Understanding Your Congregation as a System

Understanding Your Congregation as a System PDF Author: George D. Parsons
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566996872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Parsons and Leas have created an important tool for congregational leaders in this application of systems theory to evaluating a congregation’s life and readiness for change. Church leaders can explore the forces at work and examine the systemic implications in seven key areas: strategy, process, pastoral and lay leadership, authority, relatedness, and learning. The Manual provides an overview of systems theory, complete instructions for administering and scoring the Congregational Systems Inventory (CSI), and guidance for interpreting and explaining the inventory results using sample scores. The Congregational Systems Inventory is a survey designed to sample the perspectives of church staff, governing board, and key lay leaders. Be sure to order some packs of the CSI along with this valuable resource.

Understanding Your Congregation as a System

Understanding Your Congregation as a System PDF Author: George D. Parsons
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566996872
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Get Book Here

Book Description
Parsons and Leas have created an important tool for congregational leaders in this application of systems theory to evaluating a congregation’s life and readiness for change. Church leaders can explore the forces at work and examine the systemic implications in seven key areas: strategy, process, pastoral and lay leadership, authority, relatedness, and learning. The Manual provides an overview of systems theory, complete instructions for administering and scoring the Congregational Systems Inventory (CSI), and guidance for interpreting and explaining the inventory results using sample scores. The Congregational Systems Inventory is a survey designed to sample the perspectives of church staff, governing board, and key lay leaders. Be sure to order some packs of the CSI along with this valuable resource.

Understanding Your Congregation as a System: The manual

Understanding Your Congregation as a System: The manual PDF Author: George Parsons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church management
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


How Your Church Family Works

How Your Church Family Works PDF Author: Peter L. Steinke
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995515
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Drawing on the work of Bowen and Friedman, and on his own many years of counseling experience, Peter Steinke shows how to recognize and deal with the emotional roots of such issues as church conflict, leadership roles, congregational change, irresponsible behavior, and the effects of family of origin on current relationships.

How Your 21st-Century Church Family Works

How Your 21st-Century Church Family Works PDF Author: Peter L. Steinke
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538149141
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
The first edition of How Your Church Family Works was written nearly thirty years ago, and the reach and velocity of change in the last three decades poses a new challenge for churches. Thirty years ago, churches functioned in a fairly stable environment and focused on growth an expansion. The tide has turned now, though, and supplanted increase with decline. Bowen family systems theory—on which How Your Church Family Works is based—has not changed, but its application has to be revised for the twenty-first century. How Your 21st-Century Church Family Works, the second edition of Peter Steinke’s landmark book, addresses the radically altered landscape of church sustainability with new introductory and concluding chapters bookending updates throughout the now-classic text. Core chapters of the book feature fresh examples of emotional process that are more exemplary of the current scene. One key addition is a new trigger of anxiety for churches—the change process. Change threatens the familiar and stable and suffers from negative connotations of endangering tradition. Where gradual change has been the norm for so long, churches now see a blistering pace of disruptions, some of which have forced change too early or too late, or sometimes in unproductive directions. How Your 21st-Century Church family works embraces the anxiety caused by change, transforming it from a source of anguish to a font of opportunity.

Creating a Healthier Church

Creating a Healthier Church PDF Author: Ronald W. Richardson
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451417777
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
An introduction to the Bowen Family Systems Theory and its applications both to church life and to the role of leadership in creating a healthier church, this book explains the complexities of congregational emotional life in understandable language.

Discerning Your Congregation's Future

Discerning Your Congregation's Future PDF Author: Roy M. Oswald
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995078
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Drawing on extensive consulting experience with congregations, the authors provide a step-by-step guide to congregational planning that grounds strategic planning techniques in a process of spiritual discernment. The result: members will own the vision and be eager to participate in the congregation''s calling, life, and ministry. You and your planning committee learn the theory behind the techniques, along with receiving help for addressing specific situations.

Healthy Congregations

Healthy Congregations PDF Author: Peter L. Steinke
Publisher: Alban Books
ISBN: 9781566991735
Category : Church controversies
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this sequel to How Your Church Family Works, Steinke takes readers into a deeper exploration of the congregation as an emotional system. Learn ten principles of health, how congregations can adopt new ways of dealing with stress and anxiety, how spiritually and emotionally healthy leaders influence the emotional system, factors that could put your congregation at risk, and more.

Inside the Large Congregation

Inside the Large Congregation PDF Author: Susan Beaumont
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1566995612
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
For five years, Alban Institute senior consultant Susan Beaumont has been giving voice to the organizational and leadership demands of large congregations. Through her work, she has identified five basic leadership systems that need to stay in alignment for the large church to function well for its size: clergy leadership roles, staff team design and function, governance and board function, acculturation and the role of laity, and forming and executing strategy. She has also learned that these five systems operate with some important but subtle distinctions in what Beaumont calls the professional church (400-800 in worship attendance), the strategic church (800-1,200), and the matrix church (1,200-2,000). Often, she has discovered, problems in a large congregation are related to the fact that one or more of the five systems is inappropriately structured for the size of the congregation. In other words, the church isn't acting its size. Beaumont is invested in helping large congregations 'rightsize' their leadership systems to better serve their ministry context. This book articulates why size matters and how it matters in the world of large congregations. It is written for anyone who wants to better understand the leadership and organizational dynamics of the large church anyone seeking to understand the challenges of leading from inside the large congregation.

Technology, Management and the Evangelical Church

Technology, Management and the Evangelical Church PDF Author: John Weaver
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476678162
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
This book explores the technological innovations and management practices of evangelical Christian religions. Beginning from the late 19th century, the author examines the evangelical church's increasing appropriation of business practices from the secular world as solutions to organizational problems. He notes especially the importance of the church growth movement and the formation of church networks. Particular attention is paid to the history of evangelical uses of computer technology, including connections the Christian Right has made within Silicon Valley. Most significantly, this book offers one of the first academic explorations of the use of cybernetics, systems theory and complexity theory by evangelical leaders and management theorists.

Understanding the Congregation's Authority

Understanding the Congregation's Authority PDF Author: Jonathan Leeman
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 1433688905
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Congregational authority is less about the meetings and more about the mission. Congregationalism has a bad rap for well-known reasons: inefficient meetings, upstart members, browbeaten ministers. But biblical congregationalism isn’t so much about the meetings. It’s about empowering the whole church to promote and protect the gospel. Pastors lead and equip. Members get to work strengthening one another and pursuing Christ’s mission in the world.