Persevering in Ministry and Publishing: A Podcast Interview

Every so often, I share a post on my blog about a recent podcast interview. This spring, my friends Josh Ott and Emily Gardner invited me to be on their show Church Chat. The three of us have known each other for the last twelve years because we are part of the same region in our church denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America.

You can listen to the podcast episode here, “Persevering in Ministry and Publishing with Benjamin Vrbicek” (Apple, Spotify, and YouTube).

Their Church Chat podcast can be, admittedly, a little goofy. I actually like that about them. They started the interview with an extended game of “two truths and a lie.” This might give you the impression we never get to a more substantive conversation. But that would be wrong. We explored some of the hardest questions in ministry. For example, how do you keep going in life and ministry when you don’t think you can?

Many of my worst ministry challenges occurred in the first summer of Covid. Thankfully, nearly five years have passed since that difficult season. I did not realize the extent to which Josh, one of the co-hosts, had faced hardships in his church, which even led him to wrestle with his call to pastoral ministry. On one fateful Christmas Eve, Josh’s wife looked at him and said something like, “Why aren’t you getting ready?” Josh told his wife, “Because I’m not going.” He was supposed to preach at that service, by the way.

Josh did go to church and he did preach. But after that night, he took drastic steps over the next few months to pursue health.

If there is a common thread in each of our experiences of struggle and perseverance in ministry, it is the importance of churches having godly, volunteer pastor-elders. Were it not for the humility, kindness, and wisdom of the leaders at each of our churches, those seasons might have unfolded differently, and perhaps neither of us would be pastoring.

In the interview, I mention several ways my friend Mike Grenier helped me, a volunteer pastor at our church at the time. I did not get to mention it in the interview, but there were also several long phone calls with my dad during those seasons. He kept bringing up the ministry metaphor of an ox with too much weight on his shoulders. “The problem isn’t with the ox or the work of plowing,” he said. “It’s just there is way too much load on the kart.” The metaphor helped me and our leadership team reevaluate what a pastor should do amid all the work he could do.

In the interview, I also discuss writing and publishing, sharing my perspective on “starting small in publishing.” I affectionately, though typically only privately, refer to starting small as guerrilla warfare. The metaphor sorta works, sorta doesn’t. I’ll let you parse it out.

Before concluding this post, I would like to share a brief collection of other life and writing updates.

The last six weeks have been some of the most intense yet also meaningful times in recent years. My oldest daughter just graduated from high school; my wife and I completed another successful season of coaching track and field; three staffing roles changed at our church as we commissioned one associate pastor to take a new position elsewhere; I finished writing the first draft of my book; and in a few days, it’s our twentieth wedding anniversary. A lot of normal things occurred too, like cars visiting the mechanic, and another attempt by me to explore once again the chronic, mysterious pain I experience with food, this time with a new doctor.

Speaking of the book, I am incredibly grateful that after five years of hard work, I submitted my manuscript on the hope of Christ’s return. This will be my first traditionally published book. The manuscript is currently with the acquisition editor, and the initial feedback has been encouraging. I have already finished my part in supporting the marketing team, and they have begun developing the official title and cover. Sometime this winter, Baker Books will open the book for pre-order, and, Lord willing, you can have the book in the summer of 2026. Publishing has a long arc.

In the meantime, I am taking the month of June to reboot my website and email system. More on that later. I will also be giving away a short ebook that I’m calling Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ. During the research process, I had compiled a list of nearly one hundred passages related to the end times, and it was a blessing to spend a few months reading over them in my morning devotionals. I hope sharing the ebook will help others eagerly await his second coming (Heb. 9:28).

* Photo by John Nupp on Unsplash

When He Shall Come with Trumpet Sound

Today we speak less often about the return of Jesus than we did in the past. This neglect in Christian conversation and in Christian preaching affects our singing on Sundays. And our singing on Sundays certainly affects our living on all the other days.

I doubt any of us know definitively and exhaustively the reasons why, but I suspect part of our aversion to discussing the return of Jesus stems from an overreaction to perceived end-time obsession. Some Christians see every detail about the end times as crystal clear. That’s all they seem to talk about. Other Christians, myself included, look at this certainty and feel that the answers are too clean and tidy, maybe even a little contrived. This can lead to mistakenly overcorrecting by hardly ever talking about the second coming of Christ.

Perhaps our neglect also stems from the relative affluence of the Western world. In our wealth, we forget that we need a second coming to usher in heaven on earth. We try not to even think about our death. This is a relatively new phenomenon. “Throughout the history of the church, from the desert fathers to the Puritans, Christians have used the practice of meditating on death,” writes professor Kelly M. Kapic. “That is partly because the question was not about the possibility of pain but how to live with it.” Building on the work of a historian, Kapic notes, “Prior to modernity the question was not ‘a choice between pain and sickness or relief, but between a willing and a reluctant endurance of pain and sickness,’ since all were constantly in some level of physical discomfort” (Kapic, Embodied Hope, 60). To say it differently, only in our modern era has the desire for perfect health been anything but a fairytale. And the fairytale can cause us to neglect looking to the hope that God will bring in the end.

The experience of the cloud of witnesses, whether in the Bible or from the first century to modern times, was strikingly different. And this neglect of the afterlife and second coming has influenced the worship music we sing together when we gather. So many of the classic hymns so cherished by older generations of Christians featured climactic final stanzas that lifted eyes to the promise of heaven.

Consider the classic hymn “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” by Edward Mote from the 1800s. After a few verses that explore the trials we experience in this life and how Christ remains a rock and anchor for believers, the hymn celebrates the return of Christ with a trumpet. “When he shall come with trumpet sound,” we sing, “O may I then in him be found.” These lines celebrate a theme Paul writes about often, as in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (see also 1 Thess. 4:13–18).

Matthew Westerholm, a professor of worship, conducted his doctoral research on this subject, comparing extensive collections of worship songs from our era and previous eras. “Among many similarities,” he notes, “one difference was striking: Our churches no longer sing about Christ’s second coming as much as we used to.”

I do not want to argue with anyone about the musical beauty of hymns compared to modern worship songs. And I do not want to dictate what churches should or should not sing. But when examining the lyrics of most modern songs, many churches that sing for thirty minutes during their weekly gatherings include few songs, if any, whose lyrics explicitly direct believers to the hope of the end. This should not be.

To shift focus to God’s blessings now, to the exclusion of his blessings at the end, we do not lose a part of Christianity; we lose Christianity. Consider the analogy of the human body. In a tragic accident, a person might lose a finger or an arm and still remain very much alive. We cannot, however, lose the function of vital organs, such as our brain, heart, or lungs, without dying.

When the apostle Paul considers the implications of losing the doctrine of the physical resurrection of believers—the event that happens upon the return of Christ and when the trumpet sounds—Paul states that without the future resurrection, Christian preaching becomes in vain and misrepresents God, while the Christian faith becomes meaningless and futile, leaving us to perish forever in our sins and become the most pitiable of people (1 Cor. 15:12–19). The stakes could not be higher.

Of course, rather than complete avoidance of the indispensable doctrine of the return of Christ and the life everlasting, something more partial typically happens. We may not turn off the faucet completely, but we should not be surprised by our thirst when we only allow a trickle.

To quote Kelly Kapic again, “When the homes of believers are hit by chronic pain or mental illness, they often find the contemporary church strangely unhelpful, even hurtful” (38).

Perhaps songs that major on God’s blessings in the here and now, coupled with little emphasis on God’s blessings in the end, contribute to why suffering believers often find the church so unhelpful. Indeed, from a biblical perspective, to be the most helpful to believers suffering in the now, we must remember that the truth we regularly confess about the end—and the truth we regularly sing about the end—changes how we live today and every day. We must believe it all, and sing it all, to have it all.  

* Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash

Book Launch: Broken but Beautiful

People have been pointing out church-hurt for a long time. Over fifty years ago, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “With much of this criticism of the Church one has, of course, to agree. There is so much that is wrong with the Church—traditionalism, formality and lifelessness and so on—and it would be idle and utterly foolish to deny this” (Preaching and Preachers, 8). I suppose we could grab similar quotes from the Reformation era or any era in church history. We can even find similar sentiments in the New Testament itself. “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together,” Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor. 11:17). Indeed, over two and a half thousand years ago, God told his people, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” (Amos 5:21).

Certainly, there is a lot of junk that happens in the local church. But please also remember that God still uses the church to bless the world in beautiful ways. He may discipline his church to make her more holy, but he loves his church. His sons and daughters are always his sons and daughters. God even calls the church his bride, dying to purchase her and make her radiant. And one day we will see her in all her splendor.

Buy on Amazon

I worked with Gospel-Centered Discipleship to bundle some of our favorite essays about the beauty of the bride of Christ and put them into a book called Broken but Beautiful. The book launches today!

We adapted the book’s title from the first article by Glenna Marshall. She learned in deeper ways the beauty of the church during the unexpected death of a church member and the way her church served together in the days that followed.

As I think back to my own life, I think of a time sixteen years ago when my oldest son was born. The birth did not go well. There was an evening and morning of hard labor, after which the umbilical cord wrapped around my son’s neck, and they did an emergency c-section. Mom and baby, in the end, were fine—praise God. But recovery from the trauma induced by a night of labor and the emergency surgery lasted weeks. Then postpartum depression bit like a rabid dog that wouldn’t let go. But before postpartum, right when we got home from the hospital, everyone got the flu, including everyone who came to stay with us and help. Yet this is the time, my wife and I often say, that we learned when the church was the church. So many people helped and cooked and cleaned and cared. They sat with my wife when I eventually had to go back to work. We no longer live in that same city, but we saw God’s blessings in that local church so strongly that a dozen years later we named our youngest son after that church.

In the providence of God, somehow you’re reading this email. If your heart is in a season of disappointment with the local church—maybe you’d even use the word hate to describe how you currently feel about the church—we hope these stories will minister to you.

I put the table of contents for the book down below, so you can see all the authors and the entries.

You can buy the book on Amazon’s website, here. If your church would like to purchase books at a significant bulk discount, when you buy twenty on the publisher’s website, they are only $5 each! You can do that here.

As an author with a small platform, it would mean a lot to me if you’d buy a copy and consider leaving a short Amazon review. Those reviews help a ton. Seriously. And the review only needs to be a sentence or two.

Amazon paperback link

GCD Bulk purchase link

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Table of Contents

        Preface | Benjamin Vrbicek     vii

1. She Is Broken, and She Is Beautiful | Glenna Marshall     1

2. Missing Church Is Missing Out | Timothy M. Shorey     7

3. How God Humbled Me through a Church I Didn’t Agree With | Lara d’Entremont     11

4. The Dearest Place on Earth | James Williams     17

5. The Unexpected Blessing of a Rural Church | Stephanie O’Donnell     21

6. The Local Church Helps Rid Me of Morbid Introspection | Chrys Jones   27

7. The Church Is Not a Meritocracy | Jessica Miskelly     33

8. A Family of Redemption for Children of Divorce | Chase Johnson     39

9. The Warmth of the Local Church for the Suffering | Brianna Lambert     45

10. The Singles Among Us Deserve a Better Church Culture | Denise Hardy     51

11. Love Your Church Anyway | Heidi Kellogg     57

12. For the Love of Liturgy | Erin Jones     63

13. God’s Good Design of the Local Church | James Williams     69

14. Finding Beauty in the Local Church in Our Age of Social Media | Cassie Pattillo     75

15. The Hands of Grace | Amber Thiessen     79

16. How the Church Shapes Us on Our Faith Journey | Rob Bentz     83

17. On the Other Side of the Church Split | Abigail Rehmert     89

18. Dear New Mother, Embrace the Body of Christ | Lara d’Entremont     95

19. The Gold Mine in the Local Church | Chrys Jones     101

20. The Local Church Is a Sandbox | Timarie Friesen     105

21. Unless the Seed Dies | Tom Sugimura     111

22. Redeeming Love Has Been My Theme and Shall Be Until I Die | Timothy M. Shorey     115

        Epilogue | Jeremy Writebol     119

         Notes     121
        Author Bios     123
        About Gospel-Centered Discipleship     127
        Resources from Gospel-Centered Discipleship     129

Two Podcast Interviews: How Improvement in Writing Is Like Bench-Press & How Our Church Stayed “Front-Edge of the Middle” During Covid

I have two podcast interview updates to share. One interview was about writing and the other about pastoring.

First, the podcast about writing. I was a guest on Amy Simon’s podcast, The Purposeful Pen. The episode released yesterday. It’s a podcast to encourage Christian writers.

On the episode we talk a little bit about what makes for good writing, the article submission process, and some specifics to writing for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, the website I help manage. You can find it here, “Episode 63: Improving the Craft of Writing with Benjamin Vrbicek.”

A piece of advice I give is that finishing one piece of writing often develops a writer more than starting five pieces of writing but not finishing any of them. My metaphor for this comes from the gym. Something about finishing a last set of bench press, especially if you go until failure, produces more physical gains than simply doing a few sets and not going to failure. Pushing individual pieces of writing to the final, public form forces authors to identify problems and find solutions in a way that merely jotting down the “good stuff” and moving along doesn’t do.

Second, the podcast about pastoring. The other week I was a guest on the MemeLord Monday podcast, which often takes a humorous (and sometimes serious) look at the Christian subculture. You can find it here, “What Happened to the Post-Pandemic Church?”

The podcast actually released a few years ago, but the host and my friend, Matt Matias, just released the interview to the public. Previously, the episode was only available to his paid subscribers.

Now, you probably have a legitimate question coming to your mind: Why in the world would I want to listen to a podcast about churches and Covid, especially when it’s so old? I get it. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to listen to it either—and I was the guest! Who wants to relive that era, I thought. Let’s forget about Covid and move on.

But I did listen to the interview, and I found it fascinating.

I know, I know, you could say I’m an egomaniac and just love listening to my own voice. I don’t think that was the reason I enjoyed the interview so much. Listening to the interview felt like opening a strange time capsule. I had honestly forgotten all we went through as a church. Our church even had a malicious hacker ruin our online “reserved seating” by signing up fake names. Crazy weird and super aggravating. We had our guesses who hacked us, but we could never confirm it.

You probably remember, too, how there was something of a bell curve regarding how churches handled Covid. In the interview, I explained our unsophisticated guesswork about how to keep our church on the “front edge of the middle” regarding the “uncautious-to-cautious” spectrum. This involved prayer reading the Bible, arguing among ourselves, and talking to doctors, church members, and other pastors—as well as doing exactly whatever the government told us to do without question. Oh, we also cast lots a few times.

Well, maybe we didn’t do all of those. I’ll let you listen to figure it out. But our “front-edge of the middle” strategy was our version of the Goldilocks approach, our plan to hit the bell curve just right. This proved challenging as the backdrop matrix of Covid, culture, and churches kept shifting, and not always in the same direction. Alas, we did our best to be faithful to the Lord. He knows our hearts.

In the interview we also discuss pastoral abuse and why our church has a plurality of pastor-elders, rather than “the guy.” And we tell a few jokes.

If you listen to either podcast, let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your best tips to improve at writing and what your church did that was helpful during Covid.

The Purposeful Pen: “Improving the Craft of Writing”
MemeLord Monday: “What Happened to the Post-Pandemic Church?”

* Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

God Loves-Loves the Local Church

We speak of being in a love-hate relationship with different aspects of our lives. We can speak of both loving and hating exercise. It’s fun and makes us feel and look better, but exercise also hurts and takes up time. Maybe you speak of being in a love-hate relationship with your job. Maybe you speak this way of your extended family.

A lot of people could speak of both loving and hating the local church. They see the blessings the local church pours into people’s lives, the way healthy churches teach about the love of God and provide counseling and friendships and genuine community and care for the poor and a voice for justice. But people also see in local churches the hurt, the neglect, the hypocrisy, and the defaming of the glory of God rather than the exalting.

I wouldn’t say I have a love-hate relationship with the local church. The most I could say is more of a love-and-occasionally-annoyed-or-disappointed relationship with the local church. I’m thankful God has spared me from experiencing the worst parts of the church.

Wherever you fall on this spectrum, it’s my impression that it’s easier to write about what makes us mad and what we hate than it is to write about what we love. Consider how easily we write a 1-star Amazon review. The time and effort, however, to write a 5-star review—the time and effort required to offer fitting praise—is so much more. When I write book endorsements, those one hundred words can take forever.

Some of you know that, in addition to pastoring a local church, I serve as the managing editor for a ministry called Gospel-Centered Discipleship. I work with our online and book publishing ministries—including overseeing our editors, staff writers, and guest posts—to cultivate writers and resources that help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus.

At Gospel-Centered Discipleship this fall, I wanted us to try to do the opposite of what was easy. I wanted us to publish articles about the many and varied blessings of the local church. It’s not that we wanted to ignore or whitewash the bad stuff. It’s just that there has been so much of that lately. And, as I said, I think the bad stuff can be easier to write—at least most of the time. Sometimes, of course, the hardest stuff is terribly painful, even nearly impossible, to write, let alone publish. So I’m not saying that dumping on the church is always easy.

Maybe you remember back during the height of Covid when John Krasinski (“Jim” from The Office) launched a YouTube channel called Some Good News. He shot the videos from what appeared to be his home office and talked about good happenings in the world. He did this during a time when we were all very aware of bad happenings in the world. As Christians we can learn from this. We often forget that to be evangelical is to be those who major on the euangelion; we major on the very Greek word for gospel or good news.  

Certainly, there is a lot of junk that happens in the local church. Please also remember that God still uses the church to bless the world in beautiful ways. He may discipline his church to make her more holy, but he loves his church. His sons and daughters are always his sons and daughters, even when they live less holy lives than he desires. God even calls the church his bride, dying to purchase her and make her radiant. And one day we will see her in all her splendor. God loves-loves his church.

Rather than writing my own post in December, I wanted to share with you all the articles we published this fall about the local church. We published over twenty of them, so I’m not suggesting you read them all. But maybe you can skim the titles and find two or three that catch your attention and read those.

And if your heart is in a season of disappointment with the local church—maybe you’d even use the word hate to describe how you currently feel about the church—then consider praying to God, asking him to show you some good news. God loves to answer those prayers.

Indeed, I’m saying this kind of good-news prayer for you now as I write.

Gospel-Centered Discipleship’s “The Blessings of the Local Church” Series

The Church Is Not a Meritocracy, Jessica T. Miskelly | November 27, 2023

After restless years in systems where you have to earn your keep, it was so refreshing to come back to the church and be welcomed for reasons other than what I can offer.

The Hands of Grace, Amber Thiessen, November 20, 2023

While we were in our deepest pain and the most chaotic season of our life—the fear of potentially losing our six-month-old daughter—the church served as our pillar of prayer. 

The Warmth of the Local Church for the Suffering, Brianna Lambert, November 15, 2023

To start a fire and to keep a fire going, you need both smaller and bigger logs. In a similar way, suffering people need care of all sizes to keep their faith in Christ warm.

How the Church Taught Me God’s Varied Grace after my Husband’s Bike Wreck, Lisa Spence, November 13, 2023

When we faced unexpected adversity, our local church provided help and support.

The Church: A Family of Redemption, Chase Johnson, November 8, 2023

Not only did the dynamic within my house change but my whole life was shaped through the local church.

The Unexpected Blessing of a Rural Church, Stephanie O’Donnell, November 1, 2023

I wanted nothing to do with the church. Then everything changed when a guitar teacher quit his job and planted a church in our town of 700 and became our gospel preacher.

For the Love of Liturgy, Erin Jones, October 30, 2023

I didn’t know how much my heart craved liturgy until I experienced it.

Redeeming Love Has Been My Theme and Shall Be Until I Die: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#15), Tim Shorey, October 27, 2023

Tim Shorey, one of our staff writers, is journaling through his struggle with stage 4 cancer. In this entry he reflects how deeply moving songs about a Christian’s death have become.

The Local Church Helps Rid Me of Morbid Introspection, Chrys Jones, October 25, 2023

During some of my worst moments of deep introspection, Satan has fired darts at my mind to make me question my salvation and usefulness in my home and local church.

The Pastor as Curator, Ryan Kucera, October 23, 2023

Help lay the building blocks for your people to become life-long readers.

Counseling in the Community of the Local Church, Tom Sugimura, October 18, 2023

Through biblical reflection and long experience, we have come to believe that counseling works best when connected in meaningful ways to the local church.

How the Wonder and Weirdness of a Bus Reminds Me of The Blessings of the Local Church, Melinda Wallace, October 12, 2023

My life would be so different without the manifold blessings of the local church.

God’s Church Is the Lifeline We Need in Times of Trouble, Grace Strijbis, October 11, 2023

Although we were in a different part of the country with people we barely knew at all, we were still surrounded by God’s family.

Finding Beauty in the Local Church in Our Age of Social Media, Cassie Pattillo, October 4, 2023

We’ll tend to focus on the imperfections within our local church while only seeing the highlight reel of another church via social media. That’s dangerous.

The Diversity of Gifts in Christ’s Body Invites Us to Embrace Humility, Adam Salloum, October 2, 2023

Not every part of Christ’s body serves the same purpose. And that’s good for us to remember—for so many reasons.

7 Encouraging Quotes for Pastors from a New Book for Pastors, Benjamin Vrbicek, September 30, 2023

If you’re looking for a book to buy your pastor during Pastor Appreciation Month, I’d suggest Jeremy Writebol’s Pastor, Jesus Is Enough.

The Singles Among Us Deserve a Better Church Culture, Denise Hardy, September 13, 2023

Most church cultures slight the singles among them. This must stop.  

Love Your Church Anyway, Heidi Kellogg, September 11, 2023

Sometimes I would rather be done with the local church than remain. But the Lord continues to bless me with his church in too many ways.

God’s Good Design of the Local Church, James Williams, September 4, 2023

To call the church man-made is like giving a worm credit for the Mona Lisa or saying a fly painted the Sistine Chapel.

On the Other Side of the Church Split, Abigail Rehmert, August 18, 2023

Truths God taught my heart the hard way.

Family Partners: Men and Women Serving Together in God’s Church, Denise Hardy, July 12, 2023

I’m a woman who worked on staff at a church for more than thirty years. My experience was almost all positive. I wish my story was less rare.

* Photo by Simone Viani on Unsplash

Striving for Warm Complementarianism in a Cold, Mostly Egalitarian World

Our church recently posted a job opening for another associate pastor. I’ve thought a lot about the church hiring process, even writing a whole book about the topic. And in my experience, most job descriptions sound vanilla. They’re boilerplate. Sure, churches will write a bunch of details about what they want from their new youth pastor, lead pastor, or what have you—but in the end, most job descriptions for a men’s ministry pastor look an awful lot like all the other job descriptions for a men’s ministry pastor. Churches say they want applicants to have theological education and previous church experience. They also want, cliched as they are, self-starters and people skills.

Churches looking for pastors—not unlike the pastors looking for churches—typically have few opportunities to distinguish themselves from the rest. This is why in our job description we have one particular bullet point that, we hope, makes us stand out.

In the job requirements section we mention that a candidate should have “a shared theological and philosophical DNA with the pastor-elders,” and then we add, “including warm complementarianism, a humble embrace of Reformed soteriology, and a gospel-centeredness in all of ministry.” That threefold set of phrases is not vanilla. Depending on the candidate, “complementarianism” and “Reformed soteriology” will not taste vanilla but either as repulsive as a shot of vinegar or as delightful as a slice of red velvet cake.

But we’re also hoping a candidate who reads those words will pause for a bit. We hope that stringing together these particular theological concepts with those particular modifiers—warm complementarianism, humble Reformed soteriology—will cause intrigue to arise in the candidate’s mind. We want a candidate to think, “I like the sound of that, but I wonder if they mean what I would mean by those terms.”

In fact, we not only want them to wonder about the phrases but to actually ask us what we mean. And so far, some have.

I don’t want to take time in this post to explain what we mean by “humble Reformed soteriology” or “gospel-centeredness.” For those, I’ll flag J.A. Medder’s book Humble Calvinism and Jared C. Wilson’s book Gospel-Driven Church as helpful resources. I do want to explain what we mean—and what we do not mean—by the phrase warm complementarianism.

Warm complementarianism strives to actually be complementarian. Most pastors looking at our job description will be familiar with this term, but I’ll begin with a brief definition for those newer to the discussion. Broadly speaking, two theological positions exist on men’s and women’s roles in the home and church. They go by the names of “complementarianism” and “egalitarianism.” Both views affirm that God created men and women in his own image and, consequently, that both men and women have equal dignity, value, and worth. Here we all agree.

“God created men and women in his own image and, consequently, that both men and women have equal dignity, value, and worth.”

And yet, there are differences. Egalitarians believe that there should be no distinctions in roles in the home and the church that are based on the innate qualities of gender but rather that all roles should be decided on the basis of competency. In other words, if you can do a task well, regardless of your gender, then you should do it.

Complementarians don’t believe the Bible teaches this. They believe that while there is tremendous overlap between what it means to be a man and a woman, they also believe that manhood, in distinction from womanhood, means something—something beautiful. And complementarians believe that womanhood, in distinction from manhood, means something—something beautiful. In short, men and women are both fearfully and wonderfully made, but they are not interchangeable.

What, then, are the distinctions? Space does not allow me to explore this in detail, but I’ll mention one area. Our church believes God desires godly men to take the role of spiritual leadership in the home and the church, and that the office of pastor-elder is open only to qualified men.

This view is, of course, controversial. So let me mention a few of the places we see this taught in the Bible. Support for male eldership is seen in the following:

1. the responsibilities given by God to Adam before and after the fall (Gen. 2–3; Rom. 5:12ff);

2. the pattern of Old Testament and New Testament spiritual leadership being placed mainly among men (e.g., Jesus had many women who ministered with him, and he was no stranger to poking socially taboo topics when necessary, such as the religious leader’s man-made rules about the sabbath, but Jesus chose men to be his twelve apostles);

3. the parallels between male leadership in the church and the headship of men in the home as taught in places like Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and Titus 2;

4. no explicit mention of female pastor-elders in the New Testament; and, finally,

5. specific passages like 1 Timothy 2:8–3:7 and Titus 1:5–9 which require male pastor-elders.

Now, back to where I started. By saying we strive to be complementarian, we want to actually be complementarian. But what we mean by this is something quite different from the stereotype of simply keeping women from doing certain roles.

Warm complementarianism encourages women to passionately pursue ministry. The perception of many churches that hold complementarian views is that they don’t encourage women to pursue ministry, even that they stifle women from significant leadership roles.

I concede that the perception is the perception because it can often be true. Indeed, in our own church I’m sure that at times, no matter how hard I might try not to do so, my leadership in this area has left certain women feeling deflated. For all those times in the past and all those that will come in the future, please know that I’m sorry. Our hope—indeed my hope—is to see women passionately use the varied ministry gifts God has given them. Over and over again in the Bible we read of women serving in wonderful, significant, and courageous ways. There are well-known examples like Mary and Esther, but also lesser-known ones like the little girl who cared for Naaman (2 Kings 5). 

To explain this better, I’ll use an anti-analogy analogy. Most student ministry leaders have been asked some version of the question “how far is too far” when it comes to the physical relationship that the student has with his girlfriend or the girlfriend has with her boyfriend. The proper response to this question is that God desires sexual purity, and thus the goal shouldn’t be to get as close as you can to “the line.” The line of sexual sin is a line you want to stay pretty far away from.

This is not the way God wants us to view “the line,” if you will, for what is biblically appropriate for women and men in various ministry roles. There are some ministry roles that God has given only to qualified males, such as being a pastor-elder, but this doesn’t mean churches should take the approach of staying away from that line as far as possible. Actually, I’d suggest we should want to get as close as we can. In every ministry role that God intends for women and men to do, we should have men and women doing ministry. In the case of “the line” of sexual intimacy between unmarried people, getting too close to the line becomes sin, while in the case of men’s and women’s roles, backing away from the line is sin.

I should probably give a few concrete examples where women lead in our church. We have women teach on Sunday mornings in some classes. Our staff worship pastor is a man, but we typically share the leading of individual Sunday mornings with different leaders, and sometimes a woman leads us in song, and almost every week on the stage, women play instruments, sing, and read Scripture. I know complementarians debate whether women should be deacons; we believe they should, and we have several.

I’ll mention one more example. At our church we wrote a prospectus for a two-year “pastoral residency program.” It’s a program for men who are currently in seminary or have completed seminary and want more church experience before they launch into a full-time vocation. But we also wrote a “mentored ministry program” for any ministry-minded person, whether male or female, who wants to prepare for local church ministry. We haven’t made these programs open to the public yet, but as we’re beta testing the mentored ministry program, we currently have one man and one woman receiving pastoral care from me, the lead pastor of our church. I think our church currently has more women than men enrolled in seminary courses. And in the coming years, I hope and pray God uses our small church to raise up dozens of women who love the local church and have the ability to teach God’s word faithfully.

“In every ministry role that God intends for women and men to do, we should have men and women doing ministry.”

So where is the line? We understand Scripture to teach that in church settings where the sacraments would be practiced (i.e., Sunday morning worship services), teaching is preaching and should be done by elder-qualified men. However, in church settings where the sacraments would not be practiced (i.e., Bible studies and youth group), teaching is not necessarily preaching and can be done by both qualified men and women. I get to this conclusion seeing the verses near the end of 1 Timothy 2 intricately connected to 1 Timothy 3.

Much of this focus on a line, however, can shift undue focus to Sunday mornings. There are, of course, six more days of the week. Pastors often get teased about working only one hour a week, but we know best that the ministry of a church consists in far more. Which is to say that so much of what women (and non-elder men, for that matter) contribute to a church can’t necessarily be seen while sitting in a pew during a service and watching the stage, as though it were the only place of ministry. As Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman” (1 Cor. 11:11). Though we often forget this truth, we need each other and are interdependent, as the very name complementarity implies.

Almost monthly I get comments from newcomers about the beauty of the interior design of our building, which is largely overseen by one gifted woman. And I get regular requests to host weddings, funerals, baby showers, and other events here because it’s such a welcoming place. We have a few women at our church studying counseling, and these women meet informally with those young and old and with those in our church and those outside. And this is not to mention the host of friendship and discipleship relationships among our women that cultivate faith, hope, and love. Also, we have a meals ministry for those with a health challenge or after the arrival of a baby. It’s a ministry much appreciated by those who receive it, and a ministry led almost exclusively by women.

I could go on and on, but this post is long already, so I’ll close by speaking about our posture as leaders toward this doctrine.

Warm complementarianism humbly and openly embraces God’s design as good. There are plenty of ways for a man to be a lousy complementarian. He can be angry about it, wearing the doctrine like a chip on his shoulder, always ready to take offense and pick a fight. He can also be boastful, a prideful windbag who fails to see God’s calling first as a responsibility, not a privilege. I wish these were only straw man caricatures. But they really exist.

“There are plenty of ways for a man to be a lousy complementarian.”

A man could also be indifferent or cold to complementarianism. In this scenario, he might believe complementarianism comes from the Bible but fail to see how the doctrine is actually for our good. So he hides his complementarianism under the proverbial bushel. He keeps the doctrine out of his sermons, and the church keeps it off its website. We may believe this, they think, but it’s better that we not tell anyone.

Warm complementarianism, instead, embraces God’s truth humbly and openly. Warm complementarianism believes that if God is actually good and he gives good gifts, then whatever the Bible actually teaches—to allude to Jesus’s words in Matthew—is him giving bread to his children and not stones.

This is why we write about complementarianism in our membership material. We want our perspective members to know where we stand and why we stand there. We want to model the apostle Paul’s approach when he wrote to the church in Corinth, saying, “We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2). To quote from our denomination’s statement of faith, the Bible “is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises” (Evangelical Free Church of America Statement of Faith, Article 2, “The Bible”).

And this is why, to come full circle, we not only write about our complementarian convictions in our membership booklet, but we put it in our job description.

Now, may God our Father, help our belief of these doctrines to be more than mere aspirational belief, more than words on paper. And may he help us be the kind of warm complementarians who adorn the doctrine in such a way that people taste red velvet, not vinegar.

* Photo by Amanda Congiuv on Unsplash

Our Church Is Hiring Another Pastor

Over the last few years, change has marked our church experience, even my pastoring. Pastors and other staff members have transitioned. Church members have moved away and left for good reasons, while others left for, shall we say, less than good reasons. All this change is normal for churches. Maybe only the rate of change over the last three or four years has been abnormal.

And yet for all the change, the people and pastors here have also tried not to change the critical elements that make a church a church. I think, by God’s grace, we’ve gone back deeper into the basics. Back to God and his Word. Back to the primacy of the gospel and deeds of mercy and mission. In fact, for as hard as it’s been, the Lord has used the struggles to refine us. He’s grown our church numerically but also, maybe more importantly, in our depth of faithfulness. Soli deo gloria.

Part of the change at our church comes as we prepare to send out one of our pastors and dozens of people to plant a church a few miles away in the center of our city. We’ve never done this before—at least I’ve never done this before—and we’re learning as we go. But it feels right. The church won’t be planted officially until January 2024, yet we’re now starting the search for another associate pastor, a pastor who can help lead and preach, a pastor with ministry experience.

Below is the job description. We’ve posted it on job boards and with seminaries, but I thought I’d share it here too. Maybe you know someone who’d like to work with us. You can also see the PDF here and here’s a link to our website: Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Associate Pastor

OVERVIEW

The associate pastor will serve with the other members of the church staff and our pastor-elders to further our church’s vision. He will serve as a generalist, able to help in areas that need more attention in any given season but have a particular emphasis on leading and training and preaching. He will operate under the direct supervision of the senior pastor and under the overall governance of the Pastor-Elder Board.


COMPENSATION

Benefits: 7 paid holidays, 15 paid vacation days, 5 paid personal days, 1 day off during the week in addition to Saturday, which is considered a day off (Sundays are considered a workday); pay every 2 weeks on a Wednesday

Salary: Please ask for salary range during interviews.


JOB REQUIREMENTS

• Committed Christian who will participate and engage in our church and who agrees with the EFCA Statement of Faith.

• Humility and willingness to work with teams. Deep love and compassion for people, Christian and non-Christian alike.

• Skilled expositor of God’s Word; ability to teach and preach to all ages of the church.

• Excellent people skills with the ability to engage diverse types of people.

• Aptitude for training, recruiting, and developing leaders and pastors for ministry.

• 5–10 years of ministry experience in a local church (completed MDiv degree strongly preferred).

• A shared theological and philosophical DNA with the pastor-elders, including warm complementarianism, a humble embrace of Reformed soteriology, and a gospel-centeredness in all of ministry.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES

The other associate pastor roles at Community have specific areas of oversight, such as connections, worship, or discipleship and visitation. This role, however, will be something of a generalist role but have a particular emphasis in leading the church and mentoring others. As an associate pastor, he will help with church administration, preaching and teaching, administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and officiating weddings and funerals. He will preach a minimum of eight sermons a year.


CHURCH BIO & HOW TO APPLY?

Our church mission statement is “to see the weak, wounded, and wayward enjoy the living Jesus.” We belong to the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) and have around 200 members, 300 people in attendance in the sanctuary each Sunday, and 200 people in small groups throughout the week. Our lead pastor has served here for almost ten years. This position became open because we are planting a church and sending a current associate pastor to lead that church. Please see our website for more information, CommunityFreeChurch.org. Send your resume and cover letter to jobs@communityfreechurch.org. Within two weeks, we’ll follow up about potential next steps. We hope to fill the role in the spring of 2023.

Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church

I suspect that in our personal Bible readings through Exodus, with all the fireworks that come in the first half of the book, we often miss the beauty of the ending of Exodus. After all that God’s people went through, after all that was stacked against them—the sin of the Egyptian enslavers and the sin in the hearts of Israelites—God was faithful to his promise to lead his people out and to cause them to worship him (cf. Ex. 3:12 and 40:34–38). It’s a beautiful, encouraging ending to a truly epic book.

Our church recently finished preaching through the book of Exodus. In my final sermon, I connected this ending in Exodus with a passage more familiar to us, the promise that Jesus makes in Matthew 16:18 to build his church. “On this rock,” he tells Peter, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

I take the “upon this rock” statement not to be Peter in and of himself but rather the rock of Peter’s confession. Just before Jesus made the promise, he asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:15–16). Peter’s rock-solid confession is the rock upon which Jesus builds his church. As one popular worship song puts it, “This gospel truth of old, shall not kneel shall not faint.”

After the sermon, a member of our church asked what this promise might have to do with individual churches, particularly here in the West. Many churches have become so progressive that they might not be Christian churches anymore, and other churches have become so political that they might be more political than spiritual, more partisan than Christian.

Does it not seem in so many ways, we wonder, that the church of Christ is not being built but torn down?

I love this question because it aims to take seriously the promise of Jesus, which is how Christians should take the promises of Jesus. But I don’t think we should understand the promise that Jesus will build his church to mean that any individual church will increasingly thrive or even survive indefinitely. The same goes for churches in any particular region, such as churches in North America or the West more generally. Instead, I take the promise to mean that, upon the rock of the confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus will always be building his church somewhere.

I’ll give one scriptural reason for this view and a few reasons from church history.

Reasons from the Bible

In Revelation 2–3 we have letters from Jesus to individual churches in different regions. Each letter has encouragement and challenges. Some of the letters even have threats, or maybe we would call them warnings. For example, to the church in Ephesus, we read, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5). To the church in Pergamum, we read, “Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (2:16). Famously, to the church in Laodicea, we read, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (3:15–16).

It’s verses like these that help me understand what Jesus means and does not mean by building his church. The promise that Jesus will build his church cannot mean that every individual church will remain prosperous; otherwise, the verses that warn of punishment for unrepentant disobedience wouldn’t have teeth.

Reasons from Church History

Second, I think we’re helped by church history, even the church history within the book of Acts. While the church of Christ grows throughout the book, we do not necessarily see the continual, unbroken growth of the churches in Jerusalem. True, “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). When persecution comes, however, many Christians and church leaders scatter (Acts 8:1). But even in the scattering because of persecution, although it hurt the church in Jerusalem, scattering seems to be part of the very way Jesus was building his whole church.

When we leave the book of Acts to look at the rest of church history, we’re left with many questions about sometimes growing and sometimes shrinking and, inevitably, disappearing churches. Why, for example, has the church in France been cold, even hardened, to the gospel for hundreds of years, especially after a season of gospel fruitfulness? And why has the church in the global south been exploding in growth after being unreached for so long?

I’m speaking in generalities and acknowledge plenty of exceptions: there are good churches in France and bad ones in the global south. But this does seem to be how God is building the church in this day.

Again, why? What does all this mean for the church in America? What are we to make of the recent news regarding the Southern Baptist Convention? On Sunday this last week, during the sermon, I briefly mentioned the terrible news about the SBC and the abuse scandals and how sad they make me. How will Christ build his church on such shaky ground?

I don’t know any more about this question than anyone else. Yet, many people seem to think that the American church will keep getting better and better, but I don’t see any reason, at least not a scriptural one, why this would have to be true.

How Should We Then Live?

Behind the question about Jesus building his church, I suspect any thoughtful Christian would have much to be discouraged about. I, too, am confused and sad about aspects of the church in America.

Just last week I was talking to a pastor with deeply evangelical and orthodox convictions who belongs, for now anyway, to a very liberal denomination. I asked him how many pastors are like him, that is, how many pastors in his denomination believe the Bible and the historic tenets of Christianity, such as Jesus rising bodily from the dead. I won’t give this pastor’s answer. But it was a very low percentage. This is why, I think, a few years ago we saw a dozen or so churches in this denomination close in the city of Harrisburg. I’m sure some of these church buildings had a few genuine Christians who attended them each week, but I would say that it is hard enough to keep a church healthy when you actually preach the gospel. It would be even harder, indeed impossible, to build a church without the gospel. You can’t build upon a rock when the rock ain’t there.

Even as there are many things to be thankful for in the Western church, there are so, so many things to lament. And that’s probably all we can do. Lament and pray. And stay faithful in whatever church context God has called us, confessing our sin and confessing Jesus as the Christ . . . loving an imperfect local church, loving her members and her pastors . . . and loving our neighbors . . . and raising our kids . . . and planting our gardens . . . and exercising and enjoying our hobbies . . . and, of course, praying and lamenting some more. That’s about all we can do.

But that’s not nothing. It’s the sort of faithful living that God uses to build his church.

* Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Reflections on Shepherds and Sheep: An Unexpected Cost

You often hear a writer tell you how many hours it took him to write his big article or how many years it took her to write her big book. I’ve written a few times about how much I love Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See, and it seems like in every interview I’ve heard with Doerr, he’s always asked about the ten years it took to write the novel. And I get it. Authors want readers to know how much effort we expended in writing the piece, how much heartache we endured and how much saltwater dripped on the keyboard. Sometimes readers like to know too.

Author Annie Dillard, however, questions whether authors should share the cost. “How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag?” she asks rhetorically. “Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer?” (Dillard, The Writing Life, 7). She’s probably right. We all take the price tag off birthday presents before we give them lest what might have otherwise been an expensive, generous gift be seen as cheap. And yet still, from time to time, I feel the impulse to leave the tag, not so much as a humble brag—“Look how long this took”—but as catharsis.

Recently I wrote something that I won’t tell you what it cost, at least in terms of hours or months, thus sparing myself the impertinence, to use Dillard’s word. I will say, though, that I didn’t anticipate the emotional cost required to look certain realities in the eyes. Even I was caught off guard by the process, and more than a few times, I had the wind knocked out of me. Yesterday, Christianity Today posted the article. It’s about people leaving church and how pastors can respond. I’ll just share the opening few paragraphs with you, although I’d love for you to read the whole thing, “Two Hundred People Left Our Small Church.”

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About 200 people have left our small church. The number probably sits closer to 350 when counting their children. But they didn’t leave the way you might expect—no church split or splinter. They left slowly, with neither fanfare nor fireworks. Some, if not most, left without a goodbye. And they left not over seven weeks or seven months, but over the course of seven years.

I got to thinking about this when I came back from my summer sabbatical, because I was pleased to see that not only did our church still exist, but there were also a few dozen new people.

The new attendees shake my hand and introduce themselves. They smile at me as I preach. They participate in our membership class and ask about small groups and opportunities to serve. One couple invited my wife and me out for a date. Still, I struggle to open my heart to them the way a pastor should, fully and without reservation. And I wonder why.

Then it hit me. In seven years, our church—in terms of net attendance—has grown from around 150 to 350. But in the same amount of time, our church has lost as many as have stayed. The losses never occur rapidly, as though a levee burst, but more as a steady trickle or slow leak.

A few of our members died. One went to jail. One wrote me an eight-page letter of grievances I was instructed to share with the elders; another wrote a chapter-length blog post suggesting we’re not even a church. Some parishioners didn’t let the door hit them on the way out because they kicked it off the hinges and left us to pick up the shattered pieces.

These departures are by far the exceptions. Many of those who left told me neither why they left nor even that they had left. I often find out via back channels like social media and other impersonal means. And I don’t believe our church has an exceptionally large back door—I suspect we’re typical.

How does a pastor keep his heart from growing cynical when, over 350 weeks of pastoring the same church, I have lost an average of one person each week? And why are these congregants leaving our church anyway? What role might I play, even unintentionally, in sending sheep to what they perceive to be greener pastures?

I don’t know. But I recently spent a lot of time and effort to find out.

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You can read the rest at Christianity Today.

* Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash

Shepherd & Sheep: The Preface from My New Collection of Essays

I recently returned to church after a summer sabbatical. My family and I used the time to rest and play. I also used the time to work on several writing projects. It was a surprise for my church, but I gathered up my best writing about the local church and collected it in one place, a book called Shepherd and Sheep: Essays on Loving and Leading in a Local Church.

If you like, you can grab the book on Amazon. We gave away 150 copies last Sunday at church. Below is the preface to the book and the table of contents.

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Preface

Of all the apps on my phone, my favorite is Strava. It’s the fitness tracker app I’ve used to log all my workouts for the last ten years. Every trip to the gym, every mile run on a road or a trail, and every mile ridden on a street or a stationary bike are all stored in my fitness history. With all that information, Strava creates what they call a “heatmap.” Overlaid on a map of the world, Strava uses a system of colored lines with various thicknesses to show the areas an athlete has traveled most. The heatmap resembles a diagram of arteries and veins. My heatmap shows thick lines up the back of Blue Mountain Parkway in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a climb I’ve ridden well over one hundred times. It’s a 1.59-mile climb to the top, with an average gradient of 8.4%, making it a Category 3 climb, although that probably only means something to cyclists. My quickest time was six years ago, which required just under eleven minutes of enjoyable suffering. I rarely check the leaderboard, but of the nearly two thousand attempts to summit the climb, that attempt is ranked forty-fifth. Not too bad.

A certain satisfaction comes not only from looking at individual excursions but also from seeing the aggregate of all the runs and all the rides in one place. Analyzing my heatmap, I notice the routines, those places and pathways I return to again and again. Some people might rather call these routines “ruts.” But the difference of word choice between routines and ruts is more than the difference between “you say to-may-toe, and I say to-mah-toe.” Ruts signify unthinking drudgery, a continuous grind from which we cannot pop loose. Routines signify, I like to think, the places my heart, and thus my feet, gravitate toward without much thinking. Routines signify the places we love to travel, even when we know doing so might involve eleven minutes of suffering. Or to say it in biblical language, where our routines are, there our treasure is also.

Buy on Amazon

This summer my church graciously offered me a sabbatical after seven years together. The sabbatical plan had been in place for a long time, but with all the unrest in the world and in local churches, it seemed like following through with the sabbatical this summer might be unwise. Sometime in early winter, however, the Lord began to give our church a fresh supply of stability. So, when the time came, my church sent me away, and I left. I left to rest and read and write and exercise and date my wife and play with my children for fifteen weeks.

In the early weeks of my sabbatical, I happened to look over some of the essays I’d written while at our church. There are over three hundred on my blog and another seventy-five published elsewhere. Like analyzing my Strava heatmap, I began to notice routines, those themes I tend to return to again and again. I hadn’t realized how often I alluded to The Chronicles of Narnia or how influential Zack Eswine’s book The Imperfect Pastor has been to me. (Well, maybe I did know that one already.) As I looked over all the words, the largest cluster seemed to revolve around life in a local church, the relationship between pastors and parishioners, shepherds and sheep. That makes sense, of course; pastoring is, after all, my day job.

But pastoring a local church is far more than a job to me. The local church signifies the place my heart loves to be, even though I know being here will often involve more than eleven minutes of suffering. So, as a gift to our church and for the joy of collecting the best of the essays in one place, I put together this book, my writing heatmap, if you will. Perhaps a half dozen of these articles were first published on my website, but most of them appeared elsewhere, places such as Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks, For The Church, Gospel-Centered Discipleship, and Desiring God. If you’re interested, you can see the note at the end of the book for the details of where each entry was published.

I subtitled this collection Essays on Loving and Leading in a Local Church because I like to think the two go together: loving and leading, if not in my actual shepherding, at least as an aspiration. But I gave it the title Shepherd & Sheep as a way to remember that every shepherd is first and foremost a sheep in the fold of the Good Shepherd. As the apostle Peter shares, each local shepherd is an under shepherd of the chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4). And praise God that the chief Shepherd loves the sheep he leads and leads the sheep he loves. Loving and leading go together with him.

May the congregational lives of local churches, the routines of local shepherds and sheep—our heatmaps—be to the praise of the glory of the Chief Shepherd’s grace.

Benjamin Vrbicek
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Summer 2021

Table of Contents

               Preface     ix

1             Bending the Covid Bow of Bronze     1
2            The Day That Darrin Died     10
3            “Pastor, Why Aren’t You Preaching about What’s Happening?”      13
4            Redeeming Pastoral Ambition      22
5            Spring Loaded Camming Devices and The Expository Sermon      27
6            When My Church Was Washed with Butter      32
7            Ministry Morning, Noon, and Night      37
8            Was I Betraying My Church by Interviewing Elsewhere?      44
9            The Greatest Enemy of the Church      48
10          Pastor, Strive to Learn Their Names      52
11           Pastors Need Healthy Boundaries      56
12          Do Not Despise a Gentle Nudge      60
13          Don’t Let Sexual Shame Move You from Christ’s Mission      66
14          The Truth Is Always Positive      71
15          Light for Those Who Sit in Darkness      76
16          Two Ways Every Christian Can Be Pastoral      80
17          On Pastoral Prayer      84
18          The Wrath of God Should Come to Our Minds More Often      91
19          When Ministry Success Becomes an Idol      97
20         How Much Does a Pastor Work?      102
21          Congregations of Bruised Reeds      110
22         Come to Me All Who Have Covid Weariness      114
23         Sometimes God Just Closes Doors      119
24         Dear Twitter, I’m Leaving You for My Wife      123
25         My Heart Is Full      128

               Publication Note      133
              About the Author      137

Let the Nations Be Glad in God: A Pastoral Prayer

Only rarely do I share on my blog a sermon or pastoral prayer from our church. This week I wanted to share my pastoral prayer from last Sunday. You can also watch it here.

Our church leaders, and me in particular, were recently gently rebuked for not seeing and preaching often enough what appears often enough in the Bible, especially the book of Acts, which we’re currently studying. And we were right to be rebuked.

What had we failed to see? That God loves the nations of the world, and we should too.

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Depending on which way you enter and leave the building, whether by the front doors or the office doors, you will walk through a hallway that has on one wall pictures of our church outreach partners and a map of the world, and on the other wall a Bible passage. The passage comes from Psalm 67. I’ll read you verse 3–4:

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

There’s a rather famous book about world missions written nearly thirty years ago that draws its title from a line in that passage: Let the Nations be Glad. The opening three paragraphs go like this:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. . . . “Let the peoples praise thee, O God; let all the peoples praise thee! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!” (Ps. 67:3-4).

But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. Missionaries will never call out, “Let the nations be glad!” who cannot say from the heart, “I rejoice in the LORD. . . . I will be glad and exult in you, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High” (Ps. 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship. (John Piper, Let the Nation’s be Glad, second edition, 17, emphasis original)

We’ve been preaching through the book of Acts on and off for the last 18 months. This morning is the fortieth sermon on our way to a total of forty-nine sermons throughout the book. We’ve talked lately about each week looking for the biggest, most clear, most significant aspects of the book and preaching about them.

While our preaching pastors have repeatedly called our attention to the good news of the sovereignty of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ who extends grace and mercy to his people and builds his church through preaching and sacrificial deeds of mercy, and while we have repeatedly spoken of the joy and urgency to share this good-news message with others in our lives—friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and so on—we have missed singing a note that the book of Acts sings: this God who lives and loves and reigns, is God of the nations.

Just in our passage from last week, Acts 20:1–16, we read of 20 different cities and regions from several nations: Macedonia, Greece, Syria, Macedonia (again), Berea, Thessalonica, Derbe, Asia, Troas, Philippi, Troas (again), Assos, Assos (again), Mitylene, Chios, Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Asia (again), and Jerusalem.

In forty sermons we have not directly addressed the cross-cultural missionary zeal and pattern that seeks to take the gospel across the borders of nations for the joy of the nations. This has been an oversight on my part. And I’m sorry. I’d like to highlight this theme now in a short prayer.

Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we believe, as Paul preached in Acts 17 that you are the God who made the world and everything in it. We believe that, being Lord of heaven and earth, you do not live in temples made by man. We believe that you are not served by human hands, as though you needed anything since you yourself give to all mankind life and breath and everything. And we believe that from one man you made every nation to live on all the face of the earth and that you determined allotted periods and the boundaries of our dwelling place with the purpose that we—the nations of the earth, the people of your creation—should seek you, our God and Creator, that we should feel our way toward you by observing your power and might and majesty and find you because you are not far from each one of us (cf. Acts 17:24–27).

Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the type of God whose mercy triumphs over your wrath (James 2:13). We thank you that when Adam and Eve sinned against you, you went looking for them. “Adam, where are you?” you said (Gen. 3:9).

We thank you that this missionary zeal climaxed in your messiah, our messiah, the person of Jesus Christ, who went looking for lost sheep and tells us he came “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

We thank you that this rescue mission includes anyone and everyone who would want to find joy and gladness in you.

And we ask that you would make us, your people, to embody your missionary zeal, your passion to reach not only our friends, our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and our enemies but the nations of the world. Fill us with white-hot worship for the sake of your name among the nations.

We pray for our speaker today, a long-time missionary and member of our church. That you would fill him with your Holy Spirit and our hearts with a readiness to receive from you.

We pray all of this in the name and power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

* Photo by Brett Zeck on Unsplash

Ministry Morning, Noon, and Night: A Day in the Life of a Pastor

“I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.”
–The Apostle Paul

Sometimes people tease me that pastors only work one day a week. Sometimes they are not teasing.

Morning

Today I wake at 4:45 am to the muted vibrating of my iPhone. The phone that wakes me rests on my nightstand on top of a book and a hand towel because the extra padding dulls the noise: phones resting directly on wooden nightstands that start vibrating two hours before first light do not make for happy marriages. I know from experience.

By 5:00 I am on my living room couch to read through the three chapters of the book of Nahum, a book that ends with a provocative question. “All who hear the news about you clap their hands at your fall, for who has not felt your endless cruelty?” the prophet asks concerning the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. I read this, and I am reminded of a little Bible trivia. Only the book of Jonah also ends with a question, which also happens to be a book about Nineveh.

Each year I try to trek from cover to cover. Some mornings a verse or phrase sparks deeper joy in God. Some mornings a verse or phrase sparks conviction of sin and a deeper understanding of my need for Jesus. This morning, like a lot of them, the sparks do not fly and my eyelids droop.

After I have put Nahum away I sit with my laptop open to edit a friend’s book proposal. People seem to ask me for help with books more often these days. A book proposal is the business plan for a book, an unwritten and unpublished book that dreams of someday hitting Amazon and blessing readers and maybe the author. I know something of these dreams. Book proposals describe the book’s theme, author, contents, and more—and have a few sample chapters. I told my friend I would do this yesterday, but I ate something at dinner two nights ago that left me too sick yesterday morning to get up early and write. Today, however, I feel great; food allergies strike randomly like that.

At 6:44 I email my friend who lives in London his book proposal. A few hours later he tells me thank you and that “the feedback was spot-on,” which is nice to hear but is tempered with the knowledge that no traditional publisher has ever found my own book proposals spot-on.

I eat breakfast around the table at 7:00 with my wife and six children. This morning Brooke made toasted bagels and turkey sausage links. We all talk about our day. For three minutes I also read a children’s Bible based on the book of Acts as I wonder to myself if I try to cram too much into the morning. We have never read anything as a family at breakfast, and maybe we shouldn’t.

Breakfast ends with my toddler yelling from the bathroom for my wife to come help. I help it instead of her because my wife does it all the time and taking my turn makes me feel like an “Ephesians 5” type of husband even though I know I’ve domesticated the idea of a husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her.

Once we’ve walked children to the bus stop and back, I shower quick and make the three-minute commute to work. But my wife calls me on the way to tell me I forgot my laptop, so I go back quick to grab it. “Quick” starts to feel like the key adjective of the day.

When I make it to church, I record a nine-minute sample section of an audiobook in the church basement before the rest of the staff arrives. I wanted to get the recording done before my true workday starts. I made the sample to figure out if the equipment I own can reach professional-grade quality. I sort of doubt it will; I used a bunch of winter blankets from my house to dampen ambient sound, which sure didn’t make me feel much like a professional.

Now the day picks up. I answer emails and read a chapter of a book about the gospel by Ray Ortlund. At noon, a man will come to talk about the chapter because he will lead our Bible study through the material this coming Sunday night. The study this week engages with Galatians 2. How exactly in 2:4, we wonder, did false brothers slip in to spy out their freedom in Christ [not to be circumcised]? And the “circumcision party” (2:12), we think, does not sound much like a party. We both chuckle. He is a newer Christian, and this will be his first time ever leading a Bible study. Just two years ago was the first time he had ever been to a small group Bible study. Aslan, as they say, is on the move.

Noon

But before my friend can meet in the church café, I walk in the rain holding an umbrella. With another staff member I visit a neighbor who will likely die in the next day or two. We walk down the alley behind church, make a right on Ash Street, then a left to pass by a dozen houses. We shake and collapse our umbrellas, knock, and see if someone answers. The wife of the dying man sent the church a note through our Facebook page. I saw her message right before I went to bed but did not respond; I knew I would just show up when I could. She had also messaged us eight weeks ago when they first got the news her husband was dying.

“The doctors gave him three to six weeks, and here we are at week eight,” she says to us while I sit next to the metal gurney bed placed in their living room. He lays on the bed with his eyes closed and breathes heavily. The bed, like death, does not belong in the living room. “He wanted to beat the doctor’s six-week prediction,” she tells us, “and live to vote one more time.” He did both.

But when we visited eight weeks ago, we all sang a hymn and listened to this child of God, who looked so relatively healthy, tell stories of how God saved him and called him into prison ministry. He also told us of his love for birds. On this visit he tells no stories. The morphine has already induced sedation. Although his bed sits by the window to see his bird feeders, the blinds are pulled shut. Together we pray with his soon-to-be widow and wipe our sniffles away from behind our masks. I stand up, pat his legs, and tell him he has run a great race and God will carry him home. He opens his eyes and speaks his last words to me. “I’m just so gassed.” I say back, “God will carry you.” We leave in the rain and walk back up the street and the alley to our office.  

More meetings in the afternoon. First, a team of four offers critiques of the merits of my sermon from the previous Sunday on John 4, the thirsty woman who had five husbands, and our schizophrenic view of sex—it’s everything and nothing. Not my best sermon, we all agree, but still good. I probably should have talked more directly to our broken sexualities rather than around the topics, they suggest.

Then we have a staff meeting, which assigned me a few action items I quickly knock out so that I can have more time to call a husband. This husband had asked me to talk a while ago, but I could not make time for him—and I have felt bad about that. But now we talk, and I hear more about his marriage, which we have discussed several times before. I hang up the phone and contemplate that today I had prayed with a man on hospice and now pray with a man whose marriage might as well be on hospice. The marriage might recover, but we sort of doubt it. The morphine of lawyers and legal separation, as it were, has put the marriage in sedation. I fear it is only a matter of time before it passes. Only God knows.

Surprised I finished my office day before 4:00, I realize I can squeeze in a quick trip to the gym, so I do. Someone going through our church membership class raised questions about our eschatology and had emailed me a sermon by David Jeremiah. I could not make time to watch the sermon last week or the week before, so I play the sermon about the end times on YouTube at the gym while I do a CrossFit workout. The workout involves alternating between the rowing machine and throwing a twenty-pound rubber ball ten feet in the air. I like our new member and believe he likes our church, but I wonder if he noticed the sermon said my view of the return of Christ did not take the Bible seriously.

I make a quick trip home from the gym so I can make the most of my quick one hour at home to talk with my wife and kids before I go back to work. I sit at the table and read a chapter of The Magician’s Nephew with one of my daughters. We don’t finish the chapter before I have to shower quickly and scoot back to work.

And Night

I’m in the church basement again—this time a different room. I sit in a circle of chairs with our team of pastor-elders. Most elder meetings we laugh and pray and discuss how best to lead our church. Tonight is no different. But we also wrestled with more church discipline cases than usual. Again, Aslan is on the move—but sometimes his movement makes life messy.

Before I leave the church, I bump into a friend who talks to me about his recent engagement and asks if I would officiate his wedding and oversee his premarital counseling. Delighted he asked, I say yes.

Now I sit at home on the couch eating cookies I just covered with frosting as I talk to my wife about the day—but only after I made a quick round to all my children’s bedrooms to say goodnight. They were already in bed but waiting up for Dad.

My wife and I sit and talk about the day and the pastor-elder meeting. She knew enough of the items on the agenda to know we should talk for a bit. It is too late in the evening, but we start the next episode in our current Netflix series anyway. Then we brush our teeth, and I set my alarm, turn down my ringer volume, and place the phone on the nightstand.

I kiss my wife, and in the last thirty seconds before I fall asleep, I think to myself that pastors do not only work one day a week. We must work at least two.

Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing” (The Writing Life). If “this hour” and “that one” were less full than they were today and more balanced, that might be more ideal and more sustainable. But I do believe that if we pastors spend our days thus, we spend our lives well.

* Photo by Kristian Egelund on Unsplash

Our Church Was Maliciously Hacked and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

We are two weeks away from the release of our book Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World. As you might expect, our book comes down pretty heavily against clickbait posts.

We define clickbait as “the pejorative term for content, especially titles and images, designed to get visitors to click. The term is loosely drawn from fishing where shiny bait attracts the attention of a fish but conceals the hook. To some degree, what constitutes clickbait is in the eye of the beholder; however, standard tropes are readily identifiable” (from the Glossary, p. 153).

Yet for how hard we critique clickbait, my coauthor also writes in the book, “Don’t be afraid to smile when you write. . . . Feel free to include fun, even clickbait-y, posts from time to time” (John Beeson, Blogging for God’s Glory, p. 27–28).

And I agree, which is why I wrote the title to this post the way I did. It’s probably only my second deliberately clickbait title in six years of blogging. The other was from a few years ago and called, “I Read Every Jared Wilson Book This Year; You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.” But even both of these titles consciously spoof a stock clickbait trope.

Regardless, our church was, in fact, maliciously hacked. However, you can probably guess what happened next: I sent an email to our church. That’s it. Well, it took a little more work than that, but basically, that was it—just an email.

I wrestled with whether to send the email to our church at all, just as I’ve wrestled with whether to draw even more attention to the event here on my blog. When someone takes off his or her clothes and runs across the field of a professional football game, the cameras look away. Television networks do this because they don’t want to show nudity during the game but also because giving the streaker more attention scratches the itch he or she wanted scratched. I sort of feel the same talking about the hacking. But I’m sharing the letter I wrote to our church with you because of the paragraph I wrote near the end, which I put in bold. That paragraph sums up not only how our church will get through this event, but how all Christians can honor God when evil punches us in the gut.

*     *     *

Dear Church,

Since yesterday afternoon, I’ve written about seven different versions of this email in my head. But this is the one I’m actually writing and sending.

Many of you noticed that the registration system for church filled up before Friday afternoon. It’s possible that if everyone—or even most—of our church wanted to come back to church on the same Sunday, we would not fit in the building. However, I don’t think that’s what happened. I’ll explain.

It appears someone has maliciously hacked our registration system, either filling out legit names and emails or slight variations of those names and emails. Again, it’s too early to be sure why this is happening, but it is clear that something is happening. The registration system is broken.

Here’s what I propose. Please just come to whichever service best fits your needs and your schedule, whether you registered for that service or not. (We’ve been publishing COVID updates here, which explains the details about each service.) Seriously, please do NOT stay away just because our registration system was hacked.

Our goal was to have up to 75 people in the first service at 8:30 am. We want this service to be the most COVID-cautious; the building is still being professionally cleaned and sanitized before each Sunday. The other services at 9:45 am and 11 am can have up to 100 people in each of these. In truth, we can have up to 120 people in each service and still remain socially distanced and under the 50% capacity goals.

Also, we now have overflow options in the church basement fellowship hall. We’ll stream the worship service in real-time on our large TVs and through the new sound system. The newly renovated fellowship hall can hold an extra 50–60 people in the first and third services. (Overflow seating is not an option during second service because our membership class is using that room.) If either the first or third services get too full in the sanctuary, please consider moving downstairs.

Here’s my final plea: please come with a big smile and a heart that is happy do whatever is best for the whole church. I believe that the way we will honor God, defeat evil, and preserve through suffering is not by outrage but by cultivating joyful Christian unity when it feels like everything is stacked against us.

Our church has been thriving through all the craziness of 2020, and I intend to do everything I can to help it stay this way. The other day I joked that twenty years from now you can tell future generations that this was the summer and fall “you had to walk ten miles to attend church – uphill, both ways, in the snow.”

Yep. But it’s also the summer and fall that Jesus was still Lord, and he reigns even now from heaven and is building his church. Come, worship the risen Lord with us tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Vrbicek, lead pastor

* Photo by Simon Abrams on Unsplash

Fathers, Ask for Their Heart (And, Preachers, Write a Poem)

I sympathize with fellow church leaders who wrestle with what to do at church on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Some of us avoid them altogether, as if they didn’t exist, while others craft the sermon, even the service, around the day.

I once heard a pastor remark that those opposed to “high church liturgy” often have instead a “Hallmark liturgical calendar,” so not Pentecost or Epiphany but MLK Day, a summer series bounded by Memorial Day and Labor Day with Fourth of July in the middle, and a fall calendar with Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving.

Our church tends to fall in the middle. On the one hand, we mark Lent and Advent, but we miss all the national holidays except Mother’s and Father’s Day.

But even when a church highlights Mother’s and Father’s Day, it’s not always clear the best way to do so. My church, just like your church, is filled with some people rejoicing and other people weeping.

Father’s Day amplifies the pain of infertility, miscarriage, abuse, abandonment, divorce, and death. But Father’s Day also highlights the joys of parenting and being parented and that children are a wonderful gift from the Lord. It’s also a day to encourage the fathers among us who strive, however imperfectly, to image the love of the heavenly Father.

During our church services on these days, I’ll often do the announcements or pastoral prayer, briefly mentioning this tension and praying in such a way as to cover the spectrum of emotions and to lift our eyes to the Lord.

Some years on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I also write a poem and read it to the church. Two years ago, I wrote a poem for Father’s Day based on Proverbs 23:26, which says, “My son, give me your heart.” I stumbled on that short verse a long time ago, being struck by the audacity of asking for something of such significance: a father not asking for mere good deeds done with indifference, but rather his son’s heart, the very center of who he is. It strikes me that this is what God asks from all of us. “Give me your heart,” our Father in heaven says.

My poem is an imagined conversation between a loving father and a prodigal son. I’ve included the poem below. I only share it in the hope that it might stir an idea as you prepare yourself and your church for next year’s Father’s Day.

When I shared the poem in church, the feedback was good but certainly not glowing. That’s what I expected. The poem is good but not great. And that’s okay. I ain’t Will Shakespeare or John Piper.

But this winter, a year and a half after I shared the poem at church, I went to the house of a member who had died a few days before. I sat around a kitchen table with the man’s widow and three grown children to plan the funeral of the father and husband they loved and will only see again in heaven.

After we planned and prayed and hugged, I went to leave. And as I did, I saw my Father’s Day poem taped to his fridge. I smiled, thanking God that even though most of the time pastors don’t get to see the fruit God grows through our ministry, sometimes we do.

* * *

“My Son, Give Me Your Heart”

Dad, there’s a cuddly dragon outside
I’d like to take him for a ride
He’s just beyond my window pane
His breath is steaming in the rain

My son, no
Dragons grow

I see him when I close my eyes
His whispering sounds so wise

Son, a dragon’s purr becomes a roar
He won’t be thrilled except through more
He’ll stretch his wings and won’t be tamed
His claws cut deep in hearts he’s claimed

Okay, okay, I understand
For you I’ll live a life that’s bland
I’ll clean my room and mow the yard
Grit teeth and tithe, and do what’s hard

My son, give me your heart

Remember that dragon outside?
I’m going to take him for a ride
His shiny scales feel soft and fast
We’ll swoop and soar over oceans vast

Don’t be deceived when they entice
The scales that shimmer also slice
Though his highest intension sleeps
A dragon only plays for keeps
Between your shoulders is his prize
Never believe him when he lies

My son, give me your heart

Then ride a stallion, pick a cause
Don’t live for fleeting man’s applause
Follow God, love him first to last
Then you’ll soar over oceans vast

Now, I’ve failed you; I blew it bad
I’ll run away; I’ll fix it, Dad

My son, give me your heart

You said, Love a woman, love her well
But I loved ten
You said, Follow all the rules
I ran with fools

That’s neither what I said nor meant
A father’s love will not relent
Run and run away you may
Never so far that you can’t pray
And I will surely love you still
Though you rebelled against my will
My son, give me your heart

* This article was originally posted by the Eastern District Association of The Evangelical Free Church of America here.

Reopening Our Church: Well, Sort Of

I sent a letter to our church last week about our plan to reopen our Sunday morning, in-person services. As our pastor-elders wrestled with all of the thorny issues around reopening, we were helped by drawing from what a few churches in our area had shared with their churches (specifically, letters from Liberti, Grace Bible Fellowship, West Shore, and Living Water, just to name a few). It’s nice to have friends leading like-minded churches in the area.

In the spirit of cooperation and partnership, I’m sharing the letter and video I sent to our church, hoping it might serve as another of the many helpful resources floating into the inboxes of pastors and parishioners. I consider the letter “open-source,” meaning you can use anything you want, adapting it as you see fit.

Just one disclaimer, however. You’ll probably want to think through and reword the mask section near the end of the letter. Without going into details, that’s an area of the letter I wished I had tweaked to avoid misunderstanding and better love all of our members.

*     *     *

Dear Community,

Last week I heard a pastor say he didn’t like the phrasing of churches reopening. “We never closed,” he said.

I understand his point. Neither did we close. For the last twelve weeks our church has been no less of a church. I came to the office as often in April as I did in February. At our church the Word has been preached, prayers have been prayed, people have been discipled, needs have been met, and, I trust, God has been glorified.

But we did temporarily suspend meeting together on Sunday mornings in our building, which was no small change. It’s been terrible, actually. Over the six-and-a-half years I’ve been a pastor at Community, we’ve canceled our Sunday morning services only twice. When nearly forty inches of snow fell on a Saturday, we canceled. Another time our heating unit broke on a Friday, and the sanctuary temperature dropped to just above freezing, and we couldn’t get it fixed before Sunday. Even then we didn’t cancel. A church down the road let us meet in their building that Sunday afternoon.

So, again, closing for twelve consecutive weeks was no small adjustment. The leaders of Community did not make this decision lightly, but we felt we did so wisely. And now, the same prayerful and Scripture-informed wisdom that led our pastor-elders to suspend services is leading us to begin the process of unsuspending services. To say it another way, we’re opening in ten days. On June 7, we plan to hold worship services in person.

Next week we’ll follow up with more information, but let me briefly mention a few of the details now.

In the month of June we intend to hold three services on Sunday mornings: 8:30, 10:00, and 11:30. The first and third services will be inside our sanctuary (8:30 & 11:30) while the middle service will be outside in the front yard (10:00), weather permitting of course. We hope the outdoor service will especially be a blessing to those who are uncomfortable going in buildings and those who have health challenges making them vulnerable. We are going to limit each service to seventy-five people, which is a number we feel can be socially distanced in a sanctuary of our size. We’ll use some sort of reservation system for people to grab their spot. I’ll share more on the reservation system next week.

During June, we’re also going to streamline what we offer. The worship services will be shorter than normal, probably about forty-five minutes, with a sermon near the beginning and most of the singing at the end. We’ll also rope off certain pews, asking households to remain socially distanced throughout their entire time in the building. This means all children will need to stay with families during the worship services, as we will have no childcare or Sunday school classes. That’s a bummer for many of you, I’m sure. But again, we hope June is just the first phase of several increasingly less restrictive steps. This might encourage you. Over the last few months, we installed the equipment to stream our worship services to the café and nursery. So, we’ll make the café and nursery open if you need to leave the sanctuary. In the café and nursery you’ll be able to watch and hear the service. Just know those rooms will not be socially distanced, and you’ll need to keep a parent with children. Speaking of streaming the services, the first service will be live-streamed on Facebook and recorded so that people can watch it on delay.

For June, we’ll just open some of the upstairs portions of the building. And we’ll do our best to clean the building before you arrive and between the two indoor services.

We’re still working on what to do about Sunday school. There’s talk about moving it to Wednesday nights over Zoom, but we’ll let you know more about that later.

Now, let’s talk about masks. We won’t require them for the outdoor service, but everyone over the age of five is strongly encouraged to wear a mask while you are in the building. It’s what we do in Pennsylvania at Home Depot and Giant Grocery Store (for now), so we should do it at church as well. We don’t think mask wearing will be done in perpetuity, but for the time being I will be wearing a mask when I’m not preaching, as will the worship team whenever they are not leading songs. Our church will buy some extra masks and have them at the door in case you forget. That being said, if you are uncomfortable being anywhere near someone who might not be wearing a mask, or if you are adamantly opposed to wearing a mask in church, you might just want to hang back for a few weeks. Our church leadership is doing our best to make our worship services a blessing to everyone, and we need your help.

If you are sick or have been exposed to those who are, please stay home. I know you’re itching to get back—we all are. But our ability to continue to meet in person is contingent on our being wise and thinking about the needs of everyone, not just our desires. If you are not ready to come back to church, that’s okay too. In fact, we can’t have everyone come back at first or we’d have to do six or seven services. I would guess nearly five hundred people might attend our church over the course of a month, and we’re only offering room for half of that each Sunday. But based on our informal polling, we feel like that’s probably a good number to accommodate those ready to return. 

Finally, please be gracious and compassionate with each other and not make unwarranted assumptions as people make differing choices about attending or not attending, and if attending, whether indoors or outdoors. We’re in an odd time where people who have never had to publicly share their health history with others are suddenly put in the vulnerable position of having others wonder about their medical history simply by choosing to sit outside rather than inside. Let’s assume the best of others as we would want others to assume the best of us.

This is just Phase One, if you will. Our leaders will re-evaluate each week and keep our eyes open for ways to serve the church better.

More to come next week.

Thanks,
Benjamin, lead teaching pastor

A encouragement to our church as we move toward reopening on June 7, 2020.

* Picture adapted from an unused design created by Matt Higgins for my book Don’t Just Send a Resume. Even though we did not use this design for the book cover, I appreciated the way he based the design on the steeple at our church.

The Exhaustion of Pastoral Ministry: Bending the COVID Bow of Bronze

A few weeks ago our national church office reached out to me, asking if I’d be willing to write about the coronavirus from the perspective of pastoral ministry. I did not want to do it.

But I’m glad I did.

Putting into words the struggles I felt brought more healing than I expected it would. Several pastors told me just reading it did the same for them.

“Bending the COVID Bow of Bronze” is the most extended and personal essay I’ve ever had published. I didn’t share it on Facebook because I almost preferred not having people read it. But since it’s been out a few weeks, and I’m doing better than before, I thought I’d share some of it here. Even though it came out second, it’s really the prequel to a related article I wrote that many people seemed to find helpful (“Come to Me All Who Have COVID Weariness, and I Will Give You Rest”).

If you know pastors or others in full-time ministry, perhaps you’d consider sharing this essay with them.

*     *     *

Bending the COVID Bow of Bronze
One pastor’s struggle toward hope in God

Despite the numerical growth and spiritual maturity our congregation experienced, I presented my dilemma to the elder board. Something had to give. Now that I had been the lead teaching pastor for a while, I told them, I have learned one of two things: either I’m not called to pastoral ministry, or I’m doing it wrong. What other option could there be? I asked. Ministry should not be so hard.

Calm and lovingly, the elder board listened. This meeting, by the way, was a month before most pastors had heard of the coronavirus.

At the time, I had just finished reading and resonated with what tennis legend Andre Agassi wrote in his transparent memoir, Open. Agassi tells of repeatedly hearing his gruff father bellow, “Hit harder, Andre!” as they practiced grueling hours on their backyard Las Vegas court. Seven-year-old Andre was forced to return balls shot out of a cannon he called “the dragon” until he grew to hate the sport that made him famous. And from his youth matches to winning Wimbledon, that voice never stopped shouting. Hit harder. Hit harder. Hit harder.

Working hard or hardly working

I often hear voices telling me to try harder and do more, sometimes from the closest allies. In a recent Twitter thread about how pastors can serve their churches, one of my favorite authors said, “quarantine = overtime,” adding that if a pastor thinks the quarantine means part-time, then he’s “asleep at the wheel.”

Okay fine, I mumble under my breath. I’m sure some pastor somewhere needed that salvo, just as Jeremiah needed to be chided about competing with horses and surviving in the thicket of the Jordan (Jer 12:5). But what if a pastor feels drowsy at the wheel for reasons other than laziness? Sitting in the driver’s seat nine months behind a short-staffed church has exhausted me—and that was before a global pandemic hit.

Between March and June, we are attempting 20 new or re-tooled ministry initiatives to serve our church during the crisis and prepare us for when we return. We’re rebuilding our website, recording video sermons and worship songs, making phone calls to members and attendees, and posting daily Facebook videos throughout May.

Yet, for every three phone calls I make to church members, I feel guilty for not making ten. My theology tells me only the Chief Shepherd is omnipresent and omnipotent, but still I try to be everywhere at once, doing ministry fast and famously, as Zack Eswine critiqued in The Imperfect Pastor. I hear Jesus whisper that all who labor may come to him for rest. But for some reason, my sin and psyche assume “all” can’t include pastors; someone has to drive his sheep.

I know I’m not the only one who feels overworked. Our fridge holds a massive daily calendar to help coordinate the schedules of everyone in our large family. On day 21 of the lockdown, I stood behind my wife as she scratched a black X on the calendar. She looked at me and said, “That’s 63 meals.” We’re now on day 60. Comedian Jim Gaffigan once said, “You know what it’s like having a fourth kid? Imagine you’re drowning, then someone hands you a baby.” We have six kids, and the older ones can eat more than me.

// To continue reading this article, please click over to the Evangelical Free Church of America’s website (here).

* Photo from EFCA NOW blog post.

The Day That Darrin Died: Sadness over Darrin Patrick’s Death

Last Friday I opened Twitter and saw the headline that pastor Darrin Patrick had died unexpectedly. Scrolling through my feed I saw pastor after pastor expressing surprise and sorrow. I felt the same. For several years, Darrin was my pastor. And although I haven’t been a member of his church for many years, in a lingering way, I still felt like he was one of my pastors.

Religious News reported that Darrin died from a self-inflicted gunshot. You can read the article to get more background on his ministry influence, his rough patch a few years ago, and his return to what appeared to be healthy, pastoral ministry in a local church. I’m not going to write about all of that here, mostly because I only know those parts of his story the same way many of you do, that is, from a distance. Also, others have chronicled those events in more prominent places, as in Ed Stetzer’s 2019 three-part series on Darrin’s restoration process (here, here, and here). I’d like to stay more personal because that’s all I know well, and also because one of Darrin’s gifts was brevity. A longwinded post from me wouldn’t honor that strength.

When my wife and I were first married, we moved to St. Louis. Darrin had planted The Journey only a few years before, and it was still relatively small in the summer of 2005. But the rapid growth had already begun or was about to begin in earnest. We followed The Journey’s church moves and expansion across four different campuses in just two years, from Ladue to Brentwood to Tower Grove to West County. Our next move was to leave Darrin’s church, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Shortly after we arrived at The Journey, I told Darrin I felt God calling me into pastoral ministry but struggled to work out the details of that call. He said we should grab breakfast. So, on a Saturday morning over plates of cheesy eggs and cubed potatoes at Stratton’s Café, Darrin encouraged me to try seminary at night for one year and then later go full-time during the day. So I did.

I never had breakfast with Darrin again. That hurt. But it wasn’t his fault or mine. There were a hundred, if not two hundred, young men just like me at The Journey preparing for ministry who wanted to learn from Darrin. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just math. The parishioner-to-pastor ratio got skewed, more meeting requests than minutes in a day. So we left his church, not because we didn’t love The Journey, but because I knew I needed to know a pastor and a pastor had to know me if I were going to be one someday. We found a small church near our house where I knew a pastor and learned to pastor.

Although I didn’t know Darrin well or for long, at significant moments in my life and ministry, I still wanted to give him updates. Sometimes I did. When I graduated from seminary and found my first job in pastoral ministry, I wrote him a long letter thanking him that some seventy-five months earlier he had encouraged me to pursue seminary; I finished strong and wanted Darrin to know I’d carried his council through. When Darrin spoke at the 2012 Desiring God conference, he saw me in the crowd, and we talked for several minutes before he spoke. When The Gospel Coalition published my first article, I sent the link to Darrin, which he seemed eager to read. Another time, I wrote a long, handwritten letter thanking him for specific lines from a sermon preached eight years before but remain words I’ll never forget. A few years ago, he sent me a Twitter message asking me to apply for an opening they had. I told him, Thanks but no.

In the best sense, Darrin was like a dad on a playground where lots of kids kept yelling, “Hey, look at me.” I was one of those kids. And I don’t think that was bad. Paul writes to the church in Corinth that “though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers” (1 Corinthians 4:15). Darrin was a spiritual father to many.

On Friday when I saw the news about Darrin’s death and received a few text messages, sadness ambushed me. Darrin had not been my pastor for nearly fifteen years, and yet, in another sense, through his writing and speaking ministry, he never really stopped being one of my pastors. Until Friday.

* Photo screengrab from YouTube, “Darrin Patrick - Lessons Learned in Losing My Church - Numbers 20:1-13” from May 27, 2019

When My Little Boy Got the Swine Flu: Learning to Lament

On Wednesday of last week, I put on Twitter that I experienced a “Lenten miracle.”

“What was that miracle?” you say.

I finished my sermon early. That might not feel so miraculous to you, but I’ve struggled to complete a sermon before Saturday most weeks over the last year because we’ve been short-staffed, and pastoral attention is spread thin.

But I had to finish early because I traveled to Philadelphia at the end of the week for a conference with other pastors. The conference was before everything was being canceled because of the pandemic—or I should say during when everything was being canceled. I say this because as announcements were made nationally and at the state level by our governor, you could see and feel the attention of all the pastors in the room shift to our vibrating phones.

The Fear of Being Helpless

Our church, like all churches, has members with different levels of fear on the one end and skepticism on the other. I’m sympathetic to both. But I keep thinking about November of 2009. I got the swine flu, and so did my eighteen-month-old son. I was a fulltime seminary student, and I worked nearly fulltime in the construction industry too. We didn’t have a ton of money. I was afraid. The news told me people were dying, especially children and the elderly. A classmate was a former physician. I begged him to write a prescription for Tamiflu which was being rationed. I couldn’t focus on lectures or work, always thinking about what would happen to my little boy and fearing the worst.

I don’t feel that same fear now, but I pastor some who do.

Because I finished the sermon early on Wednesday, when it came time to preach it to a video camera on Saturday afternoon so we could share it on Sunday morning (another first for us), looking over my message felt odd. I wrestled with whether to set everything written aside and start a new sermon from scratch or to simply preach it as written. The world had changed so much in just a few days. In the end, I chose something of a middle road. We continued our sermon series: “How Long, O Lord? Learning the Language of Lament.” As our church journeys toward Good Friday and Easter, we are preaching through several of what are called Psalms of Lament. We couldn’t have planned it better.

I Find the Psalms Difficult to Read

I wonder if there are parts of the Bible that you read with more ease. Perhaps when you read certain parts of the Bible, twenty or thirty minutes go by without difficulty. Maybe the passionate gospel logic from the book of Romans captivates you. Or perhaps the parables of Jesus arrest your attention. Or maybe you love the Old Testament narratives, as in the book of Esther. You love reading about the hidden hand of divine providence that orchestrates events, turning the heart of the king toward his wife and the good of God’s people, which, by the way, is a helpful reminder for right now: God’s hiddenness does not indicate the absence of his power.

Some of you feel this way about the Psalms. I hear you talk about them this way. “When things are wonderful,” you say, “I read the Psalms.” “When things are hard,” you say, “I read the Psalms.” That’s good. I admire those of you who feel this way. I confess that I find the Psalms the most difficult of all portions of Scripture for me to read and enjoy. I’ve tried to think about why. I have a few ideas.

I think I’ve struggled to read and enjoy the Psalms because my method of Bible reading does not cooperate well with the genre of the Psalms. Reading four chapters every day as I make my yearly revolution from Genesis to Revelation, doesn’t allow enough time to go deep with each Psalm.

I’ll put it like this. You can drive your car to church on the highway in sixth gear. But if you want to back up out of your driveway, sixth gear is not so helpful. You need reverse. You need to gently tap the brake pedal as you cycle your eyes through your mirrors and glance over your shoulder, constantly adjusting the steering wheel. The Psalms are like reverse. The Psalms demand individual attention. They demand time. They demand a lingering and contemplative approach. This is true of the whole Bible, but especially when reading the Psalms because each new chapter of the Psalms is like beginning a new short story with a new author, new plot, new characters, new struggles.

When the Academic and Theoretical Becomes Experiential

In Psalm 38, which was our passage last week, the author says in verse 2, “For your arrows have sunk into me, / and your hand has come down on me.” In our piety, we would likely be inclined to say, “For it seems like your arrows have sunk into me, / and it seems like your hand has come down on me.” But the Psalms encourage us not to be so tidy with language. Psalms of Lament come from the gut. We shout Psalms of Lament with vocal cords warn raw from groaning. In this way, the Psalms of Lament are best studied not under a microscope while we wear a white lab coat, but rather in sackcloth with dust and ash on our heads. Biblical laments are learned by fathers with an open Bible and a toddler who can’t stop vomiting.

I am not thankful that some in our congregation feel helpless and afraid. But given where we are, I am thankful that this Lent season we have a chance to slow down, a chance to linger over just one Psalm each week. When we began planning a sermon series called “Learning the Language of Lament,” I never expected that our “learning” would be so experiential. God knew better.

* Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Excising the Plank of Narcissism from Our Eyes: Book Giveaway

That the ancient character Narcissus features prominently in Greek mythology tells us the issues the church faces today have long plagued humanity. We can even hear the seeds of narcissism in the whisper of the more crafty serpent: “You will not surely die. . . you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4–5).

And so we fell.

But from a biblical framework, what is narcissism, and how does it manifest itself in the church? And when a narcissistic pastor stands at the door of a church knocking and demanding to come in and be served dinner, what shall we do?

I had the privilege of interviewing professor and counselor Chuck DeGroat about these painful topics and his recent book When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. The article was published in the March print edition of Christianity Today and on the CT website here. I found the book helpful but also unsettling. I’d encourage you to read it, especially if you are in church leadership. When you do, don’t read it for someone else, for a friend, or for that pastor and church down the road. Bring the issues close. We’ll all be better when we do.

I wound up with an extra early release copy of the book, which launches next week. I’d love to share it with one of you. To enter the book giveaway, just share this post on social media and tag me in the post so I can mark you down. And if social media is not your thing, you can email this blog post to your friends. If you do, just forward me the email, and I’ll enter you in the giveaway. Next week I’ll update this post to announce the winner. [Update: The winner of the giveaway is Jenny from Twitter. I’m reaching out now.]

When Narcissism Comes to Church opens with an extended quote from Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk who lived during the middle of the twentieth century. Merton says that a Christian consumed with himself “is capable of destroying religion and making the name of God odious to men.” Indeed, Merton, indeed.

Excising the plank of narcissism from the eyes of Christ’s church won’t be easy, but it’s a surgery the church—with the help of God’s Spirit—must perform lest God’s name be blasphemed among the nations.

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The opening epigraph from Chuck DeGroat’s
When Narcissism Comes to Church
taken from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation

The pleasure that is in his heart when he does difficult things and succeeds in doing them well, tells him secretly: “I am a saint.” At the same time, others seem to recognize him as different from themselves. They admire him, or perhaps avoid him—a sweet homage of sinners! The pleasure burns into a devouring fire. The warmth of that fire feels very much like the love of God. It is fed by the same virtues that nourished the flame of charity. He burns with self-admiration and thinks: “It is the fire of the love of God.” He thinks his own pride is the Holy Ghost. The sweet warmth of pleasure becomes the criterion of all his works. The relish he savors in acts that make him admirable in his own eyes, drives him to fast, or to pray, or to hide in solitude, or to write many books, or to build churches and hospitals, or to start a thousand organizations. And when he gets what he wants he thinks his sense of satisfaction is the unction of the Holy Spirit. And the secret voice of pleasure sings in his heart: “Now sum sicut caeteri homines” (I am not like other men). Once he has started on this path there is no limit to the evil his self-satisfaction may drive him to do in the name of God and of His love, and for His glory. He is so pleased with himself that he can no longer tolerate the advice of another—or the commands of a superior. When someone opposes his desires he folds his hands humbly and seems to accept it for the time being, but in his heart he is saying: “I am persecuted by worldly men. They are incapable of understanding one who is led by the Spirit of God. With the saints it has always been so.” Having become a martyr he is ten times as stubborn as before. It is a terrible thing when such a one gets the idea he is a prophet or a messenger of God or a man with a mission to reform the world. . . . He is capable of destroying religion and making the name of God odious to men.

* Photo by Anton Khmelnitsky on Unsplash

On Pastoral Prayer: It Should not Be so Difficult for Me but It Is

This summer the pastor-elders of our church listened to a 9Marks podcast about leading corporate prayers during church worship services (here). We found Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever’s discussion both stimulating and convicting. We even made the change to incorporate more time for meaningful prayer during our worship services.

Now, each of our pastor-elders takes a Sunday to pray before the offering is collected, which is typically done right before the sermon. Sometimes teaching and travel schedules are such that an elder-qualified man who is not currently a pastor-elder may lead the prayer. But you get the idea. The prayer typically lasts around five minutes and often has overlap with the themes of the sermon. I’m so thankful Scott, one of our lay pastor-elders, initiated and maintains this ministry.

This weekend it was my turn to pray. We had a service less full than normal, so I took the opportunity to stretch us a bit by praying closer to ten minutes. It stretched me too. Because we’ve recently had an influx of newcomers, I used the opportunity to pray through our church’s five-year goals, which our leaders think and pray about often, but, admittedly, we do a poorer job of keeping in front of our people. For what it’s worth, we’re in year four of five.

Below is an edited version of the prayer I wrote Sunday morning before church. Jesus warned against praying in public to be seen by others (Matthew 6:1–4). But Jesus did not mean this as an indictment against all public prayer, for he immediately proceeded to teach us what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In this stream, I share below my pastoral prayer from last Sunday. I hope it encourages you to make prayer an increasingly important part of your local church services.

*     *     *

Heavenly Father, we pause when looking over our goals. We do not want to be like those described in the book of James, those who in their arrogance and self-reliance presumed that by simply putting in time and effort they could bring about their goals of more profit and more abundance, not realizing their lives—indeed, our lives—depend upon you for strength and energy. Our hearts do not beat, and our lungs do not breathe, apart from your sustaining grace. We read in the book of Hebrews that your Son upholds the universe by the word of his power. The planets of the solar system continue to orbit because you say so, just as the details of our lives are held in place because you say so.

Yet, Lord—acknowledging your sovereignty, acknowledging your goodness, acknowledging the power of the gospel that is at work among us—we come boldly before your throne of grace.

Plant a church

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us plant another church in the city of Harrisburg, not for our glory and fame but for the name and renown of the one who spilled his blood so that more and more people could taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

We thank you for those who, some twenty years ago, left the comfort of a great church so they might, by your grace and power, labor to see our church built up in love. May you even now be giving some among us that same kind of pioneering, sacrificial spirit who see the name of Jesus being magnified as of more importance than the comfort of attending an established church.

Pursue a “new” facility & Care for our local community

Heavenly Father, we give you praise for our church building. We thank you for the beauty of the renovations you enabled us to complete eighteen months ago and the way people continue to come to this church building and find hope and peace and comfort. Lord, we thank you for the neighborhood in which you placed us. We thank you for the inroads that have been made in this community. May you enable us to become servants who seek to bless our neighbors in your name.

As we see brokenness around us—whether it be the search for joy that takes place in the strip clubs just around the corner or the quiet lives of desperation led by many who feel alone in their homes—we pray that you would make our church building a safe place, a place where people can heal and find joy that will truly satisfy.

Increase racial and ethnic diversity

Heavenly Father, please help our church to grow in racial and ethnic diversity as a testimony to the uniting power of the gospel. We thank you for those among us who enrich our lives by bringing other perspectives. We thank you for the dozens of people who come to our building three days a week to learn English as a second language. We thank you especially for those who have taken a particular interest in the immigrants and refugees among us. Lord, please forgive us for being slower to help than we ought; forgive us for being reluctant to reach out; forgive us for being hesitant to love. Forgive us, Lord, for using the pronouns us and them.

Stay streamlined, program-light

Heavenly Father, when we set the goal to be streamlined and program-light at our church, we do not intend to stifle the work of your Holy Spirit among us. Forgive us, Lord, if that has happened or is currently happening.

Lord, we do not want to be streamlined and program-light because it’s easier or because it allows us to remain lazy, preferring our comfort over your mission. We do not aim to be streamlined and program-light so we can have more Netflix.

Instead, we believe we should measure spiritual maturity, not by how often we attend church meetings other than Sunday mornings, but by how many of our neighbors and co-workers we know well enough and have loved well enough that they could ask us to pray for them when their lives seem to be crashing down around them. In a culture that applies increasing pressure to do more and more and more, we ask that you help us to intentionally build margin into our lives so that when your Spirit does lead us to begin new ministries, we can do so with joy and obedience.

Lord, we long to stay streamlined and program-light so that the members of this church are not so burdened with the ministry initiatives of our leaders that they can’t be free to serve you wholeheartedly as your Spirit leads them; we long for a passion for new ministries to bubble up from within the hearts of those who call this church home. Lord, I thank you for the new ministry of the Christmas Giving Tree that will bless those among us with Christmas presents signifying, in tangible ways, your love for us. We’ve never done this before, but I thank you, Lord, for placing the idea upon the hearts of a few individuals and giving them the vision and obedience to see it become a reality.

Expand evangelism ministry

Heavenly Father, we pray for our evangelism ministry. Oh, that you would cause your gospel to go forth from us with greater power. Lord, as we share the story of the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, and his second coming, oh that more and more people would come to understand the sacrifice you made for them. Lord, would you cause your good news to be received by us in such a way that it is actually treasured as good news, news we long to share with others. Forgive us that our love for you is so small that we find it easier to talk about things that are here today and gone tomorrow.

Connect and disciple newcomers

Heavenly Father, you commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations, to baptize people into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You promised that your authority, your power, and your presence would be with us as we do so. I pray for the many relationships that have formed among our church, relationships not built around simply having coffee or watching our children play together, but relationships intentionally seeking to help one another be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

Lord, many at our church have no idea what being in a discipleship relationship would be like—to have someone to offer sound, biblical counsel and someone to weep with when their children walk away from the faith. Lord, would you make us into the type of church where discipleship relationships are not only natural but that to not be in intentional discipleship relationships would be seen as rare and unusual.

Lord, I pray especially for the older, mature Christians among us who were never themselves discipled by someone else. I pray that though they never received such care, they would build into others, giving what they never directly received.

Lord, as I think about the connection’s ministry of our church, I pray for the new pastor we are seeking to hire. We’ve been looking and praying for the last six months and are currently interviewing pastors. Give us wisdom; we need it.

Lord, I think about what one candidate said when we asked what it might look like for a connections ministry to thrive here at Community. He said it might look not so much like one new pastor doing all the work of connections, but rather like a congregation who sees themselves more and more as connecting pastors and a church where a young couple notices an elderly couple who needs care and love and, unprompted by staff pastors, they move toward each other in love. Lord, yes, for more and more of this kind of connection here among us.

Increasingly become a church of prayer

Finally, Heavenly Father, we ask you to make us a church that increasingly values prayer. I don’t think we are good at this, at least I do not think I am good at this. Praying to you in a church service for ten uninterrupted minutes should not be as difficult as it is. Forgive me for thinking I can build your church simply through effort and time on task. Forgive me for mistaking commotion and activity and sawdust flying around in the air for the substance of true spiritual life. Lord, we will cast our cares upon you when we see the weakness of our shoulders and the futility of our ingenuity.

As we call out to you in prayer—as a church gathered together in unity on Sunday mornings; as a church scattered around the city in small group Bible studies during the week; as families and homes and individuals who follow you when no one is watching but you—Lord, surprise us with the beauty of your grace, the joy of your forgiveness, and the peace of your presence.

So we ask all this, Heavenly Father, knowing you can do more than we could ask or imagine. And we pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, by which we mean prayers prayed not consistent with our will but Christ’s will and prayers prayed not on our authority but upon Christ’s authority.

Amen.

* Photo by Tyson Dudley on Unsplash