places. As he read each name, tears rolled down the faces of some of our friends, thinking about the lives lost and the lives saved and the work that we are all called to do in the midst of pain and suffering. We wrestled with the meaning of the resurrection during this high and Holy Week for those who were still suffering. We sat with the pain Jesus carried as those closest to him fell away, one by one, under the weight of what was coming – and yet he pressed on, bearing the cross out of a love that refused to let any of us go. As we sat in these heavy moments, our cohort leaned into one another in awe and wonder as we unpacked not only what Paul, Timothy, and Silas faced, but also how it might inspire and help grow our capacity for ministry today.

To experience an Easter culture full of vastly different traditions than our own awakened in our group a new sense of awe as we thought about how the people in our congregations may see the rituals and traditions differently than the way we do as those leading the services.

For some of us, this past Easter (in the U.S.) had felt like just going through the motions. But, after this encounter with the Orthodox Easter one week later, we were reveling in the energy that permeated the air of a new kind of hope in the resurrection. It was a different lens that helped us reimagine how we might approach Easter 2027 from the perspective of one who does not know or understand the rituals and traditions that we engage with a sense of repetitive familiarity.

The gift Greece offered us was far more than a change of scenery. It was an unexpected encounter with the living God, one that drew us closer to each other, reignited the call that first set us apart for ministry, and stretched our capacity for faithful work in ways that will ripple through our congregations and communities long after we returned home.

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1. What ministry “motions” are you going through that have lost meaning and value for you as a leader?

2. When was the last time you experienced a new ritual or tradition from another faith community or another culture?

3. What mysteries of God’s love and grace invite you into awe and wonder with the people you walk with in your community?

4. Who are the leaders of faith that you can lean on and process with as you discover something new about your rituals and traditions?

05/13/2026

New podcast episode! 🎙️

“This Prophetic Task: A Round Table Conversation on Grief and Hope”

https://mministry.org/podcast/this-prophetic-task-a-round-table-conversation-on-grief-and-hope/

Mark Ramsey and Beth Daniel (with a cameo from our producer, Marthame Sanders) discuss Walter Brueggemann’s three-fold assessment of the prophetic tasks of the church: to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.

Episode Transcript (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/05-13-26.pdf).

Listen now! 🎧

05/12/2026

“Barriers” - Mark Ramsey

https://mministry.org/barriers/

According to a recent story, Pope Leo XIV ran into a wall of sorts when he tried to change his contact information with his bank in Chicago.

About two months after the Chicago-born cardinal became Pope Leo XIV and moved to Vatican City, he put in a call to his bank back home. The new pope identified himself as Robert Prevost and said that he wished to change the phone number and address the bank had on file.

The pope dutifully answered the security questions correctly. Then, the woman on the line told him it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to a branch in person.

“He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that… I gave you all the security questions.”

The bank employee apologized but stood firm. The pope tried a different tack. “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” She hung up.

Look, if the Pope can’t break through the impersonal walls the rest of us run into every day, what hope do we have?

Technology has given us tools to erect barriers. Oh, they don’t seem like barriers at first. But they prevent us, over time, from making meaningful contact with other human beings.

Don’t talk to a customer service representative about your delayed flight, use their chat.

Don’t talk to a pharmacist about your prescription, just type your info into the check-in screen.

Don’t send someone personal birthday greetings, Facebook can do that for you in a click.

Each of these may be more efficient (that is up for debate), but they are not relational.

Faith communities, in all their forms, are first a relational enterprise. Efficiency (although often invoked by church board members who, with good intentions, believe “the church should operate more like a business”) is not a value that Jesus modeled.

His model, through the gospels, is one of being relentless relational.

Jesus goes to people rather than waiting for them.

The call of Matthew (Luke 5:27–28) — Jesus walks past a tax collector’s booth and simply says, “follow me.” No prior relationship, no credentials checked. He initiates a relationship across a social boundary that most religious teachers would have treated as a wall. It’s the same with Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10). Jesus spots him in a tree and invites himself to dinner before Zacchaeus has done anything to merit it.

Jesus notices the overlooked individual in the crowd.

The woman with the hemorrhage (Mark 5:25–34) — A crowd is pressing in on him. He’s on his way to answer an urgent request from a synagogue ruler, and yet he stops everything to ask, “who touched me?” His disciples think the question is absurd. He insists. The point isn’t only about healing; it’s that she must be seen and named, not just cured anonymously in the crowd.

Jesus takes conversation seriously as a form of care.

The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) — Jesus breaks through three taboos simultaneously (gender, ethnicity, moral reputation) and then stays in the conversation despite the woman’s deflections, gently redirecting, refusing to let her change the subject from herself. He doesn’t lecture; he draws out. The conversation is the ministry.

Jesus allows himself to be moved.

“Jesus wept” (John 11:35) — This phrase is easy to sentimentalize, but notice the surrounding verses. He already knows he will raise Lazarus. He weeps anyway. The relationality isn’t strategic; it’s participatory. He enters grief rather than managing it from a safe distance.

Jesus personalizes encounters even under pressure.

Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) — The crowd tries to silence him. Jesus, headed toward Jerusalem and whatever awaits him there, stops. “What do you want me to do for you?” He asks the question even though the answer seems obvious. The asking itself is relational; it honors the other’s voice.

Jesus uses meals as primary ministry space.

The practice of table fellowship throughout the Gospels, with tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees, disciples, and crowds on hillsides, is relentlessly relational. Meals in first-century Jewish culture weren’t casual; they encoded belonging and honor. Jesus uses that cultural grammar deliberately, making inclusion at the table a form of proclamation.

Jesus stays present in the face of failure and denial.

The charcoal fire breakfast (John 21) – This is one of the most carefully constructed relational moments in Scripture. Jesus doesn’t address Peter’s betrayal directly. Over a charcoal fire that evokes the charcoal fire where Peter denied him, Jesus now feeds him, then asks the same question three times. He rehabilitates through persistent presence, not through a speech about forgiveness.

For all the good-hearted attempts to “keep the church relevant,” may I suggest that we have all we need? People in all manner of social locations are starving for, yearning for, someone to see them, hear them, talk with them, care about them, break bread with them, remain present in the face of their failures.

We don’t need greater efficiency. We need an absolute commitment to follow our Savior into breaking down barriers and being relentlessly relational.

05/08/2026

“We Can’t Ignore Connection” - Elizabeth Lynn & Mark Ramsey

https://mministry.org/we-cant-ignore-connection/

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

The two downcast followers of Jesus said this to one another, after Jesus had drawn near to them on the road to Emmaus, reminded them of God’s promises, broken bread with them, and then vanished from their sight. What stirred them and soon propelled them back to Jerusalem – the place they had fled from in their grief – was not hard proof of Jesus’ resurrection. It was an experience of the Risen Christ drawing near to them and reconnecting them to the promises, the community, the mission of God.

Two colleagues of ours recently lamented, in off-handed ways, how much they miss their Blackberry phones. In 2009, at its peak, Blackberry commanded half the cell phone market in the United States – and for good reason. It was the first handheld device that allowed users to receive email on the spot. Its computer-like QWERTY keyboard was also the first on a mobile phone, allowing for faster typing than the numeric keyboards of other hand-held devices. And, as an article from Harvard’s Digital Initiative notes, “BlackBerry had enormous Network Effects, as millennials loved the chat function BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and one could only BBM with other BlackBerry devices.”

When Apple introduced its iPhone in 2007, replete with a touchscreen, BlackBerry initially dismissed the threat, insisting that users were attached to their computer-like keyboard. But the iPhone sold well. Belatedly and hastily, BlackBerry released a touchscreen device; it proved unreliable and was met with horrendous reviews. By 2016, Blackberry’s market share in the United States had cratered to less than one percent.

Blackberry’s problem was a failure of imagination, not a failure of technology. While Apple and Google created smartphones with accessible new interfaces and attractive apps, BlackBerry remained doggedly focused on the one thing that it (wrongly) thought kept consumers coming back.

BlackBerry is a study in what happens when an organization mistakes the tool for the need. They thought they were in the keyboard-and-email business. They were actually in the staying-connected-wherever-you-are business. The fall was swift precisely because the iPhone didn’t just compete on tools; it competed on what a smartphone is for.

Seth Godin observes:

…Blackberry didn’t actually sell keyboards. They sold the network. It’s easy to see this if you realize that a single Blackberry (with no one to connect to) was worthless, but an iPhone with millions of users and no keyboard is priceless.

And Godin sums up:

We get hooked on our past wins (and our fears of past losses) instead of understanding the value we’re able to provide.

In church life, the value we’re able to provide is rarely programs. Or even stand-alone worship. Or other “constituent services” that church boards often feel pressured to organize. Those Emmaus followers found their hearts burning through re-connection to Jesus, re-connection to God’s promise, and re-connection to a future full of meaning and purpose.

What Blackberry provided was not a keyboard. It was a network that connected people with one another.

Church is something more than (and different from) the sum of any congregation’s activity. It offers connection to a community that is safe, reliable, and trusted. Safe means a welcoming group of people who treasure every person and listen intently to the story each person tells about their life and why they have shown up. Reliable means our connection to one another does not rise or fall based on our agreement on specific issues, because it is grounded in a shared commitment to something much larger than ourselves. And trusted, because our connection is the fruit of safe and reliable interaction over time. When safety, reliability, and trust are present, the opportunity for spiritual growth and deep connection is unlimited.


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What do you remember about your first hand-held device? What need or needs did it meet? How have those needs changed over time?

Seth Godin observes that “Blackberry didn’t actually sell keyboards. They sold the network.” What would you say your church actually “sold” you, when you first joined it?

Thinking about your church board discussions these days, what might be your Blackberry keyboard? Put another way, what is the tool you may be focusing on, when you should be thinking about the need?

As a board, how would you complete the following sentence: “Were not our hearts burning within us while….”?

05/07/2026

New podcast episode!

"Life, Death, and Why Am I Here? A Conversation with Robb Webb"

https://mministry.org/podcast/life-death-and-why-am-i-here-a-conversation-with-robb-webb/

Mark Ramsey speak with Robb Webb (Duke Endowment) about their rural church work in North and South Carolina, the importance of prioritizing theological formation ahead of denominational metrics, and why creativity is so critical for ministry today.

Episode Transcript (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/05-06-26.pdf).

05/07/2026

05/05/2026

“It Starts with the Vine, not the Fruit” - Sherrad Hayes

https://mministry.org/it-starts-with-the-vine-not-the-fruit/

Ministry leaders of all contexts, traditions, and roles know on some level the experience of trying to produce “fruit” and only finding frustration.

I don’t deal well with frustration – just ask my sister about our marathon Monopoly sessions growing up. Frustration, of course, is an old part of the human story. “Cursed is the ground because of you,” God says to Adam after Adam’s failure to trust the Source of all good to lead him to the good, instead rushing toward, well, fruit. “Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” (Genesis 3:17-18). From Eden to now, this shared human experience of frustration originates not from God but more fundamentally from our subtle rejection of God that says, “I’ve got this. I know how to achieve, produce, take care of myself, control what’s happening.” It’s a powerful myth we tell ourselves about our own ability to choose the good, our own ingenuity, our own hard work.

- And so it goes on Monday morning when I find myself unimpressed by my sermon.

- So it goes at the church board meeting after the outreach event planned weeks ago didn’t quite have the attendance everyone hoped.

- So it goes when the treasurer hands over a bad report despite months of an expertly-designed capital campaign.

- So it goes spending years taking up the hard work towards justice — only to find injustice multiplying everywhere.

So the Disciples thought it was going that Passover night, the night Jesus was betrayed, the night before he would take up a crown of thorns onto his own head. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower,” Jesus tells them. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:1, 9).

Is it really as simple as all that, Jesus? Well, yes, it is. In the preface to his superb, short work on the Apostles’ Creed, Ben Myers speaks of this abiding, this possessing of everything we need.

The Christian faith is mysterious not because it is so complicated but because it is so simple. A person does not start with baptism and then advance to higher mysteries. In baptism each believer already possesses the faith in its fullness. The whole of life is encompassed in the mystery of baptism: dying with Christ and rising with him through the Spirit to the glory of God. That is how the Christian life begins, and to seek to move beyond that beginning is really to regress. – Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism (Lexham Press, 2018), xv.

It’s crucial for pastors and congregations to remember that, in a fundamental sense, there is no going “beyond” our relationship with God or advancing to something else, as Myers puts it. Clinging to the vine that is Christ is not something to do from time to time as needed, but continually, daily.

We often relegate our relationship with God to the periphery in order to get the “real work” done. We pay lip service to it, but we worry about being so “heavenly minded, we’re of no earthly good.” Jesus’ vine metaphor in John 15 teaches us that the only way towards any kind of lasting good is to abide – remain, continue – in Jesus. “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last . . .” (John 15:16). Seek Christ, and he promises the fruit will follow. It often happens in ways we neither expect nor plan. But from the perspective of the eternal God, the fruit will come in ways that truly last.

Jeremiah reminds us:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jer 17:7-8)

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Questions for Reflection:

In what ways is our relationship with God “simple”? In what ways does it not feel that way at all?

What frustrations are you experiencing now? How do they show you ways your ministry or church is seeking fruit but missing Jesus?

How is the Spirit leading your ministry or church towards a deeper relationship with God? What is getting in the way?