Hal West, The Pickled Priest and the Perishing Parish: Boomer Pastors Bouncing Back. CrossBooks, 2011.
Referenced in: Strengthening and Renewing the Ministry call
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
West offers encouragement from Isaiah’s vision of God, alongside his own seasoned insight, for boomer ministers (i.e. old enough to be “pickled”) to renew their call in a time when they, and those they serve, have lost their true sense of mission.
From the Publisher
Just as baby boomers comprise the largest generation in America’s history, they also represent the largest percentage of current senior pastors in American churches. Boomer pastors all over the country are struggling to transition from their roots in twentieth-century church culture to ministry and leadership in our challenging twenty-first century-and this transition must take place for traditional churches to be a relevant factor in world redemption.
In The Pickled Priest and the Perishing Parish: Boomer Pastors Bouncing Back, Senior Pastor Hal West, himself a baby boomer, offers essential insights and words of inspiration for pastors, leaders, and Christians who desire to see renewal and transformation in their churches, in America, and in themselves.
The challenges facing traditional churches and the boomer pastors who lead them are many-not the least of which are pastors’ ensconced perspective of their own spiritual formation, theological training, and experience. In his unique, conversational, and at times humorous tone, Pastor Hal West first offers proof through his own “pickled” perspective and then explores, with help from the lessons of biblical prophets like Isaiah and Nehemiah, how boomer pastors can and must bounce back.
Change is challenging, but in our day of cultural conflict, political corruption, and spiritual crisis, change is imperative. It falls to church leaders, regardless of their decades of experience in ministry and leadership, to approach transformation with an open mind and provide guidance, vision, and restoration to their churches and the souls they serve.
About the Author
Pastor Hal West is a graduate of the University of South Carolina, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary. He has served in South Carolina churches since 1978 and has served on various boards and committees at the local, state, and national level. This is his third book.
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