Norma Everist and Nelvin Vos, CONNECTIONS: Faith and Work
This 30-session small group program encourages participants to bring the joys, concerns, and questions from daily life into conversation with the teachings of the church and their personal understanding of the faith. Participants explore who they are in God's creation, how God is creating around and through them, how evil inhabits their worlds, who God redeems and how we minister in daily life in the midst of never-perfect choices. Video-based training for congregational leaders. Available from Augburg Fortress Publishers.
Linda Grenz, LeaderResources Discipleship Groups
Resource includes a leadership training program and a Leader's Guide for the first twelve sessions, six on the Baptismal Covenant (Book of Common Prayer) and six on ministry in daily life. Also included are outlines of daily devotions and Bible study methods, along with a general session format for creating your own sessions if a group continues beyond twelve meetings. For overview and sample pages see www.leaderresources.org/
Paul Minus, TAKING FAITH TO WORK: A Key Part of Christian Discipleship Today. The program includes a five-week study guide to be used by small groups in congregations. The sessions include discussion questions, activities, and case studies that allow participants to apply the text's major themes to their own lives, share personal examples of workplace issues, and explore how others are responding to the challenges of creating work/life balance. See www.faithintheworkplace.org/
Robert E. Reber, Linking Faith and Daily Life: An Educational Program for Lay People, Alban Institute, Bethesda, MD.
This program begins with a weekend retreat followed by six evening (or afternoon) sessions to help laity develop an understanding of the relationship between their work and their daily lives. Developed by the former dean of Auburn Theological Seminary, it is a good way to "jump start" a congregation in focusing on ministry in daily life. It may need to be adapted if participants are not employed or for rural settings (examples tend to be urban and job oriented). For the retreat you will need an appropriate facility, one or more facilitators (depending on total group size) and someone to host/lead the small groups that meet back home.
(301) 718-4407 (800) 486-1318 (301) 718-1958 fax
Jean Morris Trumbauer, Sharing the Ministry: A Practical Guide for Transforming Volunteers Into Ministers, Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 1999. This resource provides practical methods for helping all church members put their unique gifts into action. It helps members grow spiritually as they share their gifts with others.
Jean Trumbauer, Created and Called: Discovering Our Gifts for Abundant Living, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998. A companion manual to Sharing the Ministry. Comprehensive theology of gifts, holistic conceptual model for gift-based ministry in congregations, and numerous gifts-discovery reflection guides and participant pages that are reproducible for gifts-discovery seminars. Includes additional resources for non-classroom methods of gifts discovery, gifts-ministry administration, and celebration, including reproducible samples.
Carol L. Weiser, ed. with Sally Simmel and Bob Sitze, WORKING: Making a Difference in God's World, Chicago, ELCA, 1995. Excellent sourcebook for congregations interested in ministry in daily life. Includes models, stories, programmatic ideas, resources, and more. Some reproducible pages. Comes with an audio-tape and transcript.
Where in the World... Ministry in Daily Life Dramas, Chicago, Division for Congregational Ministries and the Division for Ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1996. Appendices include Bible passages relating to ministry in daily life, resources, and activities for Ministry in Daily Life education.
COURSES... Search the educational opportunities database at http://www.faithandwisdom.org/
