Your Church Can Thrive / Harold Percy

In the past spring, a group of us, read together The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. This was a growing experience for all as we took time to discuss the book and it’s spiritual implications for us.
This fall it is my hope that we will have an opportunity to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” all that Harold Percy has written in his book Your Church Can Thrive.
Harold Percy writes first of all as an Anglican priest in an urban parish in Mississauga, Ontario. But no where does he flaunt being Anglican. The only places where you will find the term Anglican is in one of the few notes in the book, most of which refer to books published by the Anglican Book Centre (ABC). As you read the book you will appreciate that it could have been written by almost any clergy or lay person. This is a real plus - Harold is the rector of a parish congregation, he is not one who seats a distance and pens observations deemed to be of ultimate important by the composer. He writes his ongoing experience as a rector. In reading this book you will come to appreciate his straight forward style, which you will likely find challenging at times. The point of reading this book will be for all of us to learn together.

The book is divided into five chapters and their titles summarize what we can expect in part.

1. Thinking About Growth
2. Those in the Pews
3. Those Who Walk In
4. Friends and Family of Member
5. Those Who Live in the Neighborhood

Some of what we read will come home to us in our own experiences as we have visited other churches ourselves.

I will look forward to our discussions, the challenges that this will highlight for us, and how this will cause us to grow in our faith.