Here is a list of my "Top 7"  favorite books. Tough to decide since there are so many good ones. But here I go.... Jeff

1) Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell

From Publishers Weekly
Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., offers an innovative and intriguing, if uneven, first book. This introduction to the Christian faith is definitely outside the usual evangelical box. Bell wants to offer "a fresh take on Jesus"—a riff that begins with the assertion that Jesus wanted to "call people to live in tune with reality" and that he "had no use for religion."

2) Confessions of a Pastor - Craig Groeshel

Book Description
The Dark Side of a Pastor's Life - A Breath of Fresh Air Are you tired of pretending? Living walled up? Going only skin deep? Craig Groeschel , pastor of the thriving LifeChurch.tv, sure was. And in his refreshingly raw and real book, he comes clean. Not that he has anything other than typical, human stuff to confess. Check out a few of his musings: I have to work hard to stay sexually pure, I hate prayer meetings, sometimes I doubt God , and I can't stand a lot of Christians . Through his incredible honesty, he opens the door for you to follow suit. Are you ready to dig deep and let God shine through the genuine you? No more living just to please others. No more hiding. You can be who God called you to be. You can live for an audience of One.

3) The Gutter - Craig Gross

Book Description
Why did an all-knowing, all-powerful God send the perfection of His kingdom—His only Son—to the earth through the gutter? Why did Jesus spend so much time, reaching out to people in their own secret, dark places? Why do His followers so often turn away from those very same situations? The Gutter chronicles the author’s journey to the gutter, telling the stories and sharing the insights he gained while spending time with the people who dwell there.

The Gutter serves as a manifesto for all different types of people in the Church: those who yearn to impact the culture around them, those who have reassessed their discovery of Christ and want to make their story known, and those who are seeking out new, fresh ways of exhibiting Christ’s love to the poor in spirit.

4) Under the Overpass - Mike Yankoski

Review - Amazon.com One day during a powerful sermon, Mike Yankoski had a paradigm shift as a believer in Christ. He decided that he needed to become the Christian that he claimed to be. That epiphany evolved into a daring plan: drop out of "normal" life and live for five months as a homeless person. After prayer and counsel, he found a kindred spirit named Sam Purvis to accompany him for safety's sake, and they did just that. Equal parts travel journal and faith chronicle, "Under the Overpass" is their fascinating story.

While most Christians (myself included) dream about the radical things they would *like* to do for God, Mike and Sam actually stepped out and did them. They traveled around the US to five different cities and spent about a month in each. They lived by their wits: panhandling, sleeping under bridges, eating discarded food, and getting to know the grungy homeless most of us dismiss as being lazy, addicts, crazy, or all three. They also experienced the best and worst of "regular" people, Christian or not - those who went out of their way to help, along with ones who taunted them or threw them out of coffee shops and churches.

5) The Irresistible Revolution - Shane Claiborne

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. If there is such a thing as a disarming radical, 30-year-old Claiborne is it. A former Tennessee Methodist and born-again, high school prom king, Claiborne is now a founding member of one of a growing number of radical faith communities. His is called the Simple Way, located in a destitute neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is a house of young believers, some single, some married, who live among the poor and homeless. They call themselves "ordinary radicals" because they attempt to live like Christ and the earliest converts to Christianity, ignoring social status and unencumbered by material comforts. Claiborne's chatty and compelling narrative is magnetic—his stories (from galvanizing a student movement that saved a group of homeless families from eviction to reaching Mother Teresa herself from a dorm phone at 2 a.m.) draw the reader in with humor and intimacy, only to turn the most common ways of practicing religion upside down. He somehow skewers the insulation of suburban living and the hypocrisy of wealthy churches without any self-righteous finger pointing. "The world," he says, "cannot afford the American dream." Claiborne's conviction, personal experience and description of others like him are a clarion call to rethink the meaning of church, conversion and Christianity; no reader will go away unshaken.

6) Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller

From Publishers Weekly
Miller is a young writer, speaker and campus ministry leader. An earnest evangelical who nearly lost his faith, he went on a spiritual journey, found some progressive politics and most importantly, discovered Jesus' relevance for everyday life. This book, in its own elliptical way, tells the tale of that journey. But the narrative is episodic rather than linear, Miller's style evocative rather than rational and his analysis personally revealing rather than profoundly insightful. As such, it offers a postmodern riff on the classic evangelical presentation of the Gospel, complete with a concluding call to commitment. Written as a series of short essays on vaguely theological topics (faith, grace, belief, confession, church), and disguised theological topics (magic, romance, shifts, money), it is at times plodding or simplistic (how to go to church and not get angry? "pray... and go to the church God shows you"), and sometimes falls into merely self-indulgent musing. But more often Miller is enjoyably clever, and his story is telling and beautiful, even poignant. (The story of the reverse confession booth is worth the price of the book.) The title is meant to be evocative, and the subtitle-"Non-Religious" thoughts about "Christian Spirituality"-indicates Miller's distrust of the institutional church and his desire to appeal to those experimenting with other flavors of spirituality.

7) Organic Church - Neil Cole

Reviews:
"This book is profound, practical, and a pleasure to read. It stretches our thinking and brings us to a place where we can see the Kingdom of God spread across the world in our generation. This book has come at the right time."
--John C. Maxwell, founder, INJOY, INJOY Stewardship Services and EQUIP

"I heartily recommend this book. It is packed with deep insights; you will find no fluff in it. Among the books on church planting, it offers a rare combination of attributes: it is biblical and well written, its model has proven effective, and it is authored by a practitioner rather than an observer or an ivory-tower theoretician."
--Curtis Sergeant, directory of church planting, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California