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

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

But I’m glad I did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working hard or hardly working

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Photo from EFCA NOW blog post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come to Me All Who Have COVID Weariness, and I Will Give You Rest

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30, ESV)

My friend traded his pickup for a new one. I got a good look at it the other night. It’s the kind of truck neighbors peer out the window at as the rumbling engine idles in your driveway. You practically need a stepladder to climb up to the cab. The truck is a “dually,” meaning the rear axle has two massive wheels on each side. The lug nuts on the front wheels have those spikes you see on tractor trailers. The truck is a beast made for towing. I’d say you could chain a redwood to the back, and it would yank out roots seven hundred years deep like I pull a seven-day-old weed. It’s the kind of truck that makes you feel as though you could hitch the St. Louis Arch to the back and drag it like a horseshoe.

Back in the day farmers had a way of hitching oxen together. The wood and rope connecting system was called a yoke, which allowed the full force of two oxen to plow side by side. In parts of the world, farming still proceeds in this way. Two healthy oxen might not budge a redwood, but oxen could work you and me to our death.

Jesus picks up this imagery in his familiar invitation in Matthew 11 to be yoked to him, to have rope and wood harnessed between our neck and his. Jesus promises, however, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. He promises this because, he says, “I am gentle and lowly.” Can you imagine being yoked to my friend’s dually? Nothing about that ride would be gentle.

The encompassing word all grabs my attention. Not some, not a few, not even many, but Jesus invites all who are heavy laden. All who feel hitched to a too powerful pickup, all who feel yoked to the servitude of sin, all who stagger under the weight of weariness, all who have rope burns across their necks and sun-scorched shoulders and arthritic aching knees from plowing, plowing, plowing. All may come to Jesus for rest.

Do you see yourself in the all or is the all only for someone else? As the COVID yoke lies heavy, will you come to Jesus for rest?

Mothers, will you come to Jesus for rest? You who are forced to put the stay in stay-at-home mothers, you may come to him for rest. Children follow you about the house as you run IT support and troubleshoot their iPads and Zoom calls and fix three meals a day with the food you could only get from a long line at the grocery store while wearing a mask.

Fathers, will you come to Jesus for rest? You work from home from when you wake until when you crash. Your family life and hobby life and work life and exercise life and church life ooze together. The compartments that contained the floods of craziness have collapsed. And you want to collapse as well.

Singles, will you come to Jesus for rest? Your social distancing feels more like acute social isolating, and you’re starved for conversation, laughter, and a hug.

Students, will you come to Jesus for rest? Your college dorm room was cooler than your bedroom in your parent’s house. Some of you celebrated your graduation with handmade caps and gowns and no other students or faculty. Others missed prom. Staying motivated to study when the weather warms was already difficult before COVID.

Health care workers, will you come to Jesus for rest? You labor risky hours over those who cough and sneeze and wonder if their fever will break first or them. The friends and family of your patients want to visit the hospital, but they are not permitted. So this familial labor also falls to you: not only must you take vitals and intubate, but you must hold the hand of those in intensive care.

Business owners and those who side-hustle to make ends meet, will you come to Jesus for rest? Your whole life you’ve achieved through your assertiveness, by showing up early and leaving late. Now—for reasons out of your control—you’ve been rendered passive. You can’t forge ahead because you’re not allowed. Now, homebound and without work, you wait for permission. Your spirit has restless leg syndrome.

Teachers, will you come to Jesus for rest? You lecture to a webcam and answer emails and walk the dog and grade papers all from your home classroom, which is far more of a home than a classroom.

The retired and elderly and all with compromised immune systems, will you come to Jesus for rest? Your friends cannot come to see you, and you feel more forgotten than before.

Government officials, will you come to Jesus for rest? Never have you made fewer people happy, and never have you shouldered more responsibility—responsibilities you never asked for or wanted. Weighing lives and livelihoods leaves dark circles under your eyes.

Pastors, will you come to Jesus for rest? Your church needs you. Your family needs you. You give and give and give. Ministry does not stop; it just changes venues. But when Jesus invites all, the all includes those who live to help others.

The flowing current of COVID sadness can drown the strongest swimmer. You might already be gasping for air. If you feel this way, come to Jesus. Pray to him. Read his word. Belong to his church. His grace can tow you from the mire better than any pickup. Come and enjoy the freedom found in being loved by the Savior, not controlled by a harsh slave master.

And if the waves of endless lockdown days break upon you, Jesus also wants you to tell a Christian friend. Send an email right now to a Christian who loves you and doesn’t want to see you succumb to struggle. Your friends probably don’t know how bad you feel; their own dose of quarantine might have made their gaze myopic. So, right now, send an honest text to a friend. Send the text if you feel the yoke of alcohol or porn or pain killers calling to you. Drive to the house of a friend and ask for prayer. Call your doctor if you feel the flood of depression rising.

A verse from an old hymn reads, “Come, ye weary, heavy laden, / lost and ruined by the fall; / if you tarry till you’re better, / you will never come at all.” For over two hundred and fifty years, these lyrics from Joseph Hart’s hymn Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy have extended the invitation of Christ to countless weary congregations. Let the lyrics welcome you today.

You don’t have to come with superior strength for Jesus to help you. You don’t need to come with the dirt under your fingernails manicured. You can come with a COVID haircut. You can come to Christ without makeup and wearing your pjs. It may prick your pride, but you don’t need to be business casual for Christ to help you. All you need is to know your need and the urgency that if you wait until you’re better, you will never come at all.

* Photo by Ana Cernivec on Unsplash

Free Video Series

I made a series of short, free, and confidential videos to help men jumpstart their struggle against pornography. To get the series, click here.

ENOUGH ABOUT ME by Jen Oshman (Fan and Flame Book Reviews)

Jen Oshman, Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self. Wheaton: Crossway, 2020. 176 pages.

Although strange at first, I grew to love it—the whole summer I rarely looked in a mirror.

During college I worked at a Christian sports camp in southern Missouri, and mirrors were not hung around campus except for the one I stood before as I brushed my teeth at the beginning and end of the day. I wouldn’t have realized mirrors are everywhere about our homes and schools and businesses, but you notice the contrast right away when mirrors go missing. You notice how mirrors invite occasional glances to check and recheck your appearance. And I admit all this as a dude, even one who’s wardrobe for a hundred days that summer consisted of an unbroken recycling of five gym shorts and t-shirts. The absence of mirrors, in a small but significant way, gave camp counselors the gift of self-forgetfulness.

Jen Oshman recently published Enough about Me: Finding Lasting Joy in the Age of Self with Crossway. The book doesn’t talk about mirrors and sports camps in southern Missouri, but the book does aim to set us free from our obsession with us, an obsession that steals our deepest joy rather than cultivating it. Jen and her husband Mark served as missionaries in Japan and the Czech Republic and now serve as church planters in Colorado. Oshman is the mother of four daughters, a podcaster, and a regular blogger on her own website, a guest contributor to places like The Gospel Coalition, and a staff-writer for Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

The audience for Enough about Me is primarily women, likely those in their 20s­­–40s who would show up to a women’s Bible study at a church. But the book intentionally aims at accessibility for those new to the faith. For example, Oshman writes near the middle of the book, “If you’ve ever been to church, you’ve likely heard the word gospel” (p. 69), which she then goes on to explain. New and non-Christians will feel at ease with statements like this and the stories of women grappling with what it might mean to follow Jesus and find lasting joy. Throughout the book, she introduces readers to many of evangelicalism’s favorite authors from the past and present, people such as Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Timothy Keller, Jared C. Wilson, Gloria Furman, and Jen Wilkin.

Oshman opens the book with the story of her tears as a young college student. Reaching goals hadn’t provided the comfort and joy she had expected they would. On the floor of her college dorm, she grabbed the Bible she brought to college but had never opened. “Although I believed in God,” she writes, “I didn’t know his word. That night, however, I grabbed it like a lifeline, reaching out for something more, something to help me catch my breath, find peace, and heal me” (pp. 20–21).

I found the final chapter particularly compelling, where she argues that a sub-Christian life is a life with a “safe, small god,” and “weak, meager faith” leading us to a “doable, manageable calling.” In short, a small god who beckons small faith who demands small obedience. The chapter made me think of a pointed question I recently heard posed by author and pastor Ray Ortlund. Ortlund asked something like whether Jesus was the glorious miracle worker that he says he is or if he is more of a “chaplain to our status quo”? Ouch. His question popped me in the nose before I had time to put up my guard.

But when we ordain Jesus as the Chaplain of Our Status Quo—or to use the words Oshman uses of a small god calling us to small obedience—our lives shrink and shrivel; they enfold inward until they collapse. The biblical story of redemption, however, tells a different narrative, one that expands our life rather than snuffing it out (p. 164).

Oshman closes the book by returning to where she opened, the story of her on a dormitory floor finding joy in God’s Word and the big God of the Bible calling her to big faith and big obedience. Oshman writes, “God, in his mercy and power, lifted my eyes from myself to him. It was in beholding him, that joy came” (p. 164).

I loved the book so much because, as Oshman tells her story of awakening, she also tells mine. And although the details may be different, if Christ has captured your heart, she’s telling your story too. Jen Wilkin writes in the foreword: “What is more fulfilling than a life spent chasing self-actualization? A life spent giving glory to the God who transcends” (p. 12). Enough about Me helps us embrace this paradoxical truth, the truth that we find life when we lay down our own to follow Jesus.

* Photo by Laura Lefurgey-Smith on Unsplash

Free Audiobook of Once for All Delivered: 128 Minutes of High-Octane Theology

I love Monster Energy Drinks. The sugary fuel goes down like a bag of liquid Sour-Patch Kids, which I also love. But I only let myself drink one can every couple of weeks or so. They can’t be healthy for you.

Last year I published Once for All Delivered, a short, dense, and high-octane theology book. It’s not as sugary as Sour-Patch Kids, but neither will it rot your teeth or give you caffeine-shakes if you listen on an empty stomach. The audiobook just hit Amazon, and I’d love to share it with you. David K. Martin, who did the narration on my other audiobooks, also narrated this one.

Below is a sample of a key section from Chapter 9 on the return of Christ. If you live in the United States or the United Kingdom, I have free download codes from Audible. (Sorry if you live somewhere else; the codes the publisher gave me only work there.) If you’d like 128 minutes of dense theology, just send me an email at benjamin@fanandflame.com.

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Sample of Once for All Delivered, from Chapter 9

Jesus will return personally and bodily (Mt 24:30; 26:64; Acts 1:11; Rev 1:7). This view stands over and against the view that a “return” of Christ in the hearts of his followers could fulfill scriptural promises. The two major interpretive decisions related to Christ’s literal and physical return are the nature and timing of the tribulation and the millennium. With respect to the tribulation, many Christians interpret this term to refer to a period of intense struggle, calamity, and persecution or a “great tribulation,” as Jesus calls it (Mt 24:21). Historic premillennialism understands the Bible to teach that the church, as a whole, will remain through this tribulation period and after a time (seven years being either literal or symbolic) Jesus will return to set up his millennial kingdom on earth. This understanding of the tribulation isn’t too different from my amillennial understanding of the tribulation, though it obviously differs significantly on the millennium. Amillennialism rightly understood does not deny the existence of the millennium as atheism denies the existence of God; rather, amillennialism understands the Bible to speak of Christ’s millennial reign to be taking place in heaven right now. The amillennial view is consistent with passages that intricately link the timing of Christ’s return with the final judgment and eternal state (Rm 8:17–23; 2 Thes 1:5–10; 2 Pet 3:3–14), not two returns of Christ with a great intervening period of time between the returns, which would make for odd readings of passages like John 5:28–29 (“the hour is coming . . .” where the “hour” would be separated by 1,000 years). True, some passages in the OT, Isaiah 11 and 65 for example, seem to describe a time “better” than the church age but “not as great” as the new heavens and new earth. Yet these passages could be speaking poetically of the new heavens and new earth. In short, what some see as taking place in the millennium can actually be seen as taking place in the final state. A rigid interpretation of Isaiah 65:20, which speaks of those dying after a long life, is odd to me, when v. 19 speaks of no more weeping. How could physical death not produce weeping no matter how long one lives?

Additional consideration, of course, must be given to Revelation 20. I favor the interpretive scheme called progressive parallelism, which understands the book of Revelation to recapitulate similar sequences of events, often with each cycle moving the description of the end a bit further. So, for example, what happens with the seals in chapters 4–7 is roughly parallel with what happens with the trumpets in chapters 8–11, and so on. Space does not allow for much elaboration, but events like stars falling from the sky “as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale” (6:13) push me away from a more chronological reading of the book. Once stars have plopped upon the ground like over-ripe figs, there can’t be much left.

Addressing the classic text of Revelation 20:1–6 directly, a few things should be said. A great case can be made for describing Satan as bound in the church age and unable to deceive the nations, at least to the degree he did in the OT (2 Kg 17:29; Mt 12:28­–29; 28:18–20; Lk 4:6; 10:17–18; Jn 12:31–32; Acts 14:16; 17:30; 26:17–18; Col 2:15; 1 Jn 3:8). Also, the reign of God and Christ upon a throne is frequently (some say exclusively) spoken of in Revelation as taking place in heaven (1:4; 3:21; 4:5; 7:9ff; 8:3; 12:5; and dozens of others). The 1,000 years mentioned in vv. 3, 5, 6, and 7 from which all our millennial views build their name (pre-, -post, a-) could surely be, in such a highly symbolic book, a round number suggesting a long period of time (cf. the figurative use of 1,000 in passages such as Dt 7:9; 32:30; Josh  23:10; Jud 15:16; 1 Sam 18:7; 1 Chron 16:15; Job 9:3; Ps 50:11; 84:10; 90:4; Ecc 6:6; 7:8; SoS 4:4; Is 30:17; 2 Pet 3:8). And it doesn’t feel like a stretch in context to see the “first resurrection” of those reigning with Christ as the believers raised to the intermediate state, whereas unbelievers do not experience this resurrection but only the “second death.” Additional evidence for considering the “first resurrection” as those alive in the intermediate state (not those raised to life on earth during a premillennial reign of Christ) comes from the several parallels of Revelation 20:1–6 with 6:9–11 and the decidedly heavenly locale of those martyrs. The parallels are a little more explicit in the Greek but can still be seen in translations. Revelation 6:9 says, “(A) I saw . . . / (B) the souls of those who had been slain / (C) for the word of God and for the witness they had borne,” and 20:4 says, “(A') I saw / (B') the souls of those who had been beheaded / (C') for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God.” Then add to this that the whole vision in Revelation 20 (“I saw,” v. 1) feels very heavenly; missing from the text are earthly details about Christ reigning upon earth, the temple, the land of Canaan, and the holy city of Jerusalem (although perhaps some infer that the vision takes place on earth because the angel comes down from heaven). For all these reasons, I believe the amillennial view of a single, definitive return of Christ at the end of time cooperates best with the authorial intent of not only the broad witness of Scripture to the end times but the specific witness of Revelation 20.

* Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Conquer Lust During the COVID-19 Lockdown (and a Free Audiobook)

Last year in April, I launched my book Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart. I wrote it to help men struggle against lust, not with it.

Recently the publisher of the audiobook (One Audiobooks) allowed me to give away free copies of the audiobook. You can get them here. You’ll have to put in your email address and listen from the publisher’s website—but, hey, it’s still a free audiobook.

The COVID-19 lockdown creates many opportunities to trigger your lust. Below is a chapter from the book to help you overcome temptation. What are you doing to stay vigilant?

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CHAPTER 20

Know Your Situational and Emotional Triggers; Take Precautions Accordingly

A friend of mine recently mentioned to me that when he moved across the country to start a new job, besides the stress from the move and new job, he also experienced unrelated financial pressures and a personal tragedy. “The desire to escape to fantasy,” he told me, “was strong.”

His point was porn is not the problem, not really. Our hearts crave understanding, acceptance, intimacy, empowerment, and celebration. Often we are tempted toward fantasy because we are not experiencing these things in our own life. Being aware of these deficits is key to fighting lust. This is especially true when we experience, as my friend did, a transition or crisis, which commonly triggers lust.

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During these times there are often situations and emotions that may make it harder to combat lust. In other words, there are certain things that pull the pin of your sexual grenade. These triggers do not cause immediate detonations, but they make damage nearly inevitable; it’s only a matter of time. Perhaps it’s a trigger for you to lie alone in bed on a Saturday morning when you’ve nothing else to do. Or maybe it’s traveling alone on business trips. You’re tired from travel, you miss your home, and television is a way to escape and experience fantasy. For others it’s working out at a certain gym.

We need to know our situational temptations and take precautions accordingly. When the alarm clock goes off, force yourself off the bed and out of the bedroom. To accomplish this, it might mean scheduling something early on Saturday mornings so you’re not idle in the first place. If work gets out of control, find healthy release. If your gym is a problem, buy some dumbbells for your basement.

For me, in those seasons where sexual activity in my marriage has been less frequent—whether because of my own health challenges with severe food allergies or because of my wife’s pregnancies or some other reason—I’ll occasionally have a wet dream. The desire to masturbate the next morning is strong. I know this now and can pray accordingly.

Nevertheless, triggers aren’t merely situational; they’re emotional too, often primarily so. Emotions such as stress can build up a desire for calm and release. When we’re hungry for advancement at work or some other change in our life situation, we get antsy and yearn to feel powerful and in control. When we are anxious, we feel like we’re failing at something. When we are angry, perhaps it is because our pride was wounded. When we’re lonely, sexual sin looks like a shortcut to companionship. When we’re bored, we want something new and exciting. When we’re just plain tired, our defenses are down.

Some triggers will be impossible to avoid, but as you experience them, fight to believe the promises of God even as you learn to recognize the false promises of sin, especially when they begin to whisper. Because by the time they’re shouting, they’ll be leading you to the “promised land”—and it’s often too late.

Whatever your triggers, whether they’re emotional or situational, the issue is the same: sin promises to be our savior. Sin promises to be the answer for boredom, the salve for our wounded ego. Sin promises to provide stability and a sense of control when everything else feels transient. Sin promises rest by streams of clear water when life is stressful. Sin points to the forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying, “Look, here’s the real tree of life.” But sin always promises more than she can deliver.

Instead of looking to sin when the waters of life are drowning you, look to the one who redeems you and calls you by name (Isa 43:1–3). He has shoulders of steel and the gospel of grace.

Diagnostic Questions:

1. Right now, are you experiencing life transitions or crises that are tempting you to escape into sinful fantasy?

2. What are your situational triggers? What can you do to prevent them from “pulling your pin”? If you don’t know what they are, pray about it and ask God to show you. Also, consider keeping a mental or written log to track when you have looked at porn so that you can identify commonalities.

3. What are your emotional triggers? Hunger, anxiety, anger, loneliness, fatigue, boredom? If you’re not sure, pray and think it over.

4. Sexual sin promises to be the savior of these emotions, but how is sin a disappointing savior? In what ways does the real Savior, the real gospel message, offer better salvation?

* Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash

A Video Series for Men

I created a 10-day video series to help men struggle against porn. 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.

EPIC by Tim Challies (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Tim Challies, Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2020), pp. 176.

The potency of words tends to decrease over time. Take the word “love” for instance. Broad application has cheapened the word. Do we really love our spouse and Netflix? I hope we don’t love each in the same way.

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The same degrading has happened to the word “epic.” Can both nachos and Niagara Falls be epic?

As I followed Tim Challies on social media over the last couple of years, I would say that we could legitimately use the word epic to describe his travels. He toured South Korea one week, blogged from his home in Canada the next, interviewed pastors in Africa the following week, and then was back in Canada for church on Sunday. At least that’s what it seemed like, and this adventure went on for months and months. I only casually followed his travel schedule via his Instagram posts, so I didn’t know why he was traveling so much. Now I do. And I’m thankful for all his hard work.

Tim Challies is the author of several books, co-founder of the publishing company Cruciform Press, and an influential Christian blogger. For months he traveled back and forth to every continent except Antarctica for his latest book project Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History. The book releases today, along with the documentary about his travels.

33 Faith-Building Reminders from Around-the-World

Epic tells the story of the spread of Christianity from the early church to the present day. But the method Challies uses to tell the story is novel. He doesn’t give readers the typical recounting of history through people and places. Instead, by visiting, photographing, and in many cases holding thirty-three different objects from Christian history, Challies narrates the expansion of the gospel. The story begins with a statue of Augustus Caesar and ends with the YouVersion Bible app, that is, the story moves from the world of the Roman Empire to the world wide web.

In seminary I took several graduate-level classes in church history, so I was already familiar with many of the stories told in the book, such as the broad outline of John Calvin’s life or the thousands who flocked to hear George Whitefield’s open-air preaching. But using specific objects to tell these same stories added freshness. Looking at Calvin’s chair—the chair he sat in for hours and hours as he prepared his many sermons, books, and commentaries—or seeing the rock upon which Whitefield stood to preach, somehow made these men more life-sized in a good way, a relatable way.

Challies does not only roll the highlight reel of Christian history; he covers lowlights too. For example, he writes about a Reformation-era indulgence box displayed in a museum in Wittenberg, Germany. The indulgence box resembles what John Tetzel would have used while raising money for the Pope with the jingle often attributed to him: “When a penny in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory springs” (p. 51). Challies writes, “The coins that slid through the slot and into the coffer represented a gospel of salvation by works, a gospel foreign to the Bible, a false gospel.” But it was from this lowlight that God birthed the Reformation, the recovery of the biblical gospel, the good news of salvation by faith alone through Christ alone.

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Sample of the book’s layout (from Amazon website).

Zondervan did an excellent job designing the book. I appreciate the colorful but simple layout, which complements the accessible writing. My middle school daughter spent time reading the book when it first arrived. Later, I read my eleven-year-old son the story of ancient graffiti that mocked an early Christian named Alexamenos (chapter 3), a great story by the way. If Challies ever writes a sequel, perhaps he’d consider making it more of a prequel: the roots of Christianity in the history of the Old Testament.

Two Helpful Takeaways from EPIC

As I read Epic, two takeaways hit me, one takeaway Challies highlights in the book and another that came from reading the book in our present crisis.

First, a beautiful disconnect exists between the simplicity of many of the objects and their significance. A simple chair for Calvin to write, a simple organ for Wesley to compose hymns, a simple reading stand for Edwards to study, and a simple rock for Whitefield to preach. “Whitefield Rock, though it is but a slab of stone in an open field,” Challies writes, “reminded me that God does not need great buildings, the beautiful churches and cathedrals of Christendom. All God needs to carry out his work is a faithful believer who will faithfully preach his gospel” (p. 97).

Second, it was an odd but beautiful blessing to read a church history book as the coronavirus stalks the globe and kills thousands of people and infects a million more. Church history reminds me that God’s people have been through long and hard times, and that God’s glory often shines brightest across a dark background. Challies brought out this truth well when discussing the persecution of the church. The most moving story in the book for me was about Marie Durand, who was imprisoned in France as a young woman and released decades later. She carved into a stone the word French word for “resist” as an encouragement to her and the other imprisoned women to resist recanting their Christian faith. I tend to forget these stories. But I need the reminders, not merely to know facts about dead people from faraway places but for the vibrant awareness of God’s faithfulness that I need to live for God in our day. The “great cloud of witnesses” that the author of Hebrews mentions has only grown over time (Hebrews 12:1).

I mentioned above that words and phrases have a tendency to become diluted over time, like the words “love” and “epic.” In a similar way, book reviewers tend to overuse and cheapen the phrase “highly recommend.” But I do highly recommend the book Epic. Here I stand and can do no other.

* Picture of Rylands Manuscript P52, which Challies talks about in Chapter 2 (Photo from Wikipedia).

Trailer for the accompanying Epic documentary:

Discover the story you're already a part of. Through thirty-three objects, Tim Challies explores the history of what God is accomplishing in this world-wheth...

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

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

“What was that miracle?” you say.

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

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

The Fear of Being Helpless

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

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

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

I Find the Psalms Difficult to Read

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

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

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

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

When the Academic and Theoretical Becomes Experiential

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

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

* Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Excising the Plank of Narcissism from Our Eyes: Book Giveaway

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

And so we fell.

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *

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

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

* Photo by Anton Khmelnitsky on Unsplash

To Lament Is Christian

The language of lament is sprinkled throughout the Bible but tends to show up with high density in the Psalms. Consider Psalm 13 authored by David, which opens with the question “How long, O Lord?” Perhaps not so provocative of a statement. But the next lines ask, “Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? . . . How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (vv. 1–2). These questions appear more like accusations than interrogatives. You have forgotten me. You have hidden your face from me.

We also read of laments in other parts of Scripture than the Psalms. As he reflects on all the occupational hazards associated with being a prophet, Jeremiah tells God he felt duped into the ministry. “O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived,” he says. “You are stronger than I, and you have prevailed” (20:7). One pastor paraphrased this as, “Lord, you sweet-talked me into the ministry,” not meaning the sweet talk of a lover but of a seducer.

Mark Vroegop notes in his book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy that laments are far more than rants addressed to God, the equivalent of unbridled Facebook outbursts to anyone who will listen, or worse, the vomiting of emotions into the void. Biblical laments are strictly crafted poems and thus have other elements too, most notably what Vroegop describes as “the turn.” The turn is that moment in the psalm when the author moves from expressing his emotions to asking for help and asserting his faith in the goodness and sovereignty of God despite persistent suffering and lingering questions. We see this, for example, in Psalm 13, when after questioning how long God will allow an enemy to be exalted above him, the psalmist turns to declare, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (v. 5). Though all around his soul gives way, he anchors his hope in God.

This is important because it’s actually this very progression, the progression through words of despair to words of hope, that God is often pleased to bring us from despair to hope, from rage to rest. This is why J.A. Medders calls laments underground tunnels to hope.

Last year I wrote a review of Vroegop’s book for 9Marks, but in the review, I neglected to share one of my favorite aspects of the book: the short, propositional statements he uses to define lament. Over and over he writes, “Lament is ________.” In one place, Vroegop argues that to lament, in the biblical sense of the word, is distinctly Christian. He says this because it takes faith in God to trust him to hear our pain. Giving God the silent treatment, a distinctly un-Christian approach, is saying that God can’t be trusted with honest anger.

Our church is studying the Psalms of Lament throughout Lent, the time leading up to Good Friday and Easter. In preparation for the series, I reread Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. I’d encourage you to read this excellent book too.

Below is a little taste of most (but not all) of the book’s short, propositional sentences that I love so much.

*     *     *

Lament is how you live between the poles of a hard life and trusting in God’s sovereignty. (p. 21)

Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God. Without lament we won’t know how to process pain. (p.21)

Lament is how Christians grieve. It is how to help hurting people. Lament is how we learn important truths about God and our world. My personal and pastoral experience has convinced me that biblical lament is not only a gift but also a neglected dimension of the Christian life for many twenty-first-century Christians. (p. 21)

Christianity suffers when lament is missing. (p. 21)

But lament is different. The practice of lament—the kind that is biblical, honest, and redemptive—is not as natural for us, because every lament is a prayer. A statement of faith. Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness. (p. 26)

To cry is human, but to lament is Christian. (p. 26)

Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust. (pp. 28, 158)

You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn’t. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment. (p. 28)

You might think lament is the opposite of praise. (p. 28)

Lament is not a simplistic formula. Instead, lament is the song you sing believing that one day God will answer and restore. Lament invites us to pray through our struggle with a life that is far from perfect. (p. 34)

Lament is a prayer that leads us through personal sorrow and difficult questions into truth that anchors our soul. (p. 34)

Lament is how we learn to live between the poles of a hard life and God’s goodness. (p. 36)

Lament is the language of a people who believe in God’s sovereignty but live in a world with tragedy. (p. 44)

Lament is an expansive prayer language. It can be your companion through a wide spectrum of struggles and challenges. (p. 65)

Lament is how we endure. It is how we trust. It is how we wait. (p. 74)

Lament is not merely an expression of sorrow; it is a memorial. (p. 90)

Lament is a place to learn. (p. 91)

Lament is a journey through the shock and awe of pain. (p. 96)

Lament is the song we sing while living in a world that is under the curse of sin. (p. 99)

Lament is an uncomfortable yet helpful teacher. (p. 100)

Lament is one of the ways that a heart is tuned toward God’s perspective. (p. 103)

Lament is the language of those stumbling in their journey to find mercy in dark clouds. (p. 108)

Lament is a prayer of faith despite your fear. (p. 110)

Lament is the language that moves us from our sorrow toward the truth of God’s promises. (p. 119)

Lament is the language that calls us, as exiles, to uncurl our fingers from our objects of trust. (p. 123)

Lament is the song you sing when divine blessing seems far away. (p. 136)

Lament is the prayer language for these gaps. It tells you where to look and whom to trust when pain and uncertainty hang in the air you breathe. (p. 142)

Lament is the language of a people who know the whole story—the gospel story. (p. 151)

Lament is the historic prayer language for hurting Christians. (p. 159)

Lament is more than a biblical version of the stages of grief (i.e., denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). It invites God’s people on a journey as they turn to God, lay out their complaints, ask for his help, and choose to trust. (p. 160)

Lament is the prayer language for those who are struggling with sadness. (p. 162)

Lament is a means of grace, no matter what trial you face. (p. 170)

Lament is the personal song that expresses our grief while embracing God’s goodness. Everyone has a story. Lament is never a song you set out to sing. (p. 172)

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not naive enough to believe that lament is the single solution for racial tension. There is much work to be done in listening, understanding, addressing injustice, and fostering hope. But I do think lament is a starting point—a place where people from majority and minority backgrounds can meet. (p. 186)

Lament is the bridge between dark clouds and deep mercy. (p. 190)

Lament is the language that helps you believe catastrophe can become eucatastrophe. (p. 192)

Lament is the language of waiting for God’s justice to be accomplished. . . . [L]ament is the way we live with pain beyond belief and divine sovereignty beyond comprehension. (p. 192)

No matter where we are in our journey, lament is a means of mercy. Lament is how you move from no to yes, and from why to who. (p. 194)

* Photo by SamuelMartins on Unsplash

Happy 1-Year Birthday: Don’t Just Send a Resume

One year ago today, my book Don’t Just Send a Resume launched into the world. I’ve been so encouraged by the response. About once a month over the last year I received a note from a reader who was helped by the book. Here’s one from a pastor named Kevin:

Hey Benjamin! Thank you for writing “Don’t Just Send a Resume.” I graduated from ________ Seminary about 18 months ago. I took an un-ordained Pastoral Resident job at a church in ________ where I had done a couple summer internships. About 8 months ago I got licensed and began searching for Assistant or Associate Pastor jobs within the denomination. I had a few jobs I applied for where I had no idea what I was doing. Then I picked up your book . . . and it helped a ton. It gave me perspective, encouragement, and it was just plain practical. My wife also read through parts of it and found it super useful as well. After taking some of your advice I began to have more serious leads and a couple weeks ago I officially accepted an Assistant Pastor role at a PCA church in the ________ area. I’m thankful for how the Lord used you and the book you wrote!

Not to make this sound like a speech at the Oscars, but . . .

Thank you to everyone who helped with the Kickstarter campaign.

Thank you to all of the authors and pastors who made contributions to the book: Chris Brauns, Cara Croft, Dave Harvey, David Mathis, J. A. Medders, Sam Rainer, Chase Replogle, William Vanderbloemen, Kristen Wetherell, Jared C. Wilson, and Jeremy Writebol.

Thank you to everyone who helped edit the book: Jason Abbott, Mary Wells, Ben Bechtel, Russell Meek, Stacey Covell, Alex Duke, Alexandra Richter, and dozens of early readers.

Thank you to Tim Challies for including the book in your “New & Notable” promotion.

Thank you to the 20 or so people who wrote endorsements.

Thank you to ABWE, EFCA Now blog, GCD, AmICalled.com, and other websites who posted articles about the book.

Thank you to Matt Higgins for creating a fantastic book cover. Such a great design.

Thank you to David K. Martin for making the audiobook.

Thank you to everyone who bought a copy of the book and shared about it online.

Thank you to the two-dozen people who wrote Amazon reviews.

Thank you to my wife, who still encourages me to write when the economic return on my time makes absolutely no sense.

And thank you to New Life Bible Fellowship, to whom I wrote the book’s dedication. This Oscar—I mean this “book birthday”—is for you.

If anyone would like a copy of the audiobook of Don’t Just Send a Resume, you can grab one at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. But you don’t have to buy one. I still have a few dozen to give away. Please just send me a message (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email: benjamin@fanandflame.com), so I can give you the code to download it.

Thanks for all the encouragement along the way!

Hitting It Big as a Blogger?

We give the prefix mega to a church with over two thousand regular attendees. Perhaps it would be helpful and objective to consider the epithet megablog as one with two thousand regular readers. I dunno.

But the question of how we measure success as online writers causes me to excavate what’s buried in my own heart, as well as evaluate what we might consider subjective and objective metrics of success. How do you define hitting it big?

J.A. Medders and Chase Replogle both interviewed pastor and author Scott Sauls on their writing podcasts (Home Row and Pastor Writer, respectively). In these interviews, Sauls spoke of publishers who courted him to write a book, but he also spoke of the resistance he felt for years toward this pursuit. I don’t know if the courting happened because of his blogging, his pastoring, his networking, or all of these together. In my anecdote about Sauls, there are no metrics to quantify “big,” but to me this should count as hitting it big. This is not to discount the work he eventually had to do to write proposals and complete manuscripts, but most authors have to court publishers, not the other way around.

I suppose someone from the outside could look at the websites that have published my work and feel that I have made it big—at least with respect to relationships with editors at popular evangelical websites. But every relationship with an editor did not come through my blog, even though at first I suppose having the blog (and a local church pastorate) established a measure of legitimacy. My point is that, to my knowledge, no editors have ever looked at my blog saying, “Man, we need some posts from that guy.”

Objective metrics can be helpful because I fear the dangers of a sliding scale. The fear of thinking to hit it big always means something more than where you currently are, something always just out of reach and around the corner, something like rowing toward Gatsby’s green light. An author hasn’t hit it big until he’s as well-known as, say, Keller. This is silly . . . and sinful. I’m in an online group for Christian writers, and we recently discussed blogging struggles. The most successful blogger among us commented, “One thing I can attest to is that if ‘bigger’ is your goal, nothing will ever be big enough. . . because ‘bigger’ isn’t really a measure of having more readers than you do now, but having more readers than the other guy.” This is the sliding scale I fear and the one that will bleed your joy and devour your contentment.

In that same discussion I told a friend that I had not “hit it big blogging,” and he asked what I meant by that. I guess what I mean is that after blogging weekly for over five and a half years, I have just over three hundred email subscribers. My open rate on emails is around 40 percent, which floats just above industry standards for religious emails (per MailChimp), but it does mean that only about one hundred people open each email I send. I suspect that far less than this go on to read the email they opened. My “click rate” within each email hovers around 1–2 percent, which is tiny. And almost no one except me ever shares my blog posts on social media, and I only share each post once at most. By the way, allow me to break the fourth wall for a moment to interject to say that I’m not crying or upset and hopefully not ranting; I’m just disclosing what’s behind the curtain.

At the end of the year, a number of bloggers shared on social media their blog traffic from 2019. A few friends of mine had tremendous years, which I loved and rejoiced over when I saw the numbers. My friend Chris, who asked me to define hitting it big, had web traffic numbers twice as big as my best year, which was twice as big as all my other years. That’s objective, not subjective. And I’m not complaining. I’m simply saying that over the last year when I wrote more guest posts than ever and appeared on a few podcasts and published several longer projects, my blog subscribers stopped growing. Sure, I occasionally get new subscribers, but every email I send loses subscribers too, often several. All this happens while my friend John Beeson and I work on a book about blogging. A guy writing a book about blogging should be able to grow one.

If we could measure the number of people who read my posts—not measuring “page views” and those who only skimmed a paragraph or two but measuring those who actually read an entire post—I think the number of people reading most of my posts could be counted on two hands, or maybe two hands and two feet. I’d hardly say having seventeen people read each post qualifies as big readership. And over the last six months my blog might even be shrinking. Adding more subheadings, lists, and hot-takes would get more readers to skim my posts, yet I’ll often find myself intentionally writing posts without headings, lists, and hot-takes just to reward readers who read, like putting a candy bar in the bottom of my kids’ laundry baskets to reward them for staying the course until the job is done. (I don’t do that, by the way.)

Perhaps the shrinking of my readers has to do, in part, with my writing and blogging skills. I don’t want to deflect ownership. But my shrinking readership also reflects changes in culture and Internet algorithms. A large number of shares on Facebook, for example, does not happen today except for a few bloggers. Facebook algorithms want you to stay scrolling and liking and reading Facebook, not clicking away. It’s the same with Google. It used to be that when you searched a question, you were given links to go browse. Of course Google still returns links, but more often than not, the top links are simply excerpts that show searchers the answers to their questions. So, if you crush the SEO on a post (which I never worry about) and Google ranks your post near the top or even at the top of all posts, you still might not get many click-overs because searchers only want the bite-sized answer, and Google feeds it to them. Besides all this, the idea that lead magnets generate hundreds of email subscribers has lost the novelty it once had. Who thinks, “What I need is an inbox filled with more subscription emails”?

Blogging also must compete with other platforms for attention. In Tony Reinke’s book Competing Spectacles, he describes attention as a zero-sum commodity. “At some point we must close all our screens and fall asleep” (p. 57). Reinke quotes the CEO of Microsoft who noted, “We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention” (p. 57). This certainly affects bloggers and blogging. The streaming services of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video gobble up the precious resource of attention leaving individual online authors and their blogs to compete for the table scraps of attention with large conglomerate blogs, Christian news ministries, podcasts, YouTube channels, and the microblogging of twitter threads and Instagram posts. A friend once told me that when it comes to playing outdoor sports (e.g., skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing, kayaking, etc.), you have to pick one or at most two because they’re too expensive and time-consuming. The same could be said of excelling at a craft and cultivating an audience. It’s a rare person who can excel across all the platforms available to the dedicated amateur.

For all these reasons—the changing Facebook and Google algorithms, the cultural aversion to trading one’s email address for subscriptions, and the crowded market of ideas vying for attention—the blogging landscape has changed, and so should our expectations for growth. Comparing the success of average bloggers today with the success of average bloggers just five and certainly ten years ago is like comparing baseball stats of today with the stats during the steroid era, which often get flagged with an asterisk.

We Christian bloggers have a strange relationship with metrics. We love them and hate them. We need “page views” to validate our labors and we loathe the magnetism statistics have over us. It’s not unlike the pastor who laments the Monday morning deluge of emails while at the same time knowing each inbox ping supplies a spurt of dopamine reassuring him of his job security and importance: people need me—look how they email. Deep down most Christian bloggers do want to write for the sake of God and his glory, for the sake of truth, for the sake of serving readers with our words. But I also know that for me, the mottos of “art for God’s sake” and “art for ego’s sake“ slosh about in the same heart. 

Professor and author John Koessler recently wrote, “What if, like Emily Dickinson, we die without seeing the bulk of what we have written published?” It’s a good question. Today bloggers can publish whatever we want as fast as we want, but most of us know what it means to self-publish posts long labored over only to hear crickets, which means there are more similarities to Dickinson and her mid-nineteenth century writing in obscurity than we might expect. Koessler continues, “The romantic in me says that it doesn’t matter. I am a writer. Therefore, I must write. But it is often the pragmatist who sits at the keyboard. I am afraid I am wasting my time. I worry that no one is listening.” While Koessler worries about no one listening, I often have the stats to prove no one was. So why keep blogging?

My reflections here about how we measure success as a blogger are too long-winded and probably say more about me and my existential blogging angst than the topic, so please forgive me. But the point I’m trying to meander toward is seeing the goodness of what Laura Lundgren calls being a “village poet.” A village poet views success as faithfully serving a small number of readers with our words, not as a resignation to the state of affairs but as a goal. “When I first arrived,” Lundgren writes, “the internet felt wide open with possibility.” In a world that expects and rewards all things done fast and famously, the biggest challenge for Christian writers might be to find joy in being faithful with the little things. Lundgren goes on to say, “My writing has not turned into a career. It’s mostly a hobby and a privilege. As a village poet I recognize that my writing is only one aspect of a larger ministry. Writing gives me a chance to order my thoughts about Scripture, but the ultimate goal is not to write well about these things but to live them out in obedience and humility.”

I think she gets it. I wish my heart did too.

* Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Free Audiobook Copies of Enduring Grace

Last year my friend Stephen Morefield and I published a devotional book titled Enduring Grace: 21 Days with The Apostle Peter. We’ve been encouraged by the positive feedback the book has received.

The audiobook was recently completed by David K. Martin, who also narrated my books, Struggle Against Porn and Don’t Just Send a Resume. The sample on Audible comes from a section in chapter 16, the famous scene where Peter meets Jesus on the shore of Galilee after the resurrection. I’ve pasted it below.

If you’d like to listen to our audiobook, you don’t have to buy one! I have a 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 download code. Please don’t hesitate to ask. We really do want people to have them.

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From Enduring Grace, Chapter 16, “Hope by a Charcoal Fire”

When Peter gets to shore, the first thing he notices is the fire—and not just any fire. The Gospel of John is particular here. It was a charcoal fire, a kind of fire only mentioned one other place in the Bible. In John 13, Jesus asked Peter, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times” (13:38). To this Peter says something along the lines of, “I’m all in. I’m a rock. I won’t fail you.” But as you know, he wasn’t a rock. After the arrest of Jesus, Peter followed until he reached the courtyard where his denials took place. Then John gives us this detail: “Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself” (John 18:18).

It’s funny how smells bring back memories. Peter jumps out of the boat, swims to shore to see his Lord, and when the wet sand under his toes becomes dry, he smells his own denial. Jesus, at first, simply says, “Come and have breakfast” (21:12). This wasn’t the first time Peter and Jesus had seen each other after the resurrection, but you can imagine that if the last time you saw Jesus alive before his death you had denied him, then you’d also know that when Jesus comes back from the grave, eventually he’ll want to talk to you about your sin.

But here’s the thing with Jesus: he doesn’t poke a wound to make it worse. If the risen Lord pokes your wounds, he does it so they will heal. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Notice the way Jesus puts it the first time: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (21:15).

More than these? Does Jesus question whether Peter loves Jesus more than the other disciples love Jesus? Perhaps. If we only had the video footage we could see how Jesus gestured and know for sure.

But I don’t think we need the footage. When Peter gets to shore, Jesus told them all to get more fish to eat. They had, after all, just netted 153 of them. Peter was the one who leaped up and grabbed the huge net and dragged it to shore, so happy about his catch. Fish are great . . . if you’re a fisherman of fish.

Jesus looks at this huge catch of fish and says, “Do you love me more than these?” (emphasis added). It’s as though Jesus is asking, “Do you love me more than stuff? Is the calling that I’ve placed on your life to follow me, to fish for men and shepherd my sheep, enough for you?”

Jesus asks one time for each denial—three denials, three questions. The wound is poked, but the risen Lord is reinstating Peter. No longer must Peter pretend that everything is okay around Jesus because now it is okay. No, it’s more than okay. Peter is on mission again. He’s following Jesus. And not only will Peter spend his life as a shepherd of God’s sheep, but he’ll die a death that glorifies God. Jesus tells Peter, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (21:18). Then the narrator John adds, “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (21:19). There’s certainly a heaviness to that. But there’s also gospel to it. After failing the Lord, Peter might have thought, I’ll never do anything again that brings glory to my savior. I love Jesus, I love Jesus, I love Jesus, but now how will I bring glory to him? But he will. In his life and in his death, Peter will glorify God.

In popular culture the story of Easter is about new beginnings: yellow tulips poking through the ground in the springtime sun, bunnies scampering across green grass, and the penitent turning over new leaves. But Easter is only generally about new beginnings because it is first about a particular new beginning—the dawn of a new age, the true spring. Easter is the story of how our sin dies with Jesus and he raises us to life with him. The roller coaster of transitions in our lives can cause us to drift from this, our core identity. But the good work Jesus begins in you, he promises to bring to completion (Philippians 2:6). If you are drifting, as Peter was, come home to Jesus.

* Photo by Frances Gunn on Unsplash

Current Doctrinal Issues: EFCA Ordination (Part 11 of 11)

In the fall, I began my longest blog series ever, a series sharing my ordination paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). If you’d like to read about what the process of ordination looks like in the EFCA, check out the first post in the series (here).

The ordination paper engages with our denomination’s 10-point statement of faith. I know these posts are dense. Please hang with me; this week’s post is the final in the series. It’s a miscellany on current doctrinal issues and issues related to lifestyle.

If you’ve found these posts helpful, please pick up the entire paper, which is now available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook formats under the title Once for all Delivered: A Reformed, Amillennial Ordination Paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Thank you for the prayers and encouragement along the way,
Benjamin

PS: I posted a few pictures to Instagram from my ordination service last Sunday night.

{Previous posts in this series: God, The Bible, The Human Condition, Jesus, The Work of Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Church, Christian Living, The Return of Christ, Response and Eternal Destiny}

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Current Doctrinal Issues

Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

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God desires that Christians marry only other Christians. This follows from the prudent extension of 2 Corinthians 6:14–18 to marriage (cf. 1 Cor 7:39 “only in the Lord” and 1 Cor. 9:5 “a believing wife”) and the OT passages about marrying those from other nations, which weren’t so much about differing ethnicities or nationalities but religions (Dt 7:3–4; 1 Kg 11:1–8). It’s a great evil to delegitimize interracial marriages, as some have done in the past and some continue to do in our own day. But based on these passages, I would not officiate the marriage of one person who professes faith and one who does not. Prudence also suggests that Christians enter the covenant of marriage only with Christians of similar conviction and maturity. The issues surrounding marriage of a previously divorced person are more complicated. The Bible presents two grounds for a divorce that could open up the possibility of a remarriage, namely, infidelity (Mt 5:32; 19:8–9) and desertion (1 Cor 7:10–11). The ideal is always repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, but these are not always possible. Thus pastors must take into consideration situational specificity while at the same time giving serious weight to what Scripture teaches, especially God’s hatred of divorce and the way the permanence of marriage portrays the permanence of God’s love (Mal 2:16; Eph 5:21).

Because questions often arise about the definition of sexual immorality and desertion, allow me to discuss each briefly. I take Jesus’s use of the word porneia (sexual immorality) in the exception clause in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 to be a sort of “junk drawer” term incorporating many variations of sexual sin, especially when the specific word for adultery, moichatai, is used in close proximity (5:27 and 19:9). This is not to say I’d encourage a woman to divorce her husband because last year he infrequently and repentantly looked at pornography. In fact, I’d never lead with the encouragement to get divorced. But I am saying a spouse in habitual, intense, and unrepentant porneia might qualify. Through study of God’s word and devoted prayer, I could very well imagine the pastor-elders of our church coming to the conclusion that a man who spent a decade at strip clubs and consuming internet pornography, even if he had not consummated an affair in sexual intercourse, could be divorced under the exception clause. Related to this, the desertion clause in 1 Corinthians 7 doesn’t only mean a spouse has moved to Vegas without a forwarding address. There are probably multiple ways to desert your spouse. But saying, “He won’t go shopping with me” or “She won’t watch football with me,” certainly do not constitute desertion. However, I consider habitual, unrepentant violence inflicted on one’s spouse to be a form of desertion. We must hold strictly to God’s commands, feeling the weight of Scripture far more than cultural trends. And it’s wise for pastor-elders to have a clear understanding of how we define sexual immorality and desertion before cases of each arise. As a final comment, my discussion in this paragraph should not be understood as an attempt to create new categories for divorce but to give definition and application to what the two categories encompass.

Abortion, Infanticide, and Euthanasia

God values life (Gen 9:6) and takes no pleasure in death (Ez 18:32). Thus, so should his people. Because abortion and euthanasia are sins, our views of them transcend political party lines and our solutions for them will not merely be political ones. No individual Christian or local church can participate in every meaningful cause, but I do long and pray for more who labor to advance this biblical worldview so that it gives birth to life-affirming deeds.

Role Distinctions in the Church of Men and Women

God can, and does, give both men and women extraordinary gifts for ministry, but God has left the office of pastor-elder-overseer to men. Biblical support for this is seen in the following:

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

• the pattern of OT and NT spiritual leadership being placed mainly among men;

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

• no explicit mention of women pastor-elders in the NT;

• and, finally, specific passages like 1 Timothy 2:8–3:7 and Titus 1:5–9 which require male pastor-elders, something Paul even sees rooted in creation in the 1 Timothy passage.

At the same time, however, women can and should be encouraged to participate in significant Christian ministry.

Homosexual Belief and Conduct

Today, the church has a tremendous challenge but also opportunity when speaking about what the Bible teaches about sexuality. The challenge is to speak with humility and compassion and at the same time fidelity to the Word. Homosexual practice is against God’s good design. It is a sin (Lev 18:22, 20:13; Rm 1:24–27; 1 Cor 6:9–11; 1 Tim 1:8–11), and must be called such (Is 5:20). However, alongside this truth, the church must do a better job of explaining the positive sexual design that God has established for society to flourish and winsomely invite people to participate in it.

Theology of Worship

All of life ought to be lived as worship (1 Cor 10:31), that is, living in obedient, glad esteem of the worthiness of God. It is appropriate that Christians gather regularly in local churches to both display and deepen their worship.

Speaking of the corporate gathering for worship, we endeavor to sings songs, preach sermons, and pray prayers that exalt what is true about God, faithful to Scripture, and celebrates the riches that are ours in the gospel. We seek to do all of this in an orderly way to build up the body with words intelligible to our people. The responsibility of leading corporate worship is so weighty to us that a few of us make time each Tuesday to debrief the previous week’s sermon and worship service, always striving to improve our ability to rightly handle the word of truth, asking for forgiveness where we’ve failed to speak as well as we ought, and praying that our church would more and more fall in love with God and his word.

Issues Related to Lifestyle

Spiritual Disciplines

God is pleased to supply his grace day by day and moment by moment to his people through spiritual disciplines. Therefore I actively pursue practices like evangelism, fellowship, prayer, service, and listening to the preached Word. I have my devotions in the morning before my family wakes up, attempting to read through the Bible cover to cover each year. As for prayer, I typically spend some time in prayer during my devotions. In conjunction with prayer, fasting—in both short and long durations—has been important to me.

Stewardship, Personal Finances, and Debt

God owns everything, yet he has entrusted humans with the care of creation (Ps 8; Heb 2); therefore, we should strive to be good stewards. The only debt my wife and I have is the mortgage on our house. We also intend to continue contributing to retirement funds. The Lord has been very gracious to us in these regards, and we feel blessed to extend God’s money generously to our local church, as well as to other ministries and missionaries.

Sexual Purity

The Bible tells us, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16). There are certain temptations that tend to tempt men more acutely, and pastors and Christian leaders are not immune. As such, I will continue to seek God’s help in regard to all areas related to personal holiness and trust Christ to give me continued victory and progress as I lean into the means he has appointed for such victory and progress. This is the heart behind the book I authored to help men struggle against porn, not with it.

Marriage and Family Priorities

God made it the duty of men to provide, protect, lead, and serve our families (Eph 5:22ff). It is not a role of entitlement but of sacrificial leadership. Thus, practically, Christ-like spiritual leadership in my home involves me being the one to initiate conflict resolution (as opposed to being passive), doing the dirty house-work jobs, providing financially, and, as needed, being the first to take responsibility and repent. God calls all men to embody these impulses, though the outworking will vary depending upon one’s circumstances. May God supply the grace to do it with increasing success and joy. With respect to pastoring, my family is a priority above the church. This has many practical implications such as coming home around 4:30 every day, even if I go back out for an evening meeting, as well as cutting the occasional sermon illustration that might bless the church but not my children or wife.

Social Drinking of Alcohol

Alcohol was seen as a blessing by the Jewish people and a sign of covenant celebration of God’s goodness and provision (Dt 14:26; Ps 104:15; Prov 3:7–10; Jn 2:1–12; Lk 22:20), but the use of alcohol in excess is strongly warned against throughout the Bible in both propositional statements and through sinful examples (Noah’s drunkenness in Gen 9 and Lot’s in Gen 19; Prov 20:1; Is 5:11; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:28; and many others).

In light of all these passages, I occasionally drink alcohol but always in moderation.

Accountability in Life and Ministry

There are several structures in place for personal and ministry accountability, including an engaged pastor-elder board and bi-weekly meetings with my best friend who asks hard questions.

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* Photo by Désirée Fawn on Unsplash

The Doctrine of Response and Eternal Destiny: EFCA Ordination (Part 10 of 11)

In the fall, I began my longest blog series ever, a series sharing my ordination paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). If you’d like to read about what the process of ordination looks like in the EFCA, check out the first post in the series (here).

The ordination paper engages with our denomination’s 10-point statement of faith. I know these posts are dense. Please hang with me through just two more. This week’s post covers “Article 10: Response and Eternal Destiny.”

If you’ve found these posts helpful, please pick up the entire paper, which is now available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook formats under the title Once for all Delivered: A Reformed, Amillennial Ordination Paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Thank you for the prayers and encouragement along the way,
Benjamin

{Previous posts in this series: God, The Bible, The Human Condition, Jesus, The Work of Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Church, Christian Living, The Return of Christ}

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Response and Eternal Destiny

10. We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

This next sentence is a mouthful, so take a deep breath. The gospel is the good news that Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah and heir of the Davidic monarchy, has come (Rm 1:1–5; 2 Tim 2:8), died, resurrected, ascended to his exalted throne, sits in heaven from whence he will come again to judge the living and the dead (Ps 110:2; Mk 12:36; 14:62; Acts 2:33–34; Eph 1:20; Heb 1:3, 13; 1 Tim 4:1), and by virtue of his atoning death and victorious resurrection, he graciously extends forgiveness, mercy, and righteousness to any and all persons who would come to God the Father through him in repentance and faith (Is 55:6–7; Lk 24:47; Acts 2:37–38; Rm 2:4; 3:22; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Tim 1:16). To “receive Jesus as Lord,” as this article mentions (cf. Jn 1:12), means turning from our sins and trusting in Christ as Savior.

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The gospel is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time. The gospel invites all people, no matter how wicked or vile, to experience grace (1 Tim 1:15). Whosoever wills may drink from the fountain. But God only appropriates the saving benefits of the gospel to those who place faith in Christ (Acts 4:12; 2 Thes 1:8). Ultimately many will persist in unbelief and so reject the saving benefits of the gospel. For them, an eternity of punishment in conscious torment awaits; this ought to grieve and motivate believers to manifold action. It is a sobering reality, repeatedly declared throughout the Bible and especially by the Lord Jesus himself, that hell is a place of unending torment in the full presence of God’s wrath and away from his grace, love, and mercy (Mt 25:46; Lk 16:26; 2 Thes 1:8–9; Rev 14:11; 21:8; 22:14, 15).

The Bible does not often speak of the time between an individual’s death and the final resurrection and judgment, or the intermediate state as theologians have often referred to it. However, the Bible is clear that believers will be in God’s presence. After death, the souls of believers go at once into the presence of Christ (Lk 23:43) and await their reunification with their glorified bodies in the resurrection (2 Cor 5:6–9). Similarly, upon death the souls of unbelievers go at once into hell, awaiting the final resurrection where they too will be reunited with their bodies (Jn 5:28–29).

The Bible indicates differing levels of reward and punishment based on how a person lived with the knowledge of God that they had (Lk 12:42–48; 1 Cor 3:12–15; Jam 3:1). As has been discussed previously, the connection between receiving salvific grace through faith and the producing of good works is so strong that the Bible often describes the final judgment based upon works, as it does in the account of the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20:11–15 (cf. 2 Cor 5:10). In this passage, those who did not have their name in the book of life are judged for not having good works, while those who have their name in the book do have good works and are not thrown into the lake of fire. Related to hell and the lost, it is important to say two things that have not been stressed yet. First, unbelievers do not go to hell because they didn’t know about Jesus; people go to hell because humans are condemned sinners, and hell is what sinners deserve (Rm 6:23; Gal 3:10). Second, as for those who have never heard of the gospel, we should go and tell them before they die so they may hear the gospel and might be saved. Now, it’s common to hear stories of how God is pleased to reach unbelievers through visions, especially among highly unreached people groups, such as those within the 10/40 window, but these visions are only salvific if and when they connect a person to the content of the gospel, which must then be believed. In other words, there might be more people being reached than we are aware of, but clearly the ordinary plan of God is to send human missionaries (Rm 10:14–17).

Several passages in the Bible either imply or state explicitly that there will be a great renewal of the earth in its physical condition to make a suitable place for resurrected, glorified believers to worship God forever (Is 65:17; 66:22; Jn 14:2, 3; Rm 8:19–21; Heb 12:26–27; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1; 22:1–3). Since God is infinite, and glorified people will always remain finite, the new heavens and the new earth will be a place of unending and ever-increasing joy and happiness as God displays forever “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:7). While we formerly identified with the man of dust, in the gospel we now identify with the man from heaven and all the glory therein (1 Cor 15:47–49).

“Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).

Discussion Questions

God Commands All to Believe the Gospel, Repenting and Receiving the Lord Jesus Christ

1.  What is the gospel? Is the gospel a universal message?

2.  What does it mean to “believe the gospel,” viz. what is the importance of belief?

3.  Define “repentance.” What is the role of repentance in conversion?

4.  What does it mean to “receive the Lord Jesus Christ”?

5.  What is the importance of the universal command to believe, the exclusivity of believing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the eternal consequences grounded in one’s response to Jesus?

Bodily Resurrection of the Dead and Judgment of All

6.  What is the importance of the “bodily” resurrection of the dead (note Jesus’s bodily resurrection and bodily return), and what does this teach us about humanity?

7.  What is your understanding of the Judgment Seat of Christ and the Great White Throne Judgment of Revelation 20?

8.  Will believers face future judgment? Explain the meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:10, cf. 1 Corinthians 3:12–15.

Unbeliever Condemned to Eternal Conscious Punishment

9.  What is the destiny of unbelievers? What is the destiny of the unevangelized? What does it mean that unbelievers are condemned?

10.  What is the nature of Hell, and does “eternal conscious punishment” mean?

Believer to Eternal Blessedness and Joy with the Lord

11. What happens to a believer who dies before the return of Christ?

12.  How do you describe “heaven” and “life after death”?

New Heaven and New Earth

13.  What is the relationship of the “new heaven and new earth” to the millennial Kingdom of Christ?

To the Praise of His Glorious Grace (Doxology)

14.  Why is it fitting to conclude a doctrinal Statement of Faith with a worshipful (doxological) note?

* Photo by Sasha • Stories on Unsplash

Reading List 2019

My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018). I do it for personal accountability; knowing I have to post my list helps me stay on track. Reading input decreased this year as writing output increased. I wrote a record number of blog posts on my website (47), a record number of guest posts (22), and published 3 books and 1 ordination paper.

In these “reading list” posts, I’ll often share a few anecdotes about favorite books from the year or other noteworthy items. I’ll just let the list be the list this year. As one year ends and another begins, I’m more tired than other years, and because of other writing projects across the winter I can’t seem to find the energy to analyze the last year—maybe that statement tells enough. In 2020, I gotta do better at keeping gas in the tank if I want the car to drive.

Let me know in the comments your favorite book from last year.

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Books Read per Year

1.    All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (531 pages)

2.   Expository Exultation: Christian Preaching as Worship by John Piper (336 pages)

3.   Unsettled: Overcoming the Restless Search for Who You Are (The Story of Samson and His Father) by Chase Replogle (242 pages) (Currently Unpublished)

4.   A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson (216 pages)

5.   Your Future Self Will Thank You: Secrets to Self-Control from the Bible and Brain Science (A Guide for Sinners, Quitters, and Procrastinators) by Drew Dyck (224 pages)

6.   Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr. (80 pages)

7.   Sunny Side Up: The Breakfast Conversation That Could Change Your Life by Dan DeWitt (112 pages)

8.   A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles (480 pages)

9.   Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church by Benjamin Vrbicek (204 pages)

10.  Enduring Grace: 21 Days with the Apostle Peter by Stephen R. Morefield and Benjamin Vrbicek (150 pages)

11.   The Beginner’s Guide to Spiritual Gifts by Sam Strorms (200 pages)

12.   The Paradigm: The Ancient Blueprint That Holds the Mystery of Our Times by Jonathan Cahn (272 pages)

13.   A Restless Age: How Saint Augustine Helps You Make Sense of Your Twenties by Ausin Gohn (200 pages)

14.   East of Eden by John Steinbeck (601 pages)

15.   Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work by Eugene Peterson (251 pages)

16.   The Solace of Water by Elizabeth Byler Younts (368 pages)

17.   The Bible: Romans to Revelation, Part 6 of 6 by God (300 pages)

18.   Humble Calvinism: And If I Know the Five Points, but Have not Love... by J.A. Medders (128 pages)

19.   Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write by Helen Sword (280 pages)

20.   Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (524 pages)

21.   Taking God At His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me by Kevin DeYoung (144 pages)

22.   Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop (224 pages)

23.   Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? by Randy Alcorn (197 pages)

24.   The Bible: Genesis to Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 6 by God (300 pages)

25.   Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel by Ray Ortlund (128 pages)

26.   The Passion of the King of Glory (Retelling the Story) by Russ Ramsey (240 pages)

27.   The Deep Things of God (Second Edition): How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders (304 pages)

28.   Before You Open Your Bible: Nine Heart Postures for Approaching God’s Word by Matt Smethurst (96 pages)

29.   Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor by Collin Hansen and others (176 pages)

30.   True Grit: A Novel by Charles Portis (240 pages)

31.   Connected: Living in the Light of the Trinity by Sam Allberry (176 pages)

32.   Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age by Tony Reinke (160 pages)

33.   Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer (320 pages)

34.   The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (192 pages)

35.   Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (544 pages)

36.   Called Together: A Guide to Forming Missional Communities by Jonathan K. Dodson and Brad Watson (100 pages)

37.   The Bible and the Future by Anthony A. Hoekema (354 pages)

38.   Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond by Darrell L. Bock (336 pages)

39.   Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption through Scripture by Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew Wilson (176 pages)

40.   The Bible: Joshua to Esther, Part 2 of 6 by God (300 pages)

41.   Enduring Grace: 21 Days with the Apostle Peter by Stephen R. Morefield and Benjamin Vrbicek (150 pages)

42.   The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home by Russell Moore (320 pages)

43.   Evangelical Convictions: A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the EFCA by EFCA Spiritual Heritage Committee (321 pages)

44.   The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis (200 pages)

45.   The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (400 pages)

46.   Draw Near: An Advent Devotional by Laura A. Pyne (110 pages)

47.   Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell Moore (240 pages)

48.   The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller (192 pages)

49.   He Numbered the Pores on My Face: Hottie Lists, Clogged Pores, Eating Disorders, and Freedom from It All by Scarlet Hiltibidal (192 pages)

50.   Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart by Benjamin Vrbicek (171 pages)

51.   Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, John (120 pages)

52.   Parenting in the Pastorate: “How-To” Faithfully Raise Kids in Full-Time Ministry by Paul Gilbert (110 pages)

53.   Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman (208 pages)

54.   1–2 Thessalonians: A 12-Week Study by Matt Smethurst (96 pages)

55.   The Bible: Psalms to Song of Solomon, Part 3 of 6 by God (300 pages)

56.   12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (248 pages)

57.   Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative by Sam Storms (592 pages)

58.   Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage: Critical Questions and Answers by Jim Newheiser (336 pages)

59.   The Imperfect Pastor: Discovering Joy in Our Limitations through a Daily Apprenticeship with Jesus by Zack Eswine (272 pages)

60.   Evangelical Convictions: A Theological Exposition of the Statement of Faith of the EFCA by EFCA Spiritual Heritage Committee (321 pages)

61.   Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (176 pages)

62.   How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times by Roy Peter Clark (272 pages)

63.   Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark (288 pages)

64.   The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English by Roy Peter Clark (320 pages)

65.   Choose Love, Not Fear: How the Best Leaders Build Cultures of Engagement and Innovation That Unleash Human Potential by Gary Heil and Ryan Hail (240 pages) (Publishing in March of 2020)

66.   The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (128 pages)

67.   Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces by Roy Peter Clark (320 pages)

68.   Joy in the Sorrow: How a Thriving Church (and its Pastor) Learned to Suffer Well by Matt Chandler and Friends (240 pages)

69.   The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle (304 pages)

70.   The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose by Helen Sword (88 pages)

71.   The Bright Unknown by Elizabeth Byler Younts (368 pages)

72.   The Bible: Isaiah to Malachi, Part 4 of 6 by God (300 pages)

73.   Once for all Delivered: A Reformed, Amillennial Ordination Paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America by Benjamin Vrbicek (115 pages)

74.   When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat (200 pages)

75.   The Bible: Matthew to Acts, Part 5 of 6 by God (300 pages)