Thom Bandy, Coming Clean: The Study Guide to Kicking Habits. Abingdon Press, 2001.
Companion volume: Bandy, Kicking Habits
Referenced in: Strategies for Congregational Renewal – Easum and Bandy’s Diagnostic on Thriving Congregations
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Bill Easum and Tom Bandy have written extensively on how congregations may position themselves for effective ministry in the twenty-first century. For a complete layout of their model, and how each of their volumes contributes to its development, see the resource guide on the Easum and Bandy System.
As the title suggests, this is the study guide to an earlier work by Thom Bandy, Kicking Habits, which one should read first.
Fromt the Publisher
The study guide to Kicking Habits
Coming Clean explores the issues of church transformation described in the groundbreaking book Kicking Habits. Using a series of Bible studies, group discussion, and group exercises, participants can customize and apply the insights into thriving church life to their own congregational context.
- Coming Clean means honest discernment of the realities of your church, and spiritual insight into the original purpose of the body of Christ.
- Coming Clean means mutual support and a positive attitude for change, so that congregations find confidence for the future and leaders no longer bear the stress alone.
- Coming Clean empowers the congregation to move beyond the feeling of being overwhelmed, to declare “Yes, we can!”
Coming Clean is part of Bandy’s Church Transformation Trilogy, a comprehensive set of guides for congregational leaders. The trilogy includes Kicking Habits: Upgrade Edition; which provides a large overview of systemic change and the addictive behaviors that prevent it and answers the question, “What does a thriving church look like?” The third volume is Facing Reality (replaced by 95 Questions to Shape the Future of Your Church), a comprehensive tool that examines all 11 sub-systems of congregational life and places the reader’s church on the continuum of addiction and health by answering the question, “Where must we change our church?”
This book contains many exercises, images, Bible Studies, and discussion plans designed to help churches interpret and customize the insights of Kicking Habits for their local context.
About the Author
Thomas G. Bandy is a leadership mentor and consultant for faith-based organizations. He is the author of more than fourteen books and numerous articles, including Why Should I Believe in You? (Abingdon Press) and Talisman: Global Positioning for the Soul (Chalice Press). He has been a pastor, teacher, lecturer in philosophical theology, and national denominational leader in the United States and Canada. he is now an internationally known workshop and conference leader.
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