Cracking Your Congregations Code: Mapping Your Spiritual DNA to Create Your Future - Softcover

Southern, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787955337 ISBN 13: 9780787955335

Publisher: John Wiley &Sons, 2001

Synopsis

Discover your unique strengths and values - and what God wishes for the future of your church. All congregations want to thrive and remain vibrant - but it's not always easy. Many approaches to growth and renewal don't quite fit, because they don't take into account the "spiritual DNA" of the congregation - those intrinsic characteristics that give each congregation its unique identity. Cracking Your Congregation's Code provides a practical program for reaching the heart of what must be done to survive and thrive. This unique book guides clergy and lay leaders to create or revisit their mission, vision, and values. The authors' proven, field-tested change process will help congregations in any setting refocus on what really matters in ministry: welcoming, nurturing, empowering, and serving new and current members.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Southern and Robert Norton launched Church Development Systems, a nonprofit organization and consulting practice in 1990. Together they have advised, coached, and led hundreds of congregations on the path to renewal and growth.

From the Inside Flap

How can a congregation renew itself so it can fully realize God's noble vision of transformation, maintain health, grow, and keep pace with challenging and uncertain times?
In Cracking Your Congregation's Code, church consultants Richard Southern and Robert Norton offer proven processes that allow clergy, lay leaders, and other church leaders to do just that. Using their field-tested approach, Southern and Norton guide a congregation through specific processes of discovering (or revisiting) its "spiritual DNA," which is found in its core values, mission, and vision. When a congregation is true to its DNA, current members are energized, and new members are drawn to it. Once a congregation has a clear sense of what it stands for, why it exists, and what God is calling it to do in the future, it can then create a strategic map that will guide it into that future even as conditions and circumstances change.
Cracking Your Congregation's Code is a strategic guidebook that not only assists a congregation in discovering its spiritual DNA and takes it to the next level by showing how this DNA is delivered throughout the body of the congregation using four key WelNES (welness) systems Welcoming, Nurturing, Empowering, and Serving. The authors also provide surveys to assess each system's current state of well-being. A congregation can facilitate its growth by making strategic decisions regarding these systems. It can design and monitor the necessary changes that will strengthen and maintain the health of the system.
Finally, this book carefully leads the congregation through an eight- step process that will help it create its own strategic map to serve as a navigational tool as the congregation moves in faith into the future.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley &Sons
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787955337
• ISBN 13: 9780787955335
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240