Cracking Your Church's Culture Code

Cracking Your Church's Culture Code
Author: Samuel R. Chand
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2010-09-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0470872977

Strategies for transforming a toxic church culture Why is it that the best strategic plans and good leadership often are not able to move churches in the desired direction? Sam Chand contends that toxic culture is to blame. Quite often, leaders don't sense the toxicity, but it poisons their relationships and derails their vision. This work describes five easily identifiable categories of church culture (inspiring-accepting-stagnant-discouraging-toxic), with diagnostic descriptions in the book and a separate online assessment tool. The reader will be able to identify strengths and needs of their church's culture, and then apply practical strategies (communication, control and authority, selection and placement of personnel, etc.) to make their church's culture more positive. Discusses how to diagnose the state of a church's culture Reveals what it takes to put in place effective strategies for creating a more positive church culture Author served on the board of EQUIP (Dr. John Maxwell's Ministry), equipping five million leaders world-wide. This important book offers a clear guide for understanding and recreating a healthy church culture.

Creating Your Church's Culture

Creating Your Church's Culture
Author: Stephen Blandino
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2013-09-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781492211860

How do you create a thriving organizational culture in your church? Churches are committed to a spiritual mission, but it is often the organizational aspects of the church that hinder the mission from moving forward. Cultivating health in the organizational side of church culture requires a thorough understanding of the church's vision, systems, staffing, relationships, and leadership. When the culture is healthy, it delivers consistently healthy outcomes that advance the mission of the church. But when cultures are unhealthy, or worse, toxic, they perpetuate constant dysfunction and derail the church's purpose. In Creating Your Church's Culture, Stephen Blandino gives you the tools and strategies to address the organizational side of your church's culture. You'll learn how to define your culture, activate the Culture Equation, hire staff who fit your culture, and infuse your values into your culture. You'll learn how to create a learning culture, develop effective systems, increase employee and volunteer engagement, measure healthy, and uproot bureaucracy. This practical book is loaded with wisdom and inspiration to improve the organizational aspects of your church's culture.

Creating a Missional Culture

Creating a Missional Culture
Author: JR Woodward
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830866795

Missiologist and church planter JR Woodward offers a blueprint for the missional church--not small adjustments around the periphery of the infrastructure but a radical revisioning of how a church ought to look that entails changing how we think about leadership and what we expect out of discipleship.

Look Before You Lead

Look Before You Lead
Author: Aubrey Malphurs
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441240357

Pastoral ministry is challenging work, especially when a pastor ignores the church's "congregational culture" when seeking to minister to church members or implement changes. Just as a pastor studies to interpret the Scriptures in order to understand and preach the Bible, he or she must interpret the local church culture to better understand and move it toward accomplishing its mission and vision. In Look Before You Lead, trusted church leadership expert Aubrey Malphurs shows pastors how to read their church's unique local culture, how to change or revitalize it, and even how to combine two cultures when one church adopts another. This unique resource approaches leadership and discernment from a solid, biblical perspective and includes a number of helpful appendixes, such as a behavior, belief, and a values audit, that are key to reading and understanding the culture.

Culture Shift

Culture Shift
Author: Robert Lewis
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-04-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780787975302

Culture Shift, written for church leaders, ministers, pastors, ministry teams, and lay leaders, leads you through the process of identifying your church’s distinctive culture, gives you practical tools to change it from the inside-out, and provides steps to keep your new culture aligned with your church’s mission. Real transformation is not about working harder at what you’re already doing or even copying another church’s approach but about changing church culture at a foundational level.

Contagious Generosity

Contagious Generosity
Author: Chris Willard
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2012-07-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310893143

The general practices related to church funding aren’t producing the same results they have in the past. There is a general acceptance that something has changed but little talk or interest is coming from traditional church leader training sources such as denominational entities and seminaries. Pastors are largely left to their own devices to “figure this out.” They need a lifeline. While some churches are experiencing exponential growth, some churches - despite their best efforts - have been unsuccessful at moving beyond survival mode. Coupled with increased competition from other nonprofits and a decline in the commitment to give to the church first, churches risk losing the funding they need. A growing number of leaders are beginning to discover there is another way and are struggling to understand what makes one church generous and another not. There is a need in the market to offer a simple, working definition of “generosity” and reveal the “secrets” some church leaders seem to have simply stumbled upon which are resulting in unexplainable ministry growth and unprecedented church funding even in the midst of tough economic times. The content of this material was developed and refined by Jim Sheppard and Chris Willard through years of ministry leadership in the local church, consulting with church leaders across a broad spectrum of church settings, and through participation in and leadership of the Generous Church Leadership Community facilitated by Leadership Network. Of particular benefit will be the collection of observations and best practices gleaned during the Generous Church Leadership Community that originated within real-life church leadership situations and scenarios by highlighting specific challenges, methods, and successes.

Church Unique

Church Unique
Author: Will Mancini
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2010-06-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0470435348

Written by church consultant Will Mancini expert on a new kind of visioning process to help churches develop a stunningly unique model of ministry that leads to redemptive movement. He guides churches away from an internal focus to emphasize participation in their community and surrounding culture. In this important book, Mancini offers an approach for rethinking what it means to lead with clarity as a visionary. Mancini explains that each church has a culture that reflects its particular values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions and shows how church leaders can unlock their church's individual DNA and unleash their congregation's one-of-a-kind potential.

The Come Back Effect

The Come Back Effect
Author: Jason Young
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493414100

The key to growth as a church, youth ministry, or a business is getting first-time guests to come back. And as any good manager of a hotel, a store, a restaurant, or an attraction knows, the key to getting guests to come back is not actually the rooms or the product or the food itself; it's how guests feel when they're there. It's about hospitality. No matter how much effort and time we spend on excellence--stirring worship time, inspiring sermons, a good coffee blend in the foyer--what our guests really want when they come to our churches is to feel welcome, comfortable, and understood. Written by a church consultant and a hospitality expert, The Come Back Effect shows church, ministry, and even business leaders the secret to helping a first-time guest return again and again. Through an engaging, story-driven approach, they explain how service and hospitality are two different things, show how Jesus practiced hospitality, and invite leaders to develop and implement changes that lead to repeat visits and, eventually, to sustained growth.

BLESS

BLESS
Author: Dave Ferguson
Publisher: Salem Books
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1684510880

What If You Could Change the World without Changing Your Daily Routine? When you’ve been transformed by God’s love, you can’t help but want others to experience the same grace and freedom. But how do you share it without scaring them away or offending them? For most Christians, “evangelism” is an intimidating word that suggests handing out tracts to strangers or doing other awkward things. But what if there was a more organic, more authentic way to share your faith with your friends, neighbors, and coworkers? Dave and Jon Ferguson have found five simple, straightforward practices that will allow any believer to do just that. And by consistently living them out, you can affect not just individual lives but your entire neighborhood and community—one person at a time.

The Gospel

The Gospel
Author: Ray Ortlund
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2014-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 143354086X

How does the church portray the beauty of Christ? The gospel is the greatest message of all time addressing the greatest need of all people. However, the good news about Jesus does more than just promise eternal life to all who believe. In the latest addition to the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series, pastor Ray Ortlund explains the gospel's power to transform individuals from the inside out and create beautiful human relationships. This short book helps readers experience the power of God as they are encouraged to trust in Christ and allow him to transform their beliefs, perspectives, and practices. For everyone who wants to be true to the Bible and honest with themselves, this book offers a practical guide to the fundamental teachings of the gospel and how they affect our relationships with others.