Shannon O'dell

This is a very inspiring book where the author clearly shows that God's call is stronger than the desire for human comfort and recognition. When his career as a pastor was about to turn into a "successful" one in a major church as a senior pastor, God told him to accept an offer as a pastor in a church in rural Arkansas. The "Beginnings" are described in first three chapters of the book.
Through a very light style, the author describes all the problems he incurred while trying to transform the church and the lives of the people in the community. He goes through situations that sometimes are similar the ones we might encounter in big churches as well. His description of the "VALUE" (Vision, Attitude, Leadership, Understanding, Enduring Excellence), compose the core of the book and it is very well described and developed from chapters 4 to 8. In this book he provides suggestions on how to handle some situations and it is a valuable book to any pastor who wants to transform his church into a more dynamic one. The last two chapters are description of how they implemented their vision of the future.
This book was written by Shannon O'Dell in 2010 and published by Thomas Nelson and they were kind enough to send me a copy for reviewing through their Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers Program.… (mer)