Classic and Must Have Books for Preachers, Pastors and Christian Communicators


I am posting Amazon Kindle Books on Sale that are must have. Just grabbed my copy and sharing it to everyone:

1. The Hardest Sermons You’ll Ever Have to Preach: Help from Trusted Preachers for Tragic Times – Cancer. Suicide. The death of a child. As much as we wish we could avoid tragedies like these, eventually they will strike your church community. When they do, pastors must be ready to offer help by communicating the life-changing message of the gospel in a way that offers hope, truth, and encouragement during these difficult circumstances. Those asked to preach in the midst of tragedy know the anxiety of trying to say appropriate things from God’s Word that will comfort and strengthen God’s people when emotions and faith are stretched thin. This indispensable resource helps pastors prepare sermons in the face of tragedies by providing suggestions for how to approach different kinds of tragedy, as well as insight into how to handle the theological challenges of human suffering. Each topic provides a specific description of the context of the tragedy, the key concerns that need to be addressed in the message, and an outline of the approach taken in the sample sermon that follows. Topics addressed include: abortion; abuse; responding to national and community tragedies; the death of a child; death due to cancer and prolonged sickness; death due to drunk driving; drug abuse; and suicide. Bryan Chapell, author of Christ-Centered Preaching, has gathered together messages from some of today’s most trusted Christian leaders including: John Piper, Tim Keller, Michael Horton, Jack Collins, Dan Doriani, Jerram Barrs, Mike Khandjian, Robert Rayburn, Wilson Benton, Bob Flayhart, and George Robertson. Each chapter provides you with the resources you need to communicate the life-giving hope of the gospel in the midst of tragedy. In addition, the appendices provide further suggestions of biblical texts for addressing various subjects as well as guidance for conducting funerals.
2. Worship by the Book by D.A. Carson et al…

‘What is at stake is authenticity. . . . Sooner or later Christians tire of public meetings that are profoundly inauthentic, regardless of how well (or poorly) arranged, directed, performed. We long to meet, corporately, with the living and majestic God and to offer him the praise that is his due.’—D. A. Carson
Worship is a hot topic, but the ways that Christians from different traditions view it vary greatly. What is worship? More important, what does it look like in action, both in our corporate gatherings and in our daily lives? These concerns—the blending of principle and practice—are what Worship by the Book addresses.
Cutting through cultural cliches, D. A. Carson, Mark Ashton, Kent Hughes, and Timothy Keller explore, respectively:
– Worship Under the Word
– Following in Cranmer’s Footsteps
– Free Church Worship: The Challenge of Freedom
– Reformed Worship in the Global City

‘This is not a comprehensive theology of worship,’ writes Carson. ‘Still less is it a sociological analysis of current trends or a minister’s manual chockfull of ‘how to’ instructions.’ Rather, this book offers pastors, other congregational leaders, and seminary students a thought-provoking biblical theology of worship, followed by a look at how three very different traditions of churchmanship might move from this theological base to a better understanding of corporate worship. Running the gamut from biblical theology to historical assessment all the way to sample service sheets, Worship by the Book shows how local churches in diverse traditions can foster corporate worship that is God-honoring, Word-revering, heartfelt, and historically and culturally informed.

3. Preaching and Preachers by DM Lloyd Jones. – this is a must buy for preachers. I remember this book radically changed the way I preached and saw preaching in a different light.

4. Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way – Historically, the church’s ministry of grounding new believers in the essentials of the faith has been known as catechesis–systematic instruction in faith foundations, including what we believe, how we pray and worship, and how we conduct our lives. For most evangelicals today, however, this very idea is an alien concept. Packer and Parrett, concerned for the state of the church, seek to inspire a much needed evangelical course correction. This new book makes the case for a recovery of significant catechesis as a nonnegotiable practice of churches, showing the practice to be complementary to, and of no less value than, Bible study, expository preaching, and other formational ministries, and urging evangelical churches to find room for this biblical ministry for the sake of their spiritual health and vitality.

5. Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed by DA Carson – Although it is a foundational confession for all Christians, much of the theological significance of Jesus’s identity as “the Son of God” is often overlooked or misunderstood. Moreover, this Christological concept stands at the center of today’s Bible translation debates and increased ministry efforts to Muslims. New Testament scholar D. A. Carson sheds light on this important issue with his usual exegetical clarity and theological insight, first by broadly surveying Jesus’s biblical name as “the Son of God,” and then by focusing on two key texts that speak of Christ’s sonship. The book concludes with the implications of Jesus’s divine sonship for how modern Christians think and speak about Christ, especially in relation to Bible translation and missionary engagement with Muslims across the globe.

6. DO Something!: Make Your Life Count by Miles McPherson –
Everyone wants their life to count. We all wish we could make a difference in a hurting world. The good news is that we can. Despite our own brokenness (and, in fact, because of it) each of us can be Jesus’s hands and feet on Earth, reaching out to others in real and profound ways.

With powerful true stories, illustrations from the life of Christ, and specific activities for readers to engage, DO Something! is a hopeful and practical book that shows how to live out faith in a way that improves people’s lives. With transparency and humility, Miles McPherson shares his own shortcomings as a young pastor trying to connect with people in need. Stressing the importance of hurting with people before you can do something for them, McPherson takes readers through the 5 P’s of making their lives count: preparation, purpose, pain, power, and passion. By putting into practice the principles found in this book, readers will experience spiritual fulfillment as they see that they can make a real difference in the lives of those around them.

7. Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved – “If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians.

In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality.

Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation?

Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.

8. Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry, Updated and Expanded Edition by John Piper. Super must read for everyone.

9. Entrusted With The Gospel – The church needs a strong reminder of the glorious weight of Scripture. The Bible is preached from the pulpit less and less, and we need to return to what is most important. The Gospel Coalition seeks to address this need. It exists “to be robustly biblical, richly theological, constantly elevating what God himself in his own Word makes central.”

10. The Gospel As Center (The Gospel Coalition) by Tim Keller and DA Carson – The church is reeling because of the relativistic mindset of our world. Up until a generation ago, most adults had similar moral intuitions whether they were believers or not, and the core of protestant orthodoxy was still intact. Yet, in the wake of postmodernity and secularism, all that has changed.Convinced that gospel-centered ministry is utterly imperative for such a time as this, contributors D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, Kevin DeYoung, Philip Ryken, Bryan Chapell, Thabiti Anyabwile, Richard Phillips, Sam Storms, and others defend the gospel and traditional doctrines.To strengthen the center of confessional evangelicalism, this volume collects the 14 booklets in the Gospel Coalition Booklet series. In addition, this volume includes a preface, the Gospel Coalition’s foundational documents, and indexes. The editors and contributors represent a wide range of denominations and are united not only by belief in the biblical gospel, but also by the conviction that ministry today must be increasingly Gospel centered.