Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions
Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions

Author: Mark Lau Branson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1725271753

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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.

Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions
Leadership, God's Agency, and Disruptions

Author: Mark Lau Branson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1725271745

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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.

Churches, Cultures, and Leadership
Churches, Cultures, and Leadership

Author: Mark Lau Branson

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1514002884

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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.

Confessions of an Amateur Saint
Confessions of an Amateur Saint

Author: Mandy Smith

Publisher: NavPress

Published: 2024-10-08

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 164158839X

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Confession Is Good for the Soul . . . and for Your Leadership Why are so many Christian leaders burning out, losing faith, and abusing power? Rather than relying on our self-sufficiency and toughing our way through the tension, Mandy Smith invites us to confess it. As a pastor who also equips and encourages other pastors, Mandy feels the pain. Instead of offering more strategies to fix our problems, she reminds us of the call that first captured our imagination, directing our passions back to God and God’s people. In her book you will: experience the surprising freedom of grappling with a loving God be released from illusions of control into a lifestyle of healing hope rediscover your passion for ministry and your love for God and God’s people. Confessions of an Amateur Saint is a different kind of leadership book for a different kind of leader. And different is what we need these days—spiritual leadership refined by fire rather than burned out by it, a leadership unencumbered by unrealistic expectations, a leadership reconnected to the God who receives our confession with love and restores our soul for the task ahead. In a time where all Christian leaders are required to be pioneers, let Mandy skillfully guide you to a fresh, spiritually-fueled integrity, not weighted by false expectations but leading your people as your faith is increasingly shaped like Christ.

Doxology Volume 32.4
Doxology Volume 32.4

Author: Peter Bush

Publisher: OSL Publications

Published: 2021-12-01

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13:

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Doxology: a journal of worship and the sacramental life, Volume 32.4 (Advent 2021) Founded in 1984, Doxology: a journal of worship and the sacramental life is a quarterly, peer reviewed journal published by the Order of Saint Luke (OSL Publications). It focuses on emerging and historical theologies and practices of Christian worship. Print distribution is to the members of the Order globally, as well as to a number of theology departments and seminary libraries in the United States. Doxology also continues the tradition of the journal Sacramental Life, which merged with Doxology in 2020.

Unraveling Religious Leadership
Unraveling Religious Leadership

Author: Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2024-04-23

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1506496555

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Unraveling Religious Leadership considers various attributes related to the form and function of leadership within religious institutions in conversation with decolonial ideas and practices. Decoloniality, in negation of the ongoing legacies of colonialism, seeks ways of being and doing beyond white, eurowestern, modern ideals of who a leader is and what a leader does, especially in the context of Christianity and its entanglements with empire. In this book, Lizardy-Hajbi draws upon decolonial ideas, worldviews, and practices to question the current assumed understandings of religious leadership as individual, singular in role and structure, centralizing in power, possessing of expertise and select qualifications, production-oriented, and primarily change-inducing. Pulling on each of these threads invites a reconsideration of the epistemologies (knowledges) and ontologies (notions of being) that give shape to religious leadership in North American Christianity today. Lizardy-Hajbi's innovative approach directly challenges popular leadership styles in wide use among leaders today, placing these styles in conversation with decolonial scholarship, diverse realities and worldviews, and practices that disrupt idealized norms. Popular styles such as authentic, charismatic, servant, executive, and transformational leadership are found wanting in terms of their substance and utility for meaningful leadership within religious institutions. Ultimately, Lizardy-Hajbi engages readers by presenting alternative constructions that consider the myriad complexities within both the role and function of leadership, offering new ways to frame the leadership identities the church needs for today's world.

The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership
The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership

Author: Gary E. Roberts

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-04-11

Total Pages: 1729

ISBN-13: 3031013239

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This reference work offers comprehensive perspectives on servant leadership. Featuring a cadre of leading world-class scholars, practitioners, and contributing authors from diverse fields of inquiry, it aims to collate research on servant leadership with a particular focus on its moral and spiritual dimensions.It is divided into sections that center on topics such as character, philosophical influences, diversity and inclusion, critiques of servant leadership as well as examples of servant leaders Though first introduced in the 1970 by Robert Greenleaf, the field of servant leadership is still lacking consensus on a definition and a theoretical framework. The goal of this reference work is to begin to fill this gap by assembling the scholarship of the top scholars in this field and providing a go-to source for information on the theory and practice of servant leadership. This handbook will serve as an essential resource for researchers, scholars, and students of organizational behavior, human resource management, and business ethics, as well as consultants and business leaders interested in discovering the best leadership models to suit contemporary organizations.

Joining God in the Great Unraveling
Joining God in the Great Unraveling

Author: Alan J. Roxburgh

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-05-06

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1725288508

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The awareness that the churches shaped out of the European Reformations are in an advanced process of unraveling is becoming increasingly sensed by many. This book proposes a way of addressing this unraveling based on the experiences and knowledge of people who have always had to struggle with the unraveling of their own communities and worlds. It takes us outside the circular conversations of the Euro-tribal churches into dialogue with people who have been marginalized to see how they have learned to reenter their formative stories to discover ways of remaking themselves in the unraveling. The book then turns these discoveries into ways the churches can engage their own massive unraveling.

A Perichoretic Pastoral Theology
A Perichoretic Pastoral Theology

Author: Jim Horsthuis

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1000653633

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This book articulates a perichoretic pastoral theology, offering a pastoral theological response to the question of how ministering persons practice ministry in communion with the triune God. Key elements from contemporary pastoral theology—theologies of human experience, concern for human suffering, and situational attentiveness—are drawn into conversation with the doctrine of perichoresis. Jim Horsthuis provides a vision for life and ministry in relational, participational and spiritual communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The chapters explore four spiritual movements that foster this vision: (1) the move from experience to relationship; (2) the move from concern to presence; (3) the move from competence to communion; and (4) the move from practice to prayer. The book represents a unique academic contribution to both pastoral theology and Trinitarian theology.

Becoming a Missionary Church
Becoming a Missionary Church

Author: Michael W. Goheen

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2022-07-19

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1493436554

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This book offers a historical assessment and balanced critique of contemporary church movements, especially in light of missional ecclesiology. An expert on Lesslie Newbigin and an expert on contemporary church models show how Newbigin's ideas have been developed and contextualized in three popular contemporary church movements: missional, emergent, and center church. In addition, the authors explain that some of Newbigin's insights have been neglected and need to be retrieved for the present day. This book calls for the recovery of the missionary nature of the church and commends church practices applicable to any congregation.