David Sawyer

*Name: David R. Sawyer.

Writer, Consultant, church innovation advocate

Coaching/teaching leaders to transform churches and educational institutions, specializing in Adapting to Change, Flourishing Communities, Srategy and Planning, Conflict, Administration,

*Vocation: 2002-2012--Professor of Ministry and Director of Lifelong Learning and Advanced Degrees, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Presbyterian Minister since 1969 including serving as pastor in congregations in Illinois, Ohio, and Minnesota and as judicatory staff person in St. Louis, MO.

*Degrees: B. A., Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1966. M. Div., Louisville Seminary, 1969. Ph. D., Ohio University, 1979, "Organizational Communication."

*Books:

Pathmarks to New Church: A Workbook for Leaders of Faith Communities in Search of Innovation, co-authored by Deborah G. Fortel (Flourishing Church Consulting and Coaching, 2015).

Transitional Ministry Today, a chapter in an edited book, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014)

Work of the Church: Getting the Job Done in Boards and Committees (Judson Press, 1987).

Hope in Conflict: Finding Wisdom in Congregational Turmoil (Pilgrim Press, 2007).

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

David R. Sawyer has spent most of his ministry near the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. He came from near the confluence of those two rivers to Louisville to attend LPTS, was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Southeastern Illinois Presbytery, did his advanced degree in organizational communication in the southeastern corner of Ohio, served churches in Cincinnati and Minneapolis, and worked on the presbytery staff in St. Louis. Returning to Louisville Seminary as teacher and administrator in 2002, he employed the great rivers watershed system as a metaphor for understanding the church as a human system, and for the responsibility of church leaders to tend the health and transformation of that system.