Supporting today’s leaders in their churches, communities, and beyond
Doing ministry in the 21st century is challenging. Fortress Press publishes titles that support mainline and evangelical church leaders in their efforts to lead dynamic faith communities. Topics and series cover the full range of contemporary ministry, from preaching to pastoral care and from leadership to community organizing.
Pastoral Care: A Narrative Approach offers guidance for care companions across a spectrum of care. Grounded in narrative theory, Joretta L. Marshall and Christie Cozad Neuger describe practices--based on mutual learning, deepening spiritual growth, and collaborative support--that inform lay care companioning. Curriculum support is included.
In Sustaining While Disrupting: The Challenge of Congregational Innovation, Frederick Douglas Powe Jr. and Lovett H. Weems Jr. show church leaders how to sustain and strengthen the churches they serve while guiding the critical innovation required to address a context vastly different from the one that current assumptions and behaviors fit.
Sacred Anthropology aims to equip pastors to lead congregations in times of social crisis. Tyshawn Gardner envisions the pastor as a "sacred anthropologist," argues for prophetic radicalism as a pastoral paradigm, and challenges churches to be engaged in the political and social transformation of their community.
In The Holy and the Hybrid: Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation, Ryan M. Panzer helps church leaders develop hybrid ministries through aligning the shared mission of the church with the shared values of our tech-shaped culture. The goal is to build communities that serve as the hands and feet of Christ simultaneously online and offline.
In 4D Formation: Exploring Vocation in Community, Drew Tucker builds on his definition of vocation as "meaningful, life-giving work for the world" to equip vocational explorers with the confidence and skills to examine, clarify, and affirm their purpose and identity, and ultimately to experience God's presence in and purpose for their lives.
In The Visual Preacher: Proclaiming an Embodied Word, Steve Thomason's winsomely illustrated text shows preachers basic principles and visual techniques to create and use images that will make them even more effective communicators than they already are. Preachers need not be skilled artists or technological wizards to apply Thomason's ideas.
The authors look closely at both the cultural phenomenon of stand-up comedy and theories of humor, asking what preachers can learn from both. Divine Laughter brings the task of preaching into conversation with both the comedic parts of the Bible and the theological parts of the comedic in order to bring a new kind of life to preaching.
Fifty percent of Americans, including clergy, are lonely, according to leadership development consultants Mary Kay DuChene and Mark Sundby. In A Path to Belonging: Overcoming Clergy Loneliness, they offer research, tools, and remedies for clergy to embark on the path toward a healthy sense of contentment and belonging and more effective leadership.
Collected here are seventy new prayers that grew from Gail Ramshaw's close reading of the Bible in the quietest months of the pandemic. Surprises and riches are found on every page. By turns bold and humble, universal and deeply personal, Ramshaw's poetry in prayer will inspire individual reflection and enrich public worship settings alike.
The Art of Leading Change is all about people. We can't do the work God has called us to do without people, but it's those very people that make change difficult and messy. The book offers ten vital perspectives for leading change in churches and ministries. The path to change is never easy, but learning the art of change can improve the journey.
