Modern church leaders need to cultivate innovative and creative leadership skills, as they navigate today s post-Christian world, and as their congregations look to them for insight and guidance. Gil Stafford takes a fresh look at this vital need, drawing upon his experience as a college coach, university president, and parish priest, and interweaving them with ancient spiritual practices found within the discipline of spiritual direction. Personal anecdotes help the reader envision their own life-transforming pilgrimage, as they develop into the type of adaptive leader that churches need in today s rapidly changing world. This book challenges church leaders to foster sacred safe space, holy listening, silence, and wisdom storytelling, in order to create a discerning church community. These techniques of spiritual direction can be applied to every aspect of the church, from small group studies to conducting parish business. Gradually the leader will be able to delegate some of his responsibilities to the congregation, liberating them to be leaders, and rescuing him from trying to be all things to all people."

About the Contributor(s): Tex Sample is the Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor Emeritus of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology (Kansas City). Author of ten previous books, his most recent is The Future of John Wesley's Theology (Cascade, 2012). He is a freelance speaker and workshop leader in the United States and overseas and is active in broad-based organizing in Phoenix, Arizona.

Description: This book approaches the future of John Wesley's theology in terms of a preferred future by looking back to the Apostle Paul. In a comparison of Wesley's theology with the writings of St. Paul, Tex Sample maintains that Wesleyans tend to read Paul through Wesley, but that in the future we need to read Wesley through Paul. Key issues between Wesley and Paul are considered in this book: justification by faith, sanctification, the faith in/of Christ, the powers, the individual/social concept in Wesley that is absent in Paul, and, finally, the issue of a justice of the common good. The conclusion develops the implications of this study for the future of the church and its witness. Endorsements: ""Scholars have examined the life and thought of John Wesley from many angles. Few, however, have done so with the depth and dexterity of Tex Sample. In accessible and engaging fashion, Sample brings John Wesley into a theological conversation with the first-century world of the Apostle Paul and our own context of the twenty-first century. For those who care about the future of the Wesleyan tradition, this book is a must-read."" --Christopher H. Evans Professor of the History of Christianity and Methodist Studies Boston University School of Theology ""Tex Sample skillfully engages us in a fruitful and spirited dialogue with the Apostle Paul and John Wesley on the meaning and experience of grace and justification. As a careful scholar, the author brings to the conversation a wide range of biblical interpreters, theologians, and critics. The result is a vision of divine grace that transforms the entire cosmos and calls the church toward a new future."" --Bishop Kenneth L. Carder Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Christian Ministry Duke Divinity School ""Through an encounter with the 'new' Paul, Tex Sample challenges us to envision a 'new' Wesley. He argues we can enrich Wesley's dynamic understanding of salvation by placing it within the horizon of new creation at the heart of Paul's gospel. Sample ably introduces us to what is at stake and invites us to join the conversation. --Henry H. Knight III Donald and Pearl Wright Professor of Wesleyan Studies Saint Paul School of Theology ""Who but Tex Sample could conceive of, let alone so impressively succeed . . . in bringing John Wesley and the Apostle Paul into fruitful dialogue Drawing on a broad range of Pauline and Wesleyan scholarship, he presides over a dialogue that is both stimulating in itself and has much to contribute to the church today, especially to its understanding of the indicative and imperative of God's justice and saving grace."" --Victor Paul Furnish University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament Southern Methodist University About the Contributor(s): Tex Sample is the Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor Emeritus of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology. Active in the church and in community organizing in Phoenix, Arizona, he is the author of ten books, including Powerful Persuasion (2005), Blue Collar Resistance and the Politics of Jesus (2006), and Earthy Mysticism (2008).

This book, says the author, is a testimony of narratives where [a] strange God appears. Such appearances supply the mystical states that have come to shape my life. I am not helped much by conventional approaches to spirituality. I find it almost impossible to do devotions. Daily Bible study in the sense of devoting twenty to thirty minutes a day never worked for me. I cannot get around to scheduled times for prayer on my knees with head bowed. I find labyrinths and prayer beads boring. I am ever and again distracted in silent meditation. I simply cannot sustain a spirituality based in such things. I do not regard myself as unusual or special. My hunch, and it is more than that, is that a host of people will recognize themselves in what I describe here. What is here is, clearly, my story, but it is not about me. It is about a God of surprises, of One who comes in the ordinary and the seamy. It is about a God who will goose you. It is about mystical moments when clearly the only thing that finally matters is this God who will never leave us alone, especially in the ordinary and angular places of life. It is, I hope, a spirituality for unspiritual people. From the Circuit Rider review: "Tex Sample s new book, "Earthy Mysticism: Spirituality for Unspiritual People," simultaneously says a whole lot and very little about the subject of mysticism. The word mysticism itself only shows up in the introduction and the last chapter, bracketing the book with a concept that Sample doesn t fully define or even directly reflect on the meaning of. That being said, Sample never claims to be writing a scholarly view of what mysticism might be, but instead attempts to show how one can recognize the presence of the holy in everyday life. In this he succeeds powerfully." (Click here to read the entire review.)"

No issue more polarizes American Protestants today than the church s stance on homosexuality. In recent years, a number of denominations have engaged in prolonged and divisive debates on the subject, and it appears that these debates will continue to occupy their attention. The contributors to this volume call for the formation of a loyal opposition that is serious in its commitment to the difficult process of reconciliation and forgiveness. Faithfulness to the gospel, they remind readers, requires nothing less than that Christians will be committed to the full inclusion of all persons in the body of Christ not least of all those who disagree theologically and ethically.

The book offers readers a multifaceted argument that the gospel requires a commitment to the full inclusion of all persons in the body of Christ. It focuses on how members of mainline denominations can respond to official denominational positions with which they disagree. Readers are offered an alternative response besides staying in the denomination and remaining silent or leaving the denomination because one disagrees with its official position on this issue.

Contributors include: J. Philip Wogaman, Roy Sano, Stanley Hauerwas, Jeanne Audrey Powers, Victor Paul Furnish, Dale Dunlap, Gil Caldwell, and Joretta Marshall. Foreword by Leontine Kelly.

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Although other books discuss how to involve multi-media elements in worship, The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World is the first to explore how electronic culture shapes people's perceptions and expectations of what worship is.

The new electronic culture, explains Tex Sample, is a culture that involves fundamentally different ways of experiencing and knowing the world. It is also a culture that holds tremendous challenges for all areas of the life of the church, none more so than its worship. Sample points out that if we hope to reach the generations that have grown up with television and other electronic media as daily parts of their lives, we must understand what electronic culture is, and begin to think about how the church's worship can learn from it and adapt to it.

Examining the three central elements of electronic culture -- images, sound as beat, and visualization -- Sample demonstrates that meaning arises for those steeped in this culture from the convergence of these elements, rather than from any one of them individually. He goes on to discuss how these are already present in Christian worship, and how they might be made more evident. In addition, he explains that worship can serve as a corrective and critique of electronic culture, and concludes the book with suggestions for how to build worship around an awareness of this new kind of culture.

White Soul examines the social, political, and religious foundations of country music as the soul music of white, working-class Americans.

Country music gives voice to an economically battered subculture of hard-living and hard-working people who find self-expression in the music of honky-tonks and heartaches. It celebrates the "wild side of life" as a form of populist anarchism and escapist festivity. This unusual medley of sociology, theology, and country music history is also a compelling critique of the elitism of "good taste" in the dominant culture.

Tex Sample challenges the church to reach out to working-class people, who have often been ignored and demeaned by churches held captive to the tastes and lifestyles of the upper middle class.

This book will help pastors educated in the literate culture of academia bridge the cultural gap between them and those in their congregations who verbalize their faith in proverbs and stories. Tex Sample suggests some implications for preaching, teaching, and counseling and discusses how questions of morality and social change are handled by people who think in terms of communal relationship rather than abstract theory.

Challenging the church to break the yoke of middle-class captivity and join with Christ who lives among the poor and marginalized, Tex Sample addresses exactly what kind of worship, preaching, and Christian education meet the needs of hard-living people.

Sample presents a revealing look at the church and its interactions and motivations for involvement with hard-living people. It also provides practical, positive steps that will help you minister to them more effectively.

In this book, Tex Sample provides the church with the information it needs to attract and keep members. Sample disucsses common lifestyles, including what he calls the cultural middle, cultural right, and cultural left. Sample explores the characteristics of people in each of these groups-- their worldview and their needs as church members. His goal is to help mainline churches learn about and respond to the diverse groups that make up our society.

Modern church leaders need to cultivate innovative and creative leadership skills, as they navigate today s post-Christian world, and as their congregations look to them for insight and guidance. Gil Stafford takes a fresh look at this vital need, drawing upon his experience as a college coach, university president, and parish priest, and interweaving them with ancient spiritual practices found within the discipline of spiritual direction. Personal anecdotes help the reader envision their own life-transforming pilgrimage, as they develop into the type of adaptive leader that churches need in today s rapidly changing world. This book challenges church leaders to foster sacred safe space, holy listening, silence, and wisdom storytelling, in order to create a discerning church community. These techniques of spiritual direction can be applied to every aspect of the church, from small group studies to conducting parish business. Gradually the leader will be able to delegate some of his responsibilities to the congregation, liberating them to be leaders, and rescuing him from trying to be all things to all people."