St. Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That includes closing a church, perhaps the most challenging of congregational ministries.

The goals of this webinar are to:

• Identify the gifts pastors, churches and judicatories can bring to church closure
• Name the pastoral challenges and skills that help a congregation have an experience more like Easter than Good Friday or Holy Saturday – Identify sources of grief and wellsprings of support
• Explore vocational transitions after the church closes.

This webinar will provide lessons learned from surveys and in-depth interviews with over 130 faithful pastors in five Protestant traditions (Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and UCC) as well as time for questions and answers.

The Rev. Gail Cafferata, Ph.D. (University of Chicago), M.Div. (Episcopal Divinity School) is an Episcopal priest and medical sociologist who served a Northern California congregation for nine years after a long career in universities, the National Center for Health Services Research, Children’s Hospital (Boston) and other non-profits. She brought what she learned from both experiences to write The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Church to Closure, a Louisville Institute-funded study of pastors in five mainline Protestant denominations who experienced the closing of their churches, including herself.