The Art and Discipline of Strategic Leadership by Mike Freedman (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
Freedman offers a five-phase model for setting and implementing strategy in business. It provides business leaders with a framework for either assessing and changing current strategy, or beginning a new strategic course.

Becoming a Healthy Church by Stephen A. Macchia (Baker Books, 2003).
Using data drawn from surveys of nearly 2,000 churches, Macchia presents 10 characteristics of thriving congregations. The results encompass all facets of church life, regardless of size, denomination, ethnicity, or location.

Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What by Peter Steinke (Alban Institute, 2007) identifies five reoccurring themes in troubled congregations: high anxiety; systemic impasse; lack of a clear sense of mission; poor boundaries; avoidance of problems, and then suggests behaviors and approaches that can help congregations move beyond the trouble point.

Discerning Your Congregation’s Future: A Strategic and Spiritual Approach by Roy Oswold and Robert Fredrich (Alban Institute, 1996).
Drawing on extensive consulting experience with congregations, the authors provide a step-by-step guide to congregational planning that grounds strategic planning techniques in a process of spiritual discernment. You and your planning committee learn the theory behind the techniques, along with receiving help for addressing specific situations.

The Executive Guide to Strategic Planning by Patrick Bellow, George Morrisey and Betty Acomb (Jossey-Bass, 1987). This book offers a comprehensive approach to strategic planning: how to formulate strategic plans that will develop an organization’s strengths, be responsive to changing business conditions, and chart a productive and profitable company future. Provides numerous charts, worksheets, and other resources.

Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2000) uses a fable to draw the reader into an exploration of what it takes to make an organization healthy. Although written for the world of business, the principles have relevance for the church as well.

The Gift of Administration by Thomas Campbell and Gary Reierson (Westminster Press, 1981).
This book asserts that administration is one of God’s spiritual gifts to the church, the one through which ministry occurs. It helps church leaders recover administration as the central motivation of ministry, and offers a fresh approach to administration with sensitivity and joy.

Good to Great by Jim Collins (Harper Collins, 2001).
Collins analyzes 15 companies that made the leap from “good” to “great,” and sustained their changes. The book provides the determinants for a great company, analyzing why some businesses can make that leap, and others can’t.

Growing Spiritual Redwoods by William M. Easum and Thomas G. Bandy (Abingdon Press, 1997) pinpoints methods that sustain church growth and reveals how the archaic implementation of “dogma, doctrine, and historical knowledge” robs churches of energy in their ministry to parishioners. The book is a sort of business plan for healthy churches.

Hit the Bullseye: How Denominations Can Aim Congregations at the Mission Field by Paul Borden (Abingdon Press, 2003) outlines how local congregations and denominational conferences can reclaim vitality in mission by thinking strategically about leadership recruitment, training, and ongoing nurture.

Leadership on the Other Side by William M. Easum (Abingdon Press, 2000). Bill Easum opens a portal to the other side, that place beyond the Christendom Era and its mechanistic, by-the-numbers approach to church life. It’s a bumpy ride, with treasured assumptions, privileges, and traditions shattered along the way. Yet, as Easum promises, on the other side is a church radically transformed, resonant to the leadership of the Spirit, and ready to lay aside everything that does not help it accomplish the one thing that matters: introducing people to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Management for Christian Leaders by Olan Hendrix (Baker Book House, 1981) explores questions such as: What exactly is management and what are some of the management styles? How do management principles apply to Christian work? Why do Christian workers often neglect management principles? How are goals identified and established? Why is planning so difficult?

The Power of Vision: How You Can Capture and Apply God’s Vision for Your Ministry by George Barna (Regal Books, 1984) exposes the myths that Christian leaders believe about vision,  including: common practices and beliefs that inhibit the development of true vision; the characteristics of God’s vision; practical steps toward discovering God’s unique vision for you and your ministry; ways to share and promote congregational ownership of the vision; and the relationship between vision and planning.

Power Surge: Six Marks of Discipleship for a Changing Church by Michael W. Foss (Fortress Press, 2000) is for every church leader who wants to move from counting members to making disciples. Read this book to understand that working hard at the wrong approach can make churches worse. What we need to do is lead smarter and share ministry by making disciples.

The Purpose Driven Church: Growth without Compromising Your Message and Mission by Rick Warren (Zondervan, 1995).
This book encourages churches to think about their health, trusting that growth will naturally follow. Warren asserts that a healthy church is built when focusing not on the church itself, but its people, through fellowship, discipleship, worship and evangelism.

Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers by William M. Easum (Abingdon Press, 1995). promotes an atmosphere of permission-giving that helps church leaders transcend bureaucracy and gratuitous regulations and enhance spiritual gifts rather than assign them. The sacred cows of control and regulation can be devoured, as leaders and people are converted to a new style of ministry.

A Servant’s Manual: Christian Leadership for Tomorrow by Michael W. Foss (Fortress Press, 2002) is designed to for leaders serving in ministry settings where endless controversy and lack of vision are sapping the life out of the work. The author suggests strategies for overcoming inertia and jumpstarting a stalled work.

Silo’s, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers that Turn Colleagues Into Competitors by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2006) is a great book for churches working at missional clarity and vision.

Strategic Planning Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations by Bryan Barry (Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 1997).
Barry details how to implement a winning strategic plan in a nonprofit organization. It will help you gain a sense of direction that will guide your choices about which opportunities to pursue, and which to avoid.