Gardens in the Desert: How the Adaptive Church Can Lead a Whole New Life (Gardens in the Desert)

A Vision for how we become God’s church now for God’s intended future. Picture a forest full of strong, old-growth trees with bright new saplings dotting the gaps between. This is one vision for the church we are becoming. A church ecosystem where established churches nurture new congregations, even congregations that look quite different. Ken Carter writes of this rich ecosystem with Michael Adam Beck, showing how the Methodist Church can be old and new, traditional, and unconventional. More importantly, they demonstrate why this mixed ecology is necessary and biblical. The book is practical and immediately useful. The chapters are short and pithy. The authors use frameworks, diagrams, metaphors, and lists throughout the book. This material provides the reader with ’handles’ to grab onto so that they can digest the ideas and see how they work. Readers will begin to see their challenges in a new light. They’ll learn to shift their thinking away from disillusionment (the desert), toward innovation and hope (the gardens). Pastors and others will be equipped to do the work required to become adaptive leaders and to lead the UMC into a new life.

Michael Adam Beck Michael Adam Beck is senior pastor at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Ocala, FL. He led the process introduced in this book at Wildwood United Methodist Church in Wildwood, Florida. He directs Fresh Expressions Initiatives for Discipleship Ministries, speaks and teaches at seminaries, churches, and conferences, and is the author of several books from Abingdon Press. Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. is resident bishop of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Along with the Cabinet, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to almost 800 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries and outreach initiatives in an episcopal area that stretches from Tallahassee and Jacksonville to Miami and the Keys. He came to the Florida Conference in 2012, following a ministry of almost thirty years in Western North Carolina, twenty-nine as a local church pastor. Bishop Carter is the immediate past-president of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, and he was one of three moderators of the Commission on A Way Forward, the commission authorized by the General Conference in matters of unity and human sexuality. He is author of a number of books, most recently Fresh Expressions of People Over Property and Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church (both with Audrey Warren) and Embracing The Wideness: The Shared Convictions of United Methodists. He travels extensively across the state, preaching in local churches and encouraging lay and clergy leaders. Bishop Carter and his wife, Pam have been married for thirty-seven years. Pam is also an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, and was previously a regional team leader in disaster recovery for the Florida Conference. They are blessed with two adult daughters: Liz lives in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD. student at U.C.L.A., and Abby is on the staff of Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee. Abby and her husband Allen are parents of Paige, the bishop’s granddaughter. The Carters consider it a great blessing to live and serve in Florida.