One of the Academy of Parish Clergy's "Top 10 Books for Parish Ministry"

When is the last time you asked yourself hard questions about why you were pursuing certain relationships in your ministry? Could it be that the end game for many of us is not relationship per se but loyalty, adherence, even submission? The sheep in our flock become the means to our end: pastoring becomes less about the people of God and more about maintenance of the status quo—and, if we are willing to recognize it, the elevation of our pastoral status.

Here practical theologian Andy Root dissects relational ministry as we have come to understand it and searches for the seed of a more wholesome, more pastoral understanding of the relationships for which God has prepared the church: the place where, when two or more are gathered in his name, Christ is present.



Andrew Root (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is in the Baalson Olson Chair as associate professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, MN). A former Young Life staffworker, he has served in churches and social service agencies as a youth outreach associate and a gang prevention counselor.

Preface


1. Introduction


2. New Energy, New Communications, New Consciousness . . . New Ministry


3. Transitioning from the Pastor as Self-Help Entertainer


4. Sipping the Sweet, Hard Liquor of Individualism


5. All the Lonely People: The Field of the Personal


6. What Is a Person?


7. Empathy, It's a Spirit Thing


8. Can I Read Your Mind?


9. New Visions of Incarnational Ministry


10. The Gift


11. Sharing is More Than What You Learned in Kindergarten


12. The Place Between


A Quick Pauline Excursion: Sharing and Place in Paul—It's All About the In


13. Will You Pray for Me?


14. Vista: What This Looks Like and How Story, Teaching and Preaching Fits


15. I've Got to Run the Church Don't I? Leadership as Letting Relationships Flow


Appendix: Practices from Relational Pastors