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TRAVELLING TOGETHER IN A CHANGING CHURCH
FROM STRATEGIES TO VIRTUES
choosing and living practices
to build the Church’s character and purpose
Robin Greenwood
Introduction
I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak at this gathering today. My
interest lies especially in how we learn to bring inspiration as well as
disturbance to churches as the gulf widens between contemporary
culture and the practice of Christian faith. Each of us comes here
with our own history with the church and with our own way of
telling our story.
It was 50 years ago that I first came to this place, when St John’s
was a college for training teachers. Archbishop Donald Coggan
called a conference here of sixth form boys he hoped to recruit to
ordained ministry. For almost half of my time as a priest in the
Church of England I’ve been a trainer and educator, engaging with
people, churches and church systems to find vital, sustainable and
energizing ways of being the community called “church” in many
contexts. I’ve been privileged to engage with Christians in churches
and countries other than my own and discovered how many are
seeking a new style for their presence in society, focussing on
church as “being” and church as “community”. In the struggle to
find how to be Church again in our time, I notice a growing
emphasis on “conversation” rather than on “competition”.
Eight years ago I decided to stop the continual travelling and be
rooted again as a parish priest. I needed to know if what I was
writing about, concerning churches and their leadership, had any
chance of becoming a reality. Today I’m celebrating the fourth day
of my “retirement” and here I am still asking “What does God
require of leaders and of me in today’s church?”
At a time when the practice of Christian faith seems increasingly
bizarre and unnecessary to so many, Churches whose desire is to
be drawn into the mission of God in the world are faced with a
situation that calls for new analysis and conceptualization. I believe
an urgent priority is to find a greater harmony between churches’
self-understanding – their vision as church – and the day to day
working practice. The main focus of my talk is to commend an
ecclesiology inspired by “virtue ethics” so that the disjuncture
between theory and practice of church might increasingly be healed.
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Over the past eight years as parish priest in Monkseaton and for a
time Chair of Churches Together in Whitley Bay, in North Tyneside,
It’s a large and mature church with a variety of congregations,
drawn to a range of worship forms and with a long memory of
fostering vocation. Work is progress there is seeking the necessary
habits for the formation of Christian community that is ever more
truly a sacramental sign and mediation of the triune God who is
love. Through being the leader of that community and its various
teams for almost eight years, I have come to temper Christian hope
with the recognition that models, blueprints and strategies are less
valuable than asking “What is the character of the community we
are summoned to be here and now and what habits will that
require?”. Some of the key habits we have evolved together are to:
•
encourage speech about and towards God without
embarrassment
recognize the need for leadership that evokes a tone in the
local church but is self-reflective enough to notice when it is
lapsing into imposing a single view
make it a priority to draw out and sustain leadership in many
others
recognize leadership within staff teams, church wardens,
church council, local ministry development team and leaders
of core groups for liturgy, music and evangelism
insist on conversations that build up corporate Christian
identity, especially in times of conflict
be cooperative with and respectful towards sister churches
and to the neighbourhood
outpace notions of leadership as merely task-orientated but
rather as a wisdom emerging through growth in faith and
human maturing, and
learn that being a Church that intends to be an embodiment
of love, can be a painful task, requiring a perpetual reforming.
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Finding the Church
Given the time limits of today I need simply to mention wider
background issues. So

I take for granted “Church” as more a verb than a noun,
a restless tradition, constantly in flux,
open towards God and God’s ways with the world,
and constantly re-forming through dissatisfaction.
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
I take it as fundamental that long before there is any talk of
leaders – whatever titles and status we grant them – we must
consider the vocation of the entire church as pilgrim people of
God.

I resist a ghetto or binary understanding of the Church’s
character that ignores the wide variety of understandings of
faith and questions within a single congregation and the
reality that all Christians are implicated in societal and global
frameworks

I believe the task for the churches locally and institutionally in
their daily operations and fulfilment of God’s mission, is to
witness to the love of God in the whole of life.

Four of the aspirational undertakings that I associate with
churches that have moved beyond static formality through to
a lively corporate experience are:
First, Being an Intentional Community
Churches must discover a growing confidence in being formed as
specifically Christian community and as Christian institution that
purposefully sets out to be an authentic performance of the values
and relationships of the Gospel. I do not see this a recipe though
for taking up a stance over against society as the canvas on which
Christian practice and theology must work is the living presence of
the triune God in the whole of creation.
Church leaders (of every kind), are not the experts or aristocracy of
the Church but together with Scripture, Eucharist, and prayerful
thought (theology), are resources for its flourishing. They are
bridges between its varied expressions, historically and
contextually, and their primary role is to animate churches
in finding again and again how to become corporate and earthed
witnesses to Christian faith. For example, one of the vital roles of
Church of England Readers must be to encourage and train others
in processes of adult learning, evangelism and contextual Bible
study.
Second, Becoming a living Tradition
Much of what a church did yesterday in the service of God’s
Kingdom, may well have been fine, but in each new moment and
opportunity, the Holy Spirit is inviting the lively response of a fresh
insight and practice. Churches, like hospitals, farms and universities
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are institutions embodied in a tradition with a past, present and a
future. These practice-theory traditions are born in a historically
extended common life that is not constrained by the particular
members and leaders at any one time. They are created through
conversation and the search for good practice to fulfil their
espoused purpose.
So, for example, in a local church or regional council the routine
practices of conducting meetings demonstrate beyond all rhetoric
how far the organization genuinely seeks to be characterized as a
reciprocal exercise of authority.
Third, Being Placed and Timed
Within a pilgrim or walking tradition, leaders have the task of
creating the conditions for churches to discern what to bring
through from the past into the present and what to take into the
future. Creative energy or power is generated at the point of
contact between
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the Wisdom of the long Jewish and Christian narrative,
contemporary worldwide and ecumenical insight,
the demands and opportunities of particular locations and
the Spirit-led desire to become agents of God’s final purposes.
Church leaders must learn to live with the discomfort of being a
disappointment to those who, above all, seek stability or
institutional habits that bypass discourse about God and
Fourth, Being Blessed and a Blessing
Worshipping and living out the mystery of the Trinity generates the
relationally ordered practice of Christian community not as a benign
hierarchy but in Paul’s terms, animating one another “being as one
of another” (Romans 12:5), as a serious, hopeful and joyful
contribution to the search for the kingdom of love, justice and
righteousness.
The Christian witness to a society calibrated by austerity is to live
intentionally from a spirit of abundance and the gifts and wisdom of
local communities. In my experience as a church leader, consultant
and educator, to recover relational ways of being Church is less
about hopeful strategies and more about purposeful habits.
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It includes at least some of the following:
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Having a growing awareness of ourselves personally and
communally
Learning to be a Church lived in its practices – determined to
be “grown up” from within our varied journeys, loving and
inviting one another into practices of vulnerability and co
operation.
Becoming a Church for the formation of desire – the
“towardness” that Scripture reveals is a reminder of how
humanity is blessed through choosing to be allured into
participating in God’s life and ways of seeing and
Working towards a navigating episkope, corporate authority
shared by all leaders, lay and ordained.
A Virtue Ecclesiology
With special reference to the work of the philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre, I shall focus now on how a “virtue ecclesiology” might
have something important to offer to the Church’s notions of
leadership.
I am advocating an approach to identifying Church,
as consciously formed in the practice of all its participants, in which
all, at some point exercise leadership. A virtue ecclesiology links
with the general principles of an analogical approach to social
trinitarianism. It will be discovered not in a great ideal or plan, and
not in the espoused tradition of a particular church, but in
negotiated practices for aspiring to the task of sharing in God’s
mission contextually. It offers a character-orientated way of Church
focussed primarily on the goal, the telos, which is its ultimate
desire.
In After Virtue, his classic work in the field, MacIntyre’s theories of
virtue consider how organizations are constituted in striving for
excellence in their chosen practices, rather than in models or
idealized theory; he advances the notion of “practice-institution
combinations”. MacIntyre’s sustained critique of liberal
individualistic modern society asks how leaders, rather than
focussing on rules, principles, or outcomes for achieving individual
satisfaction, might alternatively, regard themselves primarily as
members of communities that together are seeking to discern and
pursue a negotiated overall purpose. The answers to, “What sort of
community should we be?” lead to the answers to, “What should we
do?”
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MacIntyre defines Virtues as:
“…. those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and
enable us to achieve the goals internal to practices, but which
will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good,
by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers and
temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which
will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing
knowledge of the good.” (After Virtue p. 219).
Although virtue ethics has mainly until now been applied to
business organizations, more loosely aligned Church institutions
and their corporate practice of faith may also find apt connections.
As Robin Gill has warned however, we need to guard against
appropriating a form of virtue ethics that simply supports our own
moral reasoning.
Understanding his definition of a “practice” is essential
for exploring the possibilities of MacIntyre’s work for churches. In
MacIntyre’s theory, “practices”
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first, involve engagement in social activity,
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second, lead to “internal goods” such as excellence without
limit, for all concerned, in both performance and performer.
By contrast “external goods” created by practices (say
reputation or profit) are always in short supply and to be
competed for.
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third, are assessed in relation to predecessors in the
performance of the practice (perhaps of playing an instrument
or developing open heart surgery) and especially those who
have reached through to new levels of excellence. So a
contemporary practitioner is both encouraged and challenged
by the tradition in which she stands.
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and fourth, not only have a history but a future yet to unfurl
and one which will be the constant and rigorous subject of
debate amongst present practitioners.
Leaders to foster virtues and practices
The pursuit of institutional virtues and practices links with our
concern here to investigate how Churches and leaders can develop
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both to meet new circumstances and to find the “goods” of more
effective ministerial practice and the fostering of Christian
discipleship.
Virtue ethics is especially helpful when we’re considering the
relationship between local church practice and the practice of
Church as institution. Local experience is often of frustration
that the institution, “the Diocese” (“they”) don’t understand and
seem not to be working to the same agenda as local churches.
This is especially acute when the old operational model has broken.
In many parts of the Church of England now, increasingly, local
churches are being grouped with fewer clergy but without dedicated
expert, or even “Christian”, attention to the institutional innovation
required to avoid break down, stress and blame.
Of course, no church leader would disclaim an interest in working
towards excellence in the performance of its practices. In
MacIntyre’s terms, routinely there will be necessary tension
between the internal and external goods both of a church locally
and as institution. Therefore, to keep internal and external goods in
balance, the institution, will need leaders who strive for healthy
finances, property in serviceable condition, an ethical investment
policy, a pension fund for central staff and a sense of their being
appreciated. But problems arise when that seems to be the limit of
institutional aspiration.
A key priority for all church networks must be to recognize that the
nineteenth century paradigm is fractured and local people and
leaders are bearing the pain without much evidence of a radical re
appraisal. Clergy are buckling under the weight and too often left
feeling personally responsible or simply offered counselling.
When a system reaches the stage of impotence, becomes a problem
rather than a solution, there is a communal choice. Either we
struggle to be loyal to the old failing system, even ruin our lives and
health in trying to make it work out of old loyalties or a misplaced
heroism, or we create new alternatives.
This means being thoughtful and compassionate towards what is
dying in the church but also becoming experimenters, pioneers and
willing to walk on the edge. To hold both together requires courage
and the support of networking. Margaret Wheatley’s research into
the reinvigorating of local communities through “scaling across”
generative practices rather than living in fear and competition is
worth exploring on this count.
Developing MacIntyre’s proposals concerning institutional virtues,
one church or several in a cluster, could decide to re-evaluate their
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goal and aspire to given virtues chosen deliberately to serve a
renewed stated goal. In cooperation with other churches, they
might adopt and constantly revise a number of practices – with both
internal and external outcomes – most likely to promote the
exercise of the virtues required to achieve their ultimate shared
sense of purpose.
So a virtue could be
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the default church business of helping others to know God’s
love
seeking justice and peace locally
but also it could be for the way the local and regional
churches are ordered to be a reading of the Good News of the
gospel – in other words there can be no proclamation of love
by a system that is unloving to those who feel oppressed by
it.
What would be the agreed practices – locally and regionally that
would allow those virtues to be clearly recognized by all? For me
developing leadership of many kinds and in unexpected places must
be a priority.
Virtues:communal and personal
MacIntyre insists that however significant or influential a particular
leader may come to be within the organization, it’s vital that no one
ever thinks they are above striving to live the communal virtues or
to assume that seeking excellence in agreed core practices is not for
them a priority. At any point in its organization, it is vital that the
distinguishing practices that serve the virtues and goal of a Church
be in evidence. So a leader will learn to know intuitively when
to disappoint others by not overworking to achieve old agendas
and an effective leaders will be recognized by the extent to which
they are surrounded by others who have discovered their gifts
and been given permission to grow into them for the sake of others.
He notes how conflict arises when leaders permit the pursuit of
external goods (finance, buildings, and human resource levels)
priority over the development of internal goods (in the Church’s
case pastoral care, discipleship and leadership development,
engagement with mystery and sacramental celebration).
The corporate search for and communication of a good ultimate
purpose for the Church is clearly vital if the virtues and practices
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are to be upheld in every part of the institution and at every point
of contact with the population. It would make no sense, for
example, for the administration of a cathedral car park
to be operating through practices that were in sharp contrast to the
espoused virtues of that church in its sacramental and pastoral
functions. Or again, in a time of austerity perhaps the gift to society
of a complex and loosely ordered institution of a national Church
is precisely the virtue of excellence in matching its internal and
external practices, for example in both preaching and portfolio
investment.
It is so common to expect nothing but negativity from the Church
as institution. The leaders’ task is always to watch out for a balance
between the search for excellence and a balance between internal
and external goods and to notice when one is suffering to the
detriment of the other.
Illustrations of Virtues and Practices
When it comes to identifying core practices that sustain the Church
in its virtues and ultimate purpose, the underlying dispositions,
character and operational theology of leaders and the history of the
community will be undeniable factors, essentially to be kept in
awareness.
A.
Samuel Wells in his book “God’s Companions” has
developed a framework of five generic practices for
churches, together with related activities:
FORMING through Evangelism;Catechesis
INCORPORATING through Baptism
PERFORMING through Praying; Sharing life, faith and troubles
together in the body of Christ; Welcoming the stranger
RESTORING through Speaking the truth; Repentance;
Forgiveness; Reconciliation; Restoration; Healing
CELEBRATING THE EUCHARIST through practices of: Meeting;
Hearing; Responding; Sharing; Going.
B. St Mary the Virgin Monkseaton
For several years the final purpose of the church where I have
recently served as parish priest was expressed as “Making Christ
Known through Building His Church”. Over time, a variety of virtues
and practices have been developed, reviewed and revised to hold
the church in this overall goal. Three particular virtues with
practices and activities have been fostered by leaders in this time.
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1. Celebrating abundance 2. seeking wholeness and 3. embracing
uncertainty.
First, Celebrating Abundance
In the Christian tradition God is praised as communicative love, an
abundance of richness in a highly dense form. Jesus is God’s
superabundance, from the sign of the wedding at Cana (John 2),
through sharing meals and companionship with people, and in his
Rising from death, when creation is restored and disciples are led to
worship, to be his friends and eat with him (Wells 2006). Scripture
is filled with invitations to accept hope or live with despair, to
choose whether or not to live with an attitude of scarcity or one of
abundance, the way of Pharaoh or the way of The Lord. If our true
desire is to follow Jesus and together to be the Risen Christ, pathos
or nostalgia have to be abandoned. In and between churches we
find vision, determination, knowledge and the experience to help
our one another navigate how to be Church now.
One example of a practice has been walking alongside traders in a
small shopping centre that has seen better days. Several churches
together, working with a light touch supported local business in
creating open events to which unexpectedly hundreds of people
turned up. They arrived expecting to spend money but found
everything was free. This was achieved partly through churches
investing modest amounts of money to make a space where people
who live close to each other but never meet had chance for
conversations while young ones had activities but also chance to be
together in a safe place.
Second, Seeking Wholeness
The search is for a new language and cultural forms in which the
processes of Church life can be reconceived as the vulnerable and
coherent inter-play of wholeness. Everything is a whole. Difference
creates communion. The Holy Spirit, poured out “upon all flesh”
(Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28-9) working uniquely and personally with each
community draws us into participation. Our quest is for Churches to
model immediacy and face-to-face presence as advance signs of a
human society free of injustice and oppression. Communion
requires being-in-openness (freedom), being-in-transcendence
(ecstasy), and being ourselves, (a relational network of
communion).
Illustration of a practice: Afternoon worship and learning that is
confidently vulnerable, that takes time to gestate, that invites,
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draws in and expects grown up, face to face contact, making and
sharing food, talking with and not at children and parents.
Experience shows how planning and presenting such events
changes the many “leaders” who have become inspired to offer this
chance to seek wholeness in relationship.
Third, Embracing Uncertainty
Churches can only hope to be mature and to invite mature human
beings when leaders do the tough disciplined work of self awareness
and reflect on their inner life. Formality and defended selves, ego
trips, and grand designs or leaders who can’t hear even small
criticisms will not connect with most people today.
Gustavo Gutierrez, the liberation theologian, when asked if he ever
had doubts about his way of doing Church, replied “every morning”.
A question for all with responsibility today is “Do I have the courage
to be a disappointment to many and to myself in order to do what
only I am called to within the virtuous circle of the churches in
which I have a legitimized role?” In a society that reacts against
faith by believing in nothing, there’s a temptation for churches to
lust for absolute certainty. There’s a myth that possessing
unsinkable truths, fixed boundaries and unquestioned belief are
sure signs of a strong community.
The appendix to this paper offers a brief account of a dispute in our
parish which led to a full Consistory Court hearing. (A fuller account
is to be found in my Being Church: the formation of Christian
community SPCK, 2013). The presenting issue was about the
positioning of furniture; the deeper questions were about the
mystery of God as both awesome and intimate. How could a diverse
group of people having respectfully received from their
predecessors a church designed to emphasis awe and the
numinous, find a renewed identity through genuine conversation
and the uncovering and embracing of their more authentic selves?
Doubt, uncertainty and disagreement are not accidental, unusual
features of religious experience but actually make it what it is.
My learning about key elements in church community
leadership at this time includes:
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combining taking final responsibility with trusting the
commitment and gifts of others
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evoking, living and nurturing “Christian” habits of working and
discourse
encouraging teams to “covenant together” good practice
creating corporate dedicated time to engage with deep truths
and to be present to one another
appreciating and stimulating self awareness and reflective
practice
enlarging possibilities through one-to-one mentoring
constantly retelling the community narrative
including the encouragement of links with other churches,
locally, regionally and globally
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In summary
Virtues ecclesiology may have something important for the churches
now seeking renewal at a critical time.

A virtue ecclesiology would explore the motives behind
practice: planning, deployment and structural organization.
This would ensure that the core identification of the church
prioritized the love of God.

A virtue ecclesiology, instead of familiar programmes and
paradigms, aims to create conversations out of which all
dispositions, from prayer group to synod, carry the orientation
of the gospel
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A virtue ecclesiology might enable churches to explore
together what sort of communities they are in their daily
practice and what they aspire to be, in the light of the gospel,
the rich traditions of Christian experience and the society in
which they are now set.
Robin Greenwood 5th July 2013
Visiting Fellow, St John’s College, Durham.
Robin would welcome comments and responses:
robingreenwood1@gmail.com
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APPENDIX
Keeping Church true to its virtues in conflict
M own recent experience includes leading a community in which a
vocal minority were resistant to changing the internal layout of the
church building. While long-delayed maintenance was required, this
was a chance to redress the balance between an overwhelming
sense of the transcendence of God and the long neglected
experience of God’s attraction and intimacy.
As parish priest I found myself having to constantly hold the
boundary between this local church and the wider Church and
between various groups who were not listening to one another. I
had also to balance my own impatience with those who seemed to
be wanting to be locked in the past with the need to hold the
community to its identity through public conversations that didn’t
diminish or scapegoat others.
The need for change and possible ways forward had been on the
agenda long before my arrival as vicar. The staff team continued to
help the community reflect, in learning and preaching, on the need
to have a building that helps us more than the present layout was
able, to speak of God as among us as well as transcendent. In
conversation and experimental liturgy we explored other important
aspects of and metaphors for the trinitarian God.
In the public hearing of the Consistory Court that eventually
ensued, I explained the Church Council’s rationale. There was a
strong desire among us to provide a space for liturgy that could
give access to God’s Holy and friendly presence among us in life’s
difficulties and in building inclusive community. We delighted in
school visits, Art College Exhibitions, concerts, drama and social
events already accommodated in the rich and open space given to
us by the original architects.
Being open to the neighbourhood, yet strengthened by gathering
around the altar is the keystone of our identity as God’s people. It
would also be a theological statement about us becoming more a
community constituted in collaboration, inclusion and equality, as a
rebalancing of a previous overemphasis on clergy dependence and
linear hierarchy.
Allowing for great flexibility, our need was for a worship space in
the nave that allowed us to experience and learn more of the God
who comes close, as well as who holds together the life of the
universe. “Sharing” the sacrament of Holy Communion with one
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another, in mutuality, standing, was an experience that many had
come to recognize as a profound statement of how we come to
know God, not in the abstract but in the open relationship with our
neighbours and fellow pilgrims of every age.
To create, as the fulcrum of the building, a sensitive, clean crisp
circle would be a reminder of the inclusive circle of disciples who
gathered around Jesus and his prophetic, healing work (Luke 9).
The world today is in desperate need of the attitudes and human
qualities generated and sustained in Christian community, where we
learn to minister justice and love, not as strangers but as friends.
This example of a network of influences that had to be held
ultimately by the incumbent (with colleagues and the council)
illustrates how the practices of decision-making need to be of a
piece with what is to be decided. And it is costly and demanding
work that cannot be hurried.
My own learning through this is that the process should probably
have taken even longer and involved more conversation. Also the
priest has to hold the pain of being the bridge between one church
and the whole Church. In a reciprocal ordering, clergy and lay
leaders sometimes we have to be bold and determined and take
risks for the growth in wisdom of the whole community. I could not
have held to this without the networks of family, staff, council,
diocese, personal work supervision and the skill, previous
experience and character of one individual who was named by the
Chancellor who ruled in favour of the Council’s vision for a building
that would help us to learn more of God’s inclusive relationality.
Virtues, according to MacIntyre, are long-term characteristics of an
organization that are visible in and measured by all their practices.
As Geoff Moore summarizes neatly (2012 p.51):
“…the possession and exercise of the virtues enables an
individual (in community with other practitioners of course) to
achieve the goods internal to the practice, and the
achievement of those goods across a variety of practices and
over time is instrumental in the individual’s search for and
movement towards their own telos or purpose.”
Local churches that continually re-develop a mission action plan
learn about congregational consultation and communication to
identify their final purpose, and therefore virtues and practices.
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Dioceses, through promoting, nurturing and listening attentively to
active networking, rather than announcing centralized policies or
laissez faire approaches, considerably enhance this process.
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References and further reading
Brown, David (2006) Releasing Bishops for Relationships,
Foundation for Church Leadership, London.
Coakley, Sarah (ed.) (2012b) Faith, Rationality and the Passions,
Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.
Dollard, Kit, Marett-Crosby, Anthony, OSB, and Wright, Timothy,
OSB (2002) Doing Business with Benedict: The Rule of Saint
Benedict and business management: a conversation, Continuum,
London.
Ford, David F. (2007) Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and learning
in love, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gray-Reeves, Mary, and Perham, Michael (2011) The Hospitality of
God: Emerging worship for a missional church, Seabury Books, New
York.
Greenwood, Robin (2009) Parish Priests: For the sake of the
kingdom,, SPCK, London.
Greenwood, Robin and Burgess, Hugh (2005) Power, SPCK, London.
Greenwood, Robin and Hart, Sue (2011) <
Being God’s People: The confirmation and discipleship handbook,
SPCK, London.
Greenwood, Robin and Pascoe, Caroline (2006) Local Ministry:
Story, process and meaning, SPCK, London.
Grundy, Malcolm (2011) Leadership and Oversight. New models for
episcopal ministry, Mowbray, London.
Guite, Malcolm (2012)Faith, Hope and Poetry, Ashgate, London.
Hardy, Daniel W. (2001) Finding the Church, SCM, London.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. (1998) She Who Is. The mystery of God in
feminist discourse, Crossroad Herder, New York.
Lartey, Emmanual Y. (2006) Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural
World, Epworth Press, Peterborough.
Lewis, Sarah, Passmore, Jonathan and Cantore, Stefan
(2011)Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management: Using AI to
facilitate organizational development, Kogan Page, London.
Lutz, Christopher Stephen (2012) Reading Alastair MacIntyre’s After
Virtue, Continuum, London and New York,.
MacIntyre, A. (2007, third edition) After Virtue, Duckworth, London.
Mannion, Gerard (2007) Ecclesiology and Postmodernity. Questions
for the Church in our time, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville,
Minnesota.
Moore, Geoff (2011) ‘Churches as organizations: towards a virtue
ecclesiology for today’, International Journal for the Study of the
Christian Church, 11(1): 45–65.
Pickard, Stephen (2009) Theological Foundations for Collaborative
Ministry, Ashgate Press, Farnham.
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Rendle, Gil (2011)Leading Change in the Congregation: Spiritual
and organizational tools for leaders, The Alban Institute, Bethesda,
Maryland.
Rendle, Gil and Mann, Alice (2003) Holy Conversations: Strategic
planning as a spiritual exercise for congregations, The Alban
Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Scharmer, C. Otto (2009) Theory U: Leading from the future as it
emerges: The social technology of presencing, Berrett-Koehler, San
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