2023 New Year's Resolutions Scorecard

In 2023, the Texas Rangers won the World Series after 51 years of mostly mediocre baseball and not a few moments of devastating heartbreak. In 2023, my family went on a few fun trips to Phoenix, Chicago, and the Pacific Northwest and made some joyful memories there. In 2023, Lindsey and I welcomed our third child, Isaac Lynn Camp, to the world. 

Unfortunately, those are pretty much the only things I will treasure from 2023. It was NOT a good year for me. If you know, you know.

As a result, I thought about not posting my annual New Year's Resolutions Scorecard, or at least shortchanging you with something so brief it would barely be worth reading. But leaving a blank page here feels like it would be giving 2023 one last win, a perpetual black mark that would annoy my in 2024 and beyond, every time I posted a new set of resolutions or reviewed the previous year's.

So I'm doing the thing. The score will not be good. But that's how accountability works—sometimes you celebrate your victories, and sometimes you sit with your defeats. Here's how I did with my resolutions for 2023.

1. Pray for and contact every resident member of my church every month.

I started strong here: I made a spreadsheet, tracked my progress, and shared it all with our deacon body for the sake of accountability. But by the spring I'd fallen behind on the task, and by the time the first crisis of the year rolled around, I'd given up entirely.

Look for me to revise and revisit this resolution in 2024. My heart was in the right place and I need to give this another go.

Score: 0 out of 10

2. Listen to 350 albums.

I tracked every album I listened to into the month of October, and was up to 202 when I finally decided there was no way I was going to get to 350. Between that dedication to the task and the number reached, I'm comfortable giving myself half credit here.

In retrospect, 350 was WAY too much unless I was willing to toss podcasts (my primary source of audio entertainment) aside entirely, which I wasn't. An album a day doesn't sound too ambitious at first glance, but when you have almost no commute, it winds up being a pretty steep hill to climb.

A summary of my listening for 2023: in the Year of Taylor, I listened to T-Swift's entire discography for the first time. I did the same thing for the Beatles, Switchfoot, Kanye West, Metallica, and a few other artists. I tried to go through the complete works of Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones before getting overwhelmed by the volume. Lots of classic rock, less hip-hop than I expected, a lot of country in the summer months, and, like for most people, a noticeable tendency to gravitate toward the music I liked when I was 16 years old.

Score: 0.5 out of 10

3. Exercise 6 days per week.

Tempted to give myself half credit again.

Going into 2023, I had gone from being a runner (3 miles a day, multiple half marathons under my belt, even one full marathon) to an essentially sedentary lifestyle. Faced with that decline, I resolved to run every other day and to go to the local gym on non-running days, with Sunday as a rest day.

When it comes to the running, I reached my goal. After redownloading and working through the C25K app, I am back to running 2-3 miles without breaks, and I do so 3 times a week like clockwork. Rain or shine, my neighbors know I'll be out there at 6:30 AM pounding the pavement. Success!

But when it comes to the gym, I had fully given up by the fall. As it turns out, I still hate going to the gym. I hate the time it takes out of my day, I hate the monotony of the exercises, I hate watching muted episodes of First Take on the TV. I just really hate the gym. So by September, I made it official and stopped going entirely.

Ok, now that I've typed that all out, this feels like the definition of half credit. I am once again a runner, so mission accomplished on that end. And I have completely abandoned any idea that I would go to the gym on days when I'm not running. Sounds to me like I accomplished exactly half of this goal.

Score: 1 out of 10

4. Carry a journal everywhere. And use it.

Without fail, I now carry a Field Notes journal in my back pocket everywhere I go. When I'm sitting at my desk, my journal is never out of reach. And when going to a meeting, I always walk in with that same notebook and pen in hand.

But am I jotting down as much as I planned to? Not exactly.

My intention with this resolution was to make my journal(s) an extension of my brain, to fill up several notebooks with random musings, lists, ideas, etc. In reality, I kept far more thoughts to myself than I was willing to commit to pen and paper.

There's a lot of room for improvement on this front, but I made a concerted effort all year long. Half credit.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

5. Cut my iPhone screen time to 2 hours per day.

This is a resolution I was conscious of all year long. Unfortunately, being aware of a goal is not the same thing as reaching it.

It turns out, 2 hours is not a lot of screen time in 2023. When your phone is your GPS, your music player, your portable encyclopedia, a library of reading material, your primary means of communication, and an intentionally addictive toy, it's incredibly hard to keep your screen time under 2 hours without constant vigilance.

So there was a pretty typical pattern every week in 2023: I'd have 5 or so days per week where my screen time would be between 100 and 130 minutes, right in line with my goal. But then it would all be spoiled by that other day or two in the week, the one where after a long day I'd sit in bed vegging in front of TikTok or YouTube for an hour. 

I'm tempted to give myself half credit on this resolution, since mindfulness is half the battle in reducing screen time. But after charting my progress all year long, the reality is that I didn't see much improvement, just a lot of guilt—I'm just the smoker who perpetually says he'll quit next week. Expect a slightly revised version of this resolution to reappear in 2024.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

6. Learn how to use Photoshop.

The idea here was to take advantage of what was available to me through the church's Adobe subscription and learn a new skill that would serve both me and the church. Thing is, Photoshop is complex enough that it was going to require several hours of training to get beyond the basics. And Canva (which I also have a subscription to) has gotten pretty darn good and is way more intuitive—it certainly can't do everything Photoshop can, but it meets most of my basic graphic design needs.

In short, I never even tried to accomplish this resolution. And I probably won't in 2024 either.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

7. No buying lunch for just me.

There was a twofold purpose to this resolution. First, in line with resolution #1, I wanted to use lunchtime as an opportunity to connect with church members. Second, I wanted to save a little money and eat a little healthier, two things that my gravitational pull toward fast food was hindering.

Unfortunately, I'm an introvert who really really hates packing a lunch from home. So my high- minded intentions quickly gave way to my baser instincts, and I found myself scarfing down Whataburger in my office, the exact thing I'd promised to avoid. Instead of viewing lunchtime as an opportunity to enjoy good food and good fellowship, I saw it as the half-hour when I could turn my brain off and do what I wanted.

I knew when I made this resolution that it would be the most difficult to keep, that it went against my natural inclination, that I'd find excuse after excuse to violate it on any given day. I was right.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

8. Floss.

I bought a WaterPik. I used it when I felt like it/thought about it...which was decidedly not every day.

Don't think that's enough to count this as a win. My dentist would agree.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

9. Apply for Truett Seminary's PhD of Preaching.

Nope, this didn't happen. Why not? I saw two things shift, one as a result of circumstances and the other after a lot of thought and reevaluation.

First and most obviously, this was not the year to start a new degree plan. Between an unexpected death in our family, a new baby in December, and a stressful, tumultuous year at the church, I didn't have the time, inclination, energy, or money to invest in post-graduate education in 2023. There's never a good time to start a new degree, but this would have arguably been the worst time to do so.

Second, if I'm going to get a doctorate, I'm thinking more and more that it should probably be a Doctor of Ministry instead of a PhD in Preaching. If the goal of education is to learn, I think it's probably more important for me to learn about effective ministry than about the philosophy of preaching. The things I would read, learn, and discuss in a DMin program would likely benefit me more as a pastor than a PhD of Preaching would, even if the program isn't as immediately attractive to me.

I have no plans to apply in 2024—I need more stability at church before I'm ready to take on something as strenuous as a doctoral program. But if getting a doctorate is in my future—and at this point, I still think it is—then I think Truett's DMin program is probably the way I need to go.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

10. Lead my church to grow.

This is undoubtedly the most painful failure on this list, and the one that caused me the most stress and heartache in 2023. In a year where I set out to lead my church to grow, we shrunk instead—a few members passed away, several families decided to leave the church, and multiple ministerial staff members moved on. What I had hoped—and resolved—would be a year of reaping a harvest instead was a year of pruning.

I won't make this a formal resolution again in 2024 for two reasons. One, growth cannot and should not be the sole responsibility of the pastor—if 2023 taught me anything, it's that I can't do this by myself (and that, when I try, it doesn't go well.) A church that hasn't united around a shared vision for growth won't get there just because the pastor wants it to happen, because leadership starts with persuasion, not unilateral action. Two, growth should never be the primary goal—a church's first priority should be faithfulness. As Edward Abbey once said, "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Healthy churches grow when they are singularly focused on doing God's will, not when they're focused on building their brand or marketing their product. I'm a pastor, not an entrepreneur—for better or for worse, I'm going to self-correct and lean into that in 2024. Hopefully God blesses that effort.

Score: 1.5 out of 10

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Final Score: 1.5 out of 10, or 15%. Let's see how that stacks up against previous years:

2022- 1 out of 10, or 10%

2021- 4 out of 9, or 44%

2020- 5.5 out of 13, or 42%.

2019- 3 out of 13, or 23%.

2018- 8.5 out of 13, or 65%.

To my surprise (and helped by some generous half-credit scores on a few resolutions), this wasn't my worst scorecard. Nevertheless, this is two abysmal years in a row. I would really like to see a turnaround in 2024—it's time for a change.

So tune in tomorrow to see what's on my personal and professional agenda for the New Year!

December Reading Log

 

2023's reading ended not with a bang, but with a whimper...that's what happens when you spend a full week of the month in the hospital, where's there's nothing to do yet you can't concentrate enough to read. So the year ends with a pretty short log, just 3 books. Take a look!

BALL FOUR by Jim Bouton

Right on schedule, I started desperately missing baseball roughly a month after the end of the World Series. To ease my suffering, I turned to one of the most influential books ever written about the sport, Jim Bouton's Ball Four.

First published in 1970, this memoir shook baseball's foundations, offering an unfiltered portrayal of life in the big leagues. With an unvarnished, matter-of-fact voice, pitcher Jim Bouton expounds upon everything from clubhouse culture to struggles with management to what ballplayers are up to off the field. In a time when Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were still seen as larger-than-life, iconic role models, Jim Bouton was a mythbuster, taking readers behind the curtain and showing what ballplayers were really thinking and doing when the cameras weren't rolling. His account was so revealing—and credible—that MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to discredit his own book, urging him to publicly declare its stories were entirely fictional (Bouton declined.)

I was already familiar with Ball Four's reputation and impact but, more than 50 years after its initial publication, found its contents relatively tame, albeit entertaining. The book is essentially a diary, chronicling everything from offseason contract negotiations to spring training to a demotion to the minor leagues and subsequent call-up back to the majors. In the spirit of the gonzo journalism that was all the rage at that time, the narrator is also the main character, exposing larger systems through the voice of an informed everyman—not a professional journalist, but an actual ballplayer willing to reveal the truth. As a result, Bouton writes with the authority of the an informed source but the accessibility of an ordinary person.

Most importantly, the book is funny. Bouton is a witty narrator with a natural gift for storytelling, so his revelations come off less like a sensationalist's tell-all and more like a buddy shooting the breeze at the bar. This book is a delight, one whose anecdotal nature makes it more suitable for reading 5 minutes at a time rather than in long stretches. Baseball fans everywhere need to take the time to pore through its 400+ pages—some books just need to be understood, but this is a book that demands to be read.

HIDDEN CHRISTMAS: THE SURPRISING TRUTH BEHIND THE BIRTH OF CHRIST by Tim Keller

What is Christmas really about? It's a question asked by everyone from Charlie Brown to the harried shopper wondering why he's racking up debt to the parishioner in a pew at his local church's Christmas Eve service. Amidst all the busyness and tradition, we want Christmas to mean something, for there to be more to it all than commercialism and sentimentality.

In Hidden Christmas, the late pastor and author Tim Keller walks through the gospel texts to explain in a concise, insightful way why the birth of Jesus changes everything, why the Incarnation is not only worth celebrating but worth believing. With a Bible passage as the starting point for each chapter, this book is essentially a collection of sermons (and indeed, this book is an adaptation and synthesis of the Christmas sermons he preached over the course of his ministerial career.)

Keller had a gift unparalleled since the days of C.S. Lewis for presenting the Christian faith in a winsome, intelligent way that treated his readers like adult learners—he neither talked down to his readers nor sent them scrambling for a theological dictionary. Keller balanced his own convictions about faith with unfailing respect for those who did not share them, and the result is that his evangelistic efforts never felt like a sales pitch but instead like a sincere announcement of good news.

In less than 150 pages, Hidden Christmas turns the Christmas story over and explores its many different angles, all with the intention of showing you that Jesus is Lord. For the believer and the nonbeliever alike, it's an instructive, joyful primer on events we know well but could understand better. A great devotional read for anyone during the season of Advent.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 4

After 4 months and more than 100 issues, I'm still not sure what this title was ever supposed to be. A secondary Spider-Man book featuring his Amazing Friends? A vehicle for C-list characters to get a chance to shine? A throwaway money grab by a company that knew anything with their premiere character on the cover would sell books?

Whatever Marvel Team-Up was intended to be, it definitely reached its creative peak in the Chris Claremont-John Byrne years, before they left for the greener pastures of Uncanny X-Men. This fourth and final Essential volume is back to the slog of Bronze Age mediocrity—which would be more forgivable if these issues were from the 1970s instead of the early 1980s. Every issue—by this time we're back to single issue, standalone stories—Spider-Man, through some vagary of chance, teams up with another Marvel hero, usually one who isn't popular enough to warrant their own title, to take on some lower-tier villain. The writing is as slapdash as the art, and the creators are all either B-players trying to make their bones (Steven Grant, Bob McLeod) or over-the-hill veterans looking for an easy paycheck (Sal Buscema, Carmine Infantino).

Though the title would run for another 50+ issues before Marvel mercifully ended its run, it's clear that by this stage of the book's life, everybody had given up on any illusion of it 'mattering,' either creatively or canonically. These are the kind of disposable stories that used to define comics before the Silver Age, the sort of issues you'd give your kid to read on a long road trip and that he'd toss in the trash with his Coke bottle once he was done.

The harshness of my review probably makes it sound like I hated reading four volumes of Marvel Team-Up, which isn't exactly true. It wasn't bad, just bland, the white rice of reading experiences. I've certainly read better, but I've definitely read worse. If I have a bone to pick, it's with Marvel for deciding this demanded 4 volumes of reprints. Essential? Hardly.

Remembering Christmas (Friday Devotional)

Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.

- Proverbs 4:13

Growing up, we always had a live Christmas tree in the living room, refusing to give in to the convenience of the fake, store-bought, permanent kind that so many of our friends had. Every December we’d drive out to a tree farm, pick out an 8-10 foot pine, Dad would cut it down, and we’d haul it home. For the whole holiday season, that tree would sit in our living room, adorned with ornaments and bedecked with wrapped presents.

But always on the morning of December 26, that tree was promptly dragged out to the curb for pickup. And once it was out the door, there was no mistaking where it had been—there was a not-insignificant trail of pine needles throughout the house marking its presence. A visible reminder of another Christmas come and gone.

With the holiday behind us—your tree may still be up, but the presents that once rested beneath it have all been distributed by now—the natural tendency is to pack Christmas away for the next 11 months. When you regard Christmas purely as an event, the obvious inclination is to regard it as something which has come and gone, something not worth thinking about again until next fall.

But for believers, Christmas is not just about the traditions of a holiday, but about the meaning behind them. At Christmas we take the time to remember that God came to be with us as a human being and we look with eager anticipation to the day when his home will be with mortals once again. At Christmas we dwell upon all we have been given and take it upon ourselves to give back. At Christmas we are given perspective about what really matters most.

To confine those things to one month out of the year would be spiritual malpractice. So as December gives way to January and the calendar flips from 2023 to 2024, look for ways to remember Christmas in March and June and August. The tree may be gone, but there’s still a trail of pine needles—don’t sweep them up too quickly.

A Fresh Hearing (Friday Devotional)

 

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

- Luke 2:19

A Christmas Story. Miracle on 34th Street. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Home Alone. It’s a Wonderful Life. Elf. I could keep going, of course—after all, I failed to mention The Muppet Christmas Carol and White Christmas and The Santa Clause, to say nothing of beloved animated TV specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Christmas movies, whatever your favorites, are as inextricable from the holiday season as lights and presents. Just like we sing the same carols year after year, we watch these same films over and over too, unbothered that the stories never change and that we know what happens next at every turn. Being able to recite the whole script from memory isn’t a bug, but a feature—because you’re not watching these films to learn something new, you’re watching them to be reminded of something precious.

There is another Christmas story—the Christmas story—that is just as familiar, just as repeated, and far more important than Hollywood’s holiday tales. When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth, you already know the story beats: Gabriel’s visit, Joseph’s dream, the manger and the shepherds and the heavenly host. You’re probably not going to hear anything new to you when somebody reads Luke 2 this Sunday.

That familiarity makes it tempting to tune out, to assume that since you know all the information you have nothing to learn. But the Bible is no dead letter—Hebrews 4:12 tells us the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. You will find no new words in the gospel stories this weekend, but that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit won’t use those familiar old words to change you.

Luke 2:19 tells us that Jesus’s mother treasured up the events of the nativity and pondered them in her heart. This Christmas, perhaps you should do the same. After all, sometimes you don’t need a new story, just a fresh hearing of the familiar.

Holy Infant, So Tender and Mild (Friday Devotional)

 

Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

- Philippians 2:6-7

You don’t realize quite how fragile babies are until you’re confronted with that fact.

My son Isaac was born last Thursday morning, delivered by C-section at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. While his arrival was a few days ahead of schedule, the surgery itself was perfectly routine—the doctor and nurses were joking around with us, music was playing in the OR, and Lindsey and I were excited but not especially nervous. When the doctor presented Isaac to us at 2:51 AM, all 9 lb. and 7 oz. of him, everybody’s comments—including ours—were about how big he was, how healthy, how strong.

But as the minutes turned into hours, we hit a snag. Every time the nurses checked his blood sugar, it was lower than it was supposed to be, requiring supplementary care—glucose gel, enriched formula, etc.—to get it up to where it needed to be. After a 4^th failed blood sugar test, the pediatrician on call broke the news to us—Isaac would need to be moved to the NICU to receive a dextrose drip until his body started to figure out how to regulate its own blood sugar.

So for those precious first days of life, our baby boy had an IV in his little arm, a pulse oximeter wrapped around his tiny foot, and three different leads stuck to his chest to measure vital signs. He was watched over by an amazing team of nurses, but was unable to leave the NICU—including to meet his brother and sister. It wasn’t until Sunday night, after more than 3 days of observation and progress, that he was released to our care and we were able to breathe easy. For 3 long days, we were reminded just how small babies really are.

At this time of year, we remember a different birth, one that in so many ways was far more precarious. There was no operating room, no surgical instruments, not even a doctor when Mary delivered Jesus. There was no hospital, much less a NICU, to treat him if he’d gotten sick. When Jesus was born on that not-so-silent night, it was far from the serene, romanticized, sentimental picture we imagine today. It was dangerous. It was frightening. There was blood on the ground.

But the same Savior who would eventually go to the cross took no shortcuts on the road to our salvation. From Bethlehem to Golgotha, Jesus—though fully God—was also fully human, entering the world as a baby. He knew all the frailties of infancy just as he would know all the temptations of manhood—but for us, he traded the glories of heaven for the travails of earth.

The Word which was from the beginning, the Word which was with God and was God, the Word through whom all things all things were made—the Word became flesh and lived among us. The Alpha and Omega became a baby. Think about that the next time you look at the small, feeble body of an infant. I know I will.

Small Problems and Big Prayers (Friday Devotional)

 

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

- 1 Peter 5:7

“And God, I really hope I find my lunchbox tomorrow.”

That was how my son ended his bedtime prayer on Sunday evening after the usual words of thanksgiving for a good day. You see, on Friday he had come from school with his backpack unzipped and no lunchbox inside. Let me tell you, it was a crisis. This was his brand-new lunchbox, less than a month old, whale-themed (he’s obsessed with ocean life right now) and precious to him.

He was so concerned that we went up to his school Saturday morning and checked the lost and found bin—thanks to an event at the school that morning, we could stroll right in and look. Unfortunately, we had no luck, and his classroom door was locked. So all he could do until Monday was wait, worry—and pray.

To some, praying about a lost lunchbox is a waste of breath. They would say that bringing such petty concerns before the Creator of the universe is irreverent and silly, that prayer should be reserved for weightier matters. Lost souls, yes. Lost lunchboxes, no.

But Scripture tells us to cast all our anxiety upon the Lord, that no care or concern is too insignificant to bring before our heavenly Father. God cares for us, and he wants us to talk to him about the things that are weighing us down.

Petitionary prayer is not reserved for a certain class of problems, as though God only has the time for the “important” issues. Your Father wants to hear from you, whether your cares are big or small. Every prayer is important to him because you are important to him. Even when all you need is a lunchbox.

P.S. The lunchbox was in my son’s classroom when he got to school Monday, safe and sound. Truly an answer to prayer!

November Reading Log

Lots of reading this month, from pop culture essays to novellas to pastoral theology and more. With a new baby coming in a week, December's log may be a lot shorter (or, if this baby is an easy one, maybe longer!) But for now, here's what I was able to read in November!

I WEAR THE BLACK HAT: GRAPPLING WITH VILLAINS (REAL AND IMAGINED) by Chuck Klosterman

Darth Vader. The Joker. Walter White.

Ours is a culture fascinated, even shaped, by its villains. Intellectually, we wonder what makes them tick. Emotionally, we get some perverse, voyeuristic pleasure from watching them do things we would never do. And spiritually, we use them as a measuring stick for our own righteousness—so long as they are the Bad Guys, we can know we are the Good Guys.

In I Wear the Black Hat, essayist Chuck Klosterman examines the concept of villainy from a number of different angle, questioning what makes a villain, why some capture our imaginations while other fail to do so, and ultimately asking the big question: in my own story, am I a hero or a villain? With his signature blend of humor, self-awareness, and cleverness, Klosterman gets you thinking about big questions without ever making it feel like a philosophy class. In the grandest sense, this is a book on the nature of evil, yet on the surface, its subjects are O.J. Simpson, Death Wish, and the Eagles. The contrast between the highbrow topic and the lowbrow case studies is what makes the book so compelling.

Like most of Klosterman's work, I Wear the Black Hat is clever but not brilliant, a book that edges towards profundity at times only to immediately back away. It never fails to entertain, but there are times when you will finish a meandering essay and ask, "Ok, but what was your point?" If you want to comprehensively examine Life Big Questions, stick to history's greatest thinkers. But if you want to have some fun while also doing some thinking, I Wear the Black Hat is time well spent.

MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK by David McCullough

Well, this is a little embarrassing. After spending two weeks reading this book, presumably for the first time, I learned from my Goodreads account (verified by my handwritten reading list and this blog) that I had already read this book...this year, in fact. Oops.

So here's what I wrote back in January. Gotta admit though, the fact that I reread 470 pages without anything ringing a bell does seem to be a knock against this book. Or maybe just against my memory. Let's go with the latter.

BROTHERS, WE ARE NOT PROFESSIONALS by John Piper

In one regard, this is an extremely impractical book. In another sense, it's one of the finest books about pastoring I've read.

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals is essentially John Piper's advice to young and prospective pastors, each chapter a different command that you must follow if you want to be successful. There are plenty of books like that, handbooks and manuals and how-to guides for those needing guidance on everything from preaching to pastoral care to administrative leadership. Normally such books are intently practical—this is how you make a budget, this is how you baptize someone, this is how you run a staff meeting, etc.

But Piper's book is quite different in that regard. His advice is instead purely theological, focused on how preachers can glorify God and love their congregations. You'll find no advice about customer service or fundraising or conflict management here, just expository writing about what it means to shepherd God's people well for his glory.

Ultimately, the big point of Piper's book is summarized by its title: brothers, we are not professionals. In a 21st century context of perpetual busyness, where there's always another email to send or phone call to answer, Piper harkens back to the days of the Puritans, when a pastor's job was simply to study, proclaim, and apply God's Word. He has no use for the pastor as CEO, rejecting the concept outright and pointing readers toward a more biblical ideal.

I should say that I didn't agree with everything in here. In the name of meeting people where they are, I think there's a certain amount of "professionalism" people expect from their pastor, and outright refusing to accommodate those needs seems like a recipe for failure to me. Piper's titular insistence that all pastors are "brothers" was unsurprising (Piper literally wrote the book on complementarianism, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womandhood) but nevertheless distracting and frustrating. And Piper's career-defining and Calvinistic doctrine of "Christian hedonism," as usual, is infused in every chapter, sometimes to its benefit but other times to its detriment.

Nevertheless, I found this book a helpful corrective to the kinds of pastoral how-to manuals and church growth books that litter shelves (including my own). It is uninterested in fitting in or adapting to the culture, only to explaining what the Bible says about the pastorate. For pastors weighed down by the "practicalities of the job," this book offers a challenging, crucial reminder: it's not a job. It's a calling.

THE VERY PERSISTENT GAPPERS OF FRIP by George Saunders and Lane Smith

FOX 8 by George Saunders

George Saunders, author of collections like Pastoralia and Tenth of December, is the modern master of the short story. For decades now, he has delighted readers with the inventiveness of his prose and the humanity behind each story, earning a reputation as arguably America's best writer. So one Saturday this month, I sat down to enjoy two such stories, each published on its own rather than as part of a wider collection.

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a children's story. Like all good children's stories, it features a strange but easily understandable world, children who are much smarter than adults, and a problem solved by being kind and doing the right thing. With a narration style meant for reading aloud, Saunders tells the story of three families who, after some trial and error, learn what it means to be good neighbors to one another. The story is accentuated by the illustrations of Lane Smith, the Caldecott winner best known for The Stinky Cheese Man and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, whose eclectic art style, combined with Saunders' surreal story, gives the whole affair a Roald Dahl-meets-Tim Burton vibe. It's all great fun, and wraps up neatly and gently: "And soon she found that it was not all that much fun being the sort of person who eats a big dinner in a warm house while others shiver on their roofs in the dark. That is, it was fun at first, but then got gradually less fun, until it was really no fun at all. "Father," she said. "I guess we'll be having some company.""

Fox 8, while not explicitly a children's story, has the same sort of fable-like quality, telling the story of a fox whose home is destroyed by human development and whose curiosity about humans leads to tragedy. This story is typified by Saunders' trademark humor and a moral as basic as it is resonant: humans, be nicer. But the star of the show is the writing style, which never gets old. Here's the first paragraph, just to give you a taste:

"Dear Reeder. First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don't rite or spel perfect. But here is how I lerned to rite and spel as gud as I do!"

Delightful. George Saunders is just delightful.

THE GREEN MILE by Stephen King

The Green Mile is not my favorite Stephen King book, a title held for now by The Dead Zone (with Carrie close behind). It's not his most thrilling book in the can't-put-it-down sense; that's reserve for Misery. But at this moment (with the caveat that I still have 60+ King books on my to-read list), I might say it's his best book.

Originally published in six serial installments, the way Charles Dickens used to write, The Green Mile is a prison novel infused with magical realism. Narrated by Paul Edgecombe, a decent prison guard at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary, it tells the story of a year when three inmates awaited their executions by electric chair on the prison's death row, nicknamed "the green mile." When the second of those inmates, the hulking, childlike, enigmatic John Coffey arrives, the lives of everyone around him change forever.

Coffey possesses a supernatural power to heal, drawing the darkness out of a person and expelling it as light. As this power is revealed, Edgecombe and his fellow guards are forced to reckon with what it will mean to execute someone who seems to be a gift from God. Is Coffey innocent of his crimes? How does he do what he does? And, in the end, does any of it matter?

Stephen King is best known for writing horror stories, the kinds of thrillers that you buy in mass-market paperback, devour on a long flight, and then toss aside. But this conventional wisdom disregards the author's talent, which is on full display in The Green Mile. In theme as well as format, this book is a more ambitious project than the average King book, delving into the spiritual without ever compromising the story. When I read the last, profound sentence, I could only exhale—whew!—at the ride I'd been taken on and the satisfaction at how he'd stuck the landing.

Maybe you've seen the movie adaptation (I haven't, but will soon) and think you can skip this one. But let me promise you this: if you choose to read The Green Mile, you won't be disappointed. Some Stephen King books are disposable entertainment. This one deserves a permanent place your bookshelf.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 3 by

Now we're talking.

After 40+ issues of mostly mediocre Bronze Age stories featuring team-ups between Spider-Man and another (usually C-list) Marvel character, I was not really looking forward to two more volumes of the same. But then, swooping in to rescue a moribund book and pique my interest, came the dynamic duo of writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, best known for their seminal work on The Uncanny X-Men.

The pair, who collaborated for 12 issues, immediately bring a level of energy, dynamism, and professionalism the book had been lacking for some time (and that it immediately lost when they went on to bigger and better things). In their short run together, they introduce such figures as Captain Britain, the villainous Arcade (who would famously reemerge during their Uncanny X-Men run), and Captain Jean DeWolff, Spidey's pal on the police force who fills a Commissioner Gordon archetype.

Byrne's art, which would come to define an entire era of comics, arrives fully formed, with no growing pains whatsoever. His detailed, realistic style, featuring clean lines and a knack for storytelling, stands in stark contrast to the heavier house style of the time, and is worth the price of admission on its own. Claremont's writing is excellent and, especially compared to his later work, understated. He would later be known for walls of text that hid the art, but here he (or his editor) shows great restraint, allowing Byrne to move the story along.

I imagine that anyone reading these issues is doing so for their historical value, as the first pairing of Claremont and Byrne before they'd set the comics world ablaze with Uncanny X-Men. But for somebody who didn't see it coming, the issues themselves were a pure delight, and I was sorry to see their run end after 12 issues. We'll see what comes in Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 4, but I suspect I've already seen the book's high point.

The Season of Giving (Friday Devotional)

 

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

- 2 Corinthians 9:15

Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday. At this time of year, it seems like we’re being asked on a daily basis to buy something, support something, or donate something. It is, after all, the season of giving.

But as you purchase presents and plan parties and make end-of-year offerings to your favorite charity, it’s important to reflect upon why this is a time for giving. It’s not because it’s a social obligation or because the calendar dictates you do so. We give because so much has been given to us.

It’s during Advent—the season beginning this Sunday that prepares us for Christmas—that we reflect upon the hope, peace, joy, and love that God ensured for us by sending his Son to this world. This world was corrupted by the sin that humanity introduced into it; eternal life with the holy God was a distant dream forbidden by our wickedness.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). Jesus emptied himself and took the form of a slave, assuming human likeness (Philippians 2:7). The Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). Not because we earned his favor, not because we deserved his love, but as an act of divine grace, God gave us the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ his Son.

As recipients of that grace, we are now given the sacred responsibility of being witnesses to it and ambassadors for Christ. Every day you have the opportunity to love your neighbor, to serve your community, to make this fallen world a better, more redemptive place. Every day you can honor the one who has given you everything by giving to others.

So whether it’s Black Friday or Cyber Monday or What Now Wednesday, take the time to give some grace. You have received it in abundance from God—now’s your chance to share the wealth.

Saying Thank You (Friday Devotional)

 

O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.

- Psalm 95:1-3

We say thank you in a lot of different ways. Sometimes a text or a call is enough, other times you might write a note and drop it in the mail. Sometimes you thank people privately, other times public recognition is expected and important. Sometimes you might even accompany your words of thanks with a token of appreciation, a gift of some kind to honor their good deeds and express your gratitude. However you go about it, we all understand the importance of saying thank you when somebody makes you a priority.

So Thanksgiving Day is as good a time as any to apply that principle to God, the one from whom all good and perfect gifts are given. On a weekend when many traditionally count their blessings, don’t forget who you are thanking, where those blessings come from.

God is the one who gives you the breath of life. He is the one who sustains you day by day. Most importantly, he is the one who sent his Son to seek and save the lost, offering redemption by his blood and new life by his resurrection. It is in him that we live and move and have our being.

So between portions of turkey this weekend, somewhere amidst the chaos of food and family and football, take a moment to actually say thank you this Thanksgiving. You can pray, you can sing, you reflect upon God’s Word, you can perform an act of service, you can give generously. There are lots of ways to say thank you—pick one and give thanks!

He With the Most Toys Loses (Friday Devotional)

 

Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

- Matthew 5:42

Sometimes my kids don’t want to share with each other. Katherine will be playing with Legos, Andrew will want to add a brick to her creation, and she’ll recoil when he tries. Or maybe she’ll be looking at a book and he’ll snatch it out of her hands, prompting instant tears.

Whenever there’s a conflict like this, especially if it escalates into hitting or crying or tattling, I’ve developed something of a catchphrase: people are more important than things. You can be annoyed at your sibling. You don’t necessarily have to share the instant they say they want a turn. But you cannot let your attachment to a toy override your responsibility to be kind to your brother or sister. People are more important than things.

That’s the sort of simple message that instinctively sounds right when an adult says it to a child—but one that makes us feel defensive when it’s pointed our direction. As adults, we have the same sort of attachment to our toys—be they cars or clothes, purses or big-screen TVs—as children do, maybe even more so. After all, I earned those things by my hard work; I deserve something nice, those things are mine.

But Jesus offers a countercultural command: give your stuff away for the sake of others. Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, he tells a rich young ruler. Woe to you who are rich now, he preaches in Luke 6, for you have already received your reward. And in his Sermon on the Mount, he simply says to give to the one who asks you to do so.

Taken literally and to their furthest extremes, such declarations compel all believers to radical vows of poverty, and so we are quick to either over-spiritualize them or wave them away entirely. But Jesus’s point is so simple even a child can understand it: people are more important than things.

Every day you have an opportunity to use what God has given you to bless someone else. You can leave a 40% tip for the overloaded waitress who never refilled your tea. You can buy lunch for the coworker who mostly keeps to himself. You can give a generous offering to your church with no strings attached. How you do it is up to you; that you do it is a divine command.

People are more important than things. How will you show that today?

The Real Thing (Friday Devotional)

 

Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

- 1 John 3:18

When rapper Young Jeezy was preparing to take photos for the cover of an upcoming album, his creative vision was simple: he wanted shots of himself surrounded by $2 million in cash. However, he was perturbed when the prop guys started laying out the money, noticing that they were fake bills. He demanded they replace the counterfeit money with the real thing.

The prop guys understandably told him they didn’t have access to that kind of money, certainly not at a moment’s notice. Without missing a beat, Young Jeezy made a phone call and, within the hour, two unnamed men pulled up to the studio with $1.8 million in cash. After one more phone call, a friend showed up with the remaining $200,000. The fake bills were set aside and the photoshoot could begin now that they had the real thing.

When you opened this devotional, you probably didn’t expect to get a spiritual lesson from the world of hip hop. But Young Jeezy’s attitude at that photoshoot reflects a mindset that extends to all areas of life: we want authenticity. Given the choice between the counterfeit and the genuine, people will always choose the real thing. In fact, we won’t settle for less.

In Scripture, we are repeatedly called to love our neighbors. From the books of the Law to the parables of Jesus to the teachings of the epistles, that message is consistent and persistent. If there’s one thing people know about believers, it’s that God wants us to love like he does.

And 1 John 3:18 reminds us that love is not just something we preach theoretically, but something we practice authentically. It’s one thing for people to hear about God’s love, but another thing altogether for them to see it lived out, to bear witness to the transformative power of the gospel.

The world knows what hypocrisy and inauthenticity look like; they see it every day. They know the difference between counterfeit love—salesmanship disguised as kindness—and the real thing. So may God’s people love like Jesus—not just in word and speech, but in deed and truth.

October Reading Log

  

My reading schedule has been feast or famine lately. I read one of the books below in just four sittings (some long flights and train rides on a family trip helped). Another took nearly two months, with me going weeks between chapters for no reason at all. But, in spite of busyness at church, Rangers playoff games keeping me up past my bedtime, and the general ebbs and flows of life, I did get some reading done. Take a look below!

INSPIRED by Rachel Held Evans

The Bible is often described as a "handbook for life," a collection of propositions that can both explain the path to eternal salvation and help you win friends and influence people. But, as the late Rachel Held Evans reminds in Inspired, we come to know it first as a collection of stories. The Bible tells us about Noah's ark and Moses' burning bush and Daniel in the lion's den. It tells us about kings and shepherds, prophets and priests. And ultimately, it tells the story of when God's Son put on human flesh to save us.

Inspired is Evans' love letter to the book she built her life upon, the book she grew tired of seeing used and abused instead of read. Writing largely to the audience now known as "deconstructionists" (she was sort of a John the Baptist for that movement), Evans acknowledges the complexities of Scripture and decries those who have used it as an instrument of harm. But she refuses to abandon it altogether, arguing that part of faith is wrestling with the challenging parts of Scripture—neither accepting them mindlessly nor tossing the baby out with the bathwater, but instead doing the hard work of finding God in the hard-to-reach places.

This is a book full of the kinds of questions some might find sacrilegious (but not, crucially, irreverent.) Evans was not afraid to poke the bear, and you may not agree with some of the conclusions she reaches in her exploration of the Bible. But none can deny her love for the Lord or her immense talent—the writing sings throughout this book, causing you to think and to feel. The Bible is a book of stories, and Evans was a gifted storyteller.

Inspired is a warm, deep, thoughtful book worthy of your attention, and its message can be summed up best by its closing paragraph, if you'll permit me to spoil it for you: "We may wish for answers, but God rarely gives us answers. Instead, God gathers us up into soft, familiar arms and says, "Let me tell you a story."'

CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen

In Jonathan Franzen's best novels—namely, The Corrections and Freedom—he explores big topics through the lens of crumbling families. In Crossroads, the first book in a planned trilogy, he returns to this template in a novel that tackles depravity, grace, and redemption through the trials and tribulations of the Hildebrandts.

Russ is the restless associate pastor at the mainline church, outshined by a charismatic new youth director and considering an affair with a divorced parishioner. His wife Marion is seemingly the steady, unglamorous rock of the family, but holds within her a traumatic past. Eldest son Clem, away at college, has enlisted in the army, a decision he knows will infuriate his parents. Daughter Becky is wrapped up in a high school crush that is suddenly and inextricably tied to a spiritual awakening. And Perry is the prodigal son, an intelligent boy who is dealing drugs to middle schoolers even as he aspires to become a better person.

The ins and outs of this family—individual chapters are told from each character's perspective—reveal just how broken the collective family is, despite how they appear to be holding things together from the outside. But even as they seem to be careening toward a moral reckoning, there are little moments of grace that prevent this from being a nihilistic, depressing book. Russ is weak and selfish, but there is a moral foundation underneath his narcissism. Becky is hopelessly naïve, but the faith she finds is heartfelt.

This is a book that, as the title suggests, finds its characters at a critical moment in their individual lives and their family's. They don't always make the best decisions when they come to those moments—in fact, they rarely do. But in spite of their foibles, they find grace. There's hope there.

WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING by Haruki Murakami

I've been trying to get back into running after an extremely long layoff, so I thought I'd reread this memoir from novelist Haruki Murakami. I first read it 5 years ago; you can read that original review here.

THE MAMBA MENTALITY: HOW I PLAY by Kobe Bryant and Andrew D. Bernstein

In the final years of his career, Kobe Bryant's legacy crystalized: he was the ultimate competitor, an athlete with an unmatched work ethic and will to win. Other basketball players might have more talent, but none would ever outwork the Black Mamba. The Mamba Mentality, a post-retirement coffee table book of photos, helped to set this reputation is stone, with Bryant laying out in bite-sized paragraphs his approach to practice, teamwork, playing through pain, and more.

The photos, all taken by Andrew D. Bernstein during his time as the Los Angeles Lakers' official photographer, are exactly what you want from this kind of book. Dynamic and flashy at the rim, quiet and intimate in the locker room, Bernstein captured Kobe well, and the book offers a good contrast between the glamor of stardom and the grind of hard work. Most people buy these kinds of books for the pictures, and you get good ones here.

But this book, whose subtitle purports to explain "How I Play," is looking to be more than a photo album. In the captions that accompany the photos—some as short as a paragraph, some more like brief essays—Bryant (and, yes, this certainly sounds like it's authentically Kobe, not a ghostwriter) lays out with no nonsense how he went about his business. For hoop heads, there are some fascinating insights here, as you learn when and how Kobe practiced, how much time he spent studying film, etc. And for even the casual reader, you'll walk away compelled by Bryant's monomaniacal drive.

In short, this book helps cement Bryant's legacy as the NBA's ultimate gamer, a legacy which has only grown following his untimely, tragic death in January 2020. Jordan won more championships. Lebron won more MVPs. Wemby has more talent. But nobody worked harder than Kobe Bean Bryant.

ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL. 2

More random team-ups between (mostly) Spider-Man and (mostly) C-list characters! The writing is still mediocre, the art is still forgettable, and the stories are still half-baked. So did anything change between the first 25 issues of Marvel Team-Up and the next 25?

The big shift was a move away from self-contained issues to multi-part stories stretching over 4-5 issues and, improbably, featuring multiple team-ups before each story's conclusion. Maybe it was an attempt to get more monthly readers instead of those simply curious about the guest star on any given month. Maybe they wanted to to mimic the more drawn-out storytelling in other books. Maybe the writers were just having a hard time fitting their stories in 20 pages every month. Whatever the reason, this shift does not redound to the book's credit, making an already slapdash comic feel like its creators were making things up as they went along.

As was the case from the book's inception, these issues of Marvel Team-Up are far from essential, and are indeed a half step worse than those collected in the first volume. But if you're not feeling too picky and you want to watch the reading equivalent of two toys being smashed together, this books remains dumb fun. More to come with volume 3 next month!

Our First Priority (Friday Devotional)

 

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

- Matthew 5:11

“Safety is our number one priority.”

That’s a message you’ve probably heard a million times in a million different places. School principals say it when explaining drills and security protocols. Chefs say it when talking about their restaurant’s health code score. Skydiving instructors say it an hour before letting you jump out of a perfectly good airplane. And of course, politicians say it every chance they get.

Leaders of all stripes feel obligated to assure you that, in their hands, you won’t experience any discomfort or risk. The world is a scary place, they acknowledge—but, so long as you are in their care, they will do everything they can to make it seem less frightening. Nothing is more important to them than making you feel safe.

One leader defies this pattern, though: Jesus. Not only does he not promise his followers safety, he does the opposite, predicting that in his name they will experience persecution and humiliation. While we can and should look to God for protection, it is far from assured.

Jesus, who experienced the agony of crucifixion for our salvation, wants our sights set higher than earthly comfort. Secure in the hope of the resurrection, we ought to be bold, courageous ambassadors for Christ in the world, concerned more with gospel proclamation than the risks of our obedience. We don’t have to operate out of fearful hesitancy, because we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

Safety is always a consideration, especially for leaders who are entrusted with the care of others. We should be responsible, not reckless. But make no mistake—for Jesus people, safety is not our first priority. The gospel is.

Self-Evident Faith (Friday Devotional)

 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

- Romans 1:16

An undue amount of my attention the past few weeks has been devoted, as you might expect, to the Texas Rangers’ improbable postseason run. I’ve listened to games on the radio, I’ve followed them on the MLB App, I’ve watched them on TV, and I even attended a game in person last week. As they advanced closer and closer to a World Series berth, I grew more and more excited (and nervous!) So when they defeated the Houston Astros in the league championship series on Monday night, securing a trip to the World Series, I was overjoyed.

And as this week’s gone by, with the team and its fans afforded a few days to catch our breath before the World Series starts tonight, I’ve noticed something interesting: everybody from high school friends to church members to the crossing guard at my son’s school wants to talk with me about the Rangers. Totally unprompted by me, they want to high-five over the team’s success or ask for my prediction about the upcoming series or check to see if I’m going to attend a World Series game. I’m not usually the one bringing it up, but I have made my passion for the Rangers so self-evident over the years that they know how important this run is to me. My fandom is a mystery to no one.

Fandom and faith aren’t the same thing, not by a long shot. But just as I wear my loyalty to the Rangers on my sleeve, we are all called to proudly wear the name of Jesus. Believers are called to be the Lord’s witnesses, telling his story to all who will listen. We’re called to be his ambassadors, representing him in the world. And we’re called to do these things in a spirit of joy, undertaking the work of gospel proclamation not as a frightful chore, but a holy opportunity.

Just as there are obnoxious fans—the ones drunkenly bellowing at the top of their lungs from their seats in the grandstands—there are also believers whose zeal is so aggressive that they give evangelism a bad name. But the bleacher creature’s antics don’t stop the rest of the fans from cheering, and neither should the sins of a few bad actors cause the rest of us to be ashamed of the gospel. You have been saved and given new life in Christ—that ought to be something you’re excited enough about that you don’t want to keep it a secret!

Because of what you’ve shared and how you live, I hope the people in your life know you’re a Christian, that your love for Jesus is as self-evident as my love for a baseball team. People know what’s important to you—so I pray they know about your faith.