Religious organisations
Religious and faith-based organisations
The characteristics and management of religious and faith-based organisations was until 2016 a significant research interest. The rapid increase in the extent of the Basic Income debate, and a return to the study of philosophy, have left no time for new research in this field: but the books here might still be useful.
Managing God's business
As far as I know, Managing God's Business (published by Ashgate in 2005) was the first general introduction to the characteristics and management of religious organisations. Before that there were of course books on aspects of religious and faith-based organisations, but none that took a systematic and research-based approach to the subject as a whole. Following Ashgate's takeover, the book is now published by Routledge.
Managing Religion: The management of Christian religious and faith-based organizations
Managing God's Business was legitimately criticised for containing more on the characteristics of religious and faith-based organisations than on their management. Further research led to the two volume Managing Religion. The first volume is about the internal dynamics of religious and faith-based organisations, and the second about external relationships. Each chapter sets out from Christian theology, the characteristics of religious and faith-based organisations, and appropriate management theory, and asks what those might mean for the appropriate management of these distinctive classes of organisations.
The second volume appears as a separate book on the publisher's website
Mediating Institutions: Creating relationships between religion and an urban world
This book is the report on a research project on the Thames Gateway: the communities around the banks of the Thames estuary. A significant finding is that religious organisations form mediating institutions - new institutions that stand between religious organisations and the organisations of civil society - in order to facilitate relationships between religious organisations and a secular world. The latter part of the book extends the project to non-organisational institutions.
Bridgebuilders: Workplace chaplaincy - a history
For nearly thirty years I was an industrial chaplain as well as a parish priest working in South London parishes. Bridgebuilders is the first comprehensive history of the movement.
Managing Religious and Faith-based Organisations: A guide to the literature
This is the first book that I wrote on religious and faith-based organisations. It is an annotated bibliography and was published in 2000, so it is now out of date: but it might still have historic interest as an early attempt to define the management of religious and faith-based organisations as a distinct field of study. The project was supervised by Professor Margaret Harris, then at the London School of Economics. The book is now out of print, but the author still has a few copies in case anyone is interested.
Over a number of years I edited a series of books for the Canterbury press based on the life of the Church in South London. To fill the gap at the end there's a chapter in someone else's edited collection.
