Many churches are "mule churches"-strong for a generation but unable to reproduce themselves. As a mule comes from a horse and a donkey, they were the product of demographics and cultural conditions conducive for a generation of strength but did not produce many offspring in new church starts or strong candidates for ministry. Mule churches create a generation or more of pastors, superintendents, and bishops who think they knew what made for strong church, who think their approach to ministry is the key reason for their success. And it produces churches with a nostalgia for the way things used to be. This makes it hard for churches to adapt to change.
We've been declining for a long time due to changes in secular and consumer culture, demographics radically adjusting normative family structure, and a theology based in consumer marketing rather than mission-driven vitality. Now we realize that the church is free to not just make the gospel relevant to life but to make life relevant to the gospel.
Conservative evangelical Christianity was able to focus on relevance prior to its ascendency on the national stage. Methodism requires a similar period of confessional self-definition. We are going through these confessions now in the debate about our stance toward homosexuality.
Most students and most professors go to the seminary "to fix the church," because they realize that the future of the church and its seminaries are inseparable. Seminaries provide scholars for the church, who learn how to think, who learn how to take the long view, who shape identity, who foster a "culture of calling."
A new kind of Methodist progressive evangelicalism is regenerating, which lives the great commandment (love) and the great commission (reproducing disciples) on a global scale. Before, seminaries prepared pastors to maintain healthy churches in stable neighborhoods. Now, every neighborhood is changing and many churches are losing their members and their confidence. They long for a recovery of their sense of mission and a new kind of leadership. A new kind of seminary is regenerating to foster hope, wisdom, creativity, and engagement with the great issues of our day.

Veteran youth worker Tim Smith explores 8 principles for spiritual and character development, plus gives practical suggestions, discussion questions, and helpful tools for personal and group study. Essential reading for staying excited and committed in ministry over the long haul!

We are experiencing a mentoring crisis today. One key reason is that too many women cling to an outdated formulaic idea of what mentoring is all about. When we hear the word "mentoring" we conjure up a picture that fit our experience decades ago. Then we look in the mirror and don't see an adequate mentor staring back at us. Our preconceived ideas about what today's young women want in a mentor convince us we are not qualified to be mentors--but we are wrong. What we don't realize is that younger women today are far more likely to want a relationship with that woman in the mirror than the conjured-up perfect mentor in our head.

Organic Mentoring explores foundational issues that explain why beloved but outdated mentoring methods are no longer effective. The book looks at the cultural changes and fast-paced digital advancements that shape young thought and behavior but weaken the link between generations. It walks through the new values, preferences, ideas, and problems of the next generation and how these issues impact mentoring. Then the authors guide the reader through landmines to avoid and approaches that work today.

At the heart of all thinking about education, whether Christian or secular, lies the problem of integration. To adopt a philosophy of education is not the same as integrating that philosophy into all the parts-curriculum, student activities, administration, and more. This book is written by an evangelical Christian, committed to high doctrine and a worldview based on biblical truth, whose primary consideration is Christian education. Its pages seek to help educators who are Christian achieve a living union between Christianity and education.

Knight's textbook surveys the philosophies and philosophic issues relevant to Christian education. Teachers, students of education, and other readers will find this book a "helpful guide for analyzing educational purposes and practices in the light of their basic beliefs."

Besides investigating the relationship between philosophy and education and discussing how philosophies have affected contemporary practices in the classroom, Knight offers a Christian approach to philosophy and relates such an approach to educational practices.

Philosophy and Education is divided into three sections. Part I deals with basic concepts in philosophy and the relationship between philosophy and education. Part II is a survey of how traditional and modern philosophies have faced the basic philosophic questions and what that has meant for educational practice. Part III discusses the necessity of developing a personal philosophy of education, one possible approach to a Christian philosophy, and some of the ramifications of such a philosophy for educational practice in Christian schools.