Foundational Resources

Waiting for Gospel

Douglas John Hall explores how the church, both Mainline and Evangelical has lost the heart of its message, the good news. He argues that the church has opted for a theology of glory instead of the theology of the cross.

The End of Christendom

Douglas John Hall argues that Christendom is over. Christendom began with Constantine. He argues that the church was corrupted by the intertwining power and influence. Unlike many others, Hall believes that the end of Christendom is good news for the future of the church.

America's Changing Religious Landscape

“The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages.”

America’s Changing Religious Landscape

The Resiliency Advantage

Resilience is the ability to adapt to life’s changes and crises. Developing resilience helps people develop analytical, creative, and practical problem-solving skills. In the Age of Disestablishment, it is essential that pastors develop the ability to develop resilience. Resilience based not only on psychological principles, but also a solid theological foundation.

Mindset

Carol Dweck argues that their are two basic mindsets. The fixed mindset believes that we have set limit to our skills and intelligence. A growth mindset believes that through new learning and hard work, people can learn and grow. The fixed mindset leads people to seek to prove themselves. The growth mindset leads people to admit that they don’t have all the answers, but that they can take of the challenge of finding answers to seemingly impossible challenges.

Piper

Piper is a animated short by Pixar. More importantly it is a beautifully told metaphor of resilience and growth mindset. It is also guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Holy Resilience

Resilience is about how people respond to trauma and crises. In Holy Resilience, David M. Carr explores how God’s people develop resilience through the traumas and catastrophes that shaped the People of God.

Hopeful Imagination

Walter Brueggemann is the dean of Old Testament scholars in America for the past generation. He anticipated the Age of Disestablishment in the late 1980s. He described it as relinquishment and drew parallels between the exiles in Babylon and the Mainline church in America. He also offers a message of hope for the church today.

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Thousands of leadership books have been written in the past thirty years. Harvard researcher, Ron Heifetz, started a revolution when he described a new form of leadership, adaptive leadership. This leadership does not seek technical answers to the problems that we face, but adaptive answers. This leadership model is based on new learning and asking the right questions.

Boyatzis' Model of Intentional Change

Richard Boyatzis asked the question, why do organizations not change even though they spend millions of dollars on continuing education. He developed a new model of moving from learning information to applying it to the context. This project will draw on Boyatzis’ Model of Intentional Change to help participants learn and apply new material.