Archives


Five Practices Of Fruitful Congregations

Schnase contends that sucessful congregations often have certain characteristics in common. These fundamental practices demonstrate congregational health, vitality, and fruitfulness. They also help churches fulfill their mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the tranformation of the world. The five practices of fruitful congregations: -Radical Hospitality -Passionate Worship -Intentional Faith Development -Risk-Taking Mission and […]


Fragile Hope

Is your congregation concerned primarily with health and stability, or mission and outreach? Does it always or usually seek a pleasant sense of harmony and fellowship, or does it vibrate with an edgy energy? Are the members risk averse, or risk takers? In this innovative book Tom Bandy explains how harmony-the desire to minimize conflict […]


Gathered Before God

What is the central purpose of the church today? How can churches experience renewal through worship? InĀ Gathered before God, Jane Rogers Vann answers these important questions by studying ten vibrant small, medium, and large churches. Her findings, she argues, show that worship is the most important thing churches do and is vital to the renewal […]


Healing The Heart Of Your Church

The statistics documenting pastoral unhappiness and frustration are everywhere. Most surveys indicate that eight out of ten pastors consider themselves discouraged in ministry. What s more, most pastors have heard the super ministry success stories and have tried to implement many of the same principles in their church only to see the same failed results […]


Holy Conversations

Planning can be challenging in the contemporary congregation, where people share a common faith and values but may have very different preferences and needs. Much of the literature on congregational planning presents it as a technical process: the leader serves as the chief problem solver, and the goal is finding “the solution to the problem.” […]


Kicking Habits

Kicking Habits: Upgrade Edition is the groundbreaking book on systemic change that has literally birthed new congregations, rejuvenated tired leaders, and transformed declining churches. It tells the story of thriving church life through the experiences of the institutionally alienated, spiritually yearning public. It provides the big picture of thriving church life in the postmodern world. […]


Kicking Habits with Tom Bandy

This video is based on the popular church transformation trilogy ‘Kicking Habits,’ ‘Coming Clean’ and ‘Facing Reality.’ Presenter Tom Bandy helps you understand the changing spiritual yearning of the public, and explains the basic elements of the experience and mission of a thriving church. His systems approach to church transformation contrasts the declining church system […]


Memories, Hopes, And Conversations

This book recounts the experience of a church that used appreciative inquiry to harness their energies, shift their congregational conversations, and renew their sense of hope. 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 […]


Moving Off The Map

In his book Kicking Habits: Welcome Relief for Addicted Churches, Thomas Bandy provided the ‘big picture’ of the five stages of congregational renewal and transformation. Similarly, in Growing Spiritual Redwoods, Bandy and Bill Easum provided new metaphors for change to help congregations break out of outmoded attitudes and assumptions, and described the nature of spiritual […]