Christian Classics

Wang Mingdao's autobiography at fifty (1950): childhood, conversion, years alone with the Bible in Beijing, the founding of the Christian Tabernacle, and his refusal to join the Japanese-sponsored church union during the war. Soon after, he spent over twenty years in prison.

Lewis's 1960 book, grown from radio talks recorded in 1958: affection, friendship, eros and charity. Each natural love is a gift of God, yet turns destructive once made a god; only taken up into divine love does it become what it was meant to be.

Timothy and Kathy Keller's 2011 book, from a sermon series on Ephesians 5: marriage as covenant rather than feeling, shaped by the gospel of Christ's self-giving love, with chapters on singleness and on complementary roles.

Gary Chapman's 1992 bestseller: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. Learning to speak your spouse's love language fills their "love tank" — the most practical book on this path.

Robert E. Coleman's The Master Plan of Evangelism (1963): not techniques but the method of Jesus himself — selection, association, consecration, impartation, demonstration, delegation, supervision and reproduction. His plan was not to win crowds but to raise up disciples who would make disciples.

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.

Toward a Missional Church (2015) by Chinese New Testament scholar Che-Bin Tan: from the Gospels, Acts and Paul, mission not as one programme among many but as the church's very nature — applied to the realities of Chinese churches today.

The creed of the first ecumenical councils. Against Arius, Nicaea (325) confessed the Son "begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father"; Constantinople (381) expanded the article on the Holy Spirit. Shared by East and West.

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.

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.

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.

Elisabeth Elliot's Quest for Love (1996), a companion to Passion and Purity: thirty chapters built on letters from readers about singleness, waiting, purity, failure and grace, and marriage, with the love stories of missionaries such as Adoniram Judson and Hudson and Maria Taylor. Chinese edition 1998.