Gardens in the Desert
How the Adaptive Church Can Lead a Whole New Life
Published August 2024
Many church people and leaders feel like exiles in their own land. We are facing tremendous challenges. And, just as for those who came before us, the challenges are also opportunities. If we adapt to our new environment, as people and as the body of Christ.
Gardens in the Desert offers local and denominational church leaders a practical, inspired, scripture-rooted vision for how we can do this—how we can become God’s church now for God’s intended future.
Michael Adam Beck and Ken Carter draw from Jeremiah 29 to provide wise guidance for leaders and churches seeking to adapt and thrive. Jeremiah’s imperatives resonate deeply today, compelling us to experiment, cultivate new relationships, prioritize faith-sharing with people of all ages, interact with others in humility, to “seek the wellbeing of the other,” and to move forward with confidence.
The chapters are brief and packed with practical ideas and instruction. The authors include ideas from leaders inside and outside the Church, offering multiple ways for leaders to see and understand what it means to be an adaptive leader and how to shape an adaptive church. The book is rich with lists, diagrams, illustrations, clarifying questions, and frameworks, making the material easy to grasp. It is an excellent resource to share with leadership teams at every level of the local church and in denominational settings.
Gardens in the Desert is for laity, leaders, and clergy who have been feeling lost, immobilized, powerless—as exiles—and who are ready to do something new.
About the Authors
Rev. 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.
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.