Gil Rendle has spent four decades working with issues of change and leadership in the United Methodist Church as a pastor and consultant.
Rendle is a senior vice president of
TMF (originally known as the Texas Methodist Foundation) and previously served 12 years with the Alban Institute (now
Alban at Duke Divinity School) as an author, seminar leader and senior consultant.
As he prepares to retire from his current role, Rendle reflects on his career helping Christian leaders in congregations and denominations.
One of the biggest changes is that he no longer thinks it's useful to develop basic principles for all congregations to follow, he said. In this cultural moment, leaders don't take people from Point A to Point B.
Instead, everything is fluid, in flux, and today's leaders need the courage to face change alongside -- and in conversation with -- those whom they lead.
"Every day you get up, your situation has changed from the way it was before. And so how do you lead when everything doesn't hold still?" he said.
An ordained United Methodist minister, Rendle has served as senior pastor of two urban congregations in Pennsylvania and as a denominational consultant for the United Methodist Church. He has a Ph.D. in organizational development from Temple University and a Th.M. from Boston University.
He is the author of eight books, including "Journey in the Wilderness: New Life for Mainline Churches," "Back to Zero: The Search to Rediscover the Methodist Movement" and "Doing the Math of Mission." 
