If you could start and pastor a young church with the knowledge of three books, which ones do you choose and why? After not reading much the last few months, I'm ready to read a couple after Easter.
1. Planting Missional Churches - Ed Stetzer - not too sexy, but the church planting handbook after the Bible.
2. No Perfect People Allowed - Burke - with the church fighting the image problem of being judgemental, John does it right.
3. Rethinking the Church - James Emery White - challenges the way we flesh out the five purposes of the church.
4. The E-Myth Revisted - great business principles that can be applied to help us operate bigger. Unfortunately, we didn't learn this stuff at Bible school.
5. Never Eat Alone - Ferrazzi - nothing has inspired me more to get my butt out the door to engage others with confidence.
Anyone read Simple Church or The Multiplying Church by Roberts?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
top 5 books?
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4 comments:
Yeah - I've read Simple Church. It's an excellent book! It presents a convincing arguement for simplifying and clarifying how we do ministry. I would highly recommend it, especially for anyone preparing to plant a church.
John:
You've suggested an outstanding list. We're so blessed with tons of good resources today...it's really tough to narrow it down to just a few. It might be helpful to identify some categories that first time planters need to be well versed in and then pick the best in those categories. Here are some possible categories... biblical theology for the what and why of church, start-up principles, leadership development concepts, people management skills, relationship building ideas. Ed's book is great for gaining a solid foundation in a biblical theology of planting and I'd suggest Bob Roberts latest as well. Guy Kawasaki's (not sure if I spelled his name right) "The Art of the Start" is great for understanding foundational principles for starting new organizations, "Doing Church as Team" by Wayne Cordero might be the classic on leadership development, The E-myth is great for understanding foundational management concepts and your suggestion of "Never Eat Alone" is great to help leaders rethink how they prioritize their time during the start-up phase.
Here's a question I'd love to see you write about at this stage of your journey. How are you staying focused on the task of relational networking in the community now that you've got weekly meetings to get ready for?
Books to start a church? - who needs books when you have John McKinzie, Steve Pike, and Davd McNaughton? :-)
Steve, thanks for the mention of "Never Eat Alone." I wasn't familiar with this book. In regards to church planting I suggest Stetzer's book and "Missional Church" by Guder.
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