Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions PDF Download

Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725271753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Leaders in congregations and Christian organizations wrestle with an unraveling of the world in which they have little experience and training. While they are offered unending resources by experts on leadership, some with claims to biblical blueprints, the challenges seem mismatched to those methods. Branson and Roxburgh frame the situation as one in which "modernity's wager"--the conviction that God is not necessary for life and wisdom and meaning--has defined the Western imagination. Because churches and leaders are colonized by this ethos, even when God is named and beliefs are claimed, approaches to leadership are blind to God's agency. Branson and Roxburgh approach this challenge as a work in practical theology, attending to our cultural context, narratives of God's disruptive initiatives in Scripture, and a reshaping of leadership theories with a priority on God's agency. With years of experience as teachers, consultants, and guides, they name practices which lead to more faithful participation. Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruption is wide-ranging in cultural and biblical scholarship, challenging in its engagement with numerous leadership studies, and practical with its focus toward the on-the-ground life of churches and organizations.

Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514002884
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
We live in a culturally diverse society. As the church continues to heed Christ's call to reflect the multiethnic character of his people, pastors and lay leaders need to gain skills and competencies to serve in multicultural contexts, both inside and beyond their congregations. With this book, Mark Lau Branson and Juan F. Martínez equip leaders to create environments that make God's reconciling initiatives apparent in church life and in missional engagement with their neighborhoods and cities. Drawing on courses they've taught at Fuller Theological Seminary, Branson and Martínez take an interdisciplinary approach that integrates biblical and theological study with sociology, cultural anthropology, leadership studies, and communications. The result is a rich blend of astute analysis and guidance for the practical implementation of a deeper intercultural life for the church. Case studies, Bible studies, and exercises for personal and group reflection address real-life challenges and opportunities that arise in multiethnic contexts. Churches, Cultures, and Leadership offers not a static model but a praxis of paying attention, study, and discernment that can lead to genuine reconciliation and shared life empowered by the gospel. This new edition is updated throughout to address current trends and sources, particularly emphasizing the continuing power of racism and how churches should respond.

Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995825
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
A second edition of Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is now available! With helpful updates throughout, the new edition features five new chapters on Appreciative Inquiry applied in real congregations. When First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, California, was asked to provide a mission study report for its pastor nominating committee, the congregation was afraid they would find themselves engaging in busy work and producing a report that would wind up in a file gathering dust. They then asked professor Mark Lau Branson to consult with them on writing this report. He invited them to join in a process of Appreciative Inquiry--a transformational organization change process--which resulted in a major shift in congregational conversations and a new sense of hope. Memories, Hopes, and Conversations recounts the experience of First Presbyterian and outlines a process that any congregation can utilize to harness the energies of the congregation at all levels of its common life. Branson first leads readers through the foundations of Appreciative Inquiry and bracingly explores biblical texts for understanding the practice in a faith context. He then outlines and illustrates a four-step process--Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Innovate--that creatively employs constructive conversations and questions to evoke storytelling and spur imaginations. Branson persuasively demonstrates how concentrating on needs and problems can mire a congregation in discouragement and distract it from noticing innate strengths. By focusing on memories of the congregation at its best, members are able to construct "provocative proposals" to help shape the church’s future. Grounded in solid theory and real-life practice, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is a groundbreaking work of narrative leadership and the first book to apply the principles of Appreciative Inquiry to the lives of congregations.

Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725271745
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Leaders in congregations and Christian organizations wrestle with an unraveling of the world in which they have little experience and training. While they are offered unending resources by experts on leadership, some with claims to biblical blueprints, the challenges seem mismatched to those methods. Branson and Roxburgh frame the situation as one in which “modernity’s wager”—the conviction that God is not necessary for life and wisdom and meaning—has defined the Western imagination. Because churches and leaders are colonized by this ethos, even when God is named and beliefs are claimed, approaches to leadership are blind to God’s agency. Branson and Roxburgh approach this challenge as a work in practical theology, attending to our cultural context, narratives of God’s disruptive initiatives in Scripture, and a reshaping of leadership theories with a priority on God’s agency. With years of experience as teachers, consultants, and guides, they name practices which lead to more faithful participation. Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruption is wide-ranging in cultural and biblical scholarship, challenging in its engagement with numerous leadership studies, and practical with its focus toward the on-the-ground life of churches and organizations.

Author: Mark Branson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830896562
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
All mission is local?the people of God joining the work of God in a particular place. In Starting Missional Churches Mark Lau Branson and Nicholas Warnes introduce us to seven missional churches while examining common challenges regarding their genesis. Using stories, interviews with pastors and a look at common preconceived notions of church planting in the West, this guide brings together resources of the missional church conversation with the creativity and energy of those who are experimenting with diverse planting activities and practices across the country. Curated by a pastor and a professor, this work highlights diverse modern examples of congregations focused on reaching their communities with a missional mindset. Learn from these stories how to build a vibrant, engaging church—one that generates redemptive witness in our neighborhoods and in our world.

Author: Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611645425
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In this volume, highly esteemed scholar Kevin Vanhoozer introduces readers to a way of thinking about Christian theology that takes the work he began in the groundbreaking 2005 book, The Drama of Doctrine, to its next level. Vanhoozer argues that theology is not merely a set of cognitive beliefs, but is also something we do that involves speech and action alike. He uses a theatrical model to explain the ways in which doctrine shapes Christian understanding and forms disciples. The church, Vanhoozer posits, is the preeminent theater where the gospel is "performed," with doctrine directing this performance. Doctrines are not simply truths to be stored, shelved, and stacked, but indications and directions to be followed, practiced, and enacted. In "performing" doctrine, Christians are shaped into active disciples of Jesus Christ. He goes on to examine the state of the church in today's world and explores how disciples can do or perform doctrine. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Faith Speaking Understanding sets forth a compelling vision of what the church is and what it should be doing, and demonstrates the importance of Christian doctrine for this mission. Disciples who want to follow Christ in all situations need doctrinal direction as they walk onto the social stage in the great theater of the world. The Christian faith is about acknowledging, and participating in, the great thing God is doing in our world: making all things new in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Doctrine ministers understanding: of God, of the drama of redemption, of the church as a company of faithful players, and of individual actors, all of whom have important roles to play. In an age where things fall apart and centers fail to hold, doctrine centers us in Jesus Christ, in whom all things hold together.

Author: Stephanie Spellers
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1640654259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
"This book will make a profound difference for the church in this moment in history." — The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry Sometimes it takes disruption and loss to break us open and call us home to God. It’s not surprising that a global pandemic and once-in-a-generation reckoning with white supremacy—on top of decades of systemic decline—have spurred Christians everywhere to ask who we are, why God placed us here and what difference that makes to the world. In this critical yet loving book, the author explores the American story and the Episcopal story in order to find out how communities steeped in racism, establishment, and privilege can at last fall in love with Jesus, walk humbly with the most vulnerable and embody beloved community in our own broken but beautiful way. The Church Cracked Open invites us to surrender privilege and redefine church, not just for the sake of others, but for our own salvation and liberation.

Author: Alka Dhillon
Publisher: SelectBooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1590793595
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
How can women flourish when they’re constantly being caught in a never-ending battle of conflicting interests? Work, success, family, ambition—today’s women have never been given the tools to integrate the disparate aspects of their lives into a harmonious whole. Alka Dhillon’s The OM Factor®: The Woman’s Spiritual Guide to Leadership teaches the tools for achieving balance, success, and sanity amidst today’s chaos. The OM Factor® is your key to both immediate and long-term fixes for the stress and imbalance dominating your life. Dhillon’s holistic approach to well-being incorporates meditation, yoga, and food for reflection. Each of the 7 tools is designed to cultivate the desired trait or outcome needed for spiritual evolution. Easily applicable “plug-and-play” tools are designed to deliver instant results in emotionally challenging situations. OM Factor prescriptions address when you feel overwhelmed, inadequate, anxious, indecisive, resentment, taken advantage of, or disrespected. As you delve further, an infinitely adaptable toolbox will become available to you. Alka Dhillon brings her years of success as a CEO and entrepreneur to help you discover your own roadmap to equilibrium. Allow internal fulfillment to engender your external success.

Author: Alan J. Roxburgh
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 0819232114
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Church has changed-this book shows how to follow the Spirit out into the community, and reimagine our mission for the 21st century. The decline in mainstream religious denominations is palpable. For years, the question has been: How can we "fix" the church' With thirty years of experience pastoring congregations in small towns, suburbs, and urban neighborhoods in renewal, Alan J. Roxburg knows that the answer is to instead, embrace the church, reinvigorate communities with the Holy Spirit, and re-engage our neighbors with the mission of God. In this timely perspective on the role of the church in today's environment, he shows how each one of us can become a leader in that mission. Roxburg distills the best missional wisdom for both clergy and laity alike, and offers concrete steps in transforming individual congregations and society. He sheds light on the troubling history that brought us to this point, and how ecumenically and globally we can implement the simple but necessary steps to build from it. An urgent call for Christians to guide any church-large or small-to becoming a vital center for a new spirituality, Joining God is an invitation "to embark on the journey you always wanted to take" (Philip Clayton, scholar, activist and author of Transforming Christian Theology).

Author: Tod Bolsinger
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830873872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Over 100,000 Copies Sold Worldwide! 14th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year Explorers Lewis and Clark had to adapt. While they had prepared to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, instead they found themselves in the Rocky Mountains. You too may feel that you are leading in a cultural context you were not expecting. You may even feel that your training holds you back more often than it carries you along. Drawing from his extensive experience as a pastor and consultant, Tod Bolsinger brings decades of expertise in guiding churches and organizations through uncharted territory. He offers a combination of illuminating insights and practical tools to help you reimagine what effective leadership looks like in our rapidly changing world. If you're going to scale the mountains of ministry, you need to leave behind canoes and find new navigational tools. Now expanded with a study guide, this book will set you on the right course to lead with confidence and courage.