![person's raising hand](https://flourishingcongregations.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1gr67t2ouf4-768x512.jpg)
Congregations are story-telling communities. The stories they tell, which link a community’s past, present, and future, can play an important role in whether a congregation flourishes or not. The Stories Congregations Tell features detailed case study research from seven dynamic Canadian congregations across theological traditions and geographical regions. Readers will encounter narratives that congregations tell themselves through a myriad of congregational and social transitions, accounts that shape how congregations interpret, frame, approach, and ultimately flourish in ministry. This book offers social scientific analysis and theological reflection on the stories congregations tell and the function those stories play for a congregation’s culture, along with practical and hopeful applications to arise from this research.
What attitudes and perceptions regarding mental health, mental illness, and mental health challenges exist in Canadian Christian congregations, and what congregational supports and resources related to these topics exist? These questions anchor this survey, in partnership with Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, with nearly 1000 church leaders and congregants across theological traditions and Canadian regions. This report also offers a way forward for churches, informed by these data.
Plan to join Canadian researchers and church leaders for the second of four half-hour interactive gatherings – 15-minute research presentation & 15-minute Q/A (optional 15-minutes after for networking) – on topics intended to help Canadian congregations flourish forward in ministry.
A church experiencing quantitative and/or qualitative strength in many of these eleven areas…
The church from the start has been a divine and human collaboration, a dance – and sometimes a tussle – between what God is doing what we do.
The team at Flourishing Congregations Institute gets that. Their front-line research into the inner workings of healthy congregations is helping churches across Canada be good dance partners.
The Flourishing Congregations Institute researches the Canadian Church, interpreting and sharing data with church leaders across the country.
© 2024 Flourishing Congregations Institute. All rights reserved. Website designed by Boombox Creative