Description:

They sit, silent and empty, dotting the countryside of America. Few resources, aging attendees, and scarce technology create a challenging worship mission. This is the rural church - dying in one of the most churched regions of the world.

So how does one church in a town of only 446, routinely host over 2000 each weekend for worship services? It took a brand new way of looking at the rural church in America!

A pioneering force and source of support for other rural pastors seeking similar growth, Pastor Shannon O'Dell of Brand New Church provides real world wisdom, experience, and leadership strategies.

From upgrading the worship experience in low-cost, high-impact ways to becoming a force within your community, O'Dell discusses discovering the gifts within creating a vibrant worship service, reaching out to those hungry for a powerful, relevant church community, and more.

From Publishers Weekly

O'Dell, a pastor, explains how he led a small rural Arkansas church from a handful of members to a multi-site church of thousands. A unique feature of the book is inclusion of photos and perky illustrations and rich graphics to move readers through important points. O'Dell's is a fresh, no-holds-barred voice in Christian nonfiction, and he makes the case for a strong connection between marriage and ministry: "Now this book is primarily about growing the rural church, and I feel that having a red-hot marriage and a functional family is an extremely important element of that." He advocates V.A.L.U.E.: vision, attitude, leadership, understanding, enduring excellence. For all the crisp selling and innovation in the book itself, it doesn't break all the rules. Instead, it uses some of the tired phrases found in many books on church growth; and, for all the good pictures and talk of transformation of lives, the majority of the photos are of buildings and illustrations for the pastor's sermons.
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About the Author

Shannon O'Dell passionately seeks to inspire his growing multicampus church to give God only the very best. Innovative, inspiring, and committed to reaching out to struggling churches in rural areas around the country and the world, he has served as senior pastor for Brand New Church in the small community of Bergman, AR for over six years. He is a former youth pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, OK. He is married to wife Cindy, and the couple have four children.