As Missional Theology matures, it’s producing a growing body of literature. It can be a lot to sort through, so here I’m collecting those resources that I’ve found helpful, with some comments along the way. I’ll start by providing a handful of foundational texts that I think are indispensable, and then point towards some other useful works along the way. I’ll be updating this page over time, so let me know of the ones I’ve missed in the comments!
Foundational Texts
Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Darrell Guder and Friends, 1998. This is the mothership, people. It’s a foundational text, and if you really want to study the missional church, you have to read it. The good news is it reads pretty well, even after a couple of decades. For me, reading this was like finding the spring that fed the stream I’d been drinking from for years.
Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness by Lois Barrett and friends. This is essentially the same gang of writers as Missional Church (Guder 1998), and in this text they try to put a little more flesh on their ideas. It’s based on case studies, and is a quick read—much less dense than Missional Church.
The Missional Church in Perspective by Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile, 2011. This is another piece from one of the original collaborators (Van Gelder) that strikes me really as an extension of Missional Church. Since it’s a fairly easy read, I’d think of this as going into the essential toolkit. Part of what this book does is to frame how the missional conversation has forked and taken different turns since 1998. Since different people use missional language to mean different things, a book that takes a high view of the conversation, mapping it out, becomes very useful. This book is also useful for sending you in new directions, expanding your reading list.
The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission by Lesslie Newbigin (1995). This is a key predecessor to Missional Church, and no missional reading list is complete without it. Newbigin, upon his return to the Western World, helped it to see its own identity as a mission field, and provided theological language for our engagement with our neighbors.
Other Missional Books
- Poured Out: The Spirit of God Empowering the Mission of God by Leonard Allen (ACU Press, 2018). A pneumatology of mission from within Churches of Christ: the Spirit as the one who empowers the church’s participation in God’s mission.
- Models of Contextual Theology, rev. ed., by Stephen Bevans (Orbis, 2002). The standard typology of how theology engages culture; a natural companion to Sedmak.
- Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today by Bevans and Schroeder (2004).
- Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David Bosch (1991). One of the significant predecessors to Missional Church, Bosch gives a thorough account of the trajectory that led to the missional movement.
- Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry, Missional Engagement, and Congregational Change, 2nd ed., by Mark Lau Branson (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Appreciative inquiry as a method for congregational listening and change.
- Staying is the New Going by Alan Briggs (2015)
- Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission by David Fitch (IVP, 2016). Seven practices, beginning with the Lord’s Table, that shape a congregation’s presence in its neighborhood.
- Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power by David Fitch (Brazos, 2024). A theology of power in the church, distinguishing worldly “power over” from the “power under” of Christ.
- Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier by David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw (2013)
- The Road to Missional: Journey to the Center of the Church by Michael Frost (2011)
- Surprise the World: Five Habits of Highly Missional People by Michael Frost (2015) is a great little book that would be useful for a small study group. Very readable.
- The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (2003, 2013). The revised edition has some pretty useful reflections in the introduction. This is a passionate and useful text, even if I have a couple of reservations about the way they ditch the trinitarian emphasis in favor of a heavy Christology.
- A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story by Michael Goheen (2011).
- Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission by Michael Gorman (2015). Gorman’s expertise is in missional hermeneutics (how we read and use scripture).
- Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation by Michael J. Gorman (2011). This is an earlier piece on Revelation, and I love it. It’s very readable, but will leave you chewing.
- Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). A journalist’s account of the rise and unraveling of a missional congregation in Philadelphia; a National Book Award finalist.
- Called to Witness: Doing Missional Theology by Darrell Guder (2015) collects essays Guder published on the missional church after the landmark publication in 1998.
- The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Darrell Guder (2000). This book provides a perspective on what’s happening inside the missional church, and why that formation is key for the mission of God. I love this text’s fundamental premise.
- Eat What Is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context by Scott Hagley (Urban Loft, 2019). On the congregation as the primary site of contextual missiology.
- Missional. Monastic. Mainline.: A Guide to Starting Missional Micro-Communities in Historically Mainline Traditions by Elaine Heath (2014)
- The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch (2009)
- An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Historical, Global, and Interreligious Perspectives, rev. ed., by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (IVP Academic, 2021). A survey of the major ecclesial traditions and contemporary global ecclesiologies.
- Decolonizing Mission: The Cross, the Empire, and the Future of Christian Witness by Harvey Kwiyani (SCM, 2025). A majority-world call for mission without domination.
- The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight (2011) provides the sort of biblical backdrop that fuels the missional movement.
- Mission-Shaped Church (2004) is a Church of England publication I’ve heard good things about, and I know it’s been influential in the Anglican Fresh Expressions circles.
- The Trinity and the Kingdom, Jürgen Moltmann (1993). Moltmann fits the description of a theologian whose writing has deeply impacted the missional movement, even if not explicitly missional.
- Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, 2nd ed., by Stuart Murray (Cascade, 2018). The standard book-length account of the post-Christendom transition.
- Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society by Stefan Paas (SCM, 2019). A European account of Christian identity as a creative minority after Christendom.
- Churches and the Crisis of Decline: A Hopeful, Practical Ecclesiology for a Secular Age by Andrew Root (Baker Academic, 2022). Reads congregational decline theologically rather than as a growth problem.
- Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness by Andrew Root (Baker Academic, 2025). Evangelism as consolation in a culture that has traded hope for happiness.
- Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood by Alan Roxburgh (2011). This is a pretty central text, and is probably one of the better introductory pieces out there. It may end up getting moved to the foundational list above.
- Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition by Alan Roxburgh (2010). There’s been a lot written about missional leadership—Roxburgh is a trustworthy guide.
- The Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality by Alan Roxburgh (1997). This is a more academic piece than Roxburgh’s other writing, and is sort of a forgotten little book, unfortunately.
- Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, How to Become One by Alan Roxburgh and Scott Boren (2009)
- Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling: Leadership in a Changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Roy Searle (Cascade, 2025). Roxburgh’s most recent work on leadership amid cultural unraveling.
- Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity by Clemens Sedmak (2003). This is a jewel of a book with an unfortunately hokey cover. I advise you to defer judgment.
- Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus by Christopher Smith and John Pattison (IVP, 2014). A place-rooted vision of congregational life, drawn from the Englewood Christian Church story in Indianapolis.
- The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit by Craig Van Gelder (2007)
- Participating in God’s Mission: A Theological Missiology for the Church in America by Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile (Eerdmans, 2018). A comprehensive, mature restatement of missio Dei ecclesiology.
- Minding the Good Ground: A Theology for Church Renewal by Jason E. Vickers (Baylor University Press, 2011). A theological, rather than programmatic, account of church renewal.
- Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Miroslav Volf (1996). Volf isn’t explicitly a missional theologian, but his work seems to be an important piece of the conversation, in my view.
- A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good by Miroslav Volf (2013)
- The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative by Christopher Wright (2006). Like Gorman, Wright is a significant figure in missional hermeneutics. His focus has typically been in Old Testament Studies, and that provides the backdrop for this book, which is a landmark work for the field.
- Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright (revised in 2013) is excellent, and the book makes a fantastic case for a missional understanding of how scripture fits into the story of God. If you haven’t cut your teeth on Wright yet, you should, and this is a great place to start.
- Leading Faithful Innovation: Following God into a Hopeful Future by Dwight Zscheile, Michael Binder, and Tessa Pinkstaff (Fortress, 2023). A three-movement discernment process: listening, acting to learn, and sharing stories.
- Embracing the Mixed Ecology: Inherited and New Forms of Christian Community Flourishing Together by Dwight Zscheile and Blair Pogue (Seabury, 2025). How established congregations and new expressions of church can flourish together.
Missional Web Hubs
- Missio Alliance has one of the best missional blogs around the web. Most of the articles here are at a popular level, though often by respected missional leaders.
- Missio Dei is an online academic journal with articles about missional theory and practice.
- The Journal of Missional Practice has a vision “to be like a table around which theologically informed practitioners gather with others to share the stories of what they are doing and discerning on the ground and in the local.” I’d say they pull it off.
- Faith+Lead is Luther Seminary’s hub for resources on missional leadership and congregational innovation, and home of the Pivot podcast.
Missional Podcasts
- Theology on Mission is a regular podcast featuring David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw. (iTunes, Overcast)
- Missional Hospitality with Alan Roxburgh is episode 2 of the Fresh Expressions Podcast.
- Leaving Egypt is Alan Roxburgh’s podcast (with Jenny Sinclair) on the church’s vocation amid cultural unraveling.
- Pivot, hosted by Dwight Zscheile for Luther Seminary’s Faith+Lead, regularly covers missional church, faithful innovation, and the mixed ecology.
- Leading Faithful Innovation with Dwight Zscheile on Leading Ideas Talks (Lewis Center for Church Leadership, 2023) is a compact overview of the faithful innovation process.
- Homebrewed Christianity’s June 2025 conversation with Andrew Root on Evangelism in an Age of Despair is a long-form treatment of the book’s argument.
- Communitas and Loneliness with Alan Hirsch on the Fresh Expressions Podcast (2024).
Updated: Sept 8, 2026
Posted: June 8, 2016
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