On the latest Life and Books and Everything podcast, I talked at some length about what we are really arguing about when it comes to some of our current cultural flashpoints. I won’t repeat everything I said on the podcast (you should subscribe!), but I thought it might be worthwhile to give the basic outline of my monologue.
My overarching point is this: we need to be clearer as Christians about where our disagreements lie.
That is to say, we often talk as if we are disagreeing about significant elements of the Christian faith—whether that has to do with God’s sovereignty or worship or justice or racism or abortion—when actually we are disagreeing about a host of issues surrounding those issues. By drilling down to our actual disagreements, we may not find a new consensus or a mythical third way, but perhaps we will be able to talk to each other with more charity and humility.
Let’s look at three of the most contentious issues dividing churches (or about to divide churches) at the moment.
Presidential Election
Christians disagree about all sorts of things related to the election. I don’t want to talk about Trump vs. Biden. Instead, I want us to think about voting itself. How should Christians in America think about their vote for president? I see at least four approaches.
1. Vote for the best candidate of all the candidates. Pretty simple. Look on the ballot (or write someone in) and vote for the person you think best represents Christian values and will effectively carry out the responsibilities of the presidency.
2. Vote for the best (or least bad) candidate of the two major parties. It is almost assuredly the case that the Republican or Democratic nominee will be president, so, this argument insists, we ought to vote for whichever of the two candidates is better. And what do we mean by better? That is open for debate as well. For most people “better” means some combination of policies, platform, appointments, personal integrity, and the political party you would be putting in power. You may or may not be excited about the person at the top of the ticket, but you figure you are voting for a network of policies and influencers, not just one person.
3. Vote for the best candidate—of all the candidates, or of the two leading parties—so long as the candidate meets a certain threshold for character and ideology. This is like 1 and 2, but instead of saying, “I will always vote for the lesser of two evils,” it says, “I won’t cast a vote for someone I think is actually evil.” You think to yourself, I could never cast a vote for someone who advocates the killing of all puppies. He may be better than the person who supports the killing of puppies and grown dogs, but I simply can’t vote for someone who doesn’t pass a basic test of moral decency.
4. Vote in a way that you believe best advances the long-term interests of your policy goals and convictions. You may reason that Candidate A is less bad than Candidate B in the short run, but you are going to vote for Candidate C because you want to signal that you hope your party will select better candidates in the future. Or you may reason that even though you agree with Candidate B on more issues, that candidate’s style or character makes those positions less palatable and actually hurts the goals and policies you care about most. Instead of viewing the election as a matter of immediate national life or death, you think it best to play the long game and vote accordingly.
I’m not telling you how to look at your vote. Maybe one of these approaches makes more sense in our given context than another. But then we should be clear that we are arguing about a philosophy of voting—something not nailed down in Scripture—rather than about issues of first-order importance. I don’t think all of the approaches above are equally compelling, but I do think they are all reasonable ways to approach the act of voting.
Police Shootings
Let’s take another controversial issue. Many churches are divided over how to think about police shootings. Too often, we throw around accusations of racism or cultural Marxism or not caring about the Bible or not caring about people of color, when we are actually disagreeing about the facts of a given situation. It’s easy to jump to conclusions, and then jump to counter-conclusions, when slowing down to ask certain questions can isolate what we are really talking about and (likely) disagreeing about.
When it comes to the specific issue of a specific police shooting—not all race issues in general—we would do well to ask four questions.

What happened?
How often does it happen?
To whom does it happen?
Why did it/does it happen?

Of course, it’s possible that we ask questions in a way that only serves to obfuscate the issues. We’ve all heard people say, “I’m only asking questions,” when they are really just trying to gum up the discussion. But highlighting the four questions above—even if we don’t agree on the answers—can at least highlight that our disagreements may not be about a lack of concern for justice or an affinity for Critical Race Theory.
Instead, our disagreements may focus on: whether the shooting was justified or not, whether police shootings happen a lot or little, whether they happen disproportionately to some people over others, and whether the shooting was because of race, poor training, poor judgment, or some other factor. In other words, we may think we are arguing about social justice, when actually we are arguing about shooting data and police unions. Or, we may not, in fact, be arguing about remotely the same thing at all but have reached an impasse because one person is looking for empathy and a recognition of historical wrongs while another person is parsing out the nuances of proper compliance and policing procedure.
Covid-19
One more issue, and this may be the most difficult. It’s no secret that Christians don’t agree on when and whether to open church, on when or whether to wear masks, and on when or whether to disobey the government. Again, the arguments are often pitched as fundamentally about the Bible, theology, and personal devotion to Christ. And they may be. But more often in my experience, the hottest part of the argument is about other issues not spelled out clearly in Scripture.

Is the virus a very serious health concern, or has the threat been greatly exaggerated?
Is the government exercising its authority in consistent ways, or does it seem to be singling out churches for worse treatment than other establishments?
Is the government trying to achieve its public health goals in the least burdensome way, or are its rules arbitrary and unreasonably heavy-handed?
Is the government generally to be trusted as looking out for the best interests of its citizens, or is the government ramping up oppressive measures that it will be slow to relinquish?

These are all important questions. I’m not suggesting we don’t try to answer them. But in answering them, let’s be clear that we are making decisions about epidemiology, mathematical modeling, and government bureaucracies. One church may say, “Don’t you love Christ? Why won’t you meet for worship?” Another church may say, “Don’t you love your neighbor? How dare you open for worship?” Of course, every church ought to be absolutely committed to public worship and loving our neighbors. The reason two churches like this are criticizing the other has much more to do with their epidemiological views than their theological views. Being clear about the disagreement is a step in the right direction.
Four Final Thoughts
Where does this leave us? Quickly, four thoughts.
1. Let’s be clear what we are arguing about (and what we are not arguing about). Drill down to the issue really causing separation.
2. Let’s be less dogmatic about our approach to voting, and our reading of police data, and our take on the severity of the virus than we are about fundamental articles of the Christian faith. By all means, we can try to persuade about all those other matters, but let’s realize we are outside the realm of inerrant, or often even uniquely Christian, conclusions.
3. Let’s humbly acknowledge our position when disagreeing with others in the church. Instead of raising every disagreement to the highest rhetorical level, we might say, “I’m not questioning your commitment to Christ, but I don’t think the virus is the threat you think it is. Here’s why.”
4. Let’s understand that most pastors are trying to find a way to hold their congregation together in divisive times. It may be that your pastor is cowardly trying to make everyone happy. That won’t work. But it may be that he is trying to wisely shepherd a diverse flock in a way that helps the sheep to focus on Christ and him crucified. If the disagreement has become public in your church, then the pastor is usually wise to deal with it publicly. That takes courage. But don’t expect that he is going to take a definitive side when he is not an expert in the contentious matter, and reasonable Christians can come to different conclusions. The loving pastor should show that he understands both sides and is sympathetic to the good things people want on both sides. He should not pretend he has found the third way that everyone will agree on or that piety alone will transcend all our disagreements.
Make no mistake, these are difficult times and leaders will have to make difficult decisions. But the fallout from these decisions can be made less difficult if we know what we are disagreeing about, can state clearly why we think the way we do, and are willing to allow that others may reasonably think differently.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.

At one point during her confirmation hearing, Amy Coney Barrett held up a blank notepad to show to the Senate Judiciary Committee all the notes she had taken with her to the world’s most stressful job interview. In the wake of this impressive feat, I noticed someone online posed a challenge to pastors that went something like this: Hey pastors, if she can talk for hours with nothing but a blank pad of paper, why can’t you preach without notes?
Immediately, I thought of several replies. (1) She was answering questions, not giving a lecture. (2) She probably didn’t want to be bogged down rifling through material when she needed to maintain eye contact and pay attention to the speaker. (3) She was being asked about material she had already taught, studied, or written about. (4) She’s super-duper smart.
But let’s set aside the unique spectacle that is a Senate confirmation hearing and think more directly about preaching.
There are three typical ways a preacher might preach: with a manuscript, with no notes, with some notes. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages.
Manuscript
Most of the well-known pastors I know preach from a full manuscript. I’ve often had the experience of speaking at a conference, and the organizer will say, “By the way, we are going to turn these messages into a book, so after you speak send me your manuscript.” More than once, I’ve been the only one who says, “Uh, I don’t use a manuscript, and it’s going to take a lot of work for me to turn my personal notes into something that can be published.”
The advantages to preaching from a full manuscript are many. You are able to plan for the well-placed rhetorical punch. You can enter the pulpit feeling more confident and less stressed about losing your way. After the message is spoken, you can share the sermon more easily in print—whether in a book, on your blog, on your church’s website. Most importantly, writing out a manuscript promotes greater clarity, concision, and theological fidelity. I always have our pastoral interns preach from a full manuscript. Even if they lose something in delivery, I want to make sure the content is as strong as possible.
Of course, there are dangers to manuscript preaching as well. The biggest drawback is the potential lack of energy and eye contact. There is a skill (and art) to writing your sermon for the ear and then reading from a manuscript in a way that doesn’t feel stilted. David Platt and John Piper stick closely to their full manuscript, but no one would accuse either of lacking passion or authenticity.
For my part, I wrote out sermon manuscripts for a couple of years early in my ministry. I love having those sermons written out now because it’s much more useful to return to a manuscript than to an outline or scattered bullet points. But I’ve never felt as comfortable preaching from a full manuscript. I feel less engaged with the congregation and less dynamic. Maybe it doesn’t seem any different to the audience, but I don’t enjoy preaching as much when I’m reading from a page. I’m just not sure I have a knack for it.
Thankfully, manuscript preaching is not the only way to preach.
No Notes
I was taught by Haddon Robinson at Gordon-Conwell to preach without notes, and for the first few years in ministry I stuck mainly to this approach. If you’ve never preached without notes, it’s worth trying out for a few months. It may be scary at first, but give it 10 sermons and see what you think (and see what others think). Haddon was a master at preaching without notes. He had a prodigious memory and was a gifted storyteller. He was also incredibly disciplined at gathering memorable illustrations, something I’ve never been good at.
I should clarify that preaching without notes is not the same as impromptu preaching. We are not talking about preaching on the fly. We are talking about diligent study throughout the week, maybe even writing out your sermon in full, and then going into the pulpit with just your Bible and your brain. Maybe you memorized the sermon word for word (as many preachers used to), or, more likely, you have the main points tucked away and the rest is ready to come out from a week’s worth of thinking and praying. In any event, we are talking about working hard through the week so that you can walk the high wire without a net on Sunday.
The advantages and disadvantages of preaching without notes are what you might think. On the plus side, it keeps you relentlessly engaged with the congregation. Unless you and the audience are looking at your Bibles, you are looking at each other. There is freedom in preaching with nothing but a Bible in your hand.
Preaching without notes also forces you to simplify your message. It’s no coincidence that the proponent of Big Idea preaching was a big proponent of preaching without notes. Complicated sermons with quotations and footnotes and the intricacies of Hebrew grammar don’t lend themselves to preaching without notes. But if you have one big idea, with three supporting ideas, plus five illustrations along the way, you can pull it off, and often with good effect.
On the other hand, preaching without notes can lead to some bad habits. If you aren’t writing out a manuscript ahead of time, it can leave you pulling things together on the fly as you preach. I remember one well-known preacher telling me, a few years ago, that he was tired of hearing these pastors who seemed to be finishing their sermon prep in the pulpit. “Don’t test out your sermon on me,” he said. “Work out your transitions and know how you are going to land the plane before you get into the pulpit.” Cutting corners in preparation is a danger.
Making your sermon too basic and too general is another pitfall, as is homiletical meandering. No one wants to listen to 15 minutes of content stretched into a 40-minute message. Haddon Robinson made it look easy. He delivered all his class lectures without notes, and I never remember a wasted word. But most of us will end up wasting a LOT of words unless we really labor to preach effectively without notes.
For me, the time spent in memorization was the biggest drawback to preaching without notes. I’m pretty good at memorizing things, but after a couple of years of preaching without notes, I couldn’t justify the time spent on stuffing outlines into my short-term memory. Maybe I needed to stick with it longer, but once I started preaching every week, and then twice on Sunday, I couldn’t make the time to cram all the information in my head. I was spending hours on Saturday evening and Sunday morning just trying to make sure I remembered my three points and didn’t forget the important stuff I needed to say. After a while I thought, “Why not just bring a few notes into the pulpit and stop all this cramming?”
Some Notes
So I started out preaching without notes. Then I tried preaching from a manuscript. And now, for most of my ministry, I’ve preached from an outline. At first, it was quite a full outline—six pages or more. Then I went down to five pages. Now I try to make sure I don’t go past four. Sometimes it’s a little more than three pages. I usually write out my opening prayer, write out particularly important sentences or paragraphs, write out quotations, and write out my major points. The rest of the outline may consist of sentences, phrases, Scripture passages I want to turn to, or simple prompts reminding me to tell “the Krispy Kreme doughnut story.”
Preaching from an outline works for me. I don’t have to memorize everything, but I don’t have to be tied to a manuscript either. I can plan for a few rhetorical flourishes, while still maintaining eye contact. I have the road map in front of me without sacrificing the freedom to speak more or less extemporaneously. I think I sound more conversational and more passionate when I’m not reading a manuscript. At the very least, I feel more comfortable.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still downsides to my approach. I often fear that I go too long, that my transitions were wobbly, and that my content was not as crisp as it should have been. Sometimes I get into the pulpit and realize the points that seemed clear in my mind, and looked good on paper, sound awfully muddy coming out of my mouth. I also find that it’s harder to preach from an outlined sermon months or years later.
If I could find the time, I think my ideal would be to write out a full manuscript (for clarity and for posterity) and then whittle that down to a half-page of notes that I could tuck in my Bible. In general, I know that my preaching errs on the side of too much information, so simplifying almost always helps my messages.
Honest Limitations
Here’s the bottom line: Be honest about your own limitations, but don’t give up on an approach until you’ve tried it. See what works best for you and your context. Don’t let someone else’s style or method determine how you can best communicate God’s Word.
And if you are in a rut, why not try one of the other approaches for a month or two and see how it feels? There are certain “rules” to preaching. It’s not anything goes. But there is flexibility too. In whatever approach they use, preachers should work hard to grow in the skill of preaching. Ultimately, we need the Spirit to blow, but the gifts and labors of the preacher are usually the kindling he uses to light a spark.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.

First off, my usual disclaimer and explanation.
This list is not meant to assess the thousands of good books published in 2020. There are plenty of worthy titles that I am not able to read (and lots I never hear of). This is simply a list of the books (Christian and non-Christian, but all non-fiction) that I thought were the best in the past year. “Best” doesn’t mean I agreed with everything in them; it means I found these books—all published in 2020 (or the very end of 2019)—a strong combination of thoughtful, useful, interesting, helpful, insightful, and challenging. For more discussion on some of these books, check out my podcast Life and Books and Everything with Collin Hansen and Justin Taylor.
Instead of trying to rank the books 1-10 (always a somewhat arbitrary task), I’ll simply list them in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.
Andrew J. Bacevich, ed., American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition (Library of America)
For many people “conservative” is whatever Fox News says or the Republican Party does. For others “conservative” is the easy reason another person’s views can be quickly dismissed. Across the spectrum—whether you are for it or against it—Americans would do well (and American Christians in particular) to understand that conservatism is its own political tradition. As is always the case in a book like this, some chapters are better than others (the first chapter from Russell Kirk is very good), some chapters don’t agree with each other (e.g., the hawkish and the non-interventionists strands of conservative thought), and some probably don’t belong in this volume (like the one from Teddy Roosevelt, who was not a conservative). But taken as a whole, this collection of essays, drawn from the past hundred years, is a good place to start in understanding the conservative intellectual tradition.

Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy, Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (Cato Institute)
A fascinating look at the state of the world and why things are much, much better than you think. Want to know about trends in work, in population, in violence, in farming, in technology, in health, and in natural resources? This book has the graphs you need. The big knock on the book, however, is that it is not nearly big enough. The trim size and font should have been twice as big to make a proper coffee table read.

James Eglinton, Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Baker Academic)
A lecturer in Reformed theology at the University of Edinburgh, Eglinton proves with this book that he is an excellent historian as well as a superb systematician. Eglinton demonstrates a mastery of Dutch sources and Bavinck’s Dutch context. The result is an astute and readable biography of a man who not only excelled as a theologian but also made his name as an ethicist, an educational reformer, a politician, a journalist, a Bible translator, a campaigner for women’s education, and the progenitor of heroes and martyrs in the anti-Nazi resistance movement.

Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton University Press)
With admirable self-awareness and an obvious love for literature and learning, Hitz has written a book that celebrates the intellectual life without coming across as snobbish or elitist. Quite the opposite, Hitz argues that the joy of being “lost in thought” is a pleasure available not for the few but for the many.

Philip Jenkins, Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions (Baylor University Press)
The most important things happening in the world are not always the things that make for breaking news. Case in point: the falling fertility rates across the globe. “For the foreseeable future—for several decades at least—most of the non-African world does face the prospect of a contracting and steeply aging population” (185). Surely, this is big news, and Jenkins writes about the phenomenon with scholarly precision and clarity.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody (Pitchstone Publishing)
This is not a Christian book, which means there are elements of the analysis that cannot be accepted (e.g., the approval of homosexuality). On the other hand, it also means that the critique of postmodernism and its many attendant theories comes from insiders (academics, classic liberals) rather than from outsiders. If you want to know where Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality come from—and why they are massively problematic—this a book to answer many of your questions.

Mark Regnerus, The Future of Christian Marriage (Oxford University Press)
“This is a book about how modern Christians around the world look for a mate within a religious faith that esteems marriage but a world that increasingly yawns at it” (2). Regnerus argues that marriage is a public matter affecting all of society and that for Christianity the importance of faith and family usually rise and fall together. His suggestions for revitalizing Christian marriage provide good advice for parents, pastors, and Christian leaders.

Amity Schlaes, Great Society: A New History (Harper)
Part politics, part economics, and part cultural history—Shlaes covers the key ideas and personalities behind the programs meant to alleviate poverty in America. The book ends in 1976 with the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, a metaphor for Shlaes’s largely negative assessment of what the Great Society accomplished.

Scott Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction (Crossway)
There may be doctrines as important as the doctrine of Trinity for the existence and wellbeing of the Christian faith, but surely there are none more important. In less than 140 pages, Swain introduces (or reminds) us of the grammar of Trinitarian theology: relations of origin, personal properties, divine simplicity, person, essence, paternity, filiation, and spiration. This book is a great read for the Christian who knows that God is three-in-one and is eager to learn how systematic theology defends and explains this precious truth.
Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway)
First, the self was psychologized, then psychology was sexualized, and finally, sex was politicized. This is the history Trueman tells with great verve and sophistication. Tracing the rise of the modern self from Rousseau to the romantic poets, to Marx and Darwin, to Freud and Nietzsche, to the triumph of the erotic and the therapeutic in our own day, Trueman has produced a dense (400 pages), but well-written and remarkably insightful, book that helps us understand why “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” came to be seen as coherent and meaningful.

Honorable Mentions:
Conrad Mbewe, God’s Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders (Crossway).
Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Biblical Impurity within First Century Judaism (Baker Academic).
Paul Tripp, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church (Crossway).
Paul W. Wood, 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project (Encounter Books).

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.