equip the Church

The preaching of God’s Word is central to the life and health of the church. But what happens when the congregation leaves on Sunday morning? How do we ensure that the truths proclaimed from the pulpit continue to shape hearts and minds throughout the week? One often-overlooked tool to help extend the ministry of the pulpit and deepen discipleship in the Church  is the simple book table.

Beyond Sunday Morning

A well-curated book table isn’t merely a convenience for those in the church who love books or an opportunity to raise money for the church budget. Rather, it should serve as a strategic extension of the preaching ministry of the Church. When integrated thoughtfully into church life, a book table becomes a powerful discipleship tool that helps pastors shepherd their flock beyond the Sunday morning service. 

Three Categories of Books to Feature on the Book Table

In my experience, we should avoid the temptation to stock everything. The Church book table is not a bookstore. In most countries, publisher websites offer their complete catalog, the value the Church book table provides is curation. An effective book table should be carefully curated around three main categories:

1. Books Tied to Current Sermon Series

When a pastor preaches through a book of the Bible or addresses a particular theological theme, the book table should reflect and reinforce that teaching. If you’re preaching through Romans, stock accessible commentaries and books on justification, sanctification, and the gospel. Working through the doctrine of the church? Make sure you have solid ecclesiology titles available.

This creates a natural feedback loop: the pulpit drives interest in deeper study, and the books enable that study, which in turn produces more informed listeners who can better receive and apply the preaching.

2. Books Addressing Current Church Issues

Every church faces particular challenges during different seasons. The pastors have unique insight into the specific challenges that the Church is going through.  Perhaps your members are wrestling with how to engage their secular workplace. Maybe there’s confusion about gender and sexuality. Perhaps there has been some severe illness in your Church, and people are doubting the goodness of God and his providence. Your book table should address these real-time pastoral concerns with biblically sound, accessible resources.

This demonstrates pastoral care and wisdom while showing that the Elders of the Church are  attentive to the congregation’s needs and committed to equipping them with truth that applies to the challenges they are going through, not just general encouragement.

3. Core Books on Theology, the Church, and Christian Living

Finally, every book table should maintain a consistent core collection of the essential books that the elders believe that every Christian in that Church should read. This should include books on systematic theology, Ecclesiology, biblical manhood and womanhood, prayer, evangelism, and discipleship. Think of these as the theological foundations that undergird everything else or the books that pastors wish everyone in the Church would read.

These core titles ensure that even when sermon series change, members can always access resources that build a robust faith and theological understanding while building unity around biblical ideas in the congregation. 

The Power of Reading Together: Less Is More

Here’s a counterintuitive principle that many churches miss: fewer books create greater impact. Rather than maintaining an extensive library that overwhelms members with choices, focus on a carefully selected handful of titles that the entire congregation can read together.

When thirty, fifty, or a hundred members are all reading the same book, something powerful can happen when intentionally encouraged. Conversations after the service aren’t just about the events of the week, the next vacation or the weather; they’re about the new aspect of biblical truth learned through reading. Parents and students find themselves discussing the same theological concepts. The single mom and the retired businessman discover shared ground in their understanding of justification.

This creates theological unity in the body of Christ and helps create a compelling community.  When many people are studying the same biblical truths, wrestling with the same questions, and building the same theological framework, the church develops a shared doctrinal vocabulary and vision. 

This approach also fights against the consumeristic tendency to treat books like spiritual entertainment—reading whatever strikes our fancy in the moment. Instead, it cultivates humility and community: we read what the church is reading because we’re committed to growing together, not just individually.

Creating Compelling Community Through Shared Reading

One of the core convictions of 9Marks is that the local church should be a compelling community; not compelling through entertainment or programs, but through the supernatural reality of a genuine Christian community centered around the gospel. A compelling community is a community where God’s glory becomes visible in how believers love one another, where the watching world sees something they cannot manufacture on their own.

Shared reading helps create this kind of compelling community.

Think about what happens when your church is collectively reading a Christian book together;

The student and the grandmother find themselves in the church lobby discussing how penal substitutionary atonement changes everything. Age barriers disappear as they wonder at Christ’s work.

The new believer and the longtime member realize they’re both struggling with assurance that their sins are forgiven and they both find comfort discussing the finished work of Christ. Vulnerability becomes easier when you know others are wrestling with the same questions.

This is what makes community compelling: when people who have nothing in common by worldly standards find themselves unified by something greater—the truths of Scripture and the gospel of Christ. When visitors observe conversations in the church lobby that revolve around the things of God rather than mere pleasantries, they encounter something the world cannot replicate. When unbelieving spouses see their partners excited to discuss books about God with church friends that aren’t like them, they witness a community bound by something more powerful than shared hobbies or socioeconomic status.

As 9Marks consistently emphasizes, the church’s countercultural nature is part of its evangelistic power. When we create a community where a CEO and a janitor discuss justification as equals, where racial and socioeconomic divisions dissolve in pursuit of knowing Christ, where the lonely find family and the skeptical find answers, we display the transforming and unifying power of the gospel.

Monthly Focus: Building Momentum

One practical way to implement this “less is more” philosophy is through monthly book promotions. Each month, highlight one primary title from the pulpit, ideally this is done by a non-preaching Elder since this will reinforce their role as being responsible for the teaching in Church. Explain why this book matters for the current season of church life. Quote from it in sermons. Reference it in announcements. Encourage people to read and discuss the book together in their small groups or in informal settings. Think of creative ways to talk about the book and what they will learn by reading it.

Assuming a context of strong expositional preaching, when a single book receives this level of attention, several things happen:

• Momentum builds. People hear from others who are reading a particular book and want to join the conversation.
• Accountability increases. When your pastor asks from the pulpit, “How many of you have started reading this month’s book?” it can create healthy social pressure.
• Discussion deepens. Instead of superficial “I liked it” responses, people are encouraged to have substantive conversations because they’re all engaging the same material together.
• Application becomes communal. The church doesn’t just learn theology individually or abstractly; together they work out what these truths mean for how we love one another, share the Gospel, and make disciples.
• Community becomes compelling. Outsiders notice when an entire community is animated by the same truth, when conversations naturally turn to what everyone’s learning together about God and when excitement about biblical truth is contagious.

This doesn’t mean you only stock one book—maintain your core collection and series-specific resources. But it does mean you strategically focus congregational attention on one title at a time, creating a shared reading experience that builds theological unity and compelling community.

How to Make It Work

A book table is only as effective as its integration into church life. Here are key practices:

Present books monthly from the pulpit. Take three minutes during announcements to highlight a specific title, explain why it matters, and how it relates to the church’s current teaching emphasis. When a pastor commends a book, it carries weight. Better yet, tell the congregation: “This is what we’re reading together this month,” and teach them to share with others what they are learning.  

Quote from these books in sermons. When you cite an author your members can access at the book table, you create a bridge. They hear how the particular authors explain biblical truth, and are encouraged to dig deeper themselves and the author has earned their trust based on their expertise and your endorsement. When you quote from the monthly focus book, those who are reading it feel validated in their effort and will tell their friends at Church they are reading that book already, and those who haven’t started reading are motivated to start.

Teach people how to read and discuss. Don’t assume people know how to read theologically or discuss what they’re learning. Model this. Encourage small groups to read the monthly book together. Teach members to ask: What does this teach me about God and his word? About myself? How does this apply to my life? What questions does this raise? Provide discussion questions in the bulletin or on the church website. Often publishers have created study guides already, otherwise AI can help produce great discussion questions.

Cultivate a culture of theological conversation. The goal is transformation of church culture . We want members who naturally gravitate toward discussions about God’s Word, who bring questions about what they’re reading, who can articulate the gospel clearly because they’ve thought deeply about it. The book table facilitates this by putting good tools in people’s hands and when everyone has the same tool, they can grow together.

Books and the Making of Disciples

There’s a reason why historic movements of renewal and reform have always been accompanied by a flood of accessible Christian literature. The Reformation, the Puritans, the modern missions movement amongst many other movements all produced literature that we still read today.

Books, when combined with faithful preaching, create a powerful discipleship engine. The pulpit proclaims truth with authority and urgency. Books allow that same truth to be revisited, studied, debated, and absorbed at a pace that allows for genuine understanding. The preached Word pierces the heart; the written word trains the mind. Together, they produce mature disciples.

Biblical discipleship requires more than biblical sermons; it requires a church committed to the patient work of teaching, training, and theological formation. 

From Consumer to Disciple

Perhaps most importantly, a book table helps shift our church culture from consumerism to discipleship. In a consumer model, people come to church to receive; a good sermon, an emotional experience, and practical tips. In a discipleship model, people come to be equipped for service, to grow in grace and knowledge, and to be sent out as ambassadors.

When we teach our people to read great Christian books together, we’re saying: “You’re not just a passive recipient. You’re a disciple being trained. You have a mind to be sharpened, a soul to be nourished, and a calling to be faithful stewards of the truth. And you’re not alone; you’re part of a body, and we’re learning together.”

The focused, community driven approach also combats the dangerous notion that spiritual growth is purely individual. Yes, each person must personally trust Christ and walk with Him daily. But we grow in the context of the church, shaped by shared convictions and mutual encouragement. My friend David Powlison always described sanctification as a community project. When we all read the same book on the church, we develop shared expectations for membership. When we all read the same book on the gospel, we can hold one another accountable to that gospel. This is the essence of healthy church life.

Yes, we’ll still talk about vacations and jobs. But increasingly, we’ll also talk about what we’re learning together in Romans 8, how chapter four of the current book clarified our understanding of the Trinity, or how to apply what we read last month about sharing the gospel with our neighbors. And that transformation, from small talk to substantive spiritual conversation rooted in shared theological formation, is the fruit of extending the ministry of the pulpit through the simple, strategic tool of a church book table.

The Strategic Question

The question isn’t whether we have time for this. The question is whether we’re serious about making disciples who are unified around sound doctrine and formed into a compelling community. If we are, we’ll use every tool at our disposal; including good books carefully selected, enthusiastically promoted, read communally, and woven into the fabric of our church’s teaching ministry.

A church that reads together grows together. A church unified around theological truth becomes a compelling witness to a fractured world searching for authentic community. When the single mom, the college student, the business executive, and the retiree all gather to discuss the same truths about God, something beautiful and countercultural emerges; the body of Christ, visibly unified by something transcendent.

A church unified around theological truth is a church prepared to weather cultural storms, resist false teaching, and bear faithful witness to the gospel. The book table, when thoughtfully curated and strategically focused, becomes more than a ministry accessory; it becomes an instrument of doctrinal unity, spiritual formation, and compelling community.

So start small. Pick one of your favorite accessible books. Promote it from the pulpit. Get it into as many hands as possible. Facilitate discussions. Create opportunities for members to talk about what they’re learning. Then watch as your congregation begins to speak the same theological language, fight for the same gospel truths, form bonds that transcend worldly categories, and grow together in unity around the Word of God; becoming the kind of community that makes the world stop and ask, “What do they have that we don’t?”

The answer, of course, is Christ made known through His Word, proclaimed from the pulpit, and reinforced through the patient, communal work of reading and learning together.