NOT YET MARRIED by Marshall Segal (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

On a cold January night in 2003, I was in Denver, Colorado, for a Campus Crusade winter conference. All the cool kids wore Abercrombie and had flip phones, and under the influence of Joshua Harris’s book about relationships, I had kissed dating goodbye.

After dinner that night, I spoke with a girl named Brooke about dating—I mean courting—and whether God had marriage in our future. He did, and we’ve been married for a dozen years.

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A lot has changed in the last 15 years. Crusade is now Cru. Having a flip phone might be cool, but in a retro kind of way. Yet for all the changes, much stays the same. Whether you call it dating or courting or something else, the “way of a man with a young woman” (as Proverbs puts it) is still a beautiful, mysterious thing, like a ship sailing across the sea (Prov. 30:18–19).

But like the high seas, dating can be dangerous, leaving people with bitter and broken hearts.

Christian Living and Christian Dating

That’s why I’m thankful for Marshall Segal’s new book, Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating. Segal, staff writer and managing editor for desiringGod.org, is newly married, but he isn’t just another married guy telling singles what to do. “I wrote a lot of this book, and learned almost all of the lessons before I married my wife,” he explains, establishing his singleness credentials (16).

Not Yet Married has two parts. The first is “the not-yet-married life.” Here Segal channels many of Desiring God’s hallmark themes—passion and purpose, joy in mission, and the glory of God—and applies them to singleness. In the second part, “when the not-yet-married meet,” he deals with the particulars of Christian dating.

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[To read the rest of this post, visit The Gospel Coalition.]

I Signed a Book Contract

I mentioned I was going to take a month off from blogging. We just had a baby, and I need a break—and sleep! But I’m breaking my promise to share a quick update, although I’m not convinced this post technically counts as a full return to writing blog posts!

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Regardless, I’m posting to let people know that yesterday I signed a book contract. This is a first for me. The book is with Rainer Publishing. They publish short books aimed at helping the local church.

The premise of the book is that many churchgoing men have a struggle with pornography. But few struggle against pornography. My book will equip Christian men to fight against it.

I’ve written about this before, and I suspect you’ll hear more from me on this topic! The manuscript is due next summer, and the book should, Lord willing, come out in the fall of 2018. Please be praying for me. Also, please send the names of your favorite books and blog posts on the topic. Feel free to share them in the comment section or by email.

It’s way too early to gather a “launch team” to help with book promotion. But if that’s something you’re interested in, well, hang on for a year! I’d love to have your help then!

[Picture by Mark Solarski / Unsplash]

Pinterest Perfect Wedding Pressure

The pressure on couples to have a beautiful wedding is enormous, far more than when Brooke and I were married 12 years ago. When we were married, Facebook had only been around for one year, which meant no one expected us to release breathtaking photos. All of that has changed.

Last year, a year in which I was a part of seven weddings, I wrote an article for Desiring God titled, "The Problem with the Pinterest Dream Wedding." In it, I encouraged Christian couples to keep what is the center of their marriage (the gospel) at the center of their wedding ceremony.

Heather Sells, a reporter for CBN, recently interviewed me about that article and the broader trends we pastors are seeing at wedding ceremonies. Sells notes, “That 10 years ago, couples spent $16,000 on a wedding with an average of 110 guests. Today, they’re spending an average of $28,000 with 124 guests.” That increase in cost is far more than mere inflation. Also, in the last decade, the average length of engagement has increased from 8 months to 13 months.

Why do you think this is? Why the increase in cost and length of engagement? Why do weddings need a clever hashtag on social media? Why do couples feel the need to have Pinterest-perfect centerpieces? And why do I, as a pastor, feel the need to preach the perfect wedding homily?

I’m not sure all of the reasons, but I do have a few guesses. In the interview I say,

Culturally I think right now we’re at a place where our identity is not so much looking upward to God and who He says we are in the Gospel—the good news that we’re His sons and daughters in Christ—but rather who we posture ourselves as in social media.

You can watch the video interview here, which includes my comments and those of a few others.

[Picture by Allef Vinicius / Unsplash]

For to Us a Child Is Born

I typically don’t write many posts that focus on the happenings in our family. But today I thought I’d make an exception. At 8:03 AM yesterday morning my wife and I had another child. My wife had a Caesarian delivery and is resting at the hospital for a few more days.

This was Brooke’s last C-section. She’s had six of them and is a warrior! I’m so proud of her. And I’m so thankful for God’s gracious protection and providence. We’ve often reflected that if we lived a hundred years ago, or even in many parts of the world today, my wife likely would tragically have died while giving birth to our first child. Now, by God’s grace, we have three boys and three girls . . . and a very noisy house!

My son’s name is Salem Robert Vrbicek. The name Salem comes from the Hebrew word for peace, and it’s also the name of a beloved church we attended during our seminary years. His middle name Robert is my middle name, and also the first name of my father and grandfather.

During a quiet moment at the hospital yesterday while Brooke was sleeping, I held Salem in my arms. It’s amazing how fragile and dependent a three-hour-old child is. Equally amazing to me was considering how our lives, lives that starts so small and vulnerable, will have such huge influences on this world.

I titled this post with an allusion to the familiar Isaiah 9:6 passage we so often reference around Christmas. The verse reads,

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

No, my son will not one day have the government on his shoulder or be a wonderful counselor—at least not in the way that Jesus is these things. However, in that quiet moment I did spend some time praying that one day Salem Robert Vrbicek would come to know the good news story of Jesus Christ who is the Prince of Peace, and when Salem does, that my boy would be one who helps others also know where true and everlasting peace is found.

I’m Looking for Help from Pastors

From the very beginning of this blog post, let me be upfront. I’m looking for help. Let me explain.

I’ve written a book to help pastors in the job-search process. The book does not exist yet, not officially anyway. This is where you come in. For the next few months I’m recruiting 50 pastors and other thoughtful Christians to comment on the manuscript and to spend time with me on the phone about their own job-search experience. As you can see from above, right now I’m 26 interviews short of my goal.

In exchange for the 30-minute phone interview and your comments on the manuscript, I'll send you a free copy of the book. You can click here to sign up. It takes just a few seconds.

And if you are not a pastor, but you know someone who is in full-time ministry, PLEASE share this post with him or her.

One last thing. I’m not just asking you to do this work for some selfish goals of mine. I’m asking you to share a gospel vision. This book began with the belief that helping pastors transition effectively from one church to another would, in turn, help churches be healthier. And the love of God spreads across the earth through healthy churches. Together, let’s help this book play its part in God’s grand purpose of loving more people.

To get a copy of the book, click here.

The Wisdom of the Sixth Day

In Genesis 1 after God created man and woman, we read: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” (v. 31).

Recently I spent a few weeks teaching some young adults at our church about God’s vision for biblical manhood and womanhood, and how, when rightly understood, it’s “very good” for us. Yet before such a daunting topic—and frankly, a controversial one—I often felt not a little intimidated.

A few times during the class I shared a poem I wrote about God’s wisdom in creating us male and female. Poetry is thoughtful, concentrated language to express and evoke emotion, and it was my hope that my poem, frail as it was, would encourage the group to see what God says about manhood and womanhood as something wise and for our flourishing.

The Wisdom of the Sixth Day

There is a beauty to the stars
And the earth and waters,
Though it’s said only of God’s sons and daughters,
That in His likeness made,
Imaging God’s glory.

But they listened to the dragon,
And take and eat they did—
From the forest chose the tree which God forbid.
Thus perfect complement,
One transgression tarnished.

Though all creation loudly groans,
Pricked by thorns and thistles,
Bright hope we have in Christ our Lord who whistles,
Our sin and death and wrath, “Come here”—
That’s how our Savior saves.

O now for men who dare protect
And sacrifice with might,
Who neither shirk the reins nor demand by right!
Yet in the Lord, and to redeem,
They do in battle bleed.

O now for women who selfless serve
And nurture people whole,
Who neither scorn their part nor another’s role!
Yet in the Lord, and for the King,
They offer helping hands.

“But the calling is too high,”
The cynics they do say.
“And for love of self, our culture too astray.”
Yet the beauty of God’s wisdom,
The Church of God shall shine.

 [Picture by Jeremy Thomas / Unsplash]

When a Door Closes and a Window Doesn’t Open

Jared C. Wilson is quickly becoming one of my favorite Christian authors. Writing about suffering and the goodness of God, in his book The Story of Everything, Wilson says this: 

I have a problem with all the “chase your dreams!” cheerleading from Christian leaders. It’s not because I begrudge people who want to achieve their dreams, but because I think we don’t readily see how easy it is to conflate our dream-chasing with God’s will in Christ.

You know, it’s possible that God’s plan for us is littleness. His plan for us maybe personal failure. It’s possible that when another door closes, it’s not because he plans to open the window but because he plans to have the building fall down on you. The question we must ask ourselves is this: Will Christ be enough? (Wilson, The Story of Everything, 122.)

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It’s not that this quote is necessarily the sum of all that Christianity is. No one paragraph of any book is able to capture all that Christianity is. But this paragraph does, in my opinion, reflect a theme of Christianity that is often underrepresented in our churches, even the best churches. When life is hard, tomorrow might not be better than today, at least in the way that we understand things.

Two things make Wilson’s quote especially pertinent to the life of John the Baptist. First, the statement about “littleness.” Of the several famous quotes by John the Baptist, one that he said of Jesus is this: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Second, Wilson’s comment is relevant to John because of the statement about closing doors and not opening a window. Wilson is spoofing what is common in Christian lingo, that a closed door must mean another opportunity (a better opportunity!) will always arise. But it’s possible that won’t be the case . . . it was for John. When God sent John to prison, he didn’t get out. He was executed there (Matthew 14:1–12).

The question John must have been asking was whether Jesus would be enough for him when he actually did “decrease” and it seemed he was about to die? And the question for you and me is similar. Will Jesus be enough for us when we get “littleness” and a “window doesn’t open”?

Yes, yes he will.

When you stand up for what’s right and end up in jail (as was the case with John); when you have cancer; when you lose your job; when your house is robbed; when your parents get a divorce . . . Jesus is still Jesus. And he’s enough for you. At his weakest moment, God told the Apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Today, if you are weak, know that Jesus is strong and he loves you dearly, even if you don’t understand your own pain and God’s plan for it.

* This has been excerpted and adapted from a sermon I recently preached at Community Evangelical Free Church. You can listen below. 

[Picture by Gabriele Diwald / Unsplash]

Three Sentences that Changed Things for Me

Just a few times a year I share my sermons on my blog. This week and next week, I’m sharing sermons I recently preached from the gospel of Luke. They were in different contexts, one was as a guest in a former church (this week), and the other was in my current local church (next week).

Below is the written introduction to this week’s sermon, as well as the link to listen to the whole thing.

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When I was graduating from seminary and looking for jobs in local churches, one particular application stands out in my memory. When they asked about my hobbies, among other things, I wrote these three sentences:

I enjoy reading and writing. This is somewhat strange for me to admit to myself, coming from my engineering background where I neither enjoyed nor did much of either. Yet, as time has passed, largely under the influence of seminary-forced papers, irritation has grown into love.

And it did: irritation grew into love.

They were just three small sentences, but they changed things for me. If you had asked me five minutes before I wrote them, I might have told you this is how I felt, but I’m not sure I would have because I had never articulated the feelings before.

Yet if I’m honest, this hobby of mine—this passion for writing—hasn’t always been contained within its proper bounds, even now. Sometimes the things we love are good things, but our love and our enjoyment of them grow beyond the rightful place and size. Pastor and author Timothy Keller speaks of this as a “good thing becoming an Ultimate thing,” which, he says, is when idolatry happens. He says this because “good things” should never become “god-like things” in our lives.

So, for example, I recently submitted a few articles to various online publications, as well as a longer writing project to a publisher. I confess that too often in quiet moments my mind has drifted to whether or not these articles would be received well, whether they would make the cut, whether or not I was someone who mattered. Too frequently and too easily, my thoughts would drift into the realm of daydream and fantasy.

Your hobbies and preoccupations might not be mine; I doubt for most they are. But I bet you do have something that it doesn’t take much of a lull in the action for you to begin thinking about it. Maybe it’s your hobby or family or career or health. It doesn’t take much downtime for you to pull out your phone, begin browsing, and start daydreaming.

If you had your wishes, what do you want to get out of life? What do you long for? What do you hope for? What do you dream about? What keeps you motivated?

You don’t have to have an answer now, but I will tell you this: I think the way Simon Peter would have answered these questions is altogether different before the events in Luke 5:1-11 happened and after they happened. A huge catch of fish was what he desperately wanted, but when he got it, he realized he shouldn’t have treasured stuff more than Jesus.

[Picture taken by Dustin Tramel at New Life Bible Fellowship in Tucson, AZ]

12 Quotes from 12 WAYS YOUR PHONE IS CHANGING YOU

A few days ago, one of my favorite authors from one of my favorite publishers released a book I’ve been waiting for since I first heard about it. The book is 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke, and it’s published by Crossway. You can watch the promo video for the book above.

I loved the book and will post a review sometime in the future. For now, here are 12 quotes to whet your appetite.

“We now check our smartphones every 4.3 minutes of our waking lives.” (p. 16)

“What we need are new life disciplines birthed from a new set of life priorities and empowered by our new life freedom in Jesus Christ. So I cannot tell you to put your phone away, to give it up, or to take it up again after a season of burnout. My aim is to explore why you would consider such actions in the first place.” (p. 21)

 “Conversations about our smartphones often do not raise new questions; they return us to perennial questions every generation has been forced to ask.” (p. 24)

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“This means that whatever happens on my smartphone, especially under the guise of anonymity, is the true exposé of my heart, reflected in full-color pixels back into my eyes.” (p. 27)

“We find ourselves in the middle of this garden-to-city unfolding of history, and God is governing the entire process in several ways. Between the guardrails of natural law, as well as the guardrails of the abundance and scarcity of certain raw materials in the earth, and carried forward through his image bearers, each wired for innovation, the trajectory of technological progress—from the garden to the city—was set in motion.” (p. 30)

“To be without the constant availability of distraction is solitary confinement, a punishment to be most dreaded. That is why in those moments when we realize we have forgotten our phone, lost it, or let the battery run out, we taste the captivity of a prison cell, and it can be frightening.” (p. 45)

“For those with eyes to see, Christ’s return is so imminent, it potently declutters our lives of everything that is superficial and renders all of our vain distractions irrelevant.” (p. 50)

“The modern-day mantra we hear so often—‘I will follow Christ, but don’t bother me with organized religion’—is symptomatic of the disembodied assumptions of the digital age. In reality, the Christian life could not be more embodied.” (p. 62)

“Those who feed on little nibbles of immediate approval from man will eternally starve. But those who aim their entire lives toward the glory and approval of God will find, in Christ, eternal approval. The stakes are that high.” (p. 77)

“Our souls have been raised to new life in order to brag of Christ, and as we speak, our joy expands and overflows, and we become creators and artists. Art is spontaneous. Art is doxology. Art is the reflection of God’s beauty into the world. This is why we exist!” (p. 96)

“The smartphone is causing a social reversal: the desire to be alone in public and never alone in seclusion. We can be shielded in public and surrounded in isolation, meaning we can escape the awkward” (p. 124)

“We pay more attention to our phones than we do to the third person of the Trinity, but he cares for us more than we care for ourselves. Perhaps you believe you would benefit spiritually by stepping away from your phone for a season. Or perhaps you feel led to rethink better boundaries in your digital life. Or you may be fed up with your love-hate-deactivate-delete-reactivate relationship with social media, and you are ready to rid yourself of your smartphone altogether. I cannot tell you what to do, but I can encourage you to heed the conviction of the Spirit, who will help you make the next step of obedience.” (p. 197)

 

RELATED POSTS

A Pornography Sea Change

I’ve spent the last year working on a book to help men struggle against the temptations of pornography and other sexual sins. After a full year, I feel like I’m climbing a huge mountain yet still only nearing the first basecamp. There’s such a long way to go.

There are many reasons why I’ve made this a priority for research and writing, but for starters let me mention this: the issues in culture and in our churches related to pornography abuse are only going to increase as technology becomes more advanced and pornography becomes more abundant. In fact, pornography has driven much of the technological advancements we now enjoy in hundreds of other, nobler applications.

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We are experiencing a sea change. Think about this with me. The Playboys of old were largely inaccessible to young men, save when some kid nabbed a few of them from his father or uncle’s secret stash. Those who were old enough to purchase pornography for themselves could only do so by pushing through the stigma associated with buying a magazine wrapped in plastic behind the counter. Maybe not a big hurdle, but it was something.

Not to mention this too—even once obtained, these images were still shots, motionless images. Videos, of course, existed, but again with the accessibility issues. Cable television companies offered upgrades for channels so homes could get stations such as Cinemax, which my friends called Skinemax, but apart from the occasionally free promotional weekend or a visit to someone’s house that had it, again it was mostly inaccessible.

And let’s talk about the videos themselves. Often, so I’m told, there were attempts at plot and characterization and story. Cheesy as the porn movies might have been, they were more than just bodies slapping together.

Now, however, via smartphones and nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi and high-speed Internet, all manner of pornographic images are available to me in seconds—millions and millions of photos: affordable, accessible, and anonymous. If I get bored with one picture or website, I go to another. And another. Miss January, Miss February, and Miss March separated, not by 31 days, but by the millisecond it takes to swipe my thumb right. Then, if I want, I can switch porn genres. And even if I don’t want to, the Internet-linking techniques and pop-up windows will push me to do so, and do so with increasing explicitness.

This inexhaustible supply goes for videos too, except they are not the same movies as before. Instead, like heroin that has been boiled down to an exponentially more concentrated form, the videos that are now streamed over high-speed Internet have been cropped to include only their most explicit content. Clip, after clip, after clip, after clip of nothing but bodies slapping together.

Affordable, accessible, anonymous, abundant, and addictive.

See what I mean. The world has not yet begun to see the effects of this sea change. 

[Picture by Dennis Cortés / Unsplash]

Be Careful with This Stuff: Foreword to More People to Love

Just before Christmas our book More People to Love was released. If you didn’t get a chance to pick it up, you can get it for free by subscribing to this blog (see sidebar). And if you want a paper copy, the book is only $7.99 on Amazon.

Below is the foreword to our book by author and syndicated radio host, Brant Hansen.

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A note before you start reading this book: Be careful with this stuff.

If you take Jason and Benjamin seriously, you might wind up doing something dangerous, which is to say, actually follow through on it. You might even pick up and move. Now, for some people, moving into a troubled city is no big deal. But to me, it was an ironic twist of the highest order.

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I used to hate cities. Not moderately dislike; hate. No lie: I learned how to play guitar so I could play John Cougar Mellencamp songs. The first song I learned was—of course—“Small Town.” (For those younger than 40, this is a song about, you know, small towns, and how awesome they are.)

At the University of Illinois most of my friends were from Chicago. I was from a town called “Assumption” (population: 1,000). We argued endlessly about the relative merits of urban versus rural lifestyles.

Growing up in country churches, I’d sing along with songs about heaven. And they all evoked the countryside. “I want a mansion, just over the hilltop . . .” and “Just give me a little cabin, in the corner of Gloryland . . .”

Of course Heaven would be rural. It’s obvious. And Hell? Well, I’m just saying, it’s overcrowded. Probably has a subway. So draw your own conclusions.

I even used to dislike (again, I’m not making this up) Sesame Street because it was too urban. It scared me. Trashcans and brick buildings and apartments and everybody packed in there. Sure, I liked Grover—who doesn’t?—but the city thing was freaky.

 . . . and then it happened; I moved to the city. The ideas in this book, the ideas in the Bible . . . well, they’re dangerous, and they changed things for me. They changed everything.

It’s taken a long time to absorb, but I’ve learned that, apparently, God loves people more than cornstalks. I’ve also learned God wants to conform my heart to his. Sometimes, this means re-thinking, which happens to be what “repentance” means.

So, very long story short, here we are—my family and I living in the inner city. And, to add irony, on our street they could film Sesame Street. I frequently joke about hiding in our trashcan in front of our old brick building and doing some grouchy freelance puppetry.

I still love small towns and yearn for the familiar, but God has changed my heart on this one. As Jason and Benjamin point out in this book, heaven is going to be a city. The old hymns steered me wrong on this one.

Nature is beautiful, but is it possible that, to God, cities have a beauty of an even higher order? I’ve looked over the Rift Valley, and I’ve marveled at Yosemite and, like you, have seen the night sky.

Breathtaking.

But I also remember looking out over San Francisco in the evening and thinking, “You know what? There’s nothing else like this.”

God also created us to create. He loves us. To think we can also make something beautiful because we’re stamped with his image, and put so many people, who are so loved, in one place—there’s something breathtaking about that, too.

My wife and I have a totally different life together now. Our neighborhood is everything I was scared of growing up. We can’t set foot out the door without interacting with someone interesting, whether it’s a friendly old neighbor lady or a not-friendly old neighbor lady; a drunk person at 9 a.m. or the local drug dealer; the wonderful family crammed into an old place across the street with their five sweet little boys or . . . well . . . that young man who attacked my wife with a hammer in broad daylight on a Monday morning. Like I said, there’s always someone interesting just outside our door.

And when that hammer was thrown at my wife, she was just walking the dogs. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt. Still, the guy just came up the street and threw a hammer. Then he ran up to her, put her in a headlock, and eventually threw her on the street. This was everything we’d feared, whether we’d said it aloud or not.

Could we even stay here?

My wife now says in some ways it was a blessing. We’re more connected to our neighbors than ever, and they know who we are. They also got to see my wife’s desire to forgive her attacker, even as we let the justice system do its necessary thing. We pray for the guy.

And we pray for our neighbors. Addicts, wiccans, weirdoes, whatever. Hey, we’re weird too, and we’re not here to change you. We can’t do that. We’re actually for you. Truth is, we don’t totally know what we’re doing. But wow, is this interesting!

There’s a man who sits on our sidewalk every day, all day and drinks beer. He’s old and full of stories. He told us, “You know what? You guys are the best thing to happen to this neighborhood in years.”

Whether that’s true or not, whether it was the beer talking or not, I was glad to hear it. Another neighbor sat on our stoop and asked my wife, “So, I’ve wondered something: Why do you guys love people here so much?”

I don’t tell you this to tell you we’re awesome. I tell you this because we’re not. You can do this, too. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m an introvert and socially awkward and very selfish and I don’t naturally like people at all . . . but my heart is changing.

God loves people—needy, broken people—and now . . . well, here they are, right outside our window.

I’m convinced he not only loves them, he likes them, too. Imagine that.

Me? I’m getting there.

Here’s to getting there together!

Brant Hansen, Syndicated Christian radio host and author of Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

[Photo by Abigail Keenan / Unsplash]

THE IMPERFECT PASTOR by Zack Eswine (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Zack Eswine, The Imperfect Pastor: Discovering Joy in Our Limitations through a Daily Apprenticeship with Jesus. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015. 272 pp.

The title of Zack Eswine’s book, The Imperfect Pastor, reminds me of a line from the movie A Few Good Men. During the iconic courtroom scene, Jack Nicholson’s character speaks about “danger.” To this, Tom Cruise’s character asks, “Grave danger?” Nicholson responds, “Is there another kind?”

The Imperfect Pastor, huh? I stare at this title and like Nicholson’s character ask, Is there another kind?

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There is, of course, just one perfect pastor, but you’re not it, and neither am I. Nevertheless, too often this doesn’t stop us from shepherding with the illusion that we are perfect, and when we do, we wear a harsh yoke and pull a heavy load, one never meant for our feeble shoulders. Balsa wood, no matter the color we paint it, will never be tempered steel.

Eswine is a pastor at Riverside Church in St. Louis, the author of several books, and a part-time faculty member at Covenant Theological Seminary.

Early in the book, he tells a story about meeting with a young pastor for lunch. The eager-beaver declared to Eswine his desire to “go all out for the ministry.” After some pauses, Eswine responded, “If the ministry is what we go all out for . . . then how we define ‘the ministry’ seems important, you know?” (p. 23).

In this conversation, we see the heart of the book: a book about definitions. And definitions are important, aren’t they? We evangelicals opposed the redefinition of marriage, and rightly so, but I wonder how many of us are as concerned about the redefinition of ministry. The Imperfect Pastor critiques the view that prizes all things “fast and famous” (a phrase used frequently), while offering a better, more biblical way to do ministry. “Christian life and ministry,” Eswine writes, “are an apprenticeship with Jesus toward recovering our humanity and, through his Spirit, helping our neighbors do the same” (p. 35).

Eswine uses the whole book to flesh out that definition, and as he does, I found it very convicting. I could list dozens of sections from the book that poked my pride and revealed my sinful misconceptions about ministry. Take this one for example: “To the important pastor doing large and famous things speedily, the brokenness of people actually feels like an intrusion keeping us from getting our important work for God done” (p. 28). Ouch. Someone hand me the sackcloth.

For Eswine, his own ministry and marriage have not been without a few bumps, some of them quite significant. As he talks about these struggles in the book, we believe him when he writes, “I know firsthand the beauty and arson of ministerial desires” (p. 19). In this way, we might say the book has translucence; he doesn’t hide his faults from readers. And speaking of readers, though geared towards pastors, any thoughtful Christian engaged in ministry shouldn’t feel left out.

After that young pastor had told Eswine he wanted “to go all out for ministry,” Eswine attempted to say a few things to expand his definition of ministry. To this, the young man responded, “I don’t know where to start with all that” (p. 25).

Where to start, huh? Perhaps you feel this way too. If so, reading The Imperfect Pastor would be a perfect place. In the years to come, I know I will certainly return to the book to throw off the yoke of perfection and find joy in my dependence upon Jesus, the only perfect pastor and the only one with shoulders of steel and a gospel of grace.

[Picture by Sam Carter / Unsplash]

This Changed My Attitude towards the Bible

Those words—“[this] changed my attitude towards the Bible”—are from pastor and author Timothy Keller in his most recent book Hidden Christmas. The event he’s speaking about was a time of observing one Bible verse for an extended period of time.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of observing the Bible carefully before we come to conclusions about what a passage means and before we figure out how we are supposed to obey a passage. In short, we must observe a passage carefully before we interpret and apply it.

Talking about this importance, Keller writes:

[In the Bible, what] looks like a simple statement, when pondered, can be discovered to have multiple dimensions of meaning and endless personal applications—far more than could ever be discovered with a cursory glance.

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At [a formative] Christian conference [for me] . . . there was a session on how to read the Bible. The speaker, Barbara Boyd, said to us, “Sit down for thirty minutes and write down at least thirty things you can learn from Mark 1:17,” which reads, “’Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’” Then she instructed us, “Don’t think after 10 minutes and four or five things written down that you’ve figured it out. Take the whole thirty minutes and try to get to thirty things observed.” So we sat silently and did as told. And indeed, after about ten minutes I was pretty sure that I’d seen everything there was to see in these fifteen words. I put my pen down and wanted to spend the rest of the time daydreaming but everybody else looked like they were still working, so I picked up the pen and started pondering some more. Then I began to notice new things. If I imagined what the sentence would mean without one of its words, it was easier to assess what unique meaning it brought to the sentence. That gave me ability to get another two or three insights around each term. Then I tried to paraphrase the whole verse, putting it into my own words. That showed me more levels of meaning and implication that I had missed.

At the end of the thirty minutes, the teacher asked us to circle on our papers the best insight or the most life changing thing we had gotten out of the text. Then she said, “Okay, how many of you found this most incredible, life-changing thing in the first five minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Ten minutes?” Nobody raised their hand. “Fifteen minutes?” A few hands. “Twenty minutes?” A few more. “Twenty-five minutes?” Even more. That session changed my attitude toward the Bible and, indeed, my life.

Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ (New York, NY: Viking, 2016), 105–106 (emphasis original).

[Picture by Freddy Marschall / Unsplash]

THE WHOLE MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE IN 16 WORDS by Chris Bruno (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Chris Bruno, The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Words. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017. 160 pp.

Today, my favorite publisher (Crossway) released a new book. It’s The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Words by Chris Bruno. He serves as the Director of Advancement at Trinity Christian School in Kailua, Hawaii. He is also the author of a book with a similar name.

The goal of Bruno’s book is to take some of the most important concepts of the Bible (to be exact, 16 of them), and then trace how these ideas are developed from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. This process of tracing themes is called “biblical theology.” Biblical theology is related to but different from “systematic theology.” Bruno explains it like this: 

The task of systematic theology is to gather everything the Bible says about a particular topic into one place. The goal of biblical theology is to trace the progressive development of a theme or cluster of themes in the Bible. (12)

Two weeks ago, I posted my review of Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel by Ray Ortlund. That book is an attempt to do biblical theology on the topic of marriage. Bruno’s task—and it’s a tall order—does this for 16 different themes, and all in one book!

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I found the chapters on “The End,” “Temple, and “Land” to be particularly insightful. Perhaps, though, as you glance at the table of contents, it’s possible you might have selected a few different words.

Nevertheless, I feel about this selection the same way I feel about “chronological Bibles.” I love the idea of a chronological Bible, that is, a Bible arranged in the order of when events occurred. However, I would never want to be the one who decided what order to place some of the books. Sure, to a pastor who is familiar with things, a few choices are obvious. The book of Exodus comes before Ezra, and both of these come before Ephesians. But where do you place Joel within the Old Testament? And how do you arrange the gospel passages, especially when they are of parallel accounts? Not easy decisions.

And now, coming back to which 16 words to choose, I love that this book exists, but I’m also glad I did not have to choose which words to use! But Chris did a really good job of it.

This is a perfect book for those who are first beginning to grapple with theology and the overarching story of the Bible. As well, it would be helpful to those who have been around the Bible for a long time but perhaps have been overwhelmed by all the individual parts and thus have not grasped the coherence of the whole.

Without being simplistic, the book is very accessible. When Bruno uses words like “eschatology” (the study of the end times) and “ex nihilo” (creation made “out of nothing”) and concepts such as “already-and-not-yet,” he makes sure they are always well-defined. He also uses many helpful illustrations to dive into the topics. And for the most part, the book is not specific to any one theological viewpoint. Rather, to use the words of C.S. Lewis, the book is “mere Christianity,” or “mere biblical theology,” in the best sense of the phrases.

Again, The Whole Message of the Bible in 16 Words releases today. Love for you to pick it up here.

A Few Favorite Quotes

“The return of Christ and the new creation is obviously a big part of what we mean by eschatology. But I have something bigger in mind. When I talk about eschatology, it starts with God keeping his promises, forgiving sin, sending his Spirit, and reigning as King.” (19)

“As we take the gospel to the ends of the earth, we are actually doing what Adam and Eve failed to do—expand the boundaries of God’s temple so that it fills the earth. As the church is built, God’s presence fills the earth.” (68)

“But I think the community of the Trinity also helps us understand what it means to be made in God’s image. At the very least, we have to say that God has existed in an eternal community; when God says in Genesis 2 that man should not be alone, his desire is for his people to experience something like the community of the Trinity.” (81)

“At the cross, God doesn’t only judge sin. He doesn’t only save his people. Instead, at the cross, God judges sin in order to save his people. His justice is the instrument that he uses to display his mercy!” (105)

[Picture by Ben White / Unsplash]

How to Study the Bible

Today I’m continuing the blog series I started a few weeks ago. It’s a primer on how to study a Bible passage, as well as how to teach that passage in a way that is clear and compelling. I’m calling the series “Backstage Pass” because I’ll be taking you “backstage of the pulpit” to see what goes into the writing of a sermon.

As I previously said, I realize not everyone will become a vocational teacher of the Bible. Nevertheless, all Christians will spend their life studying the Bible; it’s what we do.

But how do we go about studying the book that God wrote?

O – I – A

I suppose many methods can be employed to study the Bible. I’ll admit that upfront. Yet not all methods are equally helpful. There are some ways to go about Bible study that go with the grain of the passage; they glide. They do not feel forced and manipulated because the interpreter cooperates with the text.

However, there are some ways of studying the Bible that are not at all helpful. In fact, we could say they don’t necessarily force a square peg into a round hole, but rather they batter it in with a sledgehammer. In short, they do violence to the Bible.  

Several years ago, a co-worker taught me a helpful acronym. He used it to explain (in broad terms) an effective process for studying the Bible. I’m not sure where my friend first learned the acronym. (A quick internet search shows that others are using the acronym too.)

The letters are O – I – A. I use this process each week when I prepare sermons. As I’ve written before, that’s a process stretched over twenty hours. But it certainly doesn’t have to take that long. Not that I do this overtly each morning, but when I read my Bible devotionally every day, the process lasts a little over 20 minutes.

The “O” stands for observation.
Observation is the first step to understanding a passage. To observe a passage well, you need to spend time looking at it—a lot of time!

For me, this most especially happens during the translation stage of sermon preparation. But you do not need to know how to read the original languages to accurately observe a passage. Observation can be done very effectively using only English Bibles, especially if you compare several good translations. When I’m in the observation phase, I write down as many things about the passage as I can, as well as noting what questions I have about the passage. If I’m able to answer my own questions through more observation, great. If not, I revisit them later. Sometimes I eventually learn the answers to my questions and other times I don’t.

If you get stuck in your observations and need some questions to get you going deeper, consider asking a few of these questions of the passage:

1. What is this passage saying about the character of God?
2. What is this passage saying about the grace of God?
3. What is this passage saying about the way people are saved?
4. What is this passage saying generally about people?
5. More specifically, what is this passage saying about Christians?
6. More specifically, what is this passage saying about non-Christians?

The “I” stands for interpretation.
Once you have spent sufficient time observing the passage, the next step is to determine what the passage means. This is interpretation, the necessary outworking of careful observation.

To assist in the interpretation stage, it’s helpful to consult other Christians who have also observed the passage, especially those who have studied the passage in depth. Think about it like this. If you come up with an interpretation for a passage that, after 2,000 years of church history, has never before existed, then you’re probably wrong. That’s why during the interpretation phase I typically consult several Bible commentaries on the passage. Three very helpful commentary series for pastors and non-pastors are: The Bible Speaks Today (Intervarsity Press), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan), and God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company). Also, the English Standard Version Study Bible is a tool I regularly use.

I know some people tend to pooh-pooh Bible commentaries (yes, a very technical term). They do this, I think, because they believe using commentaries is unspiritual. An interpreter, they say, should go to the source—God, not man. I agree that we should not prioritize commentaries to the exclusion of listening to God. Indeed, the best, highest, and most authoritative source to help us understand what one passage means is to use other Bible passages to shed light on it. Let Scripture interpret Scripture, the saying goes.

But I don’t think consulting commentaries is necessarily unspiritual. I think quite the opposite is true actually. If it’s true that God has given the church “pastors and teachers” (Ephesians 4:10–11)—which he has—then it is our spiritual duty to be learners. Before we teach, we listen to learn. Again, we are not the first people in church history to study any one passage.

The final letter, “A,” stands for application.
Once you have observed the passage and rightly interpreted it (i.e., you know what it means), now you have to apply the passage to your life, and possibly the lives of others.

During the application phase you should be asking questions like, “Based on what this says, what am I now supposed to do?” and “How should I be different because of this passage?” and “How am I meant to feel in light of the truth in this passage (hopeful, encouraged, sobered, repentant, etc.)?”

You should notice something about the way I worded these questions. They all have some variation of the phrase “based on what this passage means . . .” That’s intentional. The point of biblical application is that it flows naturally from what the passage means (i.e, it’s proper interpretation). Perhaps this is obvious to you, but I mention it because it’s not obvious to many people, and even when it is, it’s quickly forgotten.

Crafting applications that arise out of the main thrust of a passage is one of the most challenging aspects of studying the Bible. Too often applications come either from a minor or peripheral aspect of the passage. But even this is better than applications that have no basis in the text, which is sadly all too common.

If you get stuck on finding the proper applications, you can go back to some of the questions I listed above related to observation. For applications, you can rephrase them “Based on what this passage says about the character of God, I/we must do what?” This tends to jog some good ideas.  

Don’t Skip Steps

When studying and teaching the Bible, it’s crucial to not skip any one of these steps. Consider an analogy from health care. If you are sick, then you surely want a doctor to spend time observing you before she interprets your particular issues and prescribes a solution. You don’t diagnose cancer and prescribe a treatment plan after a 3-minute exam.

Additionally, another error could arise by overemphasis in the opposite direction. You don’t want your doctor to spend hours and hours (which means dollars and dollars) observing you but never come to an application.

The same is true when working with a biblical text. We must observe it, interpret it, and then apply it.

One final comment before leaving this subject until the next post in this series. In a sense, this three-step process is not only linear. It’s circular. In other words, we keep going through iterations until, in the case of health care, the health challenge is resolved, or in the case of a sermon, the passage is taught.

So, if you don’t have a “teaching assignment” already on the calendar. Just pick a short passage to try. And let the observation begin . . .

[Photo by John Towner / Unsplash]

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MARRIAGE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL by Ray Ortlund (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Ray Ortlund, Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016. 128 pp.

Besides following my wife on Facebook, of all the people I follow on social media—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and, yes, even LinkedIn—my favorite person to follow on social media is Ray Ortlund on Instagram. Ortlund is the pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of several books, including The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ and Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology. He has also written commentaries on the Old Testament books of Proverbs and Isaiah, as well as contributing to the ESV Study Bible.

But why is this guy, this Ortlund fella, my favorite person to follow on social media?

Well, I just like him. I really do. Perhaps because, according to Instagram, it seems . . .

He’s part goofball (here, here, here).
He’s part hunter-warrior (here, here, here).
He’s part pastor-author-scholar (here, here, here).
He’s part passionate pet owner of a black lab (here, here, here).
He’s part lover-of-his grandkids (here, here, here).
He’s part cultural- and spiritual-agitator, often posting on racial injustice (here, here, here).

Nevertheless, if Ortlund is these in part, it would seem he’s also completely in love with his wife. He’s always posting pictures of her on Instagram with captions that sing her praises (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and many more). It’s because of this love for his bride that, when I saw Ortlund had written a book about marriage, I was immediately ready to hit “Buy Now.” Unfortunately, it just took me a few months to hit “Read Now” and post my review.

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Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel is part of a series by Crossway called “Short Studies in Biblical Theology.” Biblical theology is the attempt to track the development of a theme in the same way the Bible develops the theme—from the beginning of the story to the end. Hence, Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel has a progression from Genesis; to the books of law, wisdom, and prophets; to the New Testament; and then finally to the present day. And throughout the book, Ortlund writes with a sympathetic, yet firm awareness that the biblical view of marriage is not highly esteemed by all—sometimes by those in the church who find the biblical view of marriage too passionate, and sometimes by outsiders who find it too restrictive.

A major focus of his book is not, as you might have expected, the human romance between bride and groom, which is the chief subject of so many Christian books on marriage. Rather, Ortlund’s focus is on the divine romance between The Bride and The Groom, that is, the passionate love of Jesus Christ that compels him to woo and rescue the church. Ortlund writes,

I want to lead you on a brief journey of discovery from the beginning of the Bible to its end, because the Bible is a love story. It is not a hodgepodge of religious thoughts. The Bible unfolds as a complex but coherent narrative of God gathering a bride for his Son—and he found her on the wrong side of town, too. What a story! (13)

As I read Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel, I found myself longing to be able to articulate the biblical view of marriage the way Ortlund does. It’s one of those books, that if I had let myself, I might have underlined more sentences than I didn’t. In my opinion, his writing achieved an ideal I strive for in my own writing, namely, “accessible yet riveting scholarship.” I’m not sure how often—if ever—I live up to that ideal, but it was wonderful to read an author who truly does. 

But not only, or even mainly, do I long to articulate the biblical view of marriage as well as Ortlund does. More than this, the book made me long to live the biblical view of marriage. I want to live the beauty and passion and commitment and long-suffering and intimacy of biblical marriage. I want this for my own marriage and the marriages of those in my church.

The Gospel Coalition, as they sometimes do for new books, published a post of their favorite 20 quotes from the book (here). I won’t repeat this feat, but here are just four of my favorites to whet your appetite.

“It is not as though marriage is just one theme among others in the Bible. Instead, marriage is the wraparound concept for the entire Bible, within which the other themes find their places.” (16)

“The head-with-helper dance of complementarity sprang from deep within the intuitions of God himself. We men and women today do not automatically know the steps to this dance. We must learn. But if we will receive it by faith, trusting in the goodness and wisdom of God, we can then explore its potentialities for joyful human magnificence.” (23)

“The key to a lasting romance is not endless sex but believing hearts.” (54)

“So [Jesus] not only believed Genesis 2:24 to be valid and relevant, but he publically taught it to be so—and not because he was a man of his times, echoing what everyone believed back then. What got Jesus into trouble was that he was not a man of his times.” (80)

If you are looking for a short, but stout book about marriage, I couldn’t recommend this book more highly. And if you’re looking for someone new to follow on Instagram, ditto.

[Picture by Anne Edgar / Unsplash]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth?

In last week’s post I explained a few reasons why I believe the best diet of preaching consists of “expository sermons.” In expository sermons, the point of the Bible passage is the point of the sermon. This type of preaching is over and against “topical sermons.” In topical sermons, the theme of the sermon is what drives the passage (or passages) used.

I won’t repeat the reasons for why I believe expository sermons are best, but I thought it might be helpful to illustrate what the preparation for a topical sermon might look like, at least a very particular kind of topical sermon. The type of sermon I have in mind is an “application-heavy topical sermon,” especially one done within the context of the “attractional church.”

Say what? Application-heavy? Attractional church?

It would take a while to unpack these terms in detail, but in short, when I say “application-heavy,” I have in mind sermons that focus primarily on what we are supposed to do. So, for example, sermons titled “4 Steps to Living without Anger” or “3 Ways to Thrive during Trials.”

And when I say “attractional church,” I have in mind churches who view the Sunday worship service primarily as a way to reach the un-churched (or de-churched) within their communities, especially by providing a highly polished worship service that is presumably attractive to outsiders.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to reach outsiders. Moreover, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to teach the Bible in such a way that you give clarity regarding how to live. But think about something with me for a moment. Think about what happens to someone’s view of the Bible and Christianity and the gospel when he or she listens to this type of application-heavy preaching for a decade or so? If you spend years listening to preaching that is primarily designed to tell you what to do, how might this shape (warp?!) your understanding of the Bible and Christianity?

In his book The Prodigal Church, author Jared C. Wilson argues that application-heavy topical sermons become the “new legalism.” The old legalism was one of don’ts, while the new is one of dos. Both of these, however, “are just flip sides of the same legal coin” (84). Without a strong gospel focus, neither avoidance of sin nor pursuit of obedience will please God (Hebrews 11:6).

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The remedy, Wilson argues, is Christ-centered expository sermons, that is, sermons that see every passage of the Bible as pointing to our need for the Savior and how we have that Savior in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It sounds strange to say it, but this type of sermon—a Christ-centered expository sermon—was the type of sermon Jesus preached in Luke 24 on the road to Emmaus. So Luke tells us, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27).

And what was the audience’s response to this Christ-centered expository sermon? “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (v. 32).

In my own experience as a pastor, after listening to a decade of these kinds of Christ-centered sermons, I can personally attest that people do change, and they generally change for the better. This has happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to others. When we deepen our faith in the gospel week after week, we are only then able to live or apply the Bible appropriately. Remember, according to Hebrews 11 it’s “by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . . by faith . . .” that great deeds are done.  

Most of my ministry experience has not been in the attractional church where topical sermons reign. There was, however, a brief stint in college where this was the case as I helped in a local youth group that was part of an attractional church.

Nevertheless, because my experience with the attractional church is limited, I thought I would end this post by letting Jared Wilson himself share how he learned to preach application-heavy topical sermons in the attractional church. He has since left this way of preaching behind, but his recounting of his early days in ministry is a telling one and one that illustrates perfectly what I hope myself and others will avoid as we prepare sermons. Wilson writes,

“Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.

“Ever heard the Bible explained that way? It’s a handy mnemonic device that certainly has some truth to it. But does it get at the heart of what the Bible really is?

“While being trained in the ministry, I learned how to craft sermons from listening to a lot of messages from our youth ministry, and from asking some pastors to help me. The gist of the enterprise was this: I needed to come up with a spiritual topic or “felt need” to address, something practical that my audience would be interested in or otherwise just needed to know. After identifying the topic, I needed to draft three or four sermon points, and these needed to be points of application, things my audience could actually do. The emphasis was constantly on practical application, not merely on intellectual information. The sermon needed some handles.

“When my practical steps were listed, I needed to find biblical support for them. Anything that could not be supported with Scripture had to be rewritten or abandoned altogether. Every sermon had to be, in the parlance of the times, “Bible-based.” (It is not uncommon now even to see on the websites of some attractional churches that their messages are “Bible-based” or that they offer “truth based on the Bible.”) So then began the work of digging through the concordance to find Bible verses that might match and support each point.

“It was typically a good idea to find a verse that used the wording similar to the message point, and if you found something close, you could always tweak the message point to match the language of the verse or, alternatively, look at the verse in other Bible versions to see if the wording in one of those versions better matched the wording of the message point. . . . In the end, it was common to see a sermon that contained references from multiple Bible versions—the result of searching for just the right wording.

“It took me years to unlearn this approach to preaching. But in the end I began to discover that the approach was very much upside down. I had learned to preach by making the Bible’s words serve what I wanted to say rather than by making my words serve what the Bible says. To teach and preach in this way is implicitly to say that the Bible can’t be trusted to set the agenda, and that my ideas are better than the Bible at driving changing in my audience. . .

“I’ve also come to see the Bible in a different way. I’ve always believed it was God’s Word, of course, and that makes it living and active (Heb. 4:12) and perfectly capable of making us complete Christians (2 Tim. 3:16–17). But I had been treating it more as a reference book than as a story, and more as a manual of good advice than as an announcement of good news. (Jared C. Wilson, The Prodigal Church, 71–72)

[Picture by Jazmin Quaynor / Unsplash]

OTHER BLOG POSTS ABOUT PREACHING

Why Expository Sermons?

A few weeks ago, I was invited to take my children to a college basketball game. And here’s the really cool part: we were even invited to the locker room to hear the pre-game speech. Last summer, I officiated the wedding of one of the assistant coaches.

During the pre-game speech, I couldn’t believe all the basketball jargon used. If the other team shifted to a “full-court press,” Coach wanted his team to run “Milwaukee,” and if they got around it, then they should, of course, do what?

The team shouted, “Trapeze.”

I didn’t know what he meant by either “Milwaukee” or “Trapeze.” Nor did my kids. But he knew what he meant and so did his team.

I suspect, however, if we had visited a basketball practice during the fall as the players were learning, that the coach explained all this in more detail. This would have been necessary for the freshmen, as well as a helpful refresher for the upperclassmen. On our own, no one knows what obscure jargon means, much less how to apply it. All of us need a coach to bring us along as we learn something new.

Today I’m continuing a blog series I started a few weeks ago. It’s a bit of a primer on how to study a Bible passage, as well as how to teach that passage in a way that is clear and compelling. I’m calling the series “Backstage Pass” because I’ll be taking you “backstage of the pulpit” to see what goes into the writing of a sermon.

As I mentioned the other week, I realize not everyone will become a vocational teacher of the Bible. In fact, few will. Moreover, James told the early church “not many of you should be teachers” (3:1a). Nevertheless, all Christians will spend their life studying the Bible; it’s what we do. So, we might as well spend some time talking about how to do it well.

What Is an Expository Sermon?

At our church, we have two teaching pastors, Jason Abbott and me. As teaching pastors, we have the primary responsibility to lead the preaching and teaching ministry of our church. For us, this often looks like rotating each Sunday who is preaching. When we first explain this to people, many find it a foreign concept. Indeed, having two teaching pastors is a rare church model, but I could name several other churches that do this effectively. And over the last three years, our congregants have seemed to enjoy it.

Jason and I typically preach what are called “expository sermons.” Perhaps some of you have heard this term before. For others, it’s as foreign to you as “trapeze” was to me.

Let me explain what expository means. To borrow a definition from Mark Dever, “In expository sermons, the main point of the Scripture passage is the main point of the sermon.” Simple enough, right? What the passage says (in the main), the sermon should also say. Jason and I typically preach expository sermons through one book of the Bible at a time. When we finish one book, we typically move on to another, while rotating between Old and New Testament books.

The other common type of preaching is a “topical sermon.” In a topical sermon, the particular topic in view is what drives the Bible passage (or passages) covered. An example of a topical sermon might be a sermon on godly families or the deity of Christ or how to solve conflict as a Christian.

Why We Preach Expository Sermons?

I wouldn’t say there is anything inherently wrong with a topical sermon. Again, we preach them from time to time. But I do think a regular diet of expositional preaching is the better choice. Here are two reasons why.

First, most Christians read their Bibles this way, that is, we read one book at a time, and when we finish one book, we go to another. I don’t know any Christian who reads topically, at least as a rule. Thus expository preaching—when done well—models for Christians how to effectively read the Bible. I’m convinced this, by the way, meets a great need in the church. Good preaching doesn't just feed; it teaches how to fish.

Second, we don’t want to skip parts or themes of the Bible. This is a temptation inherent to topical preaching. It’s so easy to avoid topics when you are the one choosing what topics to preach. When this happens, it’s not necessarily sinister. In fact, it almost never is. But apart from some outside influence to keep us balanced, we would all tend to favor our strengths and avoid our weaknesses. It’s human nature. And so, without a commitment to expository preaching (an “outside influence,” if you will), I fear I would avoid things with which I need to deal. Having to preach the next passage simply because it’s the next passage—whether I want to or not—tends to make me, as a preacher, and the congregation as listeners, well rounded. As Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16, God inspired all of the Bible, and it’s all profitable to us. (For a longer explanation of why I preach this way, see a post I wrote called, “Spring Loaded Camming Devices and The Expository Sermon.”)

How Long Does It Take You to Prepare?

It takes me around 16–20 hours to write most sermons. This includes the time to study, write, and practice delivering the message. A breakdown of this time looks roughly like this:

   2   hours to translate the passage
   2   hours to record notes and questions from my translation
   4   hours to study commentaries
   2   hours to listen to several sermons on the passage
   2   hours to fill out my sermon “pre-qualification list” (I’ll explain this in later posts)
   4   hours to write the sermon
   1   hour to edit the sermon
+ 1   hour to practice delivering the sermon
= 18 hours           

Here are a few other things worth mentioning about the process. Most of the time, because Jason and I work in a co-pastor model that shares the weekly preaching responsibilities, about 25% of my sermon preparation occurs two weeks before I preach, while the remaining 75% occurs the week in which I preach. We typically plan the preaching calendar (both speaker and passage) about 9 months in advance. Also, we do a sermon debrief every Monday morning at 9 am. At those meetings, we talk about what worked well the previous Sunday, what we need to improve upon, and we pray and plan for the upcoming sermon.

As you prepare your own lessons about the Bible, I don’t expect you’ll do everything we do. You don’t have to know what trapeze means to enjoy a game of pick-up basketball. Moreover, churches free up pastors to do gospel teaching full time, and this allows us to really commit to the craft. Nevertheless, hopefully this post gives you a sense of what many pastors do those other 39 hours in a week!

In the next “Backstage Pass” post, I’ll dispense with this background information and get on with sharing the tools I’ve been promising. 

To read the first post in the series, click here. [Picture by Roshan Yadama / Creative Commons]

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Power, Money, and Sex Won’t Satisfy

Power, Money, and Sex Won’t Satisfy
Guest Post by Cody Swartz

The legendary athlete Deion Sanders wrote a book titled, Power, Money, and Sex: How Success Almost Ruined My Life. The book chronicles Deion’s upbringing from a record-breaking high school athlete in Florida to a two-sport professional star and the first man ever to play in both the World Series and the Super Bowl. Despite his success and fame, Deion talked openly about his insecurities and his never-ending hunger and thirst for happiness, especially from power, money, and sex. 

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Contrary to what Deion may think, he’s not alone in this struggle, as countless Christians and non-Christians have fought through the same issues. We’ve all grasped for identity through materialistic items that only lead to long-term pain. My own personal trials and tribulations have included battles with self-worth, body image, lust, anxiety, and worldly pleasures. At times, I’ve masqueraded as a righteous and godly man while battling inner demons that offer instant gratification but damage my relationship with Jesus Christ. These struggles aren’t new to our generation; finding joy in what pleases the eye has been around since the Garden of Eden.

Even having grown up in a church-going family with two loving parents, I have a tendency to read the Bible and assume the men and women in God’s Word had it “all figured out.” They didn’t have the problems that we have today. They sat around praising Jesus and singing hymns and washing each other’s feet all day, right?

Well, not really. David was an insecure backstabber who compromised a life-long friendship with Uriah to steal Bathsheba, his best friend’s wife – and then arrange for the death of Uriah. We all know about Samson’s struggles with women. Or consider Peter. In the final days that he spent with Jesus before Christ’s death, Peter denied knowing Him not once, not twice, but three times. And Moses killed a man – a crime that would get you 25 to life in today’s society.

Do you remember the story in the Bible of Jesus feeding the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish? In John 6:22–59, we read about what happened right after that story. Now, the people who flocked to Jesus weren’t murderers or adulterers, at least not that we know of. They were merely hungry – although you could throw other words in there as well: needy, ungrateful, clingy, and possibly unbelieving.

Here’s what happened. After feeding the 5,000 people – Jesus, a likely introvert before the word was readily used to describe people – got into his boat and crossed to the other side of the lake. The people found Him and they immediately made their earthly desires known: give us more food. Jesus was merely a means of satisfying their hunger. They were consumers. The Son of Man was right in front of them, but they didn’t want Him; they wanted Him to snap his fingers and prepare another buffet. And what happened 2,000 years ago, too often, still happens today.

When it’s exam day for that certification we’ve spent three months studying for, it’s God’s time to shine. “Let me pass, Lord, and I’ll let you know what I need next.” When we’re sick, we pray that He will heal us. When we’re depressed, when we’re trying to make ends meet financially, or when we’re afraid of the unknown, we tend to rely on God more than when everything is blissful in our lives. It’s go time for God.

Look at the way Jesus responded to the people in John 6. He said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry” (v. 35). You’ll see the word “bread” 15 times in this passage, and its double meaning explains the difference between how we as humans think and how our Heavenly Father thinks. The people were clamoring for their earthly bread while Jesus was insisting they stop focusing on their earthly hunger and instead rely on Him.

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. (John 6:53, 56)

Jesus was telling his people to commit to Him in all that they do. He doesn’t want halfhearted lukewarm Christianity in which people rely on God only when they have a problem. Instead, He’s offering Himself to us, and He wants us to be satisfied in Him – all of the time. This is the beauty of salvation through grace. It can’t be earned. It can’t be bought. It’s a free gift God gives us.

I ask you, what is your earthly bread that keeps you from seeking Jesus with all your heart? Is it your own hobbies and selfish desires? Is it the desire to be liked by others? Is it your ambition to climb the corporate ladder? Is it an addiction you’ve secretly battled for ages?

Jesus wants you to replace this food by turning to Him to be satisfied. Acquiring your worldly treasure won’t satisfy you. It may give you temporary satisfaction, but until you turn to Jesus and make Him the focal point of your life, you will be empty on the inside. You’ll be hungry, just like the people in John 6.

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CODY SWARTZ is a member of Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, PA.

 [Picture by Artur Rutkowski / Unsplash]

The Girl Who Kneaded Bread

The Girl Who Kneaded Bread
Guest Post by Erin Bruker

What would it have been like to hear Jesus preach? A fictional account of a girl who heard Jesus and how he satisfies our needs.

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Like most women in Capernaum, it seems like I’m always kneading bread. Or mixing the dough . . . or waiting for it to rise . . . or shaping the loaves . . . It never goes away. That’s why I was excited when my father stepped into the kitchen and asked me, “Want to go along to market?”

I glanced at my mother with a pleading look.

“Did you finish your chores?” she asked.

“I just have to finish kneading this loaf,” I answered.

She gave a slight nod of approval and a smile spread across my face.

As father and I neared the market, we met a friend of his who was headed for the synagogue to hear the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth and invited us to come along, adding “Did you hear? He claims to be the son of God.” Apparently Jesus had fed 5,000 people in Galilee the day before with two fish and five loaves.

Father looked at me with a face full of intrigue. “Let’s go along; the market can wait.”

People packed the synagogue, so we stood in the back. Everyone was anxious to hear Jesus; they coaxed him to stand up front and give a speech. Jesus was just a carpenter but spoke with authority. And he was mesmerizing, though he used many analogies which I did not understand: “my Father gives you the true bread from heaven”; “the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”; “I am the bread of life” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven”; “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life”; “for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink”; “he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” What did he mean by these?

When he finished, people slowly went back to their business. On our way home from the market, father and I talked. “How could Jesus claim to be God?”

“He certainly had power from somewhere to do miracles,” I answered. “What do you think he meant when he said ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’? Or that he had the ‘bread of life’?”

“I don’t know,” my father answered, “but we aren’t about to become cannibals!”

“And he said doing this was supposed to make us live forever? I’m not sure,” I added.

We concluded Jesus was crazy.

The next morning I was in the kitchen kneading bread (again). The chore never stopped. I thought about what Jesus said. “Boy,” I thought, “it’d be nice to have some of his bread of life and no longer have to knead!”

There had been some people in the synagogue who did not think Jesus was crazy. I heard one man tell a friend, “Jesus healed my daughter right before my eyes! He is God as he claims—there is no other way my daughter would be alive today.”

I decided I needed to talk to my father.

I found him carving wood on our porch. “Maybe Jesus did have a point yesterday when he said he was the bread of life,” I began. “He spoke with much more knowledge than the other rabbis. If he is God, then he actually would know what someone has to do to get to heaven.”

“I have been thinking about it too,” my father replied. “If he is the bread of life, then we need him to get to heaven. We certainly don’t deserve to enter heaven on our own with all the wrongs we have done.”

I agreed. “It seems the bread he’s offering is a gift, the gift of himself. Wow—what a gift! Now, we get to follow God’s commands out of love instead of guilt. Though I cannot live up to God’s standard, Jesus has given me hope. I feel like I have been freed from a big burden!”

“I feel the same way,” he smiled. “I am so glad you came along with me yesterday.”

I returned to the kitchen with a happy heart, knowing that I had found the bread of life.

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ERIN BRUKER belongs to Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, PA.

[Picture by Gaelle Marcel / Unsplash]