Five Missiology Books for Global Workers

I wanted to create a list of five missiology books that I think would be helpful to Global Workers. This is not a typical top five list…just five books that I thought other Global Workers might like. Some are classics and some are new. Some are theological and some are practical, but they all can help Global Workers in various contexts. Let us know if you want to read them or have already read them!

1. An Old Book

I thought we would start off of missiology books with an older title, Rolland Allen’s Missionary Method’s: St Pauls or Ours. This book was published in 1912 but the book continues to influence Global Workers today. Anyone who is familiar with “Indigenous Church Principles” owes a great debt to Rolland Allen.

Allen was a Global Worker who noticed that the new church plants were not working. Europeans started the church, they pastored the church, they built the church, and they financially sustained the church. As Allen read the stories of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, he noticed a very different paradigm. Paul was not afraid to entrust leadership into the hands of the people he reached. Allen argued that modern day Pauls should empower local church leaders so that the church becomes their’s.

The book was ahead of its time and deserves a second look.

Here is a great quote from Allen…

A great many of our best men are locked up in strategic centres: if once they get in they find it hard to get out. At many of the strategic points where we have established our concentrated missions it is noticeable that the church rather resembles a prison or a safe or a swamp into which the best life of the country round is collected than a mint or a spring or a railway station from which life flows out into the country round. We are sometimes so enamoured with the strategic beauty of a place that we spend our time in fortifying it whilst the opportunity for a great campaign passes by unheeded or neglected.

Rolland Allen, Paul’s Missionary Methods: St Pauls or Ours

2. A New Book

Matt Rhodes’s No Shortcut to Success: A Modern Manifesto for Modern Missions came out December of 2021 but I still consider it to be new. It was an award last year with Gospel Coalition as the top missiology book of 2022.

The book takes aim at many methods floating around in missiological circles (ex. Church Planting Movements, Disciples Making Movements) that focuses on speed to the detriment of language learning and theological education. Matt focuses on the long game and makes a strong case for professionalism and doing the foundational things well. Matt proposes that God is in the midst of these human processes. Rather or not you agree with Matt, his points are very thought provoking and will encourage you to be the best Global Worker you can be.

This book has stirred up controversy causing members of the International Missions Board leadership to write a critical review and for Rhodes to respond. You can read both of those items here and here.

A great quote…

If we imagine that our human efforts are too ordinary for God to use—if we forget that our efforts are the means by which God calls people to himself—then we’ll have little motivation to give our best in missionary service. We’ll be taking the first step down a road to quiet despair, a step toward failure in what God has given us to do.

Matt Rhodes, No Shortcut to Success: A Modern Manifesto for Modern Missions

3. A “Bible” Book

How about a book to help us read the Bible better? This is my favorite book on this list because it awakened a passion for Missiology. God used this book to change my life.

After you read The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative by Christopher Wright you will never read the Bible the same. Wright’s thesis is that there is a missional foundation to Scripture. The Bible is about and for God’s Mission. It tells the story of God’s Mission in the world, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Many Christians approach the Bible with a Christological lens, Wright proposes that we also approach it with a Missional lens. When we do, we can see that it has always been God’s heart to bless the nations. You and I are simply stepping into that story today that began in the Garden.

Coming in at 582 pages it is the longest on this list. However, I promise you will not regret it! Sadly, I left the book in my passport country and do not have it to pull a quote from to entice you.

4. A Theology Book

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Leslie Newbigin is a timeless work written by a former Global Worker in India. Newbigin is one of those once in a generation Global Workers and theologians that I know you will enjoy getting to learn from.

After reflection on the pluralistic society in India and also in the United Kingdom, Newbigin wrote this work in order to defend the supremacy of the Gospel and its logical underpinnings. If you work in an area where “gods” are prevalent or if you work in a highly secularized area where the exclusive claims of the Gospel are offensive, then you will find this book to be very helpful. This is a classic Missiology book that you will love!

It is no secret, indeed it has been affirmed from the beginning, that the gospel gives rise to a new plausibility structure, a radically different vision of things from those that shape all human cultures apart from the gospel. The Church, therefore, as the bearer of the gospel, inhabits a plausibility structure which is at variance with, and which calls in question, those that govern all human cultures without exception. The tension which this challenge creates has been present throughout the history of Western civilization.

Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

5. A Church Planting Book

This blog is all about the “one more”, so I had to include a church planting book! Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches by Peyton Jones was a book that really suprised me. I expected to find that it was full of church planting practices that could only be applied in modern cities. To my suprise, I found that Jones was more concerned about the “art” of church planting, than simply handing out his model.

Now, don’t get me wrong, he has a model, but I appreciated the principles he gave. I found them to be biblically based, missiologically sound, and inline with the vast richness of Church History. His overall thesis is that often we have been focused on “church starting” whereas Christ commanded us to make disciples. Jones contends that church planting is simply the result of making disciples which should become our focus. I am curious to what more seasoned Global Workers think about this book since I am a rookie who has yet to put these principles into practice.

The first lesson of church plantology is that planting a church should never be our focus. Christ never commanded his disciples to plant churches, because it’s not what He wanted them to focus on. Focusing on the church to be planted leads to church starting, whereas focusing on the Great Commission itself leads to church planting.

Peyton Jones, Church Plantology: The Art and Science of Planting Churches

Conclusion

I hope that you found this list of missiology books helpful! Let us know if you want to see more content like this or maybe a more focused list!