These books are available for download.
Churches and Christian organisations are not always heavenly places to work. While transformation is their core purpose, they are often not so good at their own change. Management solutions imported from the business or NGO world frequently fail to make much difference. We tend not to appreciate nor engage with the beliefs that make Christian organisations who they are. We often carry out our visioning, strategy, evaluation and change management processes as if God was not there.
Inspiring Change is about how we integrate Christian faith into a professional process of organisational change. It is for any of us interested in helping churches and Christian organisations improve. This book takes you through the essential stages in any change process highlighting learning from practical experiences around the world. Inspiring Change is about going beyond human effort and techniques to intentionally create space for God ́s grace to bring tranformation – to make out churces and Christian organisations the places they were created and called to be.
Also available in French, Inspirer le changement and Spanish, Inspirando el cambio.
Leading people is demanding work. Many of us feel ill-prepared for the role in which we find ourselves. We yearn to know God’s presence in the messy realities of day-to-day leadership – but we don’t always feel it.
Often, we are loss to answer the most basic question: ‘Why should be anyone led by you?’
The most important thing we bring to our leadership role is not our skill, training or experience – but our character. This book focuses on four elements of character that are vital and inter-connected in strong leadership:
- A clear calling
- Radical courage
- Authentic humility
- Rigorous self-disipline
As we live out these characteristics, we find the emotional and spiritual resources we need to empower and inspire our staff. And in doing so, we create more space for God to transform our organisations.
Churches play a central role in development. They motivate voluntary action and advocacy. They provide vital services to the most marginalised and needy. They give people hope. And yet, churches themselves are also ‘in development’. Like societies and individuals, churches are in a constant and necessary process of change. This report examines this process of change. It reflects on first-hand experiences from Africa that can inspire and guide us. This can help us lead and support change processes in our own churches and in the church development organisations we work with.
Organisations that want to retain their legitimacy and continue to contribute to positive changes in society must have the ability to adjust to changing circumstances. They must be able to adapt their strategies when the situation of their target group changes. They have to be able to understand and adjust to new political situations and to actively work for influencing possible change. At the same time, each organisation must be able to maintain a certain continuity and stability in its work methods and relationships. This places high demands on both the organisation and its leaders – and it is here that OD comes into play.
Change is more difficult than we think. The organisations we work with tend to change as little as they have to. To promote authentic change in our organisations we need to learn from the experiences we have. This booklet shares some of the models and practices that Swedish Mission Council (SMC) have found useful in their organisational development (OD) work. This booklet explores important questions such as:
What are the core elements of organisations?
How do they develop and change?
What are the key elements of good practice in OD?
This publication argues that organisational change must be both professionally excellent and spiritually passionate. It highlights ten practical ways for how this can be implemented in the complicated realities of organisational life. By publishing this booklet SMC seeks to contribute to a discussion on spiritual aspects of change in general and organisational change in particular.
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