By David Young Summary: To be a diaspora Christ-follower is a liminal experience with all of the tensions of being in-between, inherent instability, and heightened levels of stress. It’s common for such people to seek stability, or a place of cultural adjustment, for their own well-being. ICs need to understand their context—not necessarily to bring […]
Rest/Counsel/Care Resources for International Church Leaders This is a sampling of retreat/counselling/vacation/guesthouse venues/services available for retreat/restoration/vacation for cross-cultural workers and people in ministry. I hope you find it helpful. Compiled by Melanie Driedger Counselling/Coaching Eric & Rachel Dufour have lived and ministered cross-culturally. “We have been counseling pastors and missionaries since 2008. Our goal is […]
Summary: These unique characteristics (mobility, diversity, leadership vacuum) can be approached as problems for pastoral staff and leadership. For example, research on high turnover of congregants in ICs showed that the transient nature of the congregation resulted in relational, emotional, and ministry fatigue for pastors. However, these challenging characteristics can be perceived through a different lens—a paradigm […]
Summary: This oasis/nurture mindset—with its primary inward focus on member care and shepherding—is inadequate for making disciples of this highly mobile, diverse, accomplished group. By making room for apostolic leadership and switching to a missional paradigm, the IC can change from an oasis mentality to that of a strategic launching pad into God’s purposes for […]
In her book, Thinking in Systems, pioneer in systems thinking Donella Meadows aimed to give readers “a basic ability to understand and to deal with complex systems” (Meadows & Wright, 2008, p. x). Due to the author’s untimely death in 2001, the work was edited and published at a later time. It was the hope […]
If The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry teaches you how to leverage positive experience to create vision and energy for a better future, The Thin Book of SOAR shows you how to build a framework around Appreciative Inquiry (AI) so that it can be used for strategic planning purposes within organizations of any size. This […]
In her book, The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry,[1] author Sue Hammond provides an excellent overview of the change philosophy developed by David Cooperrider and associates at Case Western Reserve University. Through this Thin Book publication, Hammond hopes to entice the reader to delve in deeper into the world of AI. Not only a student […]
As an International Church, you may get requests for Bibles in non-English languages – but don’t know where to find them! So you may be interested in our new site. It is probably the most comprehensive index of foreign language Bibles on the Internet. This site is particularly useful if you get requests for Bibles in […]