In ascending to heaven, Jesus Christ gave the church the Great Commission to expand the gospel to all nations. Despite this biblical commission, it is still an unfinished task. As leaders of local churches, pastors play a crucial part in this endeavor. Pastoral leadership principles have varied widely throughout history, yet it is interesting to discover the similarities between pastoral leadership principles practiced by John Chrysostom (AD 347-407) in Antioch and Constantinople, and Won Sang Lee (1937-) in Washington, DC. Despite ministering 1600 years apart, both pastors share the same core values: care for people, Christ-like character, biblical preaching, and world missions. This suggests that continued emphasis on these principles will play a significant role in fulfilling the Great Commission, independent of time and place.

Christ's sheep need shepherding. That's where you come in. With more than 60 years of ministry between them, Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford have come to understand that everything in ministry--even administration, leadership, and planning--revolves around the ancient tradition of the care of souls. Pastors are entrusted with the care of a flock by the Good Shepherd and are called to be faithful to this task. But pastoring seems to be getting more and more difficult. Based on a sound theological framework, Senkbeil and Woodford present a set of practical tools for church leadership and strategy. Calling on their vast experience, they encourage pastors to protect, guide, and feed their flock as Jesus would, bridging the eternal wisdom of the word of God with the everyday practicality of hands-on leadership. Originally published as Church Leadership & Strategy, this revision includes a new chapter and litany.

For many congregations, change creates discomfort. Pastoral leaders are often expected to be experts who manage and control realities beyond their expertise, experience, and ability. That expectation, a product of modern approaches to leadership, views the pastor as responsible for maintaining the status quo. Transforming Pastoral Leadership responds to this context by challenging readers to rediscover key biblical themes around the shepherding metaphor as well as key theological themes steeped in our historical faith narratives. Readers are challenged to consider the origins of our dominant leadership practices and to reconsider how Christ's preeminence as the leader of his church requires us to reconstruct leadership practices that are faithful to his preeminence. To assist congregations, Transforming Pastoral Leadership suggests two processes that might help congregations discern God's missional promptings as they move forward into God's future and experience conflict as opportunities for transformation.

Pastoral Leadership Is . . . presents in dozens of brief yet powerful chapters a practical, Bible-based, and highly readable guide to leading the local church. This guidebook to the great adventure of being a pastor follows the directions God gave Moses in order to effectively shepherd Israel: Pray, Teach and Preach, Lead and Multiply. Believing the western world has traded the biblical model of pastoral leadership in favor of a traditional one, author Dave Earley writes to encourage pastors to become the spiritual warriors, missional leaders, and multiplying mentors God calls them to be. Each compelling entry is set up to finish the sentence that begins with the book’s title. For example, Pastoral Leadership Is . . . “Abandoning Your Life to the Call of God,” “Following Paul’s Example in Praying for Your Flock,” “Cooperating with the Holy Spirit,” “Leading a Church Full of Leaders,” “Resolving Conflict,” and more. Expecting a revolution, Earley says, “Instead of letting traditional church culture tell you who a pastor is and what he is to do, let God tell you through the Bible.”

This book provides a model, based on Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, to help pastors lead in a manner that brings lasting change and maturity to congregational members. The project addresses the need for pastors to move beyond a transactional mindset to a transformational approach to leadership, and it provides a model for them to follow. Tim Gregory grounds the call to transformational leadership in a close reading of Paul, drawing out multiple dimensions of what that leadership should strive to develop in a faith community.

Its too easy to learn and apply business leadership models to the pastoral sector. But is it the best alternative to form Church leaders? What are we missing when we use business models in ministry? This book is about creating more sensitivity on how some of these secularly learned models can inadvertently limit pastoral effectiveness, and suggests an hourglass approach to leadership capable of fostering a set of principles more harmonious with ministry intent. In many ways this book is a guide for cultivating and developing a more authentic sense of leadership in ministry, one that emerges from within the scholarly sources of the leadership field but at the same time is rooted in the principle leadership is a spiritual practice. This book is a must have for clergy, religious women and men, and anyone engaged with forming ministry leaders or performing leadership roles in diocesan, parish life, or Church ministry.

Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church offers practical wisdom from comparative analysis of the experiences of a male pastor and a female pastor in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Church leaders must be transformed themselves as they are transforming their churches to serve their communities. From his research of the perspectives of laity, clergy, and scholars of the black church, Jeffery L. Tribble offers hopeful stories and helpful strategies for those who believe that the black church must continue its historic mission of being an instrument of survival, elevation, and liberation for its people. Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church is an important contribution to studies of black religion, womanist thought, and social justice.

Church leaders have attempted acclimation of Cambodian-Americans into their American Baptist church and leadership yet challenges loom relative to skill requirements, decision-making styles and processes. Since many churches have been so richly blessed with cultural diversity, the following leadership skills, talents and abilities to ensure each culture is sensitized to these requirements are listed below. Multicultural leaders should have the: 1. Ability to analyze cultural and ethnic groups and their various needs for security 2. Ability to identify cultural and ethnic group needs for belonging 3. Ability to select an appropriate response to ensure cultural and ethnic groups needs for significance 4. Ability to assess the success of the plan(s) to ensure the result of fulfilling the purposes God has for the lives of all cultural and ethnic groups to achieve their levels of self-actualization. Pastoral leadership skills for multicultural, multi-ethnic churches should ensure cultural differences are learned, respected, embraced and eventually celebrated. Pastors are granted authority but power is maintained when decisions are made in participation with diaconate and/or laity. Rev. Dr. F.Lee Jones interviewed a cross-section of twelve church and potential members through questionnaires. This project is a compilation and analysis of those responses which articulate the challenges, and rewards, of being open to all of Gods children. Dr. Jones has successfully transferred his secular leadership abilities into the pastoral role of church administration. He understands how to be a non-anxious presence in a crisis, as well as be a pastors pastor in his ministry to other clergy.

The Role of the Pastoral Leader in the Church Today is a book every pastor should want the church he leads to read. In this book, the people of the church come to understand the call of the pastor and what his true biblical qualifications should be. This book examines the character of the pastor as well as outlines and describes his main responsibilities in caring for the church body. The apostle Paul wrote, And He [God] Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers (Eph. 4:11, NKJV). This and other passages like it reveal it is God who gives the church the pastor. In Acts 6, the pastors of the early church laid out what their priorities were to be, but this is not where many churches are today, and this is not what many who are called to lead the church today are doing. This book confronts where we have gotten away from Gods plan for Gods man and may even be the revealing factor behind why so many pastors are leaving the church today. When we have the wrong man in the wrong place, being asked to do the wrong thing, we are destined for hardship, at least, and failure, more than likely. The Role of the Pastoral Leader in the Church Today is the book every pastor-search or nominating committee should read before taking on the task. More times than not, we are asking people to step into a role on these committees that that they are ill-equipped for. This is not to say these are not spiritual people or even the most spiritually deep people of the church they are in. However, they may not be familiar with what to look for and the questions to qualify whether a man is truly called by God to be a pastor or not. They may have some exposure to, but not a thorough understanding of, the biblical qualifications of a pastor. While character is an issue, what do you need to look for? And how do you best discover the type of character and track record of caring for the church your candidate has? And beyond his testimony, call to ministry, and track record, is there any other (and if there are, what are they?) pertinent things the church committee should consider to determine whether their candidates are fit for the role of pastoral leader in their church? Things besides what school he attended and whom he knows. The Role of the Pastoral Leader in the Church Today is challenging to the way many churches are getting Gods man into Gods place to do Gods thing and how they let him do it once he is there. This is an eye-opening book to give pastors and churches a look at how to work together for the glory of God. My prayer is that all who read it will be enlightened, encouraged, and empowered by the role of the pastoral leader in the church today.

In this book Dan Ebener leads the reader on a systematic journey to the heart of parish ministry, examining along the way the challenges parish leaders face in exercising their ministry. Throughout the book, he intersperses useful real-life examples of common leadership situations.