Healthy churches are learning communities, attentive to the times and places in which they are embedded and capable of adapting to changes in and around their communities. “Real learning,” writes Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, a classic work on learning communities, “gets to the heart of what it means to be human … Through learning, we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning.”
Learning happens in a multitude of ways, but in the present moment, reading is a vital way in which we learn about this vast and wondrous creation. Above all, we read scripture to make sense of who God is and how the world functions. But to read scripture well requires lots of other kinds of reading and learning, to make sense not only of the scriptural texts but also the dynamics of the world and of our particular places in which we strive to embody the scriptural story.
Although learning and reading are critical to the flourishing of our churches, we face many challenges to putting them into practice, not least of which is our ever-present struggle to pay attention. As a leading source for book news and reviews for church leaders, The Englewood Review of Books is curious about the reading habits of pastors and the reading practices of their congregations. In conjunction with Cultivating Communities, a Missio Alliance partner funded by the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative, The Englewood Review has designed a brief survey on pastoral reading.
If you are pastor, we invite you to participate in this study, and share your experience with reading personally and in the life of your congregation. The survey should take about 5-10 minutes to complete. Participants will be provided with a copy of the survey’s results after its completion. Also, after the completion of the survey we will draw the names of THREE participants at random, who will each win a $50 gift certificate to either Amazon.com or the independent online bookseller BookShop.org.
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Please share this survey with other clergy in your networks, including local pastors groups and your denominational leadership.
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