Reality Check 101: New Paths for a Changing Church

Publisher Marketing: Is your church stuck? Do you go around and around, discussing the need for change, but fail to get anything off the ground. Most church leaders distrust goal setting, with good reason. Reality Check is different because it connects people, their faith, and each congregation's unique calling from God. Bill Kemp wants to end topdown decision making, by training people how to do prayerful discernment. In this, his tenth book, he presents a practical, step by step, process for implementing needed change. Reality Check 101 includes three basic teaching chapters and fivechurch change tools to helpyour congregation discerna better future. Each chapter contains small group exercises, twelve in all, that teach people how to think creatively about their church. These prayer and discernment circles will build the congregation's buy-in for needed change. Five years in the making, this book consolidates the best of Bill Kemp's popular workshops and church improvement ideas. As an author, Bill keeps things simple. His goal is to put lay and clergy leaders on the same page. Reality Check also contains additional material for raising Spiritual Passion in the local church; a problem he first addressed in "Ezekiel's Bones: Rekindling Your Congregation's Spiritual Passion" (Discipleship Resources, 2007). Bill is known for writing that plays well in small membership churches and is mindful of the limited financial resources available to the average congregation. Not only are his resources affordable; they actually provide suggestions your church will find doable. Contributor Bio:  Kemp, Bill Bill Kemp (M. Div., Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Maine) has served for more than twenty-five years as a United Methodist pastor in a variety of parish settings, helping hundreds of families through the grief process. He is currently serving as intentional interim pastor for the Western Pennsylvania conference of the United Methodist Church.