Author Dana Horrell has called on his years of experience in community action to create this practical guide to help congregations reach out to their local communities. Church leaders often want to do more to engage their community contexts, but when it comes to the actual "how-to-do-it," they find themselves blocked. Engage! provides practical and proven tools to help leaders develop methods and strategies to get started and break through these barriers.

These tools, twenty-six in all, are drawn from a variety of sources, including congregations, church consultants, researchers, and nonprofit organizations. Some of these tools have a long history of use and may seem quite familiar, while others may seem new and untested, yet intriguing. These tools represent best practices and have been tried somewhere and found a degree of success.