|
Home Page
Start Here!
Initial
Considerations
Choose Your Route
Routings
Coaching
Redevelopment
Coaching
Development
Choices
Glossary
Resource Guide
Site Map
|
Resource Guide
Becoming a Healthy Church: 10 Characteristics (Book)
Stephen A. Macchia, Author. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1999.
After visiting, interviewing, and evaluating many New England congregations and 1,899 of their members, Stephen Macchia has found what he believes are ten principles characteristic of healthy churches. The ten principles of healthy churches are not presented in this book as models, but with stories of real congregations and practical guidance for implementation. The principles include: seeking the empowerment of God’s presence; excellent, diverse forms of worship; spiritual disciplines such as prayer and study; learning and growing in community; loving and caring relationships; servant-leader development; an outward focus to the church’s ministry; wise administration and accountability; networking locally, nationally and globally; and stewardship and generosity. The questions after each chapter are designed for reflection, discussion, and self-evaluation. They are also intended to help implement the principles as a congregation moves toward health. Any denominational leadership team or congregation would benefit from studying this book.
Can Our Church Live?: Redeveloping Congregations in Decline (Book)
Alice Mann, Author. Bethesda, MD: The Alban Institute, 1999.
Can waning and dying congregations actually live again? The author paints a picture of cautious but energizing optimism. Demographics, says Alice Mann, have not been friendly to mainline churches, but other factors can reverse a church's decline and give it new vitality. First, there needs to be a faith-based sense of purpose that extends beyond church walls, rather than a focus on survival and maintenance. To become vital, a church also needs a clear and positive identity, ongoing attention to nonmembers in the community, congregational harmony, positive relationships between clergy and laity, and small group programs where people can form deeper ties to one another and connect their faith with daily life. This study provides excellent theory, contextual case studies, and inspiration to allow leaders of congregations in decline to struggle through their wilderness and to imagine new possibilities for a more faithful and vital future.
Effective Church Leadership: Building on the Twelve Keys (Book)
Kennon L. Callahan, Author. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
During the post-World War II era, the United States was a “churched” culture that encouraged the development of credentialed, professional pastors. With the current decline of mainline churches in our pluralistic culture, the “professional” pastor has become ineffective and must give way to the “missional” pastor. Effective Church Leadership defines and lists the major resources of a missional pastor-leader. The reader will find practical help with the four central tasks of a missional leader: helping people rediscover power in the whole of their lives; helping people become communities of reconciliation; helping people discover meaning in everyday life; and helping people discover how they can make a difference. The missional pastor helps church members discover who they are now on the mission field, their specific mission tasks, and the central convictions about ordinary life in light of the gospel. The author gives practical insight into how pastors and key leaders can transform themselves and their communities of faith into vibrant and true mission outposts. A plan for pastoral evaluation and an evaluation worksheet are included.
Growing Spiritual Redwoods (Book)
William M. Easum, Thomas G. Bandy, Authors. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997.
This is a creative, visionary book about defining and shaping the church of the future. "Spiritual redwood" is a metaphor for a new species of dynamic Christian church organism, led by visionary leaders, that is learning to flourish in the changed environment (or forest) of the twenty-first century. The "forest" is a metaphor for culture, the public, or people and the context in which they live. The forest is incredibly diverse, and growingly so. All the rules of the forest are in flux and they are completely different from the supposed "civilization" of the twentieth century institutional church. A new "pre-Christian" world is emerging from post-Christendom, and specific chapters center on spirituality and the changing nature of faith, worship, church organization, leadership, mission, and the future. Strong themes permeating the book are the thinning of boundaries between secular and sacred and a replacement of "machine" with "organic" imagery to define the church. Suggestions about future ecclesial styles and environments may be difficult to comprehend or appreciate, especially for persons born before 1946. The book is helpful, however, because it invites crucial reflection on a changing world and an evolving church.
Futuring Your Church: Finding Your Vision and Making It Work(Book)
George B. Thompson, Author. United Church Press, 1999.
Futuring Your Church presents a detailed process for clarifying congregational vision. Author George Thompson illustrates how a congregation’s heritage, context, and theological bearings are like stars in a constellation: while they appear random, their order can be revealed through the process of clarifying vision. Thompson suggests forming teams to discover and interpret these congregational stars, and from them to project a future vision of the congregation’s calling. The book includes sample interview questions for discovering a congregation’s heritage and theological bearings, resources for gathering demographic data, and clues for avoiding the pitfalls that often derail visioning processes. It also offers suggestions to help a team communicate its vision with the rest of the congregation. The process outlined is lengthy and may seem intimidating to congregations who want speedy solutions, but the author is convinced that haste is destructive to the visioning process. The resource is a helpful tool for clergy, lay leaders, and others involved in strategic planning and in re-visioning their congregations.
The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier (Book)
Loren B. Mead, Author. Bethesda, MD: The Alban Institute, 1991.
Mead asserts that as the church's understanding of mission shifts, as once-familiar clergy and laity roles change, and as church executives are called to provide more support with fewer resources, a new church is being born around us. However, we are in a transitional period: the principles that have guided the church since the conversion of Constantine (a period Mead dubs the “Christendom Era”) no longer apply. For example, it was once assumed that a church’s mission was to convert persons in far-off lands; now churches must focus on crises in their surrounding communities. It was once assumed that clergy were powerful guarantors of community morality; now they must help laity engage in and serve a turbulent world. While alerting us to the challenges of reinventing the new church, Mead also offers hopeful signs of the future church’s emergence. Church leaders will find in this book a deeper understanding of the critical opportunities facing those who seek to renew a church that will become, in Mead’s words, “a centering presence from which we may serve the new world that God is creating around us.”
Post-Modern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for the 21st Century World (Book)
Leonard Sweet, Author. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000.
Leonard Sweet helps us see the need for an EPIC church for EPIC times. EPIC means Experiential, Participatory, Image-Driven, and Connected. This new category of churches for the third millennium is postmodern rather than modern, focuses on relationship experiences rather than on program, is interactive and participatory rather than lecture and performance oriented, is driven by multimedia images of various types rather than words, and focuses on connectedness and sense of community rather than established groups and patterns.
The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message and Mission (Book)
Rick Warren, Author. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995.
The Purpose Driven Church teaches that a healthy, purpose-driven church experiences consistent growth by balancing five biblical purposes: loving God, loving the neighbor, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching obedience to Christ's commandments. Author Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, asserts that a purpose-driven church relies on a clear purpose that cuts through every ministry and every congregational assumption. Saddleback’s purpose is “to bring the unchurched, irreligious people of our community to Christ.” To fulfill its purpose, Saddleback’s strategies foster depth through discipleship, strength through worship, breadth through ministry, and growth through evangelism. Vehicles for evolving discipleship include a series of classes that focus first on membership (knowing), then on maturity (growing), ministry (serving), and missions (sharing Christ). At each level, members sign a covenant to emphasize their commitment, clarify expectations, and encourage spiritual growth and maturity. The Purpose Driven Church provides a map for growth that values “people building process” over church building programs; it will inspire leaders who want practical insights and helpful principles on why and how to grow.
Recovering the Sacred Center: Church Renewal from the Inside Out (Book)
Howard E. Friend, Author. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1998.
The author draws on his experiences as a Presbyterian minister and founder of the Parish Empowerment Network to show how churches can meet the new ways of society. Stories from actual church situations, scriptural references, and cogent metaphors or similes make specific and understandable the ways in which churches can meet their challenges. To recover the sacred center, individuals and congregations must create a temenos, or sacred space, and must act in response to the question “What do you long for?” Churches have in the past been “glue” for their congregations—bringing disarrayed lives together; now they must risk adding ”solvent” —overcoming rigidity by letting things come apart and reassemble in a new way. Suggestions for action and explanations of principles are laid out in a lively, engaging way that make this book ideal as a basis for congregational study—abstract ideas are made concrete and interesting.
|
|
