The Agile Church: Spirit-Led Innovation in an Uncertain Age

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Brings theological insights together with cutting-edge thinking on organizational innovation to help churches flourish in a time of profound uncertainty and spiritual opportunity.

In today's dynamic cultural environment, churches have to be more than faithful-they have to be agile. That means embracing processes of trial, failure, and adaptation as they form Christian community with new neighbors. And that means a whole new way of being church.

Taking one page from the Bible and another from Silicon Valley, priest and scholar Dwight Zscheile brings theological insights together with cutting-edge thinking on organizational innovation to help churches flourish in a time of profound uncertainty and spiritual opportunity. Picking up where his bestseller, People of the Way left off, Zscheile answers urgent and practical questions around how churches become agile and adaptive to meet cultural change.

Reviews

"Zscheile understands that innovation must be a way of life for churches in the next decades. This is one of the most important books I have read in a long time."
Lovett Weems, Professor of Church Leadership, Wesley Theological Seminary

"In an age when people are making choices about their faith, spirituality, and lives in unprecedented ways, our churches have the opportunity to be nimble, graceful, and creative. The Agile Church is an ideal guide for this journey."
Doug Pagitt, Pastor of Solomons Porch and author of Church in the Inventive Age

"This hopeful book helps Christian leaders to move away from seeing Church as an end to be preserved and move toward reconceiving the Church as a result of our faithfulness to the mission of God."
Ian T. Douglas, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut

"Dwights work on innovation is a rare gift for pastors and church leaders wanting something rooted deeply in scripture and Christian imagination, not just one more trend."
Alan Roxburgh, author, consultant and founder of The Missional Network

Author Bio

Dwight J. Zscheile is professor of congregational mission and leadership at Luther Seminary and associate priest at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Recognized as one of the leading theologians in the Episcopal Church today, Zscheile also serves on the Episcopal Church's Special Task Force on Structure. In addition to People of the Way; he is co-author with Craig Van Gelder of The Missional Church in Perspective, and editor of Cultivating Sent Communities: Missional Spiritual Formation. He lives in North Oaks, Minnesota.