Download or read book The Learning Congregation written by Thomas R. Hawkins and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congregations today face an adaptive challenge of immense proportions. Many respond with classic signs of work avoidance: holding to past assumptions and blaming authority. Thomas Hawkins's new vision of church leadership can provide a way to break through these defensive routines. The Learning Congregation is a must read for all pastors and church leaders.
Download or read book How Your Congregation Learns written by Tim Shapiro and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Change isn't always easy or intuitive. How Your Congregation Learns introduces churches and leaders--both lay and ordained--to the process of the learning journey. By understanding learning dynamics and working to become a learning community, the congregation will be able to move more purposefully to achieve its goals. Congregations face many kinds of challenges. Some are mundane: the roof leaks; the parking lot needs repaving; the microphones don't work well. Some tests are transcendent: How should lives be honored? What is God calling the congregation to do and be? How can generosity be taught? Throughout life people face challenges for which they are not prepared--the death of a parent, a new job offer, making a decision about where to live. So it goes that congregational leaders face challenges that are just beyond the grasp of their abilities. This book addresses the just-beyond-the-grasp challenges and shows how real congregations can learn from them.
Download or read book Practicing Christian Education written by Mark A. Maddix and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible introduction to the broad scope of Christian education focuses on its practice in the local church. Two leading experts argue that Christian education encompasses all of the intentional practices of the local church, including worship, mission, sacraments, and teaching. They explore Christian education not only as a field of study but as a vital congregational ministry, showing how congregations can engage in discipleship and formation for spiritual growth. The book features exercises and other pedagogical devices and includes reflection questions and suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book A Praying Congregation written by Jane E. Vennard and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastors and others who want to develop their skills as teachers of prayer and spiritual practices will find in this book not only wisdom for themselves but easily accessible lesson plans, enabling them to share Vennard's insights with others while infusing the activities with their own spirit and creative ideas. Through this book, readers' hearts are made ready to explore the wonder of strengthening their relationship with God through prayer.
Download or read book Inside the Large Congregation written by Susan Beaumont and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For five years, Alban Institute senior consultant Susan Beaumont has been giving voice to the organizational and leadership demands of large congregations. Through her work, she has identified five basic leadership systems that need to stay in alignment for the large church to function well for its size: clergy leadership roles, staff team design and function, governance and board function, acculturation and the role of laity, and forming and executing strategy. She has also learned that these five systems operate with some important but subtle distinctions in what Beaumont calls the professional church (400-800 in worship attendance), the strategic church (800-1,200), and the matrix church (1,200-2,000). Often, she has discovered, problems in a large congregation are related to the fact that one or more of the five systems is inappropriately structured for the size of the congregation. In other words, the church isn't acting its size. Beaumont is invested in helping large congregations 'rightsize' their leadership systems to better serve their ministry context. This book articulates why size matters and how it matters in the world of large congregations. It is written for anyone who wants to better understand the leadership and organizational dynamics of the large church anyone seeking to understand the challenges of leading from inside the large congregation.
Download or read book Fashion Me a People written by Maria Harris and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A beautiful, insightful, and creative work that could be fashioned only by a true artist in the art of religious education".---Thomas H. Groome, Associate Professor of Theology nad Religious Education, Boston College
Download or read book Becoming a Congregation of Learners written by Isa Aron and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide presents an overview of successful congregations, explains when and how to bring about cha nge, and helps you create a Task Force in your congregation to help transform Jewish learning.
Download or read book Educating Congregations written by Charles R. Foster and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading Christian educator offers a practical guide for revisioning a church's educational program. After identifying the weaknesses in current education programs, Charles Foster offers an alternative vision that is more cooperative, more attentive to the whole of the congregation's life, and that helps people critically correlate the Bible and Christian tradition to their own experience.
Download or read book The Invisible Church written by Steve Aisthorpe and published by Saint Andrew Press. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone who is concerned about Church decline, the contents of this book offer an essential blueprint for building God’s whole community in the coming years. This unique set of resources offers practical help and insight for all who want to grow, enrich and develop their congregational life. The Church of Scotland has drawn on the findings of extensive new research that it has commissioned in order to put together this set of carefully crafted and informed resources aimed at helping every congregation to understand why people leave the Church, how to avoid unnecessary departures and, above all, to develop an enriching, vital Christian fellowship with the large numbers of Churchless Christians in every community across the country. This ground-breaking book, illustrated by Dave Walker, offers information, hope, insight, prayerful reflection and practical ideas for bringing together in fellowship all Christians, whether they are members of an institutional Church or not.
Download or read book Learning from London written by Jason A. Fout and published by . This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Gold Medal - 2020 Illumination Book Awards Crucial reading for everyone committed to evangelism and church growth. -Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church As most mainline Christian denominations struggle with declining numbers, the Church of England in the Diocese of London is bucking the trend. In one of the most diverse, multi-faith, urban, and pluralistic cities in the world, London churches are growing and thriving against the odds, proclaiming the gospel afresh, and meeting the needs of their communities in creative, innovative, and life-changing ways. Based on more than six years of study, Jason A. Fout offers lessons from London, a road map to growth and revitalization for American churches-big and small, historic and newly started, evangelical and Anglo-Catholic. This remarkable guide offers practical tools as well as insight and inspiration for all who care about the future of the church.
Download or read book Hermeneutics of Doctrine in a Learning Church written by Gregory A. Ryan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-08-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hermeneutics of Doctrine in a Learning Church, Gregory Ryan offers an account of the dynamic, multi-dimensional task of interpreting Christian tradition, with reference to doctrinal hermeneutics, Receptive Ecumenism, and the ‘pastorality of doctrine’ seen in Pope Francis.
Download or read book Teaching the Gospel Today written by Margaret A. Krych and published by Augsburg Books. This book was released on 1987 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Divergent Church written by Tim Shapiro and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New faith communities are appearing across the U.S.. Many of them bear little resemblance—on the surface—to ‘church’ in its conventional form. But when we look a little deeper we see striking continuity with the most deeply rooted practices of the Christian faith in community. What are those practices? What do these unconventional, alternative faith communities look like? How are they, perhaps, indicators of a hopeful new future for the church? And what can we learn from them? Authors Kara Brinkerhoff and Tim Shapiro spent more than a year researching and exploring these questions, closely examining the life of a dozen alternative faith communities across the country. They include new monastic communities, food-oriented communities, affinity group communities, house churches, hybrid churches and others. They are creative, ingenious, innovative, clever, dynamic and transformative. But they represent human expressions of activities that have always been part of human religious congregations: hospitality, learning, storytelling, care, leadership, worship and honoring place. This fascinating book goes beyond simply analyzing current trends. It reveals how innovative Christians are engaging in time-honored practices, creating new types of communities, which will shape the church to come. Further, it shows us how we too might innovate while holding true to the essential practices of our gathered faith. This is an instructive picture of Christian community, past, present and future.
Download or read book The Teaching Church written by Eugene C. Roehlkepartain and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Transforming Congregations through Community written by Boyung Lee and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2013-11-04 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this helpful book, Boyung Lee offers an encouraging vision of the mainline church’s future. Lee grapples with some of the greatest challenges facing the mainline church, offering compelling responses to recurring questions: What does faithfulness to the gospel look like in this changing world? What is our distinctive voice in the larger society? How does theological education have to change if it is to serve the needs of a new century? Lee argues that the church’s future is a promising one if the church can offer a richer and deeper definition of community—one that moves beyond the excessive individualism of western culture and that helps mainline Christians understand their solidarity with one another and with all of God’s people. Lee further explores the crucial role of faith formation at the congregational and seminary levels. More than mere schooling, theological education must engage all aspects of educators’ and students’ lives to prepare seminarians for the challenges that lie ahead. While not dismissing the mainline church’s challenges, Lee offers congregational leaders and seminary educators a vision of a church transformed for the 21st century.
Download or read book Churches Cultures and Leadership written by Mark Lau Branson and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world that is more culturally diverse than ever, pastors and lay leaders need skills and competencies to serve in multicultural contexts. This rich blend of astute analysis and practical guidance offers a praxis of paying attention, study, and discernment that leads to genuine reconciliation and shared life empowered by the gospel.
Download or read book RetroChristianity written by Michael J. Svigel and published by Crossway Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the current exodus of Christians from evangelical churches and argues for a return to historical roots.
