The COVID-19 pandemic renewed speculation of the Church's demise, and the wake of global catastrophe heightened clergy burnout. Still, Paul Nixon holds onto fierce hope that life and resurrection are choices the Church and its leaders can still make.

With new material for the post-quarantine era and an and an included discussion guide, the second edition of I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church! provides excellent stimulation for faith leaders to commit to six critical choices:

choosing life over death;
choosing community over isolation;
choosing fun over drudgery;
choosing bold over mild;
choosing frontier over fortress;
and choosing now rather than later.

Weird Church describes the massive shifts in culture that have impacted the church. It also provides a helpful common language for the different worldviews that exist in the institutional church today that might prevent further blaming of each other. Finally, it gives examples of the richness of diversity in healthy, relevant faith communities.--Bishop Sally Dyck, Northern Illinois Annual Conference, The United Methodist Church

In the post-Christendom era, the institutional church just isn't what it used to be. But don't give up hope for the future of faith. Weird Church offers church leaders a clear vision of what's coming next, so long as they're willing to live into a few critical shifts. Utilizing Spiral Dynamics as a means of framing the current changes in North American culture, Nixon and Estock give a thrilling forecast of where the church is going as we race toward the mid-century.

A wake-up call to anyone who still thinks church revitalization is simply a matter of doing better the things that used to come so easily. However, for the innovators whose ministries cannot fully be measured or understood by the old paradigms of members and money, Weird Church offers compelling vindication and encouragement that may cause them to stand and cheer.

Forget church growth In the twenty-first century, it is multiply or dry up. There doesn't seem to be another alternative. We believe that any church can reclaim the foundational multiplication DNA of the Jesus movement. Unfortunately, too few leaders and churches understand what it takes and what it looks like to multiply their impact to bring more of God's reign to earth. We hope this booklet helps you internalize the concept of multiplication so your church might move more boldly with God. We pray this boldness empowers concrete and constructive next steps that create new places of spiritual community and transformation with new people.

For many churches, the call to make disciples comes with a realization that the church's current worship opportunities do not reach certain groups in their surrounding community. New worship services offer the most promising strategy for renewing established churches and planting new worship communities. In a post-pandemic world, churches will be challenged to reach new people with the gospel and to help them meet in a way that is meaningful to them.

Accessible to ministry professionals and lay leaders, Launching a New Worship Community is a comprehensive guide to starting a new worship community-whether that means an established church beginning a new worship service or a church startup designing its first worship offering. The authors, writing with a team of church planting experts, provide practical advice rooted in solid academics, theology, and real-world experience. With this guide, readers will have the tools they need to begin and sustain a new worship community.

The increasing demographic divide between the people in our churches and those in our surrounding communities should signal to us that in most congregations, business as usual is not a reasonable way forward. Ours is a profoundly multi world that requires intentionally multi churches with the capacity to connect across diverse groups of people and worldviews. From the author of I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church, Multi is an encouraging and practical resource to equip churches for transformative relationships and multivalent ministry.

En una época en la que la religión organizada se asocia a menudo con un pensamiento obsoleto, una gran parte de la población ha renunciado a la iglesia. No creen que la iglesia pueda ofrecer algo interesante y relevante para ellos, escribe Paul Nixon. Por lo tanto, ahora es necesario un trabajo mayor para construir la comunidad de adoración y cultivar la confianza antes de que la gente se comprometa con nosotros. En el mundo actual, las comunidades de adoración nuevas e innovadoras son más necesarias que nunca.

En el libro Lanzar una nueva comunidad de adoración, los autores Paul Nixon y Craig Gilbert junto con un equipo de otros catorce expertos en plantación de iglesias, ofrecen consejos valiosos a los líderes del ministerio - tanto al clero como a los laicos - para alcanzar a nuevas personas con el evangelio.

Lanzar nueva comunidad de adoración contiene 32 capítulos cortos que profundizan en los detalles más prácticos a los que se enfrentan los equipos de lanzamiento de comunidades de adoración hoy en día.

Los temas incluyen lo siguiente:

- Por qué iniciar una nueva reunión?

- Enfocarse en un grupo particular de personas

- Desarrollar una cultura de invitación

- Promover la diversidad étnica

- Conectar bien en un mundo digital

- Reunir a su equipo de lanzamiento

- Ofrecer una hospitalidad de primera clase

This workbook is a companion text for God is a Person: Discovering God for Yourself. It includes practical exercises to help readers form an authentic relationship with God. Paul and Clarise have published articles and books, worked on podcasts, and produced a YouTube channel on various topics including forming an authentic relationship with God.

There is no end to clichés and easy assumptions about congregational health and vitality. It's much easier to start a new church than turn around an old one; nondenominational churches are growing, while denominational churches are dying; small-membership churches are concerned only with survival; suburban churches care only about endless programming and spiritual entertainment; downtown churches are doomed to decay. Whatever kernel of truth such analyses might contain, they miss the actual point. Churches stagnate, decline, and die for a number of reasons, but principally because they have forgotten who they are. They have forgotten their mission to reach out to those who do not know God in Christ. They have forgotten that we worship--not to feel comfortable and safe--but to come into the presence of a God who leads us out into the world. They have forgotten the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in the Christian faith, providing models for how we can proclaim the message of the gospel in ways that new generations can hear it. Paul Nixon calls this failure of memory spiritual amnesia. Concerned with institutional survival and personal comfort, congregations have forgotten what previous generations of Christians have learned time and again: that the church's great challenge is to make the gospel available in new and compelling ways to those who need most to hear it. In a series of sweeping insights into congregational life and contemporary culture, Nixon maps a course that will help churches remember who they are and for whom they exist.

For many years now we have witnessed the developing use of the internet and associated technologies by political actors and organisations. Claims and counter claims have been made as its suitability as a tool to help in the struggle to re-invigorate political participation in democracies across the globe has been contested.

This book charts the shifting sands of political activity in the digital age. It interrogates the hybrid nature of modern politics as online and offline actions blur the boundaries of traditional politics between 'real-life' co-presence and the booming virtual domain of politics. By so doing, it critically reflects on the latest scholarship on the subject while concurrently advancing stimulating new insights into it. Encapsulating both the range and the diverse velocities of change in different political arenas and geographical locations, this volumes seeks to map out a path if not towards the politics of tomorrow then towards a better comprehension of the politics of today.

Featuring a range of international and comparative case studies presenting research on the UK, US, Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Africa and China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics and Media, Political Communication, New Media studies, Public Administration, Sociology, Communication Studies, Computing and Information and Communications Technologies.

The temptation to focus only on their own internal problems and issues is powerful for congregations. Without realizing it, even churches that have a long tradition of outreach and social involvement become centered on issues of institutional survival and preservation. Worst of all are congregations that adopt a fortress mentality, addressing the larger community rarely, and only in the language of Zion when they do. This tendency to isolation and insularity flies directly in the face of the gospel imperative to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. Christian congregations exist as God's redeeming presence in the communities in which they are located. If churches are to live as though they take that seriously, they must learn to give themselves away to the community. The focus of every ministry and program must be to reach and make disciples of the unchurched. In this book, Paul Nixon paints a picture of what community based ministry is all about. Drawing on his experiences within a congregation that has seen twenty-five years of increased worship attendance, he lays out practical steps that churches can take to plant themselves firmly within the lives of the communities they serve. He demonstrates how churches can organize their facilities to become community centers, establish multiple locations for ministry throughout the community, and empower every member to become a minister of the congregation. Written with an infectious sense of hope, this book will become a critical tool for church leaders seeking to transform their congregations into outward-looking bodies of witness.

From Gower to Flintoff, Waugh to Vaughan, Cronje to Pietersen, Paul Nixon has shared a dressing room with some of the most evocative names in international and domestic cricket--and often enraged them on the field of play. The wicketkeeper, known as his sport's most prolific sledger, has amassed more than 20 years of stories from his career at the heart of the game and now reveals them in typically outspoken style. From Fredalo to match-fixing, Nixon has experienced some of the most notorious episodes in cricket history, possesses strident opinions on the game, and has a track record of success in the English first-class game and the Twenty20 revolution. With an emphasis on off-the-field anecdotes, Nixon also lays bare the personality that led the Australian legend Steve Waugh to compare him to a mosquito buzzing around in the night, that needs to be swatted but always escapes.

For many years now we have witnessed the developing use of the internet and associated technologies by political actors and organisations. Claims and counter claims have been made as its suitability as a tool to help in the struggle to re-invigorate political participation in democracies across the globe has been contested.

This book charts the shifting sands of political activity in the digital age. It interrogates the hybrid nature of modern politics as online and offline actions blur the boundaries of traditional politics between 'real-life' co-presence and the booming virtual domain of politics. By so doing, it critically reflects on the latest scholarship on the subject while concurrently advancing stimulating new insights into it. Encapsulating both the range and the diverse velocities of change in different political arenas and geographical locations, this volumes seeks to map out a path if not towards the politics of tomorrow then towards a better comprehension of the politics of today.

Featuring a range of international and comparative case studies presenting research on the UK, US, Italy, France, Spain, Romania, Africa and China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics and Media, Political Communication, New Media studies, Public Administration, Sociology, Communication Studies, Computing and Information and Communications Technologies.

From Gower to Flintoff, Waugh to Vaughan, Cronje to Pietersen, Paul Nixon has shared a dressing room with some of the most evocative names in international and domestic cricket - and often enraged them on the field of play. The wicketkeeper, known as his sport's most prolific 'sledger', has amassed more than 20 years of stories from his career at the heart of the game and now reveals them in typically outspoken style. From 'Fredalo' to match-fixing, Nixon has experienced some of the most notorious episodes in cricket history, possesses strident opinions on the game and has a track record of success in the English first-class game and the Twenty20 revolution. With an accent on off-the-field anecdotes, Nixon also lays bare the personality that led the Australian legend Steve Waugh to compare him to: a mosquito buzzing around in the night, that needs to be swatted but always escapes.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.