Transformative Pastoral Leadership In The Black Church

Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church offers practical wisdom from comparative analysis of the experiences of a male pastor and a female pastor in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Church leaders must be transformed themselves as they are transforming their churches to serve their communities. From his research of the perspectives of laity, clergy, and scholars of the black church, Jeffery L. Tribble offers hopeful stories and helpful strategies for those who believe that the black church must continue its historic mission of being an instrument of survival, elevation, and liberation for its people. Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church is an important contribution to studies of black religion, womanist thought, and social justice.

For many congregations, change creates discomfort. Pastoral leaders are often expected to be experts who manage and control realities beyond their expertise, experience, and ability. That expectation, a product of modern approaches to leadership, views the pastor as responsible for maintaining the status quo. Transforming Pastoral Leadership responds to this context by challenging readers to rediscover key biblical themes around the shepherding metaphor as well as key theological themes steeped in our historical faith narratives. Readers are challenged to consider the origins of our dominant leadership practices and to reconsider how Christ's preeminence as the leader of his church requires us to reconstruct leadership practices that are faithful to his preeminence. To assist congregations, Transforming Pastoral Leadership suggests two processes that might help congregations discern God's missional promptings as they move forward into God's future and experience conflict as opportunities for transformation.

In response to a variety of critical intellectual currents (post-colonial, post-modern, and post-liberal) scholars in Christian theology and ethics are increasingly taking up the tools of ethnography as a means to ask fundamental moral questions and to make more compelling and credible moral claims. Privileging particularity, rather than the more traditional effort to achieve universal or at least generalizable norms in making claims regarding the Christian life, echoes the most fundamental insight of the Christian traditionG�öthat God is known most fully in Jesus of Nazareth. Echoing this scandal of particularity at the heart of the Christian tradition, theologians and ethicists involved in ethnographic research draw on the particular to seek out answers to core questions of their discipline: who God is and how we become the people we are, how to conceptualize moral agency in relation to God and the world, and how to flesh out the content of conceptual categories such as justice that help direct us in our daily decisions and guiding institutions.

In the past, clergy malfeasance was mentioned only in passing by group members or adherents. The subject was invisible and those who studied it were often stigmatized as hostile to religion itself. Today clergy misconduct is acknowledged as a social problem with growing conceptual and theoretical implications. In Pastoral Misconduct, Anson Shupe and Janelle M. Eliasson-Nannini argue that the history and traditions of black pastoral leadership, coupled with the close identity of many black congregants with their pastor, congregation, and racial subculture, creates opportunity structures that facilitate predatory behavior. Familiarity and mutual identity frequently leads victims to drop their normal levels of wariness. Major denominations and minor sects have been studied, but this unique study by Shupe and Eliasson-Nannini pursues nuances of pastoral bad behavior in a new context. This book is not a tabloid treatment of the American black church. In fact, the black church becomes the vehicle for a major new sociological development: a theory of clergy misconduct in any minority religion.

The key to creating and growing a more unified and holistic church is the multi-ethnic and Christ-centered community that offers a strong connection between theology and practical ministry models, and that nurtures believers who are wrestling with what it means to be the church of the Bible today. Most books on racial reconciliation or multi-ethnic ministry center on the theological foundations, history, or social problem aspects of the topic. The Post-Black and Post-White Church offers a practical, hands-on blueprint for developing and sustaining a multi-ethnic and Christ-centered community. Written by Efrem Smith, an innovative and passionate African American leader of the Covenant Evangelical Church and founding pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this groundbreaking book shares his skills, experience, and wisdom for congregations who want to grow into a multi-ethnic, missional identity. The Post-Black and Post-White Church connects theology and practical ministry models for wrestling with what it means to be church in an increasingly multi-ethnic world that is polarized by class, politics, and race. The book embraces Jesus as one who was both Jewish and multi-ethnic and focuses on a theology of reconciled, multi-ethnic, and missional leadership.

The Transforming Male Leaders in the Twenty-First Century is a blueprint for all male leaders, especially those who are looking to be transformed into game-changing transformational leaders in their homes, churches, and/or the community. Males, especially African American males in leadership, have been on a decline in churches, homes, and the community in recent decades. This book will train all men in transformative learning and transformational leadership which will spark a transformational revival in our male leaders. This book is a recipe for transformation. It uses a qualitative method of inquiry which lays out a treatment plan including a three-week training module utilized to investigate the focus on the lack of black male leadership in the church, home, and the community. This book presents the state-of-the-art research in black male leadership. This book provides information drawn from literature review relative to the absence of black male leadership in the church. This book shares significant concepts and pertinent works by leading authors and theorists in black male leadership. This book also provides an in-depth explication of transformational leadership and transformative learning theories as they correlate to current literature on the lack of male leaders in the black church. Transforming Male Leaders in the Twenty-First Century" establishes a theoretical foundation using a theological, biblical, and historical perspective to undergird the subject matter of transforming black males in the local church. This book also examines the work of leading theorists in male leadership. This book is a solution to a male leadership crisis in the black home, church, and community. This book will enlighten all leaders regarding the leadership crisis in America and sound the bell for transformation across the globe! One must be transformed by training, love, grace, and blood of Jesus to be a transformer in the home, church, or community.

An accessible introduction to Black Theology, helping readers understand the inherited legacy of ‘race’, ethnicity, difference and racism, as well as the diversity and vibrancy of this movement.