Oh to Be an Unwavering Pastor: A Review of Jonathan K. Dodson’s Latest Book

The last few years have felt, at least to most people, anything but stable. And if we feel the instability generally across society, we certainly also feel the turmoil inside churches and among pastors. Into this context, pastor and author Jonathan K. Dodson published The Unwavering Pastor: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times (The Good Book Company, 2022).

But what Dodson means by “an unwavering pastor” might not be what you expect. He does not mean a pastor chiseled from a block of granite, strong and indomitable against the storm, a pastor with Nehemiah-like fortitude to execute his vision amid detractors. Dodson has a different kind of unwavering pastor in mind, the kind of unwavering pastor that Paul became. In his final letter to Timothy, he tells his young protégé, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12).

Dodson points out that Paul does not waver in his final imprisonment and as he nears his execution, not necessarily because of “what he believed but who he believed in. He knew the God he trusted” (13–14, emphasis original). Dodson continues, “An unwavering pastor’s confidence doesn’t come from his command of theology, his experience in counseling, or his faithful spiritual disciplines.” Instead, he writes, our confidence “is derived from God’s unwavering commitment to his own gospel, to preserve, protect, and promote the grace of God in Christ through the Spirit for sinners. . . . If you believe this, then you too can become an unwavering pastor” (14). Oh to be more of this kind of a pastor, an unwavering unmovable pastor “always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).

Buy on Amazon

During the summer of 2020, however, I experienced a struggle we could classify as something more than a mere waver but something less than a complete breakdown. I think many people and pastors did, but mine had less to do with Covid itself and more to do with all that had happened in our church in the previous years. I’ve written about that elsewhere, so I’ll leave aside those details. But I will say that I can relate to the way Dodson describes the experience of wanting to quit even though you know God hasn’t called you away. He just felt, as I had felt, that “pain was pushing [him] out the door” (129). Indeed, Paul can relate to this, and so can most pastors who’ve done the job for more than a decade. To paraphrase the author of Ecclesiastes, nothing is new under the sun or inside a church.

The Unwavering Pastor has a short introduction and eight chapters that explore what this understanding of unwavering might mean for different areas of ministry. For example, what might it look like for an unwavering pastor to love those outside the church in an age of cynicism about Jesus and the church (Chapter 2: “Questioning Christianity”), and what might it look like for an unwavering pastor to preach God’s Word not only to others but his own heart (Chapter 6: “Preach the Word”). I read the book slowly over two weeks, reading a section or two each morning during my devotions.

Besides the biblical engagement and personal stories, Dodson sprinkles throughout the book lessons he’s learned along the way. After sharing that he’s been ambushed in too many meetings, he advises, “If a critical person asks for a meeting, don’t be afraid to ask them what they want to meet about” (76). Besides mitigating anxiety, knowing the nature of the meeting can guide your prayers in the meantime and help you know if you should bring someone along with you.

I agree with the comments Dane Ortlund, author of Gentle and Lowly, makes in the foreword: “We don’t need to be told what bizarre and perplexing times we live in. We know that. We need to be given guidance for how to negotiate these times as pastors” (9). Dr. Ortlund goes on to say the greatest threat to pastors and churches right now is not pastors formally resigning from their posts. Rather, he says, “the greatest challenge is more subtle. It is to continue collecting a paycheck from the church while shifting our hearts into neutral. It is to carry forward the ministry at the level of activity while quitting ministry in terms of our hearts and longings” (10). Or to put it the way a friend of mine puts it: the danger is to quit without actually quitting. He’s not wrong.

I work part-time for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, a Christian website and publishing company. The company takes its namesake from another book by Dodson, a book recently re-released by Crossway as an updated ten-year anniversary edition. So, you could say, I should promote his book since, after all, Jonathan K. Dodson is my boss’s boss.

But I’m confident I would like The Unwavering Pastor even if I had no context for Dodson or Gospel-Centered Discipleship. In fact, being closer to the organization might have given me a better window to appreciate the struggles he writes about.

I remember during the recent low point in Dodson’s ministry, the one he talks about so candidly throughout the book, and how I texted my boss at GCD a screenshot from Dodson’s Instagram feed and asked if he was going to be okay. From my perspective, it seemed like two things were true at once: Dodson was struggling under the weight of pastoral ministry, and simultaneously his church and elders had rallied to support him as best as they could. To use the word he uses in the book, even as Dodson’s heart had become uncoupled from his church, his church’s heart toward him grew more coupled. Having this context made reading The Unwavering Pastor more visceral. In an age where so many people will do whatever they need to do to sell books, it helped to know Jonathan hadn’t feigned pastoral fatigue just so that his book would come across as “more authentic.” When he says he was tired and hurt by the church, he really was tired and hurt.

I’ve liked all of Dodson’s other books too. I was blessed by Here in Spirit as he describes his openness to the dramatic work of the Spirit and yet also the biblical grounding. And I love the transparency and moral courage of Our Good Crisis, a book that explores the meaning of the beatitudes for our present day. As an aside, I typically find the genre of “book trailers” underwhelming, but the trailer for Our Good Crisis has one of the best book trailers I’ve ever watched (here), second only perhaps to my perennial favorite of Zack Eswine’s The Imperfect Pastor (here).

I’d recommend The Unwavering Pastor to any church leader, whether the waters around him feel calm, whether a storm sits on the horizon, or whether his boat already threatens to capsize. I’d also recommend this book for teams of elders to discuss. The book would even bless the Christian in the pew who wants to gain a better appreciation for the weight and joy of Christian ministry in our divisive times and how the Chief Shepherd who safeguards his church amid the storm neither slumbers nor sleeps.

* Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

Writers’ Coaching Corner: A New Feature for GCD

“Books don’t change people, paragraphs do—sometimes sentences.”

This famous quote from author and long-time pastor John Piper highlights the transformative potential of prose. Piper added, “One sentence or paragraph may lodge itself so powerfully in our mind that its effect is enormous when all else is forgotten.”

But what makes one paragraph so transformative and so unforgettable? The answer is two-fold: the supernatural power of God and good writing. Writers can’t control the former, but we can practice the latter.

Back in January of this year, I took the part-time role of managing editor for the Gospel-Centered Discipleship (GCD) website. I’ve loved it. I get to oversee the publication of our articles and the team of staff writers and editors, help with our book publishing, and mentor fellow writers.

To that end of mentoring writers, I started a monthly feature where I look closely at one paragraph from a GCD article in the previous month to highlight some aspect of what makes for good writing. I talk about what makes the writing in the article work so well and how we, as fellow writers, can incorporate more of that writerly goodness into our craft.

If this interests you, I put a few of the videos below. You can get them all on our website, under the tab “Writers’ Coaching Corner.”

I’ve already made the video for next month, where I discuss one of my favorite writing ideas: climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction. It’s more helpful than it sounds. Trust me. I’ll post it on the GCD website on Monday, September 6, 2021. 

*     *     *

AUGUST 2021:
LIMIT THE USE OF BE-VERBS

This month I use Brianna Lambert’s article titled “God’s Word Isn’t Your Gas Station” to talk about the principle that good writing limits the use of be-verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been).

I also mention Russ Ramsey’s memoir Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death and Helen Sword’s The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose.

JULY 2021:
TAILOR PROSE TO A PARTICULAR AUDIENCE

This month I use Jen Oshman’s article, a letter written to her daughter who recently graduated from high school. The article is titled, “From Mom and Dad to Our Grad.” This article illustrates the principle that good writing tailors prose to a particular audience.

I also mention Ivan Mesa’s Before You Lose Your Faith, Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly, the Gospel-Centered Disciple Writers’ Cohort, and Roy Peter Clark’s How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times.

JUNE 2021:
LEVERAGE THE POWER OF ALLUSION

This month I use David McLemore’s recent article about guilt and grief over our sin, “In the Darkness, Jesus Is My Light,” to talk about the principle that good writing leverages the power of allusion.

I also mention Russel Moore’s recent newsletter “Atheists, Anger, & Alcohol” (Moore to the Point, May 17, 2021) and Douglas Wilson’s book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life.

MAY 2021:
EXTRUDE LIFE THROUGH TRUTH

This month I use Lauren Bowerman’s recent article about her struggles with infertility, “How Infertility Revealed My Idolatry” to talk about the principle that good writing extrudes life through truth.

I also mention Timothy Keller’s article “Growing My Faith in the Face of Death” and John Piper’s book Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully: The Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C. S. Lewis.

* Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

A Big Change to My Blog

I don’t want to bury the lede on this one, as journalists say. So, here’s the big change: I need to publish less often on my blog.

Let me explain.

In January I took the part-time role of Managing Editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship. I now oversee all the content we publish on our website, as well as the nine staff writers and three editors.

If you don’t know much about Gospel-Centered Discipleship (GCD), let me just say how much I love their passion for publishing biblical, gospel-saturated content. I also love GCD’s emphasis on developing Christian writers. They don’t just write about the gospel; they coach others to write well about the gospel. In the last ten years, the Lord has caused these two passions—love for writing about the gospel and love for thinking about writing about the gospel—to become central to my calling. I’m excited to join their team.

To state what I hope will be obvious, I still work full-time as the lead pastor of Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. No matter what happens with my writing, pastoral ministry in a local church will always be, I suspect, home base. I spent two months talking about taking the managing editor role with the fellow pastor-elders at our church, and not only do I have their permission, I have their blessing and encouragement.

A downside to this change will mean that I cannot write as often on this blog. I only have so much free time, and all the side projects tend to add up: blogging at Fan and Flame, writing guest posts for other websites, managing the GCD website, writing longer book projects, and doing freelance editing and book design. Something has to give. For now, my blog drew the short straw. That’s a bummer. I mean, I did just publish a book about blogging.

And yet, this change is also a welcomed change to my heart. I am excited to think less about me, if that makes sense. Even when I do my best to blog for God’s glory, I feel a low-grade pressure to perform and have articles hit big. What I want to do, I do not do, as Paul said. And what I do not want to struggle with, I do struggle with. Blogging less often on my website, while editing articles for others, will force me to think about me less often, which will be good for my soul.

Also, I never would have guessed how much I enjoy, and perhaps am gifted at, coaching other writers. I don’t feel like I’ve had much success as a writer, but to those on the outside of my inner circle— those who don’t see all the rejections or how painfully slow the process of writing is and how slowly my platform grows and how slowly relationships with websites and publishers develop—think I have had success. This has resulted in an increasingly steady stream of other writers asking me for help: Benjamin, can you edit this blog post before I submit it? Can you look at my book proposal? Would you read and comment on my book manuscript before I give it to the publisher? Benjamin, can we jump on a Zoom call so I can ask you questions about writing? Yes, of course; I’ll find time for that, I say.

Maybe I’m a people pleaser, and so maybe I say yes too often. But I’m also beginning to realize it also pleases me to help others improve their writing. I really do like tinkering with words.

If you’re still reading, you probably know me or care about me and my writing, so thank you. To you, I’ll mention one more factor in the change. This year is my seventh year at my church, and I have a summer sabbatical coming. I won’t be working full-time this June, July, and August, and I would have slowed my blogging anyway.

During part of this sabbatical, I hope to take an online 8-week graduate class. This class will be toward the degree of a master’s in fine arts (MFA) in creative non-fiction. The title “creative non-fiction” (also known as “narrative non-fiction”) explores traditional elements of fiction (e.g., plot, characterization, tension, and foreshadowing) and employs them in non-fiction. I believe this degree has large overlap with my preaching and other ministry responsibilities. And I’ve been dreaming about this for ten years; I just don’t talk about it much, if ever. Taking one course this summer will test the waters to see if pursuing the full degree makes sense—that is, whether the benefits outweigh the many logistical and financial headaches.

Thank you for reading my blog. I will still post something new, Lord willing, once a month. It’s a great pleasure to serve the Lord and others with words.

* Photo by Jean-Baptiste D on Unsplash