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Before he was one of the best-known church consultants in the country, Bill Easum served a lengthy pastorate in San Antonio, Texas. When he arrived at the church it was in serious decline, with the possibility of having to close its doors beginning to loom over it. By the time he left it was the most vibrant, fastest-growing congregation in its city and region. Shortly after he arrived, Easum preached a series of sermons on the book of Acts that challenged the congregation to become an authentic New Testament church. He called on parishioners to step out of their comfort zones, stop expecting their pastor to be a personal chaplain, and join together to reach their city with the message of Jesus. Preaching for Church Transformation provides updated versions of the sermons Easum preached as he issued this challenge to the congregation shortly after his arrival. Interspersed with the sermons is commentary telling the reader how to adapt them for her or his own situation. Anyone wanting to lead a congregation from the status quo to growth and faithful witness will find Preaching for Church Transformation an indispensable resource.

In hard times, you can either panic, decline, or grow. Which do you choose to do? This is not a time to tweak your church budget. It is not a time to slash and burn it indiscriminately across the board. Nor is it the time to hunker down in the bunker and wait things out. Now is the time is exercise wisdom and to act strategically. In fact, it's a great time to be the church. People need us to live out our mission as radically as we can possibly imagine. This book will help you make wise decisions about how to weather the economic storm and emerge on the other side of it a much stronger congregation. It's a simple book with a simple message: you don't get to choose when you go through hard times, only how you respond to them.

Most churches that begin small groups find that within a couple of years two things happen - the number of small groups has dwindled in size and few if any of them have birthed other small groups. So, the only way most churches keep small groups going is by reinventing them over and over, usually with the same people. The authors of this book know God has much more in store for these churches. Bill Easum and John Atkinson have both led congregations in which small group ministry proved crucial to the church's growth. Both know the pitfalls that endanger all attempts to center a congregation's life around small groups. More importantly, they understand how to make small groups growing, self-reproducing centers of Christian discipleship.

For many congregational and denominational leaders, the goal for churches experiencing declining worship attendance is to turn those congregations around. The “turnaround church” is one that has stagnated or is in decline. The old trends are reversed, new members are added, and everyone rejoices in this story of a congregation restored to health and vitality. But what if the metaphors of decline, stagnation, and loss of health just aren't getting to the problem? What if the situation is much worse than what those ways of describing it imply? What if the congregation is spiritually dead? The only solution is resurrection. Churches that have lost their sense of mission, that exist only to provide fellowship for the “members of the club,” that expect their leaders to focus solely on ministering to the members'personal spiritual needs; these churches have died to the purpose of the New Testament church, to make disciples of Jesus Christ. They cannot be turned around; they must come to life again. The key to that resurrection is leaders who are not afraid to diagnose the problem for what it really is, and who realize that resurrection is what being a Christian is about. The goal of this book is to guide the leaders of these churches through the painful, yet ultimately life-giving work of leading a church to new life in the Spirit. If you want to find new life for your church, read on...

Do you really want the mission to succeed? Are you prepared to live within clear boundaries? Are you ready to align yourself with a greater purpose? Do you have what it takes? Winning on Purpose offers leaders a way to organize congregations for success by creating structures that enable church life and health. As a comprehensive and powerful application of the biblical call to mission, Winning on Purpose sets forth the Accountable Leadership strategy. This model of leadership brings together standards for mission, boundaries, and accountability, and then shows how these standards come to life through the performance of four key players: the board, the pastor, the staff, and the congregation.To read a sample from the book click here

Bill Easum and Bil Cornelius are two strikingly different, yet surprisingly similar pastors. One undertook to revitalize a moribund mainline church; the other, to plant a new nondenominational congregation. Coming from different generations, their ministries took place under dissimilar circumstances. Yet both have experienced substantial, even explosive, growth in congregational mission and membership. Along the way they learned some important lessons, such as the centrality of strong pastoral leadership, the need for an unhesitating pursuit of excellence in all areas of the church's ministry, and the requirement that you picture an audacious vision for your church and live into that vision. Regardless of the current size of your church, you will find here inspiring, ready-to-implement ideas to help your church go BIG.

Prepares Christian congregations to fulfill their basic function - to make disciples who make disciples for Jesus Christ. This book is about helping'stuck'and'unstuck'churches either become unstuck or constantly improve their ministry of making disciples. This book is designed to help church leaders make profound changes in the way they do ministry or constantly practice methodological innovation/improvement to be effective in creating disciples churches.