Johnson, From the Outside In

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Ronald W. Johnson, From the Outside In: Connecting to the Community Around You (TCP Leadership Series). Lake Hickory Resources, 2006.

Referenced in: Social Ministry Strategies

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

The temptation of ministers who want to mobilize their churches into reaching their communities is to launch a pre-packaged, proven program. These programs are very helpful. Not uncommonly, however, they find only a few people getting on board, or perhaps wide participation at the start that soon fizzles. There can be many reasons for this, but one factor is inescapable, congregational DNA. Church leaders will experience continual frustration if they do not address how their congregational DNA, or personality, either enhances or inhibits their capacity to connect. At some point, sooner better than later, churches must address this. There is no tool better suited to this task that Ronald Johnson’s From the Outside In: Connecting to the Community Around You.

Johnson brings his extensive experience as an academic and practitioner to equip readers how to use the Enneagram to understand their congregations and communities, face internal and external obstacles, listen to their surroundings, and restructure their efforts toward greater effectiveness.

From the Publisher

From The Columbia Partnership (TCP) Leadership Series

From the Outside In is a serious look at how the personality of a church can act as a barrier that keeps it from being a welcome ally in the local community and keeps the community from hearing the gospel and the nature of the Kingdom of God. It examines the character of churches that take seriously the Kingdom of God as the essential model of their existence.

From the Outside In helps church leaders eager to reach out beyond their own walls to live missionally in a multicultural world, to dialogue with communities around them, and to move out in witness toward the world. It points out personality characteristics that prevent or enable churches to engage the communities around them. From the Outside In encourages churches to seriously listen, to hear what the community is saying, and to respond in Kingdom-focused ways.

A TCP Leadership Series title

About the Author

Ronald W. Johnson, Th. D. is professor of mission and evangelism at the McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as associate dean in the doctoral program. Prior to his tenure at McAfee, Dr. Johnson was associate professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and has served at both the Baptist Sunday School Board and the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of five books and often serves as interim pastor and consultant to churches in Georgia.

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