This wise and practical guide provides clear insight for both pastors and congregations on how to begin a healthy, productive new pastorate or make a fresh start in an ongoing ministry. Author Kennon L. Callahan, today's most sought-after church consultant, has conferred with thousands of pastors and congregations, helping them discover their strengths and gifts and showing them how to work together in service to their community and mission. Here he offers fresh suggestions on how pastors and congregations can ensure a solid future together, whether they are newly beginning or beginning again.

Callahan challenges the accepted wisdom that a year or more must pass before a new pastor can have an impact on a new congregation. He observes that the first three months are decisive for shaping a successful long-term relationship with any new church, and that the first few days set the tone for the months and years that follow. "In the first few days and weeks," he says, "you and your congregation teach one another who you plan to be together. Many pastors, in these early days, constructively teach their congregation that they plan to be a good shepherd, a helpful preacher, a wise and caring leader, a community pastor. Many congregations participate in helping this constructive beginning to grow forward."

A New Beginning for Pastors and Congregations offers fresh wisdom for every ministry, new or ongoing, on how to grow stronger, deeper, and more helpful. Illuminating his insights with stories of real ministries, Callahan identifies specific ways that pastors and congregations can develop healthy, constructive relationships of trust, respect, appreciation, and genuine love, fulfilling their objectives, hopes, and mission.

Today's most sought-after church consultant shows how you can make a healthy start in your church

A New Beginning for Pastors and Congregations offers practical, concrete wisdom for both pastors and congregations on how to begin a healthy new pastorate or create a new beginning in an ongoing ministry. Well-known church consultant Kennon L. Callahan teaches us that nurturing the pastor-congregation relationship and securing a future together happens by discovering and building upon shared gifts and strengths.

"An excellent match develops between a pastor and a congregation when the two resonate with one another in four ways," he says. "First, the pastor and the people fall in love with each other. Second, the pastor's competencies mesh with the objectives and hopes of the congregation and the congregation's mission in the community. Third, both the pastor and the people mutually grow in the mission. Fourth, the pastor and the people grow whole and healthy lives together. They experience the grace of God, the compassion of Christ, and the healing hope of the Holy Spirit. They advance the gifts and competencies with which God is blessing them."

A New Beginning for Pastors and Congregations offers clear guidance on shepherding, preaching, and sharing in the community, and reveals some of the possibilities and obstacles of the early months, illuminating the ways in which a minister's family can thrive in a new congregation. This book is a must-have for every ministry-new or ongoing.

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