Pastoral Helps
Showing 3451–3500 of 4114 results
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Saying Goodbye : A Time Of Growth For Congregations And Pastors
$23.00Add to cartLeaving a pastorate is hard on both congregation and pastor. Learn how to make this transition a growth experience for all. Written for congregations and pastors, Goodbye skillfully weaves accounts from clergy, laity, and educators of seven denominations with White’s own insight as a former General Presbyter to create a resource for meaningful and healthy partings. Includes examples of a “farewell” worship service and litany for closure of a ministry.
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Inviting Church : A Study Of New Member Assimilation
$23.00Add to cartEver wonder why some people never return after their first visit? Why some join but you rarely see them? Or why others become active participants in your church family’s life and worship? Discover how your congregation can meet growth challenges. Based on Alban Institute research, The Inviting Church includes a self-study design for assessing assimilation processes and analyzing visitors’ perceptions.
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Running Through The Thistles
$13.00Add to cartCan how you leave a church affect your feelings about leaving or create “baggage” you take to your new congregation? Gain insight into termination styles and how they affect both you and your parishioners. Oswald guides you through Alban Institute research findings, using real-life illustrations.
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Transforming Rituals : Daily Practices For Changing Lives
$23.00Add to cartToday’s rapid, deep, and pervasive changes in North American culture present myriad challenges for faith communities now and in the years ahead. Oswald explores the use of rituals as spiritually healing practices for the home, congregation, and broader community. He teaches congregational leaders how individuals and groups can use familiar new rituals to name, evaluate, live out, celebrate, and grow through change.
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Generous Saints : Congregations Rethinking Ethics And Money
$23.00Add to cartA constructive theology and ethics of money in the Christian life, this series addition is by James Hudnut-Beumler, dean and associate professor of religion and culture at Columbia Theological Seminary, and deals with vital questions. “What does the Lord require? what is the true meaning of the term ‘commonwealth?’ and how does the church build a stable base for its members to live ethical lives?” A positive approach to forming the basis for new thought and discussion.
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Total Ministry : Reclaiming The Ministry Of All Of Gods People
$23.00Add to cartUsed successfully in Episcopal dioceses and congregations, Total Ministry describes a new way for local congregations (especially small ones) and judicatories to organize their response to God’s call and to provide resources, support, and encouragement for ministry-a way that is not dependent only on full-time, seminary-trained, ordained leaders.
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Music In Churches
$23.00Add to cartClergy, worship or music committees, organists, and choir or music directors will find this a practical and invaluable guide to the role and power of music to express and form faith. Clark researched twenty-four Episcopal and United Methodist congregations to discover how churchgoers express their faith through music. Discover how music can either enhance or detract from tradition and faith experience. Explore how it can shape your congregation’s character.
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Understanding Your Congregation As A System (Reprinted)
$32.00Add to cartParsons 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. Be sure to order some packs of the CSI along with this valuable resource
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Single In The Church
$20.00Add to cartSingle adults are expected to comprise 52% of all Americans by the year 2000. Explore the concerns, needs, and fears of this segment of our society and how your church may be ignoring it. Discover practical ways churches have opened their ministries, worship, and congregational life to include singles. An eye-opening discovery that a church growth model need not rely on family-oriented programs and structures
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Making Your Church More Inviting
$23.00Add to cartIf you’ve read the book or viewed the course, now lead your church in study with this workbook approach to Alban’s Inviting Church materials. Its fifteen sessions are designed to help clergy or lay leaders guide committees or study groups through a dynamic exploration of their congregation’s IQ (invitation quotient). Discover how well you invite, welcome, and incorporate new members. As participants uncover the inviting elements of your church, they develop a personal witness style that emerges comfortably from their individual gifts.
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Evaluating Ministry : Principles And Processes For Clergy And Congregations
$23.00Add to cartGrounding evaluation in the theological and organizational context of mission (everyone a minister), Hudson describes case studies of four successful evaluation models that include the whole church. She suggests how “whole church” reviews might result in stronger pastoral ministry and new directions for mission. An important resource that will help clergy and laity explore mutual ministry, judicatory executives strengthen congregations, and new pastors get through their first congregational evaluation.
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Once And Future Church
$23.00Add to cartMead takes a broad look at past and present changes in the church, and postulates a future to which those changes are calling us. Denominations, once structured to deliver resources to far-off lands of foreign mission, now encounter the mission field in the layperson’s workplace and the community surrounding the local congregation. Thus, the church is called to reinvention for this new mission frontier. Study guide information follows.
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Personality Type And Religious Leadership
$30.00Add to cartCombining pastoral and behavioral science expertise, the authors spell out ways type and temperament theory illuminate the clergy role. Learn how to use the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types to recognize and affirm your gifts, work with your liabilities, and understand and accept those with whom you minister.
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Behavioral Covenants In Congregations (Workbook)
$26.00Add to cartThis down-to-earth workbook gets to the heart of modern congregational life: how to live creatively together despite differences of age, race, culture, opinion, gender, theological or political position. Alban Senior Consultant Gil Rendle explains how to grow by valuing our differences rather than trying to ignore or blend them. He describes a method of establishing behavioral covenants that includes leadership instruction, training tools, resources (visual models, examples of specific covenants), small-group exercises, plans for meetings and retreats.
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In Between Church
$23.00Add to cartAlban Senior Consultant Mann draws on her lengthy experience in helping congregations deal with the hurdles and anxieties of expansion or contraction in size. Often, congregations experiencing size change do not recognize the need to change culture and form as part of the successful adaptation process. Mann details the adjustments in attitude-as well as practice-that are necessary to support successful size change.
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Leading Change In The Congregation
$31.00Add to cartMany books have been written about leadership and change, but until now none has focused on the kind of change that tears at a community’s very fabric. Alban senior consultant Gil Rendle provides a respectful context for understanding change, especially the experiences and resistances that people feel. Rendle pulls together theory, research, and his work with churches facing change to provide leaders with practical diagnostic models and tools. In a time when change is the norm, this book helps to “lead change” in a spiritual and healthy way.
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Discerning Your Congregations Future
$31.00Add to cartDrawing 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.
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Equipping Pastor : A Systems Approach To Congregational Leadership
$26.00Add to cartThe authors draw on their combined experience to create an exciting model of congregational leadership that understands congregations as relational systems. Learn how relational processes can liberate members for ministry and mission in the world and release pastors for appropriate leadership.
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Attending Parishioners Spiritual Growth
$23.00Add to cartIn this clarion call to tend to spiritual growth, Williamsen provides a much-needed resource for clergy. Discover how to assist parishioners in their prayer and spiritual life. Learn how individual spiritual growth can flow back into the congregation’s growth as a community. Explore new ideas and practical approaches to using Christian education, worship, retreats, devotional guides, and church meetings as tools to achieve spiritual growth. Learn about spirituality gender differences; the importance of your own spiritual life; spiritually grounding lay leaders; encouraging spiritual friendships and study groups. For clergy interested in developing spirituality at the individual level; seminary professors who want to help their students explore this aspect of parish ministry; and judicatory executives who wish to encourage their clergy in this area.
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Faith
$9.99Add to cartYou may have faith, but may also realize that it can mean many things. Is it belief or trust or waiting or moral behavior or something else? Or is it all those things? This resource targets adult learners in their 20’s and 30’s. It challenges you to examine a powerful biblical image that defines and shapes your life, and includes these helpful features: Bible background on the particular image: faith. Articles on group leadership, organizing a study group, using small Break-Out groups, and choosing teaching options. Case studies throughout the text and in the appendix to use as discussion starters or as a bridge to your own experiences. Seven easy-to-lead sessions with clear teaching helps on every page. Options for service projects.
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Once And Future Pastor
$25.00Add to cartHobgood examines new pressures on clergy that are emerging in the “post-Christendom era:” financial stresses; the effects of a conflicted and confrontational culture; the needs of an increasing number of people living broken or dependent lives; dysfunctional behavior on the part of pastors and parishioners; questions regarding clergy respect and job satisfaction. How is ministry being affected by these changes? What skills will clergy need as they enter the new century? An invaluable resource thoroughly grounded in research and full of practical observations for clergy, judicatory executives, seminary professors, and long-range planners.
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Embracing Diversity : Leadership In Multicultural Congregations
$20.00Add to cartExplore a variety of approaches congregations have taken to embrace differences; identify leadership issues diversity creates in congregations; and discover programmatic suggestions drawn from the experience of multicultural congregations to address these issues. This book helps readers to understand their own experience with racial and cultural differences and is a guide for gathering diverse people into the life and mission of the congregation
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User Friendly Evaluation
$23.00Add to cartEach congregation must evaluate itself in light of its own mix of gifts, backgrounds, talents, and opportunities. Presenting the best of evaluation theory past and present, Woods shows clergy and lay leaders how to engage in mutual evaluation-not judgment-of ministry, mission, and community as a shared responsibility. The goal is building up the congregation. A special chapter provides commentary from church evaluation experts Roy Oswald (Alban), Paul Light (ABUSA denominational staff), and Jill Hudson (PCUSA judicatory executive) on dilemmas congregations face in evaluation
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Small Groups In The Church
$20.00Add to cartThis planning and leader training handbook offers a distinctive broad-based, small-group approach to building community. From the Jewish havurot to Christian koinonia, you will gain a thorough understanding of community, learn how to plan an effective small-group ministry, how to select and train leaders for all kinds of small groups, and how to start small groups that are a part of and not apart from their congregations. Appendices provide an overview of the sociological, psychological, and biblical theological literature on community and a wealth of presentation and leader training resources.
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Pastoral Visitation
$19.00Add to cartThis book integrates the theory and practice of pastoral visitation to increase the effectiveness of pastors and trained laity for an intentional, proactive program of pastoral visitation in the local church. In order to increase pastoral visitor’s positive experiences of effectiveness, the author presents basic “how to” information in a straightforward manner characterized by vivid illustrations and case studies. The book provides a theological basis for pastoral visitation.
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Making A Good Move
$20.99Add to cartIf you’re thinking of applying for a position in another church, you’ll appreciate the sensible guidance Coyner offers on transitioning from one pastorate to another! Discover how to establish working relationships with church members, move smoothly out of the “honeymoon” phase, and more. A valuable resource for new and seasoned pastors.
Michael Coyner argues that though the early months and years of a new pastorate can be stressful and difficult, they can also be particularly fruitful. These new beginnings can be among the most rewarding times of a pastor’s career, especially if the minister seizes opportunities for establishing and strengthening relationships with church members and plans carefully for the transition out of the initial “honeymoon” period. Drawing on years of experience as a pastor of local congregations as well as extensive work supervising pastors, Coyner provides solid, sensible guidance on making a good move into a successful ministry. Written in consultation with pastors from both “call” and “appointment” systems, this book will be of value to those who are starting a new ministry placement, whether they be fresh out of seminary or long-time seasoned veterans.
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Teaching Children Bible Basics
$21.99Add to cartHelp the 8- to 10-year-olds in your Sunday school learn to use the Bible! Children gain a working knowledge of the Bible’s structure, organization, and significance. The interactive 30-minute lessons stimulate creativity and critical thinking; each includes a lesson focus, Scripture text, materials list, learning activities, discussion questions, and closing prayer. A practical guide for teachers!
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Pilgrim Road
$28.00Add to cartChristian faith and life are not static; in fact, they can be viewed as a journey. Preeminent theologian B.A. Gerrish uses the motif of the journey of Christian life to present the cardinal Christian themes-such as God, faith, sin, forgiveness, evil, and moral action-as well as to address important related contempory questions.
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Never Call Them Jerks
$26.00Add to cartNo church is immune to the problems that can arise when parishioners behave in difficult ways. Responding to such situations with self-awareness and in a manner true to one’s faith tradition makes the difference between peace and disaster. In this must-read book, Boers shows how a better understanding of difficult behavior can help congregational leaders avoid the trap of labeling such parishioners and exercise self-care when the going gets rough. Foreword by David W. Augsburger, author of Conflict Mediation across Cultures.
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Heart Of Black Preaching
$45.00Add to cartCleophus LaRue argues that the extraordinary character of black preaching derives from a distinctive biblical hermeneutic that views God as involved in practical ways in the lives of African Americans. This hermeneutic, he believes, has remained constant since the days of slavery.
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Fun Activities For Bible Learning
$22.95Add to cartDo you ever have trouble keeping the attention of the children in your Sunday school classroom? Do you find that the young people get restless? Would you like some help in getting kids interested in the Bible? Then use one of the activities in this book!
Stimulate your youngsters’ interest and a spirit of positive competition with these …
Puzzles
Paper and pencil games
Memory work activities
Bible drill games
Board games
Action games that teach Bible truths and spiritual valuesAll this while providing fun ways to use their pent-up energy! These activities are perfect for Sunday school classes, children’s church, Bible clubs, Christian and home schools, Christian camps, or for home family times.
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They Came Together In Bethlehem
$12.95Add to cartThis book provides a complete worship resource for busy pastors …
Sermons for Advent, Christmas Eve, and the Sunday after Christmas
Advent candle readings with scripture verses
Pastoral prayers
Children’s object lessons
Dramatic monologues which can be presented by the pastor or a lay personAssign the materials … schedule the sermon titles … then relax and enjoy the season with your family as you employ these inspiring materials in your congregation.
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Culture Of Disbelief Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartThrough fascinating anecdotes and narrative stories, Donna Schaper relates these ancient texts to contemporary situations. She skillfully applies the Gospel of life and hope to circumstances of suffering and death.
Chapters include:
Letting Death Go — Mark 8:31-38
Paying Attention To The Modern Light — John 3:14-21
Junk Food And Holy Tables — John 18:1-19
Being Spiritually Odd — John 20:19-31
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Out Of The Whirlwind Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartWriting on the lectionary texts from Job, Stroman deals with extremely contemporary issues. We discover in these messages that Job’s struggles are the same as ours. The texts from Ruth and 1 Samuel introduce us to four important Old Testament women: Naomi, Orpah, Ruth, and Hannah. They all play an important role in the biblical narrative, as well as providing insight into vital current issues.
Chapters include:
*Taking The Good With The Bad — (Job 1:1; 2:1-10)
*Making Our Feelings Known — (Job 23:1-9, 16-17)
*The Tale of Three Women — (Ruth 1:1-8)
*God Remembers — (1 Samuel 1:4-20)
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Parables Of Jesus Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartThe parable is the most well-known literary form presented in the Gospels – and since narrative or story sermons are such a prominent element in the contemporary pulpit, pastors are preaching on the parable texts more frequently than ever.
This book provides a thorough and complete examination of each of the parables in Cycle B of the Revised Common Lectionary. Each parable study includes:
discussion of the theme
spiritual food for the journey
application of the parable to contemporary life
openings for preaching
points of challenge and questions to ponder
exegesis and explanation of the parable
context of the parableThese studies will be a classic resource for preaching … or useful for Bible study and inspiration.
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Humming Till The Music Returns Cycle B
$17.95Add to cartOne day God will stand again as solo conductor on the podium of the universe, and lead in the crashing finale of the symphony of Life. But until then, we who are left in this world with the buzzing and blaring of many competing and changing “top 40” hits need to keep humming the tune that Jesus taught. (from the Introduction)
The scripture lessons for these seasons combine themes of waiting in expectation and displaying the effects of eternity within the context of time. Though the dulling ache of sin and corruption pushes the song of creation out of tune, Jesus intervenes with a melody of grace, and the church keeps the music alive in witness and testimony while longing for the chorus of eternity to shout hallelujah once again. Wayne Brouwer’s messages ring loud and true in the ears of those who hear these sermons.
Sermon titles include:
I Can’t Wait — 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Tilting The Balance Of Power — Romans 16:25-27
Anti-Venom Serum — Galatians 4:4-7
Finding the Right Superlatives — Ephesians 1:3-14
Beyond Personal Preferences — 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
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Wearing The Wind Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartStephen Crotts tells us that “nothing is spared the Spirit’s influence. He shapes our friendships, our marriages, our love for our enemies, our heritage, sexual passion, wisdom, even our femininity and self-esteem.” One of the nation’s most eloquent preachers pulls contemporary wisdom from these ancient texts with sermons such as “How To Affair-Proof Your Marriage,” “How To Treat Your Enemies,” and “Godly Sexual Passion For An X-Rated World.” Preachers will find much food for thought in these ten sermons based on Cycle B Old Testament texts.
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From This Day Foward Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartGod is into relationships, and he restores them by grace and love. Paul Kummer picks up the covenant/marriage/renewal themes in these scriptural texts and creatively develops them into inspiring messages of love and hope.
Sermon titles include:
Forsaking All Others — Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
A New Name — Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Our Jealous Husband – Exodus 20:1-17
Something Old, Something New — Jeremiah 31:31-34
Shameless Passion — Isaiah 50:4-9a
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Defining Moments Cycle B
$14.95Add to cartThe Old Testament readings in the lectionary are often neglected during the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons in favor of the more direct and easier-to-preach New Testament passages. William Self brings his creative imagination to these scriptural passages and gives them new life for the preacher.
The sermons of this veteran preacher are written with the pew in mind. They are for people who hurt, for people who wait, for people who face defining moments, and for churches that struggle to proclaim the Gospel. Amply illustrated from life and literature, these sermons can be read for inspiration by lay persons and clergy alike.
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Ashes To Ascension Cycle B
$12.95Add to cartThese sermons lift up the themes of suffering, reconciliation, and the unmerited goodness of God extended to all through Jesus Christ. Stroman never loses sight of the kerygma in his tightly packed messages. He addresses a world where hatred and violence prevail with the message of divine love, which has enriched souls and kindled faith throughout the centuries.
Titles include:
Beginning The Journey To Calvary — 2 Corinthians 5:20b
Once And For All — 1 Peter 3:18a
Promises — Promises — Romans 4:21
The Right Person For The Job — Hebrews 5:5-10
Life – And Then Some — 1 John 5:9-13
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Partners In Ministry
$21.99Add to cartCould you use a partner in your ministry? Utilize the laity! Writing from the standpoint that ministry is the fundamental vocation of all Christians, the authors provide practical guidance on how the work of clergy and laity complements and strengthens each other; understanding of the functions of each; and direction on building ministry teams.
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New Beginning For Pastors And Congregations
$29.00Add to cartThis wise and practical guide provides clear insight for both pastors and congregations on how to begin a healthy, productive new pastorate or make a fresh start in an ongoing ministry. Author Kennon L. Callahan, today’s most sought-after church consultant, has conferred with thousands of pastors and congregations, helping them discover their strengths and gifts and showing them how to work together in service to their community and mission. Here he offers fresh suggestions on how pastors and congregations can ensure a solid future together, whether they are newly beginning or beginning again.
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Connecting With The Congregation
$20.99Add to cartWhether you know it or not, the timeless principles of rhetoric are at work in your preaching. When you take time to master this ancient art form, you’ll learn to consider not only what you’re saying but where, how, and to whom you’re saying it. You’ll soon get your message across with new power!
