Suppose your pastor’s birthday is coming up and you’d like to “kill two birds with one stone.” What book would you give to your lead pastor, hoping it would influence an upcoming sermon (or sermon series?)? Would it be Glenn Rogers’ “A Basic Introduction To Missions And Missiology,”
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Introduction-Missions-Missiology/dp/0977439623
or would you opt for something like John Piper’s, “Don’t Waste your Life?”
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Waste-Your-Life-Piper/dp/1581344988
or what about Paul Borthwick’s, “How To Be A World Class Christian,”
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830856803/
Suppose you just have one or two options (your budget is limited, after all). Which book(s) would you recommend? Just click “Comment” following the web or app version of this item. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
“The Mission of God” by Christopher Wright greatly impacted me–even after being a Christian for 47 years and a missionary for 25! It is a hefty book which shows how the theme of missions is woven throughout the Scriptures from beginning to end. It is a glimpse into the heart of our Creator. Loved reading it!
For a practical guide to missions enegagent in the church, you could give your pastor: “Pipeline: Engaging the Church in Missionary Mobilization”
Mountain Rain by Eileen Crossman
Is that really you God Loren Cunningham
The glory of the cross Samuel Zwemer
Chasing the dragon Jackie Pullineger
By Searching Isobel Kuhn.
INTERNATIONALS WHO LIVE AMONG US (http://eri.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=245)
Pastor, there is no better place to “start” on a cross-cultural ministry than with the neighbors to all your parishioners. This resource gives them scores of ideas of how to relate with the internationals among us.
Discovering Global Missions by Dave Guiles (Executive Director of Encompass World Partners).
This four session missions booklet has compelling videos to introduce each chapter with a dive into the Bible passages to see what the Good Book says with regards to global missions! It also highlights the need among Unreached People Groups. Accessible for all and allows the church/pastor to fill in the areas in which their church is engaging the globe on mission!
Print version at Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Global-Missions-Explore-Nations/dp/0997864060
Or you can get the FREE PDF at https://www.encompassworldpartners.org/discovering
Discovering Global Missions by Dave Guiles (Executive Director of Encompass World Partners).
This four session missions booklet has compelling videos to introduce each chapter with a dive into the Bible passages to see what the Good Book says with regards to global missions! It also highlights the need among Unreached People Groups. Accessible for all and allows the church/pastor to fill in the areas in which their church is engaging the globe on mission!
Print version at Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Global-Missions-Explore-Nations/dp/0997864060
Or you can get the FREE PDF at https://www.encompassworldpartners.org/discovering
For inspiration and modelling what living by faith looks like Loren Cunningham ” Winning God’s Way”
For something deeper and full of insights
Michael Green “Evangelism in the Early Church”
Nik Ripkin’s books:
The Insanity of God
The Insanity of Obedience
Cross-Cultural Servanthood: Serving the World in Christlike Humility (By Duane Elmer)
Out of the Comfort Zone by George Verwer
Radical and Radical Together by David Platt
Loving the Church, Blessing the Nations by George Miley
Miraculous Movements by Jerry Trousdale
Missio Nexus has a “Reading List for a Church Mission Pastor.” This comment system won’t allow me to post the URL here, so just go to the Missio Nexus website and search for “Reading” – as of today, it is the first item to come up in the list.
Ted, thanks so much for the response. I’m shocked that the comment wouldn’t let you include a URL. Please forgive. (I am not denying your experience. I’m just shocked, because responders here have been including URL’s forever. We do have to manually approve posts with more than ONE URL — to prevent spam. But we try to manually approve with 24 hours.) Anyway, I went to the page and will try to include the URL here: https://missionexus.org/reading-list-church-missions-leader/
Again, please forgive the inconvenience. We’ll test this feature for sure. I’m hoping it was just a temporary glitch.
“Becoming Global” by Bruce Dipple. Very practical book. Published in Australia but Bruce was one of the leaders of SIM a number of years ago so has very good insights.
“Loving the Church Blessing the Nations” George Miley
Recommended reading list here: https://propempo.com/books/
“The Insanity of God” Nik Ripken
The Insanity of God is the personal and lifelong journey of an ordinary couple from rural Kentucky who thought they were going on just your ordinary missionary pilgrimage but discovered it would be anything but. After spending over six hard years doing relief work in Somalia and experiencing life where it looked like God had turned away completely and he was clueless about the tragedies of life, the couple had a crisis of faith and left Africa asking God, “Does the Gospel work anywhere when it is really a hard place?” It sure didn’t work in Somalia.
Nik recalls, “God had always been so real to me, to Ruth, and to our boys. But was he enough for the utter weariness of soul I experienced at that time, in that place, under those circumstances?” It is a question that many have asked and one that, if answered, can lead us to a whole new world of faith. How does faith survive, let alone flourish, in a place like the Middle East? How can Ggod truly overcome such evil? How do you maintain hope when all is darkness around you? How can we say “greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world” when it may not be visibly true in that place at that time? How does anyone live an abundant, victorious Christian life in our world’s toughest places? Can Christianity even work outside of Western, dressed-up, ordered nations? If so, how?
The Insanity of God tells a story – a remarkable and unique story to be sure, yet at heart a very human story – of the Ripkens’ own spiritual and emotional odyssey. The gripping narrative account of a personal pilgrimage into some of the toughest places on Earth, combined with sobering and insightful stories of the remarkable people of faith Nik and Ruth encountered on their journeys, will serve as a powerful course of revelation, growth, and challenge for anyone who wants to know whether God truly is enough.