100 Books Like Church 3.0

In the 1950s, Robert Coleman, then a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, was assigned to teach a class on evangelism. But he had a problem: he had no idea what to say. So he decided to pore over the four Gospels to discern Jesus’ strategy for winning people to his message. His lecture notes became The Master Plan of Evangelism.

The reach of The Master Plan since its publication in 1963 has been enormous. Billy Graham even wrote the foreword. But Jesus’ model of training a few was so alien to the operating systems of 20th-century churches and traveling evangelists that generations had no idea how to implement it. Not many books have been so widely read and so little applied. Yet if you only read one book on this subject, make this the one. And if you’ve already read it long ago, read it again.

After reading The Divine Conspiracy twice, I’m ready to dive in again. So many treasures are packed into these pages, waiting to be absorbed.

Anchored in the Sermon on the Mount, the author discusses our discipleship and how we related to Christ. Sometimes, we miss the life that’s in biblical text, but this book offers perspective that makes us take a second look and inspires our hearts.

Addison’s book lengthens and broadens Coleman’s Master Plan. While Coleman focuses on Jesus’ selection, training, and sending of his twelve closest disciples, Addison also examines what Jesus did before he named the Twelve, including rich historical background of his ministry context in first-century Palestine. In this way, Addison sheds light on how to engage unreached people who are still far from committing themselves to learn from Jesus.

Addison discerns a recurring six-step pattern in Jesus’ activity, in the early Palestinian church, in Paul’s Mediterranean travels, and in global disciple-making movements today. Importantly, he lays out these steps in a way that contemporary Western Christians unused to Jesus’ method can begin practicing them together.

What are the stages of a disciple’s optimal development? The theoretical path starts with a person not following Jesus and ends with that person helping their own disciples make disciples of Jesus. Having a reliable model that traces the course of a disciple’s development benefits a disciple maker practically, because people have different capacities, needs, and challenges at different stages as they grow.

The most persuasive and useful model yet proposed might be found in this brief book by Harrington and Wiens, who adapt to individuals the Exponential organization’s five-level typology of churches.

This book is for pastors, lay leaders and professional church educators, and students who want to model congregational life on the kingdom of God instead of marketing strategies designed to appeal to generational narcissism based on individual preference. This is one book that will both encourage and equip congregations to be less 'conformed to the world,' less prone to say, 'I have no need for you.' This is a book that argues persuasively from solid research, as well as the biblical mandate, for congregations to really 'love one another.' This book is honest about the costly demands of intentional intergenerational development as well as its rich rewards.

Weaver provides an overview of an incredibly influential movement, one at which demons are the core. The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) had an outsized influence on the 2016-2024 presidential elections, and I loved Weaver’s thorough and well-researched history of the movement.

Some of the groups that feed into the NAR or the demonology that emerges from them are so wild that you have to read it to believe it. If you want to understand the NAR’s foundations, this book is a must-read!

Even committed Christians lose heart sometimes. We all need a breath of God’s fresh wind, the fresh fire of His Spirit moving in our lives. I picked up this book at a time when I needed just such encouragement. 

Like Joseph, we all face devastating trials, heartbreak, emotional struggles. It’s part of the human condition. And I’d bet I’m not alone when I say I’ve known what hopelessness feels like.

I loved this quote from the book: “In the same way, God does His most stunning work where things seem hopeless. Wherever there is pain, suffering, and desperation, Jesus is.”

We may not realize it, but everyone everywhere desperately needs Jesus. Joseph needed Him in the pit and the prison. We need Him in our private pits and prisons too.

I really like anthologies when I get introduced to a new field. I want to know who’s who in the field and what distinguishes each of their contributions. In this comprehensive volume, I found familiar experts whom I had previously studied. However, I was also introduced to new authors in different parts of the world who have innovative insights.

This book is one of the better overviews. And it’s up to date.

Pullman sets out – and achieves, with his usual aplomb – to subvert the stories of Jesus, indeed to divide them: his Jesus and his Christ are two entirely separate figures. Pullman uses a deliberate echo of Biblical style, to show how the Bible stories are first and foremost just that: stories. To show how history became myth and then myth became faith. How the very hypocrisies that Jesus himself pointed out – people mouthing religious observances, without the accompanying good deeds – became an almost fundamental structure of the established church. 

Probably the most fascinating study of the person and teachings of Jesus I have ever read because of its profound psychological insight into the person and words of Jesus.

Wolff illustrates through real examples from her own psychotherapeutic practice and Jungian insights why Jesus' counsel to others is as relevant and powerful today as it was 2,000 years ago. A book that assisted me greatly in my own efforts to help others heal.