One in every six churches in the United States is African-American. So, given the church's central role in the black community, why is the number of unchurched African-Americans increasing? How can you plant a church that proclaims with power and relevance the unchanging gospel to our changing African-American culture? Drawing from his wealth of experience, Hozell Francis gives you both the theory and practice for raising up a church in today's black community. You'll find out how to: - Shape a vision to guide your church - Form plans to realize your vision - Cultivate strong community ties - Develop an effective core of leaders - Impact families with the Gospel. - Transcend cultural dividing lines.

This road map for international church planting navigates case-study milestones that offer successful models and highlights the dynamics that distinguish church planting in the African-American community from church planting in general.

Reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition can help us connect with a rich faith history and address the urgent issues of our times. Demonstrating an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley shares a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation.

edited by Anne E. Streaty Wimberly A guide for pastors, church leaders, and all who help African Americans in their search for a meaningful Christian lifestyle. Forming Christians--leading fallen and flawed human beings into the path of discipleship to a crucified and risen Lord--is one of the central, if not the central, tasks of all Christian churches. It is a difficult enough task anywhere, but for African Americans, beset by racial conflict, personal crises, generational separation, and other concerns, it is especially so. African American churches must work particularly hard to counter the messages their members receive from the dominant and often unfriendly culture. This book employs the biblical text and African tradition to draw on the idea of the search for wisdom as a potent way to help African Americans in their pursuit of genuine Christian discipleship. Wisdom in African American tradition is not simply knowledge; rather, it is those insights, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors,and practices that create and sustain a life of hope and that produce an inherent sense of the worth of one's self. If their members are to engage in the search for wisdom, African American churches must build an intentional ministry of faith formation. Wisdom can be gained, the authors argue, when African Americans listen to the black oral tradition with its proverbial sayings, revered Bible stories, songs, and narratives from the lives of exemplary individuals. The book offers several similar avenues for the search for wisdom, including helpful models of black males mentoring younger black males, as a remedy to the destructive effects that contemporary culture has on this segment of the African American community.