Memories, Hopes, and Conversations

Memories, Hopes, and Conversations PDF Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995825
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
A second edition of Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is now available! With helpful updates throughout, the new edition features five new chapters on Appreciative Inquiry applied in real congregations. When First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, California, was asked to provide a mission study report for its pastor nominating committee, the congregation was afraid they would find themselves engaging in busy work and producing a report that would wind up in a file gathering dust. They then asked professor Mark Lau Branson to consult with them on writing this report. He invited them to join in a process of Appreciative Inquiry--a transformational organization change process--which resulted in a major shift in congregational conversations and a new sense of hope. Memories, Hopes, and Conversations recounts the experience of First Presbyterian and outlines a process that any congregation can utilize to harness the energies of the congregation at all levels of its common life. 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 four-step process--Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Innovate--that creatively employs constructive conversations and questions to evoke storytelling and spur imaginations. Branson persuasively demonstrates how concentrating on needs and problems can mire a congregation in discouragement and distract it from noticing innate strengths. By focusing on memories of the congregation at its best, members are able to construct "provocative proposals" to help shape the church’s future. Grounded in solid theory and real-life practice, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is a groundbreaking work of narrative leadership and the first book to apply the principles of Appreciative Inquiry to the lives of congregations.

Memories, Hopes, and Conversations

Memories, Hopes, and Conversations PDF Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995825
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Get Book Here

Book Description
A second edition of Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is now available! With helpful updates throughout, the new edition features five new chapters on Appreciative Inquiry applied in real congregations. When First Presbyterian Church in Altadena, California, was asked to provide a mission study report for its pastor nominating committee, the congregation was afraid they would find themselves engaging in busy work and producing a report that would wind up in a file gathering dust. They then asked professor Mark Lau Branson to consult with them on writing this report. He invited them to join in a process of Appreciative Inquiry--a transformational organization change process--which resulted in a major shift in congregational conversations and a new sense of hope. Memories, Hopes, and Conversations recounts the experience of First Presbyterian and outlines a process that any congregation can utilize to harness the energies of the congregation at all levels of its common life. 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 four-step process--Initiate, Inquire, Imagine, Innovate--that creatively employs constructive conversations and questions to evoke storytelling and spur imaginations. Branson persuasively demonstrates how concentrating on needs and problems can mire a congregation in discouragement and distract it from noticing innate strengths. By focusing on memories of the congregation at its best, members are able to construct "provocative proposals" to help shape the church’s future. Grounded in solid theory and real-life practice, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations is a groundbreaking work of narrative leadership and the first book to apply the principles of Appreciative Inquiry to the lives of congregations.

Memories, Hopes, and Conversations

Memories, Hopes, and Conversations PDF Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781566997836
Category : Appreciative inquiry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this updated edition, Mark Lau Branson outlines a process that any congregation can utilize to harness the energies of the congregation at all levels of its common life. Branson first leads readers through the foundations of Appreciative Inquiry and bracingly explores biblical texts for understanding the practice in a faith context.

Memory and Hope

Memory and Hope PDF Author: Alon Goshen-Gottstein
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532659237
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This book tackles the core problem of how painful historical memories between diverse religious communities continue to impact—even poison—present-day relations. Its operative notion is the healing of memory, developed by John Paul II. Chapters explore how painful memories of yesteryear can be healed and so address some of the root causes. Strategies from six different faith traditions are brought together in what is, in some ways, a cross-religious brainstorming session that identifies tools to improve present-day relations. At the other pole of the conceptual axis of this book is the notion of hope. If memory informs our past, hope sets the horizon for our future. How does the healing of memory open new horizons for the future? And what is the notion of hope in each of our traditions that could lead to a common vision of good? Between memory and hope, this book seeks to offer a vision of healing that can serve as a resource in contemporary interfaith relations. Contributors: Rahuldeep Singh Gill, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Maria Reis Habito, Flora A. Keshgegian, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Muhammad Suheyl Umar, and Michael von Brück

Conversations Worth Having

Conversations Worth Having PDF Author: Jacqueline M. Stavros
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523094028
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Conversations can be critical and destructive, or they can be generative and productive. This book shows how to guarantee your conversations will help people, organizations, and communities flourish. --

Churches, Cultures, and Leadership

Churches, Cultures, and Leadership PDF Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514002884
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
In a world that is more culturally diverse than ever, pastors and lay leaders need skills and competencies to serve in multicultural contexts. This rich blend of astute analysis and practical guidance offers a praxis of paying attention, study, and discernment that leads to genuine reconciliation and shared life empowered by the gospel.

Memory and Identity

Memory and Identity PDF Author: Pope John Paul II
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781405634656
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Reflecting on the challenging issues & events of his times, Pope John Paul II reveals his personal thoughts in a truly historic document. The world's greatest communicator offers a moving insight into his intellectual, spiritual, & pastoral experience.

Osceola

Osceola PDF Author: Osceola Mays
Publisher: Hyperion Books
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
A sharecropper's daughter describes her childhood in Texas in the early years of the twentieth century.

Mobilizing Congregations

Mobilizing Congregations PDF Author: John W. Wimberly,
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566997372
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
This is an in-depth look at the power teams bring to congregational work. Wimberly demonstrates that younger generations in particular are much happier working in a team, rather than a committee environment. Congregations using teams are able to mobilize members across generations for both short and long term tasks. After clarifying the differences between teams and committees, readers learn the important steps needed to set-up new teams. Leaders who simply create a team without attention to the formation process increase the likelihood of team failure. Using real-world examples and case studies, Wimberly addresses problems teams can expect to experience, as well as ways to resolve those issues. He highlights the surprising similarities between how teams and congregations function, both positively and negatively, providing keen insights from the business world and showing how they can be used to solve issues in congregations. Here readers will find both the theory and practice of making a successful transition to a congregation doing its work through highly motivated, efficient teams.

Developing Faithful Ministers

Developing Faithful Ministers PDF Author: Tim Ling
Publisher: SCM Press
ISBN: 0334048893
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Developing Faithful Ministers aims to support the work of all those involved in supervision and training relationships within the Church. The Church recognising its call to serve God and the nation seeks to equip and develop its ministers to face the challenge of ministry in a society at the threshold of Christendom that is in a mission context. It is a context where both the general public and the institutional church have significant expectations of those in ministry. Indeed, there is now an expectation of ‘demonstrable capability’ prior to being licensed to any form of permanent tenure. The demand for more professional, demonstrably capable, mission able and collaborative licensed ministers places particular weight on the efficacy of the initial training relationship. "Developing Faithful Ministers" seeks to support those who find themselves in these relationships by offering both models of good practice and sustained theological reflection on what these drivers mean for developing ministry.

Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions

Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions PDF Author: Mark Lau Branson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725271753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Leaders in congregations and Christian organizations wrestle with an unraveling of the world in which they have little experience and training. While they are offered unending resources by experts on leadership, some with claims to biblical blueprints, the challenges seem mismatched to those methods. Branson and Roxburgh frame the situation as one in which "modernity's wager"--the conviction that God is not necessary for life and wisdom and meaning--has defined the Western imagination. Because churches and leaders are colonized by this ethos, even when God is named and beliefs are claimed, approaches to leadership are blind to God's agency. Branson and Roxburgh approach this challenge as a work in practical theology, attending to our cultural context, narratives of God's disruptive initiatives in Scripture, and a reshaping of leadership theories with a priority on God's agency. With years of experience as teachers, consultants, and guides, they name practices which lead to more faithful participation. Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruption is wide-ranging in cultural and biblical scholarship, challenging in its engagement with numerous leadership studies, and practical with its focus toward the on-the-ground life of churches and organizations.