I’m glad that Michael Whitworth created Start2Finish, whose mission is to “provide the people of God with trusted, engaging, convicting resources that will deepen their faith, help them mature in Christ, and better understand the Word of God.” If you haven’t yet, take a look at the site and you’re likely to find some good stuff.

Here are a few books they’ve published that are particularly helpful to preachers (the hyperlinks below direct you to the Start2Finish site, but these books are also available through Amazon):

Fit for the Pulpit: The Preacher and His Challenges, edited by Chris McCurley. “The purpose of this book is to assist the preacher with some of the more common problems presented in ministry.” Good stuff from Chris McCurley, Neal Pollard, Jacob Hawk, Jay Lockhart, Jeff Jenkins, Adam Faughn, Dale Jenkins, Kirk Brothers, Michael Whitworth, and Steve Higginbotham.

Preach Better: 10 Ways to Communicate the Gospel More Effectively, edited by Chris McCurley. The authors address topics such as better planning, invitations, illustrations, relevance, passion, balance, application, preparation, attitude, and prayer life. Chapters by Chris McCurley, Keith Parker, Steve Higginbotham, Chuck Monan, Michael Whitworth, Jay Lockhart, Jacob Hawk, Wayne Roberts, Trey Morgan, and Adam Faughn.

Pressing Forward by Trent Childers. “Pressing Forward is a Bible-based addiction recovery system that can be implemented by individuals, churches, and small groups in order to lead addicts to true liberation.” Our congregations have addicts in them—how can we help them?

Here’s Start2Finish’s page that contains other resources of interest to preachers.

Articles from the last week or two that you might want to read:

“Bad News, Indeed—Playboy Opened the Floodgates and Now the Culture is Drowning” by Al Mohler.

Fascinating insight from Mohler on how Playboy helped to create a culture that then destroyed it. Like it or not, we live in the world we live in, and we need to speak clearly about the issues that surround us.

“I walked my heart up to the chasm and sat” is an article by a woman who experienced a miscarriage. Most of us preachers have known women who’ve suffered through miscarriages (perhaps within our own families), but we don’t know what it’s like, of course. I found this article to be both heart-rending and thought-provoking. It’ll be worth your time to read it, and you might have an occasion when it would be appropriate for you to share it with a hurting family.

How do we live in changing times?

At my home congregation I’m teaching a class on 1 Peter and thinking about how Peter’s audience was in some ways living in times similar to ours. They were beginning to realize that their culture did not share their worldview and was in fact becoming hostile to it.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In 2015 we—and the people in our pews—are having to make decisions that we didn’t have to make even 20 years ago. Is it wrong to attend a same-sex wedding? Is it wrong to photograph one, or sell flowers to the couple, or rent a car that will be used to take the couple from the wedding to their reception? Some answers might be clear, but others aren’t. Where do you draw the line? How do we demonstrate both our Lord’s compassion for sinful people and His unwavering stance on right and wrong?

Below are a couple of articles that I found helpful:

“Kuyper v. Benedict? This Is Not an Either/Or” by Andrew Walker.

You’ll need to read the article to understand the title, but there’s a debate within the broader Christian world about how to respond to our culture. The Benedict Option “represents a strategic withdrawal of sorts built on the proposition that if Christians hope to survive to the next generation and outlive culture’s collapse, such survival will require greater attentiveness to forming deeper Christian identity and in turn, community.” In other words, to some extent Christians are now in a position where we need to withdraw from our culture. On the other hand, people who subscribe to what some are calling the “Kuyper Option” believe “that Christianity must always engage with the forefront of culture for the sake of mission or else it will run the risk of disobeying the inherently transformative nature of Christianity.” In other words, we need to engage culture so that we might change it, or at least influence it. As the title implies, Walker believes we don’t need to retreat to either extreme. I’m struggling to figure out exactly where I stand.

“SBC leader says Christians should not attend a same-sex wedding” by Bob Allen.

Al Mohler has written a book that will be released next week (October 27, 2015): We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right & Wrong. I think this will be a book that we need to read.