Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in Your Church

by Dawn Darwin Weaks

Overview

The last 30 years of American church life have played a familiar refrain: "The church is old, out of touch, dying, and it's too late." Why bother? What if the church is not old enough, not out of touch enough, and not dying enough? When survival-rooted panic is supplanted with calm, spirited creativity, that may be exactly the moment your church was made for, that your community was hoping for— and that God is waiting for. First Christian Church of Odessa, Texas made a radical choice and was reborn as Connection Christian Church, with a new view on ministry and new energy. Breakthrough: Trusting God for Big Change in Your Church tells the story of what happened when this church dared to place their desperate, dying selves into the hands of a God whose middle name is "Surprise!" — and hints how readers might find that audacity in their own congregations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780827203280
Publisher:	APG Sales & Distribution
Publication date:	09/27/2022
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rev. Dr. Dawn Darwin Weaks is co-pastor of Connection Christian Church, a vibrant and trusted community leader in Texas' Permian Basin. She is a contributor to the Unbinding the Gospel series, a popular church transformation resource. Connection is the third century-old congregation she has led to discover bold, new purpose in ministry.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Chapter 1 Before 1

Chapter 2 Too Late? 7

Chapter 3 Church in Weird Places 15

Chapter 4 Fearless 23

Chapter 5 The Requirement for Resurrection 29

Chapter 6 A Blast from the Past 39

Chapter 7 Clink, Clink, Clink 45

Chapter 8 The Cafetorium Wilderness 51

Chapter 9 The Key Ingredient 59

Chapter 10 Y'all Means All 65

Chapter 11 Where Does It Hurt? 73

Chapter 12 Drive-In Church 81

Chapter 13 Surprised to Thrive 89

Chapter 14 After 95

Small Group Guide 99

Editorial Reviews

07/04/2022

This prosaic volume by pastor Weaks (A Travel Guide to Christian Faith) chronicles the author’s success reviving a dying church. The author details how in the mid-2010s she was recruited to co-pastor the century-old First Christian Church in Odessa, Tex., and increase its shrinking congregation. The next several years saw her usher it through major changes that included moving from an off the beaten path spot to a more centrally located former medical office building and changing the church’s name to Connection Christian Church. Weaks describes her inauspicious start in Odessa preaching to fewer than 50, as well as how she took steps to breathe new life into the church, such as hosting a day-care center for young kids in the building and getting involved in the community with programs to feed food-insecure children. The Covid-19 pandemic led Weaks to hold “ ‘Drive-In’ worship” in the church’s parking lot while making services available online, which helped ensure the church continued to grow even as the country went into lockdown. The lack of prescriptive advice on how readers might apply Weaks’s principles to their own churches means this rides on the quality of its story, which dutifully if exhaustingly discusses the administrative considerations in being a pastor in so much detail that this brief volume feels padded. Pastors may find Weaks’s story useful, but others won’t see the point. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"This book is truly a breakthrough; a hope-filled epistle to the modern church in a rapidly changing world. "
Rev. Erin Wathen, author of Resist and Persist

"When many pastors and congregations are struggling, this book is an encouraging word that will uplift, inspire, challenge, and surprise you."
Sarah Griffith Lund, Senior Pastor and author, and national staff, United Church of Christ

"The real-life story of a congregation who chose not to stay stuck, but to take a giant leap of faith."
Rev. Kyndall Rae Rothaus, author of Thy Queendom Come

"For any congregation going through a challenging time, this is the book for you."
F. Douglas Powe, Jr., Director, Lewis Center at Wesley Theological Seminary and James C. Logan Professor of Evangelism

"This book is full of practical and theological wisdom. A must-read for every dying church looking to be resurrected!"
Mike Graves, Wm. K. McElvaney Professor of Preaching and Worship emeritus, Saint Paul School of Theology and Scholar in Residence, Country Club Christian Church

From the Publisher