Shaping environments where community emerges naturally Can you really create community through master plans and elaborate strategies? Sometimes, says Joseph Myers--but more often, lasting authentic connections occur organically within healthy environments. Organic Community offers you practical guidance for helping your church or organization create spaces where community naturally comes into being. "Once again, Myers hits a home run. Organic Community calls us all--church and congregants alike--to honesty about our goals and then offers us sophisticated, efficacious, and grace-filled ways to realize them."--Phyllis Tickle, contributing editor in religion, Publishers Weekly "Looking back on twenty-four years of church planting and pastoral ministry, I wish I had thoroughly digested Organic Community before I got started. It would have saved so much wasted energy--mine, and those whose lives I foolishly tried to 'master plan.' This is a book I will reread and widely recommend."--Brian McLaren, author, activist; brianmclaren.net "If a classic is something that has never finished what it has to say, then this little gem is a 'classic.'"--Leonard Sweet, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism, Drew Theological School; distinguished visiting professor, George Fox University; www.wikiletics.com "Myers acknowledges that his is a different kind of how-to book. As much, or more, it is a how-not-to book that exposes fallacies inherent in common organizational policies and procedures, which are all the more destructive in organizations relying on volunteer efforts."--Ray Oldenburg, emeritus professor of sociology, the University of West Florida; author, The Great Good Place Joseph R. Myers is anentrepreneur, speaker, writer, and owner of FrontPorch, a consulting firm that helps churches, businesses, and other organizations promote and develop community. Author of The Search to Belong, Myers is also a founding partner of the communication arts group settingPace, based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

A practical guide for those struggling to build a community of believers in a culture that wants to experience belonging over believing Who is my neighbor? Who belongs to me? To whom do I belong? These are timeless questions that guide the church to its fundamental calling. Today terms like neighbor, family, and congregation are being redefined. People are searching to belong in new places and experiences. The church needs to adapt its interpretations, definitions, and language to make sense in the changing culture. This book equips congregations and church leaders with tools to: * Discern the key ingredients people look for in community * Understand the use of space as a key element for experiencing belonging and community * Develop the "chemical compound" that produces an environment for community to spontaneously emerge * Discover how language promotes specific spatial belonging and then use this knowledge to build an effective vocabulary for community development * Create an assessment tool for evaluating organizational and personal community health