How can Christians and other faith-based leaders make a difference in the world? What strategies for community engagement will reflect their spiritual values? Where are the new rules for radicals for today?
Rules for 21st-Century Radicals: Congregations, Collaboration, and Community Change offers a framework and toolkit for Christian leaders who want to address issues of social justice. Willard W. C. Ashley Sr. provides techniques and tactics that get results while remaining faithful to one's Christian character. For more than thirty years, Ashley has been an international leader in retail, theological education, community activism, disaster spiritual care, and mental health care. Now, through this book, he honestly addresses the realities of congregational life along with the challenges for religious leaders who are engaged in social-justice issues. Here, he mentors spiritual leaders who want to make a difference in the world but lack the know-how to fight for the issues that matter to their community. He shows leaders how to partner with global interfaith organizations that also want to make a positive difference in the world.
Throughout Rules for 21st-Century Radicals, Ashley shares his insights from two landmark experiences: (1) the thirty-two-year fight to build affordable housing in Jersey City, New Jersey, and (2) his work as designer and project manager of the largest clergy resiliency program in the United States, which became a seven-year recovery project following the tragic events of September 11, 2001. He also points to the Black church as a source of inspiration and resilience during the fight for justice. Interfaith clergy, seminarians, lay leaders, social workers, and a global activists within and outside the church will find here the spiritual grounding to fight short- and long-term battles for justice.