Jan Goodyear

Jan Goodyear is a retired middle school language arts teacher. She retired after 33 years of teaching and has since educated herself on church transformation and applied that knowledge by consulting with churches on visioning, structure, leadership development, and Christian education.

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The Intergenerational Church: Understanding Congregations from WWII to WWW.COM

Written in three parts, this resource examines the characteristics of five generations while offering practical suggestions for integrating generations within church life.

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Gen2Gen: Sharing Jesus Across the Generations

This compilation of articles examines issues and trends relating to developing intergenerational congregations, providing a new perspective on families, singles, and aging.

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Small, Strong Congregations: Creating Strengths and Health for Your Congregation

This book shares insight into why and how small congregations can be strong and viable.

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American Religion: Contemporary Trends

This resource summarizes survey findings to provide a broad overview of trends in American religion.

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Fulfilled: Living and Leading With Unusual Wisdom, Peace, and Joy

This resource seeks to lessen the stresses of pastoral leadership, offering three traits --- stillness, awareness, and playfulness --- as ways to sustain spiritual empowerment.

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The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking

This workbook introduces 50 different models for strategic thinking, detailing a history, purpose, and suggested applications for readers to modify based off their needs.

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Missional Communities: The Rise of the Post-Congregational Church

This resource explores historical and current models of missional models, noting how they promote faith among the community and embed themselves in the world.

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Autism and Your Church: Nurturing the Spiritual Growth of People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This book equips congregations to include people with autism, offering strategies and templates for meaningful and inclusive ministry.

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Sticky Faith Youth Worker Edition: Practical Ideas to Nurture Long-Term Faith in Teenagers

Based on research from Fuller Youth Institute, this series focuses on teens in the transitional years of high school and college, specifically looking at those who have active faith backgrounds and what kept them engaged or caused them to become disengaged.

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Healthy Disclosure: Solving Communication Quandaries in Congregations

This book examines how to avoid miscommunication, build trust, protect confidential information, and practice transparency.

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Living Well and Dying Faithfully: Christian Practices for End-of-Life Care

Drawing on the author's experience as a patient care practitioner and chaplain, this resource explores death in the context of faithful living.

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A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

This book demonstrates how to live the Jewish mandate to love one's neighbor, studying Jewish texts and applying them to modern times.

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The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation

This book examines the multitude of definitions for the term "missional" before offering its own definition based within a biblical and theological context.

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A Place Where Everybody Matters: Life and Ministry in a Small Church

This book explores healthy small church ministry such as relationship-building, utilizing individual gifts, and determining priorities.

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Bringing Good News: 40 Stories of Congregations and the Ministries that Transformed Them

This resource includes inspirational stories of congregations who leaned into their faith in order to create something new or overcome a challenge. Collected by the Union Presbyterian Seminary, these stories will inspire your congregation to open up to God's spirit.

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Curating Worship

This resource explores curated worship as an innovative approach to the worship experience, where the designer gathers elements, provides a context, and allows others to engage in imaginative thinking.

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Generations Together: Caring, Praying, Learning, Celebrating, & Serving Faithfully

This comprehensive guide helps congregations lay the groundwork for establishing vibrant intergenerational churches.

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Helping Without Hurting in Church Benevolence: A Practical Guide to Walking with Low-Income People

This guide offers a toolkit to make client-based ministry with the poor more transformative for the ones being helped, addressing the complexity of poverty issues.

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Learning Mission, Living Mission: Churches that Work

This resource presents the Missional Church Learning Experience as a potential model to help congregations develop missional projects with partnering churches to share experiences and ensure sustainability.

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Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition

This resource argues that the old approach to making maps, a strategic planning technique, is no longer applicable to today. Instead, it outlines a new map-making strategy that can be flexible to a more local context.

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The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Community

This book will help your congregation take the first step towards becoming more missionally engaged, inspiring new ways to leave an impact and providing success stories of congregations who did it.

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Becoming a Church of Lifelong Learners

This resource offers a new approach to faith formation, outlining four practices that involve intergenerational activities and home-based practices.

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Adoptive Youth Ministry: Integrating Emerging Generations into the Family of Faith

This book shares how to develop a meaningful and transformative youth ministry that adjusts to real-time challenges.

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Christian Educators' Guide to Evaluating and Developing Curriculum

This resource takes the guesswork out of how to plan and implement the task of evaluation and curriculum development by offering a step-by-step process.

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Sound, Lighting, and Video: A Resource for Worship

This book teaches readers how to integrate technology like video and lighting with the vision God has given a church in order to create a powerful worship service.

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Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace: Challenging the Epidemic of Gun Violence

Written in five sections, this resource is the result of a symposium of 200 bishops who met to discuss gun violence after the tragedy of the Sandy Hook shooting.

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Beyond the Screen: Youth Ministry for the Connected but Alone Generation

This book highlights the differences between connecting through technology and connecting through genuine community by examining the role of social media among youth and how to apply social media to ministry.

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Rich Church, Poor Church: Keys to Effective Financial Ministry

This resource clarifies the issues that make stewardship so challenging in modern times, examining practices that lead to faithful discipleship.

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Arts Camp: A Creative, Customizable Alternative to Vacation Bible School and Beyond

This book includes detailed "how to" plans to create an arts-based camp that includes scripture stories, issues such as ecology and peace, and bonding as a faith community.

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Reclaimed: Faith in an Emerging Generation

This book speaks candidly to congregations wondering how to draw young adults to church, offering insights into what young adults are looking for and making suggestions on how churches can engage with this demographic.

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The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations

This practical guide offers a new way for leaders to create environments where all members feel valued and included, leading to productive encounters.

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Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time

This book explores how a neighborhood-based faith congregation can leave an impact on the community using practices modeled by Jesus.

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Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

This book examines the three types of humility that affects relationships and how to use inquiry as a way to counter "do and tell" cultures.

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Reaching People Under 30 while Keeping People Over 60: Creating Community Across Generations

This book speaks to the intergenerational gap and offers suggestions for bridging divides using the biblical example of Jesus and Paul, who invited all to participate.