Written by Andy Singleterry
Note: these are not in ranked order but in suggested reading order, from introduction to advanced material.
1. The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor, by Scott Bessenecker
An introduction to incarnational urban ministry as practiced by Servant Partners and our sister organizations. Bessenecker makes a compelling call aimed mostly at college student readers. See also the follow-up, Living Mission, edited by Bessenecker and written by leaders of SP and the other organizations highlighted in New Friars.
2. Thriving In the City: A Guide for Sustaining Incarnational Ministry Among the Urban Poor, by T. Aaron Smith
Our own Aaron Smith’s contribution to this literature (and published by our own SP Press), Thriving In the City is the best how-to manual for incarnational urban ministry. Based on his own experience of moving into Manila and making a life there, Aaron counsels readers on how to make it work. This is our go-to resource to explain what we do.
3. Slum Life Rising: How to Enflesh Hope within a New Urban World, by Ash Barker
If I have to pick one top book on incarnational urban ministry, this is it. Barker matches exemplary practice and reflection; Slum Life Rising comes out of years living and ministering in Bangkok followed by a Ph.D. on the subject. Barker wrote the conclusion of Living Mission, mentioned above, seeming to question the legitimacy of calling ourselves “incarnational.” Slum Life Rising is his brilliant answer to his own questions.
4. Companion to the Poor: Christ In the Urban Slums, by Viv Grigg
Grigg’s is the classic text of incarnational urban ministry, the book that invented the category and launched the movement. He moved, alone, into a Manila slum to plant a church. He’s been calling others to join him ever since, through this book and other means.
5. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo
Katherine Boo spent two years embedded in a Mumbai slum, getting to know the residents so that she could write their stories. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is not an incarnational urban ministry book – her descriptions of Christian ministers are painful – but an excellent example of novelistic, In Cold Blood-style journalism. Unintentionally, she also produced a great example of incarnationality.
6. Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: Hope for a Planet In Peril, by Benigno P. Beltran
Father Ben (as I know him) is a fascinating man: a Roman Catholic priest trained in Rome to advance the esoteric edges of systematic theology, he left that heady life in a crisis of faith to embody himself among trash diggers. A scientist and theorist by disposition, he connects to the global environmental crisis through his place on a mountain of waste. Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain is a difficult but rewarding read.