As a Lay Servant in the United Methodist Church, I submit a report each year to the UM Charge Conference. One part of the report is a list of "books read to help you develop your devotional life, improve your understanding of the Bible, improve your understanding of The United Methodist Church, and to improve your skills in caring leading, commnuicating, and speaking."

Here is the list I submitted for the past year:

Books I have read in the past year:

Friendship with God | Kaye and Bill Cooper

Origins: God, Evolution, and the Question of the Cosmos | Philip A. Rolnick

Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Values and Virtues | Jeffrey Wattles

The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem | Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan

Birdsong | Rumi

Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns | Stephan Finlan

Bullying in the Churches | Stephan Finlan

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint | Nadia Bolz-Weber

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People | Nadia Bolz-Weber:

The Enduring Quest: A Search for a Philosophy of Life | Harry Overstreet

The Religion of Jesus | Walter E. Bundy

Our Recovery of Jesus | Walter E. Bundy

God in Idea and Experience | Rees Griffiths

God and Ourselves | Edwin Lewis

If the Oceans Were Ink | Carla Power

The Kotel Siddur: Prayer Book for Friday Night and Festivals | The Western Wall Heritage Foundation­

Speaking of Faith | Krista Tippett

Note:

The two books by Bundy, as well as the books by Rees Griffiths, Edwin Lewis, and Harry Overstreet, are cited by Matthew Block as "source books" for paper 196, "The Faith of Jesus." See http://www.urantiabooksources.com/pdf/196.pdf