Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 4

How to ‘Disciple’ Your Kids into Church Dropout Status

A recent LifeWay study confirms the church dropout rate for young adults continues to hover around 70 percent. “The good news for Christian leaders is that churches don’t seem to be losing more students than they were 10 years ago. However, the difference in the dropout rate now and then is not large enough statistically to say it has actually improved,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research.

While the dropout rate stays roughly the same (actually down 4 percent), the outlook on dropouts returning is actually looking worse.

There are definitely some things we can do to work against this distressing trend, and I offered some brief thoughts on “youth group culture” in a recent Twitter thread. But most are agreed—the epicenter of influence on kids to or away from church is in the Christian home. So, working backward, what are some ways religious families may be reinforcing the dropout trend, despite their own hopes? Here are six:

1. Attend church sporadically.

If you treat church like an option, your children will too. If going to church is contingent only on nothing else going on, if sports or hobbies or vacations frequently take priority over gathering with God’s people, how could this not over time imprint itself upon your kids?

2. Complain about your church.

This is something, when I was pastoring, that my wife and I took rather seriously. We were extremely careful not to complain about problems at church, or even discuss disappointments or circumstantial discouragements, in front of our kids. We didn’t want them to come to see church as a place that discourages mom and dad. We didn’t want them to nurse any grievances against even the idea of church because of our thoughtless exposure of our hurts about it to them. As they got older, we shared more and more openly with them and in front of them. But if your kids are constant witness, even at a young age, to your complaints, disappointments, disgruntlements, conflicts, or even gossip related to the church, you nurse their gradual disillusionment.

3. Insulate them from the rest of the body.

I’m convinced this is one of the biggest reasons kids raised in church drop out of church. Their experience of the church is limited wholly or mostly to youth group culture. Everything revolves around their interests or even entertainment. They are not integrated into the body. They do not engage with the intergenerational beauty of the whole church.

I’m not against student ministry per se—I do think kids benefit from age-specific teaching and being among peers who are pursuing Jesus unlike so many of their peers at school or elsewhere —but when our kids’ sole experience of church is youth-centered, they are not won to the church but to youth group. We keep trying new ways to offset this phenomenon—college and young adult ministries that serve as a kind of “13th grade” and thus only forestall the inevitable, the in-creep of youth group culture into Sunday morning gatherings that are increasingly idolatrous of the young and beset with gimmicks and pop culture silliness. But it doesn’t work. And when kids grow up and leave home, they discover “big church” and churches in other places cannot compete or do not cater to their juvenile tastes.

If you baptize students, remember you are baptizing them into the body, into church membership. If we don’t treat them accordingly, they may see that Christianity is about one’s individual experience and not covenant community, and they might lose interest in that experience when it seems they’ve outgrown it.

4. Ignore their crucial questions.

Youth groups that focus on just more of the moralistic therapeutic deism as adults get in “big church.” Sermons that only reinforce evangelical stereotypes of outsiders or allow no space for lament or suffering. An equation of evangelicalism with political idolatry. Parents and leaders who do not equip students with apologetics or direct answers to cultural questions teens are asking about gender, sexuality, race, and the like. All of these common phenomena implicitly tell students that church is not a place where they can get answers for real life. If we are not helping students shore up their faith with answers to questions they will eventually face at college or beyond, we should not be surprised when they decide church has no vital place in their lives. We should not be surprised in fact when they decide Christianity doesn’t have the intellectual or cultural gravitas they need in the real world.

5. Church hop.

The consumeristic ethos runs strong in American culture especially. One thing I learned during my research for my book The Prodigal Church was that the average family remains in an attractional church about four to seven years before moving on. This is often due to season-of-life changes. There are obviously good reasons to leave a church. But families that hop from church to church as kids grow or tastes change or disappointments accumulate train their kids to treat church not like a family one commits to through thick and thin but like a consumeristic product one can always throw away for a perceived upgrade. And this is just one step away from deciding church in general isn’t useful.

6. Marginalize or muzzle the gospel.

In 2010, the True Love Waits campaign analyzed the results of years of their campaign to encourage sexual purity among Christian teenagers. They were shocked. The campaign that largely focused on the risks of pregnancy and disease, and the biblical prohibitions of sex outside of marriage, had virtually no effect on even churchgoing kids who had explicitly pledged to remain virgins until marriage. Co-founder Richard Ross reflected in a Christianity Today article about the findings: “The promise is kept most tenaciously by teenagers who have moved beyond moralistic therapeutic deism and who adore the King of Kings with awe and intimacy.”

“For teenagers who know Christ,” Ross continued, “that is a far stronger motivator than a desire to avoid disease and pregnancy. Risk avoidance is a weak motivator during adolescence. . . . Teenagers need to know about the risks of promiscuity, as well as about the benefits that total life purity brings. But the most powerful way to impact prom-night decisions is for parents, leaders, and peers to more fully awaken teenagers to God’s Son.”

The law is good and must be preached. But the law cannot do what only the gospel can.

The church is the family made by Christ’s gospel. He has broken down the division between us with his blood and united us to each other by uniting us to himself by our faith. When you push the gospel to the periphery of your own religious interests and your own consideration of the church, it has the effect of disconnecting students from the only power we have to win them to Christ’s body. If, for instance, church is a regular Sunday for you but not a gospel-driven priority of your daily life—in prayer, in fellowship, in service—you show your kids that church is simply a place to go, not a people with whom you belong. And if you raise them under the shadow of the law rather than the light of Christ, you make engagement in church look like a means of earning credit with God or meriting his favor or looking religious or “spiritual,” all of which is a recipe for burnout and maybe even spiritual depression. Center on the gospel in your daily life and pray your kids flourish under grace.

If you’re interested in ensuring your kids become part of the dropout stats, any or all of these six practices are a great means of “discipleship.”

How I Write So Much

I recently finished writing my 22nd book in 12 years. Taking a little victory lap over the manuscript completion on social media, as one does, I received the usual recurring questions about productivity. “How you crank them out so fast?”

The truth is, they are not “cranked out,” fast or otherwise. (Just ask my editors!) But I do understand the curiosity about how one stays prolific as an author, especially when the curiosity comes from writers or aspiring writers themselves. How do I write so much? I’ve thought about it for a while, and here are my answers:

1. It’s my vocation.

On one level, the question feels odd. It can be like asking a pastor, “Dude, how do you write a sermon every week?” Well, it’s his job. Nobody says to a plumber, “How you get all those pipes fixed?” He just goes to work.

Writing isn’t exactly like preaching or plumbing, of course, but when you pursue a vocation, you go to work. Writing isn’t just something I do for fun on the side. It’s part of my livelihood. It doesn’t entirely pay the bills, of course, which is why I also maintain employment elsewhere. But writing is work that I’ve committed to as a service to my family, to others, and ultimately to God.

This is also why I get a little irked by drive-by commenters bemoaning that my books aren’t free. If you write about Christian stuff, you shouldn’t charge for it, the logic goes. Despite this being a completely unbiblical argument, it’s also theologically shallow and hypocritical. It posits an unnecessary divide between the “sacred” and the “secular” and is never asked of Christian janitors or car salesmen. Why don’t you bug them about working for free? They don’t turn off their faith when they go to work any more than I do.

The fact that writing “Christian stuff” is a ministry doesn’t make it any less my trade.

2. It feels good.

I frequently hear from some, “Dude, you’re a machine.” But no, I’m not. A machine isn’t thinking, isn’t working in the same sense that a writer is working. A machine also doesn’t bring a soul to its production, rapid advances in AI notwithstanding. Writing is work. Writing well on a regular basis is hard work. And yet—I feel wired (like a machine?) for this work. I have wanted to do this since the first grade, when in my little school journal, next to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I wrote Author.

Writing isn’t always fun and it’s rarely easy—otherwise, more people would do it, especially all those people who say “I’ve always wanted to write a book”—but when I write, I feel as though I’m tapping into what God has made me to be. Eric Liddell famously said, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” Well, when I write, I feel God’s pleasure. It’s both my vocation and also my avocation.

3. I don’t know what else to do.

People ask writers all the time, “Where do you get your ideas?” As if there’s some mystical idea farm out in the aether to which writers must journey when conditions are just right. It’s not usually writers who ask these questions, but people who want to have written. For writers, the question is weird. The real trouble isn’t getting ideas, it’s turning the ideas off!

Yes, writer’s block is a real thing, but it’s nearly always the result of one of two things: Not knowing how to say what you want to say, or just general fatigue. But it’s rarely about a lack of ideas.

My problem is sorting out the value of each idea that comes to me. Will this idea sustain a book? Or is it more of a blog post? Maybe it’s just worth a tweet? Or should I just keep it to myself? I usually know an idea is worth a book when I can’t shake it. I’ve been thinking about it for months, maybe years. I’m working on a treatment for a book about love right now. It began about three years ago when I decided to dedicate a good portion of my Christian reading for the year to the subject of love. Then I preached a few sermons at different places on the subject. I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t immediately begin writing a book, but I wrote an outline and came up with a book proposal, because I realized this idea will obviously be worth years of my focus.

The bottom line is, I just don’t know what else to do. I was bitten by writing bug as a child, and the infection still courses through my veins. I can’t turn it off.

4. It’s how I worship.

When the Lord gives you a gift—no matter what it is—you use it in dedication to him. I write a lot because I believe he has gifted me to do so, and I believe it would be poor stewardship not to be productive with it. This doesn’t mean you can’t worship if you can’t get published, of course. Publishing is not the issue. I was writing books before I got published, and I imagine I would keep writing them if one day the publishing offers all dried up. Publishing is just a way to help others worship with me. But I’m going to keep worshiping. God is worth my productivity.

None of these reasons may help you become more productive in your own writing. I know sometimes that’s what people want to know. I’m short on practical advice here. You basically just have to do the work. Make time. If something is important enough, you will find the space and energy to do it, even if it’s just a daily, momentary plodding. For myself, I rarely think of writing as a practical thing to do. I don’t set aside a certain time every day to write. (I probably should. I’d be a lot more productive!) It just comes out. And that’s how I write so much.

9 Biblical Reasons to Preach Christ from the Old Testament

I am grateful that the work of biblical theology is becoming more common both among scholars and also among preachers, but there are still some who do not see the rationale of proclaiming Christ from Old Testament texts. At a conference once I was making a biblical case for a gospel-centered preaching of the OT, even saying that many Christians do not preach the Old Testament in a Christian way. Afterward an attendee took issue with me in the foyer. “You preach the text as it lays,” he said. “Indeed,” I tried to convince him, “and every OT text lays, as Spurgeon put it, ‘along the road to Christ.'”

In case you wonder where some of us get this stuff, here are some New Testament texts that should have significant effect on how we preach and teach the Old.

John 5:39 — “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me”

John 8:56 — “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

Luke 24:27 — “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Acts 2:14-28 — The first Christian sermon, Peter’s at Pentecost, is essentially a Christ-centered exposition of Joel 2 and Psalm 16.

Romans 15:4 — “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 — “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

2 Corinthians 1:20 — “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.”

Galatians 3:24-25 — “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian”

The entire book of Hebrews

The truth is, the entire New Testament—from the Gospels to Revelation—is full of the fulfillment of Old Testament texts in the person and work of Christ. The Old Testament is Christian Scripture. We have more than enough reasons to teach it as such.

Helpful Resources:

Preaching Christ from the Old Testament by Sidney Greidanus

Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church by Michael Lawrence

According to Plan by Graeme Goldsworthy

Jesus on Every Page by David Murray

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited by D. A. Carson and G. K. Beale

7 Christian Podcasts I Listen To

I will admit I’m not a big podcast guy. I’ve just never gotten fully into the trend, though I have checked out some of the more headline-making podcast phenoms (Serial, for instance) from time to time. I know some folks who only listen to podcasts — commute, mowing the yard, in the office, etc. I simply can’t do it. I’m a music guy for most of those settings. I listen to podcasts the way I read a book — meaning, I am usually sitting still, doing not much of anything, and just listening. This of course limits the number of podcasts I listen to, but I do have some regulars that are almost like “appointment television” each week when a new episode comes out. Aside from a few true crime/mystery podcasts I keep up with, here are the Christian programs that are regular listens for me:

Pastor’s Talk with Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever

This podcast from the 9Marks org is short but rich. You will see that the first five podcasts listed are conversational in format — I find it grating over time to listen to one-person pundit programming. I like the feel of friends talking, and this podcast from two veteran pastors discussing all kinds of practical and theological issues impacting the local church is a hugely helpful resource. I would recommend this program at the top of the list for every podcast-listening pastor.

Doctrine & Devotion with Joe Thorn and Jimmy Fowler

An old school favorite for Reformed folk (mostly of the Baptist variety, though not exclusively), it helps that Joe is an old friend. Some folks complain about the “banter.” Knowing the guys, I enjoy it. Usually. D&D drops 2 episodes a week — the first is usually a doctrinal/theological-themed ep (currently they are walking through the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith bit by bit), and the second is usually a more practical, cultural, or “hot topic”-themed ep. If you can handle guys who take theology seriously but don’t take themselves seriously at all, this might be up your alley. And speaking of not taking yourself seriously . . .

The Happy Rant with Barnabas Piper, Ronnie Martin, and Ted Kluck

It’s good to laugh at ourselves. Here are three guys with deep roots in the contempo-evangelical world for whom no cow is sacred. Imagine if the Babylon Bee was smart and still funny. Certainly not for everybody’s taste, but I enjoy every week hearing these guys take the wind out of the evangelical subculture’s self-importance and faux-earnestness. We don’t have to take ourselves too seriously. Occasionally they wax sincere on certain issues — a recent episode on the concept of “bravery” in our day of social media virtue signaling, for instance — but mostly they’re just being the cool kids in the back of the room snarking on our flubs and foibles. Not recommended for those who struggle with sarcasm, but for the rest of us, it’s fun. (And lest you think I’m just mean for enjoying it, I should mention I am a frequent butt of their jokes myself. Like I said, it’s good to laugh at yourself. I think.)

The Holy Post with Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani (and sometimessss Christiannnnn)

I’m a relative newcomer to this program, the new form of what used to be The Phil Vischer Podcast. Adding author and thinker Skye Jethani and filmmaker Christian Taylor, Vischer now hosts in each episode about 30-35 minutes of very funny but also frequently insightful conversation on news and cultural trends of interest to evangelicals. The next 30-35 minutes is typically a guest interview by Jethani. I’ve become a voracious consumer of this program, mainly for the wit and counter-cultural sanity they represent about stuff going on in the world. Come for their historical analysis and biblical breakdown of evangelical malaise, stay for “News of the Butt.”

The Credo Podcast with Matthew Barrett

This show hosted by Barrett, a colleague of mine at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where he is Associate Professor of Christian Theology, features interviews with prominent theologians on all kinds of biblical and doctrinal topics. You have to put your thinking pants on for this show and pay attention, but it is the theological podcast equivalent of a nice steak dinner.

Now to the sermons:

I don’t listen to nearly as much sermon audio as I used to, but here are the two sermon podcasts I return to again and again . . .

Immanuel Church Podcast

Originally featuring founding and former lead pastor Ray Ortlund, Jr., now regularly featuring lead pastor T.J. Tims — and occasionally voices like Sam Allberry and others — I love the preaching coming of out Immanuel Nashville because it is like a direct line of grace. Thick with gospel and rich with pastoral wisdom and love, this is my go-to sermon podcast.

Cutting it Straight with H.B. Charles, Jr.

The sermons of H.B. Charles at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida never fail to bless my socks off. If you’re looking for meat and potatoes exposition coupled with doxological passion, few can rival H.B.

Some Men Just Like the Fight

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

— Galatians 5:13

There’s a moment in the Sam Mendes film 1917 (which is brilliant, by the way, and you should see it, though this post is not a review), in which Lance Corporal Schofield, who has been tasked with crossing through enemy-infested territory to deliver crucial news of a secret ambush to the British front lines, is given a warning about the commanding officer to whom he is delivering the letter. “Make sure there are witnesses,” he’s told. “Some men just like the fight.”

The instruction is sobering. Even though Schofield is bringing direct orders to stand down, which will save thousands of lives, he is cautioned that the orders might be ignored. Why? Because regardless of the superior command to stand down, regardless of the cost, regardless of the impossible odds and the foolhardy death that would ensue, there is a zeal for battle in some that overrides all sense. When you feel built for war, when you long for the rush of conflict, not warring feels like cowardice, uselessness, pointlessness.

Some men just like the fight.

But these are not real men. Real men are willing to fight when it is necessary. Faux men are itching to fight no matter what.

The lesson is important for any Christian and even more pertinent for Christian leaders. We live in crucial times for the church, especially in the West. There are skirmishes a’plenty, opportunities every day to go to war with our neighbors, with our brethren, with every Twitter rando with an itchy keyboard finger. We are called to wage relentless war on our sin (Heb. 4:12) and the spiritual powers of wickedness (Eph. 6:12). But not every invitation to battle with flesh and blood ought to be accepted. And rarely should such invitations be given.

Those in Christian ministry ought to especially take this to heart. Fighting is sometimes necessary. Liking to fight is not. In fact, it is forbidden.

Consider whether you are in fact with every caustic tweet chipping away at your qualification for ministry. It is not manly to get up every morning thinking of the brethren as your enemies, not even the ones you disagree with on important matters. “The Lord’s servant is not to be quarrelsome” (2 Tim. 2:24). Pastors are forbidden argumentativeness (1 Tim. 3:3).

And while the Lord’s violent cleansing of the temple may offer some model of holy zeal worth emulating, he said an awful lot more directly about blessing those who hate, praying for those who persecute, and turning the other cheek. Those are direct orders.

But some men don’t care. They just like the fight. No matter the cost, no matter the death it brings.

So we bring the witness of sober-minded accountability and pleas to stand down. Will we be man enough to listen? Courageous enough to obey? Humble enough to repent?

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts . . .

— Colossians 3:15

3 Unchanging Truths for a ‘Post-Truth’ World

This is adapted from a message I preached last year on Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2.

The first thing we should note is that a post-Christian age is not a problem for God.

And while this may seem counterintuitive, in many ways post-Christianity is an advantage to the church, because it’s an opportunity to see what only the gospel can do.

In a “post-everything” world, we can no longer appeal to religious sensibilities. We can no longer market an improved version to people of what they already kind of believe in. In a morally confused, philosophically complex, theologically vacuous culture, we now get to see how much we’ve always needed the supernaturality of Christianity.

We minister in confusing times. Difficult days. Moral confusion. Gender confusion. Political division.

And the way the American church has gone about trying to navigate the complexity and chaos has been combative or consumeristic. In this spiritually confused—often hostile when not ambivalent—post-everything world, the best thing the church can be is herself.

There are three things we can draw from Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:14-41 that the world will never be “post”—three unchanging truths in a changing world:

1. The World Will Never Be ‘Post’—The Saltiness of the Church

One of the reasons God has ordained the gospel of Jesus to create a new covenant people is to provide to a divided, confused world, a living, breathing witness to the reality of his united, coherent kingdom. In other words, the church is meant to be a signpost to a lost world that the beauty and peace of heaven is true.

This is why the mission of the church begins with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes such a stark difference between the people of God and business as usual that it is non-ignorable by the outside world (Acts 2:13-15). The first outside observances to the witness of the church surmised they were drunk!

As the church is first formed through the good news of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends and marks the believers with something like tongues of fire. And people who previously could not understand each other, suddenly did: “We can hear in our native language!” (Acts 2:7)

Pentecost becomes the great un-babeling of Babel (Gen. 11). Where there was division and confusion, now there is unity and understanding. Where there was conflict between humans centered on themselves, now there was peace between humans centered on Christ.

The Holy Spirit makes a new humanity at Pentecost.

The repentance and baptism that Peter calls for in 2:38-41 amounts to going another way. It is counter-cultural. The church isn’t meant to reflect the culture back to itself, to offer a spiritualized version of itself back to it. That is a church that has lost its saltiness according to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:13).

What is God’s plan for combating the darkness of those who reject his counter-cultural mandate? The church. The church founded on Christ and working by the Holy Spirit is God’s hope for the world.

The church is God’s Plan A, and there is no Plan B.

No matter the state of the world, it will never be beyond the sanctifying, prophetic witness of the church centered on the gospel. Indeed, the Lord has ordained the experience of church not for smooth sailing in favorable winds and peaceful waters, but precisely for apparently insurmountable cultural moments like ours. “This corrupt generation” is not more powerful than a group of broken sinners who’ve decided to stop going their own way and in lowliness and meekness turn to the saving glory of the Lord. Even hell itself is no match for the salt and light of the church.

Do you convey that reality to your people? You should.

There should be no more victim mentality in the church. The Holy Spirit has poured himself out on us. Even should they kill us, we’ll only get stronger.

2. The World Will Never Be ‘Post’—The Sovereignty of God

The fact that Peter is connecting the historical events of the moment to Old Testament prophecies is his way of saying, “The Lord planned this.”

If we focus on the challenges and the complexities of ministry in a post-Christian age, the opportunity for discouragement arises, and even for despondency. But our God is Lord over every age! He says, “I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done, saying: my plan will take place, and I will do all my will” (Isa. 46:10).

Even the gospel message itself includes the truth that what often looks like defeat is a foreordained means of victory. Consider the cross of Christ where our King was tortured to death.

This cross is now the means of our salvation. When they nailed him to that cross, they thought they’d ended him. But they had unknowingly exalted him. They crowned him with thorns, unaware of the majesty to which they were submitting. In the economy of the gospel, those jeers were blessings, and that spear was a scepter. They made him little and crushed, not knowing he was buying the world!

They crucified him, not knowing that his death was victory. Where they brought darkness, he brought light. His shame bought our salvation. His blood brought our beauty. His body resurrected brought the bursting of the very shackles of death.

It was all part of the plan!

Our God is providentially guiding history to its appointed and anciently ordained conclusion. This is true in the big epochs of global history. And it’s true in the daily ins and outs of your small corner of the ministry world.

So many pastors that I talk to seem to give the impression that their ministry is happening TO them. But I do whatever I can to help them see the sovereignty of God, that God has appointed them for these very moments. He has in fact put them on this collision course with their own inadequacy and insufficiency. And he stewarded this situation to them.

Leadership is not just about the easy days. Leadership is meant for the difficult days. You can have all the confidence and humility that comes with knowing God saw all of this coming. And he wanted you to be the one in your position when it did.

The Lord has made the church for this very season, this very age.

Sorting through the difficulties of gospel ministry in a post-everything world, you believe that Christ is the Messiah. Do you believe he’s Lord?

You may be overwhelmed and short-circuited by the challenges of your missional context, but the Lord isn’t. Acts 2:24 says not even death can hold him.

Let this world wander and wrangle. It cannot outrun the sovereign plan of the Lord our God.

3. The World Will Never Be ‘Post’—The Supernaturality of the Gospel

You will notice that this message is about a message. It’s a sermon on a sermon. And so Peter’s sermon at Pentecost is helpful both in content and also in form. Because it’s essentially an exposition of Joel chapter 2. Within that exposition, of course, he includes exposition of other prophetic passages (cf. Ps. 16:24-28 and Ps. 110:34-35).

Clearly, Peter believes expository preaching is the way to go. But it’s not just a running commentary on the text. That’s not Peter’s brand of exposition.

In his exposition of Joel and the Psalms, Peter is giving us a hermeneutic—a way of reading and preaching the Scriptures ourselves. He is showing us that (a) the Scriptures are living and active, and (b) the Scriptures’ central testimony is the powerful good news of Jesus Christ!

Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, full of the Spirit—whose role it is to shine the spotlight on Christ and make repentant sinners more and more like Christ—is designed to place the risen Christ at the center of the living Scriptures.

Peter knows the only power he has at his disposal is the Holy Spirit working through the foolish message of the cross. And, brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit working through the message of the cross is the only power we have too.

The gospel is the only thing the New Testament calls power, in fact.

The post-everything world will not be transformed by inspirational proverbs, motivational speeches, or laws and commandments any more than anybody in any other age has been. The law cannot change a single heart. Similarly, your sermons with seven practical steps cannot change a single heart.

Christianity is supernatural. We are not dealing with a life system, a religious code, a set of tips or instructions for more successful living and modified behavior. Because only the gospel is power (Rom. 1:16).

The good news of Jesus Christ is power outside of ourselves, in spite of ourselves, sourced in the Holy Spirit who is obliged and committed to furthering the glory of Jesus Christ through the proclamation of his life, death, and resurrection.

What our missional strategies and cultural philosophies could not do, the gospel of Jesus Christ could. Brothers and sisters, the gospel is the world’s only hope, and thus it is our only hope of changing the world.

No matter how far beyond Christian values or Christian thinking our age seems to get, it will never be beyond the power of the gospel.

This is why Paul says to the Corinthians, “I didn’t come to you in wisdom or eloquence. I resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

The hope of glory is not a big church. The hope of glory is not a successful church. The hope of glory is Christ. And your little corner of the kingdom may not be going the way you have envisioned it to be, but Christ’s gospel will not return void. He will have his prize.

God’s plan may not be for your glory, but it is definitely for his own. The question is: Will that be enough for you? Are you content to trust the Holy Spirit working through the good news of Jesus Christ, to repent of your trusting in ministerial technique and pragmatic attraction, to, like Paul, know nothing among them but Christ and him crucified? If so, you will see where the real power is. Where the real glory is.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. Moreover, my flesh will dwell in hope (Ps. 16:9).

He has made known the paths of life to us. Doesn’t that make your gladness full?

‘The Gospel According to Satan’ Releases Tomorrow

My brand-new book from Thomas Nelson releases tomorrow! In The Gospel According to Satan: Eight Lies About God that Sound Like the Truth I explore some of the “plausible arguments” (Col. 2:14) even Christians today are sometimes prone to believing.

Today’s the last day to officially pre-order the book, which can get you some free extras, including a discussion guide and exclusive video teaching from me. Details here.

Here is what some people are saying about the book:

“Enumerates the major ways the Devil uses his cunning and calculating ways of luring us off the narrow road of God’s grace. We will all do well to read this book and confront the lies we are being sold.”

— Kyle Idleman, senior pastor of Southeast Christian Church and author of Not a Fan and Don’t Give Up

Satan sells poisonous lies that masquerade as liberating truths. Dare I say, some of his lies sound so good you might even want to believe them anyways. Jared Wilson wastes no words in this book that shines the light of God’s word into the darkest corners of the human heart. You’ll wince with conviction, rejoice over truth, and be equipped to stand firm whenever Satan whispers, “Did God really say . . . ?”

— Costi W. Hinn, Pastor and author of God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel

“A unique, compelling, and even witty look at the devil’s current greatest hits—lies we urgently need to unmask.”

— Sam Allberry, author of 7 Myths About Singleness and Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

“One of the most thought-provoking writers in the Christian world today. . . . He doesn’t just describe the tantalizing falsehoods of our age, he exposes how they’ve slithered into our hearts.”

— Matt Smethurst, managing editor at The Gospel Coalition and author of Before You Open Your Bible: Nine Heart Postures for Approaching God’s Word

“More than a half-century ago, J. I. Packer famously said that ‘a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.’ There is no more pressing need in our day than for us to get the gospel right. Satan would love for us to embrace an imitation gospel that ultimately keeps us far from the kingdom of God. Jared’s book is a needed antidote to the imitation gospel poison that is being advanced in our day.”

— Bob Lepine, co-host of FamilyLife Today and Teaching Pastor, Redeemer Community Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

“In his characteristic fashion, Wilson writes with accessible prose, pastoral insight, and refreshing honesty as he confronts the lies Satan tells us (and that we’re all too prone to believing). Each chapter not only reveals the bondage that comes from buying into the Enemy’s schemes, but more importantly reveals the gospel’s answers that bring true liberation. The book is so relevant to the struggles we all face that I heartily recommend it to as many as possible.”

— Erick Sorensen, pastor of Epiphany Church in New York City; author, and co-host of the 30 Minutes in the New Testament Podcast

“In The Gospel According to Satan, Wilson exposes the fabricated wisdom and many false gospels of Satan and dismantles them with Scripture’s most precious and powerful doctrines.”

— Samuel Bierig, dean of Spurgeon College

You can find The Gospel According to Satan today wherever good Christian books are sold. Preorder today to get your free stuff!

Submit to One Another

The fact that “submission” has become something of a dirty word in relation to our modern sensibilities has much to do with Western culture’s increasingly post-postmodern rejection of authority. Anxiety about authority and submission has even crept into the church.

In fact, all of the brokenness, injustice, and discord in the world is a result of sinners rejecting God’s good design for authority and submission. Indeed, the Scriptures reveal that God has embedded a dynamic of authority and submission into the creation order itself. There is, of course, the sovereign God’s authority over all his creation. But there is also a structure of authority and submission endowed by God in the fabric of nature, the family, the church, and even society. Rightly ordered and administered, this structure nourishes us and glorifies God.

This is just as true in the “mutual submission” that followers of Jesus are commanded to practice in the life of the church. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:18–21:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The contrast is that of one who is intoxicated by alcohol, which only exacerbates our inner self-centeredness and makes us more vulnerable to the indulgences of the flesh, and one who is “filled with the Spirit,” which results not in self-focus but in concern for building up the brethren. But in an individualistic age and in churches still riddled with sinners, what does mutual submission look like?

Well Ordered

Paul is not advocating a kind of democratic utopianism. The admonition to mutual submission does not eradicate the order, for instance, that involves male eldership in the church or male headship in the home.

Similarly, mutual submission does not mean there are no authority structures in the church. In fact, one way we submit to one another “out of reverence for Christ” is by submitting to the structure Christ’s headship of the church mandates. We honor Jesus by honoring the ecclesiological blueprints he’s given us (see Heb. 13:17).

Paul has in mind that we submit in a way that honors Christ as Lord, and this precludes some kind of religious free-for-all that makes Christ’s body look disordered or chaotic.

Consider the common example of a small group where one person seems to occupy most of the relational real estate. Every week their anxious neediness opens an emotional black hole that every other member must try to fill. What does “mutual submission” look like here? It certainly doesn’t look like letting one person suck up all the spiritual energy week after week. That is disordered submission to one. Mutual submission would mean appropriately listening to the concerns of the one and tending to them sensitively and wisely with the Word of God, but also preventing that one person from becoming the center of the attention.

Rightly ordered mutual submission will also look like church members not seeking to usurp elders’ and other ministry leaders’ authority and leaders not seeking to domineer or “lord over” the flock (1 Pet. 5:2–3).

Affectionate

When one is “drunk on wine,” inhibitions to immodesty are lowered, and sinful behaviors are severely increased. When one is “filled with the Spirit,” inhibitions to proper affection are lowered, and edifying behaviors are greatly increased. Paul connects the Spirit’s influence with mutual upbuilding through corporate worship and prayer. The effect is radical reorienting of our concerns around the concerns of the church.

Consider the “affectionate” language of Romans 12:9 or the command of verse 10: “Outdo one another in showing honor.” Or the phrasing of Romans 15:1–2: “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”

Before the Lord, we don’t simply tolerate each other; we actually love each other. The gospel that has reconciled us as individuals to God has also reconciled us to each other. And the gospel is not about mere toleration but a grace that is “lavish” (Eph. 1:8). This is not an overindulgent intimacy that crosses barriers of modesty but simply a reference to genuine, heartfelt, others-oriented love.

Christ Exalting

This is the primary aim of the order and affection urged by Paul in Ephesians 5:18–21, that everything we do would be done “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This means that we aren’t submitting to one another out of a desire to create some kind of altruistic mutual admiration society. If that were the case, we would forgo the order of authority, the necessity of biblical church discipline, the rebuking and excommunicating of false teachers, and the prohibition of heresy. Instead, we understand that our submission to one another in love, honor, and service is a way of making visible what God has done through Christ in his life and work. We deny ourselves not to build up the self-esteem of others but to build up the Christ-esteem of the church.

When we each set our own interests aside as secondary to the building up of Christ’s body, and we prioritize each other as worthy of honor and deserving of love (Rom. 13:8), we may yet discover the beautiful stalemate of mutual submission. In that impasse of grace, we magnify the Son who put on flesh and did not regard his authority as something to be leveraged (Phil. 2:4–8). When we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, we make Christ look reverence-worthy. Because he is.

An earlier version of this essay first appeared in Tabletalk.

Applications for My Spring Ministry Cohort Now Open

I’m now accepting applications for my Spring ministry coaching cohort with Tailored Coach. If you’re interested in developing greater gospel-centrality in your ministry — if you’re in your first five years at your church or leading a revitalization/transition work, in particular — this could be a great opportunity to learn from other men in the trenches and get some help “dialing in” on some key issues.

6 months of group meetings featuring short applicational lectures with Q&A via Zoom

Cohort access 24/7 via private Slack group

Individualized help with pastoral, practical, or personal matters.

Here are some subjects I’ve helped pastors with in the last two seasons of the cohort:

– Developing both content and delivery with preaching.

– Getting a grasp on gospel-centered philosophy for ministry.

– Transitioning from attractional to gospel-centered paradigm.

– Troubleshooting small groups, discipleship process, membership development.

– Leadership development.

– Navigating staff issues or areas of conflict in the church.

– Family/work balance.

– Personal disciplines and devotional life.

– Marriage and family issues.

– and more

More details, including schedule and application access at my page at Tailored Coach.

I’m especially interested in helping guys in their first decade of ministry, particularly with issues of finding identity in Christ and how to pastor from that, as well as relational dynamics in ministry and leadership. Space of course is limited, and we start January 29, so if you or someone you know is interested, apply soon!

Carve Your Eyeball Out of Its Socket

If the title makes you uncomfortable, now you have a better sense of the provocation in Jesus’s words:

“If your hand or your foot causes you to fall away, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hellfire.”

— Matthew 18:8-9

This admonition is perhaps nowhere more appropriate today than in the virtual onslaught of pornography. No longer reserved for seedy downtown theaters or smuggled magazines from dad’s nightstands, the crack cocaine comes right to our televisions, phones, and tablets. The porn epidemic has reached public health crisis proportions. But even worse than that, according to God’s Word, it jeopardizes our souls.

So what can we learn from Christ’s warnings in Matthew 18 about getting free from porn? At least three things:

1. The sin is “in here.”

Yes, it’s “out there” too, but notice that Jesus does not allow externals to become excuses. Nobody gets to say that (in this instance) pornography “made” them fall. You are not responsible for someone else’s deliberately chosen sin, but nor are they responsible for yours. It’s not the temptation that leads you away—it’s your “foot.” It’s not the sinful vision that leads you away—it’s your “eye.”

Bottom line: Own it. Take responsibility. There may be all kinds of contributing factors to your susceptibility to certain kinds of sin, but you won’t get free from it by blame-shifting or excuse-making. It’s nobody’s fault but yours. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can be rid of it.

2. The stakes are higher than you think.

I think this is why most folks mired in pornography don’t get free through garden-variety willpower against guilt. They have yet to see the approximate toll the drugs are taking on their lives. It’s usually not until they’ve lost (or nearly lost) everything that they often find the resolve to repent in earnest. So long as the wife keeps “forgiving” without real consequences, so long as it’s held only within the private circles of those who squinch their faces up in sympathy and say they’ll pray, the sin can be managed, and then recycled.

But when the wife says, “That’s it. It’s over,” suddenly they see the toll. What her tears might not have done, her absence does. When the unrepentance bleeds past the private hand-wringers to the pastors or employers who promise actual loss of reputation, income, what-have-you, suddenly you feel the bankruptcy you’ve been engaging in all along. Why wait for those moments?

Bottom line: You have to see where this is going before you get there. Jesus would not use the language of chopping off a hand or plucking out an eye if the habitual indulging of lust was some little ol’ thing you could manage. Free porn will cost you more than you really want to give. The end result of a life devoted to sin is hell. Thus:

3. Repentance must be radical.

If you think cutting off an arm or plucking out an eye seems harsh, consider what Christ says about daily following him: “You must take up your cross.” He’s talking about nothing less than death. To experience life in Christ we are to die to ourselves.

This means at the very least that the offense of the cross must be applied to the offense of your sin, because it died there with him. Get the hammer and nails out. Find a spear. Software filters and accountability groups are fine, but maybe you don’t need a smart phone. Maybe you don’t need a TV in your house. Or a private time or a private room with a computer or laptop.

Maybe you should tell your spouse. Your pastor. Your parents. Somebody “scary.” Why? Because the stakes are high, and repentance must be radical.

And because the gospel is true, no matter the earthly consequences, you can be sure of the spiritual ones. Any pain is worth it that puts us on the path to righteousness. Any pain. Any pain is preferable to the pain of private sin festering to its hellish result. If you can’t manage it, murder it. Don’t fear embarrassment or loss more than God’s wrath. And flee from that into his loving arms. He really is better. His grace really is sufficient. His glory really is more captivating, more satisfying, more delicious than any putrid pixelated delicacies.

You can do whatever it takes, knowing he will not take from you what you most need.

So don’t be afraid to carve your eye out of its socket. The Lord will give you a new one.