Wounded Shepherd Books
Books
Five titles under the Wounded Shepherd imprint: a diagnosis, two guides for reading it with other people, and a devotional in two editions for what comes after the diagnosis.
The Book
unBiblical Eldership
Recognizing the quiet failure of church leadership — and recovering from it.
This title may read like an accusation. If you are an elder and your guard just went up, that instinct — to defend the office — is a right one. So hear this first: this book is not an exposé. It names no church and settles no scores. It is a diagnosis of something quieter: the ordinary, unremarkable drift by which good men who love Scripture come to lead in ways Scripture would not recognize. No scandal required, and no villain — the author writes as a lay elder of more than two decades who sat at the table and drifted with the room.
If you sit in a pew and were told the trouble was your own heart, these pages will deal honestly with you — about what you saw, and about what to do with it now. If you sit at the table and something in the room has begun to trouble you, they will help you name it — and then hand you the repair. That is the aim of every page: not exposure, but recovery — a leadership brought back near the Shepherd it serves.
Reading it together
The companion guides
Eight sessions each, built for reading unBiblical Eldership with other people. Each requires the book; neither one repeats it.
unBiblical Eldership Study Guide
Eight sessions for a group reading unBiblical Eldership together. Not a course in the book — the book does the teaching. These pages ask a different set of questions: what you have seen, what you have carried, and what to do with it now.
Each session opens in Scripture, carries a short word from the author, questions for the group, one prompt written privately, and prayer for the men who lead you. The first session builds a covenant — patterns before persons, no names beyond the room, conviction rather than case-building. It is the most important page here.
Some who pick this up are at peace in their church and want to understand it better. Some are not, and were told the trouble was their own heart. The guide was built for both, and it does not require your elders to be reading it too.
Find it on Amazon →
unBiblical Eldership Discussion Guide
Eight sessions for a sitting board — lead pastor included — reading unBiblical Eldership at its own table. Not a course in the book, and not a verdict on any man at the table. The board is the subject; no one at it is.
Each session opens in Scripture, carries a short word from the author, and asks questions that can only be answered out of this board’s own history, documents, and habits. Each ends with one thing the board can do before it meets again. Facilitation rotates, so no man owns the study — and the elder who proposed it answers the first hard question.
A board can agree with a book like this for eight sessions and apply every word of it to the church down the road. These pages are built to make that harder.
Find it on Amazon →The Devotional
Near the Vine
An eight-week devotional on abiding, in two editions
The book names what went wrong. This one does not argue at all. It is eight weeks in Christ’s own words on abiding, and it exists because diagnosis is not healing. Both editions walk the same eight weeks. Where Scripture itself turns to address a particular reader, each follows the passages spoken to its own.
The believer’s edition
Abiding is not something you work up. It is somewhere you stay.
Jesus said a branch bears nothing on its own. Not less — nothing. Then He said the part we keep trying to get past: remain in me.
Near the Vine is eight weeks of staying put. Each week takes up one movement of what Jesus meant, with short daily readings, a passage to sit in rather than skim, and one question worth carrying into the day.
It is not a program for becoming more fruitful. It is an invitation to stop trying to be, and to remain where fruit actually comes from.
Believer’s edition on Amazon →
The shepherd’s edition
You cannot lead anyone to a vine you are not attached to.
Shepherds are the last to be shepherded. You prepare the meal and eat standing up. You carry other people’s questions and leave your own unopened. It works for a while — until you notice you are producing ministry without receiving anything.
Near the Vine is eight weeks for the person who feeds others. The same passage and the same eight movements as the believer’s edition, read from the other side of the pulpit: what abiding asks of someone responsible for a flock, and what happens to a flock whose shepherd has quietly stopped abiding.
Shepherd’s edition on Amazon →Neither edition is the advanced one. There is no leader-grade spirituality, and the Vine does not run two grades of sap.
All five titles are published under the Wounded Shepherd imprint, Denison, Texas.