Editorial shortlist
Books on grief, suffering and loss, each with a written study guide. Grief studies are heavy by nature, so every note says what kind of loss the book is about and roughly how much a group is taking on.
15 studies below. Catalog facts last updated .
A guide qualifies when grief and loss is one of the topics its classification assigned — the book is about bereavement, suffering, lament or loss, not a book that mentions a hard season in passing.
by C.S. Lewis
Why it’s on this list
Lewis filled these notebooks in real time after his wife died, and the six sessions follow his four sections plus a closing reflection. Six sessions and 43 questions — short by design, because the material is heavy.
by Jerry Sittser
Why it’s on this list
Sittser lost his mother, wife and daughter in one accident, and the sessions follow his chapters from the sudden loss through redemptive remembering to the enduring presence of loss. Fourteen sessions and 112 questions; a care ministry usually spreads it over a whole term.
by Timothy Keller
Why it’s on this list
Keller spends the first half on how different cultures and faiths handle suffering and the second half on walking through it — sovereignty, reasons, the furnace, praying through. It answers the why questions before it turns pastoral.
by Philip Yancey
Why it’s on this list
Yancey's sessions run from a world without pain, through how people respond to it, to how to help someone in pain. That closing session on helping is why care teams often choose it.
by Mark Vroegop
Why it’s on this list
Vroegop teaches the movements of biblical lament — turn, complain, ask, trust — from the psalms and Lamentations. Nine sessions, and it hands a grieving group actual words to use.
by Elisabeth Elliot
Why it’s on this list
Elliot's eight sessions pair suffering with love, trust, transformation, surrender, gratitude and glory. Short and unsentimental, written by someone whose first husband was killed and whose second died of cancer.
by Ann Voskamp
Why it’s on this list
Voskamp writes from her own history of trauma and self-harm toward what she calls cruciform love. Eleven sessions; the writing is imagistic, so groups tend to read shorter portions and talk longer.
by Jerry Bridges
Why it’s on this list
Bridges builds the study on God's sovereignty, wisdom and goodness, then applies each to adversity, weakness and hurt. A doctrine study aimed at a pastoral problem, which helps groups that want reasons more than comfort.
by Lysa TerKeurst
Why it’s on this list
TerKeurst writes about forgiving without an apology, with sessions on trigger points, boundaries and the story we keep telling ourselves. The loss here is relational rather than bereavement.
by David Jeremiah
Why it’s on this list
Jeremiah's thirty-one short chapters are grouped into eleven sessions covering resurrection bodies, reunion, hard questions about children and suicide, and the new Jerusalem. Groups meeting in a senior-adult setting often start here.
by John Burke
Why it’s on this list
Burke gathers near-death accounts and tests them against Scripture across seventeen sessions, including sessions on children, the life review and hell. Read the early session on whether these experiences can be trusted before deciding whether it fits your group.
by Ron Hall & Denver Moore
Why it’s on this list
A true story of two men and the woman whose death changed both of them, with sessions following the friendship through her diagnosis and after. It carries grief inside a narrative, which some groups find easier than a book about grief.
by Ann Voskamp
Why it’s on this list
The guide for WayMaker runs 14 sessions with 112 discussion questions, filed under Spiritual Growth & Disciplines, Christian Living and Grief & Loss. It is on this list because its guide is classified under grief and loss; Week 1 is free to read before you decide.
by William Paul Young
Why it’s on this list
The guide for The Shack runs 20 sessions with 137 discussion questions, filed under Grief & Loss and Faith & Theology. It is on this list because its guide is classified under grief and loss; Week 1 is free to read before you decide.
by Francine Rivers
Why it’s on this list
The guide for Redeeming Love runs 15 sessions with 107 discussion questions, filed under Biography & Memoir, Grief & Loss and Faith & Theology. It is on this list because its guide is classified under grief and loss; Week 1 is free to read before you decide.
Christian books for small groups
Titles a mixed adult group can study together, with session and question counts.
Women's Bible study books
Studies written for women's ministry, from Scripture studies to books on the thought life.
Men's Bible study books
Titles written to men, plus the leadership and apologetics studies men's groups pick up.
Books for new believers
Books that explain the faith from the ground up, ordered from the lightest reading to the heaviest.
Marriage books for couples
Marriage and relationship studies, with a note on how candid each one gets.
Books on prayer
Studies on prayer and spiritual warfare, from a seven-session challenge to a full systematic term.
Christian classics for book clubs
Devotional classics and true stories, with a note on how demanding the prose is.
Christian books on anxiety
Studies on anxiety, the thought life, burnout and boundaries, ordered from plainest to most clinical.