WHERE DID 25 YEARS GO?

Twenty-five years ago this spring, I entered into contract to lead a ministry consultation with St. Jude Episcopal Church in Valparaiso, Florida.  I was a 33-year old executive pastor of a nearby growing Florida congregation, interested in applying best practices (for that time and context) in a variety of churches.  More than one thousand such churches later (and eleven books later), certain themes have emerged in my work.  In the space below, I lift up a few of these themes and connect them to some of the resources I have developed along the way (often with help from partners):

(1) Getting a local church’s culture ready to grow ministry:

•  Fling Open the Doors: Giving the Church Away to the Community (2002)

•  I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church (2006)

•  The Surprise Factor (2013), co-author Kim Shockley

•  The Readiness 360 survey and report, co-developers Christie Latona and Gary Shockley, along with the accompanying book Multiply Your Impact (2013).

 

(2) Building a sense of community with our neighbors – planting the spiritual village from which great ministries emerge:

• Fling Open the Doors: Giving the Church Away to the Community (2002)

•  Weird Church: Welcome to the 21st Century (2016)

•  Multi: The Chemistry of Church Diversity (2019)

•  Cultural Competency (2021)

 

(3) Journeying with God into a Deep Re-think of how we do Christian faith with one another:

•  Finding Jesus on the Metro (2009)

•  Weird Church: Welcome to the 21st Century (2016), co-author Beth Estock

 

(4) Building the teams and doing the homework to launch new things well!

•  Launchpad church planting curriculum, developed with the Path 1 team @ umcdiscipleship.org – a 3-day basic training for leaders of new ministries and churches (2010, with multiple updates across the last decade).  Bener Agtarap and I are co-leading a digital version of Launchpad this summer on five consecutive Mondays starting July 12.  Please contact me for more information (pnixon@umcdiscipleship.org)

•  Multi: The Chemistry of Church Diversity (2019)

•  Cultural Competency (2021)

•  Launching a New Worship Community (2021), co-author Craig Gilbert

I am so glad that Beth Estock pushed so hard in her collaboration leading to the publication of Weird Church – because, after 2020, what we wrote then is now totally mainstream – and perhaps the single resource I am most proud of.  The other resource that continues to just sparkle across the years is the Readiness 360 inventory.  It is now normed and amazingly predictive of a church’s capacities for navigating a rigorous and transformative ministry journey.  The best seller remains I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, but the above two will eventually surpass it in terms of sales and just overall reach.

All of the above resources are available on Amazon, except Readiness 360 (see www.readiness360.org) and Launching a New Worship Community, which will not be released in August of this year.