9 Quotes from THE JOY PROJECT by Tony Reinke

Yesterday I rode my bike past a church sign that said,

Happiness is not
the absence of difficulties
but the presence of God.

Typically, church signs are nothing more than clichés and sentimentality. Blah. But this one is pretty good. Yet we must ask, “If happiness comes from God’s presence, how do we get God’s presence?”

Tony Reinke wrote The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness to answer this question. The book was released earlier this week, and you can download the book free of charge, in three digital formats, at desiringGod.org/thejoyproject.

The book explores—no, celebrates!—God’s mission to bring his children infinite joy. And it does so through the theological framework called Calvinism or the doctrines of grace or the acronym TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). In fact, these five points serve as the scaffolding for the five central chapters of the book.

The Joy Project, however, is not a polemical fight. Rather, as I said above, it’s a celebration, and in this way it’s more in keeping with the Bible’s treatment of the subject—behold the beauty before bemoaning the controversies.

In the spring I read Five Points: Towards a Deeper Experience of God’s Grace by John Piper. It was a good book (and Reinke quotes from it a few times and Piper more than a few times), but I think The Joy Project is the book that I’d be more likely to give to the people in our church. I’m not saying it’s necessarily better, just perhaps more suited. 

Reinke wrote on his blog, “The Joy Project…fulfills of a dream of mine to write and publish a full book free of charge to the world.”

Thanks, Tony, for livin’ the dream. And thanks, Desiring God, for making it happen. And now may God use this book as a means to completing his joy project.

*     *     *

Below are a few of my favorite passages.

We conclude that the barriers to abiding joy are the unhealthy choices that clog our lives. The root problem, we think, is that we’re stuck in a rut of predictability and laziness, so we must unstick ourselves. We turn to self-improvement... We buy productivity apps for our phones. We resolve to become more “chill” parents, sexier spouses, better friend-winners, and more purposeful people-influencers. We need to sit less and walk more. We need to sleep more and eat less… We drink more water, less coffee, less soda. We buy organic, fair trade, rBGH-free, gluten-free, free-range. We pay off credit card debt and build our savings… We commit to staying on top of our e-mails, checking our phones less often, watching less television, visiting the library more, and reading our neglected stacks of books. (p. 2*)

Simply put, the driving motive in history is the desire for happiness. All sin, from slavery to prostitution to racism to terrorism to extortion to the sparks that ignite world wars—all are driven by a desire for happiness apart from God. (p. 13)

The greatest hazard we face is not intellectual atheism—denying that God exists. Our most desperate problem is affectional atheism—refusing to believe God is the object of our greatest and most enduring joy. This is the heart of our foolishness. The fool speaks from the depths of his affections and longings and declares: God is irrelevant (Ps. 14:1). (p. 13)

Even if we don’t feel them, the consequences are real. Our idols misshape our souls like drugs alter the facial features of a meth addict. Unlike a drug-ravaged face, whose degeneration can be captured by time-lapsed photos, we don’t see the drastic changes to our souls quite so readily, but this soul-distortion afflicts everyone who follows after the pleasures of sin. (p. 22)

We are dying sinners in desperate need of a spiritual double bypass surgery, but we spend our pocket change on double cheeseburgers. We get happy again with a momentary food buzz, but the temporary buzz is slowly killing us. (p. 25)

Left to ourselves, we are stuck in our total depravity. The centripetal force of our affections keeps us gazing at ourselves. We turn away from God for our joy, and turn toward all we have left: money, sex, power, personal affirmation, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and Instagram “likes.” We use these old technologies (and we will use new technologies in the future) to tabulate our approval and then to use those metrics of approval to compare our popularity with others. When we do, we trade authentic glory for residual sludge. It’s like drinking mud. And we choke. (p. 33)

The cross did not merely make salvation possible. The cross is not like a single who secures a wedding date and reserves an elegant church years before finding a mate, hoping they will find someone in the meantime. No, Christ’s death secured salvation for the elect individually, by name. In his death, Christ effectually pursues a bride by entering the brothel of idolatry to grab hold of the elect, one by one, by name, and pulling them out from the bondage of sin. (pp. 55-56)

Anticipating unending joy in the presence of Christ changes everything. It means we can relinquish control over our lives. It means we have no fear of the future. It means all our pressing toward personal holiness is not in vain. God elects so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ, in his holiness and in his happiness. It will be done, and we strive and obey in this inescapable hope. (p. 99)

But of course you and I know better than to say we found joy. Rather, joy found us—sometimes slowly, sometimes at warp speed. That is the story of TULIP. Calvinism is the story of a long-planned, sovereign joy that finds you before you even see it coming. (p. 121)

* All pages numbers from the PDF version.

#thejoyproject

[Photo by john mcsporran / CC BY]

Chipotle’s Super Short Book Report Sweepstakes

Ode to Chipotle

Just over 13 years ago (4,869 days to be exact), I fell in love—with Chipotle burritos. Their size, their shape, their spice: all of it.

Our first date was on May 25, 2002 in Fort Collins, CO, and I think every month since then, on average, I have enjoyed a chicken fajita burrito with corn salsa and some other garnishes. That’s around 160 burritos or $1,100 worth. If you prefer to measure in calories, that’s around 175,000 … but who’s counting?

The Competition

If you’ve been to Chipotle in the last week, you might have noticed that they are holding a competition. It’s related to the “cultivating thoughts” series which is displayed on the side of soda cups and to-go bags. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine a short story or thoughtful reflection, say 300 words or so, by a popular author. These words stare at you while you eat just begging to be discussed.

Now, back to this competition. It’s called the “Super Short Book Report Sweepstakes.” To enter, you must write—you guessed it—a super short book report for one of the entries in the series. And when they say “super short,” they mean it: just 103 characters. Maybe you’d like to contribute your own report. You can do so here, but you’ll have to hurry. The competition ends tomorrow (9/23/2015).

Laura Hillenbrand’s Ode to Chocolate

I chose to respond to Laura Hillenbrand’s entry. She’s the author of Unbroken (which I reviewed here) and Seabiscuit … and now, as well, the short essay “Two-Minute Ode to Chocolate.”

In her Ode, Hillenbrand traces the global web of activity that must take place for her to enjoy a single square of chocolate. The Ode, in its entirety, goes like this:

It is the simplest ritual of my noondays: A square of dark chocolate, little larger than a postage stamp. For its minuteness, I savor it all the more, closing my eyes as it melts gently, generously, in my mouth, as softly exquisite as a kiss.

Always, I think, I am grateful. In my mind, I follow my chocolate to its beginnings. I see a drop of rain touching red soil, and beneath, a seed waking. Leaves reaching for sifted sunlight. Careful, sure hands unclasping fruit from limbs. A kind donkey pulling a laden wagon. Wise faces bent over an ocean of seeds, summoning sweet from bitter. Roads and rivers and cunning machines that bear the chocolate to me. Someone built that wagon; someone cut that road; someone labored under a beaded brow; someone heeded an inspiration; someone offered love. How wondrous is a world that brings such gifts.

In my little ritual I am connected to that sunshine, those hands, that river, the beautiful alchemy that unites so much in a square of chocolate. A drop of rain that falls on the other side of the world, in a place whose language I may never hear, becomes sweetness on my tongue, thankfulness in my heart, words spilling from my pen, and perhaps a thought, however fleeting, in the mind of whoever reads them.

We are none of us bereft, ever. We slumber in seas of gifts. To wake up to them, to follow their tributaries, is to traverse in every direction, yet always arrive at the same place: Gratitude. Awakening from my chocolate, I look about and wonder: Whose hands made this? To whom do I owe thanks for the song of a wren? For the warmth of a sweater, cool grass under bare feet, the joy of dogs playing, laughter, a whispered I love you, the scent of bread?

I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.

What I Love about It

There is a lot that I love about these 319 words.

I love the concreteness: a square (not a piece) of dark chocolate (not just chocolate); a drop of rain (singular) touching red soil (not the earth or ground); leaves reaching (they are not passive, they reach) for sifted sunlight (sifted implies a forest above); and so on.

And I love the idea of ritual, a word she uses twice. The ancients would climb high mountains to worship, and some of us still do; Hillenbrand eats a postage stamp of dark chocolate.

And I love the way she invites us to view this universe of beneficent activity that is required for mass produced chocolate: seeds, rain, sun, a kind donkey pulling a laden wagon, and oh, speaking of the wagon, “someone built that wagon; someone cut that road; someone labored under a beaded brow.” Indeed they did.

And I love the frequent, but not overdone, alliterations (e.g. melts gently, generously… sifted sunlight… seeds, summoning sweet... Roads and rivers…).

So What’s Missing?

There are other things I love, but the essay is missing something, something important. Did you notice it? I tried to bring this out in the “super short book report” which I submitted to Chipotle for the competition.

Here’s what I wrote: 

LH’s ODE TO CHOC explores the many tributaries that bring us gifts but misses Who is at the headwaters.

I capitalized the “w” intentionally. I love Hillenbrand’s prose, but she simply stops short; she traces these tributaries eloquently around the globe to farmers and seeds and donkeys and red soil and even to the heavens for rain. But while she traces them “in every direction,” her gratitude arrives nowhere, like a perpetual road trip without a destination. Hillenbrand explores the rivers but never to their source—even while asking all the right questions:

I look about and wonder: Whose hands made this? To whom do I owe thanks for the song of a wren? For the warmth of a sweater, cool grass under bare feet, the joy of dogs playing, laughter, a whispered I love you, the scent of bread?

Yes, she concludes with the right response, a tri-fold statement of gratitude: “I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.” But are we so wrong to ask, “Grateful to whom?”

Hillenbrand doesn’t answer her rhetorical questions, but the Bible does. James writes, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:16-17).

Perhaps her statement, “How wondrous is a world that brings such gifts,” would be better written, “How wondrous is the God who gives such gifts.”

The Gospel Heals our Misplaced Gratitude

Look, I love Chipotle, I love chocolate, and I love authors who use words well. I’m thankful for these gifts, and a billion others, but what happens when we don’t locate our gratitude where we ought to? What happens if, like Hillenbrand, we don’t thank the right person?

Consider a student who received a full scholarship to college from a generous donor. Sure, this student should be thankful towards the school and the professors, the authors of his textbooks, the factory workers that produced them, and the trees that became paper. Of course, the student should be grateful for these. But at some point, you ought to thank the person who paid for your scholarship, the one who made the whole experience possible.

But my analogy is not strong enough; what if the person who gave the scholarship was also responsible for the knowledge of the professors and the production of the textbooks and the forests of trees and the rain that waters them and the workers and machines that cultivate them?

Now we are back at the central issue: ultimate gratitude to the One ultimately responsible.

Hillenbrand speaks of how “we slumber in seas of gifts,” but we might press the metaphor further: we are dead, and need more than the smelling salts of gratitude to awake us; we need resurrection.

That’s why I also love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the gospel because God provides a way for sinners who misplace their gratitude to be forgiven, and for forgiven sinners to know Who is at the headwaters drenching us in delight.

#ssbrsweepstakes, [Photo]

More Tips for Getting the Right Job in Ministry, Part I of V

Recently, I posted several articles designed to help pastors find the right job in a local church (1, 2, and 3). I hope you’re not tired of them yet because there’s still more to be said.  

Over the next month or two, I have 15 more tips that I plan to share in subsequent blog posts (three tips at a time). Here are the first three. Stay tuned for the rest.

*     *     *

1. Pray without ceasing.
Many people know that the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” But this is only the shortest in English Bibles; this verse is actually three words in Greek, edakrusen o iēsous.

The shortest verse in the Bible, in the original languages, comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing.” That’s three words in English, but in Greek it’s only two, adialeiptōs proseuchesthe.

Now this is mostly just silly Bible trivial, but the point I’m leading up to isn’t; Paul’s point isn’t trivial in the least. As Paul ends this letter to the church in Thessalonica, he does so by reminding the church of the gospel. He writes, “For God has not destined [Christians] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ…” (5:9).

And after this gospel reminder, he then gives a host of short, but important commands related to how Christians should live in light of the gospel message. One of these commands is to “pray without ceasing.”

As you look for a job, because you are a Christian who has not been “destined for wrath,” but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, you ought to be someone who prays—someone who prays without ceasing to the God who saved you. This doesn’t mean that Christians don’t do other things besides pray. Of course we do. But it does means in and around, before and after, and throughout everything we do, we pray.

In the job search, it will be easy to overlook this kind of persistent prayer, even neglect it. There will be plenty of other things to do: make cover letters and resumes; collect references and recommendations; research websites, both church websites and job boards; build a network of people who will help you along the way; prepare for interviews; and so on. In the midst of all these tasks, there will always be pressure to do “just one more thing.” Consequently, prayer can easily fall by the wayside. Don’t let it.

We are always dependent and desperate people—dependent upon God and his grace, and thus desperate for him to move on our behalf. Sometimes we feel our dependence more acutely than at other times, but it’s always there. Prayer acknowledges this dependence, and it is the God-appointed outlet, or channel, for our desperate need.

And when you feel the most overwhelmed and the job search looks anything but promising, you don’t have to pray alone. Get some friends to join you. Just make sure you do it. And besides, if you don’t depend upon God when finding a job in ministry you’ll likely not depend upon him once you’re in ministry, and that begs the question whether or not you should be in ministry at all.

You see, prayer doesn’t “work” because God is a giant piñata and prayer is the stick that whacks him until he gives us goodies. Prayer works because God is gracious and good, and because he is sovereign.

This leads to my next tip.

2. Trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God.
When looking for a job, it’s imperative that you keep a vibrant trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God.

But perhaps you’re thinking,

The “goodness and sovereignty of God”? Benjamin, I thought you were going to give me lots of juicy tips for finding a job in Christian ministry. Now you’re going all Mr. Systematic Theologian on me. Where’s the practical stuff?

Here’s the deal: there will likely be low moments during the job search and hiring process, very low moments. There were for me. To make it through these moments, you’re going to have to commit yourself now, before the low moments, to the belief that God is good and he is in control.

Consider what you’ll do if a church you really like, maybe even the one that you think could be the perfect fit, says, “No thanks.”

What are you going to do?

And consider what you will do if this same church does something worse; what if they say nothing at all—silence. No returned calls, emails, letters—either because they lost your resume or because they were not considerate enough to close the loop.

Or maybe, at some point, you’ll realize that you have to take “that list”—you know, the list you made of the details about your dream job in your dream city with your dream church—and you’ll find yourself throwing it in the trash. You’ll throw it away because the job search has become so difficult and the rejections so frequent that you no longer care about finding your dream job; you just want a job.

Or maybe this will happen. Maybe you do get a job, even a good job, but when you move to the new city, your old house doesn’t sell—for another 18 months. Now all of your savings are gone and you’re not sure if you should sell your car. Then, to make things more difficult, the role you were promised at the new church doesn’t turn out to be exactly what you expected, or even what they expected.

I’m not making this list up. These things can happen. (They all happened to me!)

Yet God has his purposes for these times as well, even though it may feel like he’s trying to shake you, or even break you. As Tim Keller writes in his book Counterfeit Gods, “Sometimes God seems to be killing us when he’s actually saving us” (p. 20).

I think when we as Christians sing about the faithfulness of God (e.g. the classic hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” or a host of contemporary songs that major on this theme), what we are singing about are primarily two things:  the goodness and sovereignty of God.

God is good in that he never does evil or ultimate harm to his children. This is a wonderful thing, but if he were not also sovereign, his goodness wouldn’t be much help to us because he couldn’t act upon it; in other words, without sovereignty, God’s goodness would just be a platitude. But he is sovereign.

Sovereignty is having absolute control over everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future. God has this type of sovereignty. Scripture tells and shows us this.

We can see it in the overall narrative of the Bible, namely, the overarching story of a sovereign God acting in history—across all nations and generations—through the smallest of details that he governs (such as a fish swallowing a coin) as well as the largest of details (such as the geopolitics at work in the book of Jeremiah).

And we can see God’s sovereignty explicitly affirmed in Scripture in many verses. For example, consider just this one verse from 2 Chronicles: “O Lord, God of our fathers… you rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you” (20:6).

It’s true that for some people, the goodness and sovereignty of God is primarily a thing of controversy. But I hope that before these doctrines are controversial to you, they are beautiful to you. Because it’s only a vibrant, gospel-empowered trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God that will sustain you in the low moments… and it’s also what will fill you with humble gratitude in high moments.

3. Speak to former employees.
Okay, after all this deep stuff on prayer and God’s sovereignty, let me end with something a little lighter.

You won’t always be able to, nor will you always want to, but it won’t hurt to ask the church (or organization) if you can speak to former employees.

And when you do speak to them, you might ask questions like these:

What were your favorite things about working at the church? Least favorite?
If you feel comfortable saying, what were the circumstances for your departure?
Would you work there again? Why or why not?

Also, if you know former employees are still in the area, you might want to know if they plan to still attend the church or not. This is especially helpful to ask of a former senior pastor. You’ll want to know if the guy who planted the church and pastored it for 25 years is still living down the street and showing up on Sundays in the front row. The shadow of this pastor’s leadership will be strong enough as is, and to have him still among the church could potentially be divisive.

And as you speak with a former employee, be as discerning as you can. Remember, he or she is likely a former employee—not a current employee—for a whole matrix of reasons including the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If at any point the person is hesitant to answer specific questions, and you are unsure why, perhaps you could just say something like this: “If you were me, what questions should I be asking the church before I committed to them?” This allows the former employee to offer suggestions of things you can pursue together without the former employee having to spell out all the issues.

Okay, that’s it for this post. Stay tuned for 12 more tips. Oh, and be sure to leave me a comment below if you have a tip that you think should be included.

[Photo by peasap / CC BY]

More Than Amnesty

Neither every moment nor every aspect of pastoral ministry enthralls. However, I am convinced—through the study of the Word and pastoral life within the local church—that every endeavor to promote connection between God and his people is nothing short of participation in God’s intention for the universe.

Said another way: laboring towards genuine, God-besotted, gospel-community is laboring with the grain of the universe, not against it. And because this is true, our labors to cultivate this type of community are always deeply meaningful, whether we palatably perceive it in every moment or not.

Furthermore, in my experience, as summertime ends and the school year begins, people tend to be more inclined to involve themselves in this type of genuine, God-besotted, gospel-community in a local church. They sign up to serve in the nursery; they join the worship team; they commit to a small group Bible study. 

This year, in order to celebrate the beauty of these commitments and the reconciliation which was hard-won for us by Jesus Christ, I reworked a poem I wrote a few years ago. It’s called, “More Than Amnesty.”

Amnesty means one group has pardoned another group of wrongdoing. But amnesty doesn’t necessarily mean the two groups are now reconciled, and it certainly does not imply that they are friends; it merely means they are neutral.

In the gospel, we have far more than amnesty. Yes, God has pardoned, but the sacrificial death of the Son of God does not bring us into a neutral relationship with God, a merely pardoned relationship.

Rather, through the gospel, we are reconciled with God; we are made his friends; we become beloved sons and beloved daughters of God. That is more than amnesty. And this is what we were made for.

May God stir deeper longings in our hearts for this type of genuinely God-besotted, gospel-community. And may God enable our churches to make greater progress towards it.

*     *     *

More Than Amnesty

In God’s likeness with no shame
Eve and Adam rule and reign
Stretching glory ‘cross the earth
‘til they doubted God’s great worth

Now scorched and frayed and fractured
Father’s connection shattered
Like concrete cracked with hammer
Change Garden’s bliss to clamor

A willful grab for power
Caused Paradise to sour
Now a fire guarded gate
None will circumnavigate

So flounder, flop, flail—long years
Try to fix, yet smudge and smears
To sin’s shackles bondage bound
With no way by man yet found

But wait, but wait, oh—but wait
upon us no crushing weight
Now the curse of sin undone
By the beauty of the Son

More than our forgiven debt
We have deepest longings met
More, more, more than amnesty
A blood adhered family

Restored, redeemed, reconciled
Children no longer exiled
Now, the Father holds us dear
“I will be your God,” we hear

[Photo by Christopher Michel / CC BY]

TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD by Kevin DeYoung (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Kevin DeYoung. Taking God At His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014. 144 pp. $17.99.

You Had Me at Hello

I once heard John Piper say, “Books don’t change people, paragraphs do—sometimes sentences.”

Buy on Amazon

I loved all of Kevin DeYoung’s book, Taking God At His Word, but one paragraph was especially lovable. As I begin this review, I’ll start with it.

The paragraph comes from the introduction. I had actually read a portion of the paragraph on a blog around a year ago when the book was first published. I loved it then, but now even more after seeing it in  context, i.e. the context of DeYoung’s discussion of the longest chapter in the Bible—Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem that gives one stanza to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet creating 176 verses. And what’s the topic of this Psalm? The Bible.

Here is the paragraph that so moved me:

Think of this chapter [the Introduction] as application and the remaining seven chapters of this book as the necessary building blocks so that the conclusions of Psalm 119 are warranted.

Or, if I can use a more memorable metaphor, think of [chapters] 2 through 8 as seven different vials poured into a bubbling cauldron and this chapter as the catalytic result. 

Psalm 119 shows us what to believe about the word of God, what to feel about the word of God, and what to do with the word of God. That’s the application. That’s the chemical reaction produced in God’s people when we pour into our heads and hearts the sufficiency of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, and everything else we will encounter in the remaining seven chapters.

Psalm 119 is the explosion of praise made possible by an orthodox and evangelical doctrine of Scripture. When we embrace everything the Bible says about itself, then—and only then—will we believe what we should believe about the word of God, feel what we should feel, and do with the word of God what we ought to do. (14, emphasis added)

There are several things in particular which stand out to me in this paragraph, but I’ll just mention two.

1. The Author of Psalm 119 was Orthodox and Evangelical

First, I’ll start with my favorite line: “Psalm 119 is the explosion of praise made possible by an orthodox and evangelical doctrine of Scripture.” I love this anachronism because it’s not really an anachronism at all.

We often (wrongly) think of our particular hermeneutical approach to Scripture as something we created, rather than the attempt to have the same hermeneutical approach to Scripture that Scripture has to itself. What I mean is this: I love that this quote reminds me that an “orthodox and evangelical doctrine of Scripture” is not something fabricated by moderns, but rather is the very view of the original authors. What a great reminder that when we, as evangelicals, put supreme confidence in Scripture, we are not putting more confidence in Scripture than the Psalmist had… or for that matter, more confidence than the apostle Peter had (see pg. 34)… or Jesus had (see pg. 110ff).

Scoffers and cynics would not write Psalm 119. The indifferent, ho-hum, and lukewarm would not either. But those with an orthodox, evangelical, and high view of Scripture would—indeed, did. Those who love the Bible’s sufficiency, clarity, authority, and necessity experience a chemical reaction in the heart which tends to produce an “explosion of praise.”

2. How Then Shall We Feel?

In Taking God At His Word, I also appreciated DeYoung’s challenge that the Bible does not merely provide us with what we are “to believe” and “to do”—albeit very important things. DeYoung, both in the above paragraph and the rest of the chapters, also puts stress, as does the Bible, on how we are “to feel” about the Word.

And it’s here that we find an often underrepresented emphasis in books about Scripture—but certainly not in Psalm 119. The author of Psalm 119 does not feel neutral about Scripture. He feels passionately about it. He loves God’s Word (vv. 48, 97, 119, 127, 140), he delights in God’s Word (vv. 14, 24, 70, 143, 174), and he longs to keep God’s Word (vv. 5, 10, 17, 20, 40, 131); he even expresses anger when people don’t (vv. 48, 97, 119, 127, 140). And the Psalmist urges us to feel this same passion.

Engagement with Dissenters

Before wrapping up my review, I want to give space to one of the book’s chief strengths. DeYoung has a wonderful, skillful way of articulating and then critiquing opposing views of the Bible—views which tend to bleed the Bible of its life giving power, rather than transfuse it to us.

For example, although he avoids the technical name, he aptly engages the “documentary hypothesis” (104-5). Contra the evangelical view, the documentary hypothesis is the view that Moses did not write the Pentateuch to the Israelites while in the wilderness, with, of course, a few small editorial updates that came later (like the one about Moses’s death). Rather, the documentary hypothesis teaches that whole teams of people wrote these books over several centuries and often from divergent theological convictions.

DeYoung notes, “This [complicated, cynical questioning of authorship] is part and parcel of what seems plain to so much modern scholarship, but it isn’t even remotely connected to anything we see from Jesus in the way he handled the Old Testament” (105).

This is a great example of DeYoung’s ability to both articulate and critique opposing views. Here’s another. On pages 65ff, he analyzes the false humility of those who say:

We can’t put God in a box. We can’t define him with human language. If we could define him with our words, then he wouldn’t be God anymore. Scripture simply gives us one inspired record of human beings trying to describe mysteries that are beyond mere words and language. (65)

This sounds “nice, even noble,” but it smuggles in all sorts of false assumptions about the Bible. And besides, as DeYoung notes, the doctrines of the clarity of Scripture and Christian epistemology, are not only related to the Bible but our view of God.

When we say that we believe the word of God is clear (with all the necessary nuances, of course), we are saying something about God, namely, that he is able to communicate with clarity. And when Christians say that we can actually know God through his Word (our epistemology), we are really saying something about God, namely, that God is able to make himself known through his Word.

Recommendation

Throughout the rest of the book, DeYoung covers the four main, historical doctrines about the Word (it’s sufficiency, clarity, authority, and necessity), as well as fitting in a few other related chapters.

As I hope you have already sensed, far from being merely academic and aloof, the book remains warm and doxological, that is to say, the book stirs an “explosion of praise” in readers, at least this reader. Moreover, for those who want to pursue other books about the Bible but feel unsure of where to start, at the end of the book, DeYoung provides an annotated bibliography of what he calls, “30 of the best books on the Good Book.”

If you are presently unfamiliar with DeYoung, he is a young, prolific, and impacting author. He writes a popular blog hosted on The Gospel Coalition. Yet, DeYoung’s greatest strength is that he’s a master at taking difficult theological concepts and presenting them in ways that are clear, compelling, and faithful to Scripture. Time and again DeYoung brings clarity to the topics he engages. In so doing, he hits his stated target, “My aim is to be simple, uncluttered, straightforward, and manifestly biblical.”

And, in Taking God at His Word, he is. I highly recommend it.

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101 Questions a Pastoral Candidate Can Ask in the Hiring Process

One of the most important things a candidate can do during the hiring process is ask good questions—lots and lots of good questions. Asking questions allows candidates a better understanding of what they are getting into with a potential church, and it also shows the church that potential candidates are truly interested, that they are taking the job, and all of its entailments, seriously.

In fact, asking good questions might determine whether or not you get the job, or it might determine whether the job you finally get is the one you actually want. A pastor recently told me this was true for him—that one reason he did not get a job was, in part, because another candidate asked so many more questions than he did. Ultimately, it became clear that that particular church wouldn’t have been the right fit for him anyway; but, he explained how thankful he was that the church which didn’t hire him actually cared enough to give him this feedback since he was then able to learn and ask more questions in his next interview—the interview with the church at which he now pastors and has proven a great fit for him.

If you need some ideas to get started, below are 101 questions you can ask a local church. And if you are looking for a job in Christian ministry, but not one necessarily in a local church, they are questions, with a little modifying, which you might ask of a parachurch ministry, organizations like Fellowship of Christians Athletes, Young Life, or a local rescue mission.

Some of the questions I created from scratch, others I adapted, and still others have been asked of me by candidates as they looked for a job. I organized them by categories so that they are easier to use (e.g. General, Theology & Practice, Church Health & Planning, etc.). However, before I list them, here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, not every question is the right question for you to ask. Some won’t work at all, but others, with a slight tweak, can be fitted to your context (i.e. your particular church or organization; your particular role; your particular experience; etc.).

Second, and I hope this is obvious, the goal isn’t to ask every question. That would be painful—for both church and candidate. The goal, rather, is to pick a few that seem appropriate for that stage of the interview process (whether the beginning or middle or end), and to ask those. For example, early on you might ask questions such as, “What are some hobbies among the staff?” and “What are the expectations for a pastor’s spouse?” Then, later in the process, ask about putting the compensation package into writing. If you switch the order, at best you could seem cold and insensitive to the process. At worst, you might not make it to the next round of interviews where you could have asked the more difficult questions.

Finally, as you look at the list, also keep in mind that certain questions must be addressed to certain people. Some questions are better for the search committee, some for other staff members, some for people in the congregation, and others for the elders. For example, don’t ask the current staff if there are problems or if someone on staff needs to be terminated. (Please tell me you know not to do this!) However, if you’re a senior pastor, it is a question you might ask the elders near the end of the process.

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General

1.             Can you give me a 3-4 minute history of the church?

2.             How long have you been planning to fill this position?

3.             What are the circumstances that created the need for this role?

4.             What is the sequence and timeline of the hiring process?

5.             When do you expect to call references?

6.             When do you hope to have someone in place?

7.             How many candidates are still in the running?

8.             As I read the job description, I’m wondering how much time you expect to be allotted to the various items listed. Could you help me understand what a typical week might look like?

9.             If I am called to your church and it turns out to be a great fit, after a year or so, what sort of things would make you say, “Wow, this is a great fit”?

10.         What (if anything) made my resume, application stand out? Why do you think I will help this church?

11.         In what ways (if at all) do you think my age might affect my reception both in the church and among the leadership?

12.         May I have an unofficial visit to your church to see what things are like before the official interview/candidating weekend?

13.         Your website states ____________. What does that mean?

14.         How does a person move from “random attend-er” at your church, to member, and then to leader?

15.         If “exciting things” were happening at your church (and they likely are), what would they be?

16.         What are some of the hobbies of the other staff? What do you do for fun?

17.         May I have a copy of a recent newsletter? Church bulletin? Financial statement? Congregational meeting minutes?

18.         Does your church have a policy manual? May I have a copy?

19.         Please describe your worship style. What are some of the congregations favorite worship songs?

20.         How would you evaluate a successful worship service?

21.         What qualities did you appreciate about the person who had this role previously?

22.         In which ways are you similar to other churches in your community? In which ways are you different?

23.         Do people in the community, generally speaking, have a positive or negative view of your church?

24.         What ministries in your church seem to be most successful? Why?

25.         When did the most recent round of new members join?

26.         What do visitors often comment on?

27.         Who is responsible for putting together orders of service?

28.         Who is responsible for the website?

29.         Does your church have expectations for pastors regarding social media?

30.         This is hard to predict, but about how many weddings and funerals might this pastor be expected to officiate in the next year?

31.         What missionaries and parachurch organizations does your church support?

Theology & Practice

32.         What is the church government structure?

33.         Does the church have a statement of faith? How was it created? Is it ever re-worked? If so, what is the process?

34.         Does your church haven an official position on the end times? Or on God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? Or the charismatic spiritual gifts? The age of the earth? Alcohol? Divorce and remarriage?

35.         What is the church’s view of male and female roles?

36.         How is baptism practiced at your church (frequency, format, who leads, who can participate)?

37.         How is communion practiced at your church (frequency, format, who leads, who can participate)?

38.         Are you open to making changes to how baptism and communion are practiced?

39.         Let’s say I move there and my neighbor wants to check out our church. He is gay. What will his experience be like? Or what would you hope it to be?

40.         Does your church have a favorite Bible translation? Do you prefer one to preach from?

41.         How do you prefer to preach/teach the Bible: topically, book studies, another method?

42.         If a pastor at your church was asked to officiate a wedding, can you see him or her ever saying no? What circumstances might legitimately bring that about?

43.         What doctrines excite the leaders of your church? What doctrines do you prefer to avoid?

44.         How would you counsel a person who accepts Christ but remains in a sinful lifestyle?

45.         Are there particular authors and pastors that you admire? Who?

46.         What theological trends, broadly speaking, create concern among your church and leaders?

47.         How is church discipline practiced? Can you give me a few examples?

Church Health & Planning

48.         May I please have a copy of the annual budget and some information on monthly giving from the last year?

49.         How many attend your church each week?

50.         What is the total church membership vs. regular attendance?

51.         Do you have a small group ministry? If so, how many people are currently in small groups?

52.         If it was decided that more people could be reached for Christ by changing the name of the church, would you be open to that?

53.         Do you own your church building/property?

54.         What are the limiting factors to growth with respect to facilities (e.g., parking, sanctuary size, class rooms, other)?

55.         Is there adequate funding in the church budget for your leaders and staff to accomplish the tasks placed before them?

56.         Where do you see the Spirit of God working in your church?

57.         Have any former staff members left the ministry? May I contact them?

58.         Are there regular times of prayer among the staff?

59.         What mechanisms are in place to help the staff avoid burnout?

60.         What are the demographics of your church? How reflective are they of the local community?

61.         If your church continued to grow for the next 5 years, what changes would do you anticipate?

62.         In regard to ministry style, can you give an illustration of another church that you are trying to model this church after?

63.         What ways do you see teamwork taking place among the staff?

64.         In which areas would you say your church is “understaffed”?

65.         How long have the other employees worked here?

66.         Besides calling a pastor, what other items are top priorities in the next year?

67.         Has the interim period been healing? In what ways?

Leadership, Structure, & Conflict

68.         What has been the most controversial thing in your church during the last year?

69.         What issues have regularly caused friction in this church? Among staff? Among the elder board?

70.         Do you have weekly staff meetings? If so, what do they look like?

71.         What is your church polity? Are there elders, deacons, ministry leaders, etc.? How do they relate to each other?

72.         What is the relationship of a staff pastor to the elder board and congregation from the perspective of authority and structure? Does your church have an organizational chart? Is so, may I see it? If not, could you explain it to me?

73.         Is this church affiliated with a larger movement or denomination? If no, what are some means and methods to cultivate healthy, structural accountability?

74.         To what extent are the non-staff elders involved in the planning of sermons and sermon series?

75.         Can you recount a time of church conflict that resulted in a form of discipline?

76.         Have you had to let someone go in the last two years? If so, what were the circumstances?

77.         What current leaders in your church, staff or non-staff, are considered indispensable? Why?

78.         What happened to the previous pastor or staff person in this role? What were the circumstances for their departure? May I contact them? What are they doing now?

79.         How many previous staff members have been terminated? What were the circumstances for their departure?

80.         If you could go back and change how a situation was handled in the last year, what would it be and why? What would you do differently?

81.         Are there issues among the current staff that once the new hire arrives, will need to be addressed? Or are there even staff members that will need to be (potentially) terminated by the new hire?

82.         How is the annual budget prepared and approved? Who is responsible for keeping spending in line with the budget?

Family

83.         What are the expectations for my spouse?

84.         What roles do the spouses of other staff at the church play?

85.         What are the expectations for my children?

86.         How many nights a week do you expect the person who is hired to be away from home?

87.         If my children were to attend a youth group at a neighboring church, would that be a problem?

88.         If I had a Christmas party (with neighbors, friends, church people) and alcohol was served, would that be an issue?

89.         Among families with children, is there a particular mode of education most common (public school, home school, private school, Christian school)? Is it an expectation?

90.         Is there a certain proximity to the church that, though unspoken and unwritten, the pastor should live?

Money & Job Performance Reviews

91.         Do you do performance reviews at the end of each year? If so, what do they look like?

92.         Can you please write up the salary package (including things like salary; health, life, and disability insurance; health savings account; continuing education and conference money; money for ministry “tools” such as books and computer software; cell phone; moving expenses; vacation; retirement; contribution to FICA; etc.)?

93.         Is there a church parsonage? If so, and if the candidate desired not to use it, would compensations be adjusted accordingly?

94.         If in 3 years I felt called to pursue an advanced educational degree (perhaps an MDiv or DMin or something else), how would that be received? What support, if any, could I expect from the church?

95.       Does your church have a sabbatical policy? If so, what is it? If not, would you be open to creating one?

96.       Does the congregation have a policy of reviewing the pastor’s salary package each year?

97.         How will success be measured, formally or informally? And by whom? And how often?

98.         If I have to move to take this position, what, if any, moving costs are covered?

99.         What are the time expectations in the areas of preaching/teaching, counseling, visitation, office hours?

100.      Is there any allowance for a pastor preaching/teaching “away,” whether at another church, a conference, a seminary, or somewhere else? If so, what support might a pastor receive for this (e.g., help with travel expenses, time to work on the messages)?

101.      The question of who “owns” the material produced by pastors (sermons, curriculum, etc.), is a complex issue. Some feel it belongs to the pastor because he or she is technically self-employed (per tax code). Others feel that the church owns everything in the same way that when a business hires a consultant, at the end of the day, the business owns the work produced by the consultant. Have you thought about this before? Do you have an opinion about this? Would you be open to a discussion about it?

[Photo by Bernal Saborio / CC BY]

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RELATED POSTS

13 Tips for Pastoral Candidates in the Initial Hiring Process, Part II of II

[This Part II of II; for Part I, click here]

Getting a job in Christian ministry is difficult and time-consuming. This is true whether you are applying for a job at a church doing a large, national search or whether you are applying for a job through your network of friends and ministry contacts, and thus competing against a much smaller pool of candidates (or no other candidates at all). Regardless, it’s hard work. But if you are serious about finding the right job, here are a few more tips to help you during the initial phase of the hiring process. (For “tips” 1-6, click here.)

7. Only send PDFs (not Microsoft Word documents).
Never send your information in Microsoft Word documents (or the Mac equivalent). You can’t control how it will look on another person’s computer screen. You can, however, control how a PDF looks. When I’ve been on search committees, every time I’ve looked at a resume with messed up formatting, it’s proved a distraction. Look, if you spend time getting the formatting perfect, especially on the resume—which typically has difficult spacing—don’t assume the person getting your email has the same version of Word. Rather, send it as a PDF to protect your hard work. If you do not know how to save as a PDF, Google it or ask someone for help. Don’t be lazy with this. It’s important.

8. Only send one attachment.
If you’ve paid close attention so far, then you realize that you’ll be sending several documents—a cover letter, resume, bio with picture(s), references, and possibly even a recommendations. That’s a bunch of documents.

However, do not send an email with a bunch of attachments! Multiple attachments are the pits, especially for the person who is receiving these emails. And there’s a good chance he or she could accidentally not print one of them or not staple or paperclip them together. As I said above, your one attachment should be a PDF.

But you might be asking, “What if each of the documents is in a different Word document—how do I make them one PDF?” This is not a problem. Save each as a PDF and then merge them into one PDF. If you don’t own a program that can do this, you can use one for free here.

9. Send from your personal email account.
Whatever you do, do not send all of this information through the mechanism provided by some job-search websites, such as ChurchStaffing.com, even if that feels like an easy button to press. As a candidate you might not realize this, but when you send your info in this way the final product looks lousy. Instead, try to look up the church’s website to see if the job is posted there. If so, follow those instructions on who to email. Related to this, don’t have a cheesy email address. For example, don’t haveIAmSoOnFireForJesus@aol.com. And I’d suggest not using your student or current work email, as well. This is true for multiple reasons, but mainly because people might try to contact you after you have left your current school or employer but won’t be able to. Therefore, what you want is an email that will stay with you after you leave. If you don’t have an email like this, just create one at Gmail with your first and last name.

10. If you are in a different country, work extra hard. Don’t take this the wrong way, but when my previous church hired people, we posted the jobs on all of the major websites and our favorite seminaries. And each time we received a dozen or more resumes from people out of the country, and almost every time, what these people sent looked sketchy. I have no idea if the people applying were actually sketchy or not—but it was difficult to tell.

If you are applying for a job not in your own country, please know that you have a massive hurdle to overcome, even if only from a financial standpoint on the church that hires you (i.e. it will cost more to fly you in for the interview and to move you). That’s not to say you won’t have much to offer. In fact, you probably do, especially by way of perspective.

Here are a few tips to overcoming this hurdle. First, have someone from the country you are trying to move to look over your material before you send it. Second, if you have references in the country you are trying to move to, put them down. And if you have worked in that country before, or have education there, highlight that as well.

11. Make the follow-up phone call.
If you like the job, after you send your email, call the church to tell them. In fact, I’m tempted to say you should call even if the paper says “don’t call.” I say this because you want to stand out. The search team could be reading two hundred packets and when they come to yours, you want them to have heard from someone, maybe the church secretary, “Hey, this guy called a few days ago and sounded really nice.”

When you make the call, don’t do what I did once. I was so excited about the job, so excited to tell the search team or the receptionist or the pastor or whoever answered the phone that, when someone did, I rambled and mumbled and paused awkwardly because I hadn’t thought through what to say beforehand. Don’t do this. I ended up getting that job, but afterwards, they had a good laugh with me (or was it at me) about it. Here’s what you want to do: know what you are going to say on the call and then keep it short and sweet. You are just saying a quick hello to let them know how interested you are and what specifically attracted you about the job and church. If you want, you might even ask a question, such as “Why do you love your church so much?”

12. Stay positive regarding previous job transitions.
When writing or speaking about previous transitions, keep them positive. I’m not saying you should lie. Don’t do that. If the church is any good, when the time comes they will ask for more details. What I am talking about is in the initial stages choose to stress the positive reasons that you are looking for a job. For example, if part of why you are leaving your current church is because there was a change in the senior leadership and you no longer fit in as well, don’t go into all of that on your cover letter. Anytime there is a transition, we all assume—or should assume—there were reasons. It won’t help anyone involved if you complain about it, especially in the initial contact.

13. Be intentional on your social media, blog, and website.
Finally, as soon as you begin to contemplate a transition, only post content online with this potential transition in mind. As soon as anyone takes you seriously as a candidate, they will Google you, and when they do, they will follow the online breadcrumbs to your social media, and if you have them, your blog and website.

Think about this every time you post something. If you are inclined to post to Facebook pictures of the steak dinner that you are about eat, that’s probably fine. But if you are given to posting links about your love for the Tea Party or, on the other end, how awesome Keith Olbermann is, scale it back. And if you tend to re-tweet people with theological differences than you in order to mock them, don’t. I follow a guy on Twitter who does this, and I enjoy it. He’s good at it, but he’s in a role where it makes sense. You’re probably not.

The general principle is this: anything that you don’t want a search committee to see, don’t post. Remember, the search team doesn’t get your inside jokes. They weren’t there that one time when… Responsible online participation should be true all of the time, simply because you are a Christian, especially a Christian pursuing full-time ministry, but it’s worth the reminder when looking for a job.

[Part II of II; for Part I, click here]

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13 Tips for Pastoral Candidates in the Initial Hiring Process, Part I of II

People often say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. While that’s true, it’s also true that in many job searches, if you don’t make a good first impression, you’ll never even get a chance to make a second.

With this in mind, when I was looking for my first pastoral job, I knew the initial contact would be important. However, I wasn’t ready for what I experienced.

After I sent my resume and cover letter to one church, I called to see how the process was going and to let them know I was interested. The kind woman who answered the phone said, “It’s so nice of you to call. The search is going great.” When I asked how many people had applied, she said, “I think it’s up to 300.”

A few weeks later, I applied to another church, and in that search, I later found out I was one of 600 candidates from 11 different countries! See what I mean. If you don’t start strong in this process, you might be a great candidate, but they are moving on—without you.

Now, I’m several years removed from these experiences. Now, I can say (both as a candidate and someone who has been on pastoral-search committees), that the size of those searches is on the high-end. But they are not unheard of, especially for the large church that puts a well-crafted job description on major websites, such as ChurchStaffing.com.

Below are 13 tips to help candidates differentiate themselves from the dozens—and maybe hundreds—of other candidates in the early stages of a pastoral job search.

1. Always include a short, cover letter.
Include a cover letter with each submission. Much of your cover letter can be boilerplate (this is who I am; this is where I worked; this is where I went to school; this is where you can listen to my sermons; this is what I’m passionate about and why you should hire me; blah, blah, blah). But, you should definitely tailor at least one paragraph to demonstrate two things: first, that you actually read the job description, and second, why you think you would be a good fit. To do this, make sure you spend time on the church’s website. Perhaps you can even comment on something on their church calendar, or some connection you have to their particular city or state, if you have one. But don’t get wordy; your cover letters should be short—certainly less than one page.

2. Choose the right resume style for you.
There are two basic approaches to the resume: the traditional, business style or a skill-based style. In the traditional style, you state “I worked here and did X, Y, Z; and then I worked here and did X, Y, Z.” This style will appeal to those on the search team who are in the business world and accustomed to these types of resumes.

The other approach is a skill-based resume. In this approach, you highlight three or four skills that you have (say preaching, administration, and leading short-term missions), and then you explain when and where you’ve used them. It’s not a rule, but people that work in a church tend to like this style; it helps them quickly see your strengths. Additionally, the skill-based style resume helps a candidate highlight his skills even if he has had minimal church ministry experience, and/or developed his skills in non-ministry jobs, such as education or engineering. One other thing to think about: as with the cover letter, tailor the verbiage on your resume to the specific job description you are applying for—but of course, do this only within the bounds of integrity.

3. With audio and video samples, suggest a few of the best but give them several.
If you are a preaching pastor, pick your best two sermons and tell people where they can listen to them online. If you are fortunate enough to have your sermons available on video, pick your favorite two-minute clip and post it somewhere online like Vimeo(not YouTube, which tends to be cluttered). As I said, churches often receive more inquiries than they want, and a solid two-minute clip is all they need at the start of the process. You can always give them more later. But keep this in mind: if the only video footage you have is lame, don’t show it to people. Video of you preaching in a seminary classroom, if it’s anything like mine was, definitely falls under this category. In this case, just give links to audio.

Speaking of audio, early in the hiring process, only give your best sermon or two. Later, if you’re a preaching pastor, encourage the search team to listen to at least a dozen sermons, a dozen sermons that you don’t hand pick. For their sake—and for yours—a diet of your typical preaching should be sampled. Sure, we all have that one great sermon, that one we’d preach at conferences (if we ever got asked), but such sermons aren’t reflective of our norms, and hiring expectations need to be grounded in the typical, not the exceptional.

But what if I don’t have sermon audio? This is common for seminary grads, but there are easy ways to avoid it. When you do preach (in your own church or as a guest in other churches) make sure you get a recording. If you preach at a country church that doesn’t record, as I did for a few months in seminary, you’ll have to do it on your own. You can use your iPhone, or if you want to improve the quality, without spending much money, I’d suggest an entry-level handheld digital recorder such as the Samson Zoom H1.

If you’re a worship leader, what I said of video and audio applies to you as well; except, at some point, you’ll very likely have to find a way to show video. Thus, if you don’t have this already, find a way to get it even if it means recruiting some friends with the necessary skills and equipment, even if this means “leading worship” when no one is in the sanctuary. Be careful, however, as this will be dicey if your potential transition is not public knowledge. In another post I’ll say more about when and who to tell about a transition. For now, suffice it to say this: tell your senior leadership early and certainly before the transition is public. The point to make here is to say that when preparing some early documents to give to churches, you don’t want the senior pastor walking in the sanctuary after youth group only to ask why you are making a music video! Awkward.

4. Include high-quality pictures and a family bio.
You should include pictures of yourself, and if you are married, pictures of your family. Generally speaking, in the business world you don’t want to do this (and it’s often not even allowed), but ministry is different. In fact, because ministry is about relationships and knowing one another, I’m tempted to say it’s wrong to not have a picture, though you are free to disagree. Be careful not to overdo it, though. You don’t want lots of pictures, one or two professional photographs should suffice.

You may be asking, “Where do I put these pictures? In the email? On the cover letter? Where?” Good questions. Here’s what you do. Write a short bio sketch of your family and put the picture at the top of the page. The writing should be informal and conversational. Look at it this way, it’s another chance to display your writing and people skills.

5. Select quality and diverse references.
It’s common for candidates to write that references are “available upon request.” I understand why people do this; either they don’t want to overwhelm churches with lots of paper, or they want to wait until the job search has progressed before they gather this info. However, I say provide them right away. It shows you have nothing to hide, and if you are serious about the job, you’ll have to provide them at some point anyway.

I would suggest picking a diverse group of three to four references. You don’t want them to all be from the same place. For example, you might choose a seminary professor, a former pastor, someone in your congregation that works in the business world, and the parent of a child in your youth group. If you are brave, you might even include a non-Christian who knows you well. This—in fact—is a requirement for pastors since Paul tells us we must “be well thought of by outsiders [to the church]” (1 Timothy 3:7).

In addition to your references’ contact information, make sure you include a short sentence about your relationship to each person. For example, “Tom has been my neighbor for the last ten years. He’s not a Christian, but we are good friends and have had many conversations about the gospel. He has also visited my church several times.” Or, “Steve is the worship pastor at our church. We work closely together, and our families are dear friends.”

And this leads to my last point, namely, as the process moves forwards, it is appropriate to give your references a heads up that they may be getting a call soon.

6. Use simple, professional formatting.
Simple, professional formatting is essential if you’re going be taken seriously. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at resumes with goofy margins or fonts. Make sure to keep all the fonts consistent. The resume, the cover letter, the family bio, and the references should all have the same font. This feels silly to say, but trust me, it matters.

My preference is to use serif fonts, that is, fonts with the little lines on the edges of most letters (in contrast to the font in this blog post, which is a sans-serif font). Serif fonts, like Times New Roman or Garamond, while bland, look more professional. Also, even among serif fonts, don’t get cute. Choose a simple, standard one. If you choose to use a weird, artsy font, you’ll definitely stand out, just not in a good way.

[Part I of II; tips 7-13 here]

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Words and Deeds, and a Few Comments on Balance

Currently I am studying for my ordination exams in the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). It’s a three-year process that has three major steps in it: one at the start, one at the end, and one in-between. The steps at the beginning and the end of the process are similar; each requires a long, doctrinal paper and an oral examination over that same paper. The difference between the two is that the first step requires a 20-page paper and a three-hour oral examination, while the last step is double that—40 pages of writing and a six-hour oral exam.

What’s the middle step? Three years of faithful, gospel ministry in the context of a local EFCA church.

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On May 21 of this year, I participated in the first step and passed. (If interested, you can read my paper here.)

While preparing for this step, I read Evangelical Convictions, which is an exposition of our denomination’s statement of faith. One place I found the book particularly helpful was in the discussion of the relationship between gospel deeds and gospel proclamation. When you hear “gospel deeds,” think of Christ-like acts of service in the church and the world. And when you hear “gospel proclamation,” think communicating the content of the gospel with words. To explain the relationship between the two, the authors of Evangelical Convictions use a musical analogy. They write:

Words often attributed to Francis of Assisi are frequently quoted in [regard to sharing the gospel]: “Preach the gospel all the time; if necessary use words.”

This is misstated, for our words are necessary, just as God’s words are necessary for us to understand his message. But it is true, nonetheless, that how we live provides the context for the content of the message we proclaim. It provides the music that accompanies the lyrics of the gospel—the music which helps to display the beauty of those lyrics to the world.

Thus, proclaiming the gospel in words and living the gospel through loving service to others ought to go hand in hand. Actions without words are insufficient, but words without action lack credibility. We declare God’s love to the world with more power when we also demonstrate that love in how we live. (Evangelical Convictions, 208)

This analogy—words and deeds likened to lyrics and music—is helpful. Gospel deeds by themselves are like instrumental music: good and beautiful, yet open to ambiguity and misinterpretation. And gospel words by themselves are like lyrics without a melody: good and true, yet all the more powerful when set to music.

A Few Comments on Balance

Perhaps you have heard serious debates about the tension between these two and which is more important: practice or proclamation? Should I shovel the snow in my neighbor’s driveway or should I invite them to a Bible Study? Should I volunteer at soup kitchens or hand out gospel tracts? Which is it, deeds or words?

Often in the debate, the word “primarily” is inserted to soften absoluteness—should Christians primarily be involved in gospel deeds or primarily in verbal gospel proclamation. This helps a little, but I agree with the authors of Evangelical Convictions; there is no ultimate tension between the two—words and deeds should go together like lyrics and music.

But just because they “go together,” I do not think our ultimate goal should be to “balance” them. I say this—that balance is not the goal—for three reasons.

First, how could we possibly know if we have just the right amount of each, the perfect balance of words and deeds? Sure, it’s possible to see gross imbalances, especially in others, but what “scale” shall we use to know when things are slightly off?

Second, balance—however it is measured—is something that must be measured over a period of time. For example, in a given moment, I might be engaged in a gospel practice, and in another moment verbal gospel proclamation. The only way to know that my life is “balancing” these two, practice and proclamation, is if you look at the period of time that includes both.

To use a different analogy, if I say, “I haven’t eaten anything in 10 hours!” you might think, “Whoa, that’s unhealthy and out of balance.” However, it might be very normal if when I said this it was 7am and I’d just had a good night’s sleep. We all have natural rhythms of eating and not eating, and in order to see if a person has a balanced diet you need to examine the right period of time. This is what I mean about words and deeds; you have to observe the right period of time. In different seasons, a person (or even a church or parachurch ministry), might rightly be focused more on one than the other.

Third, to complicate this even more, Christians exist in a body, a body made up of different members with different functions just like the human body (Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31). Therefore, by God’s great design, some of us will be more inclined to word proclamation and some more to deed proclamation. We can see this clearly displayed in 1 Peter. At one point, Peter writes that all Christians are to “proclaim the excellencies” of God (2:9). Yet later in the epistle, Peter notes that some Christians will do this through speaking and others through service. “Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies” (4:11).

For these reasons, to make balance the highest goal is not only impossible to evaluate, but the wrong goal altogether. Thus, I’m not so worried about how I balance the two in my own life, as much as I am concerned about obedience for this is Paul’s emphasis in Ephesians.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

Notice the phrase: “when each part is working properly.” The goal is not to make sure we are always in perfect balance, but perfect obedience so that together—the whole body—can sing gospel lyrics to the tune of gospel deeds. That’s the concert I want to be a part of.

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11 Resources on The Bible, Sexuality, and Homosexuality

In May, our church spent two nights teaching on God’s design for sexual intimacy (here and here). We covered topics such as marriage, pornography, and homosexuality. In preparation, the two teaching pastors at our church (Jason Abbott and I) created the following list of our top eleven books on sexuality.

1.  The Bible 
We start here, because, well… it’s just the place to start. The key passages from God’s Word that deal with sex generally, as well as all of the passages that deal with homosexuality specifically, are as follows: Genesis 1-3; Genesis 19; Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13; Judges 19; Proverbs 5-7; The Song of Solomon; Romans 1:26-28; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; and 1 Timothy 1:8-11. (This hyperlink is to the ESV Study Bible by Crossway. I’ve been using it for several years and have found it a very helpful resource for deep study of the Word.)

2. A Celebration of Sex by Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau
Sex is a good gift from God and this book celebrates it as such. As well, Dr. Rosenau addresses typical problems couples experience in marital intimacy, whether physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual. We wouldn’t recommend this book for anyone that isn’t currently married.

3. What Is The Meaning of Sex? by Denny Burk
This is a great book for believers who want to explore various questions about the ultimate purpose for sex. At the most fundamental level, Burk argues persuasively that human sexuality is intended to bring God glory. (See my book review here.)

4. The Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler
This is an engaging study through The Song of Solomon. The book moves through dating, courting, marriage, and intimacy. Additionally, there is an excellent small group video series available.

5. What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? by Kevin DeYoung
There are so many questions about homosexuality worthy of consideration, but this book answers the question that must be answered before any other questions can be appropriately broached. That question is this: according to the Bible, is homosexual practice a sin or (under the right circumstances) is it a blessing we should celebrate and solemnize? In this book, DeYoung affirms the traditional understanding and also engages the most common objections to this view.

6. Is God anti-gay? by Sam Allberry
This book explores what the Bible says about marriage, sexuality, and same-sex attraction. What is especially helpful in it is Allberry’s perspective on these matters. He is a pastor who experiences same-sex attraction yet is committed to living a celibate life in accordance with his understanding of the Bible. (See my book review here.)

7. Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill
Like Allberry, Wesley Hill experiences same-sex attraction and, like Allberry, is committed to celibacy for the glory of God. However, Hill’s book is more of a personal memoir of his experience of growing up in the church and grappling with his sexuality. This book is especially helpful for those wanting to consider whether their church provides a healthy, gospel-centered atmosphere for those grappling with same-sex attraction. (See my book review here.)

8. The Bible and Homosexual Practice by Robert Gagnon
This book is for those who want to grapple with the question of homosexuality at a very academic level. Gagnon is perhaps the leading scholar on the Bible and homosexuality. Interestingly, even though he’s part of a denomination affirming homosexual marriage, he sees nothing in the Bible that would support that position. Consequently, he has been much maligned within his denomination for his writings on this topic.

9. Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would by Chad Thompson
This is a practical book teaching us how we might love our homosexual friends. It is written by a former practicing homosexual.

10. Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan
This book is the moving personal story of Yuan’s conversion to Christianity. Like Wesley Hill and Sam Allberry, he’s same-sex attracted. It is also one of the best books available for thinking through why the church and Christians are often seen as enemies by the LGBT community. Yuan does an excellent job of helping believers rethink their approach to sharing the Gospel with LGBT friends, family, and acquaintances.

11. Porn-Again Christian by Mark Driscoll
This book, as the subtitle states, is “a frank discussion on pornography and masturbation.” It’s a book for men. You can Google it to download it as a free ebook or you can click here.

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WHO IS JESUS by Greg Gilbert (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Greg Gilbert. Who is Jesus? (9Marks). Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2015. 144 pp. $12.99.

Life is full of questions. Many of them, however, don’t really matter.

You want fries with that? Are we there yet?

But some questions do matter.

Honey, did you remember to get the kids from school? Any idea why I pulled you over today? Will you marry me?

In my own life, another question has been, and continues to be, very important.

Who is Jesus?

Greg Gilbert—a pastor in Louisville, Kentucky—agrees; that’s why he wrote a book with that title. In fact, Gilbert states that it is “the most important question you’ll ever consider” (23).

By Greg Gilbert Who Is Jesus? (9Marks) [Hardcover]

Crossway

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For many, however, this question seems, at best, irrelevant. For many, the thinking goes like this: “I’m sure Jesus was a great moral teacher and he helped people find their way, but he lived so long ago—what difference could Jesus possibly make to me?”

Rather than dismissing these sentiments altogether, Christians can certainly agree that Jesus’s fame is in stark contrast to many aspects of his life that ought to have made him historically obscure. Gilbert writes,

After all, we’re talking about a man who was born in the first century into an obscure Jewish carpenter’s family. He never held any political office, never ruled any nation, never commanded any armies. He never even met a Roman emperor. Instead, for three-and-a-half years this man Jesus simply taught people about ethics and spirituality, he read and explained the Jewish Scriptures to Jewish people… (15)

Christians and non-Christians alike can look at details such as these and wonder why anyone would even speak about Jesus today, let alone worship him.

But it’s interesting that Jesus didn’t think the question of his identity was irrelevant; he believed it mattered a great deal what others thought of him. In fact, in one of the gospel accounts, Jesus asked his followers this very question: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Jesus cared a great deal about what others thought about him because he believed great things were at stake for others in how they related to him. Jesus even believed an individual’s eternal destiny was contingent upon how he or she related to him (John 14:6).

But if when you hear this, you are inclined to dismiss it as “hype”—the over-inflated rhetoric so common in religious circles—then Gilbert’s book is for you. It’s not written primarily for those already convinced but for those with questions. This is obvious in several ways.

For starters, consider the way readers are addressed. Near the beginning, Gilbert writes, “Think about it: You probably have at least one or two acquaintances who would say that they are Christians” (16). The assumption, obviously, is that Gilberts understands that many of his readers will not already be deeply committed Christians involved in a local church where they would certainly have more than “one or two [Christian] acquaintances.”

Also, throughout the book Gilbert preemptively raises the kinds of questions that an interested skeptic might have. For example, questions about the Bible. Gilbert writes,

Now wait a second before you close this book! I know some people recoil when the Bible is mentioned because they think of it as “the Christians’ book,” and therefore they think it’s biased and useless for getting accurate information… (19)

Right after this quote, he goes on to make a superb defense for the relevance and reliability of the Bible, and he does so without stuffing the prose with confusing, technical terms. Never does he refer to the “perspicuity” of Scripture, which is an unclear word that actually means clarity. Nor in the book will you read the phrase “hypostatic union,” though the truth that Jesus was “fully God and fully human,” is in there. In other words, the book is accessible—not simplistic or childish, but accessible.

An additional strength of the book for non-Christians is that what the book does teach, it teaches in narrative. By this I mean that Gilbert unfolds the answer to “Who is Jesus?” in the same way the New Testament does—one story at a time. The effect is that we, the readers, are given the same vantage point as Jesus’s early followers. Gilbert writes,

We’re not going to work page by page through any one of the New Testament documents. Instead, we’re going to use all those sources to try to get to know Jesus in the same way that one who was following him might have experienced him—first as an extraordinary man who did wholly unexpected things, but then with the quickly dawning realization that “extraordinary” doesn’t even being to describe him… He was more than a teacher, more than a prophet, more than a revolutionary, even more than a king. As one of [Jesus’s followers] put it to him one night, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (21-22)

There are other ways this book will help non-Christians consider who Jesus is—such as its length (only 144 pages) and its balance between humor and urgency—but what if you are already a Christian? What’s in it for us?

If you are a Christian reading this review, which I suspect most are, you shouldn’t find the book boring. As a pastor, I didn’t. I even learned a few new things, but perhaps more importantly, I was re-confronted with the many things we tend to forget about Jesus—but shouldn’t. And if you’d like to go deeper with the book, there is a helpful study guide available as well. I could see great benefit in giving Who is Jesus? to a non-Christian friend with the hope of meeting for several weeks to discuss “the most important question [they’ll] ever consider” (23).

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Emotional Support for the Canaanites

At our church, we are beginning a preaching series through the Book of Judges. My co-pastor suggested we brand the sermon series, “With heroes like these, who needs villains.” If you’re familiar with Judges, then you get it. But we are preaching through this book because we don’t want to forget that God’s grace often shines brightest against the darkest of backdrops. While doing preliminary research, I came across the below quote from Dale Ralph Davis in his Judges’ commentary, Judges: Such a Great Salvation. The quote comes in the context of Davis’ treatment of one of the main objections secular people (and others) raise against the Book of Judges, namely, the morality of the conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites, especially because the Lord commanded the disposition. Or, in short, the objection says, “holy wars” were always—and are always—wrong.

Judges: Such a Great Salvation (Focus on the Bible)

By Dale Ralph Davis

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This objection is not unique to The Book of Judges but it is prominent here, as it is in Joshua. Consequently, commentators typically address it, but often, it feels, they do so reluctantly and only out of necessity. Thus to readers, it often feels as though the author would have preferred to tiptoe around the topic, or perhaps that he was sent unwillingly by an editor on a mission to rescue God from bad PR.

Regardless, I can understand why. In a day when theists strap bombs to themselves and others murder abortion doctors in the foyers of churches, God’s OT land acquisition program needs a careful explanation. Yet being careful is not the same as tiptoeing. And Davis won’t be found guilty of the latter; he approaches the objection with his typically fresh, unapologetic, and punchy style—a style I first experienced in his book on preaching Old Testament narrative texts, The Word Became Fresh (which I intend to post a full book review of later this summer).

To be sure, Davis’ comments are not the final word on the subject of holy war in the OT, but they certainly are a good first word.

For many readers Judges 1 raises once more the so-called moral problem of the conquest. How horrid that Israel butcher innocent Canaanites, wreak havoc and misery, grab their land – and all, allegedly, at Yahweh’s command!

If only the Canaanites could know how much emotional support they received from modern western readers. And the conquest was frightful. But people who bemoan the fate of the poor Canaanites don’t view the conquest from the Bible’s own perspective. They forget one vital fact: the Canaanites were not innocent.

Moses was emphatic about that; he humbled the Israelites by insisting that Yahweh was not giving them Canaan because they were such godly folk but because the Canaanites were so grossly wicked (Deut. 9:4-6). If you want all the glory details, see Leviticus 18:6-30 and Deuteronomy 18:9-14. These tests show that the conquest was an act of just judgment upon a corrupt and perverted people. The Bible, of course, does not claim the conquest will be palatable; but it does insist it was just.

Anyway, contemporary western church members who vicariously and avidly gorge themselves on violence via television and cinema have forfeited any right to throw the first stone. (16, emphasis original)

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This Quote Terrifies Me

I remember when I heard it. I was riding my bike listening to the audio of a panel discussion. I couldn’t keep pedaling. It’s a quote from D.A. Carson at the 2011 Gospel Coalition conference.

I sometimes tell students at the seminary that I have learned during the last thirty five years that most of the students do not learn most of what I teach them. What they tend to learn is what I most emphasize; they tend to learn what I come back to again and again—what I put at the center.

Therefore, if it is a broad sweeping discipline that I am trying to pass on to them, only a few of them will pick that up—the other eggheads like me. But on the other hand, if at the heart of a teacher’s ministry is a passion for the gospel, a passion for men and women, even while they are teaching advanced Greek grammar and that sort of thing, it does shape their priorities and values beyond the discipline itself.

(D.A. Carson, speaking at The Gospel Coalition: Training the Next Generation of Pastors and Other Christian Leaders, Panel Discussion: R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Mark Driscoll, David Helm, Don Carson and Ligon Duncan, The Gospel Coalition 2011 National Conference, Apr 13, 2011; quote at 25:00-25:30 minutes)

You may be confused why this quote terrifies me. It terrifies me because I teach for a living. And as a teacher, I too emphasize all sorts of different things. And Carson’s comments terrify me because they force me to evaluate what I prize at the center of all that I teach. What do I come back to again and again? What is at the heart of my ministry? Is it the gospel—a passion for the fame of Jesus Christ?

Consider what you are really passionate about—the thing behind all of the other things in your life. What is it that you think about when you are just sitting around or driving across town? What do you day dream about? If I spent the week hanging out with you, what would I remember most?

These are scary questions.

A great example of keeping the “main thing” central in one’s teaching is seen in the fatherly advice from Proverbs 1-9. Over and over—and just before and just after everything else that the father talks about—the father in Proverbs calls his son to treasure the supremacy of wisdom and the commands of God (cf. 1:20-33; 2:1-22; 3:5-8; 4:1-27; 5:1-2; 6:20-23; 7:1-4; 8:1-9:18). I think the takeaway is that there are 1,000 pursuits in life—but above them all and through them all—we are to seek to know God in wisdom.

It’s so tempting in the teaching ministry of a church or in a seminary, or in life generally, to be pulled into 1,000 separate noble pursuits. But what I learn from Carson and Proverbs is that we have to keep the main thing, the main thing— since everything else will probably be forgotten.

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Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference

Dear Pastor-elders of Community Evangelical Free Church: In April, all of us traveled to Orlando for a pastor’s conference. As you know, over 6,000 others did the same thing. And, in my estimation, at least 5,000 of the attendees were males.

Last week, thanks to your encouragement and support, I attended another conference. This time I was in Pittsburgh, and this time, there were only 155 people there. But—and I noticed this as soon as I walked in the hotel lobby—the ratio was reversed: it must have been 85% women.

It was an odd juxtaposition, these two conferences. Then again, I expected that; I was there to learn about different things—not theology and pastoring in a local church, but the craft of writing. Specifically, I was there to learn how nonfiction authors could improve their writing by using elements of fiction—things like dialogue, conflict, tension, scene, personification, foreshadowing, point of view, and character development.

Sarah, the lady who stood near me as we waited for our registration packets, was there from Chicago, where she is a professional writing coach. Jessica, who sat next to me during the Friday morning session, drove 6 hours that morning from Syracuse; she teaches English to high school freshman. All of us were there to learn how to tell stories—true stories—and to tell them well.

But in the late 1990s, so we learned at the conference, creative nonfiction (or narrative nonfiction as it is often called), was relatively unknown. And where it was known, it was mostly decried. For example, a ’97 Vanity Fair article attacked the genre and its leading protagonist, Lee Gutkind, and pejoratively called him “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction.” Gutkind was a keynote speaker at the conference, and he told us that when Vanity Fair published the article, his fellow college faculty members mocked him to the extent that he didn’t want to leave his house.

Now, however, creative nonfiction is the fastest growing genre in publishing, so we were told. Now, narrative law and narrative medicine, for example, are booming. Many forces, many streams have made it thus, including authors like Tom Wolfe and movements like the New Journalism. But whatever its recent origins, we all know that people have loved the power of stories ever since there have been people to tell them and campfires to tell them around.

On the conference website, it says,

The publishing landscape has recently seen a noteworthy shift toward longform first-person narratives. From traditional news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post to less traditional ones like Slate and Salon, stories driven by a strong first-person voice are taking on many of the most important topics of our time. (emphasis added).

I’m not sure how many at the conference consider matters of faith and the gospel some of the “most important topics of our time,” but I know that we do. And so did the Apostle Paul. He called the gospel a matter of “first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3-6). Therefore, shouldn’t Christians commit themselves to being the best writers? Shouldn’t we be those who tell the best stories?

I think so; we have the best subject matter.

And for me, I can say that the conference did many other things besides reaffirming my commitment to the craft and stirring my creative juices. The conference also gave me valuable insights into the publishing world, and also it allowed me to explore a dream that rattles around in my heart, namely, one day pursuing a writing degree. It’s a dream that could be many years away, or possibly never materialize, but the conference provided needed reconnaissance.

As well, there were a number of nuggets from the conference that served as reminders for me in my preaching at Community. Here’s just one example. After a woman practiced her book “pitch” to the panel of experts, the panel reminded the author that, while the book seemed interesting and true enough, she still had to answer this question: “why this, why now?” The panel continued, “readers and publishers have to know why THIS TRUTH, THIS STORY needs to be presented in THIS cultural moment.”

The import to preaching is direct. It’s not enough just to preach truth; good preaching must also apply every truth to our particular cultural moment, and even one’s particular congregation. There were additional takeaways for preaching, but my letter is getting long already.

So, thank you, pastor-elders, for your commitment to the continuing education of the full-time, vocational pastors at our church. Events like this help sustain me in the pastorate. I do not want my pastoral ministry to be like a sparkler—bright, yet brief. Rather, I want to be a lighthouse—standing against the waves over the long haul. And your commitment to send me to this conference added cement to my foundation.

With much gratitude, Benjamin

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IS GOD ANTI-GAY? & WASHED AND WAITING (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Sam Allberry. Is God anti-gay? And other questions about homosexuality, the Bible and same-sex attraction. United Kingdom: The Good Book Company, 2013. 88 pp. $7.99.

Wesley Hill. Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. 160 pp. $14.99.

There has been a steady stream of books about homosexuality published in the last few years, but two in particular from evangelical authors have received a lot of attention. The two books I am speaking of are Is God anti-gay? by Sam Allberry and Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill. And they should receive attention; they are great books. Besides being great books, they also have many other things in common. For example, both books are short and evangelical. Additionally, they are written by Christian men who struggle with same-sex attraction, but yet—and this is so important—believe that God calls them to forsake acting on these feelings and to live celibate lives.

Maybe you can already see why they have received so much attention.

In this post, I am going to point out some of the strengths of each book. Then I am going to discuss one difference between the authors with respect to the terminology they use to describe their lingering homosexual feelings. Finally, I’ll offer a few comments about what Christians mean and don’t mean by “change.”

But before I do all of that, let me make a disclaimer: I am primarily writing this post for Christians that already hold to a traditional understanding of the Bible and sexuality. In other words, I’m not primarily writing this to convince the unconvinced.

Is God anti-gay? by Sam Allberry

Sam Allberry is the author of the first book, Is God anti-gay? And other questions about homosexuality, the Bible and same-sex attraction. He is a pastor in England and has also authored Connected: Living in Light of the Trinity. Here are a few of the strengths of his book.

Is God anti-gay? (Questions Christians Ask)

By Sam Allberry

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First, Allberry includes the content of gospel message very early in the book (7-10), and he explains how this message changed his life. I consider this a great benefit because I suspect that many people who know very little about Christianity will be drawn in by the book’s provocative title. And speaking of starting with something, before Allberry dives into all of the Bible’s “Thou Shalt Not’s,” he first begins with God’s positive design for sex (13)—also very helpful.

Second, Allberry frequently, and helpfully, places the struggle with homosexual practice within the larger, general struggle with sin that is common to all followers of Christ (11-12). I mention this because too often in the church we tend to single out homosexual practice, even among other sexual sins. To a point, I understand why this is done, but it’s not entirely helpful either. Every prohibition against homosexual practice that’s in the Bible occurs in the context of a list of many different sins. That’s worth remembering.

Third, Allberry’s treatment of the biblical passages relating specifically to homosexuality is clear and compelling (25-38). I’m not saying that everyone who disagrees with the traditional view will be won over, but I am saying that a strong case is made for it.

Finally, the book is eminently practical for those that have objections and questions. Examples include things like the following: “Surely same-sex partnership is OK if it’s committed and faithful?” (39-40); “Jesus never mentions homosexuality, so how can it be wrong?” (40-41); “What are the main struggles for a homosexual Christian?” (54); and “My non-Christian friend has just told me they’re gay. How should I respond?” (74). These are real objections and real questions, and Allberry, with humility and grace, gives real answers.

Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill

Wesley Hill is the author of the second book. The full title is Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. The title comes from two verses that Hill believes are foundational on this topic, namely, 1 Corinthians 6:11 (“You were washed”) and Romans 8:23 (“we wait eagerly”).

Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

By Wesley Hill

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Hill completed his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College, and received a masters and PhD from Durham University in the UK. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry just north of Pittsburgh, PA. His most recent book is Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian.

Comparing Washed and Waiting with Is God anti-gay? is a little like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges—sure there are a few similarities, but fundamentally they are just not the same. Let me share a few of the strengths of Hill’s book, and hopefully that will help you grasp how the two books are simultaneously similar and different.

First, the book reads much more like a memoir than all of the other books I have read on the topic of homosexuality. This is because, in many ways, it is just that—a memoir. In the book, Hill shares his own story, but also included are chapters on the lives of two other Christian authors who struggled with homosexual desires, namely, Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins (both now deceased).

In this way, Hill’s audience is rather specific. Up front, he tells readers, “I’m writing as one homosexual Christian for other homosexual Christians” (16). Perhaps that is a narrow market—a gay Christian writing for other gay Christians. However, the special, captivating power inherent to memoirs has most certainly expanded his audience. And by “special, captivating power,” I mean this: memoirs have a way of inviting believers (in this case, some who have homosexual desires, others who do not) to live vicariously in the struggles and victories of another saint, which is a wonderful and soul enlarging exercise.

Second, the prose of Washed and Waiting is beautiful. Hill has a strong command of language. Additionally, he fills his book with eclectic references to the arts in general and literature in particular. References to paintings, poems, plays, and prose are employed in the most natural of ways. For example, in every chapter expect to see quotations or allusions to a dozen authors, people like H.W. Auden, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wendell Berry, William Shakespeare, J.R.R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Anne Lamott, and of course, C.S. Lewis; yes, lots of Lewis.

Finally, Washed and Waiting articulates the questions of broader culture that seem to clash with a traditional Christian understanding of sexuality, love, and “good news.” That these questions are given a voice will no doubt make some uncomfortable, especially because in just a few places it’s not always immediately clear whether these questions continue to be Hill’s questions (or only were his questions). However, the careful reader will see that in and around the questions and questioning, there is a deep sense that questions about homosexuality do have answers, and these answers are beautiful and biblical answers, which Hill himself affirms and loves.

One Difference between the Authors and Their Terminology

As I said above, these two books are similar in many ways, but fundamentally not the same. I hope you’ve gained a sense of this from the above discussion of their strengths. There is one difference, however, that would be helpful to point out explicitly. You may have already noticed it, but the difference has to do with the way terminology is used to describe on-going homosexual desires.

Sam Allberry tends to speak in terms of “same-sex attraction,” or especially with respect to Christians, in terms of “struggle with same-sex attraction.” You can see this reflected in the subtitle of his book (And other questions about homosexuality, the Bible and same-sex attraction). Wesley Hill, on the other hand, is far more comfortable continuing to use the terms gay and homosexual, although I should point out that Hill often qualifies the terms slightly by adding the word “celibate” (e.g. “a celibate gay Christian”).

For many, this difference is far more than a semantic one. Our understanding of what we believe to be the highest and most fundamental aspects of human identity is at stake. Allberry writes:

In western culture today the obvious term for someone with homosexual feelings is “gay.” But in my experience this often refers to far more than someone’s sexual orientation. It has come to describe an identity and a lifestyle. When someone says that they’re gay, or for that matter, lesbian or bisexual, they normally mean that, as well as being attracted to someone of the same gender, their sexual preference is one of the fundamental ways in which they see themselves.

And it’s for this reason that I tend to avoid using the term. It sounds clunky to describe myself as “someone who experiences same-sex attraction.” But describing myself like this is a way for me to recognize that the kind of sexual attractions I experience are not fundamental to my identity. They are part of what I feel but are not who I am in a fundamental sense. I’m far more than my sexuality. (10-11, emphasis original)

Do you hear what he is saying? Allberry argues that speaking of someone, specifically a Christian, as “gay” or “homosexual,” simply gives too much weight to just one aspect of what it means to be human, namely our sexuality. Sexuality is important, but biblically speaking a person’s sexuality is ancillary to who they are, not foundational and ultimate.

And what does Hill believe about all of this?

In fairness, I’m pretty sure he agrees with all of it. Yes, from the very beginning of his book he does use terms like “gay” and “homosexual,” or even “gay Christian” and “homosexual Christian,” but he also clarifies that he doesn’t mean what most might mean when using those terms. Let me quote him at length from pages 14-15:

My story is very different from the other stories told by people wearing the same designations—“homosexual Christian”—that I wear. Many in the church—more so in the mainline denominations than the evangelical ones… tell stories of “homosexual holiness.” The authors of these narratives profess a deep faith in Christ and claim a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit precisely in and through their homosexual practice…

My own story, by contrast, is a story of feeling spiritually hindered rather than helped by my homosexuality. Another way to say it would be to observe that my story testifies to the truth of the proposition the Christian church has held with almost total unanimity through the centuries—namely, that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity, that it is, on the contrary, a tragic sign of human nature and relationships being fractured by sin, and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ. (14, emphasis original)

More sections from Washed and Waiting could be quoted to address terminology (especially on page 22), but the real question is this: why would Hill tend to speak this way?

I’ve listened to audio recordings where Hill answers this question explicitly. I’m thinking especially of a Q&A at a conference on human sexuality put on by the Evangelical Free Church of American where Hill was one of several keynote speakers (here). The answer to the question to why Hill speaks this way, in short, is this: to gain a hearing from those who would immediately tune him out if he telegraphed his traditional Christian moorings too soon with phrases like “same-sex attraction.” (And remember, in an above quote, Allberry admitted the phrase is a “chunky” one.)

As a pastor, I get this. As soon as I tell people that I am a pastor, the conversation invariably changes. To be aware of this dynamic does not necessarily mean that I am ashamed of my vocation or fearful of identifying myself as a follower of Jesus. I’m not ashamed or afraid. But I can say that in my own life I have learned that there can be a God-honoring motive in delaying the revelation that I’m a pastor. The same is true, I believe, for Hill. Using the terminology of a “gay Christian” is not a way to hide his Christian beliefs indefinitely, but rather a way to help them be heard.

Don’t Christians Change?

Before closing this issue of terminology, it might be helpful to back up and talk about what Christians mean and don’t mean by this word “change.” A few years ago, I remember talking with a mature Christian about this very issue. The person was initially very shocked and disturbed by the thought that there might be gay men and women who genuinely become Christians, but yet continue to struggle with same-sex attraction. This is a startling proposition, one that many Christians have never thought through before. “What—doesn’t becoming a Christian fix this?” some ask.

Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith

By Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Buy on Amazon

Well, yes, it does, but that depends on what you mean by “fix” and what you mean by “change.”

Christians most certainly do change, but this doesn’t mean people live with perfect obedience to Jesus right away or that temptations to sin disappear. Consider for a moment sins like pride, heterosexual lust, or explosive anger. Do these fall away immediately upon conversion to Christ, or even shortly thereafter? Sometimes, but not most of the time. And in some cases the temptations never go away.

It can be jarring the first time you think of homosexual feelings this way, that is, as something that might not go away, at least until Heaven. However, when we consider the specific struggle with same-sex attraction in the broader context of the struggle that Christians have with all sin (which both Allberry and Hill do so aptly), it begins to make more sense.

This is not to say that no one will ever experience a fundamental shift in their attractions to the extent that they marry someone of the opposite sex. This happens. If you’d like to read a helpful account of this, you can do so in the book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield. For Butterfield, it happened. And when this kind of change happens, we should praise God for it. However, we should also be willing to heartily acknowledge that God can be—and is!—glorified in the life-long struggle to reject sin on account of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ. This certainly is a type of “change,” even if the final outworking of the struggle is not completed until we are glorified.

Final Recommendations

For all of the similarities of these two books, I hope you can see that they are actually two very different, but very helpful, books.

If you are a person that is less familiar with the issues involved, especially the issues around the biblical texts, then I would suggest you first read Is God anti-gay? The book is more than a primer on the topic, but it is a least that. If, however, you are more familiar with the issues, and are looking for more of a narrative sweep, then I would suggest Washed and Waiting.

But my hope is that you won’t simply choose between them, but rather read them both.

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A Conversational Ode to Christian Mothers

Last year, I broke an unwritten rule for preachers: on Mother’s Day, I did not preach a sermon that had anything to do with motherhood. For sure, there are worse crimes, but because it was my first Mother’s Day at a new church, I felt I needed to atone for my breach of etiquette. Therefore, I wrote the poem below and shared it at the beginning of my sermon. For your enjoyment, I’ve also included a few of the comments that I used to introduce and conclude the poem. Happy Mother’s Day, mothers. Thanks for all you do.

*     *     *

In honor of the women at church this morning, I have written a poem. I have no illusions that it will stand the test of time and become one of the great literary works of the century. It will not. However, I hope it blesses you. I’ve given it the ridiculously long title, “A Conversational Ode to Christian Mothers, Especially Mothers with Young Children.”

Mom, what are we doing tomorrow?
And then after nap?
And after dinner?
And after church?
And after Thanksgiving and Christmas?
Sweetie, we’re only in the month of May.
It should come more often, this Mother’s Day
Especially for how little the pay.

Mom, can I play at the park?
Can I come out of my room?
Can I go to Gretchen’s house?
Can I have a snack?
No, buddy, no. We just ate.
You’re going to have to wait.

Mom, my shoe’s untied?
My hair is tangled.
I think the little one has pooped.
Okay, okay. One thing at a time.

Hard to remember, I suppose.
When all there is are dirty clothes.
But there are rewards, are there not?
To see your children raised and taught.
To show them Christ, as he’s loved you.
To be there for all they go through.

Hard to remember, I suppose.
When baby has a snotty nose.
Remember this, when they are small
You are mother, but that’s not all.
Your children will help to shape you,
But your children do not make you.

The Target checkout lady knows your name
And so does God, and he even knows your shame.
And your pain, and he loves you all the same.
Because Christ has taken all of your blame.

That was my slightly humorous, and slightly serious, way to say this: Motherhood is a good thing, but it is not an ultimate thing; motherhood is important, but it is not everything. The best Christian mothers are the mothers who know that their children do not define them, but Christ does.

Maybe being a mom has worked out great for you and you will Skype with your children today. That’s good. But maybe being a mom hasn’t worked out so well—maybe you had miscarriages, or abortions, or children that got divorced, or maybe you never had any children. That’s hard, very hard.

I guess I would just say to all women here (especially to young mothers), that, in the Gospel, God loves you and “Christ has taken all of your blame.”

Mock Interview of Jacob and Esau from Genesis 33

Introduction

Last week, I wrote a post about the benefits of reading the Bible closely and how good preaching should model this. In this week’s post, I’m going to give an example of the types of questions I might ask of a passage (and the characters in it) when I am trying to read it closely. To do this, I’ve fashioned this post as a mock interview with the two main characters of Genesis 33: Jacob and Esau. In other words, if I was able to conduct an interview with these two men, what would I ask them, specifically, in light of the details listed in Genesis 33?

By way of background, in Genesis 33, finally, after many, many years, Jacob comes face to face with his brother Esau. Esau is the hairy-warrior-older-brother, and Jacob is the younger, softer brother who stole his older brother’s blessing. While it is fairly easy to get the big picture of Genesis 33, questions abound as to the motives involved. A few details make it seem as though Jacob’s motives we honorable, and other details seem to make them seem less so. The same is true of Esau. It’s difficult to know what to make of the two brothers. This interview is designed to sort out the ambiguity, at least as much as possible.

So, without further introduction, below are the questions I would like to ask Jacob and Esau based on the words of Genesis 33.

*     *     *

Mock Interview Questions for Jacob and Esau from Genesis 33

Genesis 33:1, And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two female servants.

Esau, this first question is for you. Why exactly did you bring “four hundred men” with you to see Jacob? That’s a big posse to meet a guy with his family and some animals.

Later, as the story unfolds, it appeared that your intentions (at least in this encounter) were not to harm Jacob but to protect him. So, Esau, were these men really just there for protection, or were they also for influence and intimidation, you know, in case you didn’t like what you saw in Jacob?

Genesis 33:2, And he put the servants with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all.

Jacob, this question is to you. Why did you arrange your children and wives this way? Was it pure favoritism to protect the ones you love most? We know how you feel about Rachel.

Genesis 33:3, He [Jacob] himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.

Jacob, good work on going out in front alone to meet Esau. That was brave. But, why did you bow down seven times? I have read that it was an established sign of respect in your culture, but was it really respect coming from you to him? Was this a genuine plea for forgiveness that came from a repentant heart? Or, Jacob, was this all an elaborate plan with survival as the principal motive?

In the previous chapter, we read that you sent messengers to Esau to tell him you were coming (32:3), so I’m inclined to pick the former motive, namely genuine repentance, but which was it? Or maybe it was some of both.

Genesis 33:4, But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Esau, were you planning to react this way, or was it a spur of the moment thing?

Genesis 33:5, And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children, he said, "Who are these with you?" Jacob said, "The children whom God has graciously given your servant."

Esau, I noticed that you asked a question to Jacob about the women and children. However, Jacob, you only responded to Esau about the children. Why? Is this significant? Was it because “wives” were a sore subject in your family? We know that you, Esau, back in Chapters 27 and 28, took “foreign wives” much to the disappointment of your mother Rebekah.

To the question again: Jacob, is this why you didn’t bring up your wives? Or maybe it was that you were embarrassed by the fact that you now, like your brother, had multiple wives and girlfriends?

Also, Jacob, here you spoke very humbly. For example, you spoke to your brother Esau as “your servant,” and later as “my Lord.” Jacob, was this the humility you learned over the years of hard labor and service to your uncle Laban, or was it an intentional projection of humility to win favor? Or again, could it be that it was some of both?

Genesis 33:6-7, Then the servants drew near, they and their children, and bowed down. 7 Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down. And last Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down.

Jacob, before this encounter, had you taught your children to bow down like this when they met someone of importance, the same way I might teach my children to look people in the eye and say, “Nice to meet you”?

Or, Jacob, are we reading about the result of very special instructions that you made to your family for this particular moment so that you could curry favor in Esau’s (potentially angry) eyes?

Genesis 33:8, Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?” Jacob answered, “To find favor in the sight of my lord.”

Again, Jacob, if I may, what do you mean with your answer to Esau’s question, “To find favor in the sight of my Lord”?

Are we talking about apologizing or trying to save your skin? If the latter, I’m not sure that would be terribly wrong. I totally understand that a father might have to be creative at times to protect his family from danger. Still, it would seem better if you were apologizing, at least in part.

Genesis 33:9, But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.”

Esau, it seems that there has been a change in you since we last met you. Before, you were “consoling [yourself] with the thought of killing [Jacob]” (Genesis 27:42). What has happened during these twenty years while Jacob was away? Have you let “bygones be bygones”? Have you truly forgiven your brother? Or, are you so wealthy now so that losing the birthright turned out to be of no real consequence, at least financially?

Genesis 33:10, Jacob said, “No, please, if I have found favor in your sight, then accept my present from my hand. For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me…

Jacob, I hear an allusion in the above comment back to your previous night’s struggle where you wrestled with a man all night, and the comment that you made that night, namely, “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:30).

So, Jacob, my question is this: what are you getting at by likening Esau’s face to God’s? Again, is this more flattery or is it sincere? It seems like you are probably very sincere, but I just have to ask.

Genesis 33:11, …Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” Thus he [Jacob] urged him, and he [Esau] took it.

Esau, I have heard that to accept a gift from someone in your culture meant that you were on good terms with the person who gave the gift. Was that what you meant by receiving this gift from your brother (or a better translation, this “blessing” from your brother)? Was this the sign that you two are now on good terms, at least you, Esau, are on good terms with Jacob?

Genesis 33:12, Then Esau said, “Let us journey on our way, and I will go ahead of you.”

Esau, why did you want your brother to come with you? Did you want to keep tabs on him? Did you just assume that he would have wanted to come with you? And here is the real question, was your amiable posture something that was going to continue once you got home? I am sure your brother was wondering this.

Genesis 33:13, But Jacob said to him, “My lord knows that the children are frail, and that the nursing flocks and herds are a care to me. If they are driven hard for one day, all the flocks will die…

Let’s stop here in the middle of this quote to talk about it for a bit.

Now Jacob, was this true? I understand you had been fleeing from your uncle Laban in haste for the last two weeks, but were the animals really on the brink of death? Could they have not gone on just a few more days? It’s hard for me to know, I wasn’t there and you certainly know more about animals than I do.

Or maybe something else was going on. Was it this: now that you and Esau had “kissed and made up,” was this statement about the animals really just a front to get Esau to leave without you? Maybe some of the stories you heard about Grandpa Abraham were bouncing around in your mind, stories about how he had to part ways with Lot (cf. Genesis 14).

Genesis 33:14, …Let my lord pass on ahead of his servant, and I will lead on slowly, at the pace of the livestock that are ahead of me and at the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir."

Jacob, let’s talk about what you said here. Jacob, you said you were going to go to “Seir,” which is just south of the Promised Land, but that you would merely get there a little slower than Esau (e.g. “I will lead on slowly, at the pace of the livestock… [and] the children”). However, as the story goes on, we read that you don’t go to Seir. Jacob, at this point in the conversation with Esau, did you know that you were not really going to Seir with your brother? Or was that something you decided later? Did you have in your mind the command of God that you had recently received, which was to go to your homeland, not to Seir (Genesis 31:13)?

Or were you simply worried that Esau would change his mind, and when you got to your brother’s village, you were worried that Esau the “hairy-warrior-older-brother” would come back out, along with his four hundred armed friends?

Or maybe you did not want to go with Esau because—as we might say using the language of the New Testament—Esau was an “unbeliever” and you did not want to be “unequally yoked”? If that was so, why not just be upfront and honest with Esau? Were you scared? I understand if you were.

Or—and this is possible too—maybe you were not lying at all because you really did go to Seir, just at a later time and then only for short visits? I wouldn’t know if this was true because no visits are recorded in the Bible, but I guess you could have done so. I did notice that Moses, the narrator of Genesis, did not add an editorial comment to this part of the story as he did when you snuck away from Laban (Genesis 31:20, “And Jacob tricked Laban the Aramean, by not telling him that he intended to flee.”). So maybe this business of going or not going to Seir is not a breach of integrity. Still, I’m curious, Jacob, can you explain this to me?

Genesis 33:15, So Esau said, “Let me leave with you some of the people who are with me.” But he [Jacob] said, “What need is there? Let me find favor in the sight of my lord.”

Let’s go back to you, Esau. I asked this earlier, but I need to ask it again. Esau, why do you really want to leave these men with Jacob? Are they escorts for Jacob’s safety, or are they undercover agents to make sure Jacob and his family go where you want them to go? As before, I’m inclined to see benevolence in your actions, but Jacob’s reaction to your kind gesture concerns me.

Jacob, did you see something in Esau’s actions that I am not seeing? Were you trying to keep Esau’s men away because you didn’t want to be an inconvenience to someone you had wronged so deeply, or were you more concerned with not having Esau’s watch dogs—I mean his protectors—with you the whole time because you knew you were not actually going back to his home in Seir?

Genesis 33:16, So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir.

Esau, when you parted company, did you expect to see Jacob meet up with you a few days or weeks later? Or did you get the vibe from Jacob that he was not coming?

Genesis 33:17-20, But Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built himself a house and made booths for his livestock. Therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. 18 And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram, and he camped before the city. 19 And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. 20 There he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.

Jacob, I could be wrong, and I may not have all the facts; but, it sounds like from the end of this passage that you were not just making a quick stop on the way home but setting up camp for a decent length of time? Is this right? And if so, this is not at all the direction of Seir, right?

You seem to be headed home, but you didn’t make it all the way, did you? Did someone get sick? Or did the seasons change and the weather was no longer conducive for continuing travel?

Or did you simply find a place that you thought you could do profitable business and so you stopped?

I’m especially interested about the initial cause of this stop and why it was prolonged because of what happens in the next chapter. I hate even to bring it up, as I’m sure it’s still painful. This “pit stop” puts events in motion that lead to your only daughter, Dinah, being so horribly abused. Tell me Jacob, what’s going on?

*     *     *

Epilogue

I first created this mock interview several years ago when I was interning with a church that was preaching expository messages through Genesis. It was there, that summer as an intern, that I fell in love with expository preaching—not as a listener but as a practitioner.

In the end, I’m not sure how either Jacob or Esau would answer each and every one of these questions, but I do think, for a few of the questions, we can come to reasonably good guesses. And, regardless of whether the questions can be answered or not, I certainly know the passage better for going through this exercise. This is part of what I mean when I talk of reading the Bible closely. And in a world of sloppy reading, good preaching should offer the fruit of a close reading of the Bible.

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In a World of Sloppy Reading

The Problem

We are inundated with information – billboards, commercials, cereal boxes, social media, and the deluge of emails. “Read me, read me—RIGHT NOW!” they shout.

So we do.

Well, sort of. Basically, we skim. We have to. Send me an email over 300 words, and it just sort of happens. I’m sorry, but it does. We look for key words; we look for headlines and block quotes; we look for text in bold.

We are teaching ourselves to read poorly. We cannot get the main point of an essay if we only read 25 words of the 5,000. And if I Google something complex and skim the search results – maybe even click a link or two (including the Wiki page, of course) – then I know “what’s what” right?

No, I don’t. And no you don’t either. We are kidding ourselves. As Tony Reinke has written:

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books

By Tony Reinke

Buy on Amazon

The Internet presents random fragments of information that flow at us in a stream—a Facebook status update, a new Tweet, even a random email—and attention gets chopped up into small, disconnected fragments throughout the day. The internet encourages superficial browsing, not concentration. (Reinke, Lit!, 141)

Might we even call this pull towards “browsing, not concentration,” a form of illiteracy – not the inability to see words and vocalize them, but illiteracy because we lack the ability to slow down, to digest, to process?

I’m sure researchers have studied this. Recently, for example, Desiring God released a large survey of how our smart phones and social media are changing us (the former: here and the latter: here). And while I’m not sure how I would quantify the type of illiteracy I’m talking about, I do know that I can feel it when I open my Bible in the morning to read. Too often I blaze through a chapter in the Bible at the same speed by which my thumb navigates my iPhone’s screen. This isn’t good. And too often, even when I put in the time, I get little out of it.

It’s into this type of world and this type of reading – a world of sloppy reading – that good preaching should offer the sweet fruit of a close reading of the Bible.

When I Say “Close Reading,” What Do I Mean?

Close reading (and close preaching) sees details, the leaves on the trees. But at the same time, close reading doesn’t become myopic. It keeps an eye on the forest, making the proper connections to broader themes. In other words, close reading sees the Big Story that contains all the little stories.

Close reading explores motive. It requires empathy. Yes, a character did X, but why did he do X? What was he after? Close reading, as one preacher has noted, asks what is the thing behind the thing?

Close reading attempts to understand unfamiliar words, strange concepts, and awkward sentence structures. Just what is that preposition doing there? And why is this word left out and that word included? Why did a character do what they did? Is there a cultural dynamic taking place that I need to become familiar with to understand this passage?

Close reading attempts to understand how the occasion behind the writing affects what is said and done (and what’s not said and not done). And what can we know of the events surrounding the passage that influenced the author to write what he wrote? For example, close reading considers things like what was going on with Israel when the passage was written. Was the passage before David or after? Before the exile of the southern kingdom or after? And in the Gospels, we might ask, where is Jesus at in his ministry? The beginning or the end? Is he in a Gentile region or a Jewish one? And of Paul’s letters, if possible, we might seek to place them in the context of his three missionary journeys recorded in Acts. And of Peter’s letters, we might ask if there was a specific emperor he had in mind when he says things like “honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17). (I personally think Peter had Nero in mind which influences how we read the passage.)

Additionally, close reading considers how a passage has been interpreted over time. If the passage is in the Old Testament, did any New Testament authors comment on it? And with an author like John, can we see any developments from his Gospel account to his epistles, which are generally understood to have been written later. And how has the passage been interpreted throughout church history? And how has contemporary scholarship challenged or affirmed traditional readings? Close reading asks questions like these.

The Harvest of Close Reading

These are just a few of the things to consider when reading the Bible closely. And this means that close reading is work – a lot of work. It takes time, concentration, and quiet. It is demanding. I know.

But in my experience, the harvest is worth it. The fruit is sweet, and it can feed people. It feeds me. And this is what good preaching does, or at least should do. It should feed people something worth eating.

By this, however, I do not mean that good preaching is a lengthy, boring presentation of the process of discovery. It’s not that at all. If it feels that way, I’m doing something wrong.

Consider the example of a farmers’ market. A farmers’ market doesn’t exist to lecture us on all the work that goes into growing a peach. Rather, it works like this. When you stop by a farmers’ market on a Saturday morning, what they are saying, in effect, is this:

Hey, here’s some good fruit for you to buy. Check it out. It took us awhile, but let’s not talk about that now. Just know we’ll be here every Saturday morning this summer with awesome produce.

We know it’s hard work running a farm; they don’t have to tell us that.

But Close Reading is Not Just for Preachers

Growing your own observations may feel overwhelming, but it’s the job of all Christians, not just the professionals. This is what it means to meditate on the Word of God.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3)

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. (Psalm 119:15-16)

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

I think Jesus, at least in part, has scripture mediation in view when he tells us to love God with all of our “mind” (Matthew 22:37).

I suspect that if we did press a farmer at the market with some questions about the process of farming, they would tell us that we could do the same thing they are doing, that is, if we just had a little coaching.

They might say,

Oh, you’ll never have acreage and whatnot, but if you are motivated, anyone can grow a few tomatoes in their own backyard. It just takes time and practice. But you should do it. They’ll taste great, and this way, you’ll be more excited to share them with your friends and neighbors.

Sometimes preachers subtly communicate that what they are doing upfront could never be done by those in the pew. This is wrong. We preachers are supposed to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-12), which, at a minimum, must include helping others grow their own fruit, their own observations about the Bible. If we are not doing this, the Bible might as well be in Latin and we might as well be pre-Reformation priests.

Good preaching then, like a farmer at a farmers’ market, should commend the fruit to others – the fruit of a close reading of the Bible. Just think of what the other extreme is. God forbid we preachers should posture ourselves as magicians holding on to our secrets. And, God forbid our published sermon notes would have a footnote that reads:  “Professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt at home.” May it never be! Rather, the subtext to good preaching should say:

Hey, taste this. Isn’t it good? It took me a while, and I had to pay close attention, but I’m so happy it feeds you. And, oh by the way, I think you could probably do this at home too. Let me help you see how.

Some Tips on Growing your Own Fruit

If your life is inundated with words and information, if your reading looks more like skimming than reading, you are probably normal. But normal means that this skimming probably creeps into your Bible reading as well. And a great enemy of careful, fruitful observation is when sloppy reading becomes habitual.

We.

Have.

To.

Slow.

Down.

I don’t know how much you currently read your Bible. Let’s just say you read four chapters a day. (I pick that because that’s the pace to read the Bible in a year.) If this is you, maybe take a month to not read four chapters a day. Instead, just read four verses, maybe from a Gospel or a New Testament letter. And then do it again the next day – the same four verses. And then, read them the next day too. And the day after that. Write out the questions you have about the passage. Pick up a study Bible and read the entries. Pray. Read the verses again. Pray. Read them again. List your observations. Ask more questions. Why is that word used? Why would the person in the story do what he or she did? What is the thing behind the thing? Do this, not in one day for fifteen-minutes, but do it for two weeks, fifteen minutes each day.

This is hard work; I know. It takes time, concentration, and quiet.

But eating a Honeycrisp apple straight from the tree, a tree you planted and watered and weeded and pruned, is worth it. You’ll taste the difference, and you’ll probably want to share it with your friends.

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MOM ENOUGH edited by Tony and Karalee Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Tony and Karalee Reinke (editors). Mom Enough: The Fearless Mother’s Heart and Hope. Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2014. 120 pp. $7.99.

Being a mom is a wonderful but difficult job. Too often Pinterest does in subtle ways what Victoria Secret does overtly—crush women under the weight of airbrushed unrealities.

But it’s not only Pinterest and Victoria Secret that can inflict damage. Sometimes damage comes from other moms. Innocent playgroups turn into competitions over who has the perfect, God-ordained way of preparing organic, gluten-free, low-carb snacks. And sometimes damage can even come from the Bible, or, at least, from the mishandling of it. For example, Proverbs 31—a chapter that celebrates women and mothers—can be (mis)taught so that it becomes just another crushing airbrushed unreality.

This is why I’m so thankful for books like Mom Enough: The Fearless Mother’s Heart and Hope edited by Tony and Karalee Reinke. It doesn’t make this mistake. Mom Enough doesn’t crush; it gives wings.

When I bought Mom Enough, I knew it was a collection of short essays from various women, all published authors. However, when I received the book and read in the preface that each entry was originally a blog post for Desiring God, I was a little disappointed. I love the ministry of Desiring God, but at first I was annoyed because the last book I read like this (blog posts turned into a book) was lousy. Mom Enough, however, is not lousy. It’s excellent. As soon as I finished the book, I bought three more to give away. And with Mother’s Day coming next month, there is still plenty of time for you to get several copies to do the same (here).

The title Mom Enough is taken from one of the book’s essays of the same name, which in turn, is a callback to the Time magazine article from the summer of 2012 that had those words on its cover. If you saw that cover, you’d remember it; it pictured a woman breastfeeding a toddler that looked like he was about a year away from kindergarten.

In the book, author Rachel Pieh Jones pointedly describes the “mom enough” battle.

From television, Facebook, blogs, and Pinterest, the message screamed at moms is this: unless you are fit to run marathons, breastfeed into the preschool years, own a spotless and creatively decorated home, tend a flourishing garden, prepare three home-cooked meals per day, work a high-powered job, and give your husband expert, sensual massages before bed, you are not mom enough. (Rachel Pieh Jones, Mom Enough, 19, emphasis original)

But Jones is waving the white flag.

From my perspective, however, the Mommy War is over. Done. Finished. Kaput. And I lost. I am not mom enough. Never was, never will be. (19-20)

Yet quitting the “mommy war” does not mean she is ceasing to fight.

But I am on the frontlines of another war. The battles are raging and the casualties could be my children, my husband, or myself. This war isn’t about me being mom enough. This war is about God being “God enough.” (20)

And this war—the fight of faith to believe that God is an all-satisfying fountain of joy and big enough and caring enough to help us in our daily lives—is a war that began long ago. This war started in a garden when a serpent implied that God wasn’t God enough and when Adam and Eve believed they would be happier if they went their own way.

Right now, my wife is pregnant, which I know is a difficult season for all women, but it is especially so for my wife. No, she won’t spend the entire time in the hospital (Lord willing), but during past pregnancies, we have certainly made a few visits for extreme dehydration because of constant vomiting. My wife is a warrior, that’s for sure. I try to help her as best as I can, but what Mom Enough reminded me is that what my wife needs most—and what I believe all Christians need most (mothers or not)—is to know that in the midst of the battle, God is always God enough.

Lessons about Writing from Three Dribbles and a Jump Shot

A Metaphor

Three dribbles, one jump shot. That’s all.

That’s all that it takes for me to know if someone can play basketball or not. I don’t even have to see if the ball goes in the hoop. It’s mostly irrelevant. How did he catch the ball? How did she dribble it? And what of the shooting form? Was it graceful? Did the technique exude good coaching? You can judge these things quickly.

I know this sounds arrogant; it’s just true.

What I am not saying is that I can know if someone could play (or did play) basketball at the college level. That’s more specific than curb appeal shows. But immediately, I can rule the possibility of college ball “in” or “out.” And I suspect real coaches of the game, those in the business (which I am not), only know this more, not less.

And I suspect this is true in writing.

A Case Study

The other day I was reading a book and came across an epigraph (a brief quotation at the start of a book or chapter to suggest theme), and I knew immediately: “This author can ball.”

The quote was originally from an essay in Time about birth control, specifically, the Pill. The quote reads:

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the ’60s so raw and raucous, the revolution stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of the church and the state—so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire… the pill became the Pill, the means by which women untied their aprons, scooped up the their ambitions and marched eagerly into the new age. (Nancy Gibbs, “The Pill at 50,” Time; quoted by Denny Burk, The Meaning of Sex, 138; ellipsis by Burk, emphasis mine)

It’s only 69 words, but it’s enough to know Nancy Gibbs can play the game.

Does her whole article cohere? Does her analysis remain fair and equitable, avoiding straw men? Does her prose adequately deal with the personal vestment and intimacy that comes with a topic like birth control? Does her… jump shot go in the hoop?

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Here, we only have three dribbles and a jump shot, and our back is to the basket. But you can see it, can’t you? She can play.

Consider just two lines. First, “raw and raucous, the revolution stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles.” The alliteration of the letter ‘r’ six times subliminally “stack” even as she makes the point that the ’60s stacked on the ’50s.

Second, look at the line “so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire...” Again, there is subtle alliteration of ‘v’, but notice the concreteness of the fire metaphor: it’s not just a fire, but a “bonfire” in all of its communal, rebellious, and wild connotations (i.e., the ’60s).

For fun, and to test my suspicions, I read the whole article. It’s almost 5,000 words. While knowing nothing of her broader career, I can confidently say that my suspicions were true: Nancy Gibbs can write.

And if I can see this, as a novice, I’m sure those in the business can as well, only better.

An Objection

But perhaps aspiring writers, like myself, may protest to the standard process(es) of publication – the pressure to impress with only a very small sample size.

The objection might go like this:

Query letters to publishers and agents are so short, and in such formulaic, expected structure. And then what of the proposal letter – don’t they need the whole novel, not just a few chapters, to see my awesomeness?

Shouldn’t they watch a whole game, or at least see me dribble around the court for a while, maybe show off some fancy ball handling? Look now – I’m a Harlem Globetrotter.

Nope. They are professionals.

Not perfectly of course – mistakes can happen – but professional agents, editors, and publishers probably know in just a few paragraphs whether a writer has game.

The takeaway for me is twofold.

1. Practice, Practice, Practice

We have to learn the game, and learn it well, before trying to play it on center court. We must work on mechanics, and know the basics of a chest pass. We have to play some pickup games. And every once in a while, sure, we can try a fancy crossover; it’s just practice. But for the most part, we must master the basics.

We must learn the rules for commas and colons. And learn when a semicolon is appropriate and when it’s just being pretentious. Learn how to use indirect quotes and direct quotes. Write some poems and a short story—or write two stories, or maybe twenty. And we need to find some good coaches too, people who can teach me things I do not know, people who can push us beyond my limits, people who can encourage when needed and critique carefully, seeing the typos and the logical fallacies. In other words, we need to practice, practice, practice.

2. Learn to Reverse Engineer

Here’s another takeaway for me: Read (broadly) those that do have game, and then learn to reverse engineer their product.

Reverse engineering is the process of disassembling something and analyzing its components. It means tearing apart something that works and figuring out why it worked in the first place. Steven Pinker, in his recent book on writing (The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century), writes:

The starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader. Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reversing-engineering examples of good prose. (12)

Practically speaking, with respect to writing, reverse engineering would mean that when you and I find a striking paragraph, we should pause. Study it. Ask why we liked it so much and what it was doing to achieve its effect. We should disassemble some of it. We should ask if form matches function (e.g. stacking the letter ‘r’)? Or do the connotations of specific words match the overall point (e.g. bonfire)? In other words, start with the end product and go backwards.

If we do this, eventually, with lots of practice, when we shoot the ball it will be more likely to go in the hoop.

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