TWO NEW BOOKS WORTH READING
Neighboring by Jorge Acevedo (Abingdon 2019) helps us to see neighboring as a spiritual practice, something we can do every day, just like prayer and Bible reading. It provides biblical, theological, and practical guidance to help us see our primary work as being outside of the church building and in the neighborhoods where the people live and work.
How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going: Leading in a Liminal Season by Susan Beaumont (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) offers a new paradigm for seeing the local church as an organism with a soul, and to see the leader’s role as tending to the soul of that church. This paradigm shift opens up helpful resources from the realm of spiritual direction for individuals, to be adapted to the life of congregations. The book is rich, full of deep insights and real-life examples, to inspire and encourage congregational and denominational leaders to better navigate the season we find ourselves in, for which the old methods do not seem to serve as well as they once did.