Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 3

Introducing the Art of Pastoring Podcast

I’m very excited to share with you a new project I’ve been working on with my friend Ronnie Martin over the last couple of months. The Art of Pastoring is a new podcast we are co-hosting to help pastors and other church leaders navigate the increasingly complex climate of ministry today.

Each episode we’ll discuss a serious issue like conflict, discouragement, grief, uncertainty, and much more, and we’ll reflect on insights from the Scriptures and from the experiences of seasoned leaders who’ve gone before us, including sharing anecdotes from our own pastorates. This is a podcast aiming good news at your heart.

I know, I know—you’re thinking, “Another podcast?” But brought to you by Christianity Today and CT Pastors, with the artistry of Mike Cosper behind the scenes, we really do think this show adds a unique contribution to the field—a podcast for pastors that treats you like human beings rather than ministry-bots, that approaches the relevant issues you face in a more, well, pastoral way. Our hope is to bless your socks off.

Check us out wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe today!

The Art of Pastoring

with Ronnie Martin and Jared Wilson

The Most Lovely Person Who Ever Lived

In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory,

and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people.

— Isaiah 28:5

There is a beauty that seems right to a man, but in the end it only leads to destruction. Isaiah 28 forecasts a day of judgment on Ephraim and Jerusalem, when all that was deemed good and lovely by the wicked will be trampled underfoot in the obliterating tempest of God’s wrath. The crown of the proud will be trodden (v.3). The painted beauty of the world will be swallowed up (v.4).

Remember, however, that you will see the good news only as good as you see the bad news is bad. For through the remnants of destruction, true beauty will emerge. The true King in his splendor will triumph over the pale kings of the world. He will make their glory seem puny, paltry compared to his own, as the pretty stars disappear when the sun rises to vastly outshine them.

It was, in part, the promise of beauty that did us in. The woman saw that the three was a delight to the eyes (Gen. 3:6). So easily still are we led astray to our own greed, envy, and lust. We surround ourselves with trinkets and baubles and hope against hope they will satisfy. We spend countless hours polishing our idols for worship, when we ought to be making war against them. We cast them in the roles of protector and satisfier and joy-giver, when really their part ends in dust.

The gospel runs the other way around. God comes to us as a man, as plain as can be in the human sense. He had no form or beauty that we should desire him as we do our idols (Is. 53:2). His scepter is a shepherd’s crook. His royal steed is a donkey. His way is lowly. He ascends first . . . to a cross.

Naturally, we don’t like that. It does not comport with our flesh. It does not compute with the way of the world.

But in the end, when he returns, all who have found common ground with his grave, who have been washed in his blood, and who do not begrudge “sharing in his suffering” for as long as it takes will see in living color what they only perceived with the eyes of faith. “Christ is,” as George Whitefield said, “the most lovely person who ever lived.”

In that day, when the weight of glory comes crashing down into the charade of attractions in this world, our hearts will find their satisfaction at last. Those who trust him now to the exclusion of all rivals will have Christ himself for their glorious crown and their beautiful diadem. There is no love like his. Because there is no one lovelier than Christ.

Can you see?

Sometimes People Just Don’t Believe

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

— John 20:29

I read this week of yet another fairly prominent Christian celebrity announcing his personal de-conversion. “After growing up in a Christian home, being a pastor’s kid, playing and singing in a Christian band, and having the word ‘Christian’ in front of most of the things in my life,” says Jon Steingard, lead singer of the CCM group Hawk Nelson, “I am now finding that I no longer believe in God.”

I don’t know anything about Steingard other than what he just published about his spiritual state. I suppose I take at face value his claims that his faith, such as it was, could not withstand the weight of his intellectual questions. Unlike many others, however, I don’t feel the need to rush in and autopsy the situation. Any time one who was raised in the church and who professed the faith rejects it, it is a tragedy worthy of serious contemplation and prayer. What we ought to be careful about is the knee-jerk grab for easy answers.

I have seen in social media analysis of this announcement criticism of Steingard’s upbringing, the quality of discipleship he received, and so on. I don’t know how anybody who doesn’t know the man, his family, or the churches of his raising—which apparently his father pastored—can make such claims.

Now, you’re not gonna catch me arguing there’s nothing wrong with the state of evangelical discipleship! I’ve spent the last ten years of my ministry arguing that in fact the discipleship track record of the dominant mode of American evangelicalism is in a way set up to produce this very outcome. So generally speaking, yes, the way Americans “do church” is not great at training converts to plant deep spiritual roots, orient their lives around the gospel, commit to a Christian community, and affirm the sufficiency of God’s Word. This indictment works on a cultural level, and as such, it certainly applies to many individuals. But if you’ve been in ministry long enough—heck, if you’ve been a Christian long enough—you’ve no doubt seen those who have truly “tasted of the heavenly gift” and yet fallen away. Easy answers about discipleship don’t always fit.

We like easy explanations. Guy de-converts? He obviously didn’t have a good preacher. Gal rejects the faith? She obviously didn’t get deep discipleship.

Except sometimes they do.

We assign logical explanations to these otherwise inexplicable outcomes because we are pragmatists at heart. We like to think that if you just push the right spiritual buttons, you will get a good spiritual result. When we evangelize someone who rejects the free offer of the gospel, we sometimes trouble ourselves thinking we didn’t have the right presentation, the best apologetic answers, and so on. And sometimes we do get in our own way. But the realness of the Spirit resists such rationale. I have seen parents who love Jesus and the church and raised their children “doing everything right” still watch a kid (or two or three) walk away from the faith. Nobody’s perfect, of course, but we likely all know parents (and churches) who did their darndest to “train up a child in the way he should go” only to see them go far from it.

And on the other hand, we likely all know some unlikely converts—those raised in difficult, awful, even abusive environments, or simply environments where they were “discipled” not to care about the things of God—come to unlikely and astounding life by the power of the gospel.

I don’t know Jon Steingard’s story. He says he’s open to experiencing a revelation from God that changes his mind (back?). I hope that’s true, and the Lord answers his prayer. But remember, if someone doesn’t believe in the Scriptures, even a miracle won’t convince them (Luke 16:31). Steingard posits some weak intellectual objections common among those who think superficially about the truth claims of Christian theism. So maybe he wasn’t discipled well. Or maybe he was, and he just doesn’t believe. Sometimes people just don’t believe. Their heart is stone. A veil lies over their eyes.

This is a difficult thing to consider, partly because it defies easy answers for why people reject the faith and reflects spiritual factors you and I can’t control, and yet it’s still a biblical truth (1 John 2:19). But as hard as this truth is to accept, it does come with a wondrous blessing. Because the Lord ultimately controls who is wakened to belief and who isn’t, it means there is no heart too hard, no soul too dead for the life-giving power of the Spirit. The Lord will have his own, and none of them shall be lost.

The Good News of Christ’s Ascension

Ascension Day is traditionally marked on the 40th day after Easter Sunday. The doctrine of Christ’s ascension has many implications. Here are just five.

1. Jesus is really alive.

The reality of Christ’s ascension, inextricable from the resurrection event, tells us that he did not raise from the dead only later to die again like Lazarus, Jairus’s daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Eutychus, or Tabitha. Jesus’s body will not be found, because he took its glorified tangibility to heaven.

2. Heaven is thicker than earth.

We tend to think of heaven as the ethereal place of disembodied spirits. And in a way it is. But Elijah is there. And Enoch. And so is the risen, glorified, incarnate Christ. Jesus is there, taking up material space. He is touchable, present. Clearly, heaven is not less real than earth but more. It is a thicker reality than our four-dimensional space, more vibrant, more colorful, more real.

3. God’s plan for human dominion of earth is being realized.

The first Adam and his helper Eve were charged with filling the earth and subduing it. They screwed it up. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted. Man will reflect God’s glory in dominion over creation. In the Incarnation, then, God sends his only Son to right the course, reverse the curse, and begin the restoration of all things. The second Adam does the job, and even in his glorification, the incarnational “miracle of addition” (see below) persists, fulfilling God’s plan for man to reflect divine glory in dominion over creation. The God-Man, who is the radiance of the glory of God, rules over the earth and is even now subduing his enemies. “The ascension means that a human being rules the universe,” Tim Keller says. Just as God planned.

4. The Incarnation is an enduring miracle.

The incarnation was a humbling of God’s Son, but not a lessening of him. The Son maintained his omnipresence even in his incarnation. (Historically, theologians have traditionally called this perspective the extra calvinisticum.) But the ascension means that the Son forever remains the God-Man. He did not revert back to intangibility. And his ascended incarnational state then is not an eternal limitation but a part of his ongoing efforts to fill all things. He takes up more space in the heavens and the earth now, not less. The incarnation is a miracle with no expiration date.

5. The ascension is gospel for sinners!

Why? Because if it means—among the many things the gospel means—that we are united with Christ through faith, it also means that where he is we will be also. It means we will go to heaven in spirit, and heaven will come to us in body. The ascension is the full fruition of the promise of Christ’s resurrection being the firstfruits of our own. The ascension means the gospel is better news than we even thought, gooder than good! Because it holds out the promise, the blessed hope, not just of life after death, but “life after life after death.” What a gracious God we have!

Reflections on My First Year of Teaching Seminary

“I believe the children are our future.”

What has become a cliche-born-of-pop-ballad is really giving me a lot of hope these days. I recently marked five years serving at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and completed my first year as a full-time faculty member at MBTS and its undergrad arm, Spurgeon College. (My first four years I worked in the communications department as director of content strategy.) I did not come to the school thinking or expecting to teach, so desiring this transition was as surprising to me as anybody else. But over the last several years serving the seminary community and my church as director of our Pastoral Training Center, the Lord’s been kind to give me a vision for theological education and gospel mentorship. I’ve also grown in my conviction about “passing the baton” of gospel-centrality to the next generation.

The students I’m encountering by and large are not like my generation at their age. Their theological instincts and missional impulses are stronger, more honed. In short, I’ve been hugely encouraged by the young men and women training to be the future of church leadership. Here are three key things I’ve noticed in them:

Deeper Roots

The young people I get to serve in ministerial training have a much more eager reach into both church history and theological foundations than most of my peers did at their age. I know I’m only speaking anecdotally here, but it’s something I’ve noticed in meeting with young people around in the world in my public ministry travels, as well. Their sense of church history does not begin with Billy Graham. And while many in my generation 10 to 15 years ago were renewing some interest in the Reformers and the Puritans, the students I engage with are digging into the early church fathers and more global resources from which to accumulate insights. Theologically, they are more curious and astute, not afraid of doctrine distracting from practical living or evangelistic efforts. They treat the Bible as more of a fountain of heavenly wisdom and a living and active power than as a sourcebook for good quotes. While my generation and much of the one that came before seemed most interested in business practices and creative entrepreneurship, I am noticing among the younger generation of ministry students in general a desire to connect their ministry not to cultural relevance but to the enduring relevancy of God’s revelation. Their roots go deeper, which will make them stronger.

More Ecclesiological Affections

I’ve been saying this for a while, but while my generation and the generation I learned ministry from seemed to be more inclined to see church as commercial enterprise, artistic vision, personal ambition, and the like, the emerging generation has a more comprehensive and biblical vision for the local church (and for the church universal). I notice less envy or veiled competition between ministry peers. I see a greater interest in an actual missional Christianity than those who used to use the phrase missional constantly as a tribal marker. I see more evangelistic concern among younger people than I did in my peers (or, frankly, myself) at their age.

Now, my viewpoint may be skewed in that I serve an institution that has made existing “For The Church” not just our slogan but our actual, on-the-ground raison d’être, so we tend to attract the kind of students attracted to that kind of focus. But it’s not just Midwestern students; it’s many, many young people who have grown tired of the franchising and the maintenance of institutional fish tanks. Their ecclesiology is more detailed and more biblical. (I suspect we can partly thank the growing influence of 9Marks Ministries among successive generations for this.) But they don’t just love building something; they love the church. They think about the church. They think in terms of the church. The church is not some incidental means to disseminating an individualistic vision or some spiritual content.

The result is a more holistic approach to evangelism, which includes re-evangelizing Christians and the church through a renewed emphasis on making disciples (instead of just converts), and a more zealous commitment to world and home missions (instead of programming the evangelism for in-house performances, which de-incentivizes believers to live on mission in their everyday lives). In short, the emerging generation thinks more like churchmen than the previous ones have.

Greater Sense of Gospel-Centrality

The younger generation is now the first to (at least partly) come of age during the ongoing gospel recovery movement. As such, they are less interested in intramural squabbles about Calvinism vs. Arminianism, emergent vs. traditional, and so on. The danger at this stage in the gospel-centered whatchamacalit is that we assume the gospel we have recovered. (Because, as D. A. Carson as warned us, the next stage after assuming the gospel is losing it.) But instead, many of the young people I am blessed to teach and disciple are diligently troubleshooting how to press the gospel into every corner of the room—of their hearts and of their churches. I notice in sample sermons from my students and my residents, for instance, how pervasive good news is in their preaching. The gospel doesn’t just show up at the end, where Jesus must make his programmatic cameo appearance. Rather, these students are making connections from the text as it lies to the Christ who reigns throughout the course of their teaching and preaching. They are also interested in distinguishing the gospel from its implications while still maintaining there are implications!

They still need to be taught the ABCs of gospel-centered ministry, of course, but even to those for whom it seems most foreign, there is a greater inclination to lean in. I notice a refreshment in their response to working through the implications of the gospel for all of life and ministry, rather than a resistance.

For many in my generation, we have had to work out our gospel-centrality with fear and trembling. Many of us began before there was a movement to speak of, no coalitions or togethernesses for it. We’ve seen of course much fracturing taking place within a lot of these tribes, the balkanization of the movement, so to speak. But the younger generation is learning to test all things and cling to the good. And they are waiting in the wings.

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Prodigal Church, which was my attempt at a winsome and irenic critique of the attractional church (the subtitle is “A Gentle Manifesto Against the Status Quo”). My desire was that it would fall into the hands of many lead pastors and church planters and cause them to at least consider my questions and rationale. That didn’t really happen, as far as I can tell. But I did hear —and still do—from many young men in youth pastor, discipleship pastor, and associate pastor-type roles, those in second and third chairs. They tell me the paradigm of gospel-centrality (not just from me, of course) has given them a vocabulary they only vaguely knew. It helps them put a finger on the thing in their current context that has up to that point only seemed “off.” These leaders are learning what they can from their current contexts, but they are biding their time until they reach the first chair. They give me hope. Because the future of the ministry is theirs.

For these reasons and more, I’ve loved teaching Bible college and seminary students. With all the weirdness going on in the world and in the church, I think our future is nevertheless bright. I have enjoyed being pastored by a younger generation of men for this reason. And I am optimistic about the decades ahead—for that reason, and for the more important one, which is that Christ is King and he has promised to build his church.

Life Together When You Can’t Be Together

My friend Chris Thomas, a pastor in Queensland, Australia, has been doing some online readings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. It also happens to be the scheduled reading for the month of May by my residents in the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist. Last year was the book’s 80th anniversary of publication (66th anniversary in English), and I don’t think many of us would have anticipated the tension then of one year later reading about “life together” in a season of intentional un-togetherness.

Outside the Bible, Life Together is the most influential book I’ve ever read. I encountered it at a crucial time in my theological and ecclesiological journey, and it turned me inside out. Since then I’ve probably re-read it six or seven times, and its effect has not lessened on my thinking about the gospel and the community the gospel forms, shapes, and empowers. Indeed, some truths of Life Together endure even when we can’t be together. Here are a few:

1. Beware of the wish-dream.

This is a key lesson I reiterate with my ministry students at Midwestern Seminary and with my residents at Liberty Baptist. And with any pastor whose ministry I have the privilege of speaking into. Peter tells elders in 1 Peter 5 to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you.” What other flock might there be, you ask? Well, there is always the flock you want, the flock you want your flock to actually be. Bonhoeffer writes:

This applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous members about their congregations. A pastor should not complain about his congregations, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament.

I took that to a heart as a pastor. We all ought to take it to heart today. If this season of social distancing and stay-at-home orders does anything for us, it may be that it is leading us into the “good predicament” of having our wish-dream shattered.

When we focus on the wish-dream church, we fail to love the church we actually have, the church which God in his wisdom saw fit to place us into. Now we get to see the church for who she really is.

2. We meet each other as bringers of the gospel.

This is the crucial point of “doing life together”—that we would welcome and accept each other as Christ has welcomed and accepted us (Rom. 15:7). We come to the experience of Christian community with our need (our sin!) and our knowledge that Christ forgives, redeems, sustains. This is how Bonhoeffer puts its:

[T]he Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure. And that also clarifies the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation.

Most of us acknowledge that livestreaming services and Zooming small groups are no real replacement for “the real thing.” And yet there is one thing we are not stopped from doing even now: encouraging each other with the goodness of grace. We can continue to do that—and we should—through as many avenues as we can. And right now, as we begin to feel our weakness and our loneliness more keenly, it is even more pressing that we meet each other, even if online, not with shallow pick-me-ups and moralistic pep talks but with the power of the gospel.

3. Love never ends.

Something odd happens when we only relate to one another via social media, through email, or other electronic means. The distance affords us a kind of bravery of the internal self. We accuse more easily. We judge more sternly. Our fingers are not as held as easily as our tongues, which are themselves a fire (James 3:6).

There is another enduring lesson in Bonhoeffer’s little book that may serve as a warning and exhortation for these days:

Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men.

Who are we called to relate to? “The true image of the other person.” Not the avatar. Not the virtual image either they project or we assume. We are called to love the real person behind the keyboard. We can do this even now in how we speak to each other, and frankly, to use Bonhoefferian language, how we hold each other in our hearts.

4. Distance cannot ultimately sever our unity.

“We belong,” Bonhoeffer writes, “to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.” Of course, the local gathering is really irreplaceable. But our unity together as followers of Jesus isn’t forged by buildings or services—it is powered by the Holy Spirit who has reconciled us together in Christ (Eph. 2:22). It is important that for all the encouragement toward relational proximity Bonhoeffer urges in Life Together, that he continually comes back to the spiritual communion of saints, our shared mystical union with Christ. He writes further:

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

In fact, our deepening understanding of this spiritual truth helps us long even more for a return of the gathering together. Anyone who thinks livestream services and “virtual community” is just business as usual has not understood the spiritual. As we are providentially hindered, what we are using may be acceptable, but it is not enduringly sufficient. Let these days be cause to help us pray fervently to re-experience what Bonhoeffer calls the “privilege to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians.”

The Severe Mercy of a Stay-at-Home Order

Like many other jurisdictions, the Kansas City Metro is about one week into a 30-day stay-at-home order in an effort to “flatten the curve” of the COVID-19 spread. Like many others doing their best to obey the order, I’ve been “stuck” at home and trying to overcome my technological incompetence to maintain my meetings, teach my students, and otherwise conduct some semblance of business as usual.

A friend texted me yesterday to ask how I was holding up in light of my recent episodes of anxiety and the like. My answer was somewhat surprising even to me. As an introvert, I suppose I am able to take the “don’t go anywhere” mandate better than a lot of others can. But as I contemplate what I’ve needed to do in order to subdue the anxiety within me, I realize it has little to do with not worrying about the virus or its effect.

Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m appropriately concerned about that. We sent our daughter back to college in Pennsylvania, and while I think it was the right decision, or else we wouldn’t have made it, I pray for her safety and protection. And like all other reasonable people, I’m concerned about the effect on others, both physically and economically, given the uncertainty of how long this will go on.

But my anxiety has little to do with specific things I’m “worrying” about. It is more the result of a busy ministry schedule. I’ve watched the domino effect of my speaking engagements canceling, and with it more and more white space forming in my calendar. I have a day job, so unlike so many others whose livelihoods largely or entirely depend on outside work and travel, I am not overly concerned about paying the bills (at least not yet). Instead, I’m realizing that what I was struggling to figure out how to do—namely, slow down—the Lord through his kind providence has done for me. He has in effect made me to lie down by still waters.

To be clear, I’m not saying the novel coronavirus is a good thing. It’s a tragedy unfolding before us. But in the evil, there can be found good. For me, it’s more margin than I was able (or willing?) to create for myself. I know a lot of pastors are working harder than ever right now, trying to adapt on the fly to this strange new ministry season.

I polled the pastors in my coaching cohort this week about how the pace of work has been affected for them, and almost all of them said they are working longer hours now. The cancelation of services and in-person ministry obligations has not provided for them significant downtime at all. Perhaps that will change as we develop new rhythms over time and acclimate to the weirdness, “get the hang of it” so to speak. For others, however, they may have more time on their hands. And that can be a good thing.

I heard from some of the leaders at my church recently saying that they’ve had more conversations with church folks over the last couple of weeks than normal and what a joy that has been. The need to innovate new means of connection has provided a real sense of community otherwise unexplored. That’s a gift.

And if you are like me, one prone to busy-ness and hurry-sickness, it might be a grace to be told to be still. With nearly all of my public ministry endeavors on hold, I have a lot more time to spend with my family, to read more books, to write more, to go on walks, to just be.

If you’re struggling with all the boredom of extra time and tempted to feel un-used, think instead of embracing your smallness. Embrace the stillness. Don’t just do something; sit there. It doesn’t mean that what’s going on outside is of no concern, or that we have no obligation to figure out how to serve and care for those who are suffering in so many ways. But it could be God’s severe mercy to you even in this season to sabbath from being a “human doing.” That’s how I’m trying to look at it, anyways.

I’m talking with my wife about how to use both of our gifts in different ways right now to love our neighbors. But we’re also just trying to enjoy a plan we hadn’t anticipated or otherwise planned for. And I’m trying to do my best to accept this disciplinary order as a gift. What the virus means for evil, perhaps the Lord means for our good. If anything, no matter how you’ve been affected by this shut-down, even if significantly, it can strengthen your faith and bring you into a closer reliance upon the One who never changes, never leaves, and never forsakes.

“Be still, and know that I am God . . .”

— Psalm 46:10a

Pastor, You Were Made for This

What have the last two weeks been like for the average pastor? Well, the audio won’t sync with the video, some of the senior adults refuse to socially distance, the wife needs you home more to help with homeschooling, you’re not sure how to keep everyone connected even though the internet ostensibly connects us all, and giving’s already down about 60 percent.

Pastor, you were made for this.

All along, you’ve been preaching, loving, serving—hoping your flock will get a glimpse of the supernatural reality of Christianity. Your business as usual has been about interrupting people’s business as usual. And what your gracious warnings could not do, the Lord has done in ordaining this weird, anxious season.

None of your peers has ever pastored through a season like this. The uncertainty of the future is so stark. Your people are listening to all kinds of voices—some say it will be fine, some say it will be the end of days, and we find either of those more appealing than the voices that simply say “we don’t know,” because we want answers. The horizon is gray. The waters are uncharted. But you were called for this. You have the word from heaven.

As people’s anxiety and unease rises, you are leaning into your qualifications of gentleness and self-control. The strategies and gifts on which you were always tempted to lean too heavily have now been neutralized. Now you are profoundly aware of your own dispensability. And that is to your advantage. Your felt weakness is fertile soil for the power of the Spirit. Now you must shepherd.

Christianity was not launched in a world of comfort, and it was not designed to flourish in a world of comfort. If the Lord is doing anything in overseeing this season, perhaps it is a refining, a sifting. Things are going to get weirder, more difficult, more trying. Maybe the true church will rise to the surface. And with her, the true pastors.

This is what you’ve been called into all along—praying as if the power is outside you, caring as if life-on-life relationships help more than virtual ones, preaching good news as if people are broken, weary, and scared of the future. This has always been necessary to pastoring, but now we can’t avoid it.

What COVID19 can do for many of us is strip life down to its essential motivations and fears. And the gospel can speak into these things like nothing else. “What a man is on his knees before God,” M’Cheyne wrote, “that he is, and nothing more.” The wise among us were already going there. The rest of us are being pushed there. And it’s a great opportunity to see what only God can do.

So we need you, pastors. We need you to pastor. God saw all this mess coming, and he wanted you to be at the helm of your church when it did. There is no uncertainty for him. There is no hand-wringing in heaven. He chose you to lead your church at this time. So walk humbly. And take courage. You were made for this.

“[F]or God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

— 2 Timothy 1:7

The Fear-Driven Life

Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible is?

It’s not “love one another.” It’s not “love God.” It’s not “do unto others” or “be ye holy.

The most frequent command in all of Scripture is some variation of this: “Don’t be afraid.”

This ought to tell us something about the kind of world we live in. But it also ought to tell us something about the kind of life God calls his children into.

The early days of faith may be awash in wonder, full of energy and wide-eyed boldness. But then days go by, and the walk begins to feel more normal, more mundane. The things of earth grow strangely bright. We hear competing messages, the noise of the world, the noise of our accuser, the noise of our internal anxieties, and insecurities begin to challenge the still, small voice of God. The things of God become less comfortable than the routine of daily life. The vision of God’s promise, which drove our faith so strongly in the beginning, begins to wane, perhaps seem less compelling, less immediately gratifying than the promises of the things around us. And as the fulfillment of the promise seems to delay day by day, so the opportunities for doubt and discouragement seem to grow.

And the truth is: there is always something to be afraid of. If you have trouble finding something, just turn on cable news—they will help you.

And this is why you can hardly go anywhere in the Bible without bumping into the words “Don’t be afraid.”

In Genesis 12:10-20 it’s possible this “ordinary life” dynamic settled in with Abram. Called by God out of his pagan world and culture, to leave everything he’d ever known and to embark on a mysterious journey with the one true God, he had a high passion, high commitment in the beginning. And when we get to Genesis 12, his trek has accumulated so far 800 miles. He’s put months into this thing. All along God is saying “I’m gonna give you this” and “I’m gonna give you that” . . . but not yet.

You can bet that over time, for Abram, the temptation to boredom with the promise grew.

And I will tell you: the more bored you are with the things of God, the more vulnerable you will be when difficulty comes.

The more bored you are with the things of God, the more vulnerable you will be when difficulty comes.

And difficulty came for Abram.

You will notice there is a famine in the land (v.10) and Abram makes the logical choice to take his family to Egypt, because there’s food there. But the wheels of fear are already turning for Abram. They are going to Egypt because they’re afraid of starving to death, but once he starts in with the fear, it seems he can’t stop:

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

We have to say, first, that Abram is not being completely irrational. There is a logic to his fear. Just like there is a logic to inside all of our fear, right? Fear can be often irrational, but most of us when we are afraid have rational reasons why.

It’s likely that most of the things we’re afraid of are real things. Real stresses, real problems, real circumstances, real possibilities. But it’s what you do with the reasoning that makes all the difference.

What does Abram do? He starts running the numbers. Egypt + Beautiful wife = Trouble. He starts playing the angles. And there is zero evidence here that his faith in the God who has called him plays into his thinking at all. He is being driven by fear. Not just informed by it, but motivated by it. And when you are driven by fear, faith takes a back seat:

1. The fear-driven life is faithless.

There is a good kind of cautiousness, the sort of wisdom that doesn’t jump in to every situation or make rash decisions. And then there’s the kind of cautiousness that has more to do with managing our own disobedience. “How disobedient can I be and still get away with what I want?’ And this comes when the vision of the things around us is greater than the vision of him who has called us. The less Godward you are looking, the more afraid you will be.

Ramon Presson writes, “The most repeated command in Scripture is ‘fear not.’ It appears 365 times—one for each day of the year—and is usually followed by ‘for I am with you.’ God would have us understand that factoring in his presence always changes the equation.”

It seems like for Abram, God’s presence did not factor into the equation. He looked at the circumstances: famine, Egypt, beautiful wife, dangerous people. And he did not look at God. And so his perspective was skewed.

This is us when it comes to fear. We let fear drive our life when we start believing that greater is that which is in the world than he who is in us.

2. The fear-driven life is self-centered.

Look again at Genesis 12:13: “Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

What is Abram’s motivation?

Saving his own skin!

He’s afraid of losing his own life. He doesn’t seem too afraid for Sarai. He doesn’t seem too afraid of her dying. He doesn’t even seem too afraid of her being sexually exploited.

Abram is running the numbers. Perhaps he thinks this will buy them some time. Perhaps he’s banking on the Egyptians following the cultural custom of the day of negotiating with a brother for the hand of the sister in marriage. But none of that is certainty. It’s just assumptions. And Abram goes that way, ultimately, because he’s willing to trade in protection of his wife in order to save himself.

The fear-driven life has a sense of security in its consideration, but it is trying to find in one’s own power the kind of security that can only be found in God. As Bob Deffinbaugh says, “Abram was clinging to his wife’s petticoat for protection and blessing, rather than to the promise of God.”

The fear-driven life is self-centered. It doesn’t see the union we have in Christ, and therefore the perfect security we have in God. It sees only what it stands to lose. Not what it has already gained!

The fear-driven life cannot even rightly claim to be for others.

And as if Abram needs the help of focusing on his self, look again at what happens as the result of his scheming:

When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. (12:14-16)

It looks like his logic has paid off! He sought his own comfort, and he got it!

But it comes with a greater price. Because Abram might have gotten a whole bunch of stuff for his own comfort, but the second part of v.15 is chilling: “The woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.” And I’m picturing the reality of what he’s just done beginning to settle on Abram as he watches his beloved be led away by the Pharaoh’s men and as she gets smaller and smaller on the horizon and perhaps disappears behind the stately gates or through the palace door, his sense of dread brims in his heart. He has sold his wife out, put her in grave danger, to protect himself.

3. The fear-driven life idolizes comfort.

Sarai is up in Pharaoh’s house now enduring God-knows-what while Abram is enjoying the spoils of his scheming. And—really—Abram has never been in more danger than he is right now.

My first mentor in the ministry Mike Ayers once said, “To be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.”

One wonders what this is even teaching Abram. It’s not even clear, after all is said and done, that Abram learns his lesson, because in Genesis 20, he repeats this same scheme. Old fears die hard.

Fear will drive us away from faith in God. Fear will drive us further into ourselves. Fear will drive us into a self-deluded comfort. When we are driven by fear and not by the glorious grace of God in Christ Jesus, we will begin to think that there is nothing worse than suffering.

But Jesus who said, “Take up your cross and follow me” also said, “Do not fear him who can take your life. Fear him who can take your life and your soul.” In other words—there is a fate worse than dying. It is dying after you die. Which is why Christ also says, “What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?”

We have this notion that difficulty is not normal. We say we don’t, but we just wait until difficulty happens. We think, surely God wouldn’t have meant this! Surely God only wants ease and comfort for us.

But God never promises comfort. He only promises peace.

And he never promises safety. But he promises eternal security.

God never promises comfort. He only promises peace.

The fear-driven life is motivated by comfort, but the faith-filled life is motivated by him in whom we have believed. And the faith-filled life is persuaded that he is able to keep that which we’ve committed to him until the end of days.

The thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is so disturbing to our little protected areas of comfort. The places we’ve set up our little idols, Jesus comes marching through, knocking stuff over, plowing down the fences, establishing his own real kingship over our pretend kingdoms.

If you are seeking your security in something other than God himself, he will come disrupt you. And make no mistake: the worst thing that can happen to you is to sail through life, comfortable and safe and easy, never realizing your need for God’s salvation, just gliding through the happy days of life right into the pits of hell.

And God did not allow this little fear-driven, self-promotional wonderland of Abram’s to continue. He barged in and showed them all who’s really in charge:

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. (Gen. 12:17-20)

We can’t be sure if Sarai was sexually compromised by Pharaoh, but even if she wasn’t, it doesn’t make what Abram did okay. No, the point is that Abram trusted in himself rather than in God and God said, “No way. I’m not letting you play this game.”

And when you seek a security that can only be found in God in anything other than God, you will always be seeking. Not until you place your faith in Jesus Christ do you find the kind of security that nothing in the world can assail! He says, “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

How did he do this? Well, facing the terrible dark cloud of the cross, Jesus was running the numbers. He saw the pain, the betrayal, the darkness of the cross. In that garden, with blood and sweat and tears, he felt the weight of the danger he was walking into.

And he could have sold his bride out! He could have handed us over to who-knows-what! But he didn’t. He took on the full weight of the cross, so we wouldn’t have to. And he died to forgive sins and rose again to secure eternal life and he ascended into heaven and Ephesians 2:6 says that those who trust in Christ have been “raised with him and seated with him in the heavenly places.” Colossians 3:3 says that the Christian is “hidden with Christ in God.”

You talk about security!

Christ went where we would not—to sacrificial death—to bring us into the place we could not—namely, the very life of himself.

The Christian is united to Christ, inexplicably connected to Christ. And if we are united to Christ by faith, hidden with him in God, we are as secure as Christ is!

Now: how secure do you think Christ is?

This reality overturns the fear-driven life! It reverses it. Once you realize your security in Christ, and once you realize the world is governed by the sovereign God who loves you, it changes everything. Or, it ought to.

Don’t let fear drive your life.

Tending the Lambs You Can’t Touch

A friend messaged me yesterday asking, “How do we effectively pastor during this time?” In this odd season of quarantining and social distancing and church service suspending, how can pastors maintain their duties to the flock?

In some contexts, perhaps the work of shepherding continues fairly normally. For many others, however, the daunting prospect of ministry in the season of COVID-19 entails more than simply figuring out how to live stream a service. If you can’t be near much of your congregation, how do you pastor them? Some suggestions:

1. Keep preaching.

Obviously, conscience and conviction may dictate whether you want to preach via the internet, but it’s still important to put the gospel in front of your people as many ways as you can. If that means broadcasting a full sermon each Sunday, do it. It may also mean publishing podcasts, vodcasts, blog posts, tweets, or Facebook updates involving devotional thoughts. Right now, your people are taking in all kinds of messages—some helpful, some not, some simply distracting. Don’t let other voices tempt them in their loneliness or anxiety to tempt their eyes away from Jesus. Figure out the ways that work best for your convictions and your context to “show them Jesus.” This is your prime directive.

2. Resource them.

Recommend good books, podcasts, blog posts, or articles. Many families stuck at home may be trying to figure out family worship for the first time. Maybe this is an opportunity to help them with simple outlines or “plans of service” for working through with their kids. Show them devotional helps or other resources that will aid their private worship in the interim. Put missional opportunities in front of them—help the use the time wisely by seeing if there are ways to fund or even participate in helping others. Lots of people are out of work or school and may be struggling with paying bills or finding meals. Lead your people to troubleshoot how to serve even if from a distance.

3. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Keep them updated with church deliberations. Meeting as a staff? Post updates. Walk them through how you’re working in this weird season. Social media can actually be a blessing in these days as it can help people feel connected to the life of the church and the heart of her ministers. Reach out via email or phone call to folks and let them know you’re available for counseling or to take prayer requests. Don’t let the Sunday interruptions be a means of “out of sight, out of mind.” Maybe even send a daily email or post a daily Facebook update to your church page with some brief Scripture and a reminder you care about them. Few ministers are in danger of over-communicating during normal times; certainly in this season, the need for communication is heightened.

4. Keep praying.

Next to preaching, prayer is the primary task of the church elder in every age. Believe in the supernaturality of the access you have with the Father to intercede for your people. This isn’t a cop-out. Praying for your people is a necessary ministry. During this season, it is especially vital to carry the lambs you cannot see in person to the throne room of grace. Carry them in your heart.