The Reality of Ministry (Friday Devotional)

They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

- Luke 6:18-19

The enemy spaceship is hurtling toward you at full speed. You jerk the controls to the right and dodge impact by what feels like inches, only to be confronted with a brand new danger: an asteroid field dead ahead. Ducking your head with the motion of your ship, you weave between asteroids, all while firing at approaching ships from the rear. Suddenly, before you know what’s happened, your vision goes red and you feel a rumble that shakes your entire body. You’ve been hit, and there’s no coming back from this one.

So you rip the virtual reality headset off your head, blink as your eyes adjust to the light of the living room, and head into the kitchen for a snack.

Virtual reality, once confined to visions of a Jetsons-like future, is rapidly becoming, well, reality. In games like the one described above, putting on a VR headset can transport you to whole other worlds, where suddenly you are flying through space, running from dinosaurs, or playing football with the pros. In a virtual sense, you can explore new places, meet fascinating people, and have great adventures—all without leaving home.

The rise of these games speaks to a bigger truth—more and more, we are growing content with virtual experiences replacing physical ones. When we need to talk to someone, we send a text message or an e-mail. When we want the entertainment of a story, we pull up Netflix. When we want to catch up with an old friend, the interaction starts and ends with Facebook. In a world of social media, online shopping, streaming video, and even drone warfare, it seems like there is little that cannot be handled virtually anymore.

But in the face of this brave new world, the ministry of the gospel remains stubbornly tied to the physical, the here and now. When Jesus healed people, the gospel writers tell us he almost never did so long distance—rather, he laid his hands on those who needed him; he looked them in the eyes and spoke aloud the words of grace they needed to hear. When he gave us the Lord’s Supper, he did not only command that we remember and reflect, but that we “take and eat”—that there be a physical act to accompany the spiritual significance. And when he gave us our salvation, he did not do so with a message airdropped from heaven, but with a broken body, spilled blood, and a physical resurrection from the grave.

For all the ways that your relationship with God and your ministry to others can be carried out virtually—by listening to sermon podcasts and praise music, by sending kind words in a text message, etc.—following Christ must eventually happen live and in person. Comforting the grieving entails wiping away wet tears. Serving the hungry requires ladling out hot soup. Rejoicing with new parents means holding their precious child in your arms. Our digital world has made many mundane tasks more convenient, but ministry remains as tactile, difficult—and glorious—as ever. So may your walk with Christ be more than just a virtual reality—may it be a present one.

Never the Same

There are certain things you get used to hearing when people find out you’re having your first child:

“Hope you’re prepared for a lot of sleepless nights!”

“You two are going to make great parents!”

“Do you already have [insert baby accessory that’s on the registry]?

To each of these I started to develop rote responses over the course of Lindsey’s pregnancy—a good-natured joke here, a word of thanks there. But there was one statement that always left me unsure how to respond, “Your life will never be the same.”

What are you supposed to say to that?

I was never sure. It’s such a profound thing to say to someone, almost always uttered by someone who knows of what they speak, i.e. a parent. Countless times I was assured that when I looked into my son’s eyes for the first time, I would feel a kind of love I’d never felt before, that my priorities would change forever, and that I would be hit with a simultaneous rush of responsibility and joy. So many people told me this, in so many different ways, that I defiantly started to wonder if they knew what they were talking about.

But they were right, of course. I don’t know if that wave of love rushed over me the moment I held my son for the first time—after all, when your wife is lying prone on the operating table and your child is being brought into the world, adrenaline and fear pretty much crowd out all other emotions. But as early as that night, when I laid on the too-small couch in our hospital room and held him against my chest until he fell asleep, all those advisors from the previous nine months were proven correct. In practical ways and emotional ways, my life was changed.

But what no one prepared me for was how it would change my ministry.

Helping the poor has always been important to me, because, you know, Jesus. But where before, I could hear stories about impoverished families and feel disconnected from their struggle, now it seems like my eyes well up with tears every time. Those kids are hungry, I think. Those parents don’t know what to do, I think. And now as I think, I feel torn up inside. Now I can’t hear a story like that without stopping to pray.

I’ve always had sympathy for single parents, imagining how hard it must be to work all day, sometimes at multiple jobs, and still find time and energy for their kids. But now that sympathy has been transformed into a deep and abiding respect—no longer do I regard single parents as harried, but as heroes. Look at the sacrifices they’re making, I think, and I’m filled not with pity, but wonder.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing kids engaged in the life of the church. But where before, I was happy to let them do their thing in the comfort of the children’s department, now I want to see and be a part of every new discovery they make about the Lord and His gospel.

Even my own personal relationship with God has deepened. “Son of God” has always been a title that helps me understand who Jesus is. It’s right there in the Bible, after all. But now, when I think about the idea of God sending His only Son to live and love and minister and die...it’s so much harder for me to fathom than it ever was before. A love I always knew was wide and long and high and deep now seems wider, longer, higher, and deeper.

Faith grows in all kinds of ways—in prayer, in study, in suffering, in community. For 20 months and counting, mine has grown in fatherhood. So to all those who told me my life would never be the same, thank you. I never could have known how right you’d be. Honestly, I’m not sure even you knew. But the Father did.

Instant Transformation (Friday Devotional)

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

- Luke 19:1-10

When you take a moment to think about it, popcorn is amazing. You start with these hard, golden brown kernels, these things which look (and taste) more like rocks than food. But then you stick them in the microwave for 2 minutes and voila—suddenly those kernels are white, fluffy, delicious pieces of popcorn. Two minutes of heat is all it takes to effect a complete transformation. It’s hard to believe a change like that can happen so fast.

I wonder if that’s what the crowd was thinking in Jericho the day Zacchaeus was transformed. As a chief tax collector, he was a despised person in the community, someone for whom corruption and treachery was second nature. He was the kind of man worthy of sneers, not salvation.

Perhaps that’s why he had so much trouble getting a decent view the day Jesus passed through town—no one was going to make space for Zacchaeus. Taking matters into his own hands, he climbed a sycamore tree for a better sightline, and in doing so caught Jesus’s attention. The crowd must have been eager to hear Jesus’s judgment upon this sinner, but they were disappointed, for instead Zacchaeus received a gesture of friendship: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down,” Jesus said. “For I must stay at your house today.”

By the time they’d made their way to Zacchaeus’s home, the crowd’s dismay was apparent; they couldn’t believe Jesus was wasting his time on a sinner like this tax collector. But that was when they received their second surprise of the day, this time from the mouth of the man who’d spent years earning their hatred. Hearing the complaints, Zacchaeus promised that starting that day he would give half of his wealth to the poor; furthermore, anyone he’d defrauded over the years he would pay back fourfold.

How could this be? Zacchaeus was a professional sinner, a traitor to his people, a thief, a liar! How could he go from stealing from the poor one minute to extravagantly giving to them the next? How could he go from being a man of greed to a man of grace seemingly in the blink of an eye? It was hard to believe a change like that could happen so fast.

We tend to think of people the way that crowd must have thought of Zacchaeus—as unchangeable. We assume that their bad habits are baked in, that their flaws are unfixable, that their past determines their future. People don’t change, we say.

But when Jesus enters the equation, we see how false a narrative that really is. “Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus said of Zacchaeus. Today. Not in a few months when he has time to prove himself, not in a few years when he’s worked his way into the community’s good graces, not in the next life. Today.

Jesus is able to do what we think impossible, to effect eternal change in the blink of an eye. Jesus can heal and redeem people we think are lost causes, Jesus can save people we think are beyond help. There are people we simply cannot and will not believe in, people we are sure are past the point of grace—but if you can’t believe in them, then perhaps you can believe in Him. Jesus can take the repentant faith of the worst man imaginable and make him someone new.

So when confronted with someone you are sure can’t change, pray for faith—not only theirs, but yours. Jesus is in the business of new creation—and you won’t believe how fast he can work.

Giving Yourself What You Need (Friday Devotional)

Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

- Jeremiah 17:5-8

When I finally got serious about running a few years ago, it only took me a few weeks to figure out what routine worked best for me. I’d wake up, give myself an hour to drink a few glasses of water and a cup of coffee, and then start running just as the sun was coming up. This procedure ensured that I started every run hydrated, caffeinated, that I wasn’t running on a full stomach, and that I was running before it got too hot. Once my body, which was still figuring out what this whole ‘exercise’ thing was, got used to the routine, it became a great way to start the day.

But then a few months into my training program, I woke up one day with so much to do that I decided to postpone my run until the afternoon. No big deal, right? After all, I’d been running regularly for a while by that point; what difference was a few hours going to make?

So I worked through the morning, ate a light lunch, and then around 2:00 got my usual urge for a snack. Fitting the stereotype of the fresh-out-of-college male to a T, I reached for the Cheez-Itz in the pantry and ate straight out of the box for about 20 minutes while I worked on the computer, washing it all down with a Dr Pepper. An hour later, I looked at the clock and realized I was running out of time to get my run in, so I took a deep breath and headed out the door with a belly full of junk food, having not drunk any water since breakfast, into the 90 degree afternoon, thinking I would run 3 miles.

I won’t get into the messy details, but let’s just say the story ends exactly the way you think it does—all because I didn’t give myself what I needed to flourish.

In the Book of Jeremiah, God’s children are told exactly what they need to spiritually flourish. Some people, God says, place their trust in the strength and wisdom of flawed, fallible human beings, trusting them above all others. They are like shrubs in a desert, He says, withering away without access to what they need most. But the faithful ones, those who trust God first and foremost, are like trees planted by a stream, drawing richly from the water and producing abundantly as a result.

These two contrasting examples make clear that for us to flourish spiritually, we need to give ourselves what we need, namely faith in God. Trusting God above all others is easier said than done—it’s a lot simpler and more immediately gratifying to indulge in the “junk food wisdom” of other people, those who indulge your worst instincts instead of pointing you to Christ. But when you do so, more often than not you aren’t rewarded with success, just a mess.

In our age of instantaneous communication and social media, you are constantly bombarded with opinions, advice, and hot takes about what you should think, feel, and believe. Faced with this cacophony of voices, you can listen to the shouts of the crowd or to the Word of life. You know which one you require to flourish—the only question is whether or not you will give yourself what you need.

It's Hard to Go to Church

Growing up, it was always easy to make it to church on Sunday morning. Dad was a Sunday School teacher and Mom was the church pianist, so skipping was never really an option for our family. Sleeping in on a Sunday morning was akin to skipping school on Monday—somewhere in the recesses of my mind I knew I could try it, but for a host of reasons it wasn’t really a viable option. What’s more, most Sundays I didn’t want to stay home—having grown up in the same church for most of my life, I loved my church family and they loved me. These were my people, my spiritual aunts and uncles and grandparents and best friends, and seeing them every week was a joy. If I had to dress up for the occasion, that was a small price to pay.

When I went to college, it was still easy to go to church, for entirely different reasons. Now every Sunday was an adventure—instead of being surrounded by people who’d known me since I was a 1^st grader, now I had the chance to blend in and start from scratch. And since Lindsey I were already dating when we went to Baylor, I didn’t have to walk through the doors of an unfamiliar church alone or endure any of the awkward introductions and reintroductions by myself, nor was I solo for lunch afterwards.

And when I was eventually called to be youth minister at Shiloh (and a year later, pastor), it was still easy to come to church. Sundays were my time to shine, to impart all the vast wisdom of my 21 years to a small group of bleary-eyed teenagers (and later to a larger group of patient adults), and to learn week by week how to be a professional minister.

So for nearly 30 years of my life, I failed to understand why so many Christians skipped church on Sundays. Why would they want to miss out on this? It’s a time commitment, sure, but it’s just one morning! It means you can’t sleep in on Sunday, but isn’t that true for 5 other days of the week? With more than a trace of self-righteousness in my questioning, I failed to comprehend why other people weren’t as faithful of attendees as I was.

But now, as I walk through a new stage of life—no longer a newlywed, no longer new to my church or my position, now a father to a toddler—I’m finding that, on a typical Sunday morning, it is hard to go to church.

That’s no reflection on my church family, to be clear. They’re as welcoming as they’ve always been; they adore my wife and my son and they graciously tolerate me. It’s no reflection on my calling either—I love my church dearly and love being their pastor. But logistically, it’s hard to go to church these days.

Going to church for us means scrambling from the time Andrew wakes up to the time we walk—or run—out the door. It means making sure all my ducks are in a row before he’s out of his crib, since he’ll need near-constant attention after that. It means making sure his breakfast starts no later than 45 minutes before we need to leave so that we’ll have time to clean him up and get him dressed. It means finding three dressy outfits that fit, one for each of us, and coordinating them if possible. It means packing a bag full of toys and books so that he’ll stay quiet and occupied during worship. It means getting a crockpot meal ready to go so that when we get home we won’t have to listen to him scream for food while we cook.

For me, it means teaching a Sunday School lesson, remembering all the announcements I need to communicate to the church (some of which are handed to me that morning), corralling several energetic toddlers while attempting to give a children’s sermon, preaching for half an hour, and then smiling by the back door, trying not to look too exhausted as I say goodbye to the congregation one by one. All those responsibilities on my plate mean that Lindsey is basically a single mom for the 2 hours we’re at church every Sunday—her primary focus for that time is keeping Andrew occupied and quiet during Sunday School, then occupied and quiet and still during the worship service. And amidst all of this, we’re supposed to find the time and the energy and the focus to worship meaningfully. Preferably with a smile.

I say all this not because I want pity or even help. I say it because I am learning, week by week, that for a lot of people—maybe even most people—it is not easy to go to church on Sunday.

For some people, it’s hard for the same reasons it’s hard for us—it takes so much preparation and so much effort to get a big family somewhere on time, much less somewhere where you’re expected to dress up and be “on.” For others, it’s hard because, after Little League games and family commitments and yard work and school projects, Sunday is the only true day of rest you have.

For still others, the church carries with it a dark cloud of bad memories and old pains, of hurt feelings and frayed relationships. For more still, the sanctuary is not a place that you leave feeling the warm embrace of grace, but the sharp sting of guilt, assured that you should be doing more and doing better.

For these reasons and more, going to church is hard for a lot of folks. And if the church is going to be a community devoted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to proclaiming good news and binding up the brokenhearted, we need to remember and honor those folks every time we gather. When we see our brothers and sisters in faith, we need to truly and meaningfully appreciate their presence, to make them feel welcome instead of taken for granted. When we notice someone’s absence, we need to give them grace instead of a teasing comment the next time we see them.

Most of all, we need to ensure that worship is a time when God is glorified in a powerful, meaningful way and when His people are spiritually fed. Simply going through the motions does a disservice to those who have overcome hassles, obstacles, and insecurities to walk through the door, to say nothing of doing a disservice to God Himself. Our people and our Lord deserve better; they deserve all the body of Christ has to give.

Going to church is hard, but I truly believe God’s people can make it easier. It doesn’t take a new program or a large financial commitment or a new staff hire. All takes is a group of people committed to showing uncommon, intentional, Christlike grace. Which, when you stop and think about it, sounds an awful lot like a church.

The Virtue of Boredom (Friday Devotional)

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused…”

- Isaiah 30:15

It had been a great morning at the farmer’s market to that point, but my family and I had underestimated how hungry we would be, so I ran across the street to buy another breakfast burrito. I placed my order at the taco truck, took my receipt, and stepped off to the side to wait. Knowing it would be at least ten minutes before the food was ready, I reached into my pocket to pull out my phone, only to realize that I had left it with my family across the street. So silently I stood there waiting, with nothing to do but watch people make their way through the farmer’s market.

And as the minutes ticked by, something dawned on me: I was bored…and startlingly, I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. After all, we now live in a world where you never have to be bored. If you want social interaction, you can send a text, make a phone call, send a message on GroupMe or WhatsApp, or write on somebody’s Facebook wall. If you want to learn something, you can check out the latest up-to-the-minute news on Twitter, read an article from your favorite online publication, or listen to the podcast of your choice. And if you just want some passive entertainment, then YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu are always there for you. Thanks to the Internet, smartphones, social media, and a general cultural drift toward constant activity, we now live in a world where we expect to be stimulated every waking hour of the day, or at least to have the option.

But with all that stimulation comes a consequence: we begin to forget how to rest. We are encouraged in Psalm 46:10 to “be still and know that I am God,” but for those of who reach for our phones not out of need but compulsion, I wonder if we still know how to do that. From the first chapter of the Bible to the giving of the Ten Commandments to the earthly ministry of Jesus, the Bible is abundantly clear about the importance of rest, of stepping away from the cares and the busyness and the distractions of life in order to reconnect with God. “In returning and rest you shall be saved,” says the prophet in Isaiah 30:15, “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

That verse ends ominously as it bleeds into the next: “But you refused…” Since the days of the Old Testament—probably since Adam and Eve’s first week out of the garden—we have been putting off rest, avoiding quiet and stillness whenever we can. But the Bible is clear—it is in rest, in those quiet moments when activities cease and you are left without anything to do but think and pray, that you are best able to hear God’s voice. So spend some time today away from a screen, away from your desk, away from the tools of your trade, even if only for a few minutes, and just be still enough to listen for God. You may get bored…but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. After all, when you’re not doing anything, it’s a lot easier to pay attention to what God is doing.

August Reading Log

Lots of great reading this month. Take a look!

5 Articles I Like This Month

"Schlitterbahn's Tragic Slide" by Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly. 31 minutes.

When Skip Hollandsworth writes a feature for Texas Monthly, I read it, simple as that. This one, about a fatal accident at a Kansas City Schlitterbahn water park and the subsequent consequences for the park and its founder, is reliably excellent. A uniquely American story of innovation, hubris, and tragedy.

"Dear Mr. President" by Jeanne Marie Laskas, The Guardian. 16 minutes.

During his two terms as president, Barack Obama read 10 letters every night from "typical Americans," compiled and curated by a vast team of White House employees and volunteers with the purpose of giving the president perspectives outside the Washington bubble. In this excerpt from her forthcoming book, To Obama: With Love, Joy, Hate, and Despair, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews the former president to ask what he learned from those letters.

"Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation?" by Steven Hyden, AV Club. 135 minutes.

In an 8-part series that served as a nice companion piece to the oral history of grunge music I read last month, Steven Hyden gives his personal account of alternative music in the 1990s, from Nirvana's explosion with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" all the way to the dueling Brit Pop approaches of Oasis and Radiohead.

"It's Time We Realize Football Is a Little Less Important" by Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated. 8 minutes.

The American institution of football is under fire once again, thanks to serious scandals at Ohio State and Maryland, an unpopular NFL rule change related to helmet use in tackling, and the seemingly never-ending debate over player protests during the playing of the national anthem. With the sport suffering because of these issues and others (especially our growing knowledge about concussions and CTE), it's worth asking: is protecting this game really as important as we've decided it is?

"The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub" by David Foster Wallace, Rolling Stone. 104 minutes.

The death of Senator John McCain prompted a lot of great profiles, some old and some new. Perhaps most famous of them all was this 2000 piece by David Foster Wallace, which he wrote after spending a week on the senator's famous "Straight Talk Express" during his 2000 run for the presidency. Fun both for the extremely dated references ("cellular phones", the Lewinsky scandal, Palm Pilots, etc.), the trenchant political observations which remain true today, and the insights into the late senator's character.

THE BAPTIST FAITH AND MESSAGE by Herschel H. Hobbs

I started the month in Arlington at the Baptist General Convention of Texas's Annual Gathering, so I left in a very Baptist mood, ready to more fully engage with my denomination. As is often the case, I began that process with a book in my hands, in this case the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message, accompanied by commentary on the document from Herschel H. Hobbs, chairman of the committee which wrote the document. Since Baptists are not a creedal people, the BFM is defined as a statement of what Baptists generally agree upon, rather than a binding document to which Baptists must pledge their allegiance. The Southern Baptist Convention, which drafted the first BFM in 1925, expanded upon it in this edition, and then did so again in 2000, but this is the one which I believe best speaks to what all Baptists should and do believe.

For all the import of the BFM, I hadn't actually sat down and read it since college, so this was an instructive experience that I think I'd be better off repeating more often than once per decade. Working through topics as general as "God" and as particular as "Education" and "Cooperation," the document biblically lays out what Baptists believe about key matters of faith and practice, usually in no more than two paragraphs per topic. The document does a masterful job of being broad enough to encompass all manner of Baptists (something at which the 2000 document fails in my opinion) while specific enough that it could never be accused of being ecumenical or syncretistic.

This particular volume includes not only the actual BFM document, but commentary from Herschel Hobbs which helps explain in more detail what is being said (and why it is being said) by each section of the document. Like any good commentary, I found much of it to be helpful and well thought out, and some of it to be head-scratching (for example, his argument why the drink used at the Last Supper was actually grape juice, not wine, is...interesting). But largely appreciate both what Hobbs says and the gracious manner in which he says it.

The 1963 BFM is important to me and, whether they know it or not, all Baptists in this part of the country. I'm glad I gave it a fresh look, and would recommend this copy with its accompanying commentary for anyone wanting a closer look at what we Baptist believe.

THE BAPTIST & CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF BAYLOR edited by Donald D. Schmeltekopf and Dianna M. Vitanza with Bradley J.B. Toben

Ever since Baylor president Robert Sloan unveiled his vision for the university's future, known as Baylor 2012, there has been a running conversation in the Baylor family: what does it mean to be a Christian (and specifically, a Baptist) university in the 21st century? For Sloan and his allies, it meant being a top tier university dedicated to both quality teaching and quality research conducted primarily by Christians for the benefit of the kingdom of God. Three presidents, two big scandals, and two decades later, that largely remains the dream at Baylor, but the debates continue to rage on: what's more important, teaching or research? Should Baylor hire only Christians as faculty? Mostly Christians? Mostly Baptists? How do fields like mathematics interact with the Christian faith? What does it mean for an institution of higher education to have a Christian identity?

This collection of essays, presented in 2003 as a colloquy and tribute to then-provost Don Schmeltekopf, provides various answers to those questions from some of the best minds engaged in that debate, mostly from Baylor's own faculty. Different perspectives are taken, both from those who clearly cherish the Baylor 2012 vision and those whose skepticism runs deep, but the conversation between essays is always fascinating.

What was remarkable in reading this book was how relevant the conversation contained within it still is at Baylor. Nearly 20 years after Robert Sloan unveiled his vision for Baylor (one that was then extremely controversial), it mostly endures today...but so do the questions and skepticism surrounding it. Some of the finer points in these essays seem dated now, but as a whole the book holds up remarkably well considering it was written for a certain time and situation.

Obviously this book is not for everybody—it’s the epitome of inside baseball for folks in the Baylor family. Furthermore, it's a book about academia written by academics for academics, so some of the essays are more accessible than others. But I largely enjoyed reading it and reflecting upon how some things have changed in the last 20 years, some things have stayed the same, and some things are still on the verge of changing. Sic 'em.

17TH AND DUTTON by Craig Nash

The local church is, for better and for worse, the community that has given me life and to which I have chosen (in obedience, I believe, to a calling from God) to return the favor. The local church is a place of ugliness and grace, of scars and healing, of sinners and saints. The church is not perfect, but for all its hypocrisies and failures, I fundamentally believe it is good, because for all that it is not, the church is the body of Christ.

17th and Dutton is the story of a local church and one man's journey with it, almost from its founding up to the present day. With heart and humor, Craig Nash (who, disclaimer, is a colleague of mine in a couple of Waco ministry circles) tells the story of how he first came to University Baptist Church, why he stayed, who he befriended, how he eventually came on staff as a pastor, how he handled being let go in the face of financial difficulties, and ultimately how he and the church found resolution and even reconciliation. The book is ostensibly a memoir, but also serves in places as a history of UBC (albeit from a specific vantage point), a cautionary tale about the dangers of being a "celebrity church," and even borders at times on being a tell-all.

But ultimately, 17th and Dutton is a love story about a man and his church, the community where he has set down roots that seemingly no tragedy or rejection can sever. With breathtaking sincerity, Craig lets readers in on the ways UBC has succeeded over the years, the ways it has failed, and what part he has played in both—but I think he'd be the first to tell you that "successes and failures" are hardly the point, neither of the book nor the church. What matters is the deep love for God and for one another that keeps the church alive even in the hardest times.

This was the second time I read 17th and Dutton, the first being when Craig initially released it as a series of blog posts. Just like the first time, I laughed at some lines and stories, got goosebumps reading certain passages, and felt my eyes well up with tears on more than one occasion. Craig is an excellent writer, evocative and authentic, and anyone wishing to read a story about the pain and the power of the local church would be well served to start here.

Note: 17th and Dutton is published by Patristica Press, a small, local publisher, so if you want to buy it, Amazon won't be able to help you. Click here if you'd like to purchase a copy. I highly encourage you to do so.

THE TRUETT PULPIT VOL. 1-5

One of the great gifts my seminary has given me over the years (both as a student and an alum) has been its weekly chapel service, in which students lead worship and the gospel is preached by everyone from students to faculty to visiting scholars. As recently as this past week I have been blessed by the work of those who lead worship during these services. From 2006-2012, the sermons preached in these worship services were collected in volumes called The Truett Pulpit, and I used the last week of August to read these sermons.

As you might expect, you get a little bit of everything in these 50+ sermons: Old Testament, New Testament, Baptist history, deep theology, and early works from students who have since gone on to do great things for the kingdom. The sermons contained in these volumes are, blessedly, all available online in audio and/or video. So rather than try to speak about all of them broadly, let me just provide links to my favorites:

"Otherwise" by Hulitt Gloer, 2006
"How Do You Keep at Ministry?" by William Willimon, 2010
"Gazing at the Glory: Closer to the Center" by Joel Gregory, 2010
"Who's Missing?" by Austin Fischer, 2011

Reading these was good for me. Watching/listening to them is better.

THE PATH TO POWER by Robert A. Caro

Once upon a time, the multi-volume biography was the norm for historians. Great men, the thinking went, were worthy of a lifetime of study, and so it was the duty of biographers to devote not years but decades (not to mention thousands of pages) to their subjects. While that methodology has mostly given way to the one-volume biography, Robert A. Caro is a singular biographer of the old school, having devoted four books, 3,000+ pages, and 36 years—with at least one more book to go—to the study of Lyndon Baines Johnson. And based on the first volume of the series, Caro is not only singular in approach, but also in talent.

The Path to Power begins with the immigration of LBJ's grandparents to the Hill Country of Texas and carries the future president's story up to his first major political defeat in the 1940 campaign for U.S. Senate. Caro leaves no stone unturned in his quest to document Johnson's life and vividly identify his ambitions. Believing Johnson's poverty-stricken upbringing in the Hill Country to be formative, Caro and his wife moved there for 3 years so they would better understand the area and its people. Believing Sam Rayburn to be one of the most important figures in Johnson's life, Caro spend 40 pages on a mini-biography of Rayburn before even referencing Johnson. Believing (correctly) that few readers will understand the importance of rural electrification, which Johnson brought to his district as its congressman, Caro spends an entire chapter detailing the life of the rural farmer in 1930's Texas, a chapter that reads more like Little House on the Prairie than a biography.

This kind of exhaustive research and attention to detail is what justifies the series' hefty page count (this first volume is 763 pages, and we're still more than 20 years away from LBJ becoming president). But aside from the amount of information, this biography is also notable for the quality of the writing. Many biographers can lay out the facts of someone's life, and many others can speculate as to their intentions, but few can do it with Caro's talent for storytelling. There aren't many high-quality historical biographies that manage to not only interest but actually thrill the reader, but thanks to Caro's prose, this one does. Accessible, precise, and detailed, Caro proves himself not only a brilliant researcher, but a masterful writer.

"The Years of Lyndon Johnson" will take me months to finish, but after reading The Path to Power I am certain it will be a journey worth taking. I cannot recommend this first volume highly enough.

THE PRIVATE EYE by Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin

In our digital age, privacy is something we have chosen to incrementally abandon. By now we generally know the deal: details about our lives once considered private are now on loan to Facebook, Google, and the rest. But what if all those private details—your Google search history, for example—suddenly became public knowledge. What if the cloud burst?

That is the world that The Private Eye inhabits, a post-Information Age world in which society has reclaimed privacy as a virtue and abandoned the Internet altogether after all its secrets (and ours) were laid bare. Everyone wears masks so as not to be identifiable. Taking pictures of someone without their permission is now something you can be arrested for. The press now serve as a sort of police force. It's not quite dystopian, but you sure wouldn't want to live here.

The story in The Private Eye is, as the title indicates, a mystery tale, but the truth is, the most fascinating aspect of this book is not the plot but the world it inhabits. Without ever being too heavy-handed, Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin do a brilliant job making the reader uncomfortable with the current state of our Information Age, and demand that we ask questions about it that we'd rather not think about. And they do it with characters who, appropriately for the subject matter, never reveal too much of themselves to be predictable.

Part crime noir, part dystopian thriller, The Private Eye is a tight, addictive joy. Great writing and great art complement an important topic and leave you wanting more. Highly recommended.

CRIMINAL VOL. 1-6  by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Speaking of crime noir, there are few who do it better than Brubaker and Phillips, whose work I've previously enjoyed on Fatale, The Fade Out, and Kill or Be Killed. For all the success those series have had, Criminal is generally considered their best work as collaborators, so I seem to have saved the best for last.

Criminal is distinctive from most comics in that each volume tells a different story. While the world of Criminal is the same in all 6 volumes, and characters occasionally appear in stories that are not "theirs," there is no serialization from book to book. The only thread that reliably connects these books is the dark, seedy world these characters occupy, a world of degenerate gamblers, ruthless mob bosses, and hookers with hearts of gold.

These stories are old-fashioned, hard-boiled crime noir that don't pretend to be anything else. In a comics landscape where many writers are desperate to say something profound with their work, Brubaker and Phillips seem content here to just tell great stories, which is kind of refreshing. Clearly influenced by the likes of Raymond Chandler, Frank Miller, and scores of pulp thrillers, these stories highlight and delight in all the cliches of the crime genre while remaining gritty, enjoyable romps.

My favorite of the stories was probably "The Sinners," the fifth of the six volumes I read. This story brings back Tracy Lawless, the protagonist of the second volume's "Lawless" as an AWOL soldier turned reluctant hitman, who in this story is tasked with finding out who killed three local crime lords. Part mystery, part morality tale, the story does a masterful job of keeping things tense right up until the final pages, when all loose ends are neatly and masterfully wrapped up.

I'd recommend these books for anyone who likes crime stories, but I'm not sure I'd read them in order if I were you. I thought the books generally got better as they went, so I'd read them this way:

1. The Sinners
2. The Last of the Innocent
3. Bad Night
4. The Dead and the Dying
5. Lawless
6. The Coward

A Better Way (Friday Devotional)

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it: I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.

- Isaiah 42:5-9

When Lindsey and I got married, our first apartment didn’t have a dishwasher, so I typically started every morning washing the previous night’s dishes by hand. While annoying at first, I quickly came to relish the activity as a quiet, almost therapeutic way to begin the day. So when a few years later we moved to another apartment, one that had a dishwasher, I didn’t adjust immediately. Just like I’d been doing at the old place, I started the first few mornings in our new home with soap and sponge in hand, going after the dirty dishes exactly as I had before. Lindsey let this go on for a few days, but finally spoke up. “I know you’re used to starting the day this way,” she said, “but there’s a better way now.”

That’s a message that the prophet Isaiah delivered to Israel as he announced the impending arrival of the Messiah. For a people in exile, hope was in short supply, so they were desperate for God to save them as He had in the past. They waited for Him to send a prophet whose word would compel the people to obey the Law, or a priest who would sanctify the people through the Temple, or a king who would lead them to victory and reign with justice. God had saved them with people like this in the past—people like Moses and Joshua, Deborah and Samuel, David and Josiah, Elijah and Hilkiah. Surely he would do so again.

But in Isaiah 42, the prophet announces that the time has come for a better way: “the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.” Instead of sending His word through a prophet, this time God would send the Word made flesh. Instead of having a priest offer up daily sacrifices, God would now have the Great High Priest make the ultimate sacrifice once and for all. Instead of sending another monarch in a long line, now God was going to send the King of Kings. The old paradigm was gone, and Israel could now place their hope in a Messiah who would be prophet, priest, and king.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth was and is that Messiah, and that by his death and resurrection we have hope. But when our lives and our world veer off course, when we find ourselves identifying with exiled Israel, we can’t seem to help returning to the old way. We raptly listen to any charming speaker with a pulpit, hoping he’ll be the prophet who saves us. We wait with bated breath for encouragement from the celebrity who seems so full of wisdom and inspiration, hoping she’ll be the priest who can make us holy. We throw in our lot with politicians, hoping they will rescue us from the powerful forces at our doorstep.

What we must remember is that our hope should not rest with these fallible, human figures—as the hymn says, our “hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Tempting as it is to look for saviors in our midst, the one true Savior has already come, and on the cross he accomplished what no one else could. Even when circumstances are bleak, Jesus is Lord, and his empty tomb proclaims that no force can overcome him. So don’t allow hopelessness to seep into your life or for cynicism to make you think that God has forgotten you. Exile has ended—and in Christ, we are invited to a better way.

July Reading Log

A week-long family vacation followed almost immediately by the busyness of Vacation Bible School meant less reading time than usual in July, but I was able to knock a few books off my list (including the two I bought on the aforementioned vacation.) Here's a look at what I read last month:

4 Articles I Like This Month

"The Dangers of Distracted Parenting" by Erika Christakis, The Atlantic. 9 minutes.

Much is written these days about the dangers of screen time for children—seriously, so much—but this article addresses a related but separate problem: screen time for parents. Adults in this generation are with their kids more than ever before, but because of the addictive devices in their pockets, are are rarely with them for more than a few minutes at a time. The result is not only a model for children of disengaged, distracted behavior, but also a lot of missing out on important bonding moments. A very convicting read for this parent with an iPhone.

"Life Inside Texas' Border Security Zone" by Melissa del Bosque, Texas Observer. 33 minutes.

For nearly 15 years now, Texas DPS has provided an increased security presence at the Texas-Mexico border (supplementing the work of the federal Border Patrol) with the stated goal of stopping an influx of illegal immigration and accompanying crime. The unfortunate result, as this article lays out, is a pair of counties living virtually under martial law while surrounding counties and, indeed, the entire state suffer as a result of this concentrated show of force. A fascinating, on-the-ground look at an issue which people on both sides of the aisle tend to think about emotionally before they think practically.

"Own Goal: The Inside Story of How the USMNT Missed the 2018 World Cup" by Andrew Helms and Matt Pentz, The Ringer. 45 minutes.

As an American, it was hard to get excited about the World Cup this summer because the U.S. Men's National Team failed to even qualify, a disaster that was years in the making. This lengthy, heavily sourced article documents the personalities, problems, and hubris that led to an America-less World Cup in 2018.

"The Birth of the New American Aristocracy" by Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic. 55 minutes.

Thanks to Bernie Sanders, most everyone is now familiar with the problem of inequality in our economy, that 38% of the nation's wealth is held by 1& of the population. But as this article shows, inequality isn't quite that simple—the problem isn't just that our system rewards the super-rich, but that our 'meritocracy' rewards the top 9.9% while giving the remains 90% little opportunity to climb into that upper bracket. The result, as this article shows with fascinating facts and innumerable insights, is that our nation's lawyers, doctors, and financial consultants—the upper-middle-class—now bear a striking resemblance to what we used to call the aristocracy, who are born into privilege and pass it on to their children, all while extolling the values of hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Take your political blinders off and read this at face value; it's an endlessly fascinating (and depressing) look at the state of our economy.

PRAYER: FINDING THE HEART'S TRUE HOME by Richard J. Foster

Richard Foster is probably best known as the author of Celebration of Discipline, his book explaining the spiritual disciplines. However, having read both that book and this one, I can happily say that Prayer is my favorite of the two. It is, quite simply, the best book on prayer (not counting the Bible) that I've ever read.

A basic reading of the table of contents will show you that in Prayer: Finding the Heart's Home, Foster addresses every type of prayer imaginable, starting with "simple prayer" and concluding with "radical prayer," with everything from contemplative prayer, prayer of relinquishment, intercessory prayer, and many other in between. But to give the book both structure and narrative flow, Foster divides it into three sections: inward, upward, and outward prayer (i.e. seeking personal transformation, then intimacy with God, then ministry for others.) This structure makes it so that the reader's understanding of prayer grows as your comfort level diminishes...much like a particularly convicting sermon!

Most helpful to me, however, was the first chapter of the book, which is basically just a pep talk on prayer, a reminder that God not only hears but loves the prayers of His people, no matter how simple or selfish they are. "In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture, so a child cannot offer a bad prayer," says Foster. I sometimes find it considerably easier to talk about prayer than to actually pray, to teach about prayer's value while struggling to actually pray well; Foster's words were a balm for my soul.

If prayer is what keeps you going through the day, read this book. You'll find your prayer life strengthened and will get some new perspectives on how to pray. If you think prayer is important but don't think you're particularly good at it, read this book. You'll learn better just what it is God wants from your prayers. And if you don't put much stock in prayer at all, read this book anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if it changes your mind. Simply, read this book. Then pray. That's my plan.

WHAT SAINT PAUL REALLY SAID: WAS PAUL OF TARSUS THE REAL FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY? by N.T. Wright

When you write as much stuff as the apostle Paul did, you're bound to get misinterpreted eventually. And sure enough, the 20th century saw numerous different scholarly opinions on Paul: for some he was a faithful servant of Christ; for others he was a misogynistic, traditionalist zealot; for still others he was the "real founder" of what we know today as Christianity. In this book, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright lays out his understanding of "what Paul really said" about Jesus, salvation, the kingdom of God, and the last days.

Wright comes to Paul at an angle, taking seriously his claim to have formerly been a zealous Pharisee (as shown by his violent persecution of the early Christians, whom he considered apostate Jews.) Thus Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus should not be seen as an abandonment of his Jewish faith and heritage, but as his recognition that Jesus was the fulfillment of everything he'd been waiting for. For Wright, everything Paul says in the New Testament should be read in light of the Abrahamic covenant: that God would, through His people Israel, restore and redeem the fallen world.

By reading Paul this way, Wright pokes holes in some of the traditional understandings of Christianity, including the doctrine of justification by faith. For Wright, justification and righteousness are both understood as covenantal and law-court terms, not moralistic ones, so that being "justified" or "righteous" is not really about how sinful you are, but about whether or not you have become a part of the covenant people of God. The cross, Wright says, is not about making bad people good so much as it is about making outsiders insiders. This is just one of a number of examples of Wright subtly tweaking traditional understandings of faith—every time he does it, it's both provocative and thoughtful...and often pretty persuasive.

Overall, Wright's so-called "new perspective" (countering the Reformed tradition) is grounded in the 2nd Temple Judaism that Paul once belonged to, and is in that sense convincing on a historical level. He makes some deductive leaps along the way, and does seem to occasionally make the classic academic mistake of wedding himself to his system even when the evidence contradicts it. But in general, this is an extremely helpful, accessible, well-written work that, at 183 pages, serves as good Cliff Notes for his 1700 page monster, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I definitely recommend it for pastors and teachers.

WHERE I'M READING FROM: THE CHANGING WORLD OF BOOKS by Tim Parks

When you're a compulsive book buyer, sometimes a bargain sticker will make you pick something up that you normally wouldn't even notice, simply because you can't let a good deal pass you by. Such was the case with Where I'm Reading From, a slim collection of essays on the state of world literature by author, translator, and professor Tim Parks of the New York Review of Books. On vacation with my family, the cover caught my eye from the bargain table at Seattle's excellent Elliot Bay Book Company and reeled me in with its price tag.

I read nearly all of its 37 essays, most in the neighborhood of 5 pages apiece, during quiet moments on the trip, with mixed results. As the book's subtitle indicates, the essays are Parks's varied takes on how world literature is read, taught, and understood in the modern era, dealing with subjects like the dueling perceptions of authorship as an inner calling versus as a career, how academic criticism affects writing, and how an author's voice changes in translation. The general theme, if I had to nail it down, is that literature matters, but not always for the reasons we've been taught.

If the little I've said didn't already tip you off, the audience for this book is ultra-specific, the kind of intellectual literati who subscribe to the New York Review of Books, attend multiple literary festivals per year, and await the annual announcement of the Booker Prize winner with bated breath. Sadly, I'm not part of that audience, so a fair amount of what Parks said could be filed either under "this is over my head" or simply "I don't care about this." But there was enough gold among the silt for this to make for decent vacation reading. Besides, the price was good!

EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF GRUNGE by Mark Yarm

Whenever I travel to a new city, I make it a priority to visit their best bookstore and buy at least one book (and grab a free bookmark.) If possible, I like to pick out a book that fits that city, so that the book also serves as a worthy souvenir of my trip. It was that impulse that inspired me to pick up Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, a book that has Seattle written all over it.

For the sake of context, I am not part of the grunge generation—I was only 4 when Kurt Cobain committed suicide—but I am a fan of the music. While some look back at grunge as little more than a fad, I regard it as rock and roll's last gasp of creativity before hip-hop seized the reins of pop music. So I was fascinated to read this account of the rise, peak, and fall of grunge as told by the artists, producers, and managers who saw it all go down.

As the cover promises, the book deals with the heavy hitters of grunge—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam—but just as fascinating are the stories about the lesser-known bands like the Melvins, TAD, the U-Men, and L7, many of whom influenced Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, and the rest without ever achieving their level of success. Starting with the arrival of these bands on the scene and the release of the Deep Six album, which featured six different bands and their "Seattle sound," the book does a great job telling not only the small stories about individual bands, but also keeping a 10,000-foot-view over the whole Seattle scene.

Everybody Loves Our Town features lots of gossip, lots of drug use (epidemic heroin use had a large role in the demise of grunge), and plenty of conflicting information depending on who's being interviewed at a given moment. But all of that chaos contributes to rather than detracts from the portrait of a scene that got too big too fast. Mark Yarm has done yeoman's work here in documenting a brief but important era in rock history. Recommended for any nostalgic 90's kids or music buffs.

ESSENTIAL HULK VOL. 4 by Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, Steve Englehart, Herm Trimpe, et al.

Sometimes you want comics to mean something, to speak important truths about life, love, and the human condition. But sometimes you just want to watch colorful characters punch each other...and for that, we have Essential Hulk Vol. 4.

Despite a rotating cast of writers on The Incredible Hulk in the early 1970s, the editors seemed to have finally figured out the right formula for the book by the time of the issues that this Essential volume covers: keep the melodrama light, skew heavily toward the Hulk instead of Bruce Banner, and make sure you give Hulk somebody to smash before the end. That pattern makes the book formulaic on an issue-to-issue basis, but far from dull. In fact, this is my favorite Essential volume for the character so far.

Essential Hulk Vol. 4 sees the not-so-jolly green giant tangle with everyone from arch-foes like the Leader and the Abomination to less memorable villains like Captain Axis, Captain Omen, and Zzzax. But his primary antagonist throughout the book, as usual, is General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and his newly commissioned Hulkbuster unit. Ross manages to capture Hulk/Banner multiple times during this volume's 28 issues, but never permanently. After all, Hulk is the strongest one there is.

As I mentioned, readers spend a lot more time with the Hulk, often brooding and confused in the woods, than with Bruce Banner in these issues. If Banner shows up at all, it is usually just for a couple of pages before something upsets him and brings back his counterpart. This volume is also light on Banner's romance with Betty Ross (General Ross's daughter), possibly because the writers realized they'd never gotten around to making her character interesting—perhaps for that reason, she is married off to Major Glen Talbot, Ross's second-in-command, before the end of this volume. Frankly, this neglecting of Hulk's supporting cast doesn't hurt the book at all—people don't buy a Hulk book for the soap opera, they buy it for the action.

1970s Hulk comics are just big dumb fun, faithfully and capably drawn almost exclusively by longtime artist Herb Trimpe. I definitely recommend these issues for Marvel fans, and will definitely be getting volume 5.