A New Resource to Help Leaders Get Their Heads Out of the 1990s

A New Way Forward: Growing Churches in a New Era,developed by the Path 1 team and written by Paul Nixon, will soon be available from Discipleship Ministries. Church development leaders who attend SCD in Columbus, Ohio, will receive a free copy at the pre-event gathering, Sunday, August 2, 2026, at the Columbus Hyatt. The book will be available on the Discipleship Ministries’ online bookstore after that.

A New Way Forward is a short read, with local church leadership teams in mind. Easy links provided by URL code enable readers to listen to podcast conversations with leaders of vital churches. A New Way Forwardgrows from the new vision offered by our Council of Bishops. The big idea is that missional outreach to bless our neighbors is not a side dish, with Sunday worship as the main event. Mission is a main event, an entree, along with worship. Almost every thriving church has a different relationship to loving and serving neighbors beyond the walls of church than was common at the turn of the century. Back then, we grew churches with an invitation to personal spiritual growth and development. Church was viewed as personal spiritual therapy to get one’s life on track. This, coupled with a good children’s ministry, was our understanding of mission then.

Today, people find therapeutic support in a variety of places. Their kids are busy with myriad activities, most of which provide more tangible benefits than people can see in sending their kids to Sunday school. Church still needs to be relevant to people’s life challenges and crises, but this alone is not adequately compelling to garner the attention of our neighbors. Today, people are drawn to places and movements that promise to make a difference in the world, the community, and in their personal lives. People want to be a part of solutions and blessings. They are weary of acrimony and unsolved social problems. The new episcopal vision invites the church beyond the walls to the work of loving neighbors and creating a movement of neighbors loving and serving neighbors, rebuilding the fabric of community and trust that has unraveled of late.

In A New Way Forward, leaders will discover that thriving churches start by loving their neighbors and fulfilling the Great Commandment. The focus is on relationships, loving up close and personal, where we know the names of those we serve. While most of those served will not be coming into our sanctuaries for worship in the near term, others hear what we are up to, and their curiosity causes them to attend. In an era when organizational religion has a black eye, churches can show through their actions that their love is real. From that position, churches often begin to grow again.