Not sure where to start?
Try our reading paths — books in order, with a guide for each step（5）→
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's lectures on preaching, given at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, in 1969 after thirty years at Westminster Chapel, London (published 1971): why preaching is the church's primary task, the preacher's call and preparation, the sermon, the congregation, and the power of the Spirit.
J. Oswald Sanders, General Director of the China Inland Mission (OMF) 1954–1969, on leadership as servanthood (1967): the qualities of a spiritual leader drawn from Scripture and missionary lives, and the costs of leading. A staple of church leadership training.
Dever's account (2000) of what makes a church healthy by the Bible's measure rather than by size: expositional preaching, biblical theology, the gospel, conversion, evangelism, membership, discipline, discipleship and leadership.
The most widely confessed statement of Christian faith. Grown from the second-century baptismal creed of Rome and fixed in its present form by about the eighth century, its twelve articles follow the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The first formal confession of the Reformation, written by Melanchthon and read before Charles V at Augsburg on 25 June 1530. Twenty-one articles of faith, centred on justification by faith, and seven on abuses corrected. The chief Lutheran confession.
The Fourth Ecumenical Council's definition of Christ's person: truly God and truly man, in two natures "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation," united in one person. The boundary of orthodox Christology ever since.
Written by Hudson Taylor's son and daughter-in-law (1932). Rather than recounting the China Inland Mission's achievements, it traces the secret of Taylor's rest and joy: his 1869 discovery of "the exchanged life" of abiding in Christ.
The conversations and letters of Brother Lawrence, a lay brother who worked for many years in a Paris monastery kitchen, gathered after his death. A short classic on practising God's presence in every ordinary moment, cherished by Catholics and Protestants alike.
Compiled from the forty-odd surviving diaries of John Sung (1901–1944), China's great revivalist, together with his two dictated memoirs — My Testimony (1901–1931, recorded by Wang Minxue, 1933) and Looking Back on the Work (1931–1938, recorded by Zheng Suilan) — and his letters and hymns. Sung himself proposed the title in his diary in 1932. An intimate record of his inner life, through to his final night in 1944.
Gary Thomas's Sacred Marriage (2000; Chinese edition 2006) asks: what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? Marriage as a spiritual discipline in which we learn to love, forgive, persevere, pray and serve.
E.M. Bounds (1835–1913), Methodist pastor and former Civil War chaplain, famed for his early-morning prayer. Power Through Prayer (1907) insists that the power of preaching lies not in method or eloquence but in the praying life of the preacher. Chinese translation by Philip Teng.
The best-known introduction to reading Scripture well (1981, many revisions). Two scholars show how to ask what a text meant then and means now, genre by genre: epistles, narrative, Acts, Gospels, parables, law, prophets, Psalms, wisdom and Revelation.