Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory

by Tod Bolsinger

Publisher:

IVP

, 2018

Overview

Explorers Lewis and Clark had to adapt. While they had prepared to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, instead they found themselves in the Rocky Mountains. You too may feel that you are leading in a cultural context you were not expecting. You may even feel that your training holds you back more often than it carries you along.

Drawing from his extensive experience as a pastor and consultant, Tod Bolsinger brings decades of expertise in guiding churches and organizations through uncharted territory. He offers a combination of illuminating insights and practical tools to help you reimagine what effective leadership looks like in our rapidly changing world.

If you’re going to scale the mountains of ministry, you need to leave behind canoes and find new navigational tools. Now expanded with a study guide, this book will set you on the right course to lead with confidence and courage.

Key Features

• Guides churches and organizations through uncharted territory.
• Helps you reimagine what effective leadership looks like.
• Offers a new vision of pastoral leadership.

Contents

Part 1: Understanding Uncharted Territory

• 1. Seminary Didn't Prepare Me for This
• 2. Adventure or Die
• 3. A Leadership Model for Uncharted Territory

Part 2: On-the-Map Skill Set

• 4. Competence and Credibility
• 5. Preparing for the Unknown
• 6. Eating Strategy for Breakfast

Part 3: Leading Off the Map

• 7. Navigating the "Geography of Reality"
• 8. My Italian Grandfather Was Killing Me
• 9. Don't Just Do Something, Stand There . . . Then Do Something
• 10. The Mission Trumps!
• 11. Take a Good Look into the Coffin

Part 4: Relationships and Resistance

• 12. Gus and Hal Go to Church
• 13. Et Tu, Church?

Part 5: Transformation

• 14. How a Nursing Mother Saved America
• 15. The End of Our Exploring
• Epilogue: Taking the Hill with Grandma
• Study Guide

Praise for Canoeing the Mountains

A superb book on the need for adaptive leadership in the twenty-first-century church. With imagination and insight formed through his experience as a pastor, church consultant and seminary leader, Tod Bolsinger challenges leaders in the Christian community to recognize the unsettling reality of being ‘off the map.’ We have ‘trained for a world that is disappearing.’ Bolsinger offers fresh, practical advice that integrates the best of leadership theory with the realities of church leadership, illustrated with vivid metaphors and real-world examples, resulting in a seminal book on how to navigate this new world. A must-read for everyone interested in church leadership.

--Uli Chi, former board chair, Regent College Board of Governors

Contemporary pastors and church leaders face a daunting challenge. The world and the church have changed dramatically. Congregational expectations have never been higher or more complex. How can we lead our churches with wisdom and kingdom impact in the ever-changing world of today and tomorrow? Tod Bolsinger answers this pressing question in his timely book Canoeing the Mountains. Combining solid biblical theology, contemporary leadership theory and years of experience as a pastor and church consultant, Bolsinger offers a new vision of pastoral leadership as well as dozens of practical examples that bring this vision to life. All pastors and church leaders need to read this book, for their own sake, for the good of their churches and for the advance of God's kingdom in the world.

--Mark D. Roberts, executive director, Max De Pree Center for Leadership

Since the missional church discussion began to develop real momentum, the constant question has been how does this theological vision of the church after Christendom translate into the practice of real congregations struggling with enormous challenges? A great deal of excellent work has been done, and there are excellent resources for the community and leadership seriously committed to missional change. But Bolsinger's book is a major step forward. It is based on solid missional theology, rooted in concrete congregational experience, shaped by provocative research of many diverse voices and communicated energetically and creatively. Most importantly, it is shaped by theologically informed hope, not just optimism, and takes the risks that must be taken for the sake of faithful witness today. I strongly commend this book!

--Darrell L. Guder, Henry Winters Luce Emeritus Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory
• Author: Tod Bolsinger
• Edition: Expanded Edition
• Publisher: IVP
• Print Publication Date: 2018
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Pages: 269
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Christian leadership; Change › Religious aspects--Christianity
• ISBNs: 9780830873876, 9780830841479, 0830841474, 0830873872
• Resource ID: LLS:9780830873876
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T20:42:13Z

About Tod Bolsinger

Tod Bolsinger (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is a speaker, executive coach, former pastor, and author who serves as associate professor of leadership formation and senior fellow for the De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary. His books include the Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year in Pastoral Leadership, Canoeing the Mountains, and the Christianity Today Award of Merit recipient, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian.