Lending Your Leadership: How Pastors Are Redefining Their Role in Community Life

Nelson Granade

As America faces great change, we must find new ways of cooperating with one another to solve problems beyond our individual control. That’s why communities are so important. Yet communities today desperately need leaders who can find ways to create new sources of social capital in the ever-changing culture. As leaders of one of the largest pools of community capital—our congregations—pastors have both the opportunity and the skills to help guide local communities through transitions and to help cast a vision of renewed, or even new, communities.

Drawing on his own and other clergy’s work as community leaders, Granade shows that clergy possess invaluable resources for working with people because they are trained to look for God’s bigger view and patient working. They understand that asking the right questions is as important as finding the right answers. He shows how pastors possess the necessary skills, experience, and perspective needed in today’s communities. He offers numerous models for clergy involvement in their broader communities.

At the heart of Granade’s book is a firm belief that clergy can play a unique leadership role in community life. He encourages clergy to reclaim that role and to share with their communities a message of hope: God still cares and is involved in the life of individuals, families, communities, and the world.