Church Next, Quantum Changes In How We Do Ministry
By Eddie Gibbs
InterVarsity Press

Competition from nontraditional and Eastern religions join with the pressures of both modernism and postmodernism to squeeze Christianity. While new church models have sprung up to meet these challenges, they all have strengths and limitations. Eddie Gibbs, well-known church strategist and practitioner, candidly analyzes these models while proposing nine areas in which the church will need to transform to be biblically true to its message and its mission to the world.

Gibbs brings together deep understanding of the quantum shifts taking place in our culture along with concrete suggestions for implementing a proactive strategy.

The Equiping Church
By Sue Mallory
Zondervan

A comprehensive look at how to mobilize lay members of your church into effective gift-based teams, illustrated with successful examples. Mallory unpacks insights and principles uncovered by Leadership Training Network over the last several years, and takes you inside the story of her own church, Brentwood Presbyterian, to observe their trial-and-error journey.

Sue Mallory is the executive director of Leadership Training Network and serves as adjunct faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

Confident Witness – Changing World
By Craig Van Gelder
Eerdmans

This thoughtful collection of essays urges the American church to a more missional posture in the changing post-Christian context. Syncretism, the Asian-American church, the influence of film, and poverty are included as topics of discussions. This book will impact any in North America who are interested in becoming a more incarnational church.

Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America
By Darrell Guder
Eerdmans

What would a theology of the Church look like that took seriously the fact that North America is now itself a mission field? This question lies at the foundation of this volume written by an ecumenical team of six noted missiologistsÑLois Barrett, Inagrace T. Dietterich, Darrell L. Guder, George R. Hunsberger, Alan J. Roxburgh, and Craig Van Gelder. The result of a three-year research project undertaken by The Gospel and Our Culture Network, this book issues a firm challenge for the church to recover its missional call right here in North America, while also offering the tools to help it do so.

The authors examine North America's secular culture and the church's loss of dominance in today's society. They then present a biblically based theology that takes seriously the church's missional vocation and draw out the consequences of this theology for the structure and institutions of the church.

The Connecting Church
By Randy Frazee, Dallas Willard
Zondervan

Pastor and consultant Frazee begins with a problem that many church leaders admit only hesitantly: small groups, widely hailed as a means to achieve authentic community, often fail to achieve the hoped-for experience of "life together." This book follows the story of Frazee's congregation, Pantego Bible Church in suburban Dallas/Ft. Worth, in its efforts to "take [the small group movement] to the next level." Frazee's proposal is no quick fix; it belies megachurch stereotypes by taking a countercultural stand against the individualism and consumerism that Frazee says plague contemporary American life. Drawing on biblical models as well as sociological research and urban planning principles, Frazee makes a strong case that the mobility and privacy of "American Dream" suburbia fosters a spirit of fragmentation and isolation that is unworkable as a basis for authentic community. Frazee recommends "consolidating relationships," opting out of multiple activities and superficial social circles in favor of "a circle of relationships that produces a sense of genuine belonging." Small groups emerge as a necessary but insufficient ingredient for attaining Frazee's vision of "biblical community." Publishers Weekly