There are very few leaders in the Anglican Church in North America who could have written a book as helpful as this. "The Rector and the Vestry" is addresses the needs, challenges, structures, canons, other important issues facing any Anglican Church of any size. Filled with wise counsel, frank discussion, and helpful illustrations, this book should be required reading for all Anglican leaders. Every Rector will want a copy of this book for every member of their Vestry. And every Vestry member will surely want a copy for their Rector.

This book is full of resources for forming the vestry as a learning community. It deals with the “soft” side of leadership that enables the pastor and vestry to journey together along the leadership path. Each chapter can be read and reviewed during a series of vestry meetings, or as part of a vestry retreat, and includes questions for group and individual discussion. Includes resources for vestries, based upon different preferred learning styles, for the formation part of the vestry meeting or retreat.

Get to know the first five Black women to be elected diocesan bishops within the Episcopal Church. During this moment, with the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter, and the increased feelings of division in our country, Black women clergy in the Episcopal Church have voiced a need to come together, believing that their experiences and concerns may be very different than those of other clergy. That need is answered here in This Band of Sisterhood. The five Black women bishops featured in this book can provide a compass for how to journey along these new paths. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Carlye J. Hughes, Kimberly Lucas, Shannon MacVean-Brown, and Phoebe A. Roaf offer honest, vulnerable wisdom from their own lives that speaks to this time in American life. Both women and men will find this book invaluable in discerning how God might be calling them to use their own leadership skills.

Churches experiencing numerical and financial decline may dread the day when they can no longer afford a full-time pastor. Freeing up funds that would go to a full-time salary sure would help the budgetmaybe even enough to turn things aroundbut is it even possible to run effective ministries with just a half- or quarter-time professional? Journalist and part-time pastor Jeffrey MacDonald says yeschurches can grow more vibrant than ever, tapping into latent energy and undiscovered gifts, revitalizing worship, and engaging in more effective ministry with the community.Readers get a much-needed playbook forhelping congregations to thrive with a part-time ministry model. They learn to see the model in a new light: to stop viewing part-time as a problem to be eradicated and to instead embrace it as a divine gift that facilitates a higher level of lay engagement, responsibility, playfulness, and creativity.

Written from a post-Christendom/emergent worldview, this books was born of a singular question asked in hundreds of ways: "What do we do to be faithful in this changed and changing reality?" Whether shaped by anxiety, a foretaste of coming changes, excitement, or energy at the prospects of witness and service the future holds, the question remains the same and the answers elusive. Part one addresses church functions under categories of governance, modeling, collaboration, champion, catalyst, mission, covenant, disciple, change and leadership. Part two offers further explication of the functions, including books recommended for in-depth study, application ideas, and further exploration of themes.

The Bible Challenge is an invitation to journey with fellow believers from across the world and across the Anglican Communion through the entire length and breadth of the Bible, and to experience the full sweep of the biblical record in the course of a single year. For each of 365 days, there is a selection of readings comprising Old Testament, Psalm and New Testament passages, insightful commentary by one of a hundred theologians and church leaders from around the Anglican Communion, a prayer for the day and questions for reflection. UK contributors include: Nick Baines, Rosalind Brown, Jeffrey John, Archbishop Barry Morgan, Mark Oakley, June Osborne, Martyn Percy, Emma Percy, Michael Perham, Stephen Platten and others. The Bible Challenge is supported by a website www.thecenterborbiblicalstudies.org and its international advisory board includes Rowan Williams, Paula Gooder, David Ford, Graham Tomlin and many senior figures from around the Anglican world.

What does it look like to lead an Anglican Church in North America? Rectors and Vestry members will love having this essential handbook and in-depth guide to leading an Anglican congregation. The Rev. Canon David Roseberry writes in an easy yet thorough style to address the needs, challenges, structures, canons, other important issues facing any Anglican Church of any size. Canon Roseberry brings the wisdom and experience of over 30 years growing and leading a church from the ground up to become one of the most attended Anglican Churches in North America.

Do you love your parish? Are you fond of your pastor? Would you believe that in just a matter of a few weeks your pastor and his family could be abused, humiliated, and unemployed? In just a matter of days your parish could be split down the middle. A couple of months from now close to forty percent of the people you currently see at worship could no longer be there. Close to half of those will never again attend worship or participate in any church. Friends that you see talking and laughing this Sunday may never speak again. If you want to do whatever you can to keep that scenario from happening to your pastor and your parish, then this book is for you. It is the product of nearly a decade of work with parishes that are undergoing or have recently undergone the very scenario described above. The substance of this book is based on twenty-five case studies of clergy exercising faithful ministries with positive results that were attacked by a small group of antagonists in their congregations. The antagonists successfully "removed their senior pastor." This book describes how it happened, what could have been to stop it, and what can be done to prevent it from happening to your pastor and parish. The Reverend Doctor Dennis R. Maynard is the author of ten books. He has served as a consultant to over one hundred parish and school boards in the United States and Canada.

Mr. Chamberlayne's transcription of "The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish" contains the earliest extant records of the parish. Among other things, the volume includes the minutes of all vestry meetings from October 30, 1720 to April 18, 1789, except for the period October 28, 1722 through November 11, 1723, and a register of births and baptisms, and a few deaths, spanning the period 1720-1798. The vestry book occupies about 60 percent of the transcription. Since it was concerned primarily with church business, most of the entries pertain to payments for services, tithables, guardianship issues, and so forth. Nevertheless, the frequent lists of accounts payable, witnesses to petitions, and so forth have the decided value of placing many colonists in Bristol Parish at a particular moment in time. The parish register, on the other hand, is an unassailable genealogical treasure. The vast majority of the more than 3,000 entries constitute records of birth and baptism, and they unfailingly indicate the names of the child, names of parents, date of birth, and date of baptism. In all, the parish register bears reference to over 9,000 persons, all of whom may be found in the comprehensive index at the back of the volume.