The Once and Future Church: Returning the Church to the Way Jesus Left it - Softcover

Kroeger, Ricky

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798994583944

Publisher: One Kingdom Worldwide, 2026

Synopsis

Every day in the USA, 16 churches close their doors for the last time. We didn't lose the faith. We lost the model.

In Jesus' day, the Sabbath gathering was a conversation. Several rabbis, their talmidim and everyone present talked through how to live a life pleasing to God, and anyone could raise a hand. Jesus walked life-on-life with twelve, who helped develop seventy, who helped develop five hundred. And they turned the world upside down.

The Once and Future Church is written for pastors, elders and church leaders who love the church and know something is missing. Ricky Kroeger traces how the church traded that conversational way for Europe's lecture model. Then he shows, practically and hopefully, how to recover it, without abandoning everything you are doing now.

Inside, you will discover:

• A Sabbath in Capernaum: what a gathering looked like when every question was welcome
• The meaning of talmid: not a student who knows or an apprentice who does, but someone becoming more and more like their rabbi
• Twelve, seventy, five hundred: how Jesus multiplied, and how every pastor, elder and staff member can walk with their own twelve
• What the lecture produced: why so many people are still stuck after 10, 20 and 30 years of faithful attendance
• A Sunday in the future church: conversational learning guided by four simple posters: Jesus' Attitudes That Bless, The Fruit of the Spirit, The Manipulate-to-Control Relationship Busters and True Talmidim Will Evidence
• Honest answers to the two fears every pastor has: the disruptive voice, and losing everything else
• Leading without a throne: Christ as the head, and leaders who serve and reconcile
• Talmidim who go: serving first, scattered like salt, and becoming light in the communities that need it most

Built to be read together. Each chapter closes with a prayer and Questions for Your Twelve, so a leadership team can work through the book side by side. The appendices include the four posters and the five-step process from the One Kingdom Worldwide books. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.

This is not a book about trying harder. It is about returning to the way of our Rabbi. Endings can be beginnings, and the church Jesus left us can be the church of our future.

About the Author

Ricky Kroeger has spent more than 40 years consulting with organizations in 20 countries across five continents. He has served as a pastor, executive pastor and elder, and taken part in two church plants. He is the founder of One Kingdom Worldwide and the author of Gravitas, Life, Love and Leading.

Edition details

• Publisher: One Kingdom Worldwide
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798994583944
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106