Every congregation participates in certain activities that are common to any number of human communities. Congregations make decisions. They help others. They sing. They tell stories. Congregations offer hospitality. They make choices about money. Human groups from families to clubs to corporations do these things too. Such common, shared, human activities are called - by those who study and name such things - practices.
A practice becomes a meaningful, religious endeavor for a congregation when the congregation shapes its practice according to its living faith tradition. Every organization practices, for good or ill, some form of hospitality (this is as true for Southwest Airlines as it is for the congregation around the corner). What makes congregational hospitality distinctive is the way a congregation’s religious commitments shape the practice.
Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, edited by Dorothy Bass, has just been republished. For more than a decade this book has been a thoughtful, and yes, practical, help for congregational leaders as they seek to live more fully their religious claims and commitments. This new version has a revised preface as well as two new chapters (and a study guide).
This is a fine resource for adult education classes, small group study, reading for the governing board and so on.
Tim Shapiro
President
