Leadership Institute Speaker Books

How to Inspire and Equip the Members of Your Church to Love and Serve Their Community

Every pastor wants to impact their local community. 

But pastors make up a small subset of the entire church, and many find themselves stretched too thin — especially now.

More than four out of five pastors tell Barna they prefer lay initiatives to new church programs, but fewer than one in 10 pastors is confident that their church is good at developing new leaders.

If you’re looking for ways to inspire and equip the people in your church to share God’s love with your community, we’d be honored to help. 

Together with our partners at Lutheran Hour Ministries, we’ve set out to answer questions such as: 

• What possibilities exist in the gifts of church members?
• What motivates Christians to make a hopeful difference in their neighborhoods?
• What’s the most fruitful way of connecting individual Christians with a heart for their neighbors to their community?
• How do you build trust in communities where Christians and the Church don’t have a great reputation?
• What’s the role of congregations and ministry leaders in this effort?

We’ve combined careful research with insights from ministry leaders and packaged them all in a report called:

Better Together: How Christians Can Be a Welcome Influence in Their Neighborhoods.

You can raise up leaders in your congregation who will make a positive difference in the community. 

It’s challenging work, but the results can be life changing — because in life and in ministry, we really are better together. 

New York Times Bestseller! What happens when we give away love like we're made of it? In his entertaining and inspiring follow-up to Love Does, Bob Goff takes readers on a journey into the secret of living without fear, constraint, or worry. In Everybody, Always, Bob shows us the simple truths that . . .

Driven by Bob's trademark storytelling, Everybody, Always reveals the lessons Bob learned--often the hard way--about what it means to love without inhibition, insecurity, or restriction. From finding the right friends to discovering the upside of failure, Everybody, Always points the way to embodying love by doing the unexpected, the intimidating, the seemingly impossible.

Whether losing his shoes while skydiving solo or befriending a Ugandan witch doctor, Bob steps into life with a no-limits embrace of others that is as infectious as it is extraordinarily ordinary. Everybody, Always reveals how we can do the same.

If you love Everybody, Always, don't forget to check out Love Does and Dream Big for more of Bob's delightful and inspiring stories!

A new, deeper look into the lives and minds of today’s young people.

In 2016, Barna and Impact 360 Institute joined forces to conduct the first major national study of Gen Z—the generation born between 1999 and 2015.

At that time, even the oldest members of Gen Z were barely 17, and the youngest had just been born.

That’s why Barna and Impact 360 Institute have teamed up once again—to check back in with this developing generation and to drill down on three new areas:

1. Gen Z's emotional lives

2. Their relationship with technology

3. How they feel about faith and practice it

If you work with 13 to 21 year olds in any capacity…
If you have members of Gen Z in your family...
If you want to know how this generation could reshape the world and the church... 

We strongly encourage you to read this report. 

Inside, you’ll get to know this driven, informed, hopeful-but-skeptical, spiritually open, highly connected, anxious generation. 

Plus you’ll learn strategies for loving and leading this often misunderstood group of young people.