As a minister, I am always on the lookout for great preaching resources. Sometimes I find some incredible tools and helpful books that enable me to improve my preaching abilities. Other times, the books I find are not all that great. This book lands somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

Invitation To Philippians, by Donald R. Sunukjian, is a part of the Biblical Preaching For The Contemporary Church series. This is a series that provides resources for the church of today, and for ministers as they strive to be relevant.

The struggle to be relevant has always been a difficult one. If you become to culturally relevant, you run the risk of compromising the message. Or you miss the chance to relevant entirely. That was my feeling as I read this book. Really, each chapter is a sermon, and it covers the entire letter of Paul to the Philippians. But in my opinion, they are bland. They lack something that would give them the power needed to be great sermons.

As I read through this book, I decided that this is much more useful in a illustrative role, rather than as sermons, or even as commentary on the passages.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some useful gems hidden in these pages. But as a preaching resource, this is mediocre, at best. I’m sure that the author is much more engaging in person, since he is a professor of preaching. However, this resource leaves something to be desired.

There are better resources out there.

Question: If you preach, what passages are your favorites to preach on? Is Philippians one of them? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

I received this book free from Cross Focused Media as part of their Cross Focused Reviews blogger review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.