A Ready Hope: Effective Disaster Ministry for Congregations 
Kathryn M. Haueisen and Carol H. Flores 
AL386; $18.00

A Ready Hope helps congregations face situations ranging from large-scale disasters to less severe, local conditions. The authors provide an overview of existing disaster-response networks, detail the predictable phases of disaster recovery at both the individual and community level, lift up helpful and unhelpful ways that congregational leaders and members can be involved in disaster response efforts, and prepare congregations to respond appropriately to a disaster in their community. This book will help people of faith prepare themselves to be part of God’s heart and hands when a disaster occurs.

 

Found in the Middle! Theology and Ethics for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical 
Wesley J. Wildman and Stephen Chapin Garner 
AL381; $18.00

There exists a deep and broad population of Christians who feel the labels of “liberal” and “evangelical” both describe their faith and limit their expression of it. By working to reclaim the traditional, historical meanings of these terms, and showing how they complement rather than oppose each other, Wesley Wildman and Stephen Chapin Garner stake a claim for the moderate Christian voice in today’s polarized society. Found in the Middle! offers a foundational approach to the theology and ethics that undergird a congregation where moderate Christians can thrive.

 

Governance and Ministry: Rethinking Board Leadership 
Dan Hotchkiss 
AL370; $17.00

In Governance and Ministry Dan Hotchkiss presents governance as an expressive art and offers congregational leaders a roadmap and tools for changing the way boards and clergy work together to lead congregations. Hotchkiss demonstrates that the right governance model is the one that best enables a congregation to fulfill its mission—to achieve both the outward results and the inward quality of life to which it is called. Resources on governance for the nonprofit sector have burgeoned over the past decade, and this book translates what is most helpful from that world for clergy and lay leaders.

 

Learning the Way: Reclaiming Wisdom from the Earliest Christian Communities 
Cassandra D. Carkuff Williams 
AL385; $18.00

Cassandra Carkuff Williams advocates that we recover and reclaim our foundations and reinterpret them in light of present-day realities. In Learning the Way, she suggests that the biggest problems facing the church today are the victim mentality created out of its own presumptions and that we have allowed society to dictate how we lead our churches. In Learning the Way she offers expert advice on how to approach modern-day issues of Christian education and discipleship formation based on the examples set forth by our earliest forebears in the faith.

 

Holy Clarity: The Practice of Planning and Evaluation 
Sarah B. Drummond 
AL387; $17.00

Sarah Drummond explores the most basic reason leaders of religious organizations conduct evaluations: to find and create God-pleasing clarity regarding the organization’s purpose and the impact of its activities. Drummond considers the work of clarification a faith practice, one that can make a pastor or layperson not just a better leader but a better Christian who is more firmly grounded in God. She presents four approaches to evaluation that can help a leader to guide a community toward greater clarity, both when evaluating or analyzing programs and when planning and starting programs.

 

Synagogues in a Time of Change: Fragmentation and Diversity in Jewish Religious Movements 
Zachary I. Heller, editor 
AL389; $20.00

As Jewish religious communities grapple with a number of challenges, from the increase in secular or unaffiliated Jews to emerging Jewish spiritual communities forming outside the synagogue, there has never been a more compelling need for a wide-ranging discussion of the diverse issues facing American Judaism today. Synagogues in a Time of Change is that discussion. This book presents essays by twenty of the leading Jewish thinkers, each of whom brings unique expertise and perspective in describing the development of contemporary religious movements (denominations) in American Judaism, their interrelationships and tensions, and their prospects for the future.