Life's Healing Choices Update

One week to launch! Stay connected with other pastors who are doing Life’s Healing Choices HERE. Share testimonies and ideas to help each other throughout the campaign.	Join The Conversation

On the Links

• Preaching for Life-Change Conference
  Research shows that the number one complaint people have about Sunday sermons is that they are boring and don’t relate to their life. If you want to learn how to preach for life-change, don’t miss the Greater New Orleans Preaching for Life-Change Conference on October 3.
• Start> Becoming a Good Samaritan
  In spite of many victories, the world is still besieged by poverty, disease, social injustice, and other problems. What impact could 77 million American Christians have on these problems? Start> Becoming a Good Samaritan is designed to help church members put their faith in action.
• Worship Matters
  This is a great blog for pastors, musicians, and small group leaders who lead corporate praise and worship at their church.
• Albert Mohler.com
  This site from the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary offers sermons and speeches, articles, an active blog, and more. Check out his latest blog post on a recent theological debate in The Wall Street Journal.
• Off the Agenda
  Find useful tips for your ministry on this blog from www.buildingchurchleaders.com.

Book Look

• The Glory of Preaching
  Darrell W. Johnson (InterVarsity Press 2009)
  God has chosen to change the world through the ministry of preaching – through the exposition of biblical texts in the power of the Spirit who inspires the text. Individuals, neighborhoods, cities, and nations are changed by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In The Glory of Preaching, seasoned preacher Darrell W. Johnson takes readers through the theoretical foundations and human mechanics of participating in God’s transformation process through preaching. If you want to rediscover the glory of revealing the Word, this book is for you.

Saddleback Sayings

• “When morality is determined by popularity, depravity becomes normality, and the death of that culture becomes an inevitability.” – Rick Warren

Bible Bytes

• “If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.” – 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 (NLT)
  
  
• “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” – Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV)

Ministry Library

• Principles of worship from the Epistles by Vernon M. Whaley
• Supporting bivocational pastors by Denise George
• From mess to miracle by Mary Southerland

Notes & Quotes

• “Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.” – Robert Orben
• “Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.” – John Dryden
• Every second 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. (Source: Internet Filter Review, 2006)
• “I've come to see institutional decline like a disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages; easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall.” – Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall: A Primer on the Warning Signs, www.businessweek.com
• “There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.” – Mother Theresa