Twelve Dynamic Shifts for Transforming Your Church
E. Stanley Ott
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans (2002)
113 pages

Stan Ott, as a Presbyterian pastor and president of the Vital Churches Institute, has given us many good books about Church revitalization. This is another study that encourages the local congregation to think constructively about how to move beyond a "traditional" church that focuses on pastor and programs to a "transformational" one that focuses on spiritual vitality and growth. In transitioning to transformational congregations, the key theme throughout the book is to bless what a church has done well and add what a church needs to be better. This is not only wise but effective advice for bringing about change in the Church.

Ott's starting point is that the crisis in the mainline Church today is due to loss of personal spirituality and congregational vitality. For this reason, he leads us through a series of twelve shifts that need to happen in visioning, ministry, congregational programs, and practice of leadership to address these shortfalls. He also provides very practical exercises for implementing these shifts. His goal is the transformational Church which he defines as a church that shares pastoral leadership, employs a variety of worship styles, is communal and missional in emphasis, is high-commitment, embraces ministry as a lifestyle and whose governance is permission-giving and leads by ministry teams. These churches (of any size) allow congregations to grow spiritually and to see themselves as "sent, in all humility, by God to pursue the work of Jesus Christ in the world" (7). This, he claims, with prayerful and expectant trust in the work of the Holy Spirit,will renew and restore a local congregation to active and vital discipleship and ministry within the Church and the community. I cannot agree more! If the call to making faithful disciples to carry on God's mission in the world is still the raisond' etre of the Church, then Ott's recommendations for becoming a transformational church could not be more helpful and timely.