Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Alban Books
Pages: 304
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-5381-1289-2 • Hardback • November 2018 • $70.00 • (£54.00)
978-1-5381-1290-8 • Paperback • November 2018 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-5381-1291-5 • eBook • November 2018 • $30.00 • (£25.00)
Gil Rendle is former senior vice president for the Texas Methodist Foundation as well as former senior consultant and director of consulting for the Alban Institute. As an ordained minister with a PhD in organizational and group dynamics, he has worked with congregations across denominations for more than thirty years. He is the author of a number of books, including Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as Spiritual Practice for Congregations.
Contents
PART I: GOOD LEADERSHIP IS NOT ENOUGH
1 Nashon’s Quiet Courage
2 The Change That Demands Quiet Courage
PART II: THE ASSUMPTIONS
3 A Word about How: Assumptions about Change
4 A Word about Enough: Assumptions about Resources
5 A Word about Structure and Process: Assumptions about
Fear, Organization, and Democracy
6 A Word about Learning: Assumptions about How
Leadership Is Formed
PART III: THE TEMPTATIONS
7 The Temptation of Playing It Safe: Nostalgia
8 The Temptation of Christian Empathy
9 The Temptation of Tiredness
PART IV: WHERE DO WE START?
10 Telling the Story That Will Get Us through the Wilderness
11 Lessons in Style
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Gil Rendle is on a very short list of our wisest guides in the practice of leadership in the United Methodist Church. And for those of us tempted toward a nostalgia that is avoidance, an empathy that is unhelpful, and a weariness that is escapist, he urges us to engage with courage and conviction. Quietly Courageous is the summation of decades of persistent attention and deep learning about how we have come to this place, and who God calls us to be in service to the mission.— Kenneth H. Carter Jr., president of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church; author of Embracing the Wideness
Quietly Courageous reveals that we ‘are not the product of things gone wrong but rather of the world grown different.’Rendle brings his prophetic powers of observation to bear on the assumptions and temptations standing between us and more effective leadership. The reader emerges from this book with a fresh framing of where we stand, how we got here, and what needs to happen next. — Susan Beaumont, author of How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You're Going
Gil Rendle has more than a bit of quiet courage as he engages the challenges facing pastors and congregations in this new mission age. He pulls apart the norms and practices that have become our shackles. Seeing the wilderness as an opportunity, Rendle then leads the reader into a reflection that allows humble movement toward God’s imagined mission.— C. Andrew Doyle, Episcopal bishop; author of Vocãtiõ: Imaging a Visible Church
Gil Rendle compassionately turns us away from our preoccupation with feeding old anxieties about how to lead our organizations. He walks with us toward a newfound courage to be discovered within the deep waters of yet unimagined possibilities— Thomas V. Wolfe, President and CEO, Iliff School of Theology
From time to time a book reaches out to introverts and says “you need to read me.” This is such a book. [This] book provides a new way of leading in the culture in which we live. It relates more to biblical leadership than to leadership in the last century. However, it also relates to the role of current cultural leadership as much as biblical leadership.
— Restoration Quarterly