The resurrection focuses our attention on God’s abundant gifts. Sharing snapshots of hopeful communities and their members opens our eyes to innovative expressions of ministry and connects us to the comprehensive story of God.

Our resources, while not exhaustive, will allow you to explore this topic more fully. The foundational resources are important for the development of transformative leaders. The formational resources are of a different sort. These are meant to spark your imagination by introducing you to stories and ideas that have surprising insight into the practice of Christian leadership.

Foundational Resources

• Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation – A two-week summer program for high school students to live in an intentional Christian community
• Ekklesia Project – This website follows friends across denominations who seek to live in such a way that following Jesus shapes all areas of their lives
• New Monasticism and Schools of Conversion – Explores a wide variety of intentional communities influenced by Dorothy Day, Henri Nouwen, Jean Vanier, and St. Benedict and others
• The Practicing Congregation by Diana Bass – Argues that the mainline church isn’t a dying tradition but is changing into a new kind of congregation
• Sabbath in the City by Bryan Stone and Claire Wolfteich – Reflections on spending four years working with urban pastors to answer what constitutes pastoral excellence in the urban context, and what sustains it
• Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr. – The theological framework for King’s nonviolent social protest
• Witness to Hope by George Weigel – With unique access to Pope John Paul II, this biography presents the pope’s daily life as well as his thought

Formational Resources

• Harvard Diary by Robert Coles – Professor of psychiatry tells stories about people he admires, including Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Conner and Tolstoy
• Lincoln and His World (v. 1) by Richard Lawrence Miller – A well-told account of Lincoln’s life and vision
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – The fictional account of what happens when the Devil appears in atheistic Russia, where it is illegal to recognize him
• Playing the Enemy by John Carlin – The unexpected story of how Nelson Mandela creatively used the national rugby team to bring together a post-apartheid nation still divided by race (for more discussion, read L. Gregory Jones’ reflection on Mandela as a witness to moral leadership)
• Theology of Hope by Jurgen Moltmann – Brings together “eschatological redemption and historical liberation in a single coherent perspective of the future”