The Eastern PA Conference’s Congregational Development Team has launched a new book club this fall, and its first title explores how churches can use Methodist traditions to pursue missional transformation.
Transforming Community: The Wesleyan Way to Missional Congregations looks at how to adopt John Wesley’s creative way of organizing churches for active discipleship in order to form missional communities and congregations. The 2016 book, co-written by seminary theologians the Revs. Henry Knight and Douglas Powe, is intended to equip today’s congregations to be more transformational.
The Rev. Kevin Babcock, the Eastern PA Conference’s new Coordinator of Church Support Services, is organizing the book club and will lead the 8-week study from Sept. 9 to Oct. 28, using Zoom videoconferencing. Registration is required; but the first 25 people to REGISTER for the book study will receive a free copy of the book.
“The nature of the church is to simultaneously be both personal and public, which creates a tension for individual churches between the pews and the community,” said Babcock. “The authors make a strong argument for community-building, both within and outside of the church, as a means of allowing this to be a holy and healthy tension.”
Book Study Schedule
Book Study Schedule
September—Part One: Communities of
Holy Love
- Chapter 1: Mission Beginning, 9/9
- Chapter 2: Knowing God, 9/16
- Chapter 3: A People Shaped for Mission, 9/23
- Part One Overview, 9/30
October—Part Two: Communities in Mission
- Chapter 4: The World is My Parish, 10/7
- Chapter 5: Thoughts upon Mission, 10/15
- Chapter 6: Organizing a C.O.M.M.U.N.I.T.Y., 10/21
- Part Two Overview, 10/28