For Ministers

HN Books

• Navigating the Storm: Resources of HOPE for Church Leaders by HOPE Network Ministries
  This book provides practical guidance and encouragement for church leaders navigating the challenges of ministry. Drawing on themes such as group leadership, vision, non-anxious leadership, spiritual formation, and church health, the chapters offer wisdom from experienced ministry leaders. Together, these resources help leaders guide their congregations with maturity, discernment, and faith, trusting that Christ is present and at work even in difficult seasons.
• Doing God’s Work: A Primer for Church Leaders by HOPE Network Ministries
  This book introduces the ministry of HOPE Network through practical wisdom from experienced church leaders. Its chapters address topics such as mentoring, leadership identity, renewing a church’s mission, shepherd selection, spiritual formation, soul care, and helping weary leaders. Together, these insights encourage and equip church leaders while emphasizing that they are supported by a network of ministers ready to help them navigate ministry challenges.

Self Assessment Resources

• Compelling Preaching Survey Report (2023) was collaboratively designed by Pepperdine University and HOPE Network Ministries in response to the guiding questions within the Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. The survey presented eight target audiences within Restoration Heritage Churches with a series of questions and choices related to compelling characteristics of sermon design and delivery, compelling personal characteristics of preaching ministers, qualities that make the story of Jesus feel real, powerful, and important to the listener, opportunities for improvement, and connectedness.
• The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World by Peter Scazzero
  Going beyond simply offering a quick fix or new technique, The Emotionally Healthy Leader gets to the core, beneath-the-surface issues of uniquely Christian leadership. This book is more than a book you will read; it is a resource you will come back to over and over again.
• Burnout Inventory
  This inventory, originally designed for ministers, has proven to be helpful to Church of Christ elders/shepherds as well.  It is instrumental in revealing a minister’s or elder’s level of burnout so that the necessary steps can be taken to remain, retain and/or regain personal health and vitality in their Kingdom work.
• Theological Worlds Inventory
  This inventory is designed to assist in that task of discerning the “world” (your experiences, thoughts, feelings, surroundings, etc.) in which you are living, in order to help gauge whether or not your “world” has become stifling and unhealthy.
• Why HOPE Network Uses the Grip-Birkman
• Stuck!: Navigating Life and Leadership Transitions by Terry B. Walling
• The Third Third of Life: Preparing for Your Future by Walter C. Wright Jr.
  Considering retirement can be daunting. How do you know how to best plan for the future? This is a helpful guidebook/workbook that leads you thoughtfully into the third third of life and provides eight sessions to help those moving toward retirement plan out their next steps.

Team Building

• Why HOPE Network Uses the Grip-Birkman

Leadership Marriage Care

• Growing Love Network
  Growing Love Network, founded and directed by HOPE Network Ministries Partner Jon Anderson, exists to help struggling and/or failing marriages through weekly classes, seminars, retreats, and professional counseling.
• Growing Love: The 9 Essentials of Lifelong Love  by Jon R. Anderson
  A nine-week guide to transforming relationships. Designed for optimal use as a class curriculum or group study, this workbook can also be used as a self-growth aid for individuals whose mate or spouse is unwilling to get help. No matter how tough your past relationships, or how hopeless you see your future, within the pages of this book you’ll find your unique path to a transformed heart.
• 365 Days of Growing Love by Jon R. Anderson
  Devote just a few moments, every day for a year, to growing the way you love, and your marriage can’t help but get profoundly better. 365 Days of Growing Love is like taking a daily supplement of all the essential nutrients for your relational health. It doesn’t take much time and the rewards far outweigh the effort!
• Marriage Mentoring: 12 Conversations

Spiritual Formation

• God Hungry
  This blog, “A Place for the God-Hungry,” is where HOPE Network Ministries Partner Jim Martin shares encouraging ideas about life, marriage, parenting, leadership, and ministry.  Each week, he dedicates at least one post to those who serve as church leaders.
• In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri Nouwen
  For a society that measures successful leadership in terms of the effectiveness of the individual, Father Nouwen offers a counter definition that is witnessed by a “communal and mutual experience.” For Nouwen, leadership cannot function apart from the community. His wisdom is grounded in the foundation that we are a people “called.” This beautiful guide to Christian Leadership is the rich fruit of Henri Nouwen’s own journey as one of the most influential spiritual leaders of the 20th century.
• The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God Through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence by Henri Nouwen
  Within this one small book lies the most relevant and inspiring challenge that we shall ever face: to surrender the compulsive noise of the world for the way of the heart that leads us to God.
• Practicing God’s Presence: Brother Lawrence for Today’s Reader (Quiet Times for the Heart) by Robert Elmer
  For centuries, the sayings of Brother Lawrence, a seventeenth-century monk, have shown believers how to follow and live like Christ. Now a new generation can discover the joy of practicing the presence of God with this updated version.

Church Health

• The Emotionally Healthy Church: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives
  In this book, Scazzero shares refreshing insights and a different and challenging slant on what it takes to lead your congregation to wholeness and maturity in Christ.
• The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
  Written for those who are trying to nurture authentic faith communities and for those who have struggled to retain their faith, The Tangible Kingdom offers theological answers and real-life stories that demonstrate how the best ancient church practices can re-emerge in today’s culture, through any church of any size.

Children’s Ministry

• The Confident Kid Ministry – This website, written by HOPE Network Associate Shannon Rains, provides articles that have been especially helpful to church leaders during the times of COVID-19 include, but are not limited to:
  • Ten Steps to Reopening Children’s Ministry
  • Reopen Children’s Ministry Now? A Frank Discussion
  • Keeping Kids Interested in Family Worship

Leadership Bootcamp for Women in Ministry

• Leadership Bootcamp for Women in Ministry – Two experienced women in ministry guide a small group of other female ministers through virtual sessions to give them skills that will increase their confidence, conflict resolution ability, credibility, and courage. Email HN Associate Amanda Box or Becky Burroughs for more details.