About Project Thrive
Project Thrive seeks to assist learning congregations to experience thriving in their congregational context. This initiative creates opportunities for churches to self-reflect upon strengths and ministry focus, their unique context, and specific thriving traits. Project Thrive has partnered with eighteen local congregations in Nashville, TN. In partnership with Center for Healthy Churches, Project Thrive will help the churches within the urban core of Nashville to help discover and define their goals for thriving.
Project Thrive is built upon four foundational principles and concepts.
Spiritual Discernment: Learning as individuals and collectively as a congregation to listen and follow the leadership of God’s spirit in unity.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI): A strengths-based approach to envisioning the future based on each congregations’ unique story, history, and context.
21ST Century Best Practices: Best practices to maximize the positive impact of Project Thrive using concepts from Bob Dale, Tod Bolsinger, Greg Jones, and other authors and practitioners.
Contextual Understanding: A set of tools and methods will be utilized to understand the internal and external realities of each congregation, including unique assets and collaborative opportunities.
Standing by thriving congregations who contribute something meaningful to the Kingdom of God and the local community.
Thriving congregations closely examine their communities and identify implications of changes in demographics, population, and commerce.
Participating churches reflect diversity from perspectives of denomination, racial, socio-economic, and congregational sizes.