I’ve recently read three books that I feel would be worth your time as well and wanted to share those here.  The first, on preaching, is Preaching the Cross, which comes out of the Together for The Gospel movement.  Dever, Duncan, Mahaney, and Mohler combine with John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul to bring this fantastic little book on the preaching and its central theme, the cross.  Piper’s chapter on preaching as expository exultation phenomenal and is alone worth the price of the book.  This book is well worth your time as a preacher to help you improve the God-given craft that you are entrusted with.

Next, I would recommend a little book on re-planting a church entitled Church Planting is for Wimps by Mike McKinley.  McKinley took on the daunting task of pastoring a dead church with the mission of seeing it revitalized as a gospel witness in its community.  His little book chronicles his journey through Capitol Hill Baptist Church to Guilford Baptist Church and the work that God has done along the way.  This book should serve as a great encouragement to pastors who are struggling in difficult churches.

Finally, in the realm of aplogetics, I would recommend to you, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, by Craig Blomberg.  Certainly, this book drags a little in some places, but the information contained within its pages will serve as a fantastic reference resource on the shelf of any pastor or lay person concerned with defending the reliability, not only of the gospels, but of all of God’s word.

As a part of my PhD program at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I am enrolled in a colloquium that examines contemporary issues in evangelism and apologetics. The reading for this class has been great, but one of the best books I have read so far (maybe ever) for conversational apologetics and evangelism is Tactics by Gregory Koukl.

Koukle does a great job of showing how to tactfully manage dialogue so as to get one’s Christian points of view across without being argumentative or angry. He reminds readers that the ultimate goal of personal evangelism and apologetics is not to win an argument, but rather to see others come to Christ and often that takes place as a result of a series of encounters that involve discussion about the Christian faith, Koukl writes:

I never set out to convert anyone.  My aim is never to win someone to Christ.  I have a more modest goal…all I want to do is put a stone in someone’s shoe.  I want to give him something worth thinking about, something he can’t ignore because it continues to poke at him in a good way…As an ambassador for Christ, you don’t have to hit a home run in every conversation.

Koukl also goes out of his way to give some very practical advice to counter common questions in evangelism and apologetics pointing out that many arguments by non-Christians are logically suicidal. Some examples of these statements that “fail to meet their own criteria of validity” (with Koukls responses) include:

-There is no truth (is this statement true?)

-There are no absolutes (Is this an absolute?)

-You can only know the truth through experience (what experience taught you that truth?)

In short, I would heartily recommend this book. In fact, I plan to use it as a text for a conversational evangelism class within my own church and believe that you too could find it very helpful in the same setting.

Michael Spencer, who writes at iMonk and is suffering with cancer has written a wonderful short blog on true apologetics. I’ve pasted it in its entirety below, but click over to his site for more of his excellent work.

A brief word from Michael

The ultimate apologetic is to a dying man.

That is what all those “Where is God?” statements in the Psalms are all about. They are, at least partially, invitations to Christians to speak up for the dying.

All the affirmations to God as creator and designer are fine, but it is as the God of the dying that the Christian has a testimony to give that absolutely no one else can give.

We need to remember that each day dying people are waiting for the word of death and RESURRECTION.

The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.

If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

What is your apologetic? Make it the full and complete announcement of the Life Giving news about Jesus.

Copied from Denny Burk:

For those of you who may have forgotten, Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina. I have written about him numerous times on this blog. He’s the guy who used to be an evangelical Christian but who left the faith some years ago. He is now writing popular level books trying to convince others to leave the faith as well. I wrote a review of one of his books that you can read here.

I am not sure why Ehrman would subject himself to this, but I don’t mind that he did. Colbert is actually pretty effective at poking holes in his arguments.

Favorite line: “What’s the son of a duck? It’s a duck.”