Godly Euphoria & the Christian Writer

Dear Reader: This is part of a longer project I’m working on related to the life of Abraham and the journey of Christian writers. I know these 2,400 words exceed the bounds of a normal blog post, but I wanted to share them together. Thanks for reading, Benjamin

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“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Genesis 12:2–3

To grab only one half of the famous lines from Dickens, it is the best of times for Abram, the age of wisdom, the epoch of belief, and the season of light. The wind and flame of God’s Spirit carry him. Downhill. With a breeze. In the shade. Filling his belly, lifting his eyes, and quickening his heart with godly euphoria.

Abram knows he did not earn an audience with his creator through his good works; he receives God’s presence by grace alone. God sought him when a stranger. God pours promises upon Abram so rich and layered and unexpected that they surpass anything Abram’s prayers could have ever asked for or imagined. He considers it unmerited favor. The unexpected call of God is changing his identity.

For all the challenges inherent in forsaking the threefold cord of country, kindred, and father’s house, God promises a great nation, a great name, and blessings as far as the eye can see across all his posterity. For all the paternal protection that Abram counts as loss for the sake of following God, he finds a better protection provided by God, his Father. Indeed, how any outsider responds to Abram—God’s newly appointed representative and missionary to the nations—becomes the touchstone for how God will respond to the individual: If you bless Abram, you get blessings from God; if you curse him, you get curses from God. What a privileged position and sacred identity.

Then there is his name, a great name, God calls it. His name means “exalted father,” but when the Bible talks about a great name, it’s not the letters, syllables, or sounds that matter most. Instead, a name reflects one’s reputation and character. “A good name,” we’re told in Proverbs, “is to be chosen rather than great riches” (Prov. 22:1). The integrity inside you matters more than the money inside your bank account.

Abram’s riches are such that he will one day possess both a great name and riches. But even now, here at ground zero, we see a stark contrast to those in Genesis 11 who wanted to build a tower to reach heaven and make a name for themselves. What they failed to build with their works, Abram receives as a gift. Good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over—plops into his lap.

It is Abram’s spring of hope. He has everything before him. He is going direct to heaven, as Dickens wrote.

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I’ve written parts of all my books in a university library just outside town. The best time to go is between Christmas and mid-January. During this period, students on break leave the campus almost empty. And when I visit during the summer, it feels nearly as deserted. You can sit alone in the quiet library to write, dream, and feel carried along by the wind and flame of the Spirit in a space as wide and tall as an auditorium and filled with rows of bookshelves reaching as high as a basketball hoop. You don’t want it to end. This is more than just a good writing day. It embodies the hope of God calling you toward something great, something that matters, a new identity.

In the introvert oasis of an empty university library, when you occasionally get up to walk around and stretch your legs, you pass by all the books and let your eyes behold all the spines and all the titles and all the authors and all the sections. A jazz music section catches your eye because you know nothing about jazz, yet the topic apparently warrants a whole wall of books. Many such sections exist, covering particular genres of knowledge of which you know not the slightest sliver.

Near the table where you work, you notice three bookshelves holding sixty-two thick books about Bob Dylan. Fascinating, you think.

This particular library is in a university with Christian roots, and so vast biblical sections also catch your eye as you walk past them. You see the huge sections of monographs on nuanced specialties, such as Acadian archaeology and commentaries on Zephaniah, a biblical book with only three chapters that warrants a dozen commentaries as thick as your wrist.

As you sit there and write the book you feel called by God to write, you feel the wind at your back as you run downhill with your heart quickened by, you hope, godly euphoria. You sit there writing, knowing that you participate in the same stream of common grace and grand knowledge that carried intellectual giants such as Socrates and Aristotle. As different as your life might be from hers, you understand why Maya Angelou’s caged bird sings. You realize that the same God of grace who called Athanasius and Augustine and Anselm to write words that changed the world also works within you.

It is the spring of hope with everything before you.

When I began following Christ in college, the hatred I harbored toward books changed. As I read and studied Christianity—at first informally on my own and later in seminary—new joys, passions, and hopes bubbled up within me, as if a chemical reaction were cooked over a Bunsen burner. Listening to good sermons, I felt God was calling me to preach. This call to preach seemed to pounce on me, irrevocably so, while listening to other men preach and feeling my mind and affections doused in a kind of spiritual kerosene so that I just knew I wanted to, and in fact had to, be involved in preaching to others.

During the early days of this feeling, if I could have hit pause during a sermon by any one of the many gifted preachers I was listening to, I would have described the experience this way: “What God is doing right now, through that guy, on that stage, behind that pulpit, as he explains that passage and the glory of God and the beauty of the gospel, with those words and those gestures, and that tone, and with all of that love and passion and urgency such that my heart is prodded and my mind is riveted, well, someday I just have to be involved in sharing that good news with others.”

This is what I mean when I say that my calling to preach came not only through opportunities to preach but also, even predominantly, through having it done to me. David Hansen, in his book The Art of Pastoring, describes his call in a similar way. As he heard a particular pastor preach, he says it seemed “the power, the conviction and the tender mercy of the gospel made the human sanctuary resonate like Pavarotti getting overtones from the rafters.” He continues, “I didn’t know what it was that he did. I just knew that if what he did was what pastoral ministry was, I would be a pastor,” he writes. “What I was made to be was being jangled by what I saw him doing.” I, too, know this feeling, this calling, this jangling.

And this rendition of the experience of the call to preach also doubles as my experience of being called to write, which came not long after. In his insightful book on the craft of writing, Stephen King said it this way: “Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing—of being flattened, in fact—is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you” (On Writing, tenth anniversary ed., 146). Through reading good writing, I felt God calling me to write. The reaction felt explosive, if only in my heart—or, to use King and Hansen’s metaphors, flattened and jangled. The words from Scripture had this effect on me, but also the writing of other gifted authors, especially but not exclusively Christian authors.

When did the wind of God’s favor first sweep you into the calling to write? When did words first become a thing for you? Which authors has God used to jangle your human sanctuary with overtones from the rafters?

In my office I have a few bookshelves. In the middle of all the shelves, I keep books from my favorite authors, those whom God has used most to call me into writing and to keep me writing. When any of those authors publishes a new book, I buy it, read it, and add it to their collection. Perhaps you do something similar. God often seems to call us into the craft this way.

This encouragement from other writers that compels us to engage the craft of writing and own our identity as writers, is true not only at the outset, but something that can help us in seasons of dryness. The call of God is meant to keep us moving forward, not just when we feel euphoric, but also when we feel writer’s block and frustration. During seasons of writing dryness, when ideas don’t seem to flow and every paragraph you write seems to stink, revisit those early voices that called you further up and further in. Set aside your own writing for a while and return to the words that remind you of the love you had at first.

Over the course of your writing life, the authors who most flatten and jangle you may change. You might begin enamored with the aesthetics of the Puritans and their concrete, imagistic style. Later, however, you may still admire their truthfulness and theological precision but also grow to prefer writing less wordy, writing that some might call less flowery, ornate, and affected. That’s okay. In this season you might come to prefer more the staccato writing of short, internet-sized paragraphs. That’s okay too. When God first called you to write, you might not have appreciated the beauty of a Shakespearean sonnet or the crisp euphony of “shook foil” in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. But perhaps now you do. Writerly tastebuds change.

An empty library might not be as enjoyable to you as the din of a coffee shop. Maybe you feel God’s pleasure when you write at home with the Interstellar soundtrack playing in the background. Maybe you sit by a stream and write with analog tools, the way everyone used to write. The point is not so much to copy what you perceive God uses to stir creative juices in others, but to embrace what God uses to stir creative juices in you.

Of course, it’s possible to elevate our reverence for great authors too much, to hold them so highly in our hearts that we always feel as though we write in their shadow and as poor derivatives of their work. We can taste and see so much truth, goodness, and beauty in the writing of our heroes that we fail to see what God is doing through our own writing. I know this feeling. We all do. It’s not wrong in itself to be intimidated by the greats, but, I believe, it is wrong by itself. The feeling of inadequacy should not be the main point we receive from the greats. This feeling of being overshadowed often appears to arise from a place of humility: Who am I to write words that matter? we think. But this has more to do with our pride and unbelief than our humility. It has more to do with looking at ourselves than at God. The promise Abram experienced, and the hope it produced in him, came from looking away from himself and to God.

As Christian writers, we don’t want to conflate the enjoyment of a good writing day with the hope that comes from the promises of God. Christian writers must remember that God’s lasting objective promises are far more important than our changing subjective feelings toward those same promises. Because Christ lived, died, rose, and promises to return, all our writing labor in the Lord can never be in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). That’s a promise true on the days we feel that it is true, and the promise remains true on the days we don’t feel that it is true. On the dark-cloud days that we hate writing and think we’re wasting our time following God, the sun still shines behind the somber sky.

For these reasons, we cannot determine our calling based solely on feelings. At the same time, our feelings do matter. Our aesthetic sensibilities and the joy God gives us as we read other authors, along with the joy we feel when we finally craft a perfect sentence, do matter. God is often pleased to use these to call us into a life of words and to sustain us in a life of words. It also seems responsible, wise, and obedient to revisit these greats every now and then to be flattened and jangled afresh.

People sometimes ask me why I left engineering to become a preacher and writer. They usually want a soundbite answer. I’m never sure how to say it briefly. Maybe someday I will figure out how. I’m sure many asked Abram why he left Ur and wanted a soundbite answer. The best way I know to say that God called me into writing is to say that it had something to do with vinegar and baking soda, corked and shaken. God’s call had then and has now something to do with the best of times, the epoch of belief, the season of light, the spring of hope.

 * Photo by Matthew Feeney on Unsplash

Avoid Announcement Prayers (and Other Advice for Congregational Prayer)

Our church recently made a small adjustment to the public prayer at our church during worship services. For the past few years, we have often had a segment called the “pastoral prayer” led by our pastor-elders. To better foster a culture of prayer, one of our key church goals for the year, we wanted to expand this part of the service to include others beyond our pastor-elders.

We now refer to the time of prayer as “congregational prayers.” About twice a month, our pastor-elders still lead the prayer, while on other weeks, a man or woman from the congregation who has a calling to prayer does so. This expansion of who prays in a service doesn’t change our belief about the office of pastor-elder or who can preach on a Sunday, but we do believe that God has gifted both men and women in prayer, and we see it as good and right to share that gift with the church. We also noticed while studying 1 Corinthians 11 last year in our preaching series that both men and women seemed to have prayed during church services, and we want Scripture to shape our lives.

Another pastor at our church, Noah Gwinn, and I co-wrote some guidelines to help our leaders pray. And when I say “co-wrote,” we literally did. There were moments when we both typed in different parts of the Google Doc at the same time. For a few months I’ve wondered if our reflections could help others outside our church. So I asked for Noah’s permission to share it here.

In the guidelines we first suggest some practices that we hope to encourage, and then we name a few that we try to discourage. Neither are meant to be rules or commandments; they are more guidelines and best practices. Even if your church handles prayer differently, perhaps our thoughts can help you refine what you do.

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We encourage those praying to…

1. Incorporate Scripture
   Pastor Tim Keller said that prayer is “continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him.” Using Scripture in our prayers communicates that our prayers are situated in this ongoing conversation and that they align with God’s heart.

2. Stay “on theme”
   As best as we can, we draw the theme of each sermon from the theme of the passage of Scripture. And we often take our cues about the theme of the whole service here as well. So, if the passage is Matthew 6 and addresses, say, our worries and God’s provision, it might be good to have the prayer reflect these themes as well. If you’re the person praying on a given week, we want you to check with the person preaching by at least Thursday so that he can give you any guidance or direction, though it’s possible the preacher will have already checked in with you. Also, we typically have a preaching schedule set for 6–8 months in advance, so you’ll be able to read the passages well ahead of time. Related to the theme of the sermon and service, there is also a tone worth considering, whether more joyful or more somber or any number of emotions. Think of the varied expressions in the Psalms. This is also something you might want to confirm with the worship leader during the week leading up to the prayer. (Additionally, any major national or global events, or those among our local congregation, will obviously influence the tone of our prayers.)

3. Write your prayers beforehand
   Some people feel like writing prayers makes the prayers less fresh and spontaneous, as though when we pray extemporaneously that is more authentic. This might be true. But it’s also often true that when people pray from the top of their mind, they fall into ruts and cliched language. We do not believe anyone needs to bring the written prayer to the stage, but it could help. If nothing else, please create an outline that will lead you as you lead others. 

4. Watch the clock
   We don’t want to be overly concerned about time, allowing us to be free to follow God’s leading. But at the same time, those planning our service find it helpful to know about how long someone might be praying. We suggest shooting for 3-5 minutes in total, from walking on stage to walking off. Practicing it a few times will let you know you’re in that range.

5. Keep your intro very short
   Please just do a quick introduction, something like, “My name is _____, and I’ll be leading the congregational prayer. Let’s pray together.” Your intro can be a bit longer. But not much. Don’t do a homily or sermonette. And if you want to read a short passage, perhaps there is a way to include that in the actual prayer. (“Lord, in your Word we read that…”). To be fair, you’ve sometimes seen our pastor-elders do longer intros when they pray, but as much as possible, we’d like to limit that. 

6. Be yourself and be reverent
   God has made each of us in his image, but he has also made each of us uniquely. Let the person God has made you come through in your prayers. Don’t feel like you must pray like anyone else. We can often feel this pressure as preachers. While we have benefited from pastors such as John Piper and Timothy Keller, both of these men are different preachers—and neither of them are on staff at our church. When it comes to humor, we can certainly be thankful God has made some of us funny. But we have to remember that in congregational prayer, we are leading God’s people to speak with God, the creator of the universe. Such a wonderful and joyful experience should also include reverence.

7. Come ten minutes early
   When you arrive, please locate the worship leader and preaching pastor and inform them that you’re there. It’s not common, but sometimes details of the service need to shift. Also, knowing you are here helps put us all at ease. And if you’re there early, please feel free to pray with the music team a few minutes before the first service. 

8. Pray for our ministry partners in a natural way
   This might not even be something you’ve noticed before, but at the bottom of our weekly email we highlight one of our dozen ministry partners. We put that same partner on the slides that run before and after the service. We have them on a rotation. It’s often nice to pray for them during congregational prayers. At the same time, we don’t want it to feel like we’re just tacking them onto our prayers out of duty or to complete a “prayer template.” Do your best to be natural. And if you do include prayers for the partner, make sure you give enough context for the congregation to know what we’re praying about. You don’t have to “pray” a person’s bio, but some context helps. A good example might sound like, “Lord, please bless David and Shawna who serve with our denomination and help young people follow Jesus. We ask that you would…”

9. Pray for our attention to the Word
   The congregational prayers often occur immediately before the reading of Scripture and preaching. For this reason, it often makes good sense to include lines at the end of your prayer about God giving us focused attention on his Word. You don’t need to pray for the preaching pastor by name. 

10. Pray for the things most relevant to us as a church body
    There are an infinite number of good things we could be praying for, but we try to use our congregational prayer time on Sunday mornings to pray for those things that feel closest to us as a church. When events happen in our city or among our membership, they tend to be more appropriate for public prayer than event in the life of some distant cousin of a church member, for example. With this being said, sometimes there are national or global events that rise to a level of concern for us as a body, and we have a responsibility to bring these things before the Lord. Scripture calls us to pray for our leaders, both locally and beyond. The congregational prayer leader often has more flexibility to address recent events than the preacher, who might be less nimble with his sermon. All this being said, we would encourage you not to go out of your way to look for the latest crisis to pray for. Again, just check with the preacher as needed.

11. Seek feedback
    It might seem strange that others would evaluate someone’s prayer. Aren’t we praying to the Lord? Who are we to judge? Certainly, no one here believes we should try to foster a critical spirit. But we can all improve in the exercise of our gifts. We encourage those praying during church (as with any other service roles) to seek feedback and accept it with humility, whether the feedback was asked for or unsolicited.

We discourage those praying from…

1. Speaking in Christianese or using prayer jargon
   It can be easy for us as Christians to use language that is personally meaningful to us, but that same wording may be unhelpful or distracting in public prayer. For example, maybe instead of praying for God to place “a hedge of protection” around a ministry partner, pray that God would protect them with wording found directly in Scripture or in common vernacular. This makes our prayers both more intelligible and less distracting. Additionally, when praying, many of us can fall back on prayer jargon we have picked up on, such as, “Lord… just… just… Lord….” Writing out our prayers beforehand will help with this and will keep our prayers clear and focused.

2. Incorporating Scripture in a distracting way
   There are many natural ways to incorporate Scripture into our prayers, and there are also some clunky ways. Beginning every phrase of our prayers with, “As David said in Psalm 23…” or “As the Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter addressed to the church located in the city of Corinth, a city that struggled with all kinds of things…” can distract us from the heart of the conversation with God and what the Word actually calls us to do and to be. Pick up on themes and use phrases, but avoid distraction.

3. Fumbling with the microphone
   While it is possible that we encounter technical difficulties when praying, let’s stay calm, check the mic, and carry on. If the mic is switched on but no sound is being transmitted, it’s the sound tech’s responsibility, not yours. While talking about mics, we’ll share one comment about how to hold the mic. Don’t hold it down by your chest; keep it up high by your chin, which helps the people in the sound booth deliver the volume in an effective way.

4. Turning prayers into announcements
   While our prayer time can be a wonderful opportunity to pray for the ministries and programs taking place at church, let’s avoid turning it into a time to share information with the congregation. For example, don’t pray, “Lord, we pray for the men’s breakfast taking place at 8 am in the Fellowship Hall this Saturday. The attendance looks low, so we pray that many men will sign up in the lobby following this service. We bless you in advance for the sweet bacon and coffee that will be provided free of charge, unless people want to make a donation, which can be done in person or online by scanning the QR code that will be made available then…” ;-) 

5. Unexpected deviation from our normal prayer patterns
   We love the thought that while you prepare to pray, God may lead you to change our normal routine of prayer. You might feel like God wants people to stand up as we pray, or maybe we should kneel. Or you might want people to be silent or perhaps pray with those sitting in the pew next to them. All of this could be wonderful. But we would prefer that these deviations not become the norm, and if you do have the desire to try something new, we’d love to hear about it first. Please coordinate in advance with the worship leader and the preacher. It’s not our desire to micromanage each person’s prayers. However, it is our desire and responsibility to ensure that the service is conducted in an orderly manner. 

 * Photo by Christian Harb on Unsplash

A ‘Holy Dissatisfaction’ with Anything Less than Gospel Grace: An Interview with Matt Smethurst about Tim Keller

As soon as I read Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst (Crossway, 2025), I immediately bought a copy for my father and encouraged a friend to read it and discuss it with me. Since then, I’ve mentioned the book to others many times in conversations. It’s such a good summary of classic Keller: simple and profound, challenging and encouraging, relevant and transcendent.

Matt Smethurst is the lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, and the author of several books. He also cohosts The Everyday Pastor podcast for The Gospel Coalition. Before all of that, when Matt was an editor at TGC, he gave me my first chance to write for an online publication. I reviewed a book about preaching. That was over ten years ago. In the last decade I am thankful for how the Lord has used Matt to bless others through his broader ministry.

Here’s an interview with Matt about writing the book, how it changed him, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Please consider grabbing a copy.

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[Benjamin] Matt, I thought you did a great job including little-known details about Timothy Keller, while still also championing his most well-known themes. How did you balance writing for two audiences, those who are Keller nerds (like me and many others) and those who might know very little of his life and teaching?

Matt Smethurst (picture from River City Baptist Church website)

[Matt] I wanted the book to serve both people who have long appreciated Keller’s ministry and those who are less familiar with his work. There are plenty of Easter eggs in the endnotes for Keller fans, but I was mainly trying to distill and synthesize Keller’s best teaching on Christian living for any believer who wants to think better about applying all of the gospel to all of life.

[Benjamin] Each chapter in the book explores a significant theme in Keller’s writing and ministry. Which theme has been the most significant in shaping your own ministry? (For me, it’s likely Keller’s writing about idolatry in his book Counterfeit Gods.)

[Matt] Likely the way Keller described the gospel as “three ways to live.” There is one way to be saved, but there are actually two ways to be lost.

We see this not only in the parable of the prodigal sons in Luke 15, but in many other passages. Think, for example, about the beginning of Romans. While there is only one way to be saved (Rom. 3), there are actually two ways to be lost (Rom. 1 and 2). The first kind of lostness is obvious: unapologetic idolatry. I live for myself, and I’m proud of it. That’s Romans 1. The second way, though, is more subtle: religious hypocrisy. I live for myself, and nobody can find out. That’s Romans 2. In other words, you can avoid God through immorality, but you can also avoid God through performative morality. The first option is intuitive; the second is insidious.

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In my preaching, I try to explain that you can avoid God by never coming to church, and you can avoid God by coming to church. As Keller points out, you can have two people sitting in the same pew, hearing the same sermons, singing the same songs, and serving in the same ministries—but there for completely different reasons. One is present to bring pleasure to the God who has saved him. The other is there to earn God’s favor or stay in his good graces. And the difference between these two people—even though outwardly everything looks the same—is the difference between heaven and hell.

[Benjamin] When a person does a deep study of a subject, that person is always shaped more than the readers. It might take an author 500 hours to write a book that someone can read in 5 hours. What will be the enduring legacy of this massive undertaking for your own life, maybe even at a more subconscious level of how Keller and the project shaped you?

[Matt] A holy dissatisfaction with anything less than experiencing the wonder of gospel grace. Keller was relentless in challenging us to take the truths in our heads and press them down into our hearts, until—by the power of the Holy Spirit—they catch fire. Keller invoked imagery from Jonathan Edwards, who said that it’s one thing to be an expert in honey and know all its properties, but it’s another to have tasted it. Rather than permitting us to move beyond the gospel, Keller beckoned us to move deeper into it—until we taste and see that the Lord is good.

[Benjamin] You were well acquainted with Keller’s ministry before this project, both his speaking and writing. Many of us are too. But you went down rabbit holes few have traveled, especially in the breadth of his preaching, and specifically his preaching before planting Redeemer Church in Manhattan. What is something new that you learned from his early preaching?

Matt: It was interesting to see how his preaching remained consistent in some ways but evolved in others. For example, I remember listening to a cassette tape of a 1977 sermon on Romans 5 in which 26-year-old Keller quoted from The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the local paper. In later decades, of course, he would be quoting from The New York Times. But that basic burden—to exegete not just Scripture but also the culture, in order to reach people’s hearts—was there from the early days.

In other ways his preaching developed over time. When he was serving in the small-town context of Hopewell, Virginia, his sermons didn’t hum with the theme of idolatry the way they would in Manhattan. Part of that is because he hadn’t yet read Martin Lloyd-Jones’s sermon on 1 John 5:21 (“Little children, keep yourselves from idols”) or David Powlison’s seminal essay “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair.’” Around the time Keller was planting Redeemer in New York, he was awakening to the centrality of idolatry in Scripture and how, at bottom, sin is a worship problem. That realization transformed his preaching.

[Benjamin] I feel like people always ask celebrities and influencers about their “morning routine.” I assume this gets asked because people believe that if we can just copy this or that practice, then we’ll get the same results. Of course it’s never that simple. Still, what is one practice of Keller that you have tried to include more in your life, and what results are you seeing?

[Matt] I want to deepen my prayer life just as Keller did over the course of decades. He was disciplined in morning, midday, and evening prayer. And yet, a few months before he died, an interviewer asked him to look back over 50 years of ministry and share one thing he wished he’d done differently. “That’s easy,” he replied. “I wish I had prayed more.” So even though prayer was something he taught on eloquently—and even practiced himself—he still sensed his need for deeper communion with the living God. Immersing myself in Keller has been freshly motivating in this regard.

[Benjamin] Bonus question, Matt. Was Keller a better preacher or writer? Why?

[Matt] He was a better preacher (and he’d say the same). Keller was a preacher who wrote more than a writer who preached. Contrast him, for example, with C. S. Lewis—a generational talent as a writer. Though Keller was a good writer, he wasn’t as gifted as Lewis. That said, Keller was unparalleled in his ability to preach to the heart in simple and compelling ways, while remaining biblically faithful and culturally attuned.

[Benjamin] Thank you, Matt, so much for all the work to prepare this book. I hope your work invites many new readers to the blessings of Keller’s ministry.

The Restoration of All Things: Cover, Title, and Table of Contents

About six years ago—almost to this exact week in October—something unexpected happened. I wrote an article for a website, and a publisher asked if I had any books I wanted to write. I for sure wanted to write books, but I couldn’t say one book idea burned in me beyond all others.

So I thought. I prayed. I consulted friends. And out came an idea for a book about the hope of the return of Christ, especially for those who are suffering. I won’t go into the details here about why that topic burned in a way others didn’t, but it did—and still does.

Well, that publisher initially showed enthusiasm but in the end didn’t want to sign the book. And that’s okay. It’s part of the process. By the way, I submitted the proposal the week Covid hit America, so it probably wasn’t the best timing for a new author, although I had no idea about the global disruption headed for us all. No one did but the Lord.

Every six months or so I would pull out the material for that book, see if I could make it better, and try again with another publisher. I got close a few times, but still no takers. Then, just last year, not one but two publishers wanted the book. Had I changed as an author? Had the publishing landscape changed? Had something else changed? Again, only the Lord knows. I’m thankful Baker Books picked up the book, has done a fantastic job, developing the content, and will release it on June 23, 2026.

Many of you have supported me over the years. You’ve read articles and other books, which has been wonderful. This next book, however, is being published by a traditional publisher, which is a first for me. I understand that doesn’t mean a lot to everyone, and for some, traditional publishing carries too much weight. But this is something I’m really excited about. If I were to use a sports analogy, it would be like playing college football at a small school and then getting drafted by a professional team.

Today I’d love to share the official title, cover, and table of contents with you.

This post isn’t about pre-orders or sales. That comes later. And I don’t actually feel greasy about marketing. Again, with so many of you encouraging me and wanting to help, it will be easy to post instructions on how to buy the book when the time comes.

For now, maybe you could just smile with me.

Title

The Restoration of All Things: How the Promise of Christ’s Return Brings Us Comfort for Today

Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction: This Train Is Bound for Glory
   1     Feasting for the Famished
   2     Rest for the Weary
   3     Bodies for the Broken
   4     Family for the Forsaken
   5     Justice for the Wronged
   6     Glorification for Strugglers
Conclusion: Loving His Appearing

Small Group Discussion Questions

* Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

How Fast Should a Preacher Preach Words if a Preacher Could Preach Words?

A longtime church member came through our office door just as I was leaving for a meeting. We didn’t have time to chat then, but the church member informed me that he “only understood half of my sermon because I talked way too fast.”

I nodded and said, “Thank you for saying that.” Then I added, “Someone else told me that same thing the other day.” During the greeting time at church a few weeks ago, someone did. A different member said she liked my preaching but that I need to slow down.

“Welp,” I told the member standing in the doorway, “Thanks, but I’ve gotta go.” I went to my meeting, but I’ve been pondering this feedback for weeks.

Looking at the last three sermons, apparently I’ve been preaching at a rate of 150–170 words per minute (wpm).

If you want details, the relevant numbers from my last three sermons are as follows. The first sermon that received the comment about preaching too fast, had 4,827 words and lasted 30:02, resulting in a rate of 161 words per minute (wpm). The next sermon had 4,508 words and lasted 30:24, for a rate of 148 wpm. The most recent sermon, which prompted the comment while I was standing in the church office doorway, had a whopping 7,062 words and lasted 44:02, for a rate of 172 wpm. (Preachers can see the note below on how I gathered the numbers.)

To give some context, a rate of 150 wpm parallels the rate of audiobooks on the normal setting, so my low-end is not objectively crazy fast for spoken words. However, preaching ain’t an audiobook. Preaching is a conversation, even if one in monologue form, and therefore should have moments with heightened pace and intensity, times when you raise your voice. But preaching, like conversations, should also have time for pauses and slower moments, time for ideas to simmer and settle, time for questions and convictions to form in the hearts and minds of the congregation. Preaching over 170 wpm doesn’t allow time for any of this. I suspect the church member who told me he “only understood half my sermon” spoke in hyperbole. But his point wasn’t wrong.

One of our associate pastors always seems to bring a word count to the pulpit larger than any of the other pastors, yet he manages to preach in a way that doesn’t make the congregation feel like we’re watching a Formula One race. Another pastor at church, however, says that he would preach for well over an hour to get through the same word count. It’s funny how the personality and temperament of each preacher can influence how others experience a sermon, whether as too slow, too fast, or the Goldilocks just right.

Anyway, that sermon of over 7,000 words had way too many words for me and for our congregation. Had I preached it correctly paced, the sermon should have lasted 55 minutes, not 44, well outside our norms. I typically aim to preach for 32–34 minutes and rarely go over 38 minutes.

The late British pastor and author John Stott has helpful insights on the ideal sermon length that go something like, “How long should a sermon be?” he asks. “A sermon might be longer or shorter, but it should feel like 20 minutes” (paraphrased from memory from Stott’s book Between Two Worlds). For me, when I preach for about 35 minutes, it seems people experience the sermon as only 20 minutes, if you know what I mean. Better preachers than me can preach for 55 minutes, and it feels like only 20. Others preach for 20, and, oh brother, it feels like 90.

With the recent lengthy sermon, I felt too close to my sermon to figure out how to shorten it. By “too close,” I mean that on those weeks when I end up writing a sermon late in the week and through the weekend, and my nose still touches the manuscript on Sunday, it’s hard to have the necessary macro perspective on which elements matter most and which matter least.

Early on that Sunday morning, I had an idea for making the sermon shorter—and better—but the cuts seemed too complicated to do effectively so close to gametime. I considered cutting my long opening illustration and replacing it with a key illustration from the body of the sermon. But then, I wondered, what would I do with the hole created in the body of the sermon? Safely amputating 500 words from an introduction while simultaneously operating on the body of the sermon requires time for pre-op, surgery, and recovery, none of which is available an hour before church starts and greeters have started to arrive.

When I was younger and first started preaching regularly, I paid closer attention to these pacing numbers, partly because I didn’t know how long my sermons might last but knew I needed to learn this part of preaching. From what I recall from those early days, I spoke at about 115 words per minute, with weddings and funerals closer to 90 words per minute, since those require a different tone and pace.

So why am I speaking faster now? Why have I been stuffing an extra 50 words a minute into my preaching? It’s hard to say for sure. I’m mulling over at least two answers.

First, the pressures from an already-too-full service affect my pace. A few weeks ago, when I looked at what we had planned, I saw we stuffed our two worship services tight, and I could tell my sermon length threatened to make it worse. Perhaps, I thought, I could make up for a few minutes by preaching, well, faster. This is dumb, I know. There’s a certain college cross country coach I’ve learned from, and he was once asked about his strategy for a national championship race. He used a car driving metaphor, replying his race strategy was, “Gas, gas, gas.” That might work for a race strategy for elite runners, but gas gas gas makes for a poor preaching strategy. The rapidity of my preaching probably made our service feel fuller than it actually was.

The second reason I could be preaching faster is that over the past few years, I’ve been listening to more sermons than I did before. On the weeks I preach, I might listen to a dozen sermons, often while lifting weights in the mornings. On weeks I’m not preaching, I listen to audiobooks or use the Speechify app. And during all of this, I never fail to crank the speed. Clearly this must be shaping (malforming?) my sense of normal.

In the end, I don’t know if there’s a universal answer to how fast a preacher should preach, any more than to the question of how long a preacher should preach. I do know the truth of the saying, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:6a). I’m thankful that those in our church love me and our church enough to risk wounding one of their leaders.

I wonder how much better I would be as a preacher—how much better any preacher would be—if loving feedback from friends in the pews met humility and teachability from preachers in the pulpit. I’d like to spend the rest of my ministry finding out.

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A note for preachers: In case you’re curious about how I gathered the numbers, I have manuscripts of my sermons, but I took the word count from the transcript generated by YouTube. If you’re a preacher who goes into the pulpit with a simple outline instead of a manuscript—and your church also uploads sermons to YouTube—you can get these numbers in just a few minutes. Just copy and paste the auto-generated transcript into a Word document, then divide by the total time. You’ll want to toggle off the timestamps first. For the sermon nerds out there still tracking with all this, I removed both the words and the time related to the Scripture reading before the sermon, which, as is our practice, is done by others. However, I did include my opening and closing prayers.

* Photo by milind bedwa on Unsplash

On “Finishing Well” and a “Shockingly Supernatural Ending”: Guest Posts at The Gospel Coalition and Gospel-Centered Discipleship

Today I have a guest post on two different websites. I didn’t coordinate it to be that way, but I’m thankful.

The first guest post is a book review for The Gospel Coalition. A scholar and pastor named D. A. Carson wrote a book about his father called Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson. The publisher, Crossway, recently published a new edition, and TGC asked me to review it. (It’s a great book, by the way.)

The second guest post is for Gospel-Centered Discipleship and is about the surprise ending of Paul’s letter in 1 Corinthians. Having preached through the letter for almost a year, when I got to the end of the letter, I would have expected Paul to be cold, perhaps angry, with the church. I was very wrong.

As appetizers, I’ll put the opening paragraphs from each article below. I’d love for you to click over and read them in full, even perhaps sharing them online.

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Why Finishing Well Matters More Than Visible Success: Review: ‘Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor’ by D. A. Carson

I already felt overbooked with weddings and studying for my ordination exams and a scheduled shoulder surgery when, unexpectedly, a key pastor left our church. Then the congregation put me in charge.

As often happens during pastoral transitions, some of our church members left. Yet I was shocked when many more people showed up, asking to take our membership classes and join our small groups. Our staff stretched and scrambled. The rapid growth made the season tough but invigorating.

I’ve often wondered how I would have reacted had the opposite happened. As an ordinary pastor, what would I have done if attendance had plummeted and finances had dwindled? I don’t know.

In Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson, Don Carson, cofounder of The Gospel Coalition and renowned New Testament scholar, tells his father’s story of faithfully serving for decades in a spiritual desert as a pastor, missionary, and caregiver. In the foreword to this republished edition, Mark Dever calls the book “a modern classic” (10). He’s right. It’s exactly the sort of book that needs to be widely read when every news cycle seems to include headlines about pastors leaving the ministry due to discouragement or disgrace.

This book encourages pastors who serve in normal-sized churches with uncertain and seemingly limited results, which tend to be most pastors. These are ordinary pastors, and Tom Carson was one of them. His story celebrates God’s blessings on an ordinary pastor, a happy father who loved his family, and a faithful leader who finished well. (To continue reading, click here.)

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The Shockingly Supernatural Ending of 1 Corinthians

Our church recently celebrated more child dedications than anyone on staff can remember. Commotion and joy and reverence and tears from parents and children filled the stage. But if I listed the names of the parents and children, the list would mean nothing to you. None are famous. You could search the internet and learn a few tidbits, but the list of people would still probably seem ordinary. Just names.

That’s often how people receive the list of names at the end of Paul’s letters. Most of them aren’t famous across the New Testament. Their names are just names.

But since I’ve been pastoring for the last dozen years in the same church, that list of names from our child dedications means more to me than just names. I can tell you which parents struggled with infertility and brutal miscarriages. I know that when some parents stood on stage praying that the church would become their family, they did so because their own family wouldn’t talk to them. I know which parents adopted out of the foster care system. I know the meanings of middle names. Staying in one church for twelve years creates this sort of knowledge.

Sometimes, however, this knowledge can make the relationships between shepherds and sheep more difficult, not easier. It’s easy to love people and pastors when we don’t really know each other. Casual attendance might let us think of a church as friendly and the pastors as nice. But meaningful, extended time together can reveal sin patterns. Such time often shows us blind spots others cannot, or will not, see in themselves. Familiarity can breed contempt more often than love.

When I came to the end of 1 Corinthians, after preaching through the book slowly for a year, I never expected the letter to end the way it does. Long ago, the list of names had seemed blah. When I read their names this time, however, having spent so much time staring at their blind spots and sin patterns, I expected the apostle Paul probably couldn’t stand them.

I was very wrong. (To continue reading, click here.)

* Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash 

Love and Mercy Meet Truth and Justice: 11 Quotes from Glenna Marshall’s Newest Book, “Known and Loved”

Years ago I led a funeral where a family member asked me to read Psalm 139 during the service. The daughter told me, “But stop before the weird parts.” The weird parts, she felt, were those parts of the famous psalm that speak of God’s punishment of his enemies.

I wouldn’t call those parts weird, but I understand why they need to be handled more carefully and don’t fit as well at most funeral services.

This particular psalm of King David includes lines that many Christians would find familiar, even if they didn’t realize they came from here. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you,” writes David, “for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13–14).

But this psalm is not merely for David. Rightly understood, the psalms are not so much an anthology of his private prayers and those from a few other authors. Rather, the psalms are the hymn book for all the people of God. The poems were crafted, set to music, and given for us all to sing and savor God. However, if we are to read them and believe them and sing them, we need to understand them—even the parts that seem weird.

Buy on Amazon

Popular author and speaker Glenna Marshall recently published a book with Moody Publishers titled Known and Loved: Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139. I’ve appreciated all of Marshall’s recent books, including this one.

Her book is not a long book, yet in the acknowledgments section, Marshall tells readers, “Of the books I’ve written so far, this one has been the most difficult to pen” (157). Trying to faithfully reflect the attributes of God—the fullness of all that our Creator is—kept her up at night.

I’m sure such reflection could fill all of us with holy anxiety if we really contemplated the gladness and gravity of God and were tasked with telling others about him faithfully. Marshall’s prayers and labors and, I suspect, even her trepidation, were not in vain. She has given readers humble, honest, and helpful reflections to consider that God knows all that can be known about his people, and he loves them anyway. The gospel of Jesus really is good news.

Below are eleven quotes from the book, one from each chapter, including chapter 7, where Marshall discusses how Christians might understand and embody prayers that curse our enemies.

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He sent Jesus to stand in your place at the cross. He didn’t save you in love and then scowl in displeasure when you didn’t deserve it. His love continues, no matter how poorly we grasp it. He loves to love you. That’s a weird sentence to write and an even weirder one to believe. He loves to love us.
(from Introduction, 15)

So, take all of that intimate past, present, and future knowledge that God has about me and you—and multiply it by billions. Trillions. I have no idea how many people have lived or will live throughout history, but He does. And He knows everything about them. From their life’s goals to the number of freckles on their skin—He has known them. From our curious idiosyncrasies to the outlandish thoughts that keep us awake at night—He is acquainted with all our ways.
(from chapter 1, 23)

We replace prayer with search engines, fusing together our trust in God with all the research the internet might produce. But is it really trust when you have all the answers? Does your constant search for knowledge bring true peace and trust in the Lord? Or does it fuel your anxiety as you second-guess every decision?
(from chapter 2, 42)

We don’t have a Savior who is distant or aloof or disconnected from the human experience. He knows what it is to be human, to be tempted, to feel the way we do. He sympathizes with our weaknesses. He doesn’t scowl, point fingers, or take back His propitiation.
(from chapter 3, 60)

If the death of a bird is noticed by God, how much more the suffering of His children? Your hidden suffering is seen by Him, for as our psalmist demonstrates, darkness is not dark to the Lord. Night shines as “bright as the day” with Him.
(from chapter 4, 72)

The unreliable narrator of my childhood and teen years told me a damaging story about myself that was colored by our culture’s unattainable standards of beauty. I struggled with various forms of disordered eating for years because of the one comment from a ten-year-old that I chose to believe with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Believing that one opinion about my body led me to weave a narrative about myself that shaped my heart and mind for decades. My mind was the protagonist; my body was the antagonist. But because I was an embodied soul, I was both hero and villain, locked in a war I was destined to lose.
(from chapter 5, 83)

The dashes on our future tombstones can’t capture all of God’s thoughts of us. The sins you have fought in your life don’t define His thoughts of you. Neither do the good things you have worked to achieve in this life, not ultimately. Here’s what matters about your life in the end: You were dead in your sins but He made you alive.
(from chapter 6, 108–9)

The apostle Paul tells us to bless those who persecute us and act kindly toward them. In the very same paragraph, he tells us why we can do this: “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Rom. 12:19, quoting Deut. 32:35). Read those words again and closely. This is both kindness and imprecation. This is how Christians are to think toward those who persecute them, who hate God and those who associate with His name. Don’t avenge yourself. Trust God to take care of it with His wrath. In the meantime, be kind to those who come against you. Paul braids the imprecatory prayer for God to avenge the wicked in His righteous wrath with the command to love and bless those who are mistreating us for our faith in Jesus. It’s so upside-down. Love and mercy meet truth and justice. This is the Christian way.
(from chapter 7, 118)

To anyone who pushes back against your bleak view of God’s love, you are armed with a stack of warnings against apostasy. Fear is your shield, and doubt is your sword. But they’ll crumble if you realize you’re giving yourself too much credit for your faithfulness to Jesus.
(from chapter 8, 132–3)

He has never left you and never will. He has delighted in you, and He has disciplined you, and He has loved you with an everlasting love.
(from chapter 9, 153)

* Photo by Alexey Sviridkin on Unsplash 

She Had an Iranian Passport

As I began writing this from the bedroom of my hotel in Istanbul, the Muslim prayers that piped through loudspeakers drowned the urban white noise of the massive city. The sound of honking car horns, revving motorcycle engines, and wailing police sirens all disappeared eerily.  

We had traveled to visit Turkish missionaries that our church has supported for many years. And I hope we continue supporting them for many more years. Although their ministry harvest might seem relatively small to some, they have their hands to the plow and labor not in vain.

I’ll say a bit more about Christianity and the country of Turkey at the end of this post, but I’d like to start elsewhere. The first reflections I had in Turkey prove to be the ones that linger loudest: The people of the world simultaneously share so much and so little.

Our sameness and differences hit me while standing in the passport line when the woman directly in front of us took three passports out of her purse. She kept one and handed the others to her children, a small boy in a stroller and a young girl standing beside her. The little girl’s suitcase appeared kid-sized and made of bright pink rubber. The woman had a giant mom-bag, and out of the top of the bag poked a red tube of Pringles.

All three of their maroon passports had the word IRAN embossed in gold on the cover. And it hit me that just weeks ago my country dropped bunker buster bombs on her country, at least that’s what I remember them being called in the news. President Trump said in his press conference that no other nation could have done what we did so spectacularly. I believe that. Yet I stood there wondering what the leader of her country told her. The day after the bombing the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, actually flew to Istanbul to give a press conference, perhaps using one of the airport runways our plane used. I hadn’t listened to what he said and had to Google his name to write this paragraph. My passport is dark blue.

Standing in line, I realized the woman and I share so much of what it means to be human—both made in God’s image, both scarred by the fall, both well-acquainted with wrangling young children through an airport. We both need clothing and shelter. We need love and hope. We need Jesus. Our children like Pringles.

Yet she and I also share so little of our experience of the world, the same world but a very big and variegated world. Worlds within the world exist.

The temperature outside in Turkey rose above ninety degrees, and it felt at least eighty degrees in the airport. My wife wore a sleeveless shirt. The woman wore a full-length covering and a scarf over her head. Probably one-third of the women in the airport wore something similar.

How were this woman and I supposed to feel toward each other? We share human sensibilities, like the innate desire to seek transcendence in purposes larger than our own, for example. We both want to protect our loved ones. We both struggle to live moral lives.

Yet our religious sensibilities differ greatly—as did, I’m sure, our civic sensibilities about pride toward our respective nations. What place should healthy patriotism hold for each of us? More to the point, how should we respond when her impulses and mine, many of them subconscious, conflict? The Augustinian view of rightly ordered loves could help us if we could agree on the right order.

Standing there, I knew none of our likely differences could ever be discussed without an interpreter. Yet even with a shared understanding of words, how would one even begin to cross such a bridge? Or is it more like ten bridges? Maybe twenty? How does one ask another person whether it bothers them or blesses them to know that Isfahan no longer has weapons-grade uranium?

I tried to smile at her son. He didn’t smile back. They all looked super sleepy. So was I.

The time arrived for her to hand over her passport. Without any questions, the police officer flipped to the proper page, thudded the stamp, and let her and her children into Turkey. Next, he did the same for us. Never will I see her again in this life and likely in the next, though I pray otherwise.

Returning to where I began this post, juxtaposed with the beauty of a place like Istanbul, I struggle to comprehend the scale of spiritual lostness in Turkey. Maybe one Christian lives among every ten thousand people. The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, for example, exist as ruins scattered across this country we call Turkey. However, today, several of those seven cities have no church preaching the gospel. Their lampstand is gone. A city like Sardis (now called Sart), has a handful of Christians, I’m told, but no church. Contrast this with my context. I live a long way from the Bible Belt, but from my house in Harrisburg, I can put on my running shoes and easily jog past six churches I would gladly send any believer to visit.

When we worshiped in Istanbul on the Lord’s Day with our missionary friends, nearly one hundred believers filled the room, a veritable mega church. I didn’t know most of the songs, but I did smile after the call to worship when we sang a Chris Tomlin classic translated into Turkish. We closed the service with “Shout to the Lord,” and the phrase “all the earth” took on more meaning in the lines, “all the earth let us sing, power and majesty, praise to the King.”

I’m finding myself praying like never before that all the people of the earth—in all our differences and in all our sameness—would know that God sent his only Son into the world so that whosoever believes in him might have eternal life. Or to say John 3:16 in Turkish, “Zira Allah dünyayı öyle sevdi ki, biricik Oğlunu verdi; ta ki, ona iman eden her adam helâk olmasın, ancak ebedî hayatı olsun.”

* Photo by Asal Mshk on Unsplash

The Contemporary Church Has a Giant Blind Spot to the Return of Christ

When I say the contemporary church has a giant blind spot to the return of Christ, I’m not just pointing the finger at other churches. Recently, I did a  deep dive into all the lyrics of all the songs we sing on Sundays, and I wrote about how rarely our church sings about Christ’s return.

The reality of our blind spot hit me again last week in a different context. I’ll explain.

Our church evaluates potential members for our pastor-elder team through several steps, one of which is an extensive theological examination. The test consists of almost seventy questions that cover a variety of topics, ranging from classic trinitarianism and the age of the earth to the practice of spiritual gifts and Reformed soteriology. We also ask about contemporary issues such as marriage, sexuality, and systemic racism. Some of the questions have what we consider to be right and wrong answers, as when we ask about the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Other questions tend to fall into the category of philosophy of ministry, which help us assess ministry alignment and, therefore, are less about right and wrong and more about wisdom and passion.

Anyway, as I spoke with another staff member about a potential pastor-elder joining our team, the conversation arose about his particular view of the end times, which, from the top of our minds, we didn’t know. “Oh,” I said, “I have his theological survey right here. Let’s check that to see.”

So we did. We read all the questions and all his answers. And we still had no idea of his views on the end times from our theological survey, because, apparently, we didn’t consider it necessary to include a question on that topic.

And my oversight is even worse than it sounds. Not only did we not ask a single question, but neither of us even realized that we hadn’t asked. After a decade of using the theological survey, I hadn’t even noticed.

This is what I mean when I say we, not just the contemporary church, have a giant blind spot to the return of Christ. We tend to think so little of the end times that we don’t even ask a single question about it on a theological exam ostensibly created to explore important topics and surface potential disagreements. Perhaps because many of us grew up in a culture of end-times excess we have subconsciously swung the pendulum the other way.

My anecdote isn’t to complain or shame. One of my best friends wrote the original draft of the theological exam, and I talked about this with him before writing. My hope in this post is to be part of the solution. Rather than the return of Christ remaining in our blind spot, I want the blazingly bright promise of the victorious rider on the white horse to become one of our guiding lights along the path of obedience. Certainly other lights guide our way too, but without the return of Christ, the path of obedience will only be darker and more precarious. And I know I need all the resources God offers. You probably do too.

I recently submitted a book manuscript to a publisher about the return of Christ. It won’t be released until the summer of 2026, so this is not a promotion for the book. I simply bring up the writing context to say that during the process I spent over a year ransacking the Bible for all the passages that discuss the end times in general and the return of Christ specifically. The final iteration of my list of end-times passages had nearly seven thousand words. I printed the list despite the size, and many mornings before my daily prayer and Bible reading, I’d spend a few minutes reading a page from the list and pondering the truths.

A list of verses that long could seem a bit overwhelming, so I refined it, aiming to make the list as focused as possible on those passages that seem to have the most direct encouragement. I’ve put the list of forty-nine Bible passages below.

I also compiled the verses into a short ebook, so that you can easily have them in one place. If you’d like a copy, sign up below, and I’ll send it to you. I’m calling the booklet Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ.

As you and I store up truth about the return of Christ in our hearts, God will strengthen our faith and equip us for every good work as we await that glorious day.

Obedience always demands effort. But following God gets more hopeful and less precarious when additional light shines on our path.

“Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).

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49 Passages about the Return of Christ:

1. Matthew 24:29–31

2. Matthew 26:64

3. John 14:1–3

4. Acts 1:11

5. Acts 17:30–31

6. Romans 8:18–24

7. Romans 14:10–12

8. Romans 16:20

9. 1 Corinthians 1:7–8

10. 1 Corinthians 4:5

11. 1 Corinthians 11:26

12. 1 Corinthians 13:12

13. 1 Corinthians 15:50–58

14. 1 Corinthians 16:21–22

15. 2 Corinthians 1:14

16. 2 Corinthians 5:8–11

17. Philippians 1:6

18. Philippians 2:9–11

19. Philippians 2:16

20. Philippians 3:20–21

21. Colossians 3:3–6

22. 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10

23. 1 Thessalonians 2:19

24. 1 Thessalonians 3:12–13

25. 1 Thessalonians 4:15–18

26. 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24

27. 2 Thessalonians 1:6–10

28. 2 Thessalonians 2:8–10

29. 1 Timothy 6:13–16

30. 2 Timothy 4:1–8

31. Titus 2:12–14

32. Hebrews 9:23–28

33. Hebrews 10:24–25

34. James 5:1–10

35. 1 Peter 1:3–21

36. 1 Peter 4:7, 12–13

37. 1 Peter 5:1–5

38. 2 Peter 1:16–19

39. 2 Peter 2:9

40. 2 Peter 3:1–13

41. 1 John 3:2–3

42. Jude 1:17–21, 24–25

43. Revelation 1:1–20

44. Revelation 11:15

45. Revelation 19:11–16, 20

46. Revelation 20:1–10

47. Revelation 21:1–4

48. Revelation 22:1–5

49. Revelation 22:12–20

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* Photo by Tobias Stonjeck on Unsplash

I Reviewed All the Lyrics Our Church Has Sung This Year and Noticed a Troubling Pattern

Recently, I wrote about the music that most churches sing on Sundays and how it has changed over the years. And I don’t mean that music has changed in obvious stylistic ways. I mean in terms of the content of our songs, specifically that today we do not often sing about the return of Christ.

Matthew Westerholm, a professor of worship, did his doctoral research comparing extensive collections of worship songs from our era and previous eras. “Among many similarities,” he notes, “one difference was striking: Our churches no longer sing about Christ’s second coming as much as we used to.”

While reading D. A. Carson’s book about prayer, I noticed he made a similar point back in the early 90s (Praying with Paul, 27–29). He asks rhetorically how many congregations sing with fervor and with anticipation about Christ’s second coming? The implied answer is not many. Then, to prove his point, he quotes at length two old hymns explicitly about the second coming. Not only had I never sung the hymns that he highlights as well-known examples, but I had never even heard of them.

This got me thinking not so much about the broader church in America and beyond, but about our own church here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. How much do we sing about the return of Christ?

I asked our worship pastor for the list of all the songs we’ve sung together this year. The number stands at fifty-eight different songs. Some songs we sang frequently, such as “His Glory and Our Good” by CityAlight, which became somewhat of an anthem for us as we preached through 1 Corinthians last year. Several others we only sang once.

When I looked at the list, about two-thirds of the songs we sang were written in the last fifteen years. I thought fifteen years would serve well enough as an arbitrary time marker for what constitutes a “new” song. The rest of our songs were older. The modern classic “In Christ Alone” is more than twenty years old. Other songs, like “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy,” are almost two hundred years old.

When I think about the indictment made by Professor Westerholm that most churches do not sing about the return of Christ as much as they used to, I checked to see if our modern songs followed that trend. Upon reviewing all the lyrics, I found out he is right. Our church hardly sings about the return of Christ, at least explicitly.

If you broaden the criteria to include songs that generally speak about a Christian’s death and resurrection, as well as our bright future with God and his people, then we actually sing a number of those. Consider the song, “Abide,” which goes,

When I pass through death as I enter rest,
I depend on You, I depend on You
For eternal life to be raised with Christ,
I depend on You, I depend on You.
(written by Aaron Williams, Aaron Keyes, and Jake Fauber)

These lines clearly lift our eyes toward eternity. Also consider “Behold the Lamb.”

When the age of death is done
We’ll see Your face, bright as the sun
We’ll bow before the King of Kings
Oh God, forever we will sing
(written by Kristian Stanfill, Melodie Malone, and Phil Wickham)

The modern hymn “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death” by Keith and Kristyn Getty and Matt Papa is filled with lyrics centered on eternity and celebrates the well-known first question of the Heidelberg Catechism. Sandra McCracken’s song “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” certainly looks toward our eternal feasting. Additionally, the songs “On That Day” and “Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me,” both by CityAlight, emphasize the theme of eternity. We sang all of these multiple times.

Also worth mentioning is “The Lord Is My Salvation” by Keith & Kristyn Getty, which has clear lines about the hope of resurrection.

And when I reach my final day
He will not leave me in the grave
But I will rise, He will call me home
The Lord is my salvation
(written by Nathan Nockels, Jonas Myrin, Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty)

However, when I examined the lyrics, I noticed that very few of the modern songs we sing on Sunday at our church have the explicitness about the return of Christ found in “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” by Edward Mote from the 1800s. “When he shall come with trumpet sound,” the hymn goes, “O may I then in him be found.” Or consider the lines, “Lord, haste the day” from the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.”

Indeed, out of the thirty-six modern songs we have sung this year, I found only three that include lines about the return of Christ. The hymn “Christus Victor (Amen)” by the Gettys, Bryan Fowler, and Matt Boswell contains some wonderful lines, such as,

O Most High, King of the nations
Robed in praise, crowned with splendor
On that day who will not tremble?
When You stand, Christ the Victor
Who was, and is, and is forever

The language of “on that day” is biblical shorthand for the return of Christ (see 1 Cor. 3:13; Heb. 10:25).

The song “O Praise the Name (Anástasis)” by Hillsong also has overt lyrics about the second coming. Anástasis, by the way, is the Greek word for resurrection.

He shall return in robes of white,
The blazing Son shall pierce the night.
And I will rise among the saints,
My gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
(written by Benjamin Hastings, Dean Ussher, and Marty Sampson)

Our church has also enjoyed singing “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery,” which speaks explicitly of the second advent.

What a foretaste of deliverance
How unwavering our hope
Christ in power resurrected
As we will be when He comes
(written by Matt Boswell, Michael Bleecker, and Matt Papa)

If the Bible had little to say about the return of Christ, then it would make sense for churches to sing little about it. However, the Bible has much to say about the return of Christ; I would guess that we could find over one hundred references to it in the New Testament. Part of what it means for a Christian to grow in maturity must involve consuming a well-rounded theological diet, not only through personal Bible reading and preaching but also in our Sunday singing.

Let me come back to D. A. Carson again as he writes about a passage in 2 Thessalonians 1. “We are losing our anticipation of the Lord’s return, the anticipation that Paul shows is basic to his thought.” Then he adds, “Even though we do not disavow central truths, for many of us their power has been eviscerated. The prospect of the Lord’s return in glory, the anticipation of the wrap-up of the universe as we know it, the confidence that there will be a final and irrevocable division between the just and the unjust—these have become merely creedal points for us, instead of ultimate realities that even now are life-transforming” (Praying with Paul, 27).

I do not expect my blog post to have much effect on those singers and songwriters who will shape the next generation of the church because I don’t know many of them. However, I encourage anyone reading this who possesses these skills and aspirations to serve the Lord and the church by providing us with more songs and hymns that celebrate Christ’s return.

We cannot completely blame the worship leaders and pastors of our church for not singing much about the return of Christ. Our leaders thoughtfully select the best theological songs that can also be sung congregationally. Unfortunately, there simply are not that many new songs available that cover this territory.

But as much as the worship leaders and pastors of our church (and other churches) have influence over the theological diet in our preaching and singing within our local contexts, let us approach this with a focus on preaching and singing about all that God has said in his Word. May it never be that the promise of the return of Christ becomes for us, as Carson puts it, a mere creedal point, something we might acknowledge , yet also something that causes us to yawn.

* Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Persevering in Ministry and Publishing: A Podcast Interview

Every so often, I share a post on my blog about a recent podcast interview. This spring, my friends Josh Ott and Emily Gardner invited me to be on their show Church Chat. The three of us have known each other for the last twelve years because we are part of the same region in our church denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America.

You can listen to the podcast episode here, “Persevering in Ministry and Publishing with Benjamin Vrbicek” (Apple, Spotify, and YouTube).

Their Church Chat podcast can be, admittedly, a little goofy. I actually like that about them. They started the interview with an extended game of “two truths and a lie.” This might give you the impression we never get to a more substantive conversation. But that would be wrong. We explored some of the hardest questions in ministry. For example, how do you keep going in life and ministry when you don’t think you can?

Many of my worst ministry challenges occurred in the first summer of Covid. Thankfully, nearly five years have passed since that difficult season. I did not realize the extent to which Josh, one of the co-hosts, had faced hardships in his church, which even led him to wrestle with his call to pastoral ministry. On one fateful Christmas Eve, Josh’s wife looked at him and said something like, “Why aren’t you getting ready?” Josh told his wife, “Because I’m not going.” He was supposed to preach at that service, by the way.

Josh did go to church and he did preach. But after that night, he took drastic steps over the next few months to pursue health.

If there is a common thread in each of our experiences of struggle and perseverance in ministry, it is the importance of churches having godly, volunteer pastor-elders. Were it not for the humility, kindness, and wisdom of the leaders at each of our churches, those seasons might have unfolded differently, and perhaps neither of us would be pastoring.

In the interview, I mention several ways my friend Mike Grenier helped me, a volunteer pastor at our church at the time. I did not get to mention it in the interview, but there were also several long phone calls with my dad during those seasons. He kept bringing up the ministry metaphor of an ox with too much weight on his shoulders. “The problem isn’t with the ox or the work of plowing,” he said. “It’s just there is way too much load on the kart.” The metaphor helped me and our leadership team reevaluate what a pastor should do amid all the work he could do.

In the interview, I also discuss writing and publishing, sharing my perspective on “starting small in publishing.” I affectionately, though typically only privately, refer to starting small as guerrilla warfare. The metaphor sorta works, sorta doesn’t. I’ll let you parse it out.

Before concluding this post, I would like to share a brief collection of other life and writing updates.

The last six weeks have been some of the most intense yet also meaningful times in recent years. My oldest daughter just graduated from high school; my wife and I completed another successful season of coaching track and field; three staffing roles changed at our church as we commissioned one associate pastor to take a new position elsewhere; I finished writing the first draft of my book; and in a few days, it’s our twentieth wedding anniversary. A lot of normal things occurred too, like cars visiting the mechanic, and another attempt by me to explore once again the chronic, mysterious pain I experience with food, this time with a new doctor.

Speaking of the book, I am incredibly grateful that after five years of hard work, I submitted my manuscript on the hope of Christ’s return. This will be my first traditionally published book. The manuscript is currently with the acquisition editor, and the initial feedback has been encouraging. I have already finished my part in supporting the marketing team, and they have begun developing the official title and cover. Sometime this winter, Baker Books will open the book for pre-order, and, Lord willing, you can have the book in the summer of 2026. Publishing has a long arc.

In the meantime, I am taking the month of June to reboot my website and email system. More on that later. I will also be giving away a short ebook that I’m calling Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ. During the research process, I had compiled a list of nearly one hundred passages related to the end times, and it was a blessing to spend a few months reading over them in my morning devotionals. I hope sharing the ebook will help others eagerly await his second coming (Heb. 9:28).

* Photo by John Nupp on Unsplash

When He Shall Come with Trumpet Sound

Today we speak less often about the return of Jesus than we did in the past. This neglect in Christian conversation and in Christian preaching affects our singing on Sundays. And our singing on Sundays certainly affects our living on all the other days.

I doubt any of us know definitively and exhaustively the reasons why, but I suspect part of our aversion to discussing the return of Jesus stems from an overreaction to perceived end-time obsession. Some Christians see every detail about the end times as crystal clear. That’s all they seem to talk about. Other Christians, myself included, look at this certainty and feel that the answers are too clean and tidy, maybe even a little contrived. This can lead to mistakenly overcorrecting by hardly ever talking about the second coming of Christ.

Perhaps our neglect also stems from the relative affluence of the Western world. In our wealth, we forget that we need a second coming to usher in heaven on earth. We try not to even think about our death. This is a relatively new phenomenon. “Throughout the history of the church, from the desert fathers to the Puritans, Christians have used the practice of meditating on death,” writes professor Kelly M. Kapic. “That is partly because the question was not about the possibility of pain but how to live with it.” Building on the work of a historian, Kapic notes, “Prior to modernity the question was not ‘a choice between pain and sickness or relief, but between a willing and a reluctant endurance of pain and sickness,’ since all were constantly in some level of physical discomfort” (Kapic, Embodied Hope, 60). To say it differently, only in our modern era has the desire for perfect health been anything but a fairytale. And the fairytale can cause us to neglect looking to the hope that God will bring in the end.

The experience of the cloud of witnesses, whether in the Bible or from the first century to modern times, was strikingly different. And this neglect of the afterlife and second coming has influenced the worship music we sing together when we gather. So many of the classic hymns so cherished by older generations of Christians featured climactic final stanzas that lifted eyes to the promise of heaven.

Consider the classic hymn “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” by Edward Mote from the 1800s. After a few verses that explore the trials we experience in this life and how Christ remains a rock and anchor for believers, the hymn celebrates the return of Christ with a trumpet. “When he shall come with trumpet sound,” we sing, “O may I then in him be found.” These lines celebrate a theme Paul writes about often, as in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (see also 1 Thess. 4:13–18).

Matthew Westerholm, a professor of worship, conducted his doctoral research on this subject, comparing extensive collections of worship songs from our era and previous eras. “Among many similarities,” he notes, “one difference was striking: Our churches no longer sing about Christ’s second coming as much as we used to.”

I do not want to argue with anyone about the musical beauty of hymns compared to modern worship songs. And I do not want to dictate what churches should or should not sing. But when examining the lyrics of most modern songs, many churches that sing for thirty minutes during their weekly gatherings include few songs, if any, whose lyrics explicitly direct believers to the hope of the end. This should not be.

To shift focus to God’s blessings now, to the exclusion of his blessings at the end, we do not lose a part of Christianity; we lose Christianity. Consider the analogy of the human body. In a tragic accident, a person might lose a finger or an arm and still remain very much alive. We cannot, however, lose the function of vital organs, such as our brain, heart, or lungs, without dying.

When the apostle Paul considers the implications of losing the doctrine of the physical resurrection of believers—the event that happens upon the return of Christ and when the trumpet sounds—Paul states that without the future resurrection, Christian preaching becomes in vain and misrepresents God, while the Christian faith becomes meaningless and futile, leaving us to perish forever in our sins and become the most pitiable of people (1 Cor. 15:12–19). The stakes could not be higher.

Of course, rather than complete avoidance of the indispensable doctrine of the return of Christ and the life everlasting, something more partial typically happens. We may not turn off the faucet completely, but we should not be surprised by our thirst when we only allow a trickle.

To quote Kelly Kapic again, “When the homes of believers are hit by chronic pain or mental illness, they often find the contemporary church strangely unhelpful, even hurtful” (38).

Perhaps songs that major on God’s blessings in the here and now, coupled with little emphasis on God’s blessings in the end, contribute to why suffering believers often find the church so unhelpful. Indeed, from a biblical perspective, to be the most helpful to believers suffering in the now, we must remember that the truth we regularly confess about the end—and the truth we regularly sing about the end—changes how we live today and every day. We must believe it all, and sing it all, to have it all.  

* Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash

In Heaven Even Their Evil Footprints Shall Not Be Known

I’m nearing the final stages of completing a full rough draft for my next book. It’s about how the promise of the return of Christ brings hope to every believer, especially to those who are suffering. Unfortunately, it won’t be for sale until June of 2026.

In the meantime, I wanted to share that the project gave me the blessing of reading over and over the passages in the Bible about the end of everything. I also had the blessing of reading a bunch of good books on the topic. A British pastor named J.C. Ryle has become one of my favorite writers from the past, and I loved his collection of remarks about the hope of heaven.

In one place, he writes about God’s complete removal of the various types of evil from heaven such that “even their footprints will not be known.” What a sweet promise. Here’s the quote in it’s fuller context.

There are many things about heaven revealed in Scripture which I purposely pass over. That it is a prepared place for a prepared people; that all who are found there will be of one mind and of one experience, chosen by the same Father, washed in the same blood of atonement, renewed by the same Spirit; that universal and perfect holiness, love, and knowledge will be the eternal law of the kingdom—all these are ancient things, and I do not mean to dwell on them.

Suffice it to say, that heaven is the eternal presence of everything that can make a saint happy, and the eternal absence of everything that can cause sorrow.

Sickness, and pain, and disease, and death, and poverty, and labor, and money, and care, and ignorance, and misunderstanding, and slander, and lying, and strife, and contention, and quarrels, and envies, and jealousies, and bad tempers, and infidelity, and skepticism, and irreligion, and superstition, and heresy, and schism, and wars, and fightings, and bloodshed, and murders, and law suits—all, all these things shall have no place in heaven.

On earth, in this present time, they may live and flourish. In heaven even their footprints shall not be known. (J.C. Ryle, Heaven: Priceless Encouragements on the Way to our Eternal Home, 8).

* Photo by Anya Smith on Unsplash

Book Launch: Broken but Beautiful

People have been pointing out church-hurt for a long time. Over fifty years ago, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “With much of this criticism of the Church one has, of course, to agree. There is so much that is wrong with the Church—traditionalism, formality and lifelessness and so on—and it would be idle and utterly foolish to deny this” (Preaching and Preachers, 8). I suppose we could grab similar quotes from the Reformation era or any era in church history. We can even find similar sentiments in the New Testament itself. “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together,” Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor. 11:17). Indeed, over two and a half thousand years ago, God told his people, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” (Amos 5:21).

Certainly, there is a lot of junk that happens in the local church. But 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. 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.

Buy on Amazon

I worked with Gospel-Centered Discipleship to bundle some of our favorite essays about the beauty of the bride of Christ and put them into a book called Broken but Beautiful. The book launches today!

We adapted the book’s title from the first article by Glenna Marshall. She learned in deeper ways the beauty of the church during the unexpected death of a church member and the way her church served together in the days that followed.

As I think back to my own life, I think of a time sixteen years ago when my oldest son was born. The birth did not go well. There was an evening and morning of hard labor, after which the umbilical cord wrapped around my son’s neck, and they did an emergency c-section. Mom and baby, in the end, were fine—praise God. But recovery from the trauma induced by a night of labor and the emergency surgery lasted weeks. Then postpartum depression bit like a rabid dog that wouldn’t let go. But before postpartum, right when we got home from the hospital, everyone got the flu, including everyone who came to stay with us and help. Yet this is the time, my wife and I often say, that we learned when the church was the church. So many people helped and cooked and cleaned and cared. They sat with my wife when I eventually had to go back to work. We no longer live in that same city, but we saw God’s blessings in that local church so strongly that a dozen years later we named our youngest son after that church.

In the providence of God, somehow you’re reading this email. 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—we hope these stories will minister to you.

I put the table of contents for the book down below, so you can see all the authors and the entries.

You can buy the book on Amazon’s website, here. If your church would like to purchase books at a significant bulk discount, when you buy twenty on the publisher’s website, they are only $5 each! You can do that here.

As an author with a small platform, it would mean a lot to me if you’d buy a copy and consider leaving a short Amazon review. Those reviews help a ton. Seriously. And the review only needs to be a sentence or two.

Amazon paperback link

GCD Bulk purchase link

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Table of Contents

        Preface | Benjamin Vrbicek     vii

1. She Is Broken, and She Is Beautiful | Glenna Marshall     1

2. Missing Church Is Missing Out | Timothy M. Shorey     7

3. How God Humbled Me through a Church I Didn’t Agree With | Lara d’Entremont     11

4. The Dearest Place on Earth | James Williams     17

5. The Unexpected Blessing of a Rural Church | Stephanie O’Donnell     21

6. The Local Church Helps Rid Me of Morbid Introspection | Chrys Jones   27

7. The Church Is Not a Meritocracy | Jessica Miskelly     33

8. A Family of Redemption for Children of Divorce | Chase Johnson     39

9. The Warmth of the Local Church for the Suffering | Brianna Lambert     45

10. The Singles Among Us Deserve a Better Church Culture | Denise Hardy     51

11. Love Your Church Anyway | Heidi Kellogg     57

12. For the Love of Liturgy | Erin Jones     63

13. God’s Good Design of the Local Church | James Williams     69

14. Finding Beauty in the Local Church in Our Age of Social Media | Cassie Pattillo     75

15. The Hands of Grace | Amber Thiessen     79

16. How the Church Shapes Us on Our Faith Journey | Rob Bentz     83

17. On the Other Side of the Church Split | Abigail Rehmert     89

18. Dear New Mother, Embrace the Body of Christ | Lara d’Entremont     95

19. The Gold Mine in the Local Church | Chrys Jones     101

20. The Local Church Is a Sandbox | Timarie Friesen     105

21. Unless the Seed Dies | Tom Sugimura     111

22. Redeeming Love Has Been My Theme and Shall Be Until I Die | Timothy M. Shorey     115

        Epilogue | Jeremy Writebol     119

         Notes     121
        Author Bios     123
        About Gospel-Centered Discipleship     127
        Resources from Gospel-Centered Discipleship     129

Reading List 2024

My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year. If you’d like to see the previous posts, you can do so here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Mostly I do this for accountability. But I also know a few other book nerds who enjoy these sorts of posts. For what it’s worth, using my Excel spreadsheet it seems my total from 2013–2024 includes 804 books and 209,316 pages. But who’s counting?

I guess I am.

In these posts I typically offer a few myopic comments that, I hope, offer some color to what would otherwise be a boring list. I figure some discussion is better than none, even if I end up ignoring stuff a few people might have considered more important.

Buy on Amazon

I’ll start by mentioning Harrison Scott Key and his memoirs. I have three of his memoirs on the list, the gateway book being his most recent and seemingly most widely read book, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. I have to give a spoiler alert and trigger warning in case you venture to read the book: he writes about his wife’s affair and portrays the agony in vivid, raw descriptions. While I liked the book, I struggled with it for several reasons. The language is a bit rough in some places and pretty sarcastic in other places—even though I understand why both the curse words and sarcasm are authentic to the author and his experience. But the deeper reason I struggled with the book is that it maps too closely with a real-time situation I know about in a church—and even though the book ultimately offers more hope than despair and exalts the importance of real, Christian community, the proximity to reality made it hard to read.

Moving on, a good friend of mine encouraged me to read two Wendell Berry books about the people who belong to the fictitious town of Port William (Hannah Coulter and The Memory of Old Jack). I’d only read Jaber Crow before when we read it for a church book club, but that was almost ten years ago. If time allowed, I’d read all the novels and short stories about the Port William membership, as it’s called. Maybe someday there will be time. (Thank you, Joe, for suggesting these books and the heartfelt discussions of them.)

Buy on Amazon

There’s been lots of appreciative buzz in my pastor circles about The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt, which is sort of strange that the book is getting this kind of reception among Christian pastors because Haidt is an atheist. But he’s a strange atheist; he’s warm to religion, even evangelical Christianity, in a way that strikes me as both wonderful and odd. In the book, Haidt persuasively argues that two trends are causing massive problems, namely, overparenting in the real world and a lack of parenting and oversight in the online world. These problems manifest themselves in especially disturbing ways among those who became teenagers after 2010 and the advent of the smartphone. At alarming rates, young girls increasingly tend toward depression and suicide, while young boys tend toward porn and passivity. I encourage you to read the book. His common-sense applications in light of these trends seem sensible and wise (for example, no smartphones or social media for people under the age of sixteen). Someday in the not-too-distant future, I believe we’ll view ubiquitous smartphone usage the way we now view smoking on airplanes.

As has been the case a few times in previous years, I wrote several of the books on my reading list. And this year, all the ones on the list written by me are currently unpublished—and maybe always will be. The first unpublished book I’m calling The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (A Memoirish Essay to Encourage Christian Writers). In this book I tell the story of how I became a writer, despite the fact that when I was in high school I hated both reading and writing. (It’s one of the reasons I chose mechanical and aerospace engineering as my college major. I figured I wouldn’t have to read as much.) I really love this book project, even though it’s gotten mixed reviews from the handful of people who have seen early drafts. Not sure if I can fix that or if it is anything that necessarily has to be fixed. I’m currently thinking I’ll self-publish it sometime in 2027. That’s highly subject to change. Right now, it sits at 50k words. The second unpublished book on the list that I wrote is Fire Hammer Rain: Reflections on the Life of the Word of God in the Life of the Preacher. Basically this is a diary of what I’m learning and experiencing as a preacher. I hope many years from now I’ll write more about preaching that will be published, so I’m starting to collect thoughts now.

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Toward the end of the year, I started the research phase for my current book project, a book about the return of Christ, so you’ll see some books with that theme toward the bottom of the list. (The lists always go in chronological order of when I read each book, by the way.) The working title is The Last Shall Be First: How the Return of Christ Makes Everything Sad Untrue. My hope is that it will encourage Christians, especially those suffering. The book will be my first traditionally published book. It’s scheduled to be released with Baker Books in the summer of 2026. The first draft of the manuscript is due May 1 of this year, so I’ll be busy finishing that in the spring. Among the books on the topic that I’ve read so far, a clear standout is Chris Davis’s book Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today. His book is so good. I hope I can write something half as helpful.

One final book I’d love to mention. It’s called Broken but Beautiful: Reflections on the Blessings of the Local Church. This book comes out with Gospel-Centered Discipleship in just a few weeks . . . and I’m the general editor! I’m really happy with it. I’ll say more about the book when it launches, but it’s some of the best writing we had on our website about the local church.

Okay, the end.

Did you have any favorites from last year? Let me know in the comments below.

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Books per Year

Pages per Year

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

1. The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (currently unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)

2. Murder Your Darlings by Roy Peter Clark (352 pages)

3. Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic by David Epstein (368 pages)

4. Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America by Daniel Vaca (336 pages)

5. Can Women Be Pastors? (Church Questions) by Greg Gilbert (64 pages)

6. Be True to Yourself by Matt Fuller (192 pages)

7. Male and Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage by Denny Burk, Colin Smothers, and David Closson (136 pages)

8. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (304 pages)

9. How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy by Terran Williams (400 pages)

10. The Blueprint of Grace: Seeing and Submitting to God’s Design for Sanctification by Robert Allen (122 pages)

11. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (288 pages)

12. Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today by Chris Davis (240 pages)

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

14. Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel James (208 pages)

15. Why Should I Be Baptized? (Church Questions) by Bobby James (64 pages)

16. How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key (320 pages)

17. The World’s Largest Man: A Memoir by Harrison Scott Key (368 pages)

18. The Preacher’s Portrait: Five New Testament Word Studies by John Stott (119 pages)

19. Congratulations, Who Are You Again?: A Memoir by Harrison Scott Key (368 pages)

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

21. Watership Down by Richard Adams (640 pages)

22. The Art of Stability: How Staying Present Changes Everything by Rusty McKie (155 pages)

23. Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World by Joe Rigney (120 pages)

24. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry (190 pages)

25. Finish Line Leadership: Setting the Pace in Following Jesus by Dave Kraft (224 pages)

26. The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (currently unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)

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

28. The Memory of Old Jack (Port William) by Wendell Berry (176 pages)

29. Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (352 pages)

30. Church Planter: Nine Essentials for Being Faithful and Effective by Tony Merdia (194 pages)

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

32. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (368 pages)

33. Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today by Chris Davis (240 pages)

34. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (304 pages)

35. Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination by Eugene Peterson (224 pages)

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

37. Heavenward: How Eternity Can Change Your Life on Earth by Cameron Cole (200 pages)

38. From a High Mountain: 31 Reflections on the Character and Comfort of God by Timothy M. Shorey (157 pages)

39. Are We Living in the Last Days?: Four Views of the Hope We Share about Revelation and Christ’s Return by Bryan Chapell (256 pages)

40. Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today by John Stott (320 pages)

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

42. Fire Hammer Rain: Reflections on the Life of the Word of God in the Life of the Preacher (unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (150 pages)

43. Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ by John Piper (304 pages)

44. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (400 pages)

45. The Great DeChurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge (272 pages)

46. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright (352 pages)

47. Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation by Nancy Guthrie (272 pages)

48. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by Ross Douthat (224 pages)

49. How Will the World End? by Jeramie Rinne (96 pages)

50. Heaven on Earth: What the Bible Teaches about Life to Come by Derek W. H. Thomas (112 pages)

51. Eternity Changes Everything by Stephen Witmer (128 pages)

52. Not Home Yet: How the Renewal of the Earth Fits into God’s Plan for the World by Ian K. Smith (176 pages)

53. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality by Nancy R. Pearcey (336 pages)

54. How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home by Derek W. H. Thomas (157 pages)

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