Books

How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

In sharing his journey, Scazzero says, he was doing “more activity for God than” his “being with God could sustain.” He says “What you do matters, but who you are matters even more.” Moreover, he shares the importance of leading out of our brokenness, a deep and abiding contemplative relationship with God, and emotionally healthy relationships. The unity and health of our congregations and movement suffer when leaders are more focused on doing for God and less focused on being with God. May we value emotionally healthy leaders - both spiritually and relationally.

Conviction and Civility teaches you how to hold Christian convictions and still treat those opposed to your convictions with respect. You will learn to evaluate your own convictions, engage others about them, and do both of these with civility.

Torn Asunder examines the forces, issues, and personalities behind the officially-recognized 1906 division of the disciples.

Other than the Bible, this book may be the best book on effectively navigating crucial conversations (CC). A CC is one with high stakes, opposing opinions, and strong emotion. 25 years research. Author speak to business, organizations, family life. This is not a religious book but the authors themselves are faith-based. Over 3 million copies sold. 

Stone-Campbell Movement: An Anecdotal History of Three Churches by Leroy Garrett. This is a must read for anyone who desires greater unity and who desires to have a thorough understanding of Restoration Movement History. 

This history of the Restoration Movement looks at why it exists, where it has succeeded, and why it has sometimes failed to accomplish the goal of Christian union and the goal of biblical authority.

A celebration and examination of the common beliefs and shared heritage of two groups of American churches, both part of the Restoration Movement, by two of their leading ministers.

392 paperback Christian book on the History of the Restoration Movement.

F. LaGard Smith challenges Christians to think more critically about identity, salvation, and fellowship.

This book is well written and good for the average Christian and/or seeker. This is a clear and comprehensive study of an extremely important subject. 

Surveys Scriptures on unity, songs and prayers about unity, biblical symbols of unity, famous slogans of unity, and key documents on unity from the Stone-Campbell movement. A rich blend of Scripture and stories, songs and prayers, wisdom and humor, insight and challenge - all pointing to God's desire for his children to be "together in Christ."

This is an exhaustive four volume history of the Restoration Movement up to 1950. 

This an exceptional overview of 2,000 years of church history is a very readable form. Shelley helps the reader see how cultural, political, and religious influences have shape the course of Chistian History and how men of God, while imperfectly, have consistently struggled to form and reform the chruch as God would have it. This is a great read. 

A vision. You as a leader may have it, but has your organization caught it? If a leader's vision is all about what could be and what should be, why are you buried under what is? Noted author and pastor Andy Stanley points out that if followers don't get the vision, it's because the leaders haven't delivered it. He reveals the three reasons vision doesn't stick. And then he delivers three ways to make vision stick, to make you a leader worth following

Read everything that Lois Tverberg writes! Is it possible that reading the Bible with a modern, western, Greco-American eye hinders my understanding of scripture - as God intends? Is view of the church of Christ inconsistent with our Lord's view? Am I teaching and leading as Jesus would? Does my misunderstanding of scripture written from an Eastern Hebraic cultural viewpoint make maintaining the unity of the Spirit more difficult for me? , 

LoisTverberg knows the treasures that await readers willing to learn how to read the Bible through Jewish eyes. By helping them understand the Bible as Jesus and his first-century listeners would have, she bridges the gaps of time and culture in order to open the Bible to readers today.