11 Study Guides
Leadership & Ministry
Grow as a leader in your church and community. These guides equip groups to think about servant leadership, team building, vision, and the unique challenges of ministry life.
Multiply
by Francis Chan
Multiply by Francis Chan is a practical, Scripture-saturated call to return to the Great Commission as the organizing purpose of every Christian's life. Built around Jesus's command to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:18–20), the book argues that discipleship is not a program or a curriculum — it is the normal Christian life. Chan, joined by co-author Mark Beuving and online teaching partner David Platt, walks readers through what it means to be a disciple, how to read and understand the Bible, and how to live out the core doctrines of the faith in a way that reproduces itself in others. The book is organized into five major parts: Living as a Disciple-Maker, Living in the Church, Living in the Old Testament, Living in the New Testament, and Living as the Church in the World — making it both a handbook for personal discipleship and a guide for leading others.
View Discussion GuideThe 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
by John C. Maxwell
John C. Maxwell's The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership distills more than three decades of leadership experience into a set of timeless, transferable principles that Maxwell argues are non-negotiable for anyone who wants to lead effectively. The book's central thesis is straightforward but demanding: leadership is not a matter of title, talent, or luck — it is governed by laws as reliable and predictable as the laws of physics. Violate them, and your leadership will suffer. Learn them, live them, and others will follow. Drawing on stories from business, politics, sports, religion, and military history, Maxwell makes each law concrete, memorable, and immediately applicable. This updated and expanded edition sharpens the original 19 laws, adds two new ones, and includes fresh illustrations and application exercises that make the material more actionable than ever.
View Discussion GuideFresh Wind, Fresh Fire
by Jim Cymbala
Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala is the story of how a struggling, nearly dead congregation in downtown Brooklyn was transformed by a desperate return to prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. Cymbala, who had no formal pastoral training when he took over the Brooklyn Tabernacle in the early 1970s, tells the unvarnished story of what happens when a church stops relying on programs, personalities, and polished production — and starts crying out to God in genuine, sustained prayer. The book's central thesis is simple and searching: God is attracted to weakness, honesty, and desperation. When we stop pretending and start seeking, the Holy Spirit moves in ways that exceed anything human effort could manufacture. The Tuesday night prayer meeting at Brooklyn Tabernacle became the heartbeat of the church and a model for what the New Testament describes as authentic, Spirit-led community.
View Discussion GuideLetters to the Church
by Francis Chan
Francis Chan wrote Letters to the Church out of a place of deep longing — longing for the Church to become what God always intended her to be. Drawing on the model of Paul's letters to first-century congregations, Chan writes as a pastor who loves the Church deeply but is troubled by how far she has drifted from the awe-inspiring, Spirit-filled community described in the New Testament. His central thesis is that we have traded the dangerous, glorious, costly Church of Acts for a comfortable, consumer-driven experience — and that the only way forward is a radical return to Scripture's vision of the Bride of Christ. This is not a book about fixing programs. It is a book about recovering a posture of surrender, sacrifice, and Spirit-dependence.
View Discussion GuideBonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
by Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy is a sweeping biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), the German Lutheran theologian who dared to stand against the rising tide of National Socialism when most of the German church capitulated or cheered. Metaxas weaves together two strands of one extraordinary life — the brilliant theologian wrestling with questions of costly discipleship and cheap grace, and the reluctant conspirator who eventually joined a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Drawing on personal letters, journal entries, and firsthand accounts, Metaxas argues that Bonhoeffer's courage was not incidental to his faith but a direct product of it. The book's central claim is that genuine Christian belief, formed deeply enough, produces people who cannot look away from monstrous evil — and that Bonhoeffer's life is a rebuke to every comfortable, accommodating Christianity that mistakes niceness for faithfulness.
View Discussion GuideWhen Helping Hurts
by Steve Corbett
When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert challenges Christians to rethink the way they engage in poverty alleviation. The book's central thesis is that much of what the church does in the name of helping the poor actually makes things worse — not because of bad intentions, but because of a fundamental misdiagnosis of poverty itself. Rather than seeing poverty primarily as a lack of material resources, the authors argue that poverty is rooted in broken relationships: with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. True poverty alleviation, they contend, requires restoring those relationships, which means that "development" — walking alongside people as they grow in dignity and capacity — is almost always preferable to "relief," which should be reserved only for genuine crisis situations.
View Discussion GuideTwelve Ordinary Men
by John MacArthur
In Twelve Ordinary Men, John MacArthur makes a stunning and deeply encouraging claim: Jesus did not choose the most gifted, the most educated, or the most religiously polished men to carry the gospel to the world. He chose twelve ordinary men — men marked by doubt, pride, impetuosity, political zeal, and even betrayal — and transformed them into the pillars of the church. MacArthur's central thesis is that God's pattern has never changed: He delights to display His glory through weak and unlikely vessels, so that no one can mistake the power as belonging to the messenger rather than to the message. By examining each apostle's personality, background, failures, and transformation, MacArthur invites readers to see that the same Jesus who made fishermen into world-changers is still in the business of making something extraordinary out of ordinary lives.
View Discussion GuideThe Emotionally Healthy Leader
by Peter Scazzero
$2d
View Discussion GuideSpiritual Leadership
by J. Oswald Sanders
J. Oswald Sanders' Spiritual Leadership, first published in 1967, remains one of the most beloved and enduring books on Christian leadership ever written. Sanders' central thesis is simple but radical: spiritual leadership is not an achievement of natural talent, ambition, or organizational skill — it is the product of a life wholly surrendered to God. True spiritual leaders are not self-appointed; they are Spirit-appointed. Drawing on the lives of biblical figures, church fathers, and missionary heroes such as David Livingstone, Samuel Brengle, and Hudson Taylor, Sanders paints a portrait of leadership that looks nothing like the world's version — one marked by sacrifice, prayer, servanthood, and a willingness to bear costs that others will not.
View Discussion GuideNecessary Endings
by Henry Cloud
Henry Cloud's Necessary Endings (2011) makes a counterintuitive but liberating argument: endings are not failures — they are necessary conditions for growth. Just as a rosebush requires pruning to thrive, our businesses, relationships, and personal lives require us to cut away what is dying, what is already dead, and what is simply not able to become what we need it to be. Cloud draws on his experience as a clinical psychologist and business consultant to show that the inability to end things — to fire an underperforming employee, leave a destructive relationship, or abandon a strategy that isn't working — is one of the most common and costly sources of personal and professional stagnation. The book's central thesis is that hope is not a strategy: wishing things will get better without doing something different is a form of magical thinking that keeps us stuck. Learning to end well, Cloud argues, is a learnable skill, and this guide is designed to help you develop it.
View Discussion GuideLeading on Empty
by Wayne Cordeiro
$2d
View Discussion GuideLeadership & Ministry Studies — Questions Leaders Ask
- How many Leadership & Ministry study guides are there?
- 11 guides right now, listed above, out of 223 in the library. Each one is written for a specific published book: a reading, discussion questions, and a closing prayer for every week of it. Browse the whole library →
- How long does a study take?
- Leadership & Ministry guides run 10 to 27 weeks, one meeting a week, and each week has its own reading, discussion questions, and closing prayer. Groups that meet every other week or take a break for the holidays simply spread the same weeks further apart. Put your meetings on real dates →
- Can we read part of a guide before we pay?
- Yes. Week 1 of every guide is free — no card and no account. Three of its discussion questions sit right on the guide's page for anyone to read, and the rest of Week 1 opens as soon as you tell us where to send it. Browse the guides →
- What does a guide cost?
- The complete guide is $29.99 once for the book you pick. Nothing renews, and there is a 7-day money-back guarantee if you request it before downloading the PDF or printable handouts. See the price →
- What if the book we want isn't on this page?
- We write it. Tell us the title and the author, and we email you the link as soon as the guide is ready. The complete guide is $29.99 once, including the single book you name. Ask for a book →
- Can I print the guide or share it with my group?
- Yes. Download the guide as a PDF to print for the table, or send your group a read-only link. One purchase covers everyone who shows up — there is no per-person fee.