Church Turned Inside Out
A Guide for Designers, Refiners, and Re-Aligners
J-B Leadership Network Series
1. Edition October 2009
240 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
A design-thinking book for planting or redesigning churches and
incubating a new generation of leaders.
Written by Linda Bergquist and Allan Karr, two experienced
church planters and mentors, the book is full of wisdom, practical
advice, and creative counsel. Instead of a business-model-as-usual
approach, the authors challenge readers to begin with the raw
materials of beliefs, values, individuals, teams, and culture, and
to then move outwards to draw from a rich palette of real and
potential church paradigms. This book is meant to provoke church
leaders to think outside of the box and to imagine how their
churches might better reflect the image and the mission of God in
the world.
* Contains a wealth of illustrative examples, charts, and other
visual aides
* Offers a creative practical perspective and a
multi-disciplinary approach to establishing a new church or leading
an existing one
* Shows how to honor a church's purpose while embracing its
unique culture
* Includes important lessons for nurturing church leadership
skills
About Leadership Network xi
Foreword by Alan Hirsch xiii
Preface xvii
1 The Once and Future Church 1
2 Acknowledging Self 17
3 Cultivating Community 33
4 Patterns That Honor God 51
5 Designing Around Beliefs 67
6 Releasing Communitas 79
7 Designing in Culture 95
8 Embracing Culture 113
9 A Palette of Models 125
10 Discovering Congruency 145
11 Organizing by Design 159
12 A New Way of Organizing 177
Notes 191
Acknowledgments 201
About the Authors 205
Index 207
ALLAN KARR is currently an associate professor of missional/church planting at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and a practitioner of church planting and community development. Allan has also served for ten years as a national missionary of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.