Do you have reflections on the following books that have meant much to me? If so please share them. If you haven't read them, I urge you to do so and let us know your reflections.
In the coming days I will go through them with more commentary in different posts. But here they are, no particular order of importance:
1. Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century by Aubrey Malphurs
2. Starting A New Church: The Church Planter's Guide To Success by Ralph Moore
3. Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age by Ed Stetzer
4. Church Planting: Laying Fopundations by Stuart Murray
5. Church Planting For a Greater Harvest by C. Peter Wagner
6. Changing Church by Wagner
7. Home Cell Group Explosion by Joel Comiskey
8. Emerging Churches by Gibbs and Bolger
9. Organic Church by Neil Cole
10. Out of Bounds Church by Steve Taylor
11. The Present Future by Reggie McNeal
12. The Small Church at Large by Robin Trebilcock
13. The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain
14. Houses That Change The World by Wolfgang Simson
15. Small Congregation, Big Potential by Lyle Schaller
16. What Have We Learned by Schaller
17. From Geography to Affinity by Schaller
18. A Mainline Turnaround by Schaller
19. The New Context for Ministry by Schaller
20. Discontinuity and Hope by Schaller
21. The Very Large Church by Schaller
22. The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball
23. Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball
24. Unlearning Church by Michael Slaughter
25. Out on the Edge by Michael Slaughter
26. Worship Evangelism by Sally Morganthaler
27. The Church in Emerging Culture ed by Leonard Sweet
28. The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World by Tex Sample
29. Postmodern Pilgrims by Sweet
30. Soul Tsunami by Sweet
31. A is for Abductive: The Language of the Emerging Church by Sweet
32. Jesus Drives Me Crazy by Sweet
32a. All the other works by Sweet
33. A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren
34. The Secret Message of Jesus by McLaren
34a. All the other works by McLaren
35. Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers by Bill Easum
36. Dancing with Dinosaurs by Easum
37. Growing Spiritual Redwoods by Easum
38. Put on your own Oxygen Mask First by Easum
39. Unfreezing Moves by Easum
40. Beyond the Box by Easum & Dave Travis
41. Under The Radar: Risk-Taking Churches by Easum & Tenny-Brittain
42. Moving Off the Map by Tom Bandy
43. Coaching Change by Bandy
44. Fragile Hope by Bandy (I know, I know, should have put a Schaller book here :) )
45. Kicking Habits by Bandy
46. Road Runner by Bandy
47. Christian Chaos by Bandy
48. Mission Mover: Beyond Education by Bandy
49. Revisioning the Church by Peter C. Hodgson
50. Friedman's Fables by Edwin H. Friedman (you can't plant and grow without embracing conflict in a healthy self-differentiated way; pearls of leadership wrapped up in these fables)
51. Generation to Generation by Friedman (the classic)
52. Lump together some of the New Perspective on Paul books, the original church planter--Reinventing Paul by John Gager, Paul: A Fresh Perspective by N.T. Wright; Rereading Romans by Stanley Stower; Paul and Empire ed. Richard Horsley and In Search of Paul by John Dominic Crossan (I will do a separate section on Paul and planting)
53. The "usual suspects" of progressive Christianity--Borg, Crossan, Spong, Lamott, Wallis, et al (I will do separate section on them too; though they don't have experience with starting new churches in new ways, they provide good theological reasons to do so).
54. In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen.
Are there any books on church planting from a British perspective?
ReplyDeleteStephen, hi. Good question. I am not up on the specifically British version of church planting, but Gibbs and Bolger's book on Emerging Churches is half full of simply stories about emerging churches, new church plants, and many of these are in the UK. I would recommend reading their book specifically for the various UK church plant stories. I think The Out of Bounds Church book might also have some research from the UK in it too if I remember correctly. I will double check. This might be a good question to raise on the church planter email list run by EasumBandy.com.
ReplyDelete...this is a little late in the game for your discussion (I found your blog while doing a search on Easum's Under the Radar), but I just posted some thoughts on Under the Radar at this site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.epinions.com/content_293017849476
I think it's likely that we'll disagree a little about the book, but that's not the end of the world.
I'm off to check out more of your blog.
Joshua
thanks Joshua. It reminds me to find some time to actually come back and do some bullet highs and lows from me about each of these books and to add some of the others I mention elsewhere since this blog post.
ReplyDeleteAbout your critique of this particular one of Easum's books--of its being incomplete. Is this only true if it is the only Easum book someone reads, or did you just want them to recap some of what they have written about the purpose of the church and the way the church has too often of late strayed from that purpose, something which Easum has done quite a bit of I think in the earlier of his books? Or do you in general in all of his books fault him for not doing more thorough assessment and diagnosis before prognosis and prescribing?
In many ways I have seen Easum as being more in the middle of the road when it comes to emergent/organic movements, and see him as more committed to the conventional or traditional church setting than say Neil Cole or George Barna or Hirsch/Frost. It isn't, I think, that he would oppose what these authors have to say and suggest about missional church, but that he would say what you have said, that much of the new can still be done in this regards through churches that still walk and talk and look like churches of the past several decades, that there is transformational and evolutionary work to be done as well as more radical revolutionary work. God knows I think there is room enough and need enough for all kinds of church changes and we will still see that for the forseeable future.
Thanks again.