Transforming Pastoral Leadership

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.

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.

Using real-world case studies and examples, Hunsinger and Latini helpfully guide pastors and lay leaders through effective and compassionate ways to deal with discord.

This book helps pastors and church leaders understand the role their personal transformation as Jesus's disciples plays in effective congregational leadership. It shifts the focus of leadership from techniques and charisma to spiritual transformation and developing emotional maturity so leaders can effectively lead congregations to embrace change. End-of-chapter discussion questions are included. The first edition sold more than 20,000 copies and has been regularly used as a textbook over the past fifteen years. The second edition has been revised throughout and includes a greater emphasis on Bowen Family Systems Theory.

Logos Book of the Year Meetings can sap our energy, rupture community and thoroughly demoralize us. They can go on forever with no resolution. Or they can rush along without consensus just to "get through the agenda." What if there was another way? Church boards and other Christian leadership teams have long relied on models adapted from the business world. Ruth Haley Barton, president of the Transforming Center, helps teams transition to a much more suitable model—the spiritual community that discerns God's will together. In these pages you will discover personal and group practices that will lead you into a new way of experiencing community and listening to God together.

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.

Pastors around the country continue to look for the program, the book, or the sermon series that will turn their plateaued or declining churches around. But what if the answer to revitalizing the church was closer to home? According to trusted church leadership expert Aubrey Malphurs and veteran pastor Gordon E. Penfold, it is. They believe that pastors themselves are the key. In a time when many pastors are jumping from church to church every two or three years as they search for the "right fit" where they can "make a difference," churches are suffering from a lack of sustained leadership from pastors with a viable vision for ministry. In Re:Vision, Malphurs and Penfold take pastors through a process of discovery and self-evaluation designed to help them re-envision their role, create a culture for positive change, and recruit people to come alongside them as helpers and encouragers. Multiple appendices offer self-diagnostic tools and surveys to help pastors assess their strengths and weaknesses for more effective ministry.

This book provides a model, based on Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, to help pastors lead in a manner that brings lasting change and maturity to congregational members. The project addresses the need for pastors to move beyond a transactional mindset to a transformational approach to leadership, and it provides a model for them to follow. Tim Gregory grounds the call to transformational leadership in a close reading of Paul, drawing out multiple dimensions of what that leadership should strive to develop in a faith community. Tim Gregory has served in pastoral ministry for the past 23 years, the last 18 of which as the senior pastor of Family Worship Center in Santa Fe, TX. Tim holds a PhD in organization leadership with a concentration in ecclesial leadership. He has led teams around the world ministering to pastors and church leaders in countries such as Cambodia, Niger, Tanzania, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and the Philippines. .