People of a Compassionate God: Creating Welcoming Congregations

A comprehensive introduction to how congregations implement change around issues of greater inclusiveness and openness.

Many congregations are facing accelerated change in the communities to whom they minister. Responding to these changes means welcoming persons of different ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientation into the full fellowship of the church. As anyone who has lived through such a transition can attest, opening the life of the congregation to this kind of diversity can be a traumatic, destabilizing time.

In order to help churches who follow this difficult route, Janet Fishburn and the contributors to this volume have engaged in a strenuous study of congregations that have consciously chosen to become more open and affirming toward segments of the population that are different than the church's current membership. Using theological, educational, and sociological tools, they seek to understand how congregations succeed in consciously becoming open and affirming of diversity--and how they fail.

Contributors include Janet Fishburn, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Linda Vogel, Nelle Slate, and Elizabeth Box Price.

Janet F. Fishburn is Professor Emerita of Teaching Ministry at Drew University Theological School in Madison, New Jersey.

Janet Forsythe Fishburn is the author of numerous articles about congregations, pastors and ministry. She is Professor Emerita of Teaching Ministry at the Theological School of Drew University where she retired as Acting Dean in 1995. An ordained Presby