The Soul of Tomorrow's Church: Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry Together

by Kent Ira Groff

Book Overview

Kent Ira Groff invites congregational leaders to weave spiritual practices into all aspects of ministry. The Soul of Tomorrow s Church will be restored as spiritual practices are woven in five... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0835809277
• ISBN13: 9780835809276
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Upper Room Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

From Upper Room:

The author invites congregational leaders to weave spiritual practices into all aspects of ministry. The Soul of Tomorrow's Church will be restored as spiritual practices are woven in five ministry functions: worship, administration, education, soul care, and outreach. Every chapter teems with practical ways to weave spiritual practices of prayer, discernment, faith stories, silence, and hospitality in each one of these five specific ministry functions.

Soul Food For The Journey

The Soul of Tomorrow's Church: Weaving Spiritual Practices in Ministry Together by Kent Ira Groff, (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2000), 181 pp.Reviewed by David NashKent Groff gives us the book that many of us parish pastors have been looking for. He offers us not a new program but an ancient calling to recover the soul of the church, and, in the process, to find a renewal of our own calling to ministry. I recommend the book highly, though it is not an easy book to live and work with, for the reader is called into self-examination and commitment while at the same time receiving encouragement and hope. Groff calls the pastoral leader and the believing community to the contemplative life style of practicing the presence of God in order to love God, others and self, especially as it works itself out in the functions of ministry. The aim is to recover the integrity, passion and wholeness of Christ within the believing community in order to re-present Christ to the world. To answer such a call means a long-term commitment and serious soul work.What moves Groff to write this book is his deep concern for the spiritual life of the pastoral leader; the need for clergy and laity to be joined together, especially to work through crises; and how the common ventures of ministry and church life can become the opening for God's presence . this book is for laypersons and clergy together. It "is written for (our) interactive learning, reflection, prayer, and retreat" together in a contemplative spiritual journey.Groff functions as a spiritual director for those who choose the contemplative path. He sees the vital ministries of worshipping, administering, educating, caring, and reaching out being woven together with the "spiritual aptitudes" of prayer, discernment, faith stories, silence-presence, and hospitality all for the purpose of Christ being formed in the believer and believing community for the sake of the world.The creative image of weaving suggests possibilities of a variety of patterns of minsitry. It is a powerful image which could have been made stronger for us by a brief description of the weaver at work to help us see the loom and feel the excitement of the movement of the shuttle back and forth carrying the variety of threads to create a pattern. Still, the image comes through with careful reading.Not a book of theology or theory, but building on both, the focus is on practicing the presence of God. In five chapters, Groff briefly describes the "soul" of the church and suggests how to weave the contemplative attitudes throughout each ministry of the church. Groff offers a variety of "leavening the liturgies" spiritual exercises for each function of ministry. And there are "resources" of spiritual practice included in the appendix.The spiritual exercise are not gimmicks, techniques, or quick fixes. They are, however, interactive and participatory and suggestive. The intention is to make deeper connections with God and with one