A Change of Seasons: A Pastoral and Personal Update

Photo: The steeple of Community Evangelical Free Church, the church I’ve been a pastor at for the last five years.

When I was a junior in college, a local youth group hosted a city-wide “service day” with other local youth groups. After the day of service, everyone gathered that night for worship and preaching. The youth group hosting the event had asked me to preach. I did. I only remember a few details from that sermon, but my main memory comes from what happened after the preaching.

My wife, Brooke, was my girlfriend at the time. After the worship service was over, Brooke and I went out for ice cream at McDonald’s with one of the pastors and his wife. As I ate my McFlurry and we talked about our lives, the pastor who heard me preach encouraged me to consider going to seminary after college.

That was sixteen years ago, and the couple who went out for ice cream with us was Jason and Natalie Abbott. As we sat at McDonald’s that night, I could have had no idea that I’d spend the last five years pastoring with Jason at Community Evangelical Free Church.

A Church Announcement

I told this story to our church a few weeks ago before my sermon. I shared it because the story gives more context to what it meant to me a few months ago when Jason first told me he was likely going to be taking a position at another church in the summer. Jason pastored faithfully at our church for seven years, and it was a joy to share five of those years with him. For the better, his preaching and pastoring shaped our lives in both obvious and subtle ways; that’s what faithful pastoring does.

Before I go on, let me acknowledge that I don’t presume most people out there on the world wide web want or need an update about one individual church in the middle of Pennsylvania. Most people don’t need this update. But a few people—people who know me and our church—might like to know about the changes.

What Does This Change Mean Practically?

As we go forward, it’s my hope and the hope of our pastor-elders that as the senior pastor I will anchor the preaching ministry of our church, which for now will mean preaching around 3 times a month or 36 times a year.

I’m not sure I know all the ways the change at church will affect the writing that I do in the mornings. For now I’ll just say that it’s been difficult to do anything except what feels like the most pressing ministry item in front of me. Few books are being read and few writing projects are being pursued as squeaky wheels keep getting all the grease.

The other major change is the promotion of our director of youth and music ministry to the role of associate pastor. He’s been here for several years and done a fantastic job. I’m excited to see him do more preaching.

We are also going to be hiring another associate pastor. We’re still working out the details, but likely the role will be a connections pastor, that is, someone who helps shepherd us into the kind of meaningful relationships that God calls his people to have with each other.

Please Say a Prayer for Us

As I wrote above, I don’t want to presume that people want to know what is happening in our little church in the middle of Pennsylvania. But a few of you might like to know. If you’re one of those people who made it to the end of this post, please say a quick prayer for me and our church. It would mean a lot to me.

Enduring Grace: Introduction

My friend Stephen Morefield and I recently published a devotional book, which we titled Enduring Grace: 21 Days with The Apostle Peter. It’s a self-published book mostly for local distribution at our churches. Stephen pastors in Kansas, and I’m in Pennsylvania. But we tried to write the devotional in such a way that it could bless a wider audience. We’ve been praying it does.

Here’s the introduction to the book. We’d love for you to consider picking up a copy.

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There were only a handful of people who got a front row view of Jesus’ entire earthly ministry. Of these, perhaps none heard, saw, or experienced more than the fisherman Peter. We speak of disciples as those who follow Jesus, and Peter did that literally—for three years. As Peter followed Jesus, he saw miracles performed, heard truth spoken, and even read what Jesus wrote in the dirt. He studied the Scriptures under Jesus and saw the brilliant white glory of heaven surround Jesus. Peter walked on water after him, shared meals with him, and spoke with men he had raised from the dead. Who wouldn’t want to hear of Peter’s experiences with the Savior?

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Not only did Peter share in a wide variety of moments with Jesus, but he also responded to Jesus in a wide variety of ways. With cowardice and cursing, he denied Jesus before the resurrection. Bold and confident, Peter preached Jesus after the resurrection. Up and down, down and up, Peter went. Two steps forward, one step—or sometimes three steps—back, Peter was not a detached observer. He was an intimately growing, struggling, and broken yet redeemed man who learned that the depth of his sin was very deep but that the Savior’s love was deeper still. And through it all, the grace of Jesus toward Peter endured, which means that in the end, by the very same grace, Peter endured. Indeed, no matter where you stand before Jesus at this moment, you should be able to relate to Peter’s story. In our faith and doubt, courage and fear, obedience and failure, growth and stagnation (or even backtracking), Peter’s witness gives us hope that Jesus really is a friend of sinners and mighty to save.

What you’ll find in the rest of these pages is a back and forth journey following the Savior through the eyes of Peter. We’ve grouped themes together as best as we could, but that means the chapters will not strictly follow Peter’s life chronologically. Instead we’ll jump between Peter’s life, which is presented to us in the Gospels and the book of Acts, and his teachings, which we have in the two letters he wrote (1 & 2 Peter). In each chapter you’ll find the Scripture we’ll study for the assigned day, our teaching on that passage, and then relevant application questions to knead the Savior’s grace into all parts of our lives.

Here are a few more things to consider before you start the journey. In an effort to combine style and personality, we, Stephen and Benjamin, have not indicated which chapters we’ve each written. When a particular story necessitates it, we indicate the writer, but otherwise we will allow the prose to blend without distinction.

Now, how to read this book? The structure sets itself up to be read as a 21-day devotional. That being said, you can also slow down and tackle the book at whatever pace suits you. There’s no need to hurry. Likewise, chapters can be grouped together, should you use the book in a Bible study or small group. Whatever method you choose, we do encourage you to slow down enough to read the Scripture before our teaching. It’s difficult to rest in the Savior’s grace while racing from page to page. And resting daily in his grace is a large part of what helps us endure in his grace.

* Photo by Frances Gunn on Unsplash

Enduring Grace: Praise for Tom Reidy

My friend Stephen Morefield and I recently published a devotional book, which we titled Enduring Grace: 21 Days with The Apostle Peter. It’s a self-published book mostly for local distribution at our churches. Stephen pastors in Kansas, and I’m in Pennsylvania. But we tried to write the devotional in such a way that it could bless a wider audience. We’ve been praying it does.

I’ll tell you more about the book next week. This week I want to tell you about Tom Reidy. I dedicated the book to him, writing on the dedication page,

To Tom Reidy,
your prayers and encouragement buoy
my ministry in more ways than I’ll ever know.

We Need More Eulogies

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Recently at our church here in Harrisburg, my copastor Jason felt called to another church. As we celebrated the many ways the Lord used him and his family over seven years of ministry, one of our leaders used the phrase “eulogize.” Of course a few jokes ensued that Jason was not dead yet, so the eulogies were premature. . . unless, so the joke went, we knew something Jason did not.

But our leader who did the eulogizing pointed out that to eulogize someone is simply to say in public something nice about another person, and it’s unfortunate in our culture that nearly the only time we do this is after a person has died. So we spent some time praising God for Jason’s ministry.

I’d like to spend some time praising God for Tom Reidy’s ministry. I even wanted to subtitle this post, “A Eulogy for Tom Reidy” rather than “Praise for Tom Reidy” but feared what would happen as people shared this post online. I didn’t want Tom to have to say what Mark Twain once purportedly had to say: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

I also hope that in the process of eulogizing my not-dead friend, I might encourage others of the truth in a verse such as 1 Corinthians 15:58, which says that because Jesus has risen, no labor in the Lord is done in vain. At times you might feel as though resurrection, gospel ministry done for God’s glory was a waste, but it’s never a waste. Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for he has risen—he has risen indeed.

Breakfast Burritos at the Golden Arches

I met Tom twelve years ago at Salem Evangelical Free Church in St. Louis. My wife and I and our young family attended Salem while I studied at Covenant Theological Seminary and worked as an engineer for a construction company.

Tom retired a few years ago, but he spent his whole career working for a large aerospace and defense contractor. I mention this because our first meaningful interaction was related to this. I can’t be certain how the topic came up, but somehow warfare and bombs were discussed in a men’s Bible study. Tom and I seemed to connect well, and we set up a breakfast date at McDonald’s to talk about the ethics of weapons of mass destruction. Tom had “top secret” clearance, so I never really knew much about the specifics of his work. He could have told me, but then he would have had to kill me.

We had dozens and dozens of breakfast burritos over the years, sometimes discussing what it meant to be a Christian employee, sometimes discussing how we might better love our wives and children, sometimes how to better love our church, sometimes what we were learning in the Bible, sometimes a tricky aspect of theology like election and God’s sovereignty, and sometimes—perhaps often—the struggles in our lives. Then we’d pray for each other and head off to work. I can’t know how many days and weeks were altered for the better because of those discussions and prayers, but without any cliché, if we had the eyes of God to see everything, I’m sure those meetings could rightly be called life-changing.

Affirming the Call of God

My first sizable writing project was called, A Short Study of The Bible, Homosexuality, and Culture: Helping Christians Navigate the Issues. The booklet was a 6-week Sunday school for local churches that swelled to 30k words. Tom constantly encouraged me as I wrote. Today, I’d never show the booklet to anyone because the writing is so poor. But yet, Tom encouraged me. He told me to keep working on it. He prayed for me. He didn’t even complain when I taught the study at our church and made seventy-year-old church ladies discuss Lady Gaga’s hit “Born This Way.”

And this highlights a significant theme in Tom’s ministry to me and many others: seeing potential in seedlings.

Enduring Grace

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For the last eight years of full-time pastoral ministry, I’m not sure if Tom has skipped listening to a single sermon of mine. I don’t know anyone else who could say that. My wife even occasionally misses my sermons when volunteering in the nursery or when one of our children is sick. But not Tom.

A short email arrives in my inbox every Monday or Tuesday morning the week after I preach telling me what moved him in the sermon. And it’s not just that. Though he lives in St. Louis, he keeps up with our church preaching calendar and knows when I’m up to preach, often sending a text in the middle of the week asking how goes the sermon and what ways he can pray for me. It’s Wednesday morning as I’m editing this paragraph, and he literally just texted me “How’s the sermon coming along?” And my bookshelf at church has at least a dozen books he’s sent me from my favorite authors. It’s fair to say that I know no one like Tom.

I’ve gushed thanksgiving before about Salem Church (here). We even named our youngest child Salem because of the love of Christ we experienced there, which were formative years for my marriage and ministry. But a large part of what made Salem Salem, was Tom. God’s grace to me through Tom has endured in ways I could not have imagined, which is why this book is for him. His labor has not been in vain.

It’s true I need to write more books so I can dedicate them to more people. So many have done so much for me. My parents, wife, and children are yet to have a book dedicated to them. Lord willing, I’ll remedy these oversights in the coming years. But today is about Tom.

Thank you, Tom, for your prayerful, encouragement to me. You and I will never know all the ways you’ve made a difference.

Podcast Interview: Don’t Just Send a Resume to a Missions Agency

Today I’m sharing an interview I recently did on a podcast about the hiring process in local churches and missions. The Missions Podcast is hosted by Scott Dunford and Alex Kocman, who both work for ABWE, an international mission’s organization. Until recently, Scott was one of the pastor-elders at our church. Both Scott and Alex are good friends. Hopefully that’s clear by the way they tease me a bit, which is a favor I tried to return. This is my second invitation to the show; this winter we talked about the struggle with pornography (here).

I know I was the one being interviewed, but I will say this: in the last 10 minutes of the interview we talk about the way the gospel makes a difference in our identity. And last night as I re-listened to the conversation, I needed to hear these truths again. Maybe you do too.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. Or you can simply listen below.

 Here’s what Alex wrote for an intro to our conversation:

Too often in pursuit of full-time ministry abroad or at home, ministry applicants simply email a church or missions agency their resume and leave the rest of the hiring process to chance. Whether you’re fresh out of seminary or transitioning to ministry after a full career in the outside workforce, such a haphazard approach is bound to fail. Maybe we need to learn more about how to conduct ourselves professionally during the onboarding processes into pastoral or cross-cultural ministry.

Benjamin Vrbicek returns to the show to discuss his newest book, Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church. He believes that the typical pastor or missionary, while fully equipped to do his job, is not equipped to transition effectively when God calls him to move to another ministry context. The book also features short contributions by 12 published authors and ministry leaders including David Mathis, Jared C. Wilson, and others. In the interview, Scott and Alex catch up with Benjamin on a personal level and explore the similarities and dissimilarities between hiring in the ministry world and the secular world, and wrap up with some wisdom on transitioning well.

Is God Big Enough to Handle Your Pain?

When tragedy strikes, we often don’t know what to do next. Yet, when the Lord’s hand of judgment fell on Israel; when the temple was leveled by pagans; and when the most tender and refined of women resorted to cannibalism (cf. Deut. 28:56–57), Jeremiah knew what to do. He sat in ash and wrote an acrostic poem. Let that sink in. When all around his soul gave way, Jeremiah penned the book we call Lamentations, a series of highly structured and theologically dense poems.

That response to tragedy might strike us as odd. But Jeremiah’s response is a gift to posterity. His laments illuminate the way out of the dark jungle of despair. He gives us a path to walk toward life, healing, and toward God himself.

The Importance of Lament

Mark Vroegop’s new book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament draws its title from two verses in Lamentations: one about the clouds of judgment that hung over Zion (2:1), and the other from the stunning promise of fresh mercy each morning (3:22). “Lament stands in the gap,” Vroegop writes, “between pain and promise” (26).

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When tragedy strikes our lives, our churches, and our communities, we need a competent guide through the laments in the Bible, which are less familiar to most Christians than they should be. Take our diet of modern worship songs as an example. The book of Psalms is one-third lament, while the overwhelming majority of our modern worship songs are “positive and encouraging,” as one radio station boasts. Focusing on the upbeat in music and calling funeral services “a celebration of life,” are not necessarily wrong, but it does leave us impoverished. We also need to know how to grieve.

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy has three sections: the first engages with four psalms of lament, the second with the book of Lamentations, and the final explores applications to individual and corporate life. The book has also discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Not only would it be a good book for preaching and worship pastors to read individually, but it’s also a good book for them to read together. Last fall at our church, we preached a 10-week series through the book of Job, and though Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy wasn’t published yet, I wish it had been so it could have better shaped not only our preaching but the whole worship service.

Learning the Meaning of Lament

There’s a famous joke from the show Seinfeld where George’s father creates the holiday Festivus, a foil to Christmas. Each year Festivus beings with the “airing of grievances.” Mr. Costanza bellows, “I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!” To the uninitiated, it can seem like biblical laments are like that, the mere ranting to God our pent-up anger and disappointment throughout the last year, a vomiting of emotions and a verbal shake of our fists. As Vroegop engages with four Psalms of lament in the first section of the book (Psalm 77, 10, 22, and 13, respectively), I gained a better understanding of what lament, biblically speaking, is and what it is not. And more importantly, the detailed discussion through each modeled how to make use of lament as an individual Christian and in the life of the church. Big surprise: it’s not the way of Festivus.

Biblical laments have, according to Vroegop, three key features. First, there is an address to the Lord. In this way laments are for believers, not those shouting to the void or an impersonal universe. Second, laments complain. The complaint might be overtly because of some sin, or it may be less clear why the tragedy struck, but regardless something has gone very wrong and the people of God aren’t going to pretend it’s okay. Finally, laments have an expression of trust or praise, sometimes both. When all the sawdust of a lament finally settles to the ground, a believer is still a believer because God is God. Often this expression of trust marks a turning point in the psalm. Appendix 4, entitled, “But, Yet, And,” traces a number of examples of this “turn” in various psalms. “In some cases,” Vroegop writes, “the specific word [but, yet, or and] is not present, but the tone of the sentence fits the purpose [of asking boldly or choosing to trust]” (209).

Like the book of Lamentations, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy was also born out of tragedy. The Vroegops first experienced lament in the wake of a stillborn daughter and they later had other significant troubles during pregnancies. “Pain and fear mingled together in a jumbled torrent of emotion. . . . I wrestled with sadness that bored a hole in my chest,” he writes (17). My wife and I—and I’m sure many in your churches—know a little bit about this. You don’t forget that pale look on an ultrasound technician’s face when she says, “I’m going to grab the doctor,” on her way out the door. But it was in this season of sorrow that the Vroegop’s found solace in the Scripture. “The Bible gave voice to my pain. . . . I discovered a minor-key language for my suffering: lament” (17).

A Book for Those in Pain

Whenever I read a book about suffering, I find myself wondering about the author’s intended audience. Russ Ramsey, the author of Struck, another edifying book on suffering, has said there are two kinds of books on suffering. “There are books that you give to people who are interested in the subject, but not necessarily afflicted or suffering in the moment. And then there are books for people who are in the middle of suffering.”

Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy is more in the latter category, but it’s not the book you hand them on the way home from the funeral. The wounds are probably still too raw for this book. It seems to me that Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy is best given to someone when the steady delivery of meals from the church has stopped, when friends forget to check in, and when acute grief has dissipated but long-term grief still lingers. It is a good book for every pastor to read, but at some time or another, it will also be a book for most people in the pews.

* This book review originally appeared at 9Marks.

** Photo by Alex Plesovskich on Unsplash

We Are the Perpetual Resistance Movement: A Review of COMPETING SPECTACLES by Tony Reinke

As we discussed purity and parenting during a seminary class, Rob raised his hand from the back of the room. Our professor called on him. Rob said, “More than I want my daughter to not wear clothing that draws attention to her body, I want my daughter to want to not wear clothing that draws attention to her body. I want her to want the right things, not just do them.”

It was a formative moment in not only my seminary education but in my Christian maturation. Rob was on to something, and I wanted to be on to it too.

Tony Reinke’s new book Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in a Media Age is a book to help us not only look at our smartphones less, but a book to help us want to look at them less by giving us something better to behold.

Competing Spectacles is a solid sequel to his book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (2017). In a culture of “viral moments competing for our attention,” Reinke explores how we can not only survive spiritually but even thrive (p. 13). “Few of us,” he writes, “have reckoned with the consequences of this tele-visual culture on our attention, our volition, our empathy, and our self-identity” (p. 33). But Reinke has reckoned with the consequences, and he relays them well—not in an alarmist, fear-mongering way but as a concerned friend and father.

Competing Spectacles has an uncommon structure. It’s one long essay broken into 33 mini-sections, which are separated into two parts, “The Age of the Spectacle” and “The Spectacle.” This structure might catch a few readers off guard, but he’s such a gifted writer that a 34,000-word essay isn’t as imposing as it might sound. Reinke is senior writer for Desiring God and author of several other books, The Joy Project (2018), John Newton on the Christian Life (2015), and Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (2011). I’ve only done this for a few authors, but I make it a point to read (and in Reinke’s case, write reviews of) all his books.

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“Spectacle” can mean different things. Spectacles are something we wear to help us see. But spectacles can also be what we see. This is the way Reinke uses spectacles throughout the book, spectacles as events. So, for example, each year the Super Bowl is a spectacle. The recent box-office hit Avengers: Endgame is a spectacle. The 2016 presidential election is a spectacle—actually the 2016 election had lots and lots of spectacles to it, something Reinke explores extensively in several sections of the book (especially “§9. Politics as Spectacle,” pp. 39–44).

But a local church worship service is also, by this definition, a spectacle. It’s a different spectacle, a smaller, less sexy spectacle than the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Adam Levine half-naked at half-time, but the gathering of the people of God is a spectacle nonetheless.

Competing Spectacles has tons of crispy writing, the kind of writing prevalent in Reinke’s other books. Just to give you a taste, he writes of the way “we never stop hungering for the Turkish delight-sized bites of digital scandal” (p. 56) and how the spectacle industry is a “gatling gun firing at us new media modules nonstop” (p. 150). That’s good writing! My favorite quote comes during his discussion of the spectacle of the local church. It’s a long quote, but read it slowly, perhaps even out loud.

Matched to the multi-million dollar CGI spectacles of Hollywood, the church’s interior spectacles seem dull. But they are beautiful and profound. Each week the local church reenacts the same things—Bible preaching, the Lord’s Table, water baptism—all of them faith-based, repeated, microspectacles (unlike the sight-based and unrepeated, expiring spectacles of the world). These church ordinances are weighted with cosmic influence. In Colossians and Ephesians, Paul is careful to show how the gospel-driven love and unity of local churches is a spectacle of the victory of Christ to the powers and principalities who seek to destroy God’s created order. The church is the perpetual resistance movement. And from generation to generation, she displays a spectacle of God’s victory to his cosmic foes, repeatedly striking those enemies with déjà vu of their defeat at the cross. (p. 101)

A few weeks ago, with as much passion as I could muster, I read this quote to our church. I might as well have been William Wallace on horseback with blue warpaint. “They may take our lives, but we are the perpetual resistance movement!”

For the first time in our 20-year church’s history, we enjoyed preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper in the same worship service. We preach each week and have regular communion services, but we’ve always done our baptisms offsite in special services. We did this, in part, to mark baptisms off as special—they got their own service. But performing baptisms at another time than Sunday morning and in another location than our church building also meant we disconnected baptisms from the spectacle of a regular Sunday. Yet there is nothing, Reinke implies, regular about it at all. “From generation to generation, [local churches display] the spectacle of God’s victory to his cosmic foes.”

I want Christians to not only come to church each week but to want to come to church. And a big part of wanting to come to church regularly involves coming alive to the extraordinary reality of what happens on every ordinary Sunday in every ordinary local church.

If the local church is to become precious to us, another spectacle—the greatest spectacle—must first become precious to us: the spectacle of the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the heartbeat of Reinke’s book; it’s the central spectacle, both the theological center of the book and the geographic center of the book (e.g., the special attention the cross receives in section 17). He writes,

Into the spectacle-loving world, with all of its spectacle makers and spectacle-making industries, came the grandest Spectacle ever devised in the mind of God and brought about in world history—the cross of Christ. It is the hinge of history, the point of contact between BC and AD, where all time collides, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine spectacle. (p. 79)

Reinke’s book is not a book to get you to simply look at your phone less or watch media with a more critical eye. Competing Spectacles is a book to stoke your desire to want to behold something more than your screens; it’s a book, as the subtitle says, to help us treasure Christ in our media age. Channeling the famous quote by puritan Thomas Chalmers, Reinke writes, “The Christian’s battle in this media age can be won only by the expulsive power of a superior Spectacle” (p. 145).

* Photo by Barbara Provenzano on Unsplash

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Dozens of Free Copies of My Audiobook: Don’t Just Send a Resume

I had no idea how difficult it would be to produce an audiobook. But then I tried.

It’s really, really difficult to read with excellence, even if you’re super familiar with the words because you wrote them!

I tried to narrate the audiobook for my “struggle” book that was recently published. After wasting a dozen hours of work and a thousand bucks, I abandoned the project and hired a pro. I hired David K. Martin to narrate the book for me. I hired David because he did such a great job on Don’t Just Send a Resume, my book to help pastors find the right job in a local church. Throughout the audiobook production process he’s been a consummate professional. For example, when I listened to an early, completed draft of the audiobook, I only found one error—one error in over six hours of audio! (By the way, David’s narration of my Struggle Against Porn book should be out later this summer.)

Just last week the audiobook of Don’t Just Send a Resume hit Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. But if you want a copy, you don’t have to buy one. I have a few dozen to give away. The only thing you have to do is send me a message (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email: benjamin@fanandflame.com) so I can give you the code to download it.

The portion of the book we used for the audiobook’s sample comes from a section that I draw the title from. I’ve included that section below if you want to listen and read.

Again, if you’d like a copy, please send me a message. And if you know a pastor or someone in full-time ministry who might like a free copy, please send him or her this way!

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Always Include a Short, Custom Cover Letter

It’s common to hear people talk of sending their resume to an employer. Never do this. Or I should say, never just send a resume.

Why? Because the cover letter, not the resume, is the leading edge of your job search. Merely sending a resume (at least in ministry) accomplishes little more than spamming a search committee. It’s lazy and rarely stands out from the stack. Sending a custom cover letter, however, shows you care. And pastors should care.

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Many job search guides in the business world will tell you the primary focus is on the resume. I’ve been told that for many huge companies (think: Procter & Gamble and IBM), resumes are usually read before cover letters. Additionally, a resume might remain in large resume “banks” for recall. In these situations, some of the standard advice about resumes (like including key word optimization for enhanced searchability) makes sense.

But in ministry, things are different. The vast majority of churches will open a hiring process, complete a hiring process, and then throw everything away or save it for a year, then throw it away. This makes the process far more personal. Furthermore, churches don’t have a full-time HR person who spends his or her day scanning resumes. So when a church conducts a search, it will likely read or at least skim your cover letter first. So make it count.

Having said that, much of your cover letter can be boilerplate, meaning you can use most (but not all) of the verbiage with little to no modification. It should include the following descriptions:

• this (briefly) is who I am;

• this (briefly) is where I worked;

• this is where I went to school;

• this is where you can listen to my sermons (or watch videos of me leading worship);

• this is what I’m passionate about and why you should hire me.

I won’t tell you exactly what to write, but stuff like this is expected and appropriate.

More than anything else, don’t make it generic. If everything in your cover letter could be sent to every church in America, then your cover letter will be underwhelming and most likely overlooked. Like a good sermon, letters have a particular audience in mind. Therefore, tailor at least one paragraph to demonstrate the following three things to the church.

First, demonstrate you actually read the job description. No job is exactly the same, even if they both share the title “youth pastor.” Someone, or likely several people, spent significant time wording the job description, and it will serve you well to show them you cared enough to read it closely. . .

Jumpstart Your Struggle Against Porn

Over the last 12 years of Christian ministry, I’ve had an abiding frustration—but perhaps the frustration will surprise you. Whether in college ministry or in a local church, I’ve often found myself meeting with guys who struggle with lust and pornography. And I go into these meetings wanting to be helpful, but I leave frustrated. But probably not for the reasons you think. My main frustration was me.

I’d want to share truth and hope and encouragement and strategies to win the war, but I’d flounder. I’m not sure I’d use the phrase “pastoral malpractice,” but that’s what it was starting to feel like.

Eventually this frustration gave rise to a few years of reading and writing and thinking about how to help men struggle against pornography. And out of the research came a short book. And out of the book has come this very short video series.

I call it “jumpstart,” because it’s not designed to fix everything about everything. But the ten, short videos are designed to reignite your pursuit of joy in God and purity. I’d love for you to check them out.

Also included with the videos is a free ebook called 50 Questions for Accountability Meetings, which gives you tons of questions to consider as you struggle against lust and pornography.

* The video series is based off the book Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart (Amazon).

“Struggle...” Book Launches Today

Launching today—after three years of work—you can buy my book Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart (Amazon).

I wrote the book because many men struggle with porn but only a few struggle against it. And there’s a huge difference between the two. Through biblical reflection and more than one hundred questions for personal and group discussion, my goal in writing this book is to help men battle against sexual sin—to slay lust and cultivate love.

Below are the endorsements for the book. I’d love for you to consider buying a copy. Also, I put together a free video series and ebook to go with the book, which you can get here: jumpstart your struggle.

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“When I first began writing about pornography, many Christians were shocked to learn about not just the scope of the problem, but that the problem existed at all. Today, a decade later, the situation has changed radically and Christians may be so accustomed to hearing about pornography that we’ve almost come to accept it as normal. Yet pornography remains as dangerous and devastating as ever. For that reason I’m thankful for resources like this one that continue to combat this terrible plague.”
     Tim Challies,
     popular blogger at www.challies.com, co-founder of Cruciform Press, and author of several books including Sexual Detox: A Guide for Guys Who Are Sick of Porn

“Struggle Against Porn is a great blend of practical wisdom and gospel promises. The result is a book that will help you fight against porn while also giving you hope.”
     Tim Chester,
     pastor of Grace Church Boroughbridge, UK, a faculty member of Crosslands Training, and the author of over 40 books including Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free

“The great Puritan theologian John Owen warned, ‘Be killing sin or it will be killing you.’ Struggling Against Porn is a serious, sin-killing book. Benjamin Vrbicek doesn’t tolerate the lackadaisical attitude so prevalent among Christian men who merely ‘struggle with’ porn. He wants to help them conquer it. By drawing our attention to core truths and practical instructions, Vrbicek has given us a battle plan for victory.”
     Drew Dyck,
     acquisitions editor at Moody Publishers, a senior editor at CTPastors.com, and author of several books

“Our enemy would have us do anything but look at Jesus. His seductive temptations are sinister, and we must be ready to combat them. Struggle Against Porn provides men with a raw, accessible, and insightful resource to help consider Gospel truths and how they apply to the daily battle for sexual purity.”
     Garrett Kell,
     lead pastor of Del Ray Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia and associate council member of The Gospel Coalition

“I’m thankful for this new resource from Benjamin—one of my favorite new Christian writers. Read deeply as you invest your life in pushing back the darkness of pornography, this great epidemic of our generation.”
     Jeremy Linneman,
     pastor of Trinity Community Church in Columbia, Missouri and the author of Life-Giving Groups

* Photo by mnm.all on Unsplash

Next Week My Book “Struggle Against Porn” Launches

Buy on Amazon

After a ton of research, writing, and re-writing (and then a lot more re-writing!), my book to help men struggle against pornography is finally ready to launch next week. The title is Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart.

I wrote the book because many men struggle with porn but only a few struggle against it. And there’s a huge difference between the two.

Look at it like this. If something were wrong with your car, you’d bring it into an auto shop for inspection. The first thing the mechanic would do is hook your car up to a computer for a diagnostic checkup. In a similar way, Struggle Against Porn is designed to be a diagnostic checkup for your head and your heart. Through biblical reflection and more than one hundred questions for personal and group discussion, my goal in writing this book is to help men battle against sexual sin—to slay lust and cultivate love.

Below is the table of contents. I’d love for you to consider buying a copy when it launches.

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FOREWORD by Greg Strand

INTRODUCTION: AGAINST NOT WITH

PART I: FOUNDATIONS

1. “Verily, Verily, I Say unto Thee, Ye Must Be Born Again”
2. Believe Sexual Sin Is Wrong and Cultivate a Hatred of It
3. Fight for Superior Joys
4. Recognize the Grave Danger
5. Run like the Wind
6. Make It Personal: The Women Are Real Image Bearers

PART II: CROSS-TRAINING

7. Cultivate Humility
8. Plant the Bible in the Soil of Your Heart
9. Don’t Avoid Conflict; Engage It
10. Run from and Become Indifferent to Flattery
11. Be Intoxicated with Your Wife
12. Avoid “Dude Talk”
13. Cultivate the Fear of the Lord

PART III: THE NITTY-GRITTY

14. Stop (S-T-O-P!) Masturbating
15. Don’t Be Alone with Sexual Temptation
16. Pursue Deep, Gospel Friendships
17. Only Have Computers (Including Tablets and Smartphones) in Public Areas
18. Install Accountability Software on All Devices
19. Cut Off All Access to Sexually Stimulating Media
20. Know Your Situational and Emotional Triggers; Take Precautions Accordingly
21. Use Visual Smelling Salts to Resist Sexual Sin
22. Share the Existence of the Struggle with Your Wife
23. Go to Bed When Your Wife Goes to Bed
24. Communicate Your Sexual Needs to Your Wife
25. Treat the Sexual Needs of Your Wife as More Important Than Your Own
26. As Needed, Seek Professional Help

PART IV: A BRIGHT FUTURE

27. Become a Passionate Teacher and a Spiritual Father
28. Understand the Lord’s Discipline as His Training of the Sons He Dearly Loves
29. Whatever You Do, Don’t Stop Serving Jesus

CONCLUSION: ONE MAN, TWO STORIES

NOTES

* Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Making the Faith Your Own Is not the Same as Making Up Your Own Faith

A pastor told me how encouraging it is when, years later, former students return to tell him how they’ve made the “faith their own.” It’s a phrase he used to encourage students with, especially those near graduation.

But he also told me how discouraging it was when one particular student returned to tell how he had made the faith his own. As the former student described this thing he considered “the faith,” it became clear he had not made the faith his own but rather made up his own faith. There’s a big difference.

Over the Easter weekend, the New York Times ran an interview with Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary. In the first few paragraphs you realize she’s done the same thing. In the short interview, she uses the phrase “for me” five times, as well as several other similar statements, such as “I don’t believe” and “seems to me,” as in the sentence, “For Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith” (emphasis added).

In addition to rejecting the bodily resurrection of Christ, Jones also dismisses the reliability of the Bible, human depravity, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus on the cross, and eternal bliss in the new heavens and new earth and eternal torment in hell.

When my friend retweeted the article, he said, “I have more in common with Islam than I do with the religion described as ‘Christianity’ in this interview.” That’s probably not hyperbole. Readers get the sense that if the interview kept going, no remaining doctrine of historic Christianity would have been left un-denounced.

At one point, Nicholas Kristof, who conducted the interview, asks, “For someone like myself who is drawn to Jesus’ teaching but doesn’t believe in the virgin birth or the physical resurrection, what am I? Am I a Christian?” Jones responds, “Well, you sound an awful lot like me, and I’m a Christian minister.”

That’s a fascinating response, to say the least. In what sense can people call themselves Christian ministers—or Christians for that matter—while holding no beliefs of the historic Christian faith?

In the New Testament, Jude wrote, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3). Did you catch that? He speaks of “common salvation” and contending “for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude’s statement becomes meaningless if Christianity is infinitely malleable.

Words have meaning, and authors have intent. And Jones knows this. In one sentence she says, “At the heart of faith is mystery. God is beyond our knowing . . .” But she ends the paragraph saying, “I don’t worship an all-powerful, all-controlling omnipotent, omniscient being . . . That’s not the God of Easter.” So does the faith mean something or is it too mysterious to mean anything? Which is it?

When asked about what happens when we die, Jones responds, “I don’t know! There may be something, there may be nothing. My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife.” Did you notice another one of those “my faith” phrases? It all sounds so humble.

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In his book Taking God at His Word, Kevin DeYoung writes about the infamous elephant metaphor for faith, the one where each person holds one part of the elephant, but because each is blindfolded, they don’t realize each holds the same thing. People often trot out the metaphor to explain how all religions are basically the same: some touch the elephant’s tail, others the side, and some the trunk. But if they all could only see, then they’d know that all religions are the same.

DeYoung disarms the faux-humility of religious pluralism that so often retreats to claims of mystery when there is no mystery. It isn’t actually humble, he notes, to profess agnosticism about what one is holding if the object you’re holding is shouting, “I’m an elephant.” That type of humility is better known as disobedience.

To be sure, there are aspects of mystery in the Christian faith, but the Christian faith cannot be all mystery or else there would be nothing to call “the Christian faith.” Moses wrote that “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29). There are secret things, and there are revealed things, but the faith once for all delivered is not a secret thing.

It was Eugene Peterson who described Christian faithfulness as a long obedience in the same direction. Serene Jones and Union Theological Seminary’s departure from the faith, however, are the result of a long disobedience in the same direction.

* Photo by Sutirta Budiman on Unsplash

Jesus Was Crucified at 9 am: Reflections on Good Friday

The following are my notes for our church’s Good Friday Service. I hope these reflections bless you as we prepare our hearts for Easter.

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Welcome

My name is Benjamin; I’m one of the teaching pastors here at Community Church. Welcome to our Good Friday Service. In just a moment we’ll formally begin our service. To prepare our hearts, please listen to our music team play a rendition of Psalm 88, which is a well-known Psalm of Lament. It’s an appropriate way to begin our Good Friday Service.

Song: “Can the Dead Rise Up to Praise?” (here)  

Would you join me in prayer? “Dear Heavenly Father...”

In the early church, there was a young pastor named Timothy, who was called by the Lord to pastor a church in the ancient city of Ephesus. The Apostle Paul wrote two letters to Timothy that we have in our Bibles. In one of those letters, Paul told Timothy to “devote [himself] to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Timothy 4:13). Each Sunday we do all three of these: we read Scripture, we exhort, we teach. But we often have more of the latter two (exhortation and teaching) than we do the reading of Scripture. So tonight we are going to major on the reading of Scripture, and I’m praying that the plain reading of Scripture would have its own way of exhorting and teaching us with the goal that our hearts might be strengthened by grace.

All ten of our Scripture readings tonight come from the gospel of Luke. The readings encompass the events that took place on Good Friday so many years ago. We are going to intersperse the readings of Scripture with songs, a few we’ll ask you to sing along with if you know them and a few the band will play over us as we listen and reflect. Before each cluster of readings, I’ll come forward to give a brief introduction to the readings. I’ll also venture a guess as to the “time stamp” of when each event took place throughout the Thursday night when Jesus was arrested and to Friday afternoon when Jesus died. Some of the times are exact because they are stated in the Gospels; other times are approximations based on what seems plausible. (I was helped by this article by Russ Ramsey.)

I’ll lead us in the first reading, which comes from Luke 22:47–53. This reading covers the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, which took place sometime in the late hours of Thursday night, so, perhaps something like 11:00 pm. Jesus, as you’ll see in the passage, refers to the following events as the beginning of an evil hour and “the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53)

Reading 1: Luke 22:47–53, Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

Song: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us”

After Jesus is arrested, he is beaten and mocked by soldiers. As well, religious leaders convene a council where Jesus is tried. All this takes place in the early morning hours of Good Friday, perhaps somewhere between 2:00 am and 6:00 am. Meanwhile, we’re also told that just as the sun is coming up, Peter denies knowing Jesus.

Reading 2: Luke 22:54–62, Peter Denies Jesus
Reading 3: Luke 22:63–65, Jesus Is Mocked
Reading 4: Luke 22:66–71, Jesus Before the Council

Song: “Oh God” by the Citizens

Now that the sun is up, the pace of the story quickens. Between 6:00 am and 8:00 am, Jesus appears before the Roman governor Pilate, and then the Judean ruler Herod Antipas, and then he goes back to Pilate where Jesus is sentenced to crucifixion. Between 8:00 am and 8:30 am, Jesus begins his march to Golgotha, which is an Aramaic word. Luke calls Golgotha by its translation: “The Place of the Skull,” likely so called because the rock formation looked like a skull and also because it was a place of execution and burial.

Weakened from his sleepless night, his beatings, and his flogging, Jesus is unable to carry his own cross, so a man name Simon is conscripted to carry the cross for him. We can’t be certain, but when you piece together what is said in Mark’s gospel with something that’s said in the book of Romans, it would seem that at least one of Simon’s sons and Simon’s wife became followers of Christ and even leaders in the early church (Mark 15:21 and Romans 16:13). We can’t know, but I’d love to think Simon became a believer in Jesus as well.

The crucifixion begins around 9:00 am. Over the next three hours, Jesus has a conversation with the criminals on the cross, and we do know for sure that one of those men becomes a believer, because Luke tells us so.

Reading 5: Luke 23:1–5, Jesus Before Pilate
Reading 6: Luke 23:6–17, Jesus Before Herod
Reading 7: Luke 23:18–25, Pilate Delivers Jesus to Be Crucified
Reading 8: Luke 23:26–43, The Crucifixion

Song: “Man of Sorrows”

After Jesus was on the cross for three hours, from 9:00 am until 12:00 noon, a strange darkness was over the land. Then, at 3:00 pm, in a loud voice, Jesus cries out to his father and gives up his spirit.

Sometime later that afternoon, as the sun sets—so perhaps around 5:00 pm—Luke tells us of a rebel, a wealthy religious leader named Joseph. Joseph did not consent to the condemnation of Jesus, as the other religious leaders did. Very bravely, Joseph requests permission to bury Jesus in a tomb.

In the Jewish reckoning of things, one day ends and a new day begins at nightfall, which means Good Friday comes to a close at sundown. But just before the sun goes down, Luke tells us a few women followed to see where Jesus is buried. Then they return home to prepare spices, which they intend to bring to the tomb in two days, after the Sabbath rest day and the celebration of Passover.

Reading 9: Luke 23:44–49, The Death of Jesus
Reading 10: Luke 23:50–56, Jesus Is Buried

Songs: “The Power of the Cross,” “There Is a Fountain,” and “Nothing but the Blood”

Closing Thoughts & Prayer

I don’t think it’s stealing the punchline from Sunday’s Easter sermon to tell you what happens. We know the story. The women never get to use the spices they prepared to place on his body. His body is gone.

Tonight we’ve been reading from Luke’s gospel, but it’s fair to say that the rest of the New Testament, in a way, is doing two main things: first, the New Testament gives us the interpretation of the events that took place on Good Friday and Easter. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God was reconciling us to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18). Jesus bore the punishment we deserved and now—wonderfully—the perfect life of Christ is given to us. Through faith in Jesus, God now sees us as having the perfection of his Son.

The second thing the New Testament authors do is explain the implications of Good Friday for our lives, the life of the Church, and the future of the world. We certainly don’t have time to tease out all of the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus. That will take our whole lives, indeed even our eternities.

But we should mention one implication. One implication of Good Friday and Easter is that believers in God do not grieve as those who have no hope, as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. We certainly grieve when a Christian who we love dies, and we certainly do the same on Good Friday.

Yes, we grieve the weight of our sin and the gravity of the cross of Christ. But Christians do not grieve on Good Friday as those who have no hope. We have great hope because the spices prepared for his burial were never used. And even so, when we die one day, our own tombs will not be our final place of rest. We will be with Jesus in paradise, just as Jesus promised the thief on the cross.

Join me in prayer, and then we’ll be dismissed. “Dear Heavenly Father...”

* Photo by Aaron Burdon on Unsplash

Did God Make the iPhone?

The Evangelical Free Church of America (my church denomination) recently posted an excerpt from my book Don’t Just Send a Resume. The excerpt offers advice to pastors as they navigate the dicey conversation about compensation when interviewing with a church. In the post (and book), I make the statement:

The private nature and the potential misuse of money doesn’t negate its proper use. God made money, and though we tend to abuse it (just like sex, food, and exercise), God is not uncomfortable with the material world. He made it and called it good. So don’t shy away from talking about money in the final stages of a job search. Godly people can talk about money in godly ways.

In the comment section under the blog post, a man named Jay wrote:

Thanks for writing, Benjamin, and for publishing your work here for our benefit. I was surprised at your statement that “God made money.” Would you also ascribe cars, light bulbs, credit cards and other examples of human technology to God’s creative power?

My response to Jay was probably too long for a comment under a blog, but by itself it was a smidge too short to use as a blog post. So, I took my reply to Jay and expanded it here for us. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I wrote. Have you ever thought about whether God made money and technology? Here’s what I think . . .

Great question, Jay. Thanks for asking it. I’m actually pondering my own sentence in deeper ways now that you’ve asked about it. I tend to think the answer to the question, Did God make technology? is both yes and no.

If there is a way to positively affirm that God “makes” technology, then I’m sure we’d both agree that God doesn’t make technology the same way he made Adam (and trees and stars and so on). The Bible has no “Let us make an iPhone.” And neither does God work at a Ford plant or in a cubical at Visa’s headquarters. Cars and credit cards—and I guess everything else—are made by people.

But in another sense, I do think the Scriptures teach that God is behind all human ingenuity. Every good and perfect gift, writes James, comes down from God (1:17). How many lives are saved through advances in medical technology? I know that every time I use Neosporin or get an MRI, I’m thankful to God for these good gifts. I recently went on a field trip with my daughter to the Civil War Museum here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I’m certainly thankful God has caused medical practices to improve from those days of ghastly limb amputation.

A verse that has also been helpful to me is Deuteronomy 8:18. Moses instructs God’s people, “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth...” Moses wants us to see God as the one behind our ability to make money. Another way to say this would be to say that God wants us to remember he is behind all “human” ingenuity and all “human” industry.

Here’s one other idea that I think is helpful. When Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall, they were charged with caring for it. Have dominion over paradise and subdue it, God told them. Adam and Eve were to cultivate the raw, unformed aspects of Eden, in a comparable way to how God created and cultivated his creation in Genesis 1. But as soon as Adam and Eve used any tool other than their hands and fingernails to plant crops, or as soon as they made a knife to cut their food, couldn’t we call these tools, crude as they were, technologies?

I’m not saying that everything people make is good or that when good things are made, they are always made in ways that honor God. They are not. When certain people attempted to build a skyscraper to heaven so that they could make a name for themselves, God confused their languages as a judgment against them (Genesis 11). They “weaponized” their God-giving ingenuity and used it against their Creator.

We should look up at the night sky and say, “Look how awesome God is” because the heavens are his handiwork (Psalm 19). But we can also stand on the roof of the Empire State Building overlooking the sea of skyscrapers and say, “Look how awesome God is.” This is precisely what King Nebuchadnezzar did not do when he scanned the majesty of his kingdom. While his boastful words were still in his mouth, God judged Nebuchadnezzar for his refusal to see God’s sovereign hand behind the pomp of the kingdom (Daniel 4:28ff).

God aims to get all of his glory for all that he has done, which is why it’s important for us to see God’s role in “making” things he doesn’t directly make. “For from him and through him and to him,” the Apostle Paul writes, “are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:36).

* Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash

My Heart Is Full: A Miniature Memoir after Five Years of Ministry

John Piper has said that “God will hide from you much of your fruit [from your ministry efforts]. You will see enough to be assured of his blessing, but not so much as to think you could live without it” (The Supremacy of God in Preaching, 25).

I’ve found this to be true. I hear enough encouragement in ministry that I don’t want to quit—most of the time. But I don’t tend to hear so much encouragement as to become proud—at least I hope I haven’t become proud.

But the receiving of encouragement is not always so balanced of a thing in the short run. It’s a lot like gaining and losing weight. When you are, on the whole, losing weight, you still gain weight each time you eat, even if the total calories you burn create a weekly deficit. And when, on the whole, you’re gaining weight, each time you exercise or do any movement, or make no movement as you sleep, your body burns calories. Encouragement and discouragement in ministry are like that, something in constant flux.

It’s fair to say that encouragement didn’t come my way often when I first arrived at my current church five years ago. Early on, I never really wanted to leave, nor did I feel like anyone especially wanted me to leave. But I sort of had this sense that if I did leave, no one would miss me too much. People didn’t love or hate my pastoring; they seemed indifferent. That might be overstating things, but it’s how I felt.

I’m not sure of all the reasons I perceived these feelings of indifference. In hindsight, I believe the largest contributing factor was my change in role. At my former church, encouragement dripped into my inbox like it was hooked up to an IV bag, and the encouragement was broad and steady.

But at my last church, I was an associate teaching pastor not a senior teaching pastor. Church members seem to like rooting for an associate pastor, especially if he’s trying hard and improving. I’d preach an okay-ish sermon one week, but then a few months later I might preach a sermon that was a little better than just okay. People would let me know ways I had improved. They’d show me notes they took during the sermon. Then, eventually, I’d preach a few sermons that could almost be considered good, at least by associate pastor standards. A few times near the end I might have even preached well. That was fun. Again, the congregation rooted for me. Who doesn’t want an underdog to win?

When five years ago I came to Community Evangelical Free Church no longer an associate teaching pastor but a senior teaching pastor, someone also pulled the IV out of my inbox. It’s not that anyone ever said this outright, but it almost felt like people were thinking, Hey, you’re a senior teaching pastor now; we sort of expect your sermons to be good, and the same goes for your counseling, discipleship, Bible knowledge, administration, and everything else you do.

For whatever deficit of encouragement there was in the first few years—whether it was an actual deficit or it was just perception, only the Lord knows—I certainly know now that my church is rooting for me. Last weekend my church gave me a big dose of encouragement as we celebrated my five-year anniversary. A few members of the original search team, staff, elders, my small group, and a few other friends, gave up an evening to share ways that my wife and I have blessed them through our ministry here. They even prayed over us. My heart is full.

In one note, a dear friend wrote,

I see you in the trenches week in and week out wrestling with the Scriptures, honing your preaching craft, writing for the edification of God’s people, centering (and re-centering) your work, ministry, and family on the gospel. . . . Over the last five years you’ve made gospel-centeredness tangible.

That note and the other notes hold more life-giving encouragement than I feel comfortable sharing here. I don’t want my reflections to be considered self-serving. But one thing stood out as people around the room shared: the wide cross-section of life that pastoral ministry occupies. For one couple, I had officiated the weddings of two of their daughters. For another couple, I had visited them in the hospital while they sat beside the bed of a dying parent, once for a father and once for a mother. I had also prayed with new mothers and fathers in hospitals when their children were born. With others, we’d shared tears and prayers and pans of brownies in homes during countless small group meetings. And all of them had endured my preaching. Speaking of preaching . . .

My best friend, Mike, had a raffle of sorts to see who could guess how many sermons I had preached in the last five years. My co-pastor and I alternate preaching, so it wasn’t difficult to do a little math and make a decent guess. My guess didn’t count, but I thought it might have been around 110, which turned out to be a little high. In a few seasons, like last year when we renovated a building, my preaching frequency slowed a bit. The answer was 104 sermons in the last five years, which amounts to something like 400,000 words. That’s a lot of words.

Do you remember those arcade games with a mechanical bar that slides back and forth, continually nudging a huge stack of coins resting on a shelf? You play the game by dropping in coins and hoping the mechanical bar will nudge the stack in such a way that some eventually fall off the ledge. That’s often how I think about preaching and pastoral ministry. Preaching is a series of tiny nudges. There are the granular nudges in 400,000 individual words and the aggregate nudges in 104 completed sermons. With most nudges, nothing seems to happen. So in faith you reload again. And again. And again.

But then sometimes the nudges connect. Change happens. People are helped and healed. I’m thankful my church cared enough about me to show me the fruit from a few of my ministry nudges.

My heart is full.

* Photo by Amanda Herrold Photography

HUMBLE CALVINISM by J. A. Medders (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Nine years ago I was searching for my first job in pastoral ministry. During the interview process with one local church—the church that would eventually hire me—they asked that I fill out an in-depth questionnaire. It had questions about my family, education, and hobbies. There was also a meaty theological section that began by asking, “How do you associate with Calvinism or Arminianism?”

My full answer was a bit longer, but here’s some of what I wrote:

I think the first thing I’d say to a random Christian asking me about Calvinism or Arminianism, would go something like, “I think I know what I mean by those terms, but what do you mean when you use them?” In my experience people often have a very unsavory connotation of whichever side they do not espouse to the extent that the other position becomes a caricature that proponents do not hold themselves. However, if what you describe in your Teaching Doctrinal Statement is what you believe Calvinism to be, I’m totally on board. . . 

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One of the things that caused me to appreciate this church was not just their theological precision but their humility. Members who joined the church did not have to embrace, or even understand, this thing called Calvinism. It was only the Bible teachers, staff, and elders who needed to agree to teach in concert with the doctrinal statement. And yet, they cared enough to take the time to write everything out so that prospective members (and prospective staff pastors) could know what they were getting into when they joined.

Well, I’m rambling a bit, but this combination of theological precision and humble posture do not go together as often as they should. This is one reason I liked J.A. Medder’s new book, Humble Calvinism: If I Know the Five Points, but Have Not Love . . .  Medders is a pastor in Texas at Redeemer Church. He’s also the author of Gospel Formed and co-author of Rooted. If his name sounds familiar to readers of this blog, perhaps it’s because I’ve written about him a few times. He’s one of the twelve contributors to my recent book Don’t Just Send a Resume, and he hosts Home Row, one of my favorite podcasts about writing.

“We don’t need less Calvinism,” Medder’s writes early in the book, “we need more real Calvinism” (p. 27). I agree. Calvinism, which holds to a high view of God’s sovereignty, especially in salvation, ought to produce the most humble of Christians. You can’t rightly claim you were a wretch when God did everything necessary to save you while simultaneously having a boastful smirk and a cocky swagger. It sometimes does happen, but it shouldn’t happen. In fact, I’m sure several people reading this post have been hurt by Christians who espoused Calvinism but did so with such arrogance that you’ve been turned off the topic ever since. “Many of us who claim to love the ‘doctrines of grace,’” Medders writes, “have not grown in showing grace. We have not become more gracious, kind, tender, and compassionate. And that can only mean one thing: we actually don’t know the doctrines of grace” (p. 17).

But others reading this review might be thinking, “Wait—I don’t really know what Calvinism is. Neither do I know the ‘five points’ mentioned  in the subtitle.” To this, I’ll say that Medders does of faithful job of bringing readers up to speed. After the introduction there is a short section that covers historical background and definition of terms. In the rest of the book, Medders unpacks each of the five points of Calvinism (often identified by the acronym TULIP) and how each point should produce meek not malicious Christians.

As someone who has read a number of books on this topic, let me also say how enjoyable Medders made his book, which is not easy to do when explaining theology; his sentences snap, crackle, and pop. For example, he writes of those who wield their Calvinism like a lead pipe; getting his first whiff of TULIP; making theological taxidermy a hobby; and predestination as the prequel of our faith in Christ (pp. 19, 43, 45, and 77).

Humble Calvinism is a helpful book for those trying for the first time to understand the Calvinistic view of God’s sovereignty in salvation. And it’s also a convicting book for pastors like me who need to be reminded that if our understanding of Calvinism—or any other doctrine—produces in us arrogance, then we haven’t learned the doctrine as we ought.

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To Spank or not to Spank? We Do

I’ll say at the start of this that my wife and I spank our children.

But in this post I’m not going to begin with 10 minutes of throat clearing—you know, all that introductory stuff to make sure we are all starting on the same page. I’m just going to assume that the reader knows that when I say spank, I don’t mean beat. And I’m going to assume that the reader knows when I say spank, I don’t mean it’s the only way to discipline or even the best in every circumstance. I have never beat my children, and we have used many other methods of discipline in addition to spanking.

My wife and I have six children, so we’ve been thinking about this for a long time. But I’ve especially been thinking about it over the last few weeks. This year I’m officiating the weddings of five young couples, and during premarital counseling when we discuss the disciplining of children, it’s fair to say that most, if not all, seem moderately or strongly opposed to it. This trend has proved true for most of the last dozen engaged couples who have sat in our living room to talk about raising children (and budgeting and intimacy and for richer and for poorer).

The other thing that got me thinking about it was a humorous and somewhat odd sermon intro by pastor Matt Chandler (“That Which Satisfies” on John 6:22–71, preached March 3, 2019). While he tells a story of disciplining his own children, you can almost feel how the congregation seems both humored and uncomfortable. At one point, Chandler momentarily breaks from his story to say something like, “I know you don’t spank your kids, but we do.” Apparently, I’m not the only one hanging onto a method of discipline that’s going out of style—or one that has already long gone out of style.

Yet this post isn’t part of my crusade to get you to spank your children. I’ve never written about this before and don’t plan to do it again. I certainly don’t want to be another polemical voice in the already overly opinionated milieu of Christian child-rearing. Instead, I’d like to talk about how parents can spank their children rightly. In other words, if you’re already open to the idea of spanking—or perhaps already doing it—then I’d love to offer some thoughts about how to and how not to proceed.

The Bible doesn’t say much about spanking. The modern Proverb about spoiling a child by sparing the rod isn’t actually in the Bible. Although Proverbs does say these things:

Whoever spares the rod hates his son,
    but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (13:24)

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
    but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. (22:15)

I don’t want to quibble with anyone about whether “rod” should be understood literally or if it’s a metaphor for discipline of another kind. Again, I’m simply trying to help those already walking a certain path to stay on that path in a way that honors God.

So, here are 13 thoughts about what would and would not help to make spanking most effective and honoring to the Lord.

1. A Calm Mom or Dad
Don’t spank in anger. If the child’s disobedience is causing you to react poorly, you probably should have spanked (or disciplined in some other way) long before you did.

2. A Spoon is Better than a Hand
My suggestion is that you use a wooden spoon or plastic spatula rather than your hand. This suggestion has little to do with how it feels to be spanked with either item. I think using a spoon is better than using your hand because, over time, it seems wise to have something else do the spanking that isn’t so closely tied to you. You can put a spoon away in a drawer or diaper bag, but your hand is always with you.

3. Spank Only for Willful Disobedience
Don’t spank a little kid for making the sorts of mistakes little kids tend to make. If a kid spills a drink at dinner, that doesn’t call for a spanking. But if a kid looks at Mom and yells, “NOOO!!” when asked to pick up toys, that does call for a spanking. Related to this point of “little kids being little kids,” if your child throws a temper tantrum because you went on vacation and kept the little guy up way past his bedtime for days on end, that’s not something to spank about either. That tantrum is on us, the parents.

4. Spank Away from the Presence of Others
Don’t spank a child in front of her siblings, friends, or other company. The point is not to humiliate.

5. Spank on the Child’s Bottom
If the child is very young, say 18 months, you can do it lightly on the hand. Otherwise only spank on the bottom. You don’t want a child fearful about what part of his body will receive the spanking. The punishment should be a procedure known to the child not something fearfully erratic.

6. Explain Why You Are Spanking
If a police officer gave me a traffic ticket, which has happened a few times, the officer has always made it clear what law (or laws) I violated. The same should be true of spanking. Children need to know what they did wrong. This is true with all methods of discipline.

7. Seek to Draw out an Apology
Related to making sure a child knows what he did wrong, explain the need to repent verbally and apologize to those sinned against.

8. Tailor Discipline to the Child’s Temperament and Age
A child might go through a season of disobedience where she needs a few spankings every week. But that should be very rare. And some children, because of their tender disposition, shouldn’t get but a few spankings the entire time they grow up. Know your child. When it comes to age, I’d say 18-months old to 6-years old is a decent window, though you might go a bit longer. But don’t spank a 12-year old, or a 12-month old for that matter. A friend mentioned something helpful to me about this. He encouraged me that if the child is violently resisting the spanking, then it’s not the time to do it. Wait for things to calm down. Traumatization is not the effect we’re aiming for.

9. Make Spanking Consistent
Children should not be surprised that a certain action resulted in a spanking, and when you do spank, they should be consistently done. Avoid being random and erratic. Don’t ratchet up the physical force for a greater offense. Also, spanking shouldn’t be the thing that only Dad does (or only Mom does). This pits children against certain parents and each parent against each other. In a blended family, more thought might be needed here, as sometimes it can be best for the biological parent of the child to do the more difficult disciplining, at least at first.

10. Give Only One Warning
Don’t threaten with a spanking if you don’t intend to follow through. If you warn a child sixteen times before a spanking, you’ll certainly be teaching but not what you should be teaching. And whether you spank or not, please don’t ever “count to three” slowly to get a child to obey. ONNNNEEE... pick up that toy... I mean it... TWOOOO... just bend over and pick it up... TWOOOO AND A HALFFFFF... Don’t make me have to spank you because here comes number three... This just teaches delayed obedience, which is also known as prolonged disobedience.

11. Reaffirm Love and Show Affection
When the spanking is over, it’s over—all of it. Hug your child and remind her how deeply you love her.

12. Apologize to Your Child When You Get it Wrong
A Dad who never repents is a terrible lesson to teach. No parent is perfect. It’s not if but when you’ll need to apologize to a child. The apology should be done privately, as with the spankings, but your apology should also be done publicly because likely others in the house heard the commotion. Public sin should have a public repentance.

13. Take the Long View
Big problems are not typically fixed in one afternoon. Consistent love and discipline (of whatever method) over the life of the child is what shapes the child’s heart and character.

Let me know in the comments what I’m missing.

* Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash

Audiobook in Production: Don’t Just Send a Resume

I’m excited about the production of the audiobook for my recent book to help pastors in the job-search process, Don’t Just Send a Resume. The audiobook will be available for purchase in the next 8–10 weeks. The narrator is David K. Martin. I’ve listened to the first part a few times, and he’s doing a fantastic job.

You can listen to a 5-min sample of the preface below.  

*    *    * 

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It took me five years to earn my seminary degree. It was exhausting. It cost thousands of dollars and took thousands of hours to learn what I needed to learn so I could help lead a local church. Eventually that training was complete, and it was time for my classmates and me to look for jobs.

This didn’t go well for many of us. In fact, some students—men I respect and thought would make great pastors—struggled to find the right church or any church at all.

In a word, they floundered.

Why? Because they didn’t know how to find a job. They didn’t know what they were doing. I suspect there are valid reasons why this was the case.

First, they forgot—or they never learned—that the business world is different from the vocational ministry world. These differences startled me when I began interviewing for pastoral jobs. For example, during the interview process with one church, the pastors visited my home for a meal. They met my entire family and even saw my laundry room during a tour of our house. Trust me, this never happened during my former career as a mechanical engineer.

Second, pastors struggle to connect with the right local church because many seminaries don’t have margin to teach students how to transition from the classroom. For every book a professor includes, there are ten others he or she wanted to add but couldn’t.

If you’re a seminary student about to graduate, it’s no guarantee you’ll have a pastoral job in a few months. You know the feeling—and it’s terrifying. In his book to help pastors during transitions, John Cionca writes, “Occasionally, I meet seminarians who view a Master of Divinity degree as a union card. They figure that someone owes them a church upon graduation.” I’m not sure I’d go this far, but I understand the sentiment. All that effort, time, and money—in addition to a sense of calling that’s been confirmed by others—creates certain expectations, or at least certain hopes.

So, when the end of the tunnel starts to look more hopeless than hopeful, disillusionment and panic ensue. It’s overwhelming to think about all the steps involved in finding the right job, especially if you’ve never done it before. Where do I start? Who do I talk to? What do I send them? It’s no less terrifying when you’re currently in a church but considering a new role. How do I know my family and I will fit at the new church? How do I tell people I’m leaving?

For all those questions, we pastors need solid coaching. We need processes that are theologically informed and practically oriented. We need anecdotes from real hiring processes, and we need strategies for every step of the way.

This is what Don’t Just Send a Resume is about. Consider for a moment an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). An EMT, though trained, needs an ambulance to get him to the accident. He’s been trained to help those who are hurt, but he needs a ride to be able to do so. If he can’t get to the accident, he can’t help. In the same way, I’m not interested in pastors earning a lot of money or finding the flashiest job. I simply want to get those who are trained to help—pastors—on the path to those churches who need their help.

This whole project started with two e-mails. Joel, a friend from seminary, emailed me to ask for advice about finding a job in a church. That was three and a half years ago. Joel was about to transition from one church to another, and he was looking for help. I sent him an e-mail with ten suggestions. Who sends a ten-point e-mail? I guess I do! Anyway, Joel found my thoughts, as well as the subsequent coaching I gave him, helpful. After that, my e-mail to Joel grew into a series of blog posts. Then came eighteen months of research with my nose in books on the topic, both church-specific and business-specific books. Then came over fifty interviews with pastors of all different ages and roles and denominations who’d recently made a pastoral transition. Then I reached out to other pastors and authors who have thought deeply about pastoral transitions, asking them to contribute to the book. And finally, this book—or, rather, this ambulance.

Let’s go for a ride.

The Story of a Book: Struggle Against...

Nearly 1,000 days ago, there was a men’s breakfast at our church. I didn’t expect much more from the breakfast than to eat bacon, drink coffee, and chat with a few men from our church. I was wrong.

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The leader of the devotional that morning talked about the struggle with pornography—why it was bad and what to do about it. As a pastor of a local church, I had known for some time that I needed to do better at helping the men in our church in this area, but until then, I hadn’t done anything about it. So I was glad he took the risk.

When the speaker was finished, men asked questions. I raised my hand and said,

“Let’s say there is someone here this morning who believes everything you just said—he believes lust and pornography are wrong and that God wants better for us—but he isn’t sure what practical steps to take so that he can fight against this sin.”

Then I asked, “What are a few practical steps you might tell this person so he can better struggle against pornography?”

The leader said something like, “Well, there are a number of men here this morning who might be able to comment on that.” Then he looked around the room and said, “Guys, what are practical things you’ve found helpful in the struggle against pornography?”

What followed for the next half hour was suggestion after suggestion on practical tips to fight against pornography. I typed notes on my phone as fast as my thumbs could go. That afternoon I texted some friends who might be able to add to the list of practical steps. And they did. Lot’s of suggestions poured in by text and email.

That day was 969 days ago, the summer of 2016.

I never planned to write a book about what I learned. But that’s what happened. That men’s breakfast was the day that I first began writing what would become, Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart.

If I did have aspirations to write a book, it was only for a booklet, that is, something I might be able to use as a reference in counseling sessions. But the booklet kept expanding, eventually outgrowing the need for the ending “let.”

Still, I only expected to use the book in our local church. When I hired Russell Meek as an editor, he told me the book was better than I had realized and that I should consider publishing it, which I had previously not considered. So Russ and I passed it around and eventually got a yes. (Thank you, Russ!) Rainer Publishing offered me my first book contract. That was 596 days ago, the summer of 2017.

I worked on the book for a year and turned in the completed manuscript along with endorsements on July 9, 2018, which is 254 days ago. That’s almost 2 years to the day since the men’s breakfast triggered the writing process.

As an aside, if you’re getting the sense that books take time to write and publish, you’re right. It’s a slow process.

But that process is almost complete. A few days ago the publisher sent me the final draft of the book cover.

It shouldn’t be long now before you can buy it. And when the publisher releases the book, I hope and pray that it serves the church well by supplying a fuller answer to my question over 3 years ago: What does it look like for a Christian to be proactive in his struggle against pornography?

YOUR FUTURE SELF WILL THANK YOU by Drew Dyck (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible and Brain Science (A Guide for Sinners, Quitters, and Procrastinators)

I didn’t read the book Your Future Self Will Thank You for my sake, but for yours. I read it because I can’t figure out why all you people out there can’t get your stuff together. Just lose that weight, read that Bible, stop checking your phone at the dinner table, and, well, you know, be more in control!

Joking, of course. I struggle with self-control as much as the next guy. We all have Adam for a great-great-grandpa. So does the author, Drew Dyck. And that is one of the things that makes the book so refreshing. “I’m caught,” he writes, “in my own civil war between the good I want to do and the sinful impulses holding me back” (p. 13).

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Drew works as an editor for Moody Publishers and has written two other books, Yawning at Tigers and Generation Ex-Christian. In this book, his most recent, Drew shares with readers some of the areas he finds self-control most elusive, whether aspects of prayer and Bible reading or the struggle to consistently exercise and make healthy eating choices. In fact, each of the nine chapters ends with a short section recounting the progress—and sometimes regression—Drew made throughout the time he wrote the book. These personal testimonies from his battles on the front lines of the self-control war, give the book a relatable and unpretentious feel.

One of the most significant takeaways for me came in chapter 4, which was on willpower and habits. It turns out that willpower is like a muscle. You can only exert willpower for so long before it gets fatigued and cries, “Uncle!” Whether you are able to do five pushups or fifty pushups—or a whole lot more!—at some point, even if you were offered a million dollars to do just one more, it won’t matter. Your arms are toast, and your nose can’t get off the carpet. Willpower, so it seems, is a bit like that.

Therefore—Drew encourages us—to direct our limited supply of willpower into the formation of meaningful habits because once a habit is formed, it takes less willpower to keep it going. For example, it’s a lot easier to read your Bible in the morning when you develop the habit of doing so than if you must summon the willpower to do it each and every time. Once a healthy habit is formed, you can then use your cache of willpower to develop another healthy habit. And then another. And another.

But as the subtitle promises, the book has more than brain science. The book engages thoughtfully with the Bible, which has much to say about self-control, including that self-control isn’t simply a muscle; it’s also a “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22–23). That is good news for Christians. It’s good news because it means that as we embrace the hope of Jesus Christ offered in the gospel, God begins a gardening process in our lives, so to speak. As our roots of faith go deeper into God, the Spirit of God produces more self-control—and the other fruits we so desperately need God’s help to produce.

It’s no surprise to me that Drew’s book launched on January 1, the time of the year when we make new resolutions. But here we are seven weeks later in the middle of February. How are you doing with your resolutions? How’s that monthly budget working out? And has your plan to read the Bible in a year hit a snag in Leviticus? If self-control has been a struggle for you, I encourage you to buy this book. Your future self will thank you.

* Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Thank You, New Life Bible Fellowship

While driving to the Mexican restaurant Qdoba, I got my first phone call from Pastor Greg. I pulled over to take the call. He and I didn’t talk but a few minutes. I remember telling him that I wanted to make sure I answered to say hello, but also that I couldn’t talk because I was on a date with my wife. Brooke and I had just dropped off our three children at Megan and Allen’s house for babysitting.

That phone call was exactly 8 years ago, the Valentine’s Day of 2011, which simultaneously feels like yesterday but also like another lifetime ago.

At the time, we lived in St. Louis. But Pastor Greg was calling from Tucson, where a growing church called New Life Bible Fellowship was looking to hire a new pastor. And I was looking to be hired as a pastor, my first full-time job in ministry.

To be candid, the search process wasn’t going well for me. My lack of experience was part of the problem. Another factor was the recession; churches simply weren’t hiring. I’ve since learned many pastors had similar experiences during these years. If a church had three pastors and one left, they were learning to get by with two. And if a church was growing and needed to add staff, most didn’t.

My first day of work at New Life Bible Fellowship in Tucson, AZ on June 1, 2011.

At some point in this search process, I remember saying to my wife, “You know that list we made, the one with our dream job in the dream city? I’m throwing it in the trash. I just need to find a job—forget the right job.” That’s how bad it was.

But then Greg called, and a flicker of hope was kindled. It seemed like a long shot, though. I’d never been to the Southwest, let alone Tucson. And when I had first applied for the job, sending my cover letter and resume and references and recommendation letters, I called New Life to see how the process was going and to let them know I was interested. The kind woman who answered the phone—who I now know as the lovely Cindy Carpenter—said, “It’s so nice of you to call. The search is going great.” When I asked how many people had applied, Cindy replied, “Let me look . . . Oh, I think it’s up to three hundred.” See what I mean by a long shot.

Later in the interviewing process, Greg and John flew out to visit our home. When we gave them a tour of our house, I showed them my laundry room, which is a bizarre thing to do, but for some reason I did. We also took a walk around the block. John, the worship pastor of the church, was kind enough to give my young children piggyback rides as we walked through my neighborhood.

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I know, I know, I know. I’m rambling. I’ll get to the point. The point is I’m really thankful to New Life Bible Fellowship. And I’m really thankful to God. My first job as a pastor didn’t come without a few bumps, even a few bumps in that interviewing process. But I’m glad for it—all the good and all the hard.

Today, 8 years after my first phone call with Pastor Greg, my book to help pastors in the job-search process comes out. On the dedication page I wrote:

To New Life Bible Fellowship
for taking a risk on a rookie pastor
whose calling was clear but gifts were raw

If you want to buy the book, that’s great I guess. But today I’m not so worried about getting more sales. I’m more concerned about saying “thank you” to everyone in Tucson who we met during the interview process and everyone who loved us while I pastored at New Life. There were many of you, far too many to name. (But if I were to mention just a few names, I’d be sure to say the Lavines, Grandma Sandy, all the Tramels, and Jordan Carpenter; they loved us beyond what could ever be asked.)

New Life was the perfect place for me to learn and struggle and grow. It was the perfect place to develop my gifts, which admittedly were very raw. It was a perfect place to give and receive love.

So thank you, New Life Bible Fellowship.

* Church photo from New Life’s welcome video.

A book to help pastors and other ministry leaders in the job-search process.