Leading the Congregation: Caring for Yourself While Serving Others, Paperback/Norman Shawchuck

Leading the Congregation is a complete and definitive guide to the practice of church leadership. The book describes essential paradigms for the leader that integrate spiritual integrity and service within a "systems" view of the congregation and its ministry. This revised and updated version focuses on the challenges of congregational leadership in a culture that has fewer ties to Christian faith. The authors lay out the dual contexts in which church leaders must function-within the congregation, and as the congregation's representative to the community-and they explain the very different skill sets required to flourish in each. Underlying the revised edition is an insistence on the congregational leader's call from God, and cultivation of her or his relationship with God. Leadership is not the same thing as charisma, they explain; it is rather a set of attitudes and practices that each of us can and must master if we are to be worthy servants of Christ.