Can Our Church Live?

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Summary: Can Our Church Live? Looks at Congregation Life Cycle
Review: Nothing on earth lives forever-not even congregations. Can Our Church Live?-the latest book from Alban Institute best-selling author, Alice Mann-explains how the natural life cycle plus other factors can produce a congregation that is in real trouble. Drawing on her years as a pastor and consultant, Mann offers real-life survival stories and details practical options for congregations, leadership challenges for laity and clergy, ways to work with denominations and discussion questions for use in congregational planning.

In the foreword of Can Our Church Live?, Anthony G. Pappas, author of Entering the World of the Small Church: A Guide for Leaders, discusses Mann's approach to congregational spirituality and how its affects the health of the church. "She asserts the radical idea that each congregation has a divine vocation," explains Pappas. "Without this sense of God's purpose, all efforts at redeveloping congregations will amount to little more than managerial tinkering. But with a sense of this unrefusable divine invitation, congregations can astound themselves and be transformed."

According to Claire Schenot Burkat, Director, Mission and Resource Development, Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Can Our Church Live? is useful and essential for the one in every three Protestant churches today struggling to survive. "Alice Mann has written a wonderful handbook for lay leaders, pastors, and denominational staff who love the congregations they serve and are willing to plan honestly for the coming decades," notes Burkat.

"One of Alice Mann's gifts is to take many theories about society and church from the public domain and then to organize, condense, simplify, and present them in such a way that they can be used by pastors, lay leaders, and denominational staff," asserts H. Alan Elmore, General Presbyter, Presbytery of Charlotte (NC), Presbyterian Church (USA). "Mann's emphasis here is on radical redevelopment. Pastors and their church boards can study this book together, using it as a workbook and stimulus for creative ideas that will help them turn decline into a new phase of formation in their congregations."

"One of the strengths of this book is that it begins with the fundamental question, 'How do we connect our deepest faith-identity with the realities of our context today?'" says Sheryl A. Kujawa, Director, Congregational Studies, Episcopal Divinity School. "The systemic and coordinated response of any congregation to this question has a great deal to do with its future as a faith community with integrity."

"Leaders of struggling congregations will find in this book a complete resource for discernment and planning," says Arlin J. Rothauge, Executive Director, Seabury Institute, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. "Alice Mann's latest contribution should be required reading in all seminaries and on the desk of every informed church leader."

An Episcopal priest, Alice Mann has pastored six congregations, and currently is senior consultant for the Alban Institute with an emphasis on growth strategies, leadership skills, strategic planning, and spirituality. For two decades she served in the dual roles of local pastor and nationally recognized consultant-trainer in the field of parish development. She is the author of current Alban bestseller The In-Between Church, which examines congregation size change and strategies for transitioning.