Why You Should Consider Studying and Preaching the Book of Judges

I fell in love with the book of Judges years and years ago. During college even, when I was a camp counselor at a Christian sports camp for a summer, I would read as a bedtime story about Ehud shoving his sword into the belly of a fat king until the king’s poop spilled out. The kids loved it. So did I.

One of the first few summers in my current church, my co-pastor and I preached through Judges. It was—as my father often says with a kindly smirk—memorable. I’ve written blog posts about the book and preached it at retreats. I’ve preached it on Christmas Eve. Seriously. It worked well, too. In fact, tomorrow I’m preaching two messages from the book of Judges to a local Christian school. (Yes, it’s the older students, but I think the book can be preached to younger students too, especially when using a children’s Bible like this one.) I guess I’m like Sam-I-Am and could preach Judges in a boat and to a goat, in the rain and on a train, and in a tree—it’s so good, you see.

Yesterday the website For The Church published the longest collection of words I’ve ever had published, nearly five and a half thousand of them, which is basically the size of a large chapter in a book. The words are a “preaching guide” to the book of Judges. But you don’t have to be a preacher to make use of the guide. You can just be a regular Christian who wants to know God and the gospel better.

My preaching guide in Judges is part of their series to offer guides through books in the Bible. Their preaching guides have a sort of template to them, and the last section always suggests reasons you should preach through the book (or, as I said, study through the book). Below you’ll see my answer for why you should study and preach through the book of Judges. I hope you enjoy the excerpt.

If you’d like to read the rest of the preaching guide, you can do so here. (The list of all the preaching guides is here.)

And if you know a pastor or Sunday school teacher who might benefit from my guide on Judges, please pass it on to them as well. Everything is free.

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Why should you preach through Judges?

Those who live in the Rocky Mountains or on the Hawaiian shores can behold beautiful scenery as easily as they can walk to their back porch. For most of us, however, tracking down mountain vistas or ocean sunrises takes a lot of work. From a preaching standpoint, the vistas seen from Ephesians 2 or Romans 8 tend to be more accessible and thus more often traveled by preachers and beheld by congregations. Yet for those willing to break a sweat and endure some soreness, the vistas that open in the book of Judges are just as fearfully and wonderfully made—you just might have to wade through a swamp or hack through a jungle before you can see them. In short, you should preach Judges because the book offers modern readers scenery that we didn’t know we needed until someone has shown us. These “views” include but are not limited to those I have listed below. Knowing these breathtaking views exist and hiking with your people to see them is reason enough to start the journey through Judges. And as you go, you will discover other sights both terrifying and awesome, sights you didn’t know you needed until God showed you that you did.

The book of Judges shows us the purpose of divine rumble strips. Rumble strips are annoying. They shake your car and rattle your teeth. If you have young boys in the back of your car, someone might yell, “Who farted?” In other words, rumble strips get your attention. So do smelling salts. So do defibrillators. God often goes to great lengths to get our attention when we, his people, are tempted to sin. “When new gods were chosen, then war was in the gates” (5:8). For his glory and our good, thankfully the invasive love God displays in Judges, he still displays now. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The book of Judges shows us that sin is fundamentally illogical and only partially explainable. To read Judges slowly and carefully is to also become confused. He did what? But why?  And she said what? But why? Often, you can deduce probable answers to many of these questions, and yet even when the questions are answered, you still might not know the deeper reason for why people do what they do. For example, consider some of the unanswerable questions from chapter 19. Why wouldn’t anyone take the travelers into their house? How could it be that an angry mob demanded violent, homosexual acts in an Israelite city? Why would a man offer his virgin daughter to the mob to be devoured? Why would the Levite allow his concubine to be handed over? What was a Levite doing with a concubine, anyway? And who could cut up a woman and send her out in twelve little pieces? When you stand back and let the totality of the depravity of this passage land on you, one recognizes almost immediately that we must settle for partial explanations. This is because, in the order of the universe, sin is only partially explainable. Why would Adam take and eat the fruit? Why would sin ever have looked pleasing to his eyes? Why would anyone crucify the son of God? Why would the drunk driver get behind the wheel? Why would I ever use that tone of voice with the wife of my youth? Because sin is only partially explainable and fundamentally illogical. We really do need a savior.

The book of Judges stokes our longings for permanence. Peace and prosperity ebb and flow like the ocean tide, and all our progress seems as permanent as castles in the sand. The cycles in the book of Judges show us this. And they show it to us again. And again. And again. We need a savior who sits on the throne he will never vacate, which is what we have in Christ.

Finally, the book of Judges shows us the greatest enemy of the church is not external but internal. The book of Judges both shouts and whispers this indictment. Consider, again, the last sentence in the book. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25; see also 17:6). Positioned intentionally at the end, this statement is the ancient equivalent of bold, italics, underline, and all caps—an example of the book shouting that our greatest enemy is internal. We hear another shout in Judges 2:10 where God lays the blame for all their trouble on the fact that “there arose another generation . . . who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.” Again, the foe is internal, not external. The book also whispers this message. For example, consider the judge Tola (10:1–2). He, like another judge named Shamgar in Judges 3:31, was a deliverer only mentioned in a verse or two. But unlike Shamgar, who delivers from an external enemy (the Philistines), no enemy is listed that Tola fought. When Tola comes to save, he saves Israel from Israel. And that is why the book, as a whole, concludes with an appendix of sordid stories likely from an earlier time in the book, stories of a greedy priest, a Levite who dismembered his concubine, and a civil war that nearly annihilated one of the tribes. It is easy to point the finger at those outside the church. The greatest threat to the church, however, is not ISIS or Planned Parenthood. It is not Hollywood. It is not atheist professors who ruin the faith of our sweet college freshmen. The greatest enemies are not secular politicians and Supreme Court judges. If we want to know the worst enemy of the church—the one that, apart from the sustaining grace of God, could eternally destroy us—then we must look in the mirror. Doing so will not be easy; it will be uncomfortable. But a long look into our own souls and our indwelling sin might catch our melanoma while it’s early. And if it does, praise God we have the gospel for our healing.

* Photo by Jan Kronies 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. 

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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

Did Jesus Have a Belly Button? A Silly Question with a Seriously Encouraging Answer

The other day I received an email asking, what might feel like to some, a silly question. But the question came with sincerity. The question asked whether Jesus had a belly button.

I said yes. Here’s my longer answer.

Before I responded, I chuckled at the question because typically when people wonder whether someone from the Bible had a belly button, they usually wonder about Adam and Eve, since our first parents were not born by ordinary means; God created one from a pile of dust and the other from a rib. In one of my seminary classes, I remember a student asking the professor about Adam and Eve and whether they had belly buttons. The student asked C. John Collins, one of our Old Testament professors and an expert on the creation account in Genesis. I just wish I could remember the answer Dr. Collins gave. Knowing him he probably made a dismissive joke.

Coming back to the question at hand, I presume behind the question of whether Jesus had a belly button, lurks the suspicion that if Jesus experienced that intimate of a connection to his mother Mary, a relationship where they shared blood through her placenta and umbilical cord, then the blood of our Savior would have somehow been corrupted. This concern over the purity of Christ’s blood has led Catholic theologians to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is often assumed in popular culture to refer to the extraordinary, virgin birth of Christ. But the Immaculate Conception, in Catholic theology, refers to Mary’s birth, that she was born without the stain of original sin. In this way of thinking, if Mary had been born without original sin, then Jesus could have been in her womb with a belly button and an umbilical cord and could have shared her blood—and yet Christ would not have shared her original sin because she didn’t have original sin to share.

“While I affirm the impulse to see Christ as special as he really is, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary finds no basis in Scripture. ”

While I affirm the impulse to see Christ as special as he really is, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary finds no basis in Scripture. Perhaps there is a splinter of the Protestant church that, while rejecting the Immaculate Conception, has suggested that Christ did not have a belly button as a way to keep him from inheriting original sin through Mary. I have never heard any Protestants talk like this before, but there are many things I’ve never heard before. On the crowdsourcing website Quora, the question and answers about Jesus’s belly button seem to have more interest than I expected it would—although, to be fair, I hadn’t expected any interest.

As I start to answer this question, let’s acknowledge that when a baby lives in a mother’s womb, the line between blood and nutrients and cells becomes blurred. A child in a womb is dependent on the mother for all of these—the nutrients, the blood, and more. What a mother eats, in a way, her baby eats. Consider, for example, the tragic situation of fetal alcohol syndrome. So, yes, if Jesus was in his mother’s womb and had a belly button, then he would have shared Mary’s blood.

And certainly we should consider the blood of Christ special. The New Testament authors saw his blood this way. In the letter to the church in Rome, the apostle Paul writes of Jesus “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (3:25). That phrase—as a propitiation by his blood—means that the sacrifice of Jesus absorbed God’s wrath against sin. This is the meaning of the rather obscure word propitiation. Later in the same letter Paul writes of Christians being “justified by his blood” (5:9). In both of these passages, as is often the case, speaking of the blood of Christ is a shorthand for speaking of his death. One dies when one loses one’s blood (cf. Lev. 17:11). Still, this shorthand way of speaking does not nullify the specialness of Christ’s blood.

The New Testament has many similar examples of talking about Christ’s blood the way Paul does in Romans and elsewhere (Eph. 2:13; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 1:5; 5:9). The apostle Peter even speaks of the “precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:19). A key passage from the author of Hebrews is worth quoting at length:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (2:14–15)

The author of Hebrews picks up this theme again later in his letter, including an extended section in Hebrews 9:11–28 where he describes the importance of blood in Old Testament sacrifices and how these Old Testament sacrifices were really a pointer to the final, better sacrifice that would come through the blood of Christ.

“The emphasis in the Bible on the purity of the blood of Jesus is not so much on chemical purity but moral purity.”

But to say that the blood of Christ was pure could be misunderstood. It was pure, but in what sense? We misunderstand the purity of the blood of Christ when we understand it merely as chemical or biological purity, as though Christ’s blood must be his blood and his blood alone. The emphasis in the Bible on the purity of Jesus and his blood is not so much an emphasis on chemical purity but moral purity. Jesus was morally pure and without blemish, and therefore the true and greater spotless lamb who could take away the sins of the world. We see this, albeit in a different context, when Jesus touches lepers and remains clean.

While I waited for my kids to finish riding a roller coaster at an amusement park, I texted with my friend John Biegel about this question. (Yes, this really happened.) John is a super-smart theologian and pastor. John said—and I quote—“there’s nothing inherently sinful about a belly button, I think.” The “I think” made me laugh. But I agree. John also pointed out that the “be fruitful and multiply” command is a pre-fall mandate, which is repeated after Noah and his family get off the ark (Gen. 9:1), and “unless God changed the means of procreation post-fall, we should expect belly buttons to be a part of God’s very good design for humanity.”

Additionally, think how weird it would have been if, in the Father’s plan of redemption, the first witnesses to Jesus were supposed to recognize how special Jesus was by noticing that he did not have a belly button. Instead, it seems to me that the Father intends the witnesses to the Son to esteem his character, his majesty, his power, his love. They were not supposed to conclude that Jesus was the God-man, as theologians call him, after sneaking a peek behind his robe. As Jesus hung naked on the cross, people were not supposed to notice a missing a belly button. That’s just weird.

This is all a way to explain my answer that Jesus did have a belly button. The doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness requires that his blood was morally pure, a purity that emanates from his character and essence. As my friend John also texted me, “I don’t think the idea of human corruption is one that is considered in simply biological terms as if there were a sin gene that got passed through blood or tissue.”

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. From time to time, I write blog posts that I suspect no one will ever read but were helpful and edifying for me to write nonetheless. But maybe to a few of you this conversation about belly buttons still feels goofy, even bringing to mind the Veggie Tales silly song about belly buttons done as a Backstreet Boys parody (YouTube). It did for me.

However, encouragement flows to Christians willing to contemplate the full humanity of Jesus because faith should always seek understanding as far as faith can go. Christians should not retreat to “mystery” or “miracle” sooner than we must, even though the doctrine of the virgin birth and the nature of Christ, as with all theology, will inevitably lead us to both mystery and miracle.

And as we ponder the Christ anew, we see that in his incarnation the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, really did become flesh: he was born, increased in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), ate (Matt. 9:10–11), slept (Mark 4:38), got tired (John 4:6), felt sadness and wept (John 11:35), and experienced great pain and died (Mark 15:37). Which is to say Jesus really was like me. And like you. That is encouraging.

“Jesus really was like me. And like you. That is encouraging.”

We might rightly assume that this means when Jesus ate spicy Jewish food, sometimes he got indigestion and gas, even diarrhea. If the Coronavirus had swept through ancient Israel, as surely other viruses did, Christ was just as susceptible to sickness and, perhaps, being out of work without pay for an extended period of time. Now, in the sovereignty of God, Jesus couldn’t have died until, as we read about in John’s gospel, that his “hour had come” (John 7:30; 8:20; 13:1; 17:1). But still, Jesus was made like us in every way, as the author of Hebrews says (2:14). The Son of Man who saved the world from our sins had no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20), and as he grew in favor and wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), during puberty likely his voice cracked and his face had pimples. He was like me. And like you. He got lint in his belly button. That is encouraging.

Of course, he was also more than us. He was, as the Bible teaches, also fully God. So, not like us, which is encouraging too.

And it’s this dual nature—fully God and fully man—that allows him to be our Savior: in his humanity he identifies with us, and in his divinity he is a worthy sacrifice in a way no human could be.

Therefore, when we, with the eyes of faith, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we behold someone more special and more wonderful and more real than our imaginations could have ever created—a Savior who lives and loves with purity and power that is both heavenly and earthly at once.

* Painting: “The Lamentation” by Ludovico Carracci, ca. 1582

I Love Russell Moore, and I’d Like All of You to Love Him Too

I remember my father talking about how much he liked the 1971 movie Brian’s Song. It’s based on the true story of a football player named Brian Piccolo who was diagnosed with terminal cancer after turning professional in 1965. The most famous line in the movie comes from Brian’s friend and teammate, Gale Sayers, who says, “I love Brian Piccolo, and I’d like all of you to love him too” (YouTube).

I feel the same about Russell Moore.

“I feel the same about Russell Moore.”

Dr. Moore has been in the news a lot over the last year, most recently as he transitioned roles in June from the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) to Christianity Today where he will serve in the role of Public Theologian. To say that Moore is best known for his convictional, gospel winsomeness and his moral clarity around current events, might not be accurate. These are certainly the traits that I know of Moore and how I’d want you to know him. Still, it’s probably more accurate to say he’s more widely known for being controversial within his former denomination, The Southern Baptist Convention, and his critical political engagement of President Trump.

The winds of time have since blown away the Internet paper trail to all the hyperlinks, but I’ll recount for you one of my favorite Russell Moore kerfuffles. In the late spring of 2016, Donald Trump tweeted that Moore is “A nasty guy with no heart.” When asked on CNN about the comment, Moore replied to Anderson Cooper, “[This is] one of the few things I agree with Donald Trump on. I am a nasty guy with no heart. We sing worse things about ourselves in our hymns on Sunday mornings: we’re a wretch and in need of God’s grace.” Well played, Moore, well played.  

During President Trump’s second campaign and after Moore’s widely shared article “The Roman Road to Insurrection” about the January 6 riots at the Capitol, I’m sure Donald Trump’s opinion of Moore didn’t change—but whaddya gonna do? A lot of people are on Trump’s naughty list.

Speaking of the controversy around Russell Moore, I suspect much of the angst exists because the polarization is not simply the standard divisions between the political and theological left and right, the standard divisions between progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. Rather, a polarization exists within the right itself. Because of this, Moore gets called names like “woke” and “cultural Marxist”—all labels that, in my opinion, seem to have the effect of shutting down thinking and discussion rather than stimulating them. During the recent approach to the annual Southern Baptist Convention, Moore’s departure as the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and a leaked letter also created a lot of noise.

Opponents criticize Moore saying he cowardly capitulates to culture, whether in his insistence on racial equality in the church or that abusive men be brought to justice or for moral integrity in political leadership. But the criticism that Moore is capitulating to culture would ring truer if his positions were not so out of step with much of his own tribe, that is, his culture. You would think that the culture one could feel tempted to compromise toward would be the one that pays your salary, yet Moore’s courage to stand manifests itself in his critiques of his tribe, a decidedly not cowardly move. Still, if he is known for critiquing his religious support base, he could be described well with words from a book he and I both love: “prophets love the people they chastise” (Marilynne Robinson, Gilead, 142).

I’d prefer not to spend time writing about any of the labels Moore receives or a letter that was leaked. Instead, I want to encourage you to read and learn from him firsthand instead of imbibing the soundbites, even if you suspect that you’d see many political or theological issues differently than Moore sees them. The social media version of the children’s game “whisper down the alley” (aka “the telephone game”) tends to boil off any nuance until the final rendition only vaguely resembles a grotesque version of the original, if that. There’s more to Moore than supposed wokeness, whatever that means.

A great place to become familiar with Moore would be his weekly newsletters (subscribe). He started the newsletter during the pandemic, and few resources have pastored me as well through our cultural moments over the last year as each installment of 3,000 to 4,000 words, the length of my typical sermon. His writing is so rich, so pastoral, so winsome, so convictional, so, if you ask me, Christ-like. When I think of Moore’s writing, I think of Paul’s words about love: “it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

“When I think of Moore’s writing, I think of Paul’s words about love.”

In a newsletter this spring where he explored the troubles of pastors and pastoring in our current age, Moore shared that someone complained to him that pastors are cowardly not speaking out enough about current events, especially political ones, with the same passion and clarity that Moore does. Defending us pastors, Moore responded, “But that’s my literal job, to speak to ethical and cultural questions; and I’ve kind of been doing it for the last thirty years” (“Are Our Pastors in Trouble?” Moore to the Point, May 10, 2021).

In a sermon this winter, as we were preaching through the book of Acts, I quoted to our church a line from another newsletter. Moore was addressing the conspiracy theories over Q-Anon, but I related Moore’s comment to the headstrong, jealous, and sometimes irrational opposition the Jews had against Paul. Moore wrote this sober warning: “one cannot reason someone out of something one was never reasoned into in the first place” (“Christ Over Q-Anon,” Moore to the Point, February 1, 2021). Read it again slowly: one cannot reason someone out of something one was never reasoned into in the first place. A month after I preached that sermon, a member of our church came up to tell me how much he continues to think about that line.

I also appreciate the other resource he started during the pandemic, his series on YouTube and Instagram called “Reading in Exile.” Every few days or so, Moore grabbed a book (or several) off the shelf of his home library and talked for ten minutes about why the books and authors matter. I saw many of the videos when they were released, but over the last few months I have been going back through the playlist on YouTube. I’m on video number 35 of 51.

Buy on Amazon

Moore has written several books, including most recently The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul (B&H, 2020); as well as The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home (B&H, 2018); Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel (B&H, 2015); Adopted for Life (Updated and Expanded Edition): The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches (Crossway, 2009 and 2015); and several others. Over the last few years, I think I have read all but two of his books. He did is PhD work on aspects of the kingdom of God and the end times, issues I’ve thought and written about often and suspect we also see similarly.

The other pastors at the church office tease me that my growing love for Russell Moore might be in danger of bumping my other favorite evangelical writers off their “Top 3” rankings in my heart. My friends might be right. I had hoped to be able to bump into Moore at The Gospel Coalition’s conference in April to tell him how much I appreciate him, but I was disappointed when my coworker pointed out that the fine print in the conference program said Moore was only there “virtually.” They wheeled a giant TV on the stage during his panel discussion.  

I love the way Moore writes about his own struggles with transparency I can hardly imagine imitating myself. And I appreciate the assumptions it would seem he makes about his audience, namely, that we are more weak, wounded, and wayward than our smiling faces in church pews belie. This assumption about the struggles of the average, storm-tossed Christian (and storm-tossed pastor!) has a way of breaking down religious stereotypes and keeping the ground at the foot of the cross as level as it really is.

I also love the way Moore can tweak a familiar phrase into something fresh, as in the chapter on sex in The Stormed-Tossed Family when he writes that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of orgasms,” which of course tweaks Jesus’s words from Luke 12:15 about wealth. (I’m quoting the audiobook from memory, so I might have the quote slightly wrong.)

Rather than me telling you about his writing, here are the opening four paragraphs from his most recent book, The Courage to Stand, to give you a taste:

Whenever I lose my way in life, there are two maps on the wall that can help me navigate my way back home. That happens more often than I would like to admit, but whenever it does, the maps are always there. One of those maps is of the state of Mississippi, with a dot hovering over the coastline there where I grew up. The other map is of a land called Narnia. Those maps help remind me who I am, but, more importantly they remind me what I’m not, what I almost was.

And what I almost was is a teenage suicide.

That last sentence there I have written, and unwritten, at least a dozen times. I’m scared to disclose it, because I’ve never discussed it before, even with close friends. But that’s what this book is about: finding a way in the midst of fear, to somehow, having done all else, to stand.

Those maps are just scraps of paper, but, to me, they are almost portals to alternative realities, and in one of those realities I am dead. In the other reality, I found my way here, through a wardrobe in a spare room somewhere in England.

The Courage to Stand is in large part an extended reflection on the ministry of the Old Testament prophet Elijah and the surprising ways God deals with such a broken and disappointed prophet, which are the severe but merciful ways God deals with all his children in the gospel. As the back cover of the book says, “Gospel courage is nothing like the bravado of this anxious age. The call to courage is terrifying because the call to courage is a call to be crucified.”

“This spring, several times I sat down to write Moore a long, handwritten note to express my appreciation.”

This spring, several times I sat down to write Moore a long, handwritten note to express my appreciation for his ministry and the abundance of joy and biblical clarity he brings into my life. The Bible instructs us, “Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches” (Gal. 6:6). But I never did write the note. Life always seems to move too fast, my kids too young, and church ministry too all-consuming for the luxury of writing. For example, this post started as a quick, 500-word promo for The Courage to Stand that was supposed to take me ninety minutes. But here I am, two weeks later with nearly 2,000 words on the screen and having only said half of what I could say, half of what I want to say—and I’m only able to say this much because I’m on sabbatical and can afford a little extra time for reflection and thanksgiving.

Maybe someday I’ll write Moore that note. And maybe someday you will write Moore that same note because I nudged you in his direction. If that happens, I’ll be happy because I love Russell Moore, and I’d like all of you to love him too.

* Photo by John Towner on Unsplash

The Very Flame of the Lord: A Wedding Reflection on That Which Cannot Be Quenched

I recently officiated the wedding of Noah and Hannah, a couple I care about deeply, and I thought I’d pass on my wedding reflection. The sermon is a short reflection on the gospel beauty of Song of Solomon 8:6–7.

Before the wedding began, rain poured all day in 90-minute chunks. We borrowed from baseball and opted for a short rain delay. It worked. The clouds parted, a rainbow streamed across the valley, and God joined a man and woman in holy matrimony.

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Noah and Hannah, I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. You and your parents certainly have been waiting for it longer. But I’d say I’ve been earnestly waiting for this day to come around since at least, well, I don’t know . . . August 10, 2020. To be more specific, I’ve been waiting for your wedding day since Monday, August 10, 2020 at 10:24 a.m.

Why 10:24 a.m.? you ask. Well, that is when I received one of the best emails I’ve ever received. For context, the day before I had just officiated the wedding of another couple in our congregation, which you’ll see this email referred to as an “interview.” I’ll tell you now that the email was signed in this way: “Sincerely, Noah, on behalf of the [groom’s last name] – [bride’s last name] Event Planning Corporation.”

But how does the email begin? you say. I’ll tell you.

Dear Mr. Vrbicek, I hope this message finds you well. Thank you for your interest in playing a role in the forthcoming [groom’s last name] – [bride’s last name] wedding. Your desire for involvement is something that we see and appreciate. During the interview conducted yesterday, you were being evaluated under the criteria of eloquence, flexibility, quick-thinking, aesthetic, and overall likability.

This goes on for several paragraphs, eventually asking me to officiate their forthcoming wedding. The email concludes,

Please feel free to reach back out at your convenience. We would love to hear what you are thinking about this opportunity, or if there is anything we can do to make this onboarding process as seamless as possible. We are excited to bring you on board—your skills will be a great asset to our team.

That was 327 days ago. Now here we are: July 3, 2021 at 6-something p.m. I have now long sense been successfully “onboarded to the team,” and I guess in a sense, so have all of us.

So, what do we do now? What do I say now? At this time I want to share a few comments about marriage and Christianity. These comments are for all of us, but I would especially like to share them with you, Noah and Hannah.

There’s that line about “what do you get a guy who has everything,” or “what do you get a gal who has everything.” I’m not attempting to imply that, Noah and Hannah, you have everything. But I do want to say, especially to Noah, that he has heard me speak at many a wedding before, and he has heard everything I have to say at weddings.

In fact, the other year, Noah and I, together, worked at several weddings in a row—Noah played the music, and I led the ceremony. And we made the joke that he and I should just take this “gig on the road.” I’m not sure how lucrative the preacher and musician “wedding gig” is; we never found out. But I bring this up to say that it’s not that Noah has everything, but, again, that he has heard me say everything I typically say at this moment at a wedding.

So, what do I say now, what do I say to two people I care about deeply but feel like you’ve heard it all from me before?

Well, there is one angle on marriage you’ve never heard me talk about before. I tried to talk about it to you once, but you, Noah, got up to leave in the middle of when I was speaking. Hannah, you did not run away from my Sunday school class. Noah said he “had” to go back upstairs to the sanctuary to lead music for the worship service that was taking place because he is one of our worship leaders. A likely story.

I was teaching that particular Sunday school class through the provocative Old Testament book called the Song of Solomon. If you know anything about that book, you know it’s a love poem, at times an explicit love poem, between an engaged couple who eventually get married and go on to do the sorts of things husbands and wives do, which is to say the book can be a little awkward. Perhaps this is why, Noah, you got up to leave in the middle of my class. Because you did, you missed me read and talk about one of the not-awkward but beautiful passages from the end of the book.

In Song of Solomon 8:6–7, the woman has a request to her husband, the request to be close to him and that his love would be directed always and only toward her. Then she goes on to say something about the tenacity of the love of God. The woman says to her husband,

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes [the holy, jealous flashes of marital love] are flashes of fire,
    the very flame of the LORD.
Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
    all the wealth of his house,
    he would be utterly despised. (8:6–7)

This passage is the only place in the book that mentions the name of the Lord, the name YHWH. And when she does, she likens their marital love for each other to something drawn from the love of God, which she calls the “very flame of the LORD,” a love so strong it cannot be quenched by many waters.

In other words, the love of God is like a candle shining in the darkness, and if you took that candle on the boat called “Maid of the Mist,” and rode it not just near but even under Niagara Falls, not even the torrent of water pouring down Niagara Falls could put out the very flame of the Lord. The love of God for his people is too hot and too bright to be quenched. 

When I hear the woman in the Song of Solomon talk about the love of God in this way, I hear a woman talking about the covenant love of God. I hear her talking about what Christians call the gospel.

A covenant relationship is not focused on whether the other person upholds their end of the agreement. A covenant relationship is one based on a solemn vow to hold up your end of the agreement regardless of whether the other person does. This is why covenant relationships are so beautiful, why Christianity is so beautiful.

Jesus loves you in the gospel with covenant love. Jesus, knowing exactly who the church is, knowing exactly who his bride is—in all of his bride’s glory, sure, but most especially all of his bride’s shame and depravity and guilt and weaknesses and insecurities and failures—knowing all of this, Jesus still loves his bride. Noah and Hannah, your many failures and manifold weaknesses cannot quench the love of God in Christ for you.

This covenant love of God is why marriage between a husband and wife is a pointer to the love of God. When the world looks at a marriage—although the light is not near as bright or as strong as the love he has for us—marital, covenant love comes from the same sort of flame. Engagements will always come to an end, but marriages, as God intends them to be, should burn without “sickness or health” and “better or worse” quenching the flame of love.

Now, I promised I would say something new. But while I started by saying something new, I’ve ended up talking about the love of God as a covenant love, and in doing so I’ve made the sorts of statements I always make at weddings, indeed themes you, Noah, and probably you too, Hannah, have previously heard me say many times.

This makes me think of something the apostle Paul wrote to a church in an ancient city called Philippi. Paul deeply loved the church and the people in Philippi. From prison in Rome he made it a point to write a letter to them. Many lines from that letter are familiar to Christians today. Paul writes that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (2:10–11). Paul writes of how he has “learned in whatever situation . . . to be content,” which he follows with the famous statement that he “can do all things through [Christ] who strengthens [him]” (Phil. 4:12, 13). These are familiar lines. In that same letter he also wrote this: “To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you” (Phil. 3:1).

Paul could have plowed new ground. But the best lesson for them, the safest lesson, was to remind them of what they already knew, what he had already taught them. I feel the same. Significant moments in our lives—weddings, funerals, and so on—I believe are not so much for giving new information but opportunities to remind us of what we already know.

Therefore, it’s no trouble to say to you the same sorts of things I always say at a wedding. Noah and Hannah, your marriage is to display this covenant, gospel, “very-flame-of-the-Lord” type of love. Noah, as you love your wife sacrificially and unconditionally, you display the gospel, the unconditional love of Christ for his bride. This is a high and honorable calling. And, Hannah, as you love and support Noah, you display the response to the gospel. You also have a high and beautiful calling.

But more importantly, I want you to know that even though both of you will inadequately display the flame of the Lord in your marriage, remember that you are not saved because you have a perfect marriage or a perfect spiritual life or a perfect anything: Remember, God loves you with a flame that many waters cannot quench. And his covenant love toward you will hold you through better and worse and sickness and health and life and death.

* Photo by Tales and Trees Photography (via a Facebook post)

On Christianity and Porn: A REMOJO Podcast Interview

This year I’ve been the guest on a few radio interviews and podcasts. I don’t usually share these on the blog, but I’m making an exception for this one because this interview was, well, different.

Jack Jenkins, the CEO & Founder of an app to help people quit pornography, invited me on his show to talk about Christianity and pornography. That, by itself may not be too strange. What made the conversation more interesting is that Jack is not a Christian. And neither is his app REMOJO faith-based. The company wanted to hear from a Christian, as many of the people benefiting from their app are Christians. What a neat opportunity, I thought.

I really enjoyed talking with Jack, and hope you find the conversation helpful too. In hindsight, I wish I had answered a few questions better than I did, but interviews, just like life, happen in real-time, and we do the best we can. Thanks to the handful of people who prayed for me while the interview took place.

If you’d like to see more info about REMOJO, check out their website.

Without Theological Triage, You Drive a Car of Glass: A Review of Before You Lose Your Faith

Back in April we took our church staff to The Gospel Coalition’s national conference. For three days we listened to sermons, attended break-out seminars, walked the city streets of Indianapolis, laughed, prayed, and saw friends we hadn’t seen in years.

Each day of the conference The Gospel Coalition provided attendees with free books, including the recently released Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church edited by Ivan Mesa.

“Deconstruction is the term often used to describe how evangelical Christians end up as atheists—or something in between.”

I have a huge stack of books to read, so I don’t even know why I moved Before You Lose Your Faith to the top of the pile. But I did. And I am glad I did read it sooner than later, for all the book’s excellent and challenging yet compassionate entries from some of my favorite writers, for example, Samuel James and Jared C. Wilson.

What Is “Deconstructing”?

For those unfamiliar with the term deconstructing, it involves “systematically dissecting and often rejecting all the beliefs you grew up with” (2). Deconstruction is the term often used to describe how evangelical Christians end up as atheists—or something in between.

Deconstruction is happening all around you, not just to some Christian celebrity out there on the Internet or the young men and women on the university campus in your city but also among those in the church you attend. For some of you, although you might not want to admit it, deconstruction might even be happening in your heart and mind as you wrestle with doubts about the Christian faith so personal and so intense you worry you cannot bring them up in a conversation with your pastor.

This is why I appreciated the tone each contributing author uses throughout the book, speaking to readers with the assumption that they are in some stage of deconstruction. Too often Christians talk past the very people we are ostensibly talking with to score points with our tribe, the tribe we imagine listening over our shoulder and cheering us on as we “own” our opponents. Before You Lose Your Faith is not out to own anyone. The book speaks with consistent compassion to the real issues of those losing their faith and overwhelmed with doubt.

Buy on Amazon

Speaking of the real issues, Part Two of the book has eight chapters devoted to reconstructing views that many in our secular age consider disagreeable or even deplorable about Christianity, at least as they understand Christianity. Issues such as sexuality, science, and social justice receive warranted attention. Claude Atcho wrote a chapter in this section called “Race: Is Christianity a White Man’s Religion?” that explores how our faith would be less syncretistic if we untangled aspects of the true Christian faith from certain aspects of culture and church traditions. Although the Christian church might participate in racial injustice, is racism what true Christianity endorses? This kind of disentangling, he writes, could save people from deconstructing.

Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead has a line I thought about often as I read Before You Lose Your Faith. The main character, Pastor Ames, writes to his son about doubt, saying, “The Lord gave you a mind so that you can make honest use of it. . . . you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment” (Gilead, 179). Before You Lose Your Faith helps disentangle our doubts, especially when we might not have realized our doubts are influenced by the particular fashions of our moment in time and place in culture.

The Need for Theological Triage

A favorite paragraph from the book highlights the importance of what people refer to as theological triage. The triage metaphor comes from war hospitals, specifically the decision process of prioritizing which injured soldiers to treat first. Many years ago, doctors treated wounded soldiers on a first-come, first-served basis, which is nice if you’re first to the field hospital but becomes a bummer when you’re at the back of the line with a sucking chest wound.

In a similar way, theological triage helps rank doctrines in terms of their importance. Gavin Ortlund wrote a whole book on the topic called Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage. In that book, Ortlund suggests as a starting point a four-fold way to rank doctrines: first-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself; second-rank doctrines are urgent to church health at the local and denominational level; third-rank doctrines are important but not important enough to justify separation among Christians in the same church; and fourth-rank doctrines are those that are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration.

“Like a car made of glass that has no shock absorbers, such a faith shatters upon hitting any bump in the road.”

— Karen Swallow Prior

Coming back to Before You Lose Your Faith and my favorite paragraph, Karen Swallow Prior quotes an author who noted that without theological triage, we tend to have “glass theology.” By this she means when we regard each aspect of our theology as equally important—that is, when all doctrines are “first-rank” doctrines—our theology turns brittle. Prior writes, “Like a car made of glass that has no shock absorbers, such a faith shatters upon hitting any bump in the road” (96). I might add that you don’t have to drive your glass car over bumpy roads for it to shatter; people also throw rocks.

When Parishioners Leave Church Pews Unnecessarily

As a pastor of a local church, there is nothing theoretical about deconstruction and theological triage. I believe if pastor-elders can model prioritizing doctrines well, triage might save a lot of pain among our parishioners. But sometimes, whether pastors model triage well or not, people who we do not want to leave, leave anyway.

This winter I know a pastor who received an eight-page letter from a longtime parishioner, a friend even, who outlined the struggles he had with the evangelical world, the ways the church had failed during the previous year, and why he was leaving my friend’s church. The letter mentioned the disappointments you might expect: error too far in one direction with mask protocols (re: not enough enforcement); error in politics (re: not enough rebuking); error in issues of race (re: not enough engagement); and others. The pastor likely wouldn’t even quibble much about most of the issues, and on a few, the pastor’s personal convictions align precisely with the one who wrote the letter.

The main reason for leaving the church, however, had to do with a specific theological point that the pastor held, even though the church and denomination had stated clearly that it is a position Christians should not separate over. (To use Gavin Ortlund’s framework, the specific doctrine in question should be considered a “third-rank doctrine.”)  Except the man did separate from the church. Now the pastor worries about the letter writer’s faith, what church he’ll now attend, and whether a friend was lost. The whole situation is sad, especially because, as the pastor sees it, the departure was unnecessary.

That’s just one story from the trenches. I have many others.

A Book for Evangelists and Preachers

In the last entry, Derek Rishmawy writes, “If you’ve come to the end of this book, you’re either thinking about deconstructing your faith or you’re worrying about how to talk to folks who are” (131). To be candid, I was doing neither. My faith was not deconstructing nor was I seeking to help those who are.

But reading the book made me realize that I should be in the latter category; I should care about those deconstructing their faith more than I currently do. In fact, I suspect the main benefit to me from the book will be in my preaching. I typically do a poor job engaging contemporary struggles that people have with the Christian faith. Ivan Mesa’s book helped me see that, and the book also stoked my desire to improve while showing me fifteen examples of how to do this well.

Pastors need the reminder that part of contending for the faith once for all delivered, as Jude puts it, must also involve having “mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 3, 22). And part of having mercy on those who doubt involves understanding those doubts. Reading Before You Lose Your Faith will help you understand. It did for me, and I trust it will do the same for you.

* Photo by Veeterzy on Unsplash

Batalla Contra la Pornografía: The Spanish Edition of Struggle Against…

About a year ago, my friend Kevin Halloran encouraged me to find a way to get my book Struggle Against Porn published in Spanish. Kevin is bilingual and tells me there are few gospel-centered resources in Spanish to help men win the war against lust, especially compared to the abundance of English resources. So, Kevin connected me with Daniel Puerto, the Executive Director of Soldados de Jesucristo, a prominent Christian website in the Spanish-speaking world (Soldiers in Christ, in English).

Now, fast forward to just last week, and the book was published as both a paperback and ebook available on Amazon. My friend Chase Replogle helped me create a cover similar to the original.

Soon, Soldados de Jesucristo will post all the chapters from the book in a long blog-series on their website. The material is so important, we want to make it freely and widely available to anyone who wants help.

Buy on Amazon

Back in January of 2021 I asked for financial help to cover the cost of the translation. Thank you so much to the dozen or so people who helped. It means a lot to me.

If you know anyone who would be interested in the book, please send them this way. I can offer discounted pricing for bulk orders.

And if you can read Spanish, I’ll end the post letting you enjoy the endorsement from blogger and author Tim Challies:

Cuando comencé a escribir sobre pornografía, muchos cristianos se asombraban de descubrir, no solo la dimensión del problema, sino simplemente que existía un problema. Hoy, una década más tarde, la situación ha cambiado radicalmente y los cristianos están tan acostumbrados a escuchar sobre pornografía que casi ha llegado a ser aceptada como si fuera normal. Sin embargo, la pornografía sigue siendo tan peligrosa y devastadora como siempre. Por esa razón, estoy agradecido por recursos como este que continúan combatiendo en contra de esta plaga terrible.

Tim Challies, conocido blogger en www.challies.com, cofundador de Cruciform Press y autor de varios libros incluyendo Limpia tu mente.

* Photo by Sab Qadeer on Unsplash

Unexplainable Misery and the Wonder of Advent

During seminary my wife and I were members of a small local church near our home. I volunteered as much as time and permission from church leadership allowed. A few times a year our pastor let me preach. One fateful year I managed to land the opportunity to preach during Advent. Even sweeter, he let me pick the passage. I chose the book of Judges, specifically Judges 19.

Looking out from the pulpit upon a sanctuary decorated with golden stars and red velvet bows and families dressed in their Sunday Christmas best, I told the story of a concubine raped all night to her death, sliced into twelve pieces, then packaged and sent throughout the tribes of Israel. “Such a thing has never happened or been seen,” says the narrator (19:30). That’s sort of what I felt too as I preached the passage during Advent.

I had titled the message “Unexplainable Misery and the Wonder of Advent,” and I had intended to mean the misery of everyone in the book of Judges (especially those in chapter 19), as well as the misery of all who live east of Eden. But as I preached, it sure seemed awfully hot in the sanctuary for the middle of December. My misery, however, didn’t seem so unexplainable.

It’s been fifteen years since I preached that sermon, and different ministry roles have taken me to churches in other parts of the country. But just the other week I ran into my former pastor. Although we hadn’t seen each other in years, do you know what came up? “Ahhh, yes, that sermon,” he said. I guess neither of us can forget it.

Although my seminary preaching ambition may have been greater than my preaching ability, the gospel punchline from that sermon still preached: There was no king in Israel—until there was. The King of kings came in a manger, and he’ll come again on a white horse. Both Advents bring good news to all who see Jesus as the only savior from the sinful world around them and the world of sin within them.

“There was no king in Israel—until there was.”

Pastor, as you preach through the book of Judges, your people may stare back at you with blank faces; indeed, you may sit in your study on more than a few Wednesdays pouring over a passage with your own blank stare. But if you “pray the sermon hot,” as I’ve heard one pastor say, the glory of the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ will sparkle against the grizzly backdrop of the book of Judges—and against the backdrop of our lives. And after you preach each week, and the music team takes the stage for one more song, with every head bowed and every eye closed, your people will be able to rest in this one truth: although scarcely will one man die for a good man, they will know that while we were still sinners—sinners like the sinners in the book of Judges—God demonstrated his love for us in the death of his Son. And soon and very soon, the Son who now sits will yet stand to split the sky.

Sound the trumpet, Preacher. There was no king in Israel until there was. And is. And will be again.

* These reflections are an unedited selection from a forthcoming writing project, a “preaching guide” for the book of Judges to be published by For The Church.

** Photo by Jeison Higuita on Unsplash

Dear Twitter, I’m Leaving You for My Wife

I might have to walk this decision back, but for now, I’m leaving Twitter.

And Facebook.

And Instagram.  

The latter two accounts were killed more as collateral damage than being directly engaged as enemy combatants.

I suppose it’s probably more accurate to say I’m simply inducing a coma for my social media accounts than it is to say that I’m leaving them or even killing them—but death sounds more dramatic, and dramatic seems to get more attention, so let’s just say I killed them.

I’ll tell you a few of the reasons why I’m quitting Twitter, even though I won’t presume that one guy’s reasons for abandoning Twitter have any interest to you.

Basically, I joined and remained on Twitter for only a handful of reasons. I liked seeing what my friends from around the world were up to, most of whom are fellow pastors. And I liked seeing what my Christian heroes were up to—again, mostly pastors and authors. I also liked having a vague sense of what was going on more broadly in Christianity. Finally, I supposed that being on Twitter helped me share my books and articles. All of these—the friends, the heroes, the news-worthy events, the writing—were beneficial to me, even sources of joy.

But I started to realize that the underbelly of “Christian Pastor Twitter”—you know, all the snark, all the trolling, all the assuming-the-worst, all the myopic nitpicking—might not be the underbelly. The worst part of Twitter might actually be the whole pig—the head, the body, the arms, the legs, the snout, the curly tail, and not just the underbelly. The exception had become the rule. In fairness, Twitter has probably been this way for a good while, but my experience with Twitter had, at least until recently, remained primarily positive.

But then in the middle of March came a string of, what I can only call, insanity.

There was that lousy review of the book Gentle and Lowly. If you missed this, you are better for it. A book reviewer managed to misread an excellent book written by a hero of mine, and the review got people worked up, including me.

Then there was the shooting at the massage parlors in Atlanta, which seemed to cause several social commentators to offer bizarre and irresponsible hot takes. For example, within days of the shootings, some suggested that Christian teaching about sex caused the shooting because the shooter was a member of a church. An article in the New York Times spun it this way. One of my former seminary professors even took the opportunity to slander a thoughtful, biblical organization, saying that the organization had “radicalized” the shooter. That accusation is absurd—and again, slanderous. I know I shouldn’t care as much as I do, but I write for the organization that he slandered, and that organization has blessed me and our church in a thousand tangible ways. It seems wildly reckless to connect with a thick, straight line the worst version of Christian teaching about sex—teaching that would be better labeled as un-Christian teaching—and say that it is because of Christian teaching that women are dead. This connection, at best, is a thin correlation and certainly not causation.

That same week another hero of mine, Collin Hansen, tweeted about what a rough week it had been on social media and included a link to the new book he cowrote about hope. I’m so glad he wrote the book. What person couldn’t use more hope in our anxious age? But when I clicked to see the comments underneath Hansen’s tweet—it seemed to me—people salivated at the opportunity to tear him down. It was like Hansen and The Gospel Coalition, where he works, are the source of all the world’s problems. One person likened Hansen to an arsonist who feigns confusion of a burning house. In other words, you caused the terrible week on social media, so don’t be so perplexed.

Speaking of culpability, I should insert a note here I haven’t mentioned yet. I know that I am culpable for my Twitter feed. The specifics of all the social media algorithms may remain opaque, but the principle is readily known: the more you click, the more you get. And I certainly got. For every doofus Twitter comment I clicked, I got ten more comments in my feed. My eyes were reaping the seeds I had sown with my thumbs. Forgive me, Lord.

This reaping led to more and more reaping. Controversies I didn’t know existed were foisted upon me. And the “news” I had tried to remain vaguely aware of started to become the headlines I’d rather be completely unaware of.  “Beth Moore Leaves the SBC.” “James White Said Something Provocative and Made People Mad.” “Somewhere Someone with White Skin Said Something Racist.”

As an evangelical pastor, I began to feel like each time I opened Twitter, I stood trial for all the dumb things fringe evangelicals had done. To open Twitter was to be prosecuted by the mob. And mobs don’t do nuance well.

It’s not that I don’t care about Beth Moore and the like, but I am a pastor of a church with plenty of our own problems, and all of our church problems I care about far more than the problems I didn’t start and I can’t fix. Indeed, one day I will be held accountable to God, not for whether I engaged in the latest Twitter storm, but whether I loved the sheep of my flock. And while we’re on the subject of divine accountability and moral imperatives, I also have a large family, and they are my first pastoral priority. Each time I turn around, my children grow an inch or two and seem to be one step closer to walking out our front door and onto a college campus. Time flies when you have toddlers and teenagers in the same house.

Rod Dreher argues in his popular book The Benedict Option that Christians should retreat to the places where we can have meaningful influence, to—in a sense—become Benedictine monks on Noah’s ark. Conservative Christians, he would say, must become those who actually have something to conserve (re: godliness) and spend our time conserving it. I read the book a few months ago and found it insightful even if I don’t take his conclusions to be the only, or even the best, option for Christians. But perhaps Dreher’s arguments worked on me more subtly than I realized. Today, I feel content to let the Twitter dumpster fire burn while I retreat to play with my kids and love my wife and pastor my church.

This gets to the real issue. In addition to all the drama, Twitter had become an all-consuming time drain, devouring every bit of my mental rest and human interaction. Do I really need to open Twitter while I walk upstairs to grab my running shoes? Do I need to recheck when I walk down the stairs to see what I missed during the 30 seconds it took to find my shoes? Do I need to check Twitter with one hand and brush my teeth and comb my hair with the other? Do I need to check Twitter as I walk from my car to the office in the morning and then again while I warm my coffee in the office microwave? No, no, no, and no. And more importantly, do I need to multitask when I talk with my wife? Same answer.

When I tweeted that I was leaving Twitter, I wrote that “If you want to reach out to me, send me a text message.” A few days later I checked the comments, and someone had asked, “Do you mean a direct message?” Actually, no. I did mean text message. If you have my cell phone, let’s keep in touch.

So, Dear Twitter, for all these reasons, I’m leaving you for my wife. And for my family. And for my joy. Your tidal wave of trash and the general social media sea of cesspool finally rose so high and crashed so hard on my little island oasis of joy where I visited with my friends and heroes that I’m going to float away.

Maybe one day the violent waters will recede, I’ll get off my ark, and we can be friends again.

* Photo by Jean-Pierre Brungs on Unsplash

Our Blogging Audiobook Is Now Available: How to Win a Free Copy

At first I didn’t want to do it, but I’m so glad we did.

With my previous book projects, I hired a professional to record the audiobook. It’s funny to think about, but even though being a local church pastor entails doing a lot of reading in public, I’m still not all that great at reading out loud. And when you listen to an audiobook, they are typically done so well, I feared the contrast from professional readers to me—at best a novice reader—would be too noticeable.

But I’m also too much of a perfectionist. So John and I pressed on, and the audiobook of Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World turned out far better than I had hoped it could have. I received a lot of great coaching from the production manager, Mark Johnson of the Loft Studios, and my coauthor John Beeson reads as well as he writes. If the process was difficult for John, I sure couldn’t tell from his finished recordings.

The paperback and ebooks released last November, and the audiobook just came out a week ago.

Win a Free Copy

We’re each giving away five copies of the audiobook. You can win a copy by sharing about the book on social media, whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. You can share this blog post or the Amazon page (share on Facebook; share on Twitter; share on LinkedIn). Just make sure you tag me in the post or email me the link to your post, so I know it happened and can get you entered. I’ll pick the five winners randomly on Saturday morning (3/6/2021).

Bad news, but we only can do this for those using Audible in the United States or the United Kingdom—it’s not us; it’s an Amazon thing.

Sample

Here’s a sample of the audiobook of me reading from the introduction.

What Does It Mean to Blog for God’s Glory?

“Daddy, I painted this for you,” says my daughter Izzy. Closing the door behind me and setting my work bag on the table, I bend over to look at the paper she’s covered with splotches of primary colors in the shape of people. The paper is still wrinkly from liberally applied paint. She places her artwork in my hand.

“That’s wonderful,” I say, trying to figure out which way is up and which is down. I’ve learned from experience not to ask, “What is this?” Instead I say, “Tell me about your picture, sweetie.”

“It’s a doggie in our backyard, and all of our family is eating pickles,” she says.

“Oh, I see. May I hang it on the fridge?”

Izzy smiles wide. Her two front teeth are missing.

We hang her wrinkly artwork on the front of our refrigerator along with all the others.

People tend to mark the stages of life. We save the paystub from our first paychecks, mount diplomas on walls, celebrate a marriage and a first mortgage. I’m in that stage of life where my fridge hides behind artwork from my children. They hand me watercolor paintings when I leave for work. They hand me colored-pencil drawings when I come home from work. They come to work to hand me colored macaroni glued to construction paper. It’s wonderful. I don’t want it to end.

What I love most is the innocence of their gifts. My little Izzy doesn’t have a clue there is such a place as the British Museum housing works of Rembrandt and Rubens. Izzy doesn’t know anything about the Louvre in Paris that displays da Vinci’s Mona Lisa for ten million visitors each year. All Izzy knows is our fridge: the two sides of the fridge and the front side of the fridge. I guess we could call them the three sides of our art galleries. The front of our fridge—or the main gallery, if you will—receives nearly ten visits a day, or maybe one hundred visits a day in the summer when our children enjoy vacation and standing in front of an open fridge. But no one in our family visits the fridge necessarily to see her artwork. That’s the child-like innocence Izzy has when we mount her paintings. If an adult were to possess this kind of ignorance of the great works of art, especially an adult given to producing her own art, we’d call it something other than innocence; her ignorance would take on the pejorative, culpable sense of the word. In a child, however, the ignorance is admirable.

The purity of her gifts strikes me too. “Daddy, I painted this for you,” she says. Izzy paints not for fame or money or from the overflow of competition with her siblings, but for you, she says. When I say purity, I mean this kind of single-mindedness, the kind of joy that is captivated by and treasures only the smile of her father. No mixed motives, no duplicity. Only pure, single-minded devotion.

I’m not saying children are innocent and pure and full of rainbows and bubble gum. I believe in original sin because I read of it in the Bible and also because I see it in the mirror and in the eyes of every one of my young children who—if their little arms were strong enough—might kill me rather than not get their way. Children are not pure and innocent in an absolute sense. As those downstream from our father Adam, we are not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we are sinners. As David writes, “In sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5).

Still, I think about my children’s artwork often when I blog. I like to think of God printing out my blog posts and hanging them on his heavenly fridge, which I’m sure is huge and made of stainless steel and has an ice dispenser that always works. I like to think of God stooping over to smile and say, “Tell me about this one, Benjamin.”

Let the Nations Be Glad in God: A Pastoral Prayer

Only rarely do I share on my blog a sermon or pastoral prayer from our church. This week I wanted to share my pastoral prayer from last Sunday. You can also watch it here.

Our church leaders, and me in particular, were recently gently rebuked for not seeing and preaching often enough what appears often enough in the Bible, especially the book of Acts, which we’re currently studying. And we were right to be rebuked.

What had we failed to see? That God loves the nations of the world, and we should too.

*     *     *

Depending on which way you enter and leave the building, whether by the front doors or the office doors, you will walk through a hallway that has on one wall pictures of our church outreach partners and a map of the world, and on the other wall a Bible passage. The passage comes from Psalm 67. I’ll read you verse 3–4:

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.

There’s a rather famous book about world missions written nearly thirty years ago that draws its title from a line in that passage: Let the Nations be Glad. The opening three paragraphs go like this:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. . . . “Let the peoples praise thee, O God; let all the peoples praise thee! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!” (Ps. 67:3-4).

But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. Missionaries will never call out, “Let the nations be glad!” who cannot say from the heart, “I rejoice in the LORD. . . . I will be glad and exult in you, I will sing praise to thy name, O Most High” (Ps. 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship. (John Piper, Let the Nation’s be Glad, second edition, 17, emphasis original)

We’ve been preaching through the book of Acts on and off for the last 18 months. This morning is the fortieth sermon on our way to a total of forty-nine sermons throughout the book. We’ve talked lately about each week looking for the biggest, most clear, most significant aspects of the book and preaching about them.

While our preaching pastors have repeatedly called our attention to the good news of the sovereignty of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ who extends grace and mercy to his people and builds his church through preaching and sacrificial deeds of mercy, and while we have repeatedly spoken of the joy and urgency to share this good-news message with others in our lives—friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and so on—we have missed singing a note that the book of Acts sings: this God who lives and loves and reigns, is God of the nations.

Just in our passage from last week, Acts 20:1–16, we read of 20 different cities and regions from several nations: Macedonia, Greece, Syria, Macedonia (again), Berea, Thessalonica, Derbe, Asia, Troas, Philippi, Troas (again), Assos, Assos (again), Mitylene, Chios, Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Asia (again), and Jerusalem.

In forty sermons we have not directly addressed the cross-cultural missionary zeal and pattern that seeks to take the gospel across the borders of nations for the joy of the nations. This has been an oversight on my part. And I’m sorry. I’d like to highlight this theme now in a short prayer.

Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we believe, as Paul preached in Acts 17 that you are the God who made the world and everything in it. We believe that, being Lord of heaven and earth, you do not live in temples made by man. We believe that you are not served by human hands, as though you needed anything since you yourself give to all mankind life and breath and everything. And we believe that from one man you made every nation to live on all the face of the earth and that you determined allotted periods and the boundaries of our dwelling place with the purpose that we—the nations of the earth, the people of your creation—should seek you, our God and Creator, that we should feel our way toward you by observing your power and might and majesty and find you because you are not far from each one of us (cf. Acts 17:24–27).

Heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the type of God whose mercy triumphs over your wrath (James 2:13). We thank you that when Adam and Eve sinned against you, you went looking for them. “Adam, where are you?” you said (Gen. 3:9).

We thank you that this missionary zeal climaxed in your messiah, our messiah, the person of Jesus Christ, who went looking for lost sheep and tells us he came “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

We thank you that this rescue mission includes anyone and everyone who would want to find joy and gladness in you.

And we ask that you would make us, your people, to embody your missionary zeal, your passion to reach not only our friends, our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and our enemies but the nations of the world. Fill us with white-hot worship for the sake of your name among the nations.

We pray for our speaker today, a long-time missionary and member of our church. That you would fill him with your Holy Spirit and our hearts with a readiness to receive from you.

We pray all of this in the name and power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

* Photo by Brett Zeck 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

Thank You for Helping Get My “Struggle” Book Translated into Spanish

Friends:

Last week I asked if you’d consider helping me publish a Spanish translation of my book Struggle Against Porn.

Great news—we made it! I had hoped to raise $700 for the translation, and we got there with a little room to spare. Please stop sending me money! We hope to have the book available for purchase early this summer.

Additionally, when the book is released in Spanish, Soldados de Jesucristo (a prominent Christian website in the Spanish-speaking world) will post all the chapters from the book in a long blog-series on their website. The material is so important, we want to make it freely and widely available to anyone who wants help.

If you missed last week’s blog post and want to hear about why I consider this project to be so critical, you can read about it here.

Thanks,
Benjamin

* Photo by Euan Cameron on Unsplash

Would You Help Get My “Struggle” Book Translated into Spanish?

[Update: Thank you for all the financial help; the funds needed for this project were raised on January 15, just a few days after I posted this.]

Each week that I stand in front of my congregation to preach, I assume I look out into many eyes that looked at pornography the previous week.

These same people—both men and women—got up early on the weekend, showered, dressed, and drove across town to gather with God’s people for church. They put in this effort to hear truth from God’s word preached, truth about the beauty of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Deep down, this is what they want to hear about. But they also gather as those who feel guilty and ashamed because they gave into temptation the previous week.

Most of these men and women, I assume, want their church and their pastor to help them with their struggle but don’t know where to begin to look for that help.

A Book to Help Struggling Saints

I don’t think it’s wise to talk about pornography in the sermon each week. Many other issues are worthy of our attention, and, besides, talking about porn too often tends to give this one particular struggle too much gravity. The war against lust, I believe, is often won by attacking from the flank, not from a direct assault. To say it another way, feasting on Jesus curbs our appetite for junk food.

But just because I can’t address something each week in a sermon doesn’t mean that I don’t want to help. I do want to help. This is why I wrote a book a few years ago called Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart. I wrote it to help men not struggle passively with porn but rather struggle proactively against it, hence the title had the word against. The book was published by Rainer Publishing in May of 2019 and received endorsements from Tim Challies, Drew Dyck, Garrett Kell, and Tim Chester.

A New Spanish Translation Coming Soon!

Buy on Amazon

For the last year, my friend Kevin Halloran has encouraged me to find a way to get the book published in Spanish. Kevin is bilingual and tells me there are few gospel-centered resources in Spanish to help men win the war against lust, especially compared to the abundance of English resources. So, Kevin connected me with Soldados de Jesucristo, a prominent Christian website in the Spanish speaking world (Soldiers in Christ, in English).

Now, fast forward a few months, and Soldados de Jesucristo and I are working on a professional translation and publication of the book.

Additionally, when the book is released in Spanish, Soldados de Jesucristo will post all the chapters from the books in a long blog-series on their website. The material is so important, we want to make it freely and widely available to anyone who wants help. Lord willing, we’ll publish the book’s Spanish translation by early summer of 2021 (this year!), and the blog series on Soldados de Jesucristo will follow shortly thereafter.

Will You Donate to the Translation Project?

I would love your help. The cost of translation and editing is $700. All the other work—the cover design, the book layout, etc.—will be covered by the publisher.

In fact, let me just be candid. The publisher for this project is my self-publishing imprint Fan and Flame, which means I will cover all costs. I’ve already paid for the translation too. I’m just reaching out to see if anyone else wants to participate in this opportunity to bless others.

Let me put it another way. As an author and publisher, I’ve been pushing a “boulder” to the top of a new hill, and it would be wonderful to have a few people help me give it a final shove down the other side. (Well, maybe a boulder is not the right metaphor, but you get the idea.)

Would you consider donating to the translation? For every donation over $50, I will add your name to the book’s copyright page to say thank you.

If you’d like to ask more follow-up questions, please send me an email at benjamin@fanandflame.com. If you happen to be able to read Spanish, let me know. We’ll need a few people to spot read sections of the book before it launches.

You can donate to the translation project here.

Donate

(And just in case it matters to you, let me mention one other item. Unfortunately, donations will not be tax-free. Even though my blog does not make any money, I’m considered a “for-profit organization,” so I can’t hook you up with a donation receipt. Sorry about that.)

* Photo by Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash

Reading List 2020

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

My reading intake increased this year from last year, while my writing output decreased a bit. And that was fine with me, even intentional. I read 92 books and over 24,000 pages.

In an unexpected highlight, a new reader to my blog scoured my list of books from past years and noticed something: no books by pastor John MacArthur. This was not intentional. It just sort of happened, or sorta did not happen as it were. So my new friend made use of the rarely used “donate” button buried on my About page and gave me $100 to buy some books. Among the new books, I grabbed two recent ones by MacArthur, including a complete commentary on the Bible, which I now consult each time I prepare a sermon. Why can’t y’all be more like this guy?

You’ll see on the list Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a beast of a novel. Amazon tells me the book is 1,168 pages! I assume that’s right. I listened to the audiobook, which I had to rent from the library three separate times to finish because the audiobook is sixty-three hours long! And get this—each time I rented the book, I had to go back on the waitlist for three or four months. Yet, despite the long gaps between rentals, each time I reengage the plot, the book still felt surprisingly fresh, which I assume is a testament to the quality of the book and the magnetic pull of the characters.

I didn’t love every aspect of Atlas Shrugged, though. Just to name a few frustrations, the multiple love interests toward Dagny (and her reciprocation) annoyed me; the stark black-and-white, good-and-evil contrast of most characters felt unrealistic; and the final soliloquy by the mysterious John Gault is more becoming to a non-fiction book. Still, the book seemed to me, dare I say it, contemporary and relevant.

One other goofy detail about Atlas Shrugged. Later in the year I also listened to the audiobook of The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brendan Manning, which was read by the same popular voice actor, Scott Brick. The commonality of the reader, coupled with such diametrically opposed themes—“salvation by man’s hard work” vs. “salvation by God’s grace”—made for a viscerally jarring listening experience. I kept mumbling to myself, “This is so strange,” but no one was sharing earbuds with me to commiserate.

I’m not sure how closely anyone looks at my lists, but you’ll notice that Analog Church appears on the list three times. That’s not a mistake. I did actually read it three times. I read the book twice as I prepared a book review for 9Marks. I believe a reviewer should truly understand a book before commenting on it publicly. But 9Marks requested I make some overhauls to the first draft of my review, so I reread the book again before resubmitting. The time commitment was not ideal, but sometimes that’s how a writing project goes. Getting it right counts more than getting it published.

I enjoyed my first book of the year far more than I expected, the autobiography Open by Andre Agassi. At a pastor’s conference in 2019 I heard James K.A. Smith mention the book in an offhand comment, commending it as one of the best memoirs of all time (or something like that). Smith’s recommendation didn’t disappoint. It’s hard for me to fathom the level of transparency Agassi has with his readers. Open really is a fitting title.

I also enjoyed two Crossway books by two female authors: Jen Oshman’s Enough About Me and Glenna Marshall’s Everyday Faithfulness. In the category of Christian ministry, I thought Gospel-Driven Church (Crossway, 2019) was classic Jared C. Wilson: thoughtful and punchy, winsome and gospel-y. The sequel comes out this year in March, which I’m looking forward to reading.

This year I reread two books about writing, as well as a half-dozen new ones. Both Stephen King’s On Writing and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well taught me more the second time around than the first. Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark was a new read, but it will certainly be a book to reread in the coming years. Kudos to Peterson and B&H for publishing the book without a single endorsement. It didn’t need them. Would that we all had such confidence in our work. This fall I also began reading the words of Flannery O’Connor (five books) and words written about her (one book completed and another in the works). I expect this Flannery fascination to continue next year and maybe longer.

My favorite book of the year, outside of the Bible, was once again my beloved World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. If Doerr and I were stranded on the proverbial desert island with Marie-Laure Werner, Volkheimer, Reinhold von Rumpel, and a makeshift radio, we wouldn’t get bored. Each year when I begin the book afresh, the immediacy of the present tense verbs in the opening lines (and throughout the book) take me to a happy place: “At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.” (Pour, not poured. Blow, not blew. Turn, not turned. Flutter, not fluttered. Swirl, not swirled. And so on for 450 lovely pages.)

Before turning you loose on the list, let me add just a few housekeeping notes. Yes, I “count” reading my own books but only once for every ten times I read them; it really does take forever to write a book. In fact, I just finished recording the audiobook for Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World. Look for that to release in the late winter.

Speaking of audiobooks, I read twenty-five audiobooks this year, which helps pad the numbers and lets me shoehorn extra books into my life—especially novels, which I often listen to as I exercise. Next, just as some people write in their Twitter bios about their retweets, I’ll say that reading a book does not equal endorsement of a book. For example, this fall I listened to The Subtle Art of . . .  What can I say? I was in the mood to see what all the fuss was about. Finally, as I’ve pointed out in other years, I count reading the Bible as six normal-sized books rather than one massive book; breaking it up helps me keep pace from year to year.

Let me know in the comments your favorite book from last year, and if we overlapped at all in our reading, especially in the unlikely event you listened to Atlas Shrugged and The Ragamuffin Gospel in that order. So strange.

Books Read, 2013–2020

Pages Read, 2013–2020

*   *   *

1. Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi (400 pages)

2. Gospel-Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace by Jared C. Wilson (240 pages)

3. The Gospel According to Satan: Eight Lies about God that Sound Like the Truth by Jared C. Wilson (224 pages)

4. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren (184 pages)

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

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

7. Leading with Love by Alexander Strauch (208 pages)

8. Tracing the Thread: Examining the Story of Self for Lasting Change by Christy Rood (210 pages)

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

10. Proverbs: A 12-Week Study by Lynda Brownback (96 pages)

11. The Abiding Cycle: Knowing God by Experience through Obedience by Glen Whatley (140 pages)

12. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (544 pages)

13. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (368 pages)

14. Living & Active Vol. 1: Scripture Through the Lives of Luther, Calvin, And Knox by Stephen R. Morefield (105 pages)

15. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (176 pages)

16. Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History by Tim Challies (176 pages)

17. Learn how to become a blogger: An EASY step by step guide to starting your own blog by Matthew Arnold (118 pages)

18. Make Money from Blogging: How to Start A Blog While Raising A Family (Make Money from Home) by Sally Miller (123 pages)

19. God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (With the Complete Text of The End for Which God Created the World) by John Piper and Jonathan Edwards (272 pages)

20. The United States v. You: A Practical Guide to the Court-Martial Process for Military Members and their Families by R. Davis Younts (113 pages)

21. Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt (288 pages)

22. Enough about Me: Find Lasting Joy in the Age of Self by Jen Oshman (176 pages)

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

24. Blogging for Dummies by Amy Lupold Bair (432 pages)

25. How to Blog for Profit: Without Selling Your Soul by Ruth Soukup (229 pages)

26. Influence: Building a Platform that Elevates Jesus (Not Me) by Kate Motaung and Shannon Popkin (168 pages)

27. Coronavirus and Christ by John Piper (112 pages)

28. The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis (176 pages)

29. Trade Craft, issues about blogging (6 issues) by Various (200 pages)

30. The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them by Kevin DeYoung (208 pages)

31. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (304 pages)

32. The Commonwealth v. You: A practical guide to the Pennsylvania Criminal Justice System for those facing charges by R. Davis Younts (121 pages)

33. Jesus Driven Ministry by Ajith Fernando (256 pages)

34. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard (124 pages)

35. Tons of blog posts about blogging by Various (350 pages)

36. The Lord’s Prayer by R.C. Sproul (129 pages)

37. The Lord’s Prayer by Thomas Watson (332 pages)

38. Extreme Ownership (How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win) by Jocko Willink (384 pages)

39. Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson (224 pages)

40. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson (409 pages)

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

42. On Writing (A Memoir of the Craft (Reissue)) by Stephen King (320 pages)

43. Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World (The Gospel Coalition) by Glenna Marshall (176 pages)

44. A Solider of the Great War by Mark Helprin (880 pages)

45. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1,168 pages)

46. Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World by Benjamin Vrbicek and John Beeson (181 pages)

47. Placed for a Purpose: A Simple and Sustainable Vision for Loving Your Next-Door Neighbors by Chris McKinney and Elizabeth McKinney (143 pages)

48. The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel by Diane Setterfield (432 pages)

49. Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age by Jay Y. Kim (216 pages)

50. Stand Firm: Living in a Post-Christian Culture by John MacArthur (152 pages)

51. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (224 pages)

52. Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age by Jay Y. Kim (216 pages)

53. Beartown: A Novel by Fredrik Backman (432 pages)

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

55. Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age by Jay Y. Kim (216 pages)

56. World-Class Assistant: Hiring, Training and Leveraging an Executive Assistant by Michael Hyatt (176 pages)

57. The Truth about Us: The Very Good News about How Very Bad We Are by Brant Hansen (208 pages)

58. On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser (336 pages)

59. Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (352 pages)

60. You’re a Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass): Embracing the Emotions, Habits, and Mystery That Make You You by Mike McHargue (240 pages)

61. Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science by Mike McHargue (304 pages)

62. Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane C. Ortlund (224 pages)

63. The Ten Commandments of Progressive Christianity (Cruciform Quick) by Michael J. Kruger (58 pages)

64. Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen (176 pages)

65. The Subtle Art of Not… : A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson (224 pages)

66. When People Are Big and God is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man by Edward T. Welch (252 pages)

67. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (384 pages)

68. How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age by Jonathan Leeman (272 pages)

69. Dear Edward: A Novel by Ann Napolitano (352 pages)

70. Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt (256 pages)

71. Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World by Benjamin Vrbicek and John Beeson (181 pages)

72. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing by Tony Reinke (224 pages)

73. Writing for Life and Ministry: A Practical Guide to the Writing Process for Teachers and Preachers by Brandon J. O’Brien (128 pages)

74. The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor by Jonathan Rogers (208 pages)

75. The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out by Brennan Manning (272 pages)

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

77. A Little Book for New Preachers: Why and How to Study Homiletics by Matthew D. Kim (128 pages)

78. Essays of EB White by E. B. White (380 pages)

79. Missions by the Book: How Theology and Missions Walk Together (Yet Unpublished) by Chad Vegas and Alex Kocman (224 pages)

80. The Song of Solomon: An Invitation to Intimacy by Douglas Sean O’Donnell (192 pages)

81. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: A Novel by Kim Michele Richardson (322 pages)

82. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor (256 pages)

83. Wise Blood: A Novel by Flannery O’Connor (256 pages)

84. God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself by John Piper (192 pages)

85. The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ by Raymond C. Ortlund Jr. (144 pages)

86. The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor (256 pages)

87. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (288 pages)

88. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications by Amy Einsohn (200 pages)

89. The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) by Carol Fisher Saller (576 pages)

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

91. Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers (248 pages)

92. Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor (288 pages)

Guest Posts and a Recap of 2020 Struggles

When NBC aired sitcom re-runs back in the late 90s during the summer, they advertised using the slogan, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you.” I always thought that was clever marketing. The slogan has come to mind each time I’ve bought a “new” car, by which I meant a used car that, because I hadn’t driven it before, was new to me.

As 2020 ends, I want to share with you my guest posts that were published in 2020 (list below). A “guest post” is an article written for another website. Sometimes I’m invited to write for these other websites, and, to be candid, sometimes I try to invite myself. Regardless, if you have not read the articles yet, well, they’ll be new to you.

Considering how difficult this last year has been, perhaps the first post might be the most interesting to you. The January article explores potential ways that 2020 might be a difficult year but, come what may, exalts God’s goodness and sovereignty. In the final paragraph I write,

We’ll have plenty of hindrances next year, but none too great for God’s love and power to overcome. As Paul says elsewhere, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). A “no hindrances” mentality in 2020 means something more gritty than prosperity preachers teach and something more glorious than any politician can offer.

I had no idea what the “plenty of hindrances next year” might entail, though it did not take a prophet to see election troubles in the forecast. I had no idea one of my former pastors would take his own life. I had no idea our church would be maliciously cyber hacked. I had no idea we’d close down our in-person church services for thirteen weeks. I had no idea our pastor-elder team would spend dozens of hours discussing a piece of fabric placed over the mouth and nose of church attendees.

Speaking of masks, just last night before bed I received an email that another family will not attend church until our policy on face coverings changes. I’m glad the person emailed me back when I asked how they were doing and if they were okay because I hadn’t seen them lately. I’m glad the person responded because most people have ghosted our church.

Jesus spoke of shepherds who leave the ninety-nine to find the one missing sheep (Luke 15:1–7), but I struggle to know what to do as lead pastor of a church that fifty percent of our regular attendees do not attend regularly. Around 150–200 people are missing from our in-person gatherings each week. It’s hard to pastor people you can’t see. In fact, I have pretty much given up chasing non-members and decided to just do my best to pastor our members and those in front of me, and whoever comes back in the spring comes back.

I’m not trying to rant. I’m simply underscoring that when I wrote for The Gospel Coalition that I had no idea what hindrances we’d have this year, I really did have no idea. I’ve not even cataloged half of the struggles.

But what I said in my article about God’s goodness and sovereignty is also true: no hindrance is too great for God’s love and power to turn it for his glory and our good. I also take comfort knowing that, as Peter said, “the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:9).

My favorite article from the year—and perhaps my favorite piece of writing from all time—came out of the struggles related to Covid and other challenges in pastoral ministry. I titled the article “Bending the Covid Bow of Bronze” and wrote it for our church denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America. If you read only one of my guest posts, I’d encourage you to read it.

Thank you for subscribing to my blog this last year. I don’t take it for granted.

Thanks,
Benjamin

Guest Posts in 2020

“Neither Sin nor Death nor Elections Can Hinder God’s Work in 2020,” The Gospel Coalition, January 2, 2020

“Expository Preaching and Anchoring to the Rock,” EDA MOVE, Evangelical Free Church of America, Eastern District Blog, January 22, 2020 (an audio reading of this post by Benjamin appeared on the EDA Move Podcast, here)

“An Interview with Chuck DeGroat, author of When Narcissism Comes to the Church,” Christianity Today, online February 17, 2020, and the March print edition

“How to Land Employment in the Local Church: A Brief Overview,” an excerpt from Don’t Just Send a Resume at the Gospel Relevance blog, February 25, 2020

“Bending the COVID Bow of Bronze,” EFCA NOW, Evangelical Free Church of America Blog, May 13, 2020

“Redeeming Pastoral Ambition,” 9Marks, June 12, 2020 [Also, reposted as “Redeeming Pastoral Ambition,” For The Church, October 6, 2020 and reposted as “Redimiendo la ambición pastoral,” 9Marks - Spanish Website, November 24, 2020]

“Know Where to Find a Pastoral Job after COVID-19,” The EFCA Leader’s Network, June 9, 2020

“Fathers, Ask for Their Heart (And, Preachers, Write a Poem),” EDA MOVE, Evangelical Free Church of America, Eastern District Blog, June 18, 2020 (an audio reading of this post by Benjamin appeared on the EDA Move Podcast, here)

“A Book Review Jesus Driven Ministry by Ajith Fernando,” 9Marks, July 30, 2020

“Book Review: Don’t Just Send a Resume, by Benjamin Vrbicek” a review written by Kris Sinclair, 9Marks, August 8, 2020

“10 Tips for Finding a Ministry Position During the Pandemic,” The Gospel Coalition, August 14, 2020

“Pastor, Why Aren’t You Preaching About What’s Happening? [Part I],” Gospel-Centered Discipleship, August 31, 2020

“Pastor, Why Aren’t You Preaching About What’s Happening? [Part II],” Gospel-Centered Discipleship, September 2, 2020

“A Book Review of Analog Church by Jay Kim,” 9Marks, September 17, 2020

“The Wrath of God Should Come into Our Minds More Often,” EFCA Now, Evangelical Free Church of America Blog, November 17, 2020

“A Book Review: A Little Book for New Preachers, by Matthew D. Kim,” 9Marks, December 3, 2020

* Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

The Second Advent: The Thrill of Hope for a World in Sin and Error Pining

On Christmas Eve, with only candlelight, our church will sing the classic Christmas hymn “O Holy Night.” We’ll sing the line, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining.” That line in the hymn accurately described the state of the world just before the Advent of the Messiah, the world just before the birth of Christ. But that description also sounds how I might describe our world as we wait for the second Advent, the second coming of Jesus.

Consider each of those three words: sin, error, and pining.

First, there is sin. In the first century the political leaders over God’s people were debauched. For example, in the Christmas story we read about a king who killed a generation of babies when he learns of the birth of a new king (Matt 2:16–18). Today in America we also kill a lot of babies. And consider Matthew 14 where we read of Herod Antipas offering up to half his kingdom to a young woman who does something of a striptease for him at a dinner party. Sin abounded in their world—but also in ours. If you visited our church on Sunday morning, depending on which way you drive to our building, a minute before you arrive in our parking lot you would pass two strip clubs and an adult video store. The sign above one of the clubs says, “According to the poles, we’re the best place in town.” In other words, on your way to church you’d be confronted with sin, not in some faraway and long-ago land, but around the corner. Long lay the world in sin—then and now.

There is error. You don’t have to be familiar with the Bible to know of the religious group called the Pharisees. Yet the Pharisees were only one of four major religious groups. There were also the Sadducees, who tended to be more liberal and interested in colluding with the Romans. There were the Essenes, a pious group known for their retreat from ordinary society to maintain their supposed purity. There were the Zealots who were primarily interested in regaining political power. Then, of course, there were the Pharisees. The Pharisees were more like your evangelical pastors in the way they tended to have a conservative approach to the Bible. But Jesus took even this best group, the Pharisees, to task repeatedly for their errors (e.g., the seven “woe to you Pharisees” statements in Matt 23). This multiplication of religious error even within true religion (not even considering the errors of false religions) causes me to think how many errors exist today among all the fractured denominations of Christianity. There are not four major groups in Christianity, but forty or even four hundred. Long lay the world in error—then and now.

And then there’s the word pining. We don’t use the word pining much, but it means reaching or yearning. Pining involves longing for something yet unrealized, like reaching for a carrot always just too far in front of you. Behind each idol our hearts could create for worship—whether the idol of work or money or sex or approval or power or whatever—is a pining for something deeper, something we know we want but can never seem to grasp. Perhaps to describe pining we could use the language of “thirst” and “desire,” as Revelation 22:17 does: “And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” C.S. Lewis uses the language of desire in his famous quote about being created for another world: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” All of us have this desire, this thirst, this pining for another world. Before the first Advent of Christ, there were four hundred years of silence from God’s prophets from Malachi to Matthew. And there have been two thousand years since as we wait for the second Advent. Long lay the world pining—then and now.

But I find encouragement from the book of Revelation, specifically the last verses in the last chapter in the last book of the Bible. There we see that Jesus anticipated a time when his church would be wondering if they had been forgotten. Jesus anticipated a time when his people would feel they had too long lain in sin and error pining.

The last chapter of the Bible answers the question of whether God’s people have been or will ever be forgotten with a resounding, No. In Revelation 22:7 Jesus tells us, “And behold, I am coming soon.” Later he says again, “Behold, I am coming soon . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (v. 12).

I don’t know exactly what Jesus means by the word “soon”; apparently not what you and I ordinarily mean by the word. But I do know that the promise of Christ’s second Advent means his children are not forgotten.

At the end of a difficult year, I pray the promise of God’s soon return would lead us to know a fresh “thrill of hope” and cause our “weary world to rejoice.”

* Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

Where Does Long-Term, Faithful and Joyful Ministry Come From?

Pastors and churches go through seasons; times of prosperity and abundance, and times of scarcity and decline.

In many ways, even surprising ways, throughout the Covid19 lockdown and financial upheaval, our church did far more than limp along; we continued our work with enthusiasm. But for me personally—as the lead pastor of our church—the spring of 2020 was more of a long spiritual winter. The cooler spiritual temperature began a year ago when a key staff member moved away. When he left, I strapped my boots on tighter and went to work harder than before. I read Fernando’s book in the midst of the spiritual dryness—the frenetic activity at church had worn my soul thin. Jesus Driven Ministry came at just the right moment.

Jesus Driven Ministry focuses on aspects of ministry that featured prominently in the ministry of Jesus during his earthly life. The chapters cover topics you would expect such as prayer, the Word of God, and discipling young leaders. But Fernando also covers overlooked though important aspects of ministry, such as having a sense of God’s joyful affirmation, visiting homes, resting from ministry, and ministering to the sick and demon-possessed.

The Blessing of Perspective

Western readers will find Fernando’s work a helpful exploration of biblically principled ministry in an international setting. His work often references ministry challenges that westerners have rarely faced. For example, Fernando is familiar with war and hardship in a way I am not. In many places in the book he alludes to a civil war in Sri Lanka that existed in the background and sometimes the foreground of his ministry. “As part of their strategy,” he writes, “militants often come to the south where I live and plant bombs in strategic places” (25). He explains how these challenges created unique ministry challenges and opportunities. The war was so bad in 1989, he notes, that “there was never a time when a body was not floating in the river at the edge of our city” (96). Fernando ministered to people who saw human carnage almost daily.

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In another place, Fernando notes that because his organization does not pay bribes, some initiatives they wanted to accomplish never materialized (26). I’m currently overseeing a renovation project at our church, but I’ve never had to wrestle with the temptation of paying a building inspector to make a certain problem go away.

Perspectives from church leaders in international settings can challenge, correct, and encourage our own ministries. Of course, simply reading books by fellow pastors outside the US isn’t the same as pastoring in a foreign city but books like Jesus Driven Ministry can help us sift true Christianity from cultural attachments and help us discern between what is wheat and what is chaff.

The Blessing of Transparency

Fernando’s transparency on the difficulties of Christian ministry are also encouraging. In ways that didn’t come across as self-serving, the book was a show and tell of ministry scars. As the Apostle Paul could write of bearing on his body the marks of Jesus (Gal. 6:17), so Fernando showed how he bears the marks of Christian ministry on his soul. These struggles often led him to consider quitting. “This is why in my twenty-six years as director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka, there have been many times when I have wished to resign from my job. A few times I even wrote a draft of a letter of resignation” (67).

Further, Fernando deftly analyzes how anger can build up over the course of a ministry: “When I turned fifty, I made a list of the biggest battles I face in my life and ministry. High up on that list was the battle with anger over the way people have treated me. One of the saddest sights in the church today is that of Christian workers who are angry—angry over the way they have been hurt by others, by circumstances, and sometimes, they feel, even by God” (111). Anger, like rust on the chassis of a car, can build up over the course of a ministry. It weakens our effectiveness and threatens our fidelity to the gospel. Fernando’s record of his struggles in ministry reminded me I’m not alone. His remedies for discouragement and anger are soul-stirring and worth considering if you’re a discouraged pastor.

The Building Blocks for Ministry for the Long-Haul

Ultimately, Jesus Driven Ministry considers what propelled Jesus into ministry and what sustained him in it—and how those same things should sustain us. This emphasis on longevity comes through in Fernando’s prayer for his book, namely, that men and women “commit themselves afresh to those vital basics of ministry that make for long-term ministry that is both fruitful and joyful” (16).

* This originally appeared at 9Marks.org

** Photo by Shavin Peiries on Unsplash

Real People in Real Places to Hold Real Hands and Wipe Real Tears

Stephen has come to church six times in six years. Surprisingly, he showed up again last week, even though COVID has forced our church into outdoor meetings under a 90-degree sun. Even with online options, Stephen showed up to stand six feet apart from others and to introduce me to his girlfriend. With a sober but deeply thankful smile he said, “This is Pastor Benjamin; he came to our house the day after Mom died.”

That event was five years ago, but he remembers that I came; I suspect he always will.

At significant moments—either those of great joy or great sorrow—we need real people in real places to hold real hands and wipe real tears and give real hugs. As churches across the country wrestle with the best ways to foster fellowship when our gatherings are inhibited, Jay Kim’s book Analog Church shows us the importance of gathering to the Christian life.

Technology and the Church

Analog Church has three parts: worship, community, and Scripture. In each section, Kim explores both the advantages and limitations of technology. Throughout, Kim argues that God requires embodied realities as part of the essence of the church—or as the subtitle says, real people, places, and things. To use an example, a person might find someone to date using an online app, and the app might even be used to arrange the date. But you can’t date online; you have to go somewhere and buy a meal or hike a trail or play golf. As Kim notes, technology can help us communicate but not commune. Communion requires more than fast Wi-Fi; it requires flesh and blood.

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Advancements in technology claim to improve three main areas of humanity: speed, choices, and individualism. In other words, technology offers us whatever we might want and gives it to us quickly. But, Kim argues, we need to recognize that following Christ requires a wholly different set of values: “discipleship requires patience, depth, and community—the very things that stand in contradiction to the values of the digital age” (26).

In the chapters on worship, Kim talks about how stage and sanctuary lighting technology can lead to a culture of performance, not participation. “Rather than accentuating the lyrics we’re being invited to sing together, these image backgrounds often become mesmerizing shows accentuating a musical performance, and we end up watching rather than participating” (44).

In the chapters on community, Kim notes that the Greek word we often translate as church, ekklēsia, means gathering. He also notes that all of Scripture’s one-another commands require physical proximity; they require ekklēsia or “gathering.” He writes, “All these [one anothers] are difficult at best, and impossible at worst, to do online. These practices of the church, the gathered community of God’s people, require physical presence” (100).

Finally, in the chapters on Scripture, Kim doesn’t so much critique reading the Bible from a screen per se, but the social media trend to pull warm, comforting verses from their context and overlay them on appealing backgrounds. Practices like these, over time, tend to convey that Scripture exists to comfort God’s people but never confront them. To counter this trend of decontextualizing Scripture, he encourages pastors to preach sermons based on longer passages of Scripture, even grounding a topical sermon series on something like marriage or evangelism in a series through one book of the Bible.

With regard to preaching, Kim continues to stress the importance of the physical presence of the preacher with his congregation, as opposed to live-streaming a preacher from a different campus. “Preaching,” he writes, “is a participatory act involving both the communicator and the community, in the moment, not simply after the fact. . . . [It is] an act that must be witnessed rather than simply watched. Participation in the transformation process begins at the moment of the sermon delivery” (67–68, emphasis original).

A Needed Admonition for Our Technologically-Obsessed Age

The shockwaves of the technological innovation explosion that has occurred in the last century ultimately reaches every church and pastor. When we were remodeling our church building three years ago, the contractor simply couldn’t understand my hesitations about including too much technology as part of the remodeling effort.

“If you pick that small of a screen for your sanctuary,” the contractor told me, “the size will be all wrong when you show videos.”

“We generally don’t show videos on Sunday,” I said.

Then we talked about how our new slide system works. The contractor told me to make sure I keep our church logo on the screen when we transition between slides. “Why would we do that?” I asked. “Can’t we leave the screens black between slides? And for that matter, can’t we keep the screens clear as often as possible?”

He responded, “In my context, you never miss an opportunity to market.”

“But,” I said, “people are already in our church building. Why do I need to remind them of our logo?”

So the conversation went for several minutes, each of us remaining equally mystifying to the other.

Screens, of course, aren’t sinful. But the larger point is that many churches pursue relevance to the neglect of faithfulness, and technology has become a significant domain where that flaw flashes in bright lights. I appreciate that Kim, writing as a pastor in Silicon Valley, perhaps the technology capital of the world, chose to write in a tone that attempts to win over churches and pastors to a better, more biblical way. For example, he writes,

[I]n addition to the harm it’s done to our churches, the unchecked effects of the digital age on the worshiping life of the church are doing damage to the very men and women charged with serving and leading the church into the future. They are doing damage to you—tapping into the insecurities, uncertainties, and performance-driven tendencies in the worst possible ways (51).

Kim’s illustrations indicate his familiarity with the struggles technology brings church leaders. He was once told to make sure he regularly looked into the camera as he preached so the other campuses would feel connected to him. “The thought of looking into a camera,” he writes, “to ‘connect’ with people who would be gathering on another day in another room on the other side of the city struck me as an exercise in missing the point” (47). I assume many in his book’s target audience have pondered the same thing, if not out loud in a staff meeting, at least in their inner dialogue.

A few aspects of the book were a bit theologically concerning. For example, Kim hints toward a more egalitarian perspective on ministry. Also, for those who already agree with Kim’s central thesis, the book might not give as much application as you may like. Even so, I was helped as I read the book. Each time I pick up my iPhone to refresh my email, I think about the nefarious connection Kim describes between the technology that drives casino slot machines and the apps on our phones (133–37).

Analog Church is a marvelously timed book in light of the fact that in a COVID world many people are suddenly wondering, “is virtual church enough?” Kim compellingly argues it is not. I’m hopeful many will take to heart its fundamental arguments as our churches begin to regather in the coming weeks and months.

* This originally appeared at 9Marks.org.

** Photo by Andreas Kruck on Unsplash