Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Living Church
None
Help for the Small-church Pastor
Churches with fewer than 150 people will always be a bastion of Christianity despite today's megachurch emphasis. Pastors dealing with the strengths, problems and opportunities of smaller churches will value Bierly's timely guidance and encouragement. Knowing what makes small churches tick helps their leaders invest time and energy wisely into the kind of growth that matters.
Effective Small Churches in the Twenty-First Century
Dudley's work in Making the Small Church Effective (1978) broke new ground in understanding the dynamics of life in the small congregation. In this revised edition, Dudley revisits the small church, posing new questions reflective of the considerable changes that have swept over small churches in the last two decades. Among the most significant recent developments are shifts in institutional loyalty and individual's sense of identity in relation to larger groups and organizations. Dudley explores the key components that contribute to a small congregation's sense of unity and that motivate its members to more faithfully live out their faith.
Turnaround and Beyond
Since its publication in 1995, Ron Crandall’s Turnaround Strategies for the Small Church has become required reading for anyone striving to revitalize the ministry of a small membership congregation. That book was built on extensive interviews and studies conducted in dozens of small membership churches, across several denominations, that had experienced significant turnaround. In a new study Crandall has now returned to those congregations to see what it takes to make the turnaround work over a period of years. Learning much from both the churches who maintained significant growth in numbers and ministry, and those that failed to do so, he offers even more helpful insight to any congregational leader seeking to take a small membership church into a new phase of witness and mission.
Christian Education in the Small Membership Church
Christian Education is part of the vital ministry of all churches, but especially of small membership churches. In a culture that places great value on numbers, small membership churches often mistakenly see themselves at a disadvantage. Small membership churches can create wonderful opportunities to form and disciple faithful followers of Jesus Christ. In offering viable Christian Education, the role of the pastor is critical. This book invites pastors to lead their small membership churches to develop an imaginative and holistic vision of Christian Education. Read the Introduction
Under One Steeple
Remember the era when people loved living in Christian community? So why not bring that way of life to a "community of churches" in which longtime members of cavernous, cathedral-type buildings open their lives and belongings to homeless churches? For decades now, God has been bringing revival to the US through immigrant church startups exploding with fearless vigor while many of our once stalwart churches continue to coddle a handful of folks each Sunday. Why not "stand on the table" and see God at work from a different vantage point? Some congregations own huge structures, others need space, we all need each other, and we can learn to share, kindergarten-style, first our passion for Jesus and his agenda, and secondly our stuff--holding the former tenderly, the latter loosely. It's all God's anyway, and will crumble without being used, so let's share it all gladly while we can! By concentrating on placing people's hands in the hand of Jesus, we can create a community of churches under one steeple, then under another steeple, then another, unlocking every room and every heart!
Big Lessons from Little Places
"Churchwide discussions on structure and growth tend to focus on the importance of increasing “butts in the pews and bucks in the plates.” Suggestions have been made on merging smaller dioceses to create larger ones and closing the doors of congregations which do not have Sunday attendance of at least 200. This is a model of scarcity without consideration of the value and abundance to be found in small churches. Discover the roles, possibilities, promise, and potential of being a small church! Travel with Kay Collier McLauglin as she takes the back roads and byways of the United States, visiting small churches that are making a difference in their community. Each chapter tells a story about an example of faithfulness in the life of a small congregation and relates that story to the essentials of faithful living and being church. The book challenges the decision-makers in the Episcopal Church to think beyond traditional measures and shortterm economic fixes to discover the life-giving opportunities and models presented by the smallest congregations.
Religious Education in the Small Membership Church
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE SMALL MEMBERSHIP CHURCH is a comprehensive resource aimed at making religious education more effective all along the line in small churches. From a living ecology of solid theory and proven research, this book develops exciting possibilities and helpful procedures to maximize religious education opportunities in small church settings. Packaged with this volume is a huge wall chart summarizing highly important information on religious education in small membership churches.
How to Get Along With Your Church
By culture, George B. Thompson Jr. means not just racial, ethnic, economic, or regional culture, but also a congregation's way of doing things--its history, customs, conventions, and procedures. In order to launch and maintain a successful ministry, pastors and other church leaders must come to grasp that unique culture of their parish. They must develop a culture capital within their congregations, meaning that they invest themselves deeply in how their church does its work and goes about its ministries. The author presses clergy to answer such questions as How well do I know what I'm getting into? and Have I been adopted yet? and even Is it time to move on? The book is ideal for pastors in solo settings, but pastors in multiple staff settings will also find the author's insights helpful.
Disrupted
"I should not be writing this. I had a malignant brain tumor. I had an extremely malignant brain tumor. By all medical statistics, I should be dead. Last time I checked, dead people don't write." So begins Julie Anderson Love's memoir. It is the funny, horrifying, compelling story of her battle with an extremely malignant brain tumor. The good news is, she survived; the scary news is, according to medical statistics and prognoses, she wasn't supposed to. Her book is not just a How-To-Be-The-Patient-From-Hell, although one could read it for that; it is the story of a woman of faith who believes in a loving God, who faces the possibility of her imminent death. As one reader described it: "This...
