Transformation Is About Change!

Church transformation is about change. 60% of mainline churches across all denominations are in the last half of their life cycle and need change. However, the leaders and members of many of these churches have no idea about what needs to change or how to change or even why they need to change.

TransformingTheChurch.org will help churches, their clergy, lay leaders and congregations, to understand the process of church and congregational transformation, as well as provide guidance and best-practices to navigate the long-term systematic changes needed for true transformation.

TransformingTheChurch.org will provide affordable access to education, training, consulting and coaching to guide you along. We use on-line education and virtual meeting technologies to make our content and interactions with some of the best practitioners in the greater Church accessible to all facets of the leadership of a church: clergy and laity alike. Using nothing more than a web browser and broadband Internet connection, we provide a source for fully-interactive education and personal guidance without the need to travel across town or across the country.

We're Working On a New Upgrade for New Capabilities

During our holiday break and before the start of the next set of classes after the New Year, we are completing a significant upgrade to our TeleWorship Content Delivery Network (CDN) and its media servers. As I write this story, we are working on the upgrade and should be completed and tested over the holidays.

We have been operating Adobe’s Flash Media Sever (FMS) family for a number of years; most recently FMS v4.5. Adobe has recently upgraded this product and renamed it to be Adobe Media Server 5 (AMS 5). The FMS name has been retired. However, the new upgrade to AMS 5 is much more than just a new name.

AMS 5 retains all of the FMS 4.5 features as well as add many new features that are important to our future for providing advanced streaming media services and interactive applications to any device. We are currently working to implement AMS 5 Extended on all of our servers. Click here to see the data sheet.

AMS 5 will allow us to continue to provide advanced Adaptive Streaming services to our Windows and Mac personal-computer users but to also provide these same services to users with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets include Apple’s iOS devices and Android devices.

AMS 5 will also add additional security features and support for new protocols that will allow us to begin to converge our live conferencing and collaboration services to a common set of servers for the first time. Also, using AMS 5 features, we are beta testing exciting new interactive features and functions such as “social streaming” that will become a regular feature of our Connected Community.

As the saying goes, “stay tuned” for additional announcements and news. We are planning to do some Connected Community Free Events early in the new year to demonstrate our new capabilities.

New Advent Course To Aid The Season's Sermon Prep!

We have a brand new course to assist all pastors with their Advent sermon preparation titled, "Advent: Preaching Texts from the Hebrew Bible and Gospels." This course is taught by Dr. Rick Lowery. Ph.D. with additional commentary and discussion by Linda McCrae, Senior Pastor of Central Christian Church of Indianapolis.

Click here to see the course video trailer.

This course takes an in-depth look at this year's lectionary texts for Advent from the Hebrew Bible and asks how they relate to the gospel texts from Luke. Lectures provide an overview of the historical context of the biblical passages and some of the cultural and economic influences that shaped them. Conversations explore sermon ideas and how the biblical texts relate to the weekly themes of advent.

Rick Lowery provides social-historical, literary, and theological commentary and talks with experienced Indianapolis pastor Linda McCrae about how these texts speak to the church as it engages its mission of justice, healing, and reconciliation today.

The course consists of five 40-minute video-on-demand sessions and five 60-minute live online discussions with Dr. Lowery that will be paced throughout the sermon preparation period for the Advent season. Using TransformingTheChurch.org’s “Watch – Discuss – Do!” approach to online education, each week online students will view one video-on-demand session and participate in one fully-interactive live online session with Dr. Lowery. As with all of our distance learning courses, participants can join the Virtual Classroom for this course from anywhere with nothing more than a browser and a broadband Internet connection.

The interactive session with Dr. Lowery will be conducted via a telephone conference bridge on:

• Nov. 7, 11 a.m. Central (12 p.m. Eastern) - For Session 1
• Nov. 14, 11 a.m. Central (12 p.m. Eastern) - For Session 2
• Nov. 21, 11 a.m. Central (12 p.m. Eastern) - For Session 3
• Nov. 28, 11 a.m. Central (12 p.m. Eastern) - For Session 4
• Dec. 4, 11 a.m. Central (12 p.m. Eastern) - For Session 5

Late Registration For The Advent Course

For this class, "Advent: Preaching Texts from the Hebrew Bible and Gospels," there will NOT be a late registration deadline. The course will be kept open for late arrivals all during Advent. Late arriving students may miss one or more or the interactive sessions. However, there is still a great deal of value for late-arriving students:

• First, all five of the video-on-demand sessions - a total of three and a half hours of high-quality video - will always be available for viewing. These videos alone will be of value to those entering the class for the first time.
• Second, all of the past live conference calls are recorded and available for catching up on the past sessions.
• Third, the Class Forum is always available for catching up with questions on past video-on-demand or live conference call sessions. It is never to late for new questions and continued discussions of earlier sessions.

In other words, it is not too late to join this class!

Christian College and TransformingTheChurch.org have endeavored to make this course as RELEVANT and as ACCESSIBLE to as many Pastors as possible. Our pricing is set in order to ensure that even those on a “lean” professional development or educational budget can participate. This is not only fresh, new content for Advent preparation, but affords several hours of direct interaction with the instructor. We believe that the VALUE is unsurpassed, and we offer this course to the Church and Her Servants with hopes that you can participate.

Click here to register.
Click here to see the course video trailer.
Click here for the course brochure.
Click here for the course flyer.
Click here to see the course details.
Click here to see the course syllabus.
Click here to see the course video trailer.
Click here to see Rick Lowery's bio.
Click here to see Linda McCrae's bio.
Click here to see the anticipated course outcomes.

Our Fall Season: Announcing the Availability of a New Course!

For more than a decade, Dr. Jerry Gladson has prepared and taught a foundational course for all those who enter ministry in Georgia: The Disciples of Christ -- History, Polity and Ethos. Dr. Gladson has offered this course, through Christian College, for those who were enrolled in the Institute for Christian Ministry and for Seminarians enrolled in five graduate theological seminaries in the Greater Atlanta Area.

Many who have transferred their standing to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) through the Region of Georgia have also completed Dr. Gladson's course.

Dr. Gladson’s course is now available for online completion in the Fall of 2012 on the TransformingTheChurch.org system.

This is a one-semester course, and usually requires about 75-90 days to complete. The course will begin upon enrollment, but the student MUST plan his or her schedule in order to complete the course no later than December 15, 2012.

Click here for full details.

Click here to register for the course.

Our Fall Season: Next Class With Dick Hamm Starts Sept. 20

This is a fully-interactive media-rich online learning course composed of five high-quality video-on-demand sessions and five one-hour fully-interactive sessions with Dr. Hamm. In addition, participants are provided with an interactive online learning community to discuss classes and application topics with other students under the supervision of Dr. Hamm. As a bonus, the course includes a sixth video-on-demand session that is a music concert by John Tracy singing songs about change and personal transformation.

Click here for details.

Click here to register for the course.

Click here for a larger version.

Comming Soon! Video Interview with Dr. Anil Henry

For one of our first Connected Community Free Events, we will be showing a video interview with Dr. Anil Henry, medical director of the Christian Hospital of Mungeli, India. Dr. Henry was visiting Sandy Springs Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in August and sat down for an in-depth interview. 

Dr. Henry, a member of Brookmeade Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, also serves the Synodical Board of Health Services of the Church of North India.

Join the Connected Community (membership is FREE) to learn more about the wonderous work of this Global Ministries medical missionary.

Click here for a FREE membership in the Connected Community.

Welcome GADisciples!

Members of the Georgia Region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are welcome here and invited to join our Connected Community. Membership is FREE, all you have to do is register!

Also, we have created a Private Community as a private meeting space off of our general-purpose Connected Community. When you sign up for the Connected Community, will will also be given access to the GADisciples Private Community.

Join today for up-coming events, discussion, news and access to all of our Connected Community Free Events.

Click here for details.

Click here for your FREE registration of the Connected Community.

More Online Training for Laity and Clergy

"Recreating The Church: Leadership For The Post-Modern Age," by Dr. Richard (Dick) Hamm, is intended for clergy, lay leaders and members of church congregations. This course is based on the book, also by Dick Hamm, of the same title, TCP Leadership Series, Chalice Press, 2007 and supplemented by up-to-date findings from recent consultation. Click here for details.

This five-session on-line course helps us make sense of the new context in which we of the church find ourselves, provides practical models by which to understand how our congregations need to change, describes a visioning process by which we can discover what God is calling the church to be and do now, and provides practical advice and counsel to those who provide leadership for change.

This course will begin again in September of 2012.

Watch ... Discuss ... Do!

Our church transformation curricula is intended to be used by busy members of real-world congregations, including both clergy and laity. To help the way these type of students fit additional education and training into their busy lives and schedules, we have developed a methodology that is both simple and powerful.

Our "Watch ... Discuss ... Do!" method is designed to be both efficient and effective as well as provide even the smallest (or largest) congregation with affordable access to the best practices and instructors/leaders in the field of church transformation.

Click here for details.

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