17 Books for New Ministry Leaders
When I finished seminary, I had friends who swore they’d never pick up a book again. School had been a marathon of books and they were sick of it. But I seem to have had just the opposite experience. I find myself reading as much, if not more than, I ever did in school. I do this because I’m curious. I do this because I have so much more still to learn. I do this because I can.
I heard a friend recently say, “Everyone has a living hypothesis.” I take him to mean that everybody has a driving question (probably several) that shapes their whole life. Do you know how to listen to it in yourself? Do you know how to listen for it in the members of your congregation and community? Read to answer these questions. As you enter into a full-time ministry gig, you’re about to be hit with hundreds of questions you never had while you were in seminary.
How do I get everything done every week? How do I be a better leader? How do I communicate in a way that actually matters to people? How do I be a more compassionate pastor? How do I take care of my own soul? How do I parent in the midst of ministry? How do I run a meeting? How do I keep my own prayer and Bible study fresh?
There are all kinds of places to find something to read that gets to your questions. Ask people you trust and look up to what they read. Explore Goodreads. Scot McKnight curates a great space for pastoral reading. The Englewood Review of Books is another great source. Ryan Holiday provides a monthly email of reading recommendations. And if you really want to connect missionally with your community, go down to your public library and join a reading group.
The following are some books that I have found helpful after seminary. They’re books that spoke to questions that weaseled their way into my brain long after my last papers, projects, and presentations. These are books that I’ll categorize as spiritual/theological, “life skills,” and fiction. Spiritual books seem really obvious for a list like this. I call them “life skills” because they’re not religious books. You might find them in the business or self-help section of the bookstore. They’re really about being a better human with other humans and that’s pretty universal. Fiction is because we all need more fiction in our lives. Ministry is communication and communication is language and story. We learn better language and story in fiction.
Read because it’s fun. Each and every author can be an ally and mentor on your journey. And remember, there are no prizes for reading all of the books.
Books on Spirituality
Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting by Marva Dawn
How do I keep healthy rhythms of work and rest? Being in ministry for the long haul requires diligent soul care. You don’t get to the finish line without injury if you don’t embrace a Sabbath rhythm to life.
The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction by Eugene Peterson
How do I keep from being so busy? It’s not cool for Christians to be busy, much less so for Christian leaders. The “tyranny of the urgent” is a disease that, unchecked, creeps into our ministry life to the detriment of ourselves and those around us.
Self to Lose – Self to Find: A Biblical Approach to the 9 Enneagram Types by Marilyn Vancil
How do I be myself and give space to others to be themselves? The Enneagram is an age-old tool of spiritual formation that names nine different ways we might engage the world. It can be a liberating thing to discover that you can be a healthy version of yourself and be normal. It can also be a liberating thing for others to offer them the grace to not be just like you.
Books on Life Skills
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
How do I get done what needs to be done in the finite time I have? Allen is best read hand-in-hand with Marva Dawn. You are not a human doing but a human being. At the same time, in vocational ministry, we need effective work habits in order to steward our finite time well.
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
How do communities work and how do I get better at organizing them? I find community organizing one of the most undervalued pastoral skills. I often ask those exploring ministry questions like, “Who follows you? What communities are you building?” This book explores the ways that people bond together.
Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
How do I lead when I’m not perfect? Brown is a researcher about shame and vulnerability, and this work of hers particularly explores how we overcome failure. We all drop the ball. We make decisions that come with unintended consequences. How we be generous to ourselves and those around us goes a long way.
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
How do I be a leader who genuinely connects with people? People are drawn to movements like magnets. Godin talks about how anybody has the capacity to be a leader who can say, “I want to go here! Who wants to come with me?”
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath
How do I preach and teach in a way that will transform people? What’s the ratio of sermons you’ve heard to sermons you remember? Mine is pretty low. So why do we as preachers invest so much time and emotional energy saying things no one will remember an hour after we say them? But there are ways to communicate that stick with people.
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
How do I stay fresh creatively? Vocational ministry involves all kinds of creation—talks, sermons, newsletter articles, training systems, VBS decorations. I was never trained in seminary how to constantly churn out new ideas. Unfortunately, our educational systems are heavy on data and information and light on exercising our creativity muscles. We need fresh ways of saying the old stories of the Bible and fresh ways of seeing the world around us.
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee
How do I tell a story that people care about and remember? A second most undervalued pastoral skill I find is storytelling. The gospel comes to us as story in the Bible, not a list of statements to believe. Nobody likes to be explained anything, especially abstract theological doctrines. Tell more stories. That’s what Jesus did in telling parables.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
How can I live a simpler life? The world around us is hungry for minimalism and simplicity. We’re slowly learning the value that less is more. In a world of affluence, of bigger and more are better, we need boundaries to help us say, “This is enough.” That’s what God’s shalom is—exactly enough.
The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods by John McKnight and Peter Block
How do I organize a group of people for the sake of the wider community? We are trained by culture to fix problems. Church culture is no different. We think in terms of meeting needs. But there’s another way. If we think in terms of gifts and employing those gifts, our communities would look very different.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
How do I inspire a group to action? I’ve used this TED talk with countless groups. Nobody wants to go to church. They do, however, want to find ways to live a happier, more meaningful life. The more ways we can articulate our own “why” and speak to the “whys” of those we’re with, the less frustrated we’ll be.
Fiction Books
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
What do committed relationships in community look like? Nobody articulates the beauty of membership in community quite like Wendell Berry in his Port William novels. Jayber is the town barber and this is his story of how he came to Port William and the people he lived his life with there.
Silence by Shusaku Endo
How do I help people who never seem to get it? This is a story about two Portuguese priests in 16th century Japan, in the midst of severe Christian persecution. This caused me to rethink everything I thought I knew about Jesus and Judas.
Glittering Images by Susan Howatch
How do I do ministry without losing my soul? There’s a saying, Jesus may live in your heart, but you’ve still got grandpa in your bones. That sentiment is captured in this story about a priest and his encounter with a spiritual director as he begins a psychological journey of peeling back the many layers of dysfunction he carries in his relationships.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
How do you find the extraordinary in the ordinary work of ministry? Like Jayber Crow, Gilead is a patient character study about a minister at the end of his life as he tries to articulate to his young son what his life was all about.
Find your questions. Read to find your way through your questions. I’ll leave Austin Kleon with the final word.
If any of these titles spark your interest, I invite you to support the local independent book store closest to you.