God Loves-Loves the Local Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truths God taught my heart the hard way.

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

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

* Photo by Simone Viani on Unsplash

The Too-Many Ways the Lord Is Teaching Me to Number My Days

When I officiate weddings, the brides and grooms always seem young. Yet I keep noticing something in that moment when I ask the father of the bride, “Who gives this young woman away?” and he answers, “Her mother and I.” The fathers and mothers seem to be getting younger and younger.

Of course, they are not getting younger. I’m getting older.

Which means if you are over a certain age, I might owe you an apology. If you are around 65 years old today, I’m sorry. I apologize because if you go back about 15 or 20 years to when you were younger than 50 years old (and I was younger than 30), then I was probably confused about your age. I know it’s not kind to admit, but I probably thought you were already 65 back then. Please forgive me.

This hit me the other day because something at work got me thinking about one of my seminary professors. So, I looked online for his current age. Today he is 68 years old. Today. Something didn’t seem right because 15 years ago I thought he was already 65. How, I wondered, did he only age 3 years over the last 15? Hence the apology.

“In so many more ways than I would like, the Lord has been teaching me to number my days.”

Where am I going with all this? The psalmist asks God, “Teach us to number my days.” He requests this so that we might, “get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). I haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time asking God to teach me to number my days, and I wouldn’t say I’ve necessarily gained a heart of wisdom, even though I hope I’m wiser than I was a decade ago. But I can say this: in so many more ways than I would like, the Lord has been teaching me to number my days.

The other day, for instance, the news app on my phone suggested an article from The Wall Street Journal called “The Age When You Stop Feeling Young.” The subtitle indicated that the oldest millennials (of which I am one) have reached the decade when people often start noticing signs of aging. I couldn’t tell whether the suggestion to read this article was altogether random or my phone was taunting me.

I noticed my age this last summer while our family vacationed at the beach. (Beaches have a way of showing us our age, don’t they?) Our family often plays checkers on vacation, and my oldest daughter beat me, and, no, I didn’t let her win or let her have that triple jump. They both just happened. Also at the beach, my oldest son and I went for several runs, some together and some by ourselves. Whether together or on our own, he always ran faster and usually further. No, I didn’t let him beat me either.

To some extent he ran faster because I’ve had a hip injury hampering my training since the spring. Here also my age shows. I coach a local track team, and I got hurt as I participated in a sprint workout. Since then, I’ve been doing physical therapy off and on. When I showed up for my final session of PT, the receptionist told me I had met my insurance deductible. I’m glad to have my insurance costs reduced, but it made me feel like people probably feel when asked if they want the senior discount. Meeting your insurance deductible is not a prize you want to win.

Soon, when I look at my wedding photos, the father who gave his daughter away will be younger than me.

I could go on and on about getting older, but I suspect that if you were on the receiving end of my apology because you’re older than 65, you already know everything I’m saying—and you could add more stories of your own. And if you’re 25 right now, the more I keep blabbing about the signs of aging, the more you’ll think I am already 65.

“Surely gaining a heart of wisdom must mean more than realizing you can’t outrun your teenagers.”

When Moses asks the Lord, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom,” he does not mean, “Lord, help us to list all the ways we feel old, that we might feel bad”—even if numbering our days and listing ways we feel old does have some overlap. Surely gaining a heart of wisdom must mean more than realizing you can’t outrun your teenagers.

Indeed, it does mean more.

When we sing the stanza that asks God to teach us to number our days, we also ask for the blessing of the Lord to serve him with purpose to the end of our days. “Let the favor of the LORD our God be upon us,” we sing. “And establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Ps. 90:17).

As we age, rather than cultivating gloom and apathy, we can pray that whatever God calls us to do, we will do it with joy and vigor. We can ask God to let our extra trips to the doctor remind us that God watches over the lilies and even more so watches over us as the Great Physician. And we can pray that whatever our hands find to do, we can do it with all our might, knowing that our labor in the Lord is not in vain (Eccles. 9:10; 1 Cor. 15:58).

When you feel the signs of aging, are these the kinds of prayers you pray? You can. You and I have a choice. As my phone reminded me, this may be the decade I stop feeling young, but it doesn’t have to be the decade I stop serving the Lord with zeal.

* Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash

Could It Be Time for a Pastoral Transition?

“All the time,” said John Piper, “I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years.”

What had Piper been thinking about for thirty years? A potential transition in pastoral ministry.

He said this around the time of his retirement from his long tenure at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota. “I thought about quitting a lot,” he added. But then Piper mentioned the way God didn’t give him a chance to move at the same time he wanted to move. “Here’s the beautiful thing that I look back on with such thankfulness: the Lord never let those ‘ready-to-move’ feelings come when there was an opportunity to move. The opportunities to move came when I didn’t want to move. He timed it perfect.”

If you’re reading this post about pastoral transitions, perhaps you’re only doing so “for a friend.” But my guess is that you’re a ministry leader who might be in one of these ready-to-move seasons right now, the kind of season Piper mentioned. (If, however, you’re a member of a church, and you want one of your pastors to move to another church, well, that’s a different situation entirely! And if you’re a pastor who wants some of his members to move churches, that’s also another post, one I won’t be writing.)

As the summer ends and fall arrives, I suspect you might not be alone, as the fall is a common time for pastors to begin thinking about transitions. In fact, I’ve recently been writing a draft of an article for another publication about the blessings of not transitioning away, the blessings of what I’m calling “the ministry of staying put at your church.”

But if these thoughts of transitions are rattling around in your heart, I thought I’d offer a few things to consider. Because before you go looking for the tips and tools you need to transition well from one church to another, it’s worth backing up to ask the question: are you sure it’s the right time?

For some pastors, a looming transition is obvious. This is your last semester or two in seminary, and you’re ready to work in the field. You’re being influenced by both “push” and “pull” factors, not just one or the other. You’re being pushed out of seminary and pulled into a new local church. When this is the case, it’s fairly straightforward. Let the transition begin.

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Some of you, however, feel like you’re on a rollercoaster. You feel anticipation and excitement as your church grows in size, but then a loop-de-loop and a double corkscrew induce fear and instability. How do you know when your time is done? If you were terminated, others decided the ride for you was over. But what about when the decision is yours?

Determining God’s will is often tricky. Gideon used a fleece, but I’m not sure this was to his credit. So we probably shouldn’t try something similar.

When I was a kid, my parents gave me a choice about a summer vacation. I couldn’t figure out what to do. My parents told me I could go with them on a short trip to visit my grandparents or I could stay home with a friend to attend a local basketball camp. I had no idea what God wanted me to do. One morning I distinctly remember staring at a small bowl of cereal and asking God this very question. As I twirled the last few Lucky Charms with my spoon, I asked God to make the cereal into the shape of the state—either Missouri (basketball) or Iowa (grandparents)—to indicate what I should do. I’m not encouraging you to go and do likewise. After all, when I was a child . . .

Kevin DeYoung wrote a whole book about how to discern the will of God. “‘The will of God’ is one of the most confusing phrases in the Christian vocabulary,” he writes. “Sometimes we speak of all things happening according to God’s will. Other times we talk about being obedient and doing the will of God. And still other times we talk about finding the will of God” (Just Do Something, 16).

Too often we feel as though we need to divine God’s will (say, with Lucky Charms). But DeYoung argues we should stop “thinking of God’s will like a corn maze, or a tightrope, or a bull’s-eye” (23). Instead, we need to realize God gave us brains and passions and mentors and friends and education and experiences and longings. As we listen to all of these—as well as when we adequately take into account our proclivity for sinful, mixed motives—somehow God shows himself faithful to lead us to where we should go.

In his book Before You Move, John Cionca explains thirty-five different categories to help pastors sense whether God is moving them to another ministry. He uses the metaphor of red and green traffic lights. The more red lights, the less likely God may be moving you, and the more green lights, the more likely he may be. So, if you get nineteen green lights and sixteen red lights, that makes things clearer, right? No, it’s not a simple math problem, and neither do each of the thirty-five categories carry equal weight.

Yet I do find it helpful how this approach forces one to think broadly about the situation. Often when a pastor wants to move, it might be that a few persistent annoyances have provoked his restless desire. It’s better to consider the whole picture.

I won’t list all of his thirty-five categories, but here are some I found especially useful.

Red Lights to Moving	Green Lights to Moving
Congregational Hunger	Congregational Apathy
Vibrancy and Growth	Stagnation and Decline
Good Giftedness Match	Poor Giftedness Match
Enthusiasm for the Task	Restlessness or Withdrawal
Good Opportunity for Impact	Limited Opportunity for Impact
Family Happy and Growing	Family Distressed and Stifled
Appropriate Compensation	Insufficient Compensation
Tenure Less than Six Years	Tenure More than Six Years
Compatibility with Staff	Poor Staff or Key Relationships
High Integrity and Credibility	Low Integrity and Credibility
Advisors Confirm Ministry	Advisors Suggest Major Change
Ideal Geographical Proximity to Extended Family	Less than Ideal Geographical Proximity to Extended Family

Again, these don’t provide a full-proof plan; they’re simply tools. If the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had used these categories, the score would have been a shutout: 0–35. These prophets were certainly in one of those ready-to-move seasons. Often, a prophet’s congregation didn’t want to fire him but to kill him.

In fact, when God explains to Isaiah that his job description involved preaching until the pews were not only empty but until they were burned to ashes, Isaiah’s “Here am I! Send me” quickly became “How long, O Lord?”

For Isaiah (and many other prophets), faithfulness meant staying put when all the lights appeared to be green. Why? Because the voice of God became to them like Gandalf thrusting down his staff and roaring, “You shall not pass!”

If, however, God is telling you it might be time for a transition, I would bring several other trusted friends and ministry leaders into that conversation. Ideally, if your situation allows such disclosure, do this with someone in leadership at your church rather than blindsiding them later. Not all situations allow such honesty, however. You might not feel free to discuss this with anyone local until the process progresses.

In the meantime, if you’d like more help thinking through a transition—help finding the right job in ministry with excellence, integrity, and respect for everyone involved—then you might find helpful my book on this topic, Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church.

* Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Moths Have Eaten an Infamous Armstrong Poster

The basement in my home is a dungeon. Construction workers poured the concrete walls over a hundred years ago, and when it rains, the walls leak like an old pirate ship. I store my road bike in the basement, a corner of the dungeon tucked inside a small alcove. During the winter or when it’s really raining, I come inside the leaky dungeon, put my bike on a trainer, and ride for an hour while I stare at the posters on the walls.

I collected most of the posters in college, and one poster catches my attention each time I ride, especially times like right now, for the three weeks in July when a hundred professional riders compete in the two-thousand-mile race called the Tour de France.

The poster is of Lance Armstrong, his famous “What Am I On?” poster. A blurred Armstrong rides along a country road in his iconic Postal uniform on his Trek bicycle frame. The red, white, and blue colors evoke the best of American, even Texan, pride, the ideas that happiness can be pursued and success is democratized to everyone willing to work hard. In the background behind Lance is a white building resembling a country church. Perhaps the church signifies devotion and zeal, even worship. In the upper right-hand corner the poster reads:

This is my body and I can do whatever I want to it, I can push it, study it, tweak it, listen to it. Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?

The poster was actually part of a broader marketing campaign by Nike. A television commercial employed the same brash and polemical wording on the poster to rebuke the early rumors of Lance’s steroid use and blood doping.

As I said, I’ve had this poster since college, and many times as a college athlete, I would look up and think, If I work hard, if I do the work with excellence and effort, passion and devotion, if I put in the six-hour days and I’m smart about it, then I will get ahead. It. Will. Happen.

I did this because, more than just celebrating Armstrong’s work ethic, the poster promised—indeed the “Legend of Lance” promised—similar results to all who had ears to hear. The way the poster shows Lance riding slightly uphill underscores this promise. His skills and determination shined brightest on French mountains, so the climbing posture fits. But the posture also extends the promise of progress to any devoted viewer, any true believer in hard work. You can do this too, it whispers. Armstrong climbed back from cancer by riding his bike uphill six hours a day. What are you on?

Needless to say, that poster looks different to me today than it did in college.

Not only was Lance Armstrong stripped of all seven of the titles he won in the Tour de France, but during that era the governing body of the race has chosen not to award other winners because of such pervasive use of performance-enhancing drugs. Most top riders have confessed to cheating or been credibly accused.

I ponder these realities and see the potential to make what some call a “Jesus juke,” that is, to quickly move from one story—whether a sad or sappy story—to a fairly obvious connection to Jesus, often some sentimental truth. But in all seriousness, the story of Lance and this particular “What Am I On?” poster has often led me to reflect upon Jesus’s words about treasure. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,” Jesus said. “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19–20).

The promise, however, offers more than we likely realize at first. God offers forgiveness for cheaters. Instead of standing trial for our failings, God offers to let the death of Christ stand as the public reckoning for wrongs. And here is the real treasure, forgiveness from God and friendship with him that never fades.

I know he’s controversial, but I like Armstrong—not only back in the day when he raced but now. I appreciated the early autobiography It’s Not About the Bike written with Sally Jenkins, and I appreciate now his predictably arrogant hot takes on his podcast The Move. And I can appreciate his recent attempts to engage the conversation of transgenderism in sports, chiefly biological men playing against biological women.

Yet of course I understand the polarization, like on Twitter for instance. The comments under his posts fall almost exclusively in the categories of either “I love you, Lance” or “I hate you.” This is because he’s also hurt people, not only back in the day when he squashed his accusers, but the way his hot takes still cut down others. For all the other falsehoods about Armstrong’s integrity in his that early autobiography, it really was true that it’s not about the bike. Lance is about Lance, then and now.

And I feel this same temptation tug at me, even as I preach and lead a church and love my wife and kids and point others to Jesus. Too often it’s about Benjamin.

So I guess I long for Armstrong to know—as I long for myself and others to know—the treasure of God’s forgiveness and what it means to be caught up in something bigger, indeed Somone bigger, than myself. Because while the promise of the poster has rusted, the promise from Jesus has not and will not.

How to Grill the Best Beef Tenderloin

I’ve probably written three hundred blog posts, but I’ve never written about grilling meat. Today, however, is Father’s Day, and as an ode to the ten thousand ways my father has blessed me, I offer you my best rendition of my father’s instructions for grilling a beef tenderloin.

I’ve watched him grill tenderloin several times, but two weeks ago, I tried myself. We had company coming over. Our church was hiring a new pastor, and we invited the new pastor, his wife, and the pastoral search team for dinner. With the help of others, we cooked for fourteen adults, plus my children.

By the way, we’re in the middle of a kitchen remodel, and we didn’t have countertops yet. You could see into our unfinished basement through a hole in the floor. My giant new stainless-steel refrigerator sat in the living room. You get the picture. It was a mess.

Despite the remodeling chaos, the grilling turned out so good that others asked for the recipe. I tried to text it to my friend but realized it might be more fun to write it out here with more detail. Posting it to my blog will also help me not be typecast as a blogger who only writes about church stuff.

One more bit of background before I begin. I’m sure this is an overstatement, but in my memory, every Sunday night when I grew up, Dad would grill, and we’d have a huge family dinner. I miss that. A lot. My wife and I have tried to follow the Lord where he’s sent us, but that following has always put us too far away to join in Sunday night meals, except for when we’re all visiting each other on vacation. But when we do, and Sunday night comes around, Dad still doesn’t disappoint.

Below is my best attempt to recount his recipe. It’s derivative, of course, but it comes from a master griller, so the recipe should still serve you well.

And thank you, Dad, for being an even better father than you are a griller.

*     *     *

The Best (Grilled) Beef Tenderloin

STEP 1: Buy the meat     [the day before dinner]
The first step to having a great meal, my father always says, is to “buy nice meat.” And it will probably be better if you bought the meat recently and never froze it. If the meat starts frozen, make sure you thaw it slowly in the fridge for several days before you want to cook it. This seems to not damage the meat in the way blasting it under hot water does. You can do that with frozen hot dogs, but you won’t want to do that with beef tenderloin because . . .

Beef tenderloin is expensive. The cut of meat is a long cylinder of high-quality cow. A tenderloin is about as round as your forearm and probably as long as from your elbow to your fingers. The “filet mignon” is the last portion of the beef tenderloin, which is why buying a beef tenderloin costs a lot. It’s basically two feet of filet.

I try to get mine from Costco because that’s how—as with everything else in this recipe—my dad does it. They come in packages of about 4–5 lbs. and at a price of about $20–25 per pound. You’ll need about half a pound per person unless you’re also serving another main dish, something like chicken, which can help keep the cost of the meal down.

I’ll insert a quick comment here about “side dishes.” This one also comes from my father. Make sure you have nice sides to go with the meal. It makes the meat taste better, he says. I agree.

STEP 2: Marinade the meat     [6 hours before dinner]
Take the meat out of the fridge and poke lots of holes in it. You can poke the holes with something like a kebab or a corn-on-the-cob holder. Last time my son and I used a marshmallow roaster to poke the holes.

After adding the holes, put the meat in a metal tray and pour a marinade over the meat. I’d suggest something like Dales Original. After you cover the meat, put it back in the fridge. This sounds weird, but you want a marinade that will make the meat taste like better meat, not a marinade that will make the meat taste like something else, like a Greek salad or stir fry. Save those kinds of marinades for other meals.

STEP 3: Dry the meat and apply a rub     [4 hours before dinner]
Take the meat back out of the fridge and dry off the meat using paper towels. You can end up putting the meat back in the same tray, but you’ll need to rinse it off and dry it as well.

Once the meat is dry, apply a liberal amount of black pepper all over the meat. You’ll also want to add salt or meat tenderizer. If I sprinkle on meat tenderizer, then I don’t also use salt because it can make it too salty tasting. You can also rub other spices onto the meat, such as a light touch of rosemary or crushed red pepper. Our house likes spicey food, so I use both. Return the meat to the refrigerator.

STEP 4: Let the meat warm     [2 hours before dinner]
Take the meat out of the fridge to let the meat begin to warm to room temperature.

STEP 5: Get the grill hot     [90 min before dinner]
Begin heating your charcoal grill to 450 degrees. You can use a gas grill, of course. I do that too. My Dad has bought me the best Webber Grill version of each, and I’m super thankful for that. I love the convenience of the gas grill and use it more often, but when I’m cooking something expensive, such as beef tenderloin, I try to use the charcoal grill because I think it tastes better. My family agrees.

STEP 6: Sear the meat     [65 minutes before dinner]
Place the meat on the hottest part of the grill, and turn it every 1–2 minutes to sear all sides. Make sure you cover the grill each time, so you don’t lose all your heat.

STEP 7: Cook the meat     [55 min before dinner]
Now it’s time to do the main portion of cooking. Place the meat in a metal tray on the grill. Continue cooking at 450 degrees. Turn the meat every 15 minutes.

Apply drizzles of olive oil each time. To do this, I like to put the olive oil in a bowl and just use a spoon. Don’t be stingy, especially at the ends of the meat. You don’t want them to burn, as they will be thinner. And if you can, try to keep the ends away from the hotter parts of the grill.

One other trick. You have to build little ridges made of tin foil along the bottom of the tray. You can actually buy them, but I just make them by rolling up little strips of tinfoil. These ridges sit at the bottom of the metal tray, so the meat doesn’t sit on the bottom. This helps get airflow underneath and not burn the bottom.

STEP 8: Remove the meat     [20 min before dinner]
Remove meat when the internal temperature of the “thick” part of the tenderloin is about 130–135 degrees. This will set you up for a final cooking of “medium-rare” in the thick middle of the tenderloin and more like “medium” on the thinner ends. This spectrum is good when you have company who likely have different preferences about how they like their steak cooked.  

You’ll need a meat thermometer for this. And as has been the theme, my dad bought me a fancy Bluetooth one by the company Meater. It literally sends the external and internal temperature to your phone and makes a graph as it cooks. You don’t need anything this fancy, though.

Once you remove the meat from the grill, place the meat in a new tray and cover it with tin foil to keep the heat in. It would be best if you now let the meat “rest” for 20 minutes. While the meat is covered and resting, it will stay warm and continue to cook a little. The resting lets the juices stop moving, so they won’t rush out when you cut the meat. That’s my non-technical explanation. I’m sure my dad or Bobby Flay could explain it better.

Cooking the meat to the right temperature and taking it off at the right time is the most important step. You can always cook it more, so error on less-cooked than over-cooked.

STEP 9: Check the temperature     [10 min before dinner]
If you’re nervous about what the meat looks like, whether too rare or too well-done, you can cut part of the thickest section of the meat to see how it looks and whether you have your desired amount of pinkness. If the meat is too pink, you can cut the meat into a few chunks and put it on the grill for a few more minutes. Cutting it into smaller chunks is not ideal, but it speeds up the process.  

STEP 10: Cut the Meat     [1 min before dinner]
Now, put the meat on a cutting board and cut the meat using an electric knife. If you don’t have one, just use your best steak knife. Try to make circle sections of about 1/4”–1/2” in thickness.

Then put the meat on a serving tray and cover it with tin foil. If you have a serving dish that has a lid, you can use that instead. It will look nicer. And if you’re serving $130 of beef tenderloin that took six hours to prepare, you might as well make it look nice. When we had company the other week, since people had already seen the holes in my kitchen floor and my fridge in the living room, I just covered the meat in tin foil. No one complained.

STEP 11: Eat the meat     [dinner time]
Enjoy with friends and family and give thanks to God.

Exploring the Nuance of “The Tim Keller Rule” for Writers

[Author’s Note: I started writing these reflections nearly two years ago and only recently took them back out to complete them, entirely independent of knowing about Keller’s declining health. Then, like everyone else, I learned how sick he was and then that he so quickly passed away, and thus I paused on publishing this. In light of his death, I would have rather written a more overt tribute to him, sharing my deep appreciation for his ministry. But maybe—when rightly understood—this post can serve as a kind of tribute to Keller’s ministry, specifically his writing ministry. The way he lived his “rule” and avoided the pitfalls that came with fame can serve as an excellent model for every believer, no matter the size of their platform.]

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Despite what seems to be the case, all authors write far more words that do not get published than they write words that go viral.

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s even good for us. God has a good purpose for Christian writers in what often feels like the frustrating slowness of our progress in the craft and the expansion of our platforms.

Consider what God says to the Israelites in Exodus 23 about the way he will cause them to inherit the Promised Land. “I will not drive them out from before you in one year,” God says, “lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.” Instead, God tells them, “Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land” (Ex. 23:29–30).

This principle of slow-and-steady and providentially governed progress should temper a writer’s publishing angst, that anxious fretting many of us do about how much to publish and where to publish, who is reading us and how to get more people to read our work. This principle should also help us understand why books are often better written by authors without velvet fluff still on their antlers.

The young prophet Jeremiah had fire in his bones, but it would be years, even decades, before he understood what it meant to run with horses in the thicket of the Jordan (Jer. 20:9; 12:5). And consider young Elihu from the book of Job. Four times in just four verses the narrator tells us Elihu burned with anger. “Then Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He burned with anger also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong. Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he. And when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, he burned with anger” (Job 32:2–5). Despite all the burning anger, we’re told he “had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he” (32:4).

Although one wonders if Elihu should have waited longer than he did to speak up, perhaps waiting another few dozen years for his youthful angst, we would hope, to meld into wisdom. As it is, his juvenile berating became canonized in the best-selling book of all time. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child” (Prov 22:15).

These issues around when to write and how much to write lead me to consider what I’ve heard called “The Tim Keller Rule.” It’s a rule that haunts the conscience of many writers in the evangelical world, including mine. Do not publish a book until you are sixty years old, the rule goes. The government has rules about how old a person must be before they can work a job, drive a car, get married, enlist in the military, smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, and many other activities. Should Christian publishers have an age rule? Would we want it to be sixty?

A former understudy of Keller wrote a tribute to him in one of his books. “Tim waited until he was almost sixty years old to publish his first trade book,” he writes. “Humbly, he wanted to wait until he was old and wise enough to write the best possible book he could on any given subject. No doubt, his book writing pace since then has made up for lost time.” Keller’s understudy doesn’t state this so much as a rule but more as a description. The clear implication is that humble and wise authors should consider doing the same. One writer on Twitter recently referred to this as the Keller model rather than the rule.

Yet the word choice of publish in this tribute is key. Is sixty when Keller began writing? If Keller never wrote anything from high school to the age of early retirement, would his books be so insightful, so clear, and well-written? Could Keller have published a book every year from age sixty to seventy if he never wrote anything from his twenties through his fifties?

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To be clear, God’s blessing has rested upon Keller in ways and to degrees no one could manufacture—even Keller himself. The full credit for Keller’s tremendous writing output and exceptional quality belongs only to God. I praise God for the benefits his ministry has poured into my life and the life of our church.

When considering Keller’s output, however, we are also beholding the effects of compound interest. When you squirrel away a few dollars here and a few dollars there in mutual funds, the money not only increases by addition but by multiplication. Keller may not have published before he was sixty, but he certainly wrote.

In the introduction to Hidden Christmas he writes, “In this book I hope to make the truths of Christmas less hidden. We will look at some passages of the Bible that are famous because they are dusted off every Christmas” (4). The Christmas story is not only dusted off by parishioners but also by pastors, which is why in the acknowledgments of the book Keller notes, “The ideas in this book were forged not in writing but preaching. Each chapter represents at least 10 or so meditations and sermons on each biblical text, delivered in Christmas services across the decades” (143). Keller was sixty-six years old when Hidden Christmas was published, but the seeds of the book were planted and watered long before the food was harvested and packaged commercially.

In Keller’s book Center Church, we read similar words when he mentions that the book has roots in lectures he gave to an international audience nearly ten years before the book was published (385), which were ideas and lectures, we assume and he implies, that had been written and field-tested the previous decade at Redeemer Church and beyond.

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Perhaps some of the mystique about The Keller Rule comes from Keller himself. In an interview about the subject of young pastors writing books, Keller encouraged writing “essays and chapters, not books yet. Hone your craft through short pieces and occasional writing.” Then he warned, “But don’t tackle books yet. Writing a whole book takes an enormous amount of energy and time, especially the first one.”

In this way Keller encourages the “both-and” we find in Paul’s letter to Timothy. On the one hand, Paul instructs that someone in spiritual leadership “must not be a recent convert.” The command exists not because he won’t do the job well but because he probably will, and success may cause him to become “puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6). Yet, on the other hand, in the next chapter Paul tells Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth.” Timothy is instead to “set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). If Timothy was to set an example “in speech” among his congregation, surely he should also set an example, albeit a youthful one, in his writing.

Thus, aspiring writers need to hear the helpful warning of The Keller Rule about publishing words. Young writers often need their publishing ambitions chastened. But at the same time, young writers must not fear writing words. Indeed, those called to write should write, even if they only plod along at the pace of a few pages here and a few essays there. The literary version of compound interest can only happen when you squirrel words away in the bank, making regular and faithful deposits.

Returning to the idea of “little by little” in Exodus 23, if you’re a young or beginning writer, you probably can’t handle all the success you think you want right now. You probably can’t handle all the criticism that comes along with that success. The “wild beasts” mentioned in Exodus 23 eat famous yet immature authors for breakfast. If you had written Gentle and Lowly, you might have become brutal and haughty.

So take heart. The writer who sows words slow and steady, generously and obediently, will also reap generously—whether in this life or the next. Just as no one gives a cup of cold water to a needy person in the name of Jesus without a permanent divine accounting, no one who writes words for God’s glory does so without God’s notice. Your labor in the Lord, Paul says, is not in vain.

* Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

Striving for Warm Complementarianism in a Cold, Mostly Egalitarian World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Photo by Amanda Congiuv on Unsplash

Our Church Is Hiring Another Pastor

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

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

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

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

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Associate Pastor

OVERVIEW

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


COMPENSATION

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

Salary: Please ask for salary range during interviews.


JOB REQUIREMENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES

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


CHURCH BIO & HOW TO APPLY?

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

Reading List 2022

My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021). I post the list for personal accountability, not to showboat. Knowing I have to confess my list helps me stay on track.

The total this year comes to 63 books. You can see from glancing at the graphs below how the tonnage relates to other years. I’ll just give you the punch line, though, so you don’t have to spend time figuring it out. This year I read fewer books—significantly fewer—than any year since 2015. I know, I know, for many readers, finishing more than sixty books in one year would feel epic. And when compared to the general population, it is epic. I’ll explain.   

Around seven or eight years ago I started taking reading (and writing) seriously and set the goal of reading over one hundred books a year. I don’t typically make it, but I often get much closer than I did this year.

There’s not necessarily one reason why my total finished so low. But I could sum up the reasons in the phrase “intentional sacrifice”; I chose to do other things. I have a large family, and as my older children tend to stay up later at night, so do my wife and I, which means I get up less early. I helped coach sports at my children’s school, which means I can’t pad my reading total by hammering audiobooks while I work out. Right there I lost more than a dozen books. Also, life at our church was super full. We had several staff transitions and geared up to plant a church. All good stuff, right? But it meant I rarely read books at work.

The same sentiment about sacrifice applies to my writing. Not only have I not read fewer books in seven years, but I’ve also probably never written less. I used to write forty blog posts and a dozen guest posts each year, while also tinkering, if not finishing, a book project. This year I wrote a mere half dozen blog posts, a half dozen guest posts, and didn’t do much more than tinker with a book.

I love my part-time job as the managing editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship. I get to edit and oversee the publication of over 150 articles a year, coach staff writers and editors, and work on our book projects. It’s wonderful to get paid to do something I would do as a hobby. But this work garbles up precious free time that I have in the mornings for writing.

But for all the sadness of sacrificing words read and words written, I know I’m making the right decision. Books to read and books to write will still be there, Lord willing, when children are not.

One final comment. In last year’s recap, I noted that I wanted to read the Bible using my English Standard Version Study Bible and that I also wanted to read all the introductions to each book as I went through the Bible. By God’s grace, I did. That added 66 extra days of reading or over two months’ worth of mornings. This meant I had to read an extra chapter or two each day to finish in a year. The sacrifice was a good one. Even as a pastor, I must keep reminding myself of whether Hosea wrote to the northern kingdom of Israel or the southern kingdom of Judah and why that context matters.

If you have a favorite book from the previous year, please let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for great books to read, fiction or non-fiction.

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Books Read, 2013–2022

Pages Read, 2013–2022

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In order of completion, this year I read . . .

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (160 pages)

2. Confessions of a Pastor: Adventures in Dropping the Pose and Getting Real with God by Craig Groeschel (224 pages)

3. Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson (272 pages)

4. The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life by Marion Roach Smith (128 pages)

5. Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing by Jared C. Wilson (256 pages)

6. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers (479 pages)

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

8. The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (304 pages)

9. Storycraft, Second Edition: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Jack Hart (286 pages)

10. The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition: Advice from Chicago by Carol Fisher Saller (200 pages)

11. The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson (224 pages)

12. Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (76 pages)

13. A Separate Peace by John Knowles (204 pages)

14. The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr (256 pages)

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

16. A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller (176 pages)

17. Wordcraft: The Complete Guide to Clear, Powerful Writing by Jack Hart (282 pages)

18. But the Blood: A Novel Based on the True Story of America’s Bloodiest County Seat Battle by Stephen R. Morefield (209 pages)

19. The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World by Brett McCracken (192 pages)

20. The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective by Russell Moore (320 pages)

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

22. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams (226 pages)

23. Surprised by Jesus: Subversive Grace in the Four Gospels by Dane Ortlund (144 pages)

24. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis (176 pages)

25. The Best Punctuation Book, Period: A Comprehensive Guide for Every Writer, Editor, Student, and Businessperson by June Casagrande (256 pages)

26. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism by Carl F. H. Henry, Foreword by Russell Moore (112 pages)

27. The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz (368 pages)

28. Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches by Russell Moore (256 pages)

29. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (448 pages)

30. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins (400 pages)

31. Always Longing: Discovering the Joy of Heaven by Stephen R. Morefield (162 pages)

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

33. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr (352 pages)

34. Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ by Russell Moore (208 pages)

35. Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World by Russell L. Meek (80 pages)

36. The Unwavering Pastor: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times by Jonathan K. Dodson (160 pages)

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

38. The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul by Russell Moore (304 pages)

39. The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amore Towles (592 pages)

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

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

42. Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend (352 pages)

43. Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr (224 pages)

44. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (531 pages)

45. Boundaries for Leaders: Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously in Charge by Henry Cloud (272 pages)

46. The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (256 pages)

47. Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God by Tim Challies (224 pages)

48. The Possibility of Prayer: Finding Stillness with God in a Restless World by John Starke (200 pages)

49. 1984 by George Orwell (328 pages)

50. But the Blood: A Novel Based on the True Story of America’s Bloodiest County Seat Battle (Audiobook) by Stephen R. Morefield (209 pages)

51. The Secret Place of Thunder: Trading Our Need to Be Noticed for a Hidden Life with Christ by John Starke (192 pages)

52. God, Technology, and the Christian Life by Tony Reinke (320 pages)

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

54. Primed to Plant: Overlooked Requirements of Church Planting by Dwight Bernier (168 pages)

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

56. Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri (368 pages)

57. Leading Change by John P. Kotter (208 pages)

58. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (560 pages)

59. Memory Wall: Stories by Anthony Doerr (256 pages)

60. About Grace: A Novel by Anthony Doerr (432 pages)

61. Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz (224 pages)

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