For a more extensive list of resources that we engaged with see http://www.ralphmayhew.com/church-planters-reading-list/

 

Now here you go…

Gaining By Losing – JD Greear

People are leaving the church J.D. Greear pastors. Big givers. Key volunteers. Some of his best leaders and friends. And that’s exactly how he wants it to be. When Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission, he revealed that the key to reaching the world with the gospel is found in sending, not gathering.

This is such a good book to devour in order to develop a macro vantage point about church planting. Its call is to churches, challenging them toes end more people out into church planting. It looks at how a church might do that and what changes might need to take place first.

 

Small Is Big – Tony & Felicity Dale | George Barna

Church planters Tony and Felicity Dale and acclaimed researcher George Barna bring a big message to God’s church. How might we change the world if our Christian faith began multiplying at a rapid pace–through a way of life that is explosive and transformational? It happened once before, in the early days of the church; what will it take to bring us to that point of urgency and determination again?

This book about house churches. I don’t feel called to the house church movement, but the authors do offer a HEAP of really insight wisdom and helpful ideas.

 

Church Planter – Darrin Patrick

Much of what is written about church planting aims at methodology and strategy for facing such challenges, but specific strategies do not apply to every context. What lies deeper, at the heart of every church plant?The most critical human component of every church plant is the planter.Darrin Patrick, vice president of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, looks at what Scripture teaches about this man’s character, his teaching, and the aim of his church.

This book is for all Christian leaders. While I’m not keen on the author’s need to be male-centric, it is an Acts 29 Church Planting Movement manual. I think it’s a potential textbook for anyone looking to move into full-time ministry (providing you can look past the strong complementarian position). I think I’ll use it to help future church planters develop.

 

Starting A New Church – Ralph Moore

According to the author, perhaps our greatest responsibility is to evangelise our own generation. Yet established churches are not able to do that. In fact, rising generations of Americans live in ignorance of Jesus Christ and have no moral absolutes. Aggressive church planting, the author believes, is the answer to the problem, because new churches focus on the needs of each new generation and present biblical truth in the cultural context that best reaches those people. The objectives of this book are to lay down the challenge to consider becoming a church planter while at the same time screen out wishful thinking and focus on the practical challenges of church planting.

Loved this book. It’s a comprehensive, insight into church planting and relatable to any size church. Moore has lots of practical tips and speaks from his vast experience. It’s a solid all-rounder I would suggest anyone thinking of planting a church should read.

 

Simple Church – Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger

The simple revolution is here. From the design of Apple products to Google’s uncluttered homepage, simple ideas are changing the world. Now in paperback, multi-awarded #1 national bestseller “Simple Church” guides Christians back to the simple gospel-sharing methods of Jesus. No bells or whistles required. With insights based on case studies of400 American churches, Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger prove the disciple-making process is often too complex. Simple churches thrive by taking four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement. Alignment. Focus. ” Simple Church” examines each idea, clearly showing why it is time to simplify.

The best book I’ve read on making disciples from an organisational level of church. These guys have been around for ages, have solid experience and data to back up their claims and present it in a very helpful manner. they walk you through how you might do it. They don’t tell you what to do but help you figure it out as you go along. I highly recommend this book if you’re wondering how your church or ministry can make disciples more effectively.

 

Launch – Nelson Searcy & Kerrick Thomas

Starting a church from scratch? Start here! This is no typical church planting or church growth book. The authors, both pastors at The Journey Church of the City in Manhattan, offer specific strategies for beginning a church from scratch, based on their own experiences in launching a church with no members, no money, and no staff and watched membership skyrocket to more than a thousand people in three years! They offer clear, practical how-to strategies for quickly raising funds, creating a team, planning services, effective evangelism, and rapidly developing a growing membership.

In a helpful and down to earth way the authors walk you through what they did to launch a church. It’s a good book and reveals some important lessons not to be missed. They are quite prescriptive with what they say will work and it is geared to the success they’ve had in NYC. Absolutely worth a read, though!

 

Viral Churches – Ed Stetzer & Warren Bird

A groundbreaking guide for multiplying the impact of church plants based on a study that was commissioned by the Leadership Network, this book reveals the best practices in church planting and uncovers the common threads among them. A much-needed resource, this book will inform, guide, and even catalyse today’s many church planting leaders. The authors clearly show leaders how to plant churches that create a multiplication movement and offer inspiration for them to do so.

This book offers a very high and wide exploration and commentary on what is happening in the United States around church planting. It explores multiplication verses addition, house churches, mega churches, local churches and small churches. Plus it’s all backed up with research which is presented in an accessible and very helpful manner. The stories that hold the book together are also very encouraging and quite intriguing.

 

Doing Church As A Team – Wayne Cordeiro

When a Church Works Together, “Nothing “Is Beyond Reach Your church may have many members, but does every member have a purpose? In “Doing Church as a Team,” Pastor Wayne Cordeiro underscores that church numbers are insignificant when every individual is not involved. However, if the team members work together as one toward a single, clearly defined goal, anything is possible–and everyone shares in the joys and rewards of success!

It was a good book, but quite elementary. Cordero offers a solid introduction to church leadership and covers the basics well. It didn’t add much to my thinking, but for someone unfamiliar with church leadership, it would be a great place to begin.

 

Open Leadership – Charlene Li

An essential guide for leaders who want to use social media to be “open” while maintaining control “Be Open, Be Transparent, Be Authentic” are the current leadership mantras-but companies often push back. Business is premised on the concept of control and yet the new world order demands openness-leaders do not know how to be open and be in control. This must-have resource will help the modern leader understand how to lead in the new open world, where blogging, twittering, Facebooking, and digging are becoming the norm. the author lays out the steps that leaders must take to transform their organisations and themselves into being “open” -and exactly what that will mean.

Every CEO and Lead Pastor should read this book. It explores how opens, driven by technology and advancements in our culture, can now equip us to bring more people along on the journey. It’s a well researched, well written, solid book that is much needed in this day and age.

 

Organic Church – Neil Cole

Churches have tried all kinds of ways to attract new and younger members – revised vision statements, hipper worship, contemporary music, livelier sermons, bigger and better auditoriums. But there are still so many people who aren’t being reached, who don’t want to come to church. And the truth is that attendance at church on Sundays does not necessarily transform lives; God’s presence in our hearts is what changes us. Leaders and laypeople everywhere are realising that they need new and more powerful ways to help them spread God’s Word.

In many ways, this book says what lots of other books say about small churches, in houses, who develop the ability to rapidly reproduce. Neil is a great leader and has some great things to say. This book focusses on some of the theological reasoning behind why this method of church is valid.

 

Why God Made Cities – Timothy Keller

Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and the chairman of Redeemer City to City, a ministry which has helped start over 300 churches in 45 cities. This FREE download explores the redemptive purposes of the city and what we are called to do in them. The text is adapted from the sermon “The Problem of the City” by Timothy Keller, presented as part of the series “Modern Problems; Ancient Solutions” at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 7, 1993.

SO GOOD. This is an absolute MUST read for every church planter, ever! Read it! It’ll help you understand the central importance of the church in cities and how to engage in a city theology.

 

Discipleshift – Jim Putman & Bobby Harrington

Over the last thirty years, many influential church leaders and church planters in America have adopted various models for reaching unchurched people. An attractional model will seek to attract people to a local church. Younger leaders may advocate a more missional approach, in which believers live and work among unchurched people and intentionally seek to serve like Christ. While each of these approaches has merit, something is still missing, something even more fundamental to the mission of the church: discipleship. Making disciples helping people to trust and follow Jesus is the church s God-given mandate.

This book covers it all when it come to directing and equipping a church to make disciples. After the journey we’ve been through in wrestling with this issue of making disciples, it affirmed what we were thinking but didn’t add a great deal to it, with the exception of helping us think through the individual one-on-one mechanics of it. If you’re wanting to get your teeth stuck into making disciples and you’re feeling like you’re missing the mark. This is the book for you!

 

Centre Church – Timothy Keller

Today many pastors are struggling to adapt to a post-Christian culture without abandoning orthodox theology. How do we communicate the concepts of grace and substitutionary atonement in our globalised culture and context? In Center Church, Timothy Keller offers challenging insights and provocative questions based on over twenty years of ministry in New York City. This book outlines a theological vision for ministry – applying classic doctrines to our time and place – organised around three core commitments: Gospel-centered, City-centered, Movement-centered. At the same time, he enables us to think through how we can responsibly interact with the culture, how we can – indeed, must – appreciate good things within it, and how we can firmly and faithfully apply the gospel to it.”

I think it’s fair and accurate to say that every church leader should read this book. It’s the bible for church planting and essential reading for every church planter, as you seek to develop a theological vision, which brings together your doctrine and ministry form. It’s so comprehensive and insightful, seeking to equip leaders for cultural mission.

 

The New Dynamic Church Planting Handbook – Paul Becker, Jim Carpenter, Mark Williams

This free PDF book from Dynamic Church Planting International is said to be an invaluable resource for church planters, both concerning the theology and practice of setting up a new plant.

 

 

 

The Master Plan of Evangelism – Robert E. Coleman

For more than forty years this classic study has shown Christians how to minister to the people God brings into their lives. Instead of drawing on the latest popular fad or the newest selling technique, Dr. Robert E. Coleman looks to the Bible to find the answer to the question: What was Christ’s strategy for evangelism? This convenient, portable format has an updated look for a new generation of readers.

I really enjoyed this book. Coleman simply walks his reader, step by step, through what Jesus did to make disciples. Spoiler alert: The plan is that God has been calling people to himself, via the lives of others since the dawn of time. His call is to all who follow Jesus to be part of it. His premise is, it’s all about evangelism because it’s inseparable from making disciples.

 

Redeemer Church Planting Manual – Timothy Keller

The Redeemer Church Planting Manual is an extensive compendium of outlines, lectures, essays, exercises and other materials that prepare learners for church planting especially in an urban setting. As with other similar manuals, this manual shares the conviction that church planting is the single “most effective evangelistic methodology known under heaven.” (C.P. Wagner) But most books on new church development are either too general (telling us why to do church planting but not how to do it) or too specific (telling us how to reproduce just one particular kind of church model.) This manual equips the reader to think creatively about how to start churches in any context, culture or people group.

 

The Star Fish And The Spider – Ori Brafman &  Rod A. Beckstrom

If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world. What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections.

This book is a must read for church planters. Ori and Rod explore, so helpfully, the nature of centralised (top down) and decentralised (flat) organisations, not to mention the hybrids. Decentralised or open systems will be dominating the world stage more and more as our society moves forward and understanding them to leverage the idea is essential.

 

 

Missionary Methods: St.Paul’s or Ours? – Roland Allen

This study of Paul’s missionary work focuses not on the apostle’s doctrine or character but on the method by which he accomplished his task. Throughout, Allen compares Paul’s methods to modern missionary methods; he concludes by suggesting some ways the apostolic method might be usefully employed today.

This was that book that kept popping up time and time again as a reference to so many church plant thinkers. It is an academic type read but very insightful and helpful. He works to debunk a number of myths surrounding Paul’s missionary plight and explores how what Paul did in one culture might translate across to our culture. It’s a very important book, with a very boring cover.

 

 

The Gospel Coalition asked 20 well-seasoned leaders and pastors what were the three top books they should read in regard to church planting. Their answers are diverse and brilliant. You can see their list here.