This handbook provides practical, creative, and simple tools for pastoral agents who are involved in designing experiences to enhance people's spiritual lives in the parish environment.

Provides a brief, informative, readable, and very helpful explanation of basic parish management to pastors, priests from abroad, deacons, seminary students, pastoral and finance council members, and lay parish workers.

This book is a practical step-by-step guide for church planters and their coaches. It covers everything they need to know to start healthy, growing churches that are biblically faithful and yet culturally relevant. While addressing the who, why, and where of planting new congregations, this comprehensive manual focuses primarily on the "how-tos." The authors use a five-stage "life cycle" (conception, pre-natal development, birth/infancy, adolescent growth, and adult reproduction) to flesh out the entire process of starting and growing a new church. Under each of these stages, a host of essential ministry and planning tasks is addressed so the planter can keep his "baby" church on course and can have the joy of watching the new church grow to maturity and eventually reproduce itself.

An Indispensable Resource for Pastoral Agents Responding to the need for resources to set up, sponsor, and lead retreats, Planning and Implementing Retreats: A Parish Handbook provides an array of simple yet creative tools to achieve a successful outcome. This book is a practical, time-saving guide for those who are involved in designing experiences to enhance people's spiritual lives--in parishes especially, but also in hospitals, campus ministries or other locales where Christian adults gather for spiritual formation. At the heart of this resource are five planning and design strategies for professionals and volunteers who want to create a well-organized and spiritually sensitive retreat experience. Other chapters deal with the theological and scriptural bases for retreat design, as well as special areas of concern, worship and liturgy, and participation evaluation. The strategies and tips outlined in this book can help planners--novice or experienced--nourish their own spiritual life as they prepare for the task of journeying with those in search of the living God. This is truly a fundamental and much-needed resource.