Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 13

What Some People Are Saying About “Supernatural Power for Everyday People”

My new book Supernatural Power for Everyday People: Experiencing God’s Extraordinary Spirit in Your Ordinary Life releases on January 23. Below are some kind endorsements from some sweet people.

“A book on supernatural living is something one expects from a charismatic or Pentecostal preacher, not a Gospel Coalition blogger. But this is what makes Jared C. Wilson’s effort to convey the other-worldly power of the Holy Spirit so intriguing, infectious. Make no mistake, our God is a supernatural being who works supernaturally.”

— Kyle Idleman, pastor and author of not a fan and Grace is Greater

“In his book Supernatural Power for Everyday People, Jared C. Wilson points out that the Holy Spirit is not just someone who simply counsels and comforts, but rather our God who convicts and guides. He is the one with the supernatural power to affect our heart, strengthen our resolve and lead us to action. Whether associated with the holy rollers or one of the frozen chosen, or neither, we all need to embrace this book.”

— Mike Cosper, author of Recapturing the Wonder

“Words like ‘supernatural power’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ in our current cultural and religious moment, have been wielded and to some extent hijacked by pastors with big personalities and big money. Jared brings them back here…and brings us back here to a simple, biblical, no-fluff look at the supernatural power that changes ordinary people like you and me. As I read, I found myself worshiping. I found myself craving the Spirit more than his miracles. Get this book. No gimmicks, snakes, or gold dust here — just real power for real people.”

— Matt Papa, songwriter, recording artist, and worship leader

“Many of us wonder how our God is supposed to supernaturally work in our lives, but we are often confused by the mixed messages we hear in various Christian communities. Jared C. Wilson does well to convey how God supernatural acts, if we merely submit to his will.”

— Caleb Kaltenbach, pastor and author of Messy Grace

“The word supernatural is often mistaken and misused in Christian circles. But in Supernatural Power for Everyday People, Wilson corrects the misnomers and rights the mistakes by revealing the supernatural being God reveals himself to be. The Bible is full of supernatural events and experiences that we should embrace and enjoy. Let’s live it.”

— Greg Gilbert, author of What is the Gospel? and FAVOR

“With his usual penetrating clarity, Jared C. Wilson describes the delusion of the dull-hearted faith, critiques the shallowness of the consumer-culture faith, and prescribes a pathway to a powerful faith with fresh reflections on everyday practices that awaken us to the Spirit’s work in our lives. This book will stir your desire to pursue your faith, guide you to nurture your faith, and encourage you to venture with faith into your everyday relationships.”

— Geoff Folland, leader at Power to Change, Australia

“There is just no way Jared C. Wilson–or anybody else–can speak with so much truth and grace as in these pages except by the power of the Holy Spirit. I found myself confronted and comforted time and time again while reading and desiring to live life more supernaturally and less dependent on my little strength and empty knowledge. I can’t wait to share the life-giving truths of this book with my church.”

— Jairo Namnún, executive director of The Gospel Coalition, Spanish

“Tired of slogging through your spiritual journey, back bent and jaw clenched? Yeah, me too. That’s why I found Jared C. Wilson’s latest book so refreshing. Jared reintroduces readers to the Holy Spirit, exposing the shenanigans perpetrated in his name, while also showing how the Spirit’s power is available to every believer for everyday life. If you’re hoping for some esoteric knowledge that will elevate you to an elite spiritual status, you’ll be disappointed. Jared argues that the Spirit’s work isn’t spooky or secretive. It’s to glorify Jesus and drive us deeper into the heart of the gospel. It’s there we find the power we need to live a fruitful, joyful Christian life.”

— Drew Dyck, editor at Moody publishers and author of Yawning at Tigers

“Jared C. Wilson’s gritty, down to earth writing style endears itself to gritty, down to earth disciples–which is perfect, because that is where most of us find ourselves. I eagerly read this as a means to minister better to others, but suddenly found myself exposed, not only by Jared’s Biblical and pastorally shaped insight, but more importantly, by the living and active ministry of the Spirit. On this topic,this has become my new ‘go-to’ recommendation for everyday followers of Jesus who desire to walk in step with the Spirit.”

— Chris Thomas, teaching pastor at Raymond Terrace Community Church, Australia

“This is a book that will help people understand who the Spirit is and de-mystify a lot of confusion. Jared’s trustworthy writing is warm, relatable, and accessible. I would recommend Supernatural Power for Everyday People to anyone wanting to know how to live in step with the Spirit as they follow the way of Jesus.”

— Lucas Parks, lead pastor of Village Church Belfast and director of Acts 29 Northern Ireland

“If you’ve ever thought ‘there’s something missing in my Christian life’,then this is the book for you, for it shows us again that there really is nothing missing, except maybe the ongoing awareness of all that God has provided for us in and through the person and work of his Spirit.”

— Pete Greasley, pastor of Christchurch Newport, Wales

“In a generation that has been fed lots of content but who often lacks power, all of us need to recognize that we truly need to embrace the supernatural power of the Spirit. Jared Wilson’s book gives careful attention to God’s character and how he demonstrates that the means of his grace to us are supernatural in and of themselves.”

— Jay Bauman, pastor, director Acts 29 Latin America and Restore Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Learn more about the book — including details on an exclusive pre-order offer of free resources (study guide, devotional, etc.) — at SupernaturalPowerBook.com

Don’t Make Your Pastor Groan

It is hard to pin down what is difficult about pastoral ministry for people unfamiliar with it. Many laypeople see their pastor once or twice a week during Lord’s Day worship or a church activity. A few may see him more frequently if they are involved in volunteer ministry or are being discipled or counseled personally by the pastor. So while we sometimes joke about the congregation that thinks their pastor works only one day a week—and even then, he’s just talking—the stereotype of the pastor who “gets no respect” is regrettably a real thing.

And this is difficult to talk about for pastors. It is difficult to explain to their own congregations how pastoral ministry can be so difficult. It can be and often is a great joy. But it is difficult in ways that are hard to express, because doing so runs the risk of appearing as complaining, shaming, or nagging. The pastor may find it not difficult at all to exhort his congregation in submission to God, faithfulness in service, and joy in discipleship. But exhort them to submit to himself and his fellow elders? In faith? With joy? Well, that’s something else entirely. Out of all the biblical texts the Christian may hope his pastor neglects to teach, Hebrews 13:17 may sit near the top of the list:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

We may assume, based on all of the Bible’s instructions on such matters, that the author of Hebrews is not instructing Christians to submit to sin. This caveat is embedded in all the New Testament’s words on our submission to each other. So let us set aside immediately the “but” we want to bring up about immoral or abusive leaders. Set aside as well the image of the perfect pastor custom-tailored to your way of thinking, quite easy indeed to submit to. Think instead of the imperfect, unpolished, ordinary pastor. Think of your pastor. Think of your leaders. Hebrews 13:17 says to obey them and submit to them.

When we think of submission, we often think in terms of ruling and overruling, of conflict and wielded authority. I want to encourage you to think of obedience and submission differently in this context. Certainly, it does mean that when sin is evident, when you are in need of confession and repentance, you ought to obey your leaders’ rebuke and submit to their biblical discipline. But assuming such a circumstance is not the case, think of obedience and submission this way: encouraging your leaders with faithful graciousness.

Faithful graciousness means consistently and diligently choosing to glorify Christ with your words and deeds rather than satisfying your own wants and needs. Faithful graciousness is a way of Christian living that contributes to the overall peace and harmony of a church body. It means not nitpicking. It means not complaining about personal preferences. Faithful graciousness is intentionally and quietly minding one’s own business, having a productive presence rather than a critical spirit (1 Thess. 4:11). Faithful graciousness works toward being low-maintenance, not working at any of those puny-hearted and petty things that cause pastors to groan (1 Tim. 5:13).

Certainly, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But what we really want is grace. The way to align with God’s will is through the humble encouragement of your pastor by faithful graciousness. The benefits are mutual.

Hebrews 13:17 reminds us that our leaders will have to give an account. Do we want them to have to bring to the Lord in prayer our selfish neediness, our unwilling submission, constant criticisms, and questions? Or do we want them to go to the Lord in great thanksgiving out of the joy of being our leaders? I want those in authority over me to be able to say, “Oh, Lord, thank you for the gift of Jared! What a great joy it is to lead him,” rather than “Oh, Lord, help me with this guy. He’s so difficult.”

In the short term, disregarding commands like Hebrews 13:17 is a great way to gets lots of attention and, perhaps, even lots of satisfaction. In the long run, however, it is spiritually dangerous. Giving your leaders cause for groaning is “no advantage to you.” In the end, obediently submitting to our leaders with lives of faithful graciousness in the church is a commitment of faith in God, because he has placed these leaders in your church. By submitting to God-appointed authorities, we submit to God. No, the pastor isn’t perfect. No, he doesn’t always get things right. Yes, he too is a sinner—just like you. But when we know this and submit anyway, we give God glory and our pastor grace. This is good for us. We may not be immediately interested in our leaders’ joy, but if we are interested in our own spiritual advantage, we will repent of our selfishness and seek our leaders’ joy.

Let it be a great joy to our pastors to have us as their sheep. Let us give them great cause to “boast of us” in Paul’s godly way (2 Cor. 8:24; 1 Thess. 2:19). Your leaders probably won’t tell you to do this. They will fear that it will seem self-seeking or self-pitying. And this is all the more reason why you should obey and submit to them, encouraging them tremendously with your commitment to faithful graciousness.

I’m Doing Some Ministry Coaching Through Tailored Coach

I know, I know. I’ve never seemed like the guy who did “coaching.” And I’ve probably done my fair share of making fun of it. But over the last couple of years as I’ve done more church staff and elder training events and conferences, I’ve had some friends suggest I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss offering more personal help for pastors interested in applying gospel-centrality more to their ministries. So I’m gonna give it a shot.

Starting in February, I will be offering 6 months of ministry coaching via Tailored Coach. The format will be cohort based (limit 12 people) and will involve a combination of monthly group conference teaching/Q&A’s and one-on-one coaching. All the details are here, including cost.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Why Gospel-Centrality? This session will lay the biblical foundation for orienting ministry around the finished work of Christ.

2. The Gospel-Centered Pastor. Pastors fundamentally lead from who they think they are. This session will deal with identity and empowerment.

3. Preaching. An overview of approaches to the Bible and preaching pro-tips on making the main thing the main thing.

4. Shepherding. Peter tells pastors to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you.” This session will cover what that looks like from the gospel-centered paradigm and offers some “best practices” for scheduling, administrating, visiting, and sabbathing.

5. Discipling. How do you help people constantly look to Jesus? If the call of the church is to make disciples, what should pastors be doing week to week to facilitate fulfilling this mandate?

6. Gospel-Centered Troubleshooting. This session will deal with applying our union with Christ to ministerial and relational issues that can cause frustration and discouragement – problem people, gossip, the slow pace of change, difficult contexts, family dynamics, etc..

Space of course is limited and deadline to apply is Wednesday, January 10. If you or someone you know is interested, apply soon!

3 Things I’m Excited About at Midwestern Seminary

I rolled on to Midwestern Seminary campus three winters ago unsure of a whole lot about the school and my place in it. The future looked promising, and the opportunities looked exciting, but I don’t know if I—or anyone—could have predicted the outrageous amount of growth we’ve experienced over the last few years.

Perhaps Jason Allen could have. Our seminary president is completing his first five years this year, and what he has presided over at Midwestern could perhaps only be described as miraculous. While many schools are making cuts after cuts, some even closing campuses, we are enjoying another year of enrollment growth, and the momentum continues to gain.

There are lots of things I could look back on and reminisce about my first three years at Midwestern, but instead I prefer to look forward. With the groundwork laid by Dr. Allen’s impressive first five years, what lies ahead for Midwestern that makes one really excited to be here? I’ll limit myself to three.

1. Team Expansion

I’ve been consistently impressed with how Midwestern makes key hires. As I’ve seen the communications team I work on expand, this has been true, and it’s been doubly true of the strategic additions Dr. Allen and seminary provost Jason Duesing have made to the Midwestern faculty. In the last three years, we’ve seen the arrival of Owen Strachan and the opening of his Center for Public Theology, as well as the recent arrival of scholar Matthew Barrett, who brings a wealth of knowledge (and a growing list of publication credits) to campus. With the further of addition of as Spurgeon Center preaching fellows, Midwestern continues to enhance its already established and gifted faculty team. Year by year, hire by hire, enrolling at the seminary only gets more attractive.

2. Campus Growth

With exponential enrollment growth comes the need to adapt infrastructure, and it’s just plain fun to show up to work every day and see a new construction or remodel project underway. Midwestern’s Kansas City campus needed some updating when Dr. Allen arrived, but it also presented a pretty big blank slate for new builds. With the establishment of the Spurgeon Library and the newly renovated chapel where we host the annual For The Church Conference, we’ve also seen awesome beautifications and enhancements in courtyards and patios, including the addition of a few of those cool fountains Kansas City is known for.

The biggest expansion to date, of course, is the $14 million, 40,000-square-foot Mathena Student Center, currently in progress and due to open summer 2018. This will be a game changer for us, and I’m excited to see the student center become the epicenter of campus fellowship and student life. We need this space very much, not just for the seminary and college students already making Midwestern’s campus their home, but for the many more besides who will be doing so in the years to come. The buzz on campus has only gotten busier and more vibrant, so I’m excited to walk through the new coffee shop, fitness center, cafeteria, commons areas, and bookstore to see campus life in action.

3. Church Partnerships

This is probably the aspect of Midwestern’s growth I’ve been most excited about, and it’s the area I’m most excited about seeing continue to develop. Lots of people ask me how the extraordinary increase here can be explained. There are a few reasons, of course, but perhaps the single most important factor in the phenomenal turnaround at Midwestern has been our laser-like focus on existing For The Church. It probably sounds cliché to many at this point, and it is of course the seminary’s slogan, our “brand” if you will. But over the last three years, I’ve also seen that existing For The Church is not simply institutional smoke and mirrors. Jason Allen’s original vision for re-marrying seminary training to the life of the local church—to the building of pastors, specifically—has been taken seriously from the top down.

So like all theological institutions, we train scholars for the academy and prepare other Christian leaders for all sorts of contexts. But our primary vision is to support and supply the local church. So I’ve been encouraged by our ongoing partnerships like The Three Fourteen Institute with The Journey Church in St. Louis and The Cornerstone School of Theology with Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa, where seminary education is provided and facilitated “in house” for those training for ministry.

I’ve been excited about the ongoing expansion of local opportunities for residential students. The Timothy Track is a seminary-affiliated program run by Jordan Wilbanks, where residential MDiv students are placed in internships in local churches. While they study, they get lots of hand-on opportunities to learn and lead in the life of a local congregation. They also get a 50 percent tuition break their first year, which is nice!

Other churches offer internships and various other ministry roles for seminary students, as well, of course. One of the coolest developments has been the rise of ministry residency programs designed to complement and coalesce around seminary training. My friend Josh Hedger leads the Emmaus Pastoral Residency at Emmaus Church in North KC, and I direct The Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church just northeast of the city. Both of these residency programs, and similar programs at other churches, offer Midwestern students the possibility to press deeper into their pastoral training and learn how to apply more of their studies to the life of church ministry.

These are just three of the reasons I think the brilliance of the last few years at Midwestern prefaces a bright future still to come. I’m glad to call Kansas City home, and I’m hugely optimistic about the days ahead helping train the next generation of leaders for the church.

The Christmas Miracle of the Incarnation of the Omnipresent Word

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

— Hebrews 13:8

Every year at this time as we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus to the virgin Mary, I don’t suppose it occurs to too many merrymakers that what they’re really celebrating is the incarnation. All of the other miracles are in service of that central miracle: God became man. And in becoming, through spiritual conception, the man Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God did not cease to be God. Baby Jesus, from the moment of conception to the straw habitation of the manger, was fully God and fully man. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

When we put our minds long to the idea of Jesus being 100 percent God and simultaneously 100 percent man, they naturally feel overwhelmed. The orthodox doctrine of the incarnation is compelling, beautiful, biblically sensible, and salvifically necessary, but it is nevertheless utterly inscrutable. And that’s okay. In the end, the incarnation is not for analysis but for worship.

But when we read Colossians 2:9—“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily”—the inscrutability of the incarnation widens. The baby Jesus who was wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, was also omnipresent Lord of the universe. Omnipresence is one of God’s impassable attributes; God cannot not be omnipresent. So for Jesus Christ to be God incarnate must not mean he was no longer God omnipresent.

Louis Berkhof concurs:

The doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the incarnation always constituted a problem in connection with the immutability of God. . . . However this problem may be solved, it should be maintained that the divine nature did not undergo any essential change in the incarnation. (Systematic Theology, Eerdmans, 1996, pp. 323-324)

Wait a second, you might say. Didn’t Jesus disregard his deity as something to be grasped? Yes, but what Paul is getting at in Philippians 2:5–8 is not that Jesus did not “hold” or “maintain” the fullness of his divinity but that he did not exploit it or leverage it against his experiencing the fullness of humanity. He didn’t pull the parachute, in other words.

Instead, what we see in the wonder of the God-Man is a miraculous extension, not reduction. Jesus “made himself nothing” (Phil. 2:7), yes, but this was not a voiding of his essential deity. It is instead an appraisal of the bewilderment of the incarnation. The incarnation posits a self-willed emptying consisting of Jesus’s refusal to employ all divine abilities at his disposal, not an emptying that would consist in a subtraction from the Godhead. The alternatives to simultaneous incarnation and omnipresence are a lesser incarnation on one side or a lesser Godhead on the other.

The words of John Calvin:

For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning! (Institutes, ed. McNeill, Vol. 1, 2.XIII.iv, p. 481)

In Calvin’s estimation, God’s incarnation in Christ was not an exit from heaven so much as a descent, an extension. In his commentary on John’s Gospel, he writes, “So Christ, who ‘is in heaven,’ has clothed himself in our flesh, so that by stretching out his brotherly hand to us he may raise us to heaven with himself.”

Let us take this cue from Calvin: Here is something marvelous!

This Christmas, let’s marvel that the incarnation presents to us the fullness of God in the fullness of man, because it proclaims to us the great big gospel of the fullness of God for the fullness of man.

(This post originally published at Desiring God, 2011).

Would It Change Your Life to Know Supernatural Power Were Available?

I wrote Supernatural Power for Everyday People—coming next month from Thomas Nelson — for everyone who’s felt a little spiritually dry, a little disconnected, a little confused as to what difference the Christian faith makes for the mundane stuff of ordinary life.

A pre-order comes with extra goodies. Details here.

My Top Books of 2017

I always wait to the last minute to post my annual list, so I know I’ve missed the big wave of the last couple of weeks. In any event, here is my list presented with appropriate fanfare. The best books I read this year. (Keep in mind that not all of these were published in 2017—they were just the best books I read in 2017.)

In ascending order:

10. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances Fitzgerald

I had mixed feelings about this book when I read it late spring, but its significance has grown on me. The first half is a really great book. The second half bogs down, not so much due to Fitzgerald’s writing, but because of the historical narrative shift of evangelicalism as revivalistic and culturally responsive movement to evangelicalism as political reactionary and morally compromised movement. The second half history is largely about the machinations of the Republican Party from 1970s onward, which for a book written about “The Evangelicals,” tells you quite a bit. Beginning to end, however, the book is meticulously researched and nearly exhaustive in details. It could have used a better editor, however, not simply to pare down the length, but also to catch recurring errors —eg. 1. repeatedly referring to the premillennialist belief in “The Tribulations,” when nearly all spokespeople call it “The Tribulation” singular; 2. constantly re-introducing figures, like referring to Rick Warren as megachurch pastor and bestelling author of The Purpose-Driven Life numerous times within a few pages (You already told us who he was!); and 3. simple textual errors like typos that I’m sure the sheer bulk created more opportunity for. At one point Gregory Boyd is referred to as “Gerald Boyd” within a page of his name being listed correctly. Despite the sloppy editing, it is a weighty book and a good outsider’s panoramic look at how we got where we are today.

9. Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel by Ray Ortlund

I actually can’t think of anybody better to have written this. What this book lacks in length, it makes up for in profundity and depth. The gospel shape of and implications for the marriage union are laid out clearly and with affection. The field of Christian marriage books grows exponentially every year with a new slew of entries—this one rises to the top. Skip the cutesy reheated therapy-speak from the latest evangelical social media personalities and read this from one of our wisest and most weathered shepherds.

8. Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill

One of the most personally helpful books I’ve read in a long time. Even if this struggle is not your struggle, Hill patiently and pastorally shows how it kinda is. Huge implications in this little book for anyone who longs, feels lonely, and wants to know how any of this fits into the big picture of sanctification. It’s also a helpful window into the world of Christians with SSA that most straight evangelicals don’t get. But don’t just read it that way. Read it personally and apply it to your affections for God. (Note: I have not read the 2016 expanded version, which is linked here.)

7. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Slow down. Listen to the dialogue. Hear the wind through the grass, the mooing of the cows, the bubbling of the streams. Laugh at the old coots in the barber shop. Try to stay awake in church. No book I read this year feels as lived and lived-in as this one.

6. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

Southern Gothic with a heavy dose of theological medicine. O’Connor’s absurdist portrait of irredeemable men and women pawing at the prospect of redemption like cats might a mouse is mesmerizing, frustrating, and perplexing. It’s also one of the best narrative depictions of the sickness of sin—not just what we do, but who we are—that I’ve ever read. Come for the weirdness, stay for the subtle insights into the human condition apart from God against the humid backdrop of the Christ-haunted south.

5. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat

Douthat’s scathing portrait of religious America does not go as far back as Fitzgerald’s The Evangelicals in tracing the roots of our modern evangelical malaise, but his landscape is still bigger (to include “conservative Christian” religionists) and his insights more accurate. As I read this book, I kept thinking of people I wished would read it. If you have trouble sorting out how we got here—where moralistic therapeutic deism, the prosperity gospel, and nationalism are the holy trinity of evangelicalism—Douthat’s book is a sherpa up the thin-aired mountain. Important.

4. Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan

Autobiography as fever dream. I don’t even know how much is true, but it certainly sounds true. Dazzling prose, mesmerizing reflections. Dylan is able to infuse even the most ostensibly mundane memories with a sense of wonder and meaning. My favorite parts are when he recollects thoughts and feelings about other musical contemporaries—everyone from Ricky Nelson to Tiny Tim, from Woody Guthrie to Bono. I don’t know if there will be a Volume 2, but I will read it.

3. Free at Last?: The Gospel in the African American Experience by Carl Ellis

A must-read for our divisive and divided times, especially for pastors, ministry leaders, or really any Christian interested in listening well to the African-American experience and in understanding the necessary gospel implication of racial justice. Let Dr. Ellis be your teacher. You will learn a lot.

2. All Loves Excelling by John Bunyan

I know I’m pressing the boundaries of the Top Books of 2017 pretty hard with this 17th-century classic of Puritan literature, but it helped me tremendously this year. A sublime taste: “He that would know the love of Christ in several degrees of it, must begin at his person, for in him dwells all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Nay, more; in him ‘are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2:3). In him, that is, in his person: For, for the godhead of Christ, and our nature to be united in one person, is the highest mystery, and the first appearance of the love of Christ by himself, to the world (1 Tim. 3:16). Here I say, lie hid the treasures of wisdom, and here, to the world, springs forth the riches of his love.”

1. The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge

I’m not sure I’ve read a (modern) book so simultaneously intellectual and devotional in a long, long time. A masterful and exhaustive treatment of the doctrine of substitution and its entailments (and controversies and historical roots and ecclesiological implications), I was stirred and edified by Rutledge’s book and read the whole shebang in about three days. Couldn’t put it down. For a fuller examination, read Andrew Wilson’s excellent TGC review; I share both his appreciations and his critiques. The “redemption” of Anselm is helpful. The willingness to critique her own mainline tribe is appreciated. Her defense of wrath, blood guilt, the preach-ability of the biblical gospel, and so on is all so refreshing and relevant to our current theological situation. My quibbles began about halfway through and accumulated in dribbles thenceforth—dribbles of quibbles!—but what is great in this book is more than worth the investment. It took Rutledge 20 years to write, and it shows. Hands down, the best book I read this year.

Honorable Mentions:

Weakness Is the Way by J. I. Packer

The Rise of Evangelicalism by Mark Noll

Reading the Bible Supernaturally by John Piper

Theologies of the American Revivalists by Robert Caldwell

The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher – Listen to Owen Strachan and me discuss this book on the FTC podcast.

My 2016 books list.

The Numinous and R. C. Sproul

“Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy.”

— R.C. Sproul

We lost another giant yesterday. I suppose we will not know how big a man of God the late R. C. Sproul was for another hundred years, but he seems plenty big today. And he seemed pretty big all along.

Upon hearing of his passing, I began thinking of all the ways my life had intersected with Sproul’s work, and I suspect I could go on counting. I recall as a boy of high school age coming across his preaching on the radio. He did not sound like any of the preachers I had heard before. I did not have the emotional or intellectual capacity to comprehend why at the time, but I was a neurotic kid and pretty fearful, and there was something I could only register as “spiritual” in his tone and topics that resonated. It would be a few more years before I actually pursued in earnest what that something different actually was.

In college as I began wrestling with a lot of my grasp of the Christian faith—determining what I believed on my own as opposed to what I had immaturely inherited and assumed as true from my religious upbringing—a friend who was helping me (primarily in the area of soteriology) recommended Chosen by God. To this day, whenever I talk to men my age who went through the same sort of theological conversion I did, they almost invariably identify Chosen by God as the book that made the difference. I know it did for me. It is still one of the most formative books of my life. And I didn’t stop there.

I am hard pressed to think of another living author at the time whose work I read more of than R. C. Sproul’s. All the Reformed theology stuff. Last Days According to Jesus. Who Is the Holy Spirit? I even latched on to this helpful compilation of (I think) radio call-in show Q&A sessions called Now, That’s a Good Question. I might’ve recommended that book to a hundred people who visited the Christian bookstore where I worked while in college. More recently, I assigned his Getting the Gospel Right to my ministry residents at Liberty Baptist Church.

And then there was The Holiness of God. I read this seminal work for the first time while in college too. Sproul sent me to Rudolf Otto, and I learned about the experience mysterium tremendum, which helped give shape to all of my adolescent “fear and trembling.” The book The Holiness of God seemed to hold the key to unlocking what made Sproul so blessedly different from even the most well-spoken “celebrity preachers.” He was obviously a man who walked in the graciously disturbing orbit of the true numinous.

I re-read The Holiness of God 15 years later with my men in my last pastorate. We all wrestled with it, some of us newly, others of us again. One of our guys was a previously unchurched man who made a profession of faith in our community. Before seeking us out, his only exposure to the Bible was from a radio preacher he’d been listening to. That preacher? R. C. Sproul.

Sproul’s own young testimony in that book of following the late-night draw to his campus chapel and becoming overwhelmed by the sheer weightiness of God seemed to hang over his entire ministry thereafter. As the shadow of the blinding light of Paul’s dramatic gospel hijacking on the road to Damascus falls over all his epistles, as Isaiah’s discombobulation in the temple reverberates throughout his prophecies, has any preacher of R. C. Sproul’s prominence seemed so wondrously weighted by the righteousness of God? (I propose only the two Johns (MacArthur and Piper) come close.)

The cliche “larger than life” could have been invented for R. C. Sproul. And he seemed that way not simply for his towering intellect, his far-reaching influence, and his incredible preaching gift, but also for the way he talked about the holiness of God as a man who had been taken apart and put back together by it. And yet one thing I have learned that the holiness of God does to spiritually in-step souls is that it makes them simultaneously heaven-minded and of earthly good. Has any pastor-theologian of his stature seemed so at once erudite and . . . well, normal? One can just as easily see oneself discussing Cartesian philosophy with R. C. as watching the Steelers game with him. Who else is both a towering intellect and entirely amiable? I can think of no one. (Don’t name any names, because I’ll tell you how socially awkward they actually are.) This is an effect of the holiness of God also.

They don’t make them like this any more. Like Packer before him and the Johns and a handful of others shortly after, he was holding down the fort for gospel-centrality before it was a “thing.” Lots of people act like all this “God-centeredness of God” and “God’s passion for his own glory” stuff is new, perhaps invented by The Gospel Coalition even, while Sproul had been preaching the same thing for almost 50 years. He was country when country wasn’t cool.

We are standing on his shoulders, boys and girls.

A couple of years ago, my friend Steve Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College, invited me to preach in the school’s chapel service. I got to tour the campus of Ligonier and also St. Andrew’s. I did not get to meet Sproul, as was originally planned. It was expected that his poor health at the time would keep him home, but he was well enough at the last minute to travel to Los Angeles for the debut of an orchestral piece he’d written(!), hosted by MacArthur’s Grace Community Church. Steve did give me a tour of Sproul’s study, though. It was as I imagined—big, stately, warm, impressive. Over the desk hung a painting of Melville’s great white whale. I’ve been told that Moby Dick was Sproul’s favorite novel, and it makes sense: the book is intimidating, powerful, and brimming with alternating senses of dread and exhilaration. Has any American novel conveyed the prospect of the numinous like Moby Dick?

The sanctuary at St. Andrew’s, originally designed according to Sproul’s vision, is one of the most beautiful worship spaces I’ve ever set foot in, and the influence of the mysterium tremendum experience emanates from every stone and fixture. The pulpit is like the one in Melville’s masterwork—fit for the prow of a ship. I was in awe.

To the left of the main pulpit was situated a smaller one, more of a lectern really, but one that would serve as a fine enough pulpit in anybody else’s church. This, not the larger, is the pulpit I preached from. I assumed initially this had something to do with a Presbyterian protocol I was not savvy enough to know about. Perhaps only credentialed men got to preach from Sproul’s pulpit. Or maybe it was something as simple as they thought the smaller more befitting the smaller chapel crowd. In any event, I was fairly relieved. I was already intimidated preaching in that massive and massively overwhelming space; preaching from the center pulpit would have flustered me even more. I looked at it like the preaching equivalent of the kids’ table at the family Thanksgiving meal. When I thought back on all this man’s ministry had given me over the last two decades, I really deserved to be under the table altogether. I was glad to be at the kids’ pulpit.

I am grateful for this great man of God, for his legacy of faithfulness and ferociousness in proclaiming the greatness of Christ’s grace and the gravity of his holiness. Now that he has stepped into the numinous space he was so passionate to cast a vision for, let us honor his memory by gladly walking in his shadow.

Really, if we’re being honest with ourselves, compared to R. C. Sproul, all of us are at the kids’ pulpit.

The Numinous and R.C. Sproul

“Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy.”

— R.C. Sproul

We lost another giant yesterday. I suppose we will not know how big a man of God the late R.C. Sproul was for another hundred years, but he seems plenty big today. And he seemed pretty big all along.

Upon hearing of his passing, I began thinking of all the ways my life had intersected with Sproul’s work, and I suspect I could go on counting. I recall as a boy of high school age coming across his preaching on the radio. He did not sound like any of the preachers I had heard before. I did not have the emotional or intellectual capacity to comprehend why at the time, but I was a neurotic kid and pretty fearful and there was something I could only register as “spiritual” in his tone and topics that resonated. It would be a few more years before I actually pursued in earnest what that something different actually was.

In college as I began wrestling with a lot of my grasp of the Christian faith — determining what I believed on my own as opposed to what I had immaturely inherited and assumed as true from my religious upbringing — a friend who was helping me (primarily in the area of soteriology) recommended Chosen by God. To this day, whenever I talk to men my age who went through the same sort of theological conversion I did, they almost invariably identify Chosen by God as the book that made the difference. I know it did for me. It is still one of the most formative books of my life. And I didn’t stop there.

I am hard pressed to think of another living author at the time whose work I read more of than R.C. Sproul’s. All the Reformed theology stuff. Last Days According to Jesus. Who is the Holy Spirit? I even latched on to this helpful compilation of (I think) radio call-in show Q&A sessions called Now, That’s a Good Question. I might’ve recommended that book to a hundred people who visited the Christian bookstore where I worked while in college. More recently, I assigned his Getting the Gospel Right to my ministry residents at Liberty Baptist Church.

And then there was The Holiness of God. I read this seminal work for the first time while in college too. Sproul sent me to Rudolf Otto, and I learned about the experience mysterium tremendum, which helped give shape to all of my adolescent “fear and trembling.” The book The Holiness of God seemed to hold the key to unlocking what made Dr. Sproul so blessedly different from even the most well-spoken “celebrity preachers.” He was obviously a man who walked in the graciously disturbing orbit of the true numinous.

I re-read The Holiness of God fifteen years later with my men in my last pastorate. We all wrestled with it, some of us newly, others of us again. One of our guys was a previously unchurched man who made a profession of faith in our community. Before seeking us out, his only exposure to the Bible was from a radio preacher he’d been listening to. That preacher? R.C. Sproul.

Sproul’s own young testimony in that book of following the late-night draw to his campus chapel and becoming overwhelmed by the sheer weightiness of God seemed to hang over his entire ministry thereafter. As the shadow of the blinding light of Paul’s dramatic gospel hijacking on the road to Damascus falls over all his epistles, as Isaiah’s discombobulation in the temple reverberates throughout his prophecies, has any preacher of R.C. Sproul’s prominence seemed so wondrously weighted by the righteousness of God? (I propose only the two Johns (MacArthur and Piper) come close.)

The cliche “larger than life” could have been invented for R.C. Sproul. And he seemed that way not simply for his towering intellect, his far-reaching influence, and his incredible preaching gift, but also for the way he talked about the holiness of God as a man who had been taken apart and put back together by it. And yet one thing I have learned that the holiness of God does to Spiritually in-step souls is that it makes them simultaneously heaven-minded and of earthly good. Has any pastor-theologian of his stature seemed so at once erudite and . . . well, normal? One can just as easily see oneself discussing Cartesian philosophy with R.C. as watching the Steelers game with him. Who else is both a towering intellect and entirely amiable? I can think of no one. (Don’t name any names, because I’ll tell you how socially awkward they actually are.) This is an effect of the holiness of God also.

They don’t make them like this any more. Like Packer before him and the Johns and a handful of others shortly after, he was holding down the fort for gospel-centrality before it was a “thing.” Lots of people act like all this “God-centeredness of God” and “God’s passion for his own glory” stuff is new, perhaps invented by The Gospel Coalition even, while Sproul had been preaching the same thing for almost fifty years. He was country when country wasn’t cool.

We are standing on his shoulders, boys and girls.

A couple of years ago, my friend Steve Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College, invited me to preach in the school’s chapel service. I got to tour the campus of Ligonier and also St. Andrew’s. I did not get to meet Dr. Sproul, as was originally planned. It was expected that his poor health at the time would keep him home, but he was well enough at the last minute to travel to Los Angeles for the debut of an orchestral piece he’d written(!), hosted by MacArthur’s Grace Community Church. Steve did give me a tour of Sproul’s study, though. It was as I imagined — big, stately, warm, impressive. Over the desk hung a painting of Melville’s great white whale. I’ve been told that Moby Dick was Sproul’s favorite novel, and it makes sense: the book is intimidating, powerful, and brimming with alternating senses of dread and exhilaration. Has any American novel conveyed the prospect of the numinous like Moby Dick?

The sanctuary at St. Andrew’s, originally designed according to Sproul’s vision, is one of the most beautiful worship spaces I’ve ever set foot in and the influence of the mysterium tremendum experience emanates from every stone and fixture. The pulpit is like the one in Melville’s masterwork — fit for the prow of a ship. I was in awe.

To the left of the main pulpit was situated a smaller one, more of a lectern really, but one that would serve as a fine enough pulpit in anybody else’s church. This is the pulpit I preached from, not the larger. I assumed initially this had something to do with a Presbyterian protocol I was not savvy enough to know about. Perhaps only credentialed men got to preach from Sproul’s pulpit. Or maybe it was something as simple as they thought the smaller more befitting the smaller chapel crowd. In any event, I was fairly relieved. I was already intimidated preaching in that massive and massively overwhelming space; preaching from the center pulpit would have flustered me even more. I looked at it like the preaching equivalent of the kids’ table at the family Thanksgiving meal. When I thought back on all this man’s ministry had given me over the last two decades, I really deserved to be under the table altogether. I was glad to be at the kids’ pulpit.

I am grateful for this great man of God, for his legacy of faithfulness and ferociousness in proclaiming the greatness of Christ’s grace and the gravity of his holiness. Now that he has stepped into the numinous space he was so passionate to cast a vision for, let us honor his memory by gladly walking in his shadow.

Really, if we’re being honest with ourselves, compared to R.C. Sproul, all of us are at the kids’ pulpit.

Recovering the Cure of Souls

From my ministry vantage point at Midwestern Seminary and in getting to travel quite a bit and meet young and aspiring pastors around the world, I have been greatly encouraged by the increasing sense of what I can only call the “pastoral temperament” I sense among the younger generation. What I mean is, I sense—and I hope that I’m right—that something that has come alongside the gospel recovery movement is not just a recovery of theology, expositional preaching, missional church planting, and the like but also a recovery of the active and intentional shepherding of the people of God.

Our ancestors used to call this intentionally relational shepherding “the curing of souls.”

A lot of us still remember the winning of souls, and we employ that concept in a variety of ways, from end-of-service invitations to door-to-door evangelism or gospel sharing in backyards and coffee shops and airplane seats. But the curing of souls has fallen on hard times. You get the impression from some church promotional material that our only job is to win the soul, and then the soul is really sort of left on its own. But Jesus did not say to go out into all the world and make converts of all peoples; he said to make disciples. And this means the pastoral enterprise cannot begin and end with public proclamation and private planning—it must be applied in personal care. As John Piper has famously warned us: “Brothers, we are not professionals.”

The phrase in question is antiquated today, of course—curing souls may conjure up the image for some of an old-timey physician or apothecary promising some magical elixir for our spiritual maladies. But while the wording may be old-fashioned, I certainly hope the concept is not.

To those in the church committed not just to preaching and teaching and prayer—the primary tasks of the church elder, to be sure—but also to home and hospital visitation, counseling, personal discipleship—to helping people think and helping people live and helping people die—I want to offer my warmest thanks and profoundest salute. And to those who would seem to be falling behind in this vital area, I hope what follows will serve as a gracious exhortation to repentance.

In 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8, the apostle Paul writes:

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

The nursing mother, of course, is not the dominant model of the pastoral vocation marketed today. I have never seen a ministry conference advertised called “The Pastor as Nursing Mother.” But this is exactly the image that Paul here is introducing as emblematic of the pastoral task.

Why does he use this maternal image to reflect “being affectionately desirous” of this flock and “sharing not only the gospel but his very self” with them? For at least three reasons:

1. Godly pastoral care is the overflow of love.

I didn’t nurse my children of course, but I do remember getting up with them in the middle of the night and preparing a bottle and feeding and rocking them. As fussy and inconsolable as babies can be, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more connected to my daughters than when cradling them up close, feeding them, singing to them, rocking them, soothing them. I often started that routine in an exasperated, frustrated way, but I almost never ended it that way.

Something spiritual happens when we get up close, share meals with our people, weep with them, remind them gently of the gospel, listen to their stores, hold their hands when they’re hurting or dying. You cannot experience this if you see the people of your church as projects, not people. You cannot experience this if your ministry is driven largely out of ambition or aspiration. It must be driven by love.

Paul calls this love “affectionate desire.” When Jesus looked out the crowd and says that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, he was broken inside over them. If you struggle to feel this way about your church, ask yourself why. Ask God to help you. And then put yourself in positions to have your heart shaped more toward them. This is why Paul describes it as “gentle,” and why one of the biblical qualifications for eldership is “gentleness.” It’s also part of the fruit of the Spirit. So if you’re not a gentle person, not only are you disqualifying yourself from ministry, you have reason to test your salvation to see if you are in the faith.

2. Godly pastoral care is an act of nurture.

The nursing mom is feeding her child. She isn’t neglectful. She isn’t outsourcing the work. Remember that Jesus didn’t say to Peter, “Teach the sheep to self-feed.” He said, “Feed my lambs.”

Pastor, do not look at your church primarily as a recruiting station or an event center or a spiritual production, but as a pasture where the sheep are nourished.

And you must take care what you feed your sheep with. If you want them to be nourished, built up in their faith, and empowered to follow Christ day by day, you must feed them grace. The finished work of Christ announced in the gospel is the only power prescribed in the Scriptures for growth in godliness. You can’t inject anything into the law that will make it do what the simple, pure feast of the gospel will. Make sure you provide enough feed in the gospel that they never lack the sustenance they need to live and grow.

3. Godly pastoral care is an act of self-giving.

The nursing mom brings her baby to her breast. She is giving of herself. She cannot give what she doesn’t have. This is why Paul connects the image to “sharing our very selves” with the church at Thessalonica.

Pastoral care is costly. It doesn’t just hurt your brain; it can hurt your heart. Sometimes sheep bite. The weight of ministry will keep you up at night. It will make you sometimes feel drained. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul talks about the anxiety he feels for all the churches. Godly pastors know what he means by this “anxiety”—the spiritual weight of responsibility.

If your ministry is comfortable, you may not actually being doing ministry. Godly pastoral care is self-giving.

This means, pastor, that to give adequate care you must give adequate time to be nourished yourself. You cannot give what you don’t have. This is not a call to be self-centered but to be self-aware.

During my last pastorate, one dear lady who began as one of my most serious scrutinizers became one of my biggest supporters. When you can turn a critic into a colleague, something extraordinary has happened, because usually it runs the other way! But this woman watched me for several years up close, asked me lots of questions about motives and intentions. And she saw me at my best and at my worst. She got a piece of my heart. And she ended up being the last saint I had the privilege of helping pass into glory, the last funeral I preached before my time of service there was up. And over the several months it took her to die, I was one of the few she let into her room in hospice at any time—to talk, to pray, to read Scripture to her. Why? Because when I first came I was just “the preacher.” But I had become, over time, her pastor.

No, this isn’t new. It’s not innovative. And it’s not rocket science. But it is vital to the work of the minister and to the life of his congregation. Godly pastoral care is the overflow of love, an act of nurture, and an act of self-giving. Pastor, cure some souls.