This study was carried out under the topic: Congregational Transformational Leadership. It explores how church leaders in the Province of the Anglican Church of Uganda-Mityana Diocese can attain congregational and community ...

<p>As a Specialized Interim Minister (SIM) I walked with a congregation in transition using a model of accompaniment based on the Emmaus Road story (Luke 24:13-35). To help the congregation tell their individual and collective stories, to come to terms with the past, and to open up space for discovery, healing, and change, I drew upon a variety of embodied, participatory methodologies. My project provides examples and explores the effectiveness of the participatory methodologies used in the areas of worship, with the leaders, in symplaysiums, and through the congregation's project of building and walking a labyrinth.</p><p>Action research formed the basis of the doctor in ministry project as I accompanied the congregation as both a participant and reflective observer. Six months following the conclusion of the interim period, I returned to collect data from the congregation through a questionnaire and individual interviews. The responses and my analysis seek to answer the question: Did the participatory methodologies used in worship, with leaders, in the symplaysiums, and in building the labyrinth open up space for discovery, healing, and change at Haven Shores Community Church?</p>...

Global instability, national turmoil, and ecclesial ambivalence mark our current day. What is the church to do? This project emerges as more germane than I ever imagined, proposing the answer to that question as, ...

<p>This project is a personal and pastoral invitation to church leaders to devote themselves to prayer and a ministry of the word as the central task of their vocation. Through autobiographical method and phrases from Eugene H. Peterson's translation of Acts 6:1-4, this paper puts one pastor's contemporary experience through the filter of the early church's experience in a way that is descriptive and prescriptive for church leaders today.</p><p>Chapter one begins with "hard feelings." This chapter does not market a plan for a perfect church and pastor. Instead, it describes. Through journals, recorded dreams and personal correspondence it explores some of the pressures and pains of ministry. It suggests that pastors and parishes may need, like the early church, to refocus because of what qualitative research and autobiographical method suggest many in the church are experiencing.</p><p>Chapter two supplements autobiographical method with group process and family systems analysis. It documents the first two years of one new pastorate where the pastor intentionally focuses on prayer and proclamation. Comments from a team of congregational members measure the effectiveness of such an approach. Family systems theory monitors the response of the larger congregation. Theories on managing change and research into the start of new pastorates round out this chapter on "a meeting of the disciples."</p><p>Chapter three suggests it wouldn't be right for pastors and parishioners to turn away from focusing on a ministry of the Word. Using the parable of the soils as its central metaphor, this chapter critiques the church growth movement as a distraction from what pastors should have as their primary focus. The author's own experience as a church planter in the Reformed Church in America, his travels to Israel, his extensive study in commentaries on the book of Acts and the mentoring of Eugene H. Peterson all are the soil out of which this chapter grows.</p><p>Chapter four joins word ministry with a waiting ministry inviting pastors, parents and parishioners to pray. Ethnographic interviews "field test" the claims of this chapter. The mentoring of the senior pastor of the largest church in our area makes prayer more practical and congregational. Perhaps most significant in this chapter, however, are the excerpts from a young couples' pain and prayer for the birth of their premature daughter.</p><p>Finally, chapter five concludes with not the least, priests. It invites church leaders to become not successes, but successors of those who have gone before them. Christologically, biblically, historically and autobiographically this chapter suggests that church leaders have already had their work cut out for them. They must, the chapter contends, preach and pray because it is what Jesus does, what the bible mandates, what his followers continue and what many ordained pastors have promised</p>...

<p>As the church has moved into a new century, today's pastors have needed to ask themselves: If our ministries are going to be effective in this 21 st century context, what should those ministries look like? In other words, what shape should pastoral ministry take today? It's a necessary question to ask when pastors want to do more than simply 'do their jobs' (which traditionally includes preaching, teaching, pastoral care, administration, and, more recently, leadership) and thereby 'run' the church, but instead want those pastoral activities to make an increasingly transformative difference in people's lives. The fundamental issue in this project, in other words, is that of ascertaining what sort of shape pastoral ministry needs to take that will most likely lead to significant spiritual impact. The premise in this document is that effective pastoral ministry generally will not happen in church settings where a pastor does most of his or her work in isolation from the other members of a congregation, and where the congregation in turn sees the pastor's work as disconnected from what they are called to do. Instead, transformative pastoral ministry will happen within a congregational web, where pastors work collaboratively with members of the church, enlisting the power of relationships, maximizing the use of the spiritual gifts of each member, and harnessing the spiritual energy that is unleashed by the creation of ministry teams....

Bowen's Family System Theory offers a comprehensive way to think about human behavior. This paper examines how one pastor embodied the theory in a way that takes into account the more inclusive transformation of the gospel. ...

This dissertation offers an interview tool to help congregational leaders identify, draw out, and nurture Eph. 4:11 Equipping Leaders in order to prepare Christians for works of service (Eph. 4:12). This interview tool is ...