Michael Beck
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Ecumenical Field Guide To Fresh Expressions
$18.99Add to cartLearn the essentials of fresh expressions for your church.
An Ecumenical Field Guide for Fresh Expressions is a practical manual for understanding and implementing Fresh Expressions for a church in any denominational setting.
The Fresh Expressions movement is a new way of thinking about the local church and a new way of doing church as a congregation. It refers to new (fresh) iterations or types (expressions) of ministry, usually outside the confines of the church building. These iterations or types of ministries are formed intentionally but organically out in the community, where people are. They are based on shared activities or interests, where people are gathering already, and where the people are open to or interested in learning about Jesus. Christian people share their own stories of how Jesus is part of their lives. Often, these gatherings become regular and increasingly begin to adopt the practices of a church community, like worship, service, study, and giving. Thus, they become fresh expressions of the church from which they sprang.
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Gardens In The Desert
$19.99Add to cartYour church can thrive in this strange new world!
Many church people and leaders feel like exiles in their own land. We are facing tremendous challenges. And, just as for those who came before us, the challenges are also opportunities. If we adapt to our new environment, as people and as the body of Christ.
Gardens in the Desert offers local and denominational church leaders a practical, inspired, scripture-rooted vision for how we can do this?how we can become God’s church now for God’s intended future.
Michael Adam Beck and Ken Carter draw from Jeremiah 29 to provide wise guidance for leaders and churches seeking to adapt and thrive. Jeremiah’s imperatives resonate deeply today, compelling us to experiment, cultivate new relationships, prioritize faith-sharing with people of all ages, interact with others in humility, to “seek the wellbeing of the other,” and to move forward with confidence.
The chapters are brief and packed with practical ideas and instruction. The authors include ideas from leaders inside and outside the Church, offering multiple ways for leaders to see and understand what it means to be an adaptive leader and how to shape an adaptive church. The book is rich with lists, diagrams, illustrations, clarifying questions, and frameworks, making the material easy to grasp. It is an excellent resource to share with leadership teams at every level of the local church and in denominational settings.
Gardens in the Desert is for laity, leaders, and clergy who have been feeling lost, immobilized, powerless?as exiles?and who are ready to do something new.
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Doing Justice Together
$17.99Add to cartTransform your church with grace. Doing Justice Together introduces a process using Scripture as a souce of inspiration and instruction for pastors and church people to move through together, to re-envision and reorient themselves away from old, harmful habits. Beck and Hand show pastors how they can, over time, lead the congregation to become a place where racial harmony, justice, and liberation are intrinsic to the structure and life of the church. The authors lay out four pathways for discerning and correcting the unjust patterns that often sneak into church life unnoticed. They also share other leaders’ stories from a variety of settings where this process has led to healing, revival, and hope. Following the pathways, pastors and congregants will be equipped to thoughtfully transform their church. They’ll make changes with grace and care, honoring and including longtime members. And they’ll begin new ministries–perhaps reaching people they could never have imagined reaching before–becoming a fresh expression of church in their community.
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5 Congregational Personality Types
$18.99Add to cartCan churches in the 21st century stop, reverse, or prevent decline – and even become healthy, thriving congregations?
Missional innovator, pastor, and church renovator, Michael Beck, says they can.
But the old cookie cutter ways of doing church won’t cut it in today’s world. If churches are going to stop the shocking rates of pastoral burnout and exodus from the pews, they must understand that every church has a distinct personality type, which can keep it stuck or propel it into maturity, depending on how it’s used.
Now, for the first time in history, you can understand and leverage your congregation’s culture and personality using the groundbreaking 5 Congregational Personality Types(TM) model. Based on proven methods from psychology and ministry archetypes in Scripture, The Five Congregational Personality Types will help you unearth:
*Which of the five congregational personality types your church is
*Your congregation’s unique culture and how to nurture your church’s strengths
*The “shadow side,” or weak point, of your congregation’s personality type – and how you can transform this into a strength
*Your #1 strategy for growth and clear next steps to take
Get The Five Congregational Personality Types and discover exactly what to do next to grow your church in the 21st century.
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Fresh Expressions Of The Rural Church
$19.99Add to cartCultivate “fresh expressions of church” in your rural congregation with Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church by Tyler Kleeberger and Michael Beck.
Congregations became the hub of rural lifefor a time. The place where people gathered not only on Sundays to hear a sermon but to help each other work the land, break bread, and form deep relationships. The rural church was the place where they found a community that could sustain them through the joys and struggles of life with the land. In many ways, a rural church expressed the essence of church in general: To be the guiding hand into the life of a place.
After disruptions from agriculture, industrialization, and technology, many rural churches (like the people around them) feel forgotten. Has urbanization made life outside the urban sprawl irrelevant? Can rural congregations struggling to survive find hope and new life? If so, can healthy rural churches catalyze a different future for the world?
Tyler Kleebergerand Michael Beck think so. They have served rural congregations for over a decade, Michael in North Central Florida and Tyler in Northwest Ohio. They have discovered the potential and beauty of life and faith in the rural setting. The ageing congregations they serve(in declining rural communities) found ways to cultivate “fresh expressions of church” with people who call rural simply “home”. They serve contexts in the often forgotten, wild places of our contemporary world.
This book includes breakthrough stories from the diversity of rural contexts across the US. It lays out a fresh theology for rural life and offers principles for harnessing the potential of what some consider the forgotten spaces.