Becoming a Future-Ready Church

Description

Are Church Leaders Missing the Generational Handoff? There's Still Hope.

• Are we building institutions that will meaningfully serve the next generation of believers and their leaders?
• How does a church thrive in a culture where we have to earn credibility?
• How do we create a sense of belonging to the body of Christ and a strong sense of identity for the next generation?

Becoming a Future-Ready Church is a blueprint to guide you through eight critical shifts to help lead your church into the future with wisdom and hope. It describes several major converging trends that will greatly impact the church in America over the next few decades: the Great Resignation of Boomer leaders from churches, the shrinking percentage of Christians in America, and the change in felt needs among rising generations shaped heavily by anxiety, skepticism, and fragmentation.

Missiologist and pastor Daniel Yang, religion journalist Adelle Banks, and church researcher Warren Bird have come together in Becoming a Future-Ready Church to help church leaders evaluate whether their ministries are entrenched in strategies that worked well in the past but need to be adapted for the future. By helping us ask better questions about the issues and needs facing the church, they reveal practical ways in which the next generation of church leaders can gain a sturdier foothold as they navigate into the future.

About the Authors

Daniel Yang is the National Director of Churches of Welcome for World Relief. Prior to that, he was the director of the Church Multiplication Institute at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. He has planted churches in Detroit, Dallas, Toronto, and Chicago, either as the lead planter or through recruiting, training, assessing, and mentoring church planters. Daniel is a sought-after conference speaker, missional strategist, and consultant.

Adelle Banks, projects editor and a national reporter, joined Religion News Service in 1995. An award-winning journalist, she previously was the religion reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and a reporter at The Providence Journal and newspapers in the upstate New York cities of Syracuse and Binghamton. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, USA Today, Christian Century, Christianity Today, Jet, Sojourners, and Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly.

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President of Research and Equipping at ECFA.org (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability). Previously he was Research Director at Leadership Network. He's an award-winning author/co-author of 34 books for pastors and church leaders, church boards, and seminary professors. Bird researches cutting-edge churches and works with their leaders to multiply their evangelistic and disciple-making impact.