Healing Our Congregations History A training manual for pastors of potential turnaround churches that are stuck in their history

Dr. Joseph L. Lynch is a Director of Religious Education at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Formerly, for 14 plus years he was the pastor of Sheridan Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, a Master of Divinity degree from Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, a Master of Business Administration degree from Oklahoma City University, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from San Diego State University and an Associate of Science in Electronic Communications Technology degree from San Diego Community College. Additionally, he has taken several clinical and organizational graduate psychology courses at the University of Tulsa and three clinical pastoral education courses at the Veterans Administration hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Dr. Lynch has authored over 600 articles that have appeared in various religious and secular media. Dr. Lynch is an instructor for Indiana Wesleyan University, Oklahoma Wesleyan University. As a former associate pastor and senior pastor, Dr. Lynch has learned first-hand how past conflicts affect the present mindset of a congregation. Additionally, as one of the many volunteers in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, a short-term missionary to conflicted countries such as Bosnia, and an U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, he has witnessed and experienced the consequences of conflicts taken to the extreme. Through Dr. Lynch's research for his doctor of ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as his experiences and research in the local congregation and the small business settings, he has discovered an area that is overlooked in a congregation's recovery of its past-that of healing from its past. Concerned that all too often new programs are substituted for the healing work of the Holy Spirit within the congregation, he has developed this training manual as a way for the pastor and the local congregation to focus on the healing and reconciliation necessary for a congregation to move forward. Dr. Lynch believes this training manual provides the way for pastors to be guided and to guide their congregations out of hurts they have experienced in their pasts. He has prepared it with the hope that its application will be useful to pastors and their congregations as the Holy Spirit leads them out of their conflicted situations and into healing and reconciliation from their pasts.