Healthy Clergy Make Healthy Congregations

A Company of Pastors offers a fresh approach to overcoming the type of loneliness that seems inherent in the lives of religious leaders. The book offers a two-year framework for a clergy support group among pastors. It invites them to practice fun, food, and fellowship as a prophetic witness against all the pressures that seek to set them one against another. It invites clergy to rediscover the support of the beloved community as an antidote to the toxic isolation so frequent among clergy.

Kindle: $3.99

Print : $11.99

bit.ly/CompanyofPastors

An interim is in a perfect place to educate a congregation not only on the challenges of ministry but also on ways a congregation can join the pastor to maintain a healthy ministry.

This book identifies the challenges to a pastor’s health and offers suggestions on how the interim can educate the congregation about healthy ministry prior to the new pastor’s arrival. It is one of the great gifts that an interim can offer a congregation as s/he leads the congregation through a vital but sometimes confusing time of transition.
Kindle: $2.99

Print: $9.99

bit.ly/InterimGift

God Laughs—Why Don’t You? introduces the art of humor as a healing antidote to the toxic aspects of ministry so that the clergy can both sustain their own health and offer a healthy presence to those around them. The author provides specific ways to utilize humor in the practice of ministry from counseling to conflict, preaching to pastoral visits, and a pastor’s survival notebook for one’s personal health.

Kindle: $4.99

Print: $14.99

bit.ly/Godlaughs

Experiencing the Psalms, an award winning examination of the Psalms, provides a framework for examining current ethical problems, attending to the emotional stress of being a clergy, and opens the possibility for worshipers to bring the full range of their emotions to God in worship.

Available from Smyth & Helwys at www.helwys.com. $20

Lectionary Year A

Gospel Focus: Matthew

Good News for a Fractured Society

Speaks to the divisions of
◊ power
◊ wealth
◊ gender
◊ religious pluralism

Shows how God works through divisions of society

Explores the theme of reconciliation

Offers hope and healing in a tension-filled world

Reveals the signs of God’s reconciling purpose

OR

share an online course with your congregation

You can find sermon starters about how Matthew speaks to societal divisions of power, wealth, gender, and religious pluralism.
You can invite your educator or Christian Education Committee to have an existing adult class or a newly formed class to use the online course for discussion.
1. Each lesson is about 20 minutes long plus some discussion assignments.
2. A leader can buy the book for extra details (eBook $3.99 or paperback $11.39) and project the online course on a screen.
3. Or ask all class members to study the course at home and use class time for discussion. good-news-online.thinkific.com
You can publicize the available course in your church newsletter and encourage either personal study or small home study groups.

CREATING THE BUZZ

Once Matthew is being studied in various formats, occasionally mention the emphasis in worship and your church newsletter so that even those who are not part of the process are aware of what is happening.

Encourage several pastors in the community to share the resource with their congregations.

Pastors can meet weekly for coffee and discussion that would feed their theological imagination.
Pastors can have some joint congregational potlucks in which you design ways to celebrate your common study.
Pastors can invite a special speaker to a shared church dinner to expand on the study.

These are all resources that can be useful if you are a pastor or can be a great gift if you care for a pastor.