Building a Professional Ministry Library On The Cheap

Yes­ter­day I spent 10 hours in a meet­ing dis­cussing train­ing strate­gies for col­lege min­is­ters (most of whom come from sec­u­lar col­leges). While dri­ving back I began think­ing about the chal­lenge a new min­is­ter with­out for­mal train­ing faces in build­ing a pro­fes­sion­al library. Books are expensive–the New Inter­na­tion­al Com­men­tary series on the Old and New Tes­ta­ments retails for near­ly $1,500 (OT, NT)! For some new min­is­ters, build­ing a qual­i­ty library can seem so over­whelm­ing that it’s hard to know where to start.

Inspired by a sim­i­lar exam­ple, I decid­ed to com­pile a sol­id (although basic) min­istry library for under $200 (I failed by eleven cents). I priced the books (used) on Amazon.com on 6/18/2004. Books are list­ed in rough order of impor­tance with­in each cat­e­go­ry.

The Ref­er­ence Col­lec­tion — $102.85

• NIV Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance $19.35
• Sys­tem­at­ic The­ol­o­gy, Mil­lard Erick­son $29.99
• The IVP Bible Back­ground Com­men­tary — New Tes­ta­ment, Craig Keen­er $13.95
• Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacel­li $5.99
• Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the New Tes­ta­ment, H. Wayne House $10.15
• Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the Old Tes­ta­ment, John Wal­ton $9.99
• Mul­ti­pur­pose Tools for Bible Study, Fred Danker $13.43

The Per­son­al & Pro­fes­sion­al Growth Col­lec­tion — $97.26

• Devo­tion­al Clas­sics, Fos­ter & Smith $6.65
• How to Read The Bible For All Its Worth, Fee & Stu­art $1.99
• Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, C. S. Lewis $4.95
• The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Dal­las Willard $9.60
• The Chal­lenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright $10.97
• Prayer, Richard Fos­ter $5.00
• A Tale of Three Kings, Gene Edwards $3.85
• The Pur­suit of Holi­ness, Jer­ry Bridges $2.49
• Exeget­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es – D. A. Car­son $8.99
• Between Two Worlds, John Stott $9.00
• The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism, Robert Cole­man $0.97
• The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, Rick War­ren $8.00
• Chris­t­ian Coun­sel­ing, Gary Collins $10.50
• Solu­tion-Focused Pas­toral Coun­sel­ing, Charles Kol­lar $12.71
• Take and Read, Eugene Peter­son $1.59

Total Cost: $200.11 (exclud­ing ship­ping & han­dling)

I tried to end each list with a book that would lead to more books, so that this would only be the gen­e­sis of a pro­fes­sion­al library…

I wel­come sug­ges­tions for replace­ment vol­umes. What do you think impor­tant for a novice min­is­ter with lit­tle the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion to read?