This is the book I give to any visitors to our church who want to know about Presbyterian church government. It is short, it is as simple as it gets, and is very clear.

For the person who wants more depth than the above book (Well Ordered Living Well), I would point that person to Waters’ excellent step up in terms of depth and substance. Jesus Christ is the head of the church – not any person, or even congregation. But as the head, how does he actually govern his church? This book is Guy Waters’ answer.

This is the mountaintop book on Reformed polity. If you are eager to read an excellent work by a dedicated churchman, there’s really no resource that I know of that matches Bannerman’s seminal work on this topic.

The original dissertation this book is based on was written in the 17th century and spanned over 1,100 pages. This book is a distillation of that work. In Ancient Roots, Vitringa takes the reader through the history of the church stretching back to the Jewish synagogue to show that the polity of Reformed churches has its roots in the early church, and actually even before that.