The archive below contains articles and downloads for our AIIM members.
For AIIM Members
- January, 2020 Mailing — Nurturing Engagement
- Being Thankful for Gratitude
- October, 2019 Mailing
- September, 2019 Mailing
- August, 2019 Mailing
- July, 2019 Mailing
- June, 2019 Mailing
- May, 2019 Mailing
- Time, Volunteerism, and Congregational Life
- Exploring models of pastoral leadership
- Your pastor isn’t as unhealthy as you might think
- Three Hard Choices Effective Leaders Make
- Silent Mentors
- Eight Rules for Innovation in Congregations
- A move to part-time clergy sparks innovation in congregations
- Do Denominations Matter?
- Leading as Meeting “Them” Where They Are
- We’re in the innovation business
- 14 Surprising Facts About Pastors
- A case for Christian leaders to practice integrative thinking
- Most Spiritual-But-Not-Religious Americans are Younger – and Religiously Affiliated
- Quotes from Albert Einstein
- 12 Things Pastors Cannot Do
- Do-It-Your-Self Faith On the Rise Thanks to the Web, Study Finds
- Doomsday Clock: Why Americans love apocalyptic predictions
- Goodbye absolutes, hello new morality
- Learning to Love the Church
- What Should Ministry Look Like in America?
- Tolerating Bad Behavior in the Church
- Teams: Not Easy, Just Necessary
- Disruption and leadership development in mainline Protestantism
- A Book Review: How to Get Along with Your Church: Creating Cultural Capital for Doing Ministry
- I’m A Millennial. This Is The Kind Of Church I Need.
- It’s Crazy Out There: Practices for Religious Leaders
- Ruinous Empathy
- Do you actually want to be our pastor? A story about a search committee and a candidate
- Your Best Move: Effective Leadership Transition for the Local Church
- How Do Organizations Get to a Place of Too Much Change?
- I Found Purpose at the End of My Pastorate
- 5 Reasons We Play the Blame Game… but rarely win
- “How’s Your Church Doing?”
- Leadership Means “Pushing People to Purpose”
- You Feed the People
- Healing Spiritual Wounds
- Three Overlooked Leadership Roles
- Passion, not money, needed for vibrant young adult ministries, study shows
- Meet the “Spiritual but Not Religious”
- How Appreciative Inquiry Brings “Vision” into Focus
- Transparency in the Local Church – Should We Care?
- Meet Those Who “Love Jesus but Not the Church”
- Leave Me Alone So I Can Do Ministry!
- A Move to Part-Time Clergy Sparks Innovation in Congregations
- When They’re Really Mad at You
- State of the Bible 2017: Top Findings
- Reimagining Religion – The 10 Qualities of Creative Communities
- When is the Right Time to Close Our Doors?
- The Church Does Not Exist to Entertain Us – Or Bore Us
- Spirituality and Congregational Life
- Modern – and Ancient – Christian Identity Crisis Drives Decline of American Church
- Crunch Time in Smaller Congregations
- Group Conflict Can Be a Powerful Agent of Change
- Practices that sustain Christian community
- U.S. churches face big ministry challenge in aging Baby Boomers
- Why your Church needs a Social Media Director
- The Mentor Leadership Team
- Living into a Both-And World
- Are We Entering the End Times for Mainline Seminaries?
- 9 Ways Senior Leaders Subconsciously Sabotage Innovation
- Staying Put: A Look at the First 10 Years of Ministry
- Why Do We Have Christmas Trees?
- Slow Down
- Role of deacons changing as churches embrace missional focus
- A Life to Die For …
- 3 Secrets of Leadership Training
- A new crop of D.C. churches has discovered the secret to appealing to millennials
- Epidemic: Another Pastor Burned Out and Quit Last Sunday
- Have We Failed?
- Hell is a Place Where the Visitors Wear Name Tags
- Churches urged to talk to Millennials and nones, not just read about them
- The Effect of Rising Health Care Costs on Churches
- Is Disciple-Making Just a Fad?
- As Millennials Leave the Church, Some Youth Ministers Ponder ‘Scary Stats’
- Many boomers in denial over problems they face growing old in suburbs
- The New God-Fearers (Fka “The Nones”) and Where To Find Them
- Pastor in the middle
- Should a Church Set Goals?
- Spiritual Formation as the Future of the Church
- How can clergy achieve positive mental health?
- Church Leadership for Panicked Souls
- Bonhoeffer’s Answer to Political Turmoil: Preach!
- Hard Job, High Calling
- Churches need to improve their generational IQ
- Want a Healthier Congregation? Start with Better Meetings
- Five Ways Christianity Is Increasingly Viewed as Extremist
- 4 Guidelines for Pastors of the Declining Church
- The Day I Hit the Wall
- The Bumpy Road to Self-Care
- Memory Work
- The Truth about Consensus
- The Belt Is Still Buckled: America’s 100 Most Bible-Minded Cities of 2016
- Shaping a theology of money
- 6 Kinds of Pastors You’ll Meet in Fiction
- How to Be a Good Listener
- Myths about millennials
- In Search of Adequacy
- How Change Can Replenish—Or Drain—Your Reserves
- Five tips for achieving lasting change in congregations
- Sacrificing the Body
- History Without A Reason
- Chaos Theory and Congregational Life
- Six Things Christians Should Worry About More than the Decline of Christianity
- Rural churches struggle as resources flow to urban churches
- Congregational Culture is Crucial
- 3 Ways To Quell Overload
- Transforming conflict from the inside out
- Quick Wins
- Partnership saves historic Baptist church
- Steeples and Millennials — does church architecture matter?
- Making Choices
- How Boards Raise Money for Ministry
- 3 leadership strategies every pastor should adopt
- Defusing the Conflict Time-Bombs
- Sustaining Personal Energy in Leadership
- Here are 3 Reasons No One is Joining Your Church (Plus One More)
- Cultivating a mindset of generosity
- Don’t Like How Your Church Is Changing? This Is For You
- Making more ‘nones’ (ASAP)
- Racially diverse nation isn’t mirrored in most religious groups
- (How) Will Millennials Change the Church?
- Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome? Yep, It’s A Thing
- The Age of DisIncarnation
- What has to be true for an idea to be successful?
- For Some, Another Threat To Church Survival: Natural Beauty
- Did Pastors Pave the Way for Trump?
- The Dirty Truth About Honoraria
- Want millennials back in the pews? Stop trying to make church ‘cool.’
- How Do We Evaluate Performance?
- Devotional Thought
- Young adults challenging traditional church membership concepts
- Welcome to the church of ‘holy chaos’
- Mission Drift
- I’m troubled: A personal reflection from a CBF leader on Charleston tragedy
- 6 Ways to Safeguard Pastors
- Think Christianity is dying? No, Christianity is shifting dramatically
- 6 ways mainline churches should respond to decline
- 5 Ways Churches Inflicted Pain on Themselves
- Working around Incompetence on the Team
- Fledglings take flight: Helping churches make the shift in a new religious landscape.
- Economist: Church in crisis but hope remains
- What Size is Our Congregation?
- Smooth pastoral succession takes creativity and planning, Baptist leaders say
- Millennials Don’t Care About Owning Cars, and Car Makers Can’t Figure Out Why
- A Pastoral Paradox
- Why so many young Christians are leaving their churches — and coming back again
- Think twice before you leave the traditional church
- The Future of Religion
- The Final Trust Walk of Steve Hayner
- Stuff it: Millennials nix their parents’ treasures
- Cultivating resilience in Christ-shaped leaders
- The Risk of Turning Around a Church
- 7 New Trends in the Pastor Search Process
- The 10 Most Influential Churches of the Last Century
- Lead with a Healthy Mind
- The Rise of the Dones
- Staying Afloat Amid Information Overload
- New Questions for a New Day
- Step aside, millennials — Here comes Generation Z
- Conflict à la mode
- Six responses of well-differentiated leaders