Tim Chester’s Top 5 books on Evangelism, Church Planting and Missiology

Tim’s thoughts follow the recommendation and my additional comments in brackets.

Missiology

1. Part one of The Missionary Movement in Christian History by Andrew Walls is essential reading. (almost bought this the other day)

2. Transforming Mission by David Bosch is the classic text book. (read it! brilliant! Read my review here)

3. I would also recommend The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin. (really want to read this one!)

4. Although nearly 100 years old, Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? still feels ahead of its time! Some recent reading I’ve done on church planting movement only confirms this. (really want to read this one too)

5. Perhaps I can also add my own Good News to the Poor. (read it and loved it!)

Church planting

1. I would of course start with Total Church by Steve Timmis and me. (read it – brilliant!)

2.  The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch is very stimulating as his book with Michael Frost, The Shaping of Things To Come. (read them both)

3. One of the books that most influenced me was Going to the Church in the First Century, Robert Banks’ brief fictional account (albeit based on his through NT scholarship) of, well, going to church in the first century. (have not read)

4. Also worth reading, and available free online, is a summary of David Garrison’swork of church planting movements. (downloaded it yesterday)

Evangelism:

1. Jim Petersen – Living Proof -This is my favourite, though it seems to be unavailable. It combines and revises Peterson’s classic books on personal evangelism, Evangelism as a Lifestyle and Evangelism for Our Generation. (Great that my number one was the same as Tim’s)

2. John Chapman – Know and Tell the Gospel – A great easy-to-read introduction to the theology and practice of evangelism. (This was a great help to me a number of years back)

3. John Stott – Christian Mission in the Modern World – Not one of Stott’s best known works, but one I found extremely helpful and recently reissued as an ‘IVP Classic’. It’s based on his talks at the first Lausanne Congress in 1974. (I had never heard of this but recently picked it up 2nd hand really cheap, still planning to read it)

4. Nick Pollard – Evangelism made slightly less difficult – A good introduction to worldviews and how they can help us engage with people. (Have not read)

5. Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church – A now classic treatment of, well, of evangelism in the early church (but with plenty of application for today). (Have not read but want to)

~ by John on March 26, 2009.