Becoming the Pastor You Hope to be: Four Practices for Improving Ministry - Softcover

Blodgett, Barbara J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156699411X ISBN 13: 9781566994118

Publisher: RLPG/Galleys, 2011

Synopsis

Becoming the Pastor You Hope to Be unapologetically urges clergy readers to develop practices that will help them become more excellent ministers. A long-time field educator, now serving as a denominational staff person responsible for ministerial formation, Barbara Blodgett believes excellence is a matter of doing simple things with care and consistency. Ministers who commit themselves to excellence will grow and flourish, and even become happier in ministry. Blodgett urges ministers to resist praise and instead to ask for feedback, to seek the company of mentors who are better than the reader is at what he or she does, to be vulnerable before their peers in order to learn from them, and to define themselves as a leader who does not merely take activist stances but risks entering into deep, transformative relationships. Improvement in ministry, Blodgett argues, comes about not through extraordinary leaps and bounds but rather through adoptingsimple habits and carrying through on small but thoughtfully made choices. Addressed to ministers, ecoming the Pastor You Hope to Be is also a valuable resource for discernment committees, Christian educators, leaders of continuing education and lay education programs, and all those who partner with theological schools to help form ministers, both lay and ordained.

About this title

Review

The heart of this book is on improving and relying on others to help you become the pastor you want to be. In describing ways to do this, Blodgett explores carefully and compellingly the company of mentors, the theory and practice of peer groups, and leadership in public ministry.--Robert E. Reber, Interm President, Bexley Hall Seminary

Grounded in long and rich experience, Becoming the Pastor You Hope to Be looks forward to a church and to leadership styles needed for the future. Blodgett challenges some conventional wisdom and sloppy thinking that needs to be challenged. And she gives reality-tested practical advice on key practices for pastors who seek to be excellent in their vocation. Besides all that she writes well.--Anthony B. Robinson, Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations and What's Theology Got to Do with It: Convictions, Vitality, and the Church

This book makes us better ministers as we move from our desire for praise to an appreciation of feedback and move beyond the Lone Ranger syndrome to greater trust in our mentors and peers. Barbara Blodgett helps us to be more effective in our jobs and more faithful in our vocation.--David Bartlett, Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

About the Author

Barbara J. Blodgett is Minister for Vocation and Formation for the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio. She was previously the director of Supervised Ministries at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. A former pastor ordained in the UCC, she is also an ethicist who speaks and writes on moral issues in the ministry. She is author of Lives Entrusted: An Ethic of Trust for Ministry and Constructing the Erotic: Sexual Ethics and Adolescent Girls.

About this edition

• Publisher: RLPG/Galleys
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 156699411X
• ISBN 13: 9781566994118
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196