The Once And Future Church

Mead takes a broad look at past and present changes in the church, and postulates a future to which those changes are calling us. Denominations, once structured to deliver resources to far-off lands of foreign mission, now encounter the mission field in the layperson's workplace and the community surrounding the local congregation. Thus, the church is called to reinvention for this new mission frontier

In 1991 The Once and Future Church by Alban Institute founder and former director Loren B. Mead created an instant sensation in congregational circles with its prophetic insights into the life of the church in a post-Christendom era. Still often-quoted and in demand, the book stands as Alban's all-time best seller. Two subsequent titles, Transforming Congregations for the Future and Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church, extended Mead's original vision with similar success. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Once and Future Church, Alban released all three of these books as a single, special edition hardcover. In addition to these classic texts in beautiful, newly designed formats, this collection features an interview with Loren Mead discussing how his views have changed since the books' first publications and his current thoughts on directions for the church in the twenty-first century. This hardcover volume is the perfect gift for graduating seminary students, new congregational leaders, or for pastors whose original editions of these three books may be dog-eared or missing--and a wonderful addition to every church library. All who love the church and pray for the future of our congregations will value this opportunity to have Loren Mead's seminal works in a single, long-lived edition.

Church boards, congregational planning groups, judicatory study groups, and people exploring their own religious experiences in the congregation will find themselves in new territory, using their own insights as well as Mead's. Can be used independently with either or both of Mead's books; includes suggestions for Bible study and group exercises.

Mead presents five key challenges facing today’s churches-and how they represent opportunities for the evolutionary, transformative changes he believes must take place in congregations if the church is to remain a viable institution into the twenty-first century. Readers of Mead's Once and Future Church and Transforming Congregations for the Future will want to continue the journey begun with those books. A must for congregational leaders at all levels.

The book elaborates on these five challenges: To transfer the ownership of the church; to find new structures to carry our faith; to discover a passionate spirituality; to feed the world's need for community; to become an apostolic people.

Few other books have caused as much stir in the Church of England in recent decades as has For the Parish. Twelve years on from its publication, in the wake of the Covid pandemic and the ‘Save the Parish’ movement much has changed, but much has stayed the same. In this follow up to this influential and controversial book, new and already familiar themes are newly inflected in the debates of the present time: principally minster hubs, the ‘Emerging Church’ programme and the Strategic Development Fund. Alison Milbank challenges the ecclesiology, models of theological anthropology and the analysis of secularism that are present (explicitly or implicitly) in these movements, and offer a striking and encouraging vision of what the parish model could offer to our anxious world.

Church growth models have often been long on promises and short on disciple-making. We continue to watch consistent church attendance shrink, and our desire to reach the lost is infected with a need for self-validation by growing our numbers at any cost. If we believe that God wants his church to grow, where do we go from here? What is the future of the church? Drawing from his 20 years and 15,000 hours of consulting, author Will Mancini shares with pastors and ministry leaders the single most important insight he has learned about church growth. With plenty of salient stories and based solidly on the disciple-making methods found in Scripture, Future Church exposes the church's greatest challenge today, and offers 7 transforming laws of real church growth so that we can faithfully and joyfully fulfill Jesus's Great Commission.