Fisher of Men

Maybe it’s the smug servant Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Perhaps it’s the extremely suspicious Boston community in Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlett Letter. Or it could be the more recent TV drama named for the location of the infamous Salem witch trials of early colonial America. High school history books continue to tell tales of America’s Pharisaic progenitors and their overly concerned moralism with attempts to establish God’s pure “city on a hill.” Many of us have grown up with an understanding of Puritans as those gloomy religious folk who found joy in making sure others had none. The tale of spoilsport Puritans continues to be told, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Here are 5 myths about Puritans which you may still be...

Many pastors, this one included, have a hard time opening up and being vulnerable with those around them. The lethal cocktail of pride and insecurity, combined with the belief that people need us to be an ever-stable, always-faithful, never-failing rock, causes some pastors to suffer in silence, struggle in secret, and suffocate in isolation. This sad tendency is destructive for the church, but deadly for the pastor. I hear a lot about growing our churches, preaching, and leadership, but little about the need for pastors to grow in their vulnerability. This is a problem. If you’re a pastor, I want to share three reasons I think you and I need to strive for healthy vulnerability with those in our lives. 1. Vulnerability Is Humbling The Apostle Peter said, “Humble yourselves, therefore, unde...

“We homeschool.” It’s amazing how loaded a two-word answer can be. If I’m in a room full of public school teachers, it can come across as condescending and dismissive of public education. If I’m in a room full of home school parents, it can make me sound like a hero. If I’m surrounded by Christian school parents, it might elicit pity. I don’t think there is any more divisive topic among Christian parents than the topic of education. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a way to have strong convictions about the type of schooling we prefer for our children in this season of life and still acknowledge that this is a complex issue and an issue that might lead Christian people to different conclusions. I’ve lived on all sides of this issue. As a Christian school kid, I thought, for long...

Should we hate sin? Absolutely! Psalm 97:10 makes this plain: “O you who love the Lord, hate evil!” That’s simple enough. Right? But why should we hate sin? God’s Glory is Supreme This first reason to hate sin takes supreme precedence. God’s salvation narrative more than anything is about his glory. He is a glory hound who does not share with anyone or anything. His collective attributes give us confidence that His glory is for our good. He’s righteous, so seeking glory is His righteous pursuit. He’s holy, so seeking glory is His holy pursuit. He’s beautiful, so seeking glory is His beautiful pursuit. We must trust this because, well, He’s trustworthy! This being the case, then our aim is to maximize God’s glory. The sinfulness of sin by design is a barrier to it, one that ultimately is ov...

The preaching event involves not only God, the preacher and the biblical text, but the people who listen to the sermon. Unfortunately, writing and teaching in the field of preaching has focused predominantly on getting the text right (exegesis), getting the style right (rhetoric) and most importantly getting God right (theology). These are, no doubt, essential concerns and skills for effective preaching, but something is missing. Getting the listener right is a paramount, though often neglected, consideration in preaching today. Effective sermons engage the varied listening styles represented in the congregation. Too often, we preachers become stylistically self-absorbed. We are tempted to let our stylistic preferences dominate our preaching. The only problem with my prefere...

When I started at my job a little over a year ago, I was the only Christian in my department. Since then, I’ve referred a few Christian friends, who have referred even more Christian friends, and there are now eight of us. This growth excited me for two reasons. First, I now had support in living out the Christian life at my work. Second, it increased an evangelistic witness for my non-Christian co-workers—people I care about deeply and would love to see know God.    Then something happened that I didn’t anticipate. A few weeks ago, the director and my fellow managers requested to speak with me about some issues with some of the Christians in our department. The company I work for partners with small colleges to boost their marketing, enrollment, retention, etc., and most of thes...

What kind of peace do you hope for in the Middle East? What kind of peace do you pray for? Once again the simmering conflict between Israeli and Palestinian groups has burst into flame. You’ve seen the images of explosions in the middle of residential street, of rockets flying through the air. You’ve listened to the talking heads go at each other over the issue again and again. I wonder, what is your initial response to it all? Conflict in this particular stretch of land inevitably leads to tempers and arguments erupting in a way that conflict elsewhere in the world does not cause, in or out of the church. There are important political, ethical, and theological issues tied to this conflict. These issues must be discussed and worked through with grace and sobriety. But as Christians, we als...

What you believe about God changes everything. It affects how you love, work, live, marry, parent, purchase, and worship. Think of just a few popular views that people have about God: Is God an impersonal blob who is uninterested in the world except for figuring out who the good and bad people are? Is “god” a karma vibe making sure everyone gets what they deserve? Is God a myth that weak, stupid, or oppressive people use to console themselves or dominate other people? Is God a cosmic cheerleader who is concerned mainly with helping you achieve immediate happiness and self-actualization? Or is God someone else? We Believe… God reveals himself to sinners and saves them for his glory. Theology is not obscure, abstract theories about the divine. Rather, theology is the study of a persona...

Our summer vacation was interrupted slightly as Hurricane Arthur blew its way up the coast, hitting the seaside town of Beaufort, NC directly.  All the reports indicated that the Category 2 hurricane coming our way was no cause for evacuation, so we stayed and, as my children like to say, “survived the hurricane!”  The storm began in the early evening and then formed into a constant pounding.  The rain didn’t fall in typical fashion, but it swirled wildly, pushed forward by the raging wind.  Suddenly, close to midnight, all was eerily silent.  In the eye of the storm, there was peace and calm. I sat in the stillness considering how all of nature reflects and reveals the truths of God. The eye of the storm was a picture of contentment in a world that rages and circu...

How’s your prayer life? On a scale of 1 to 10 from non-existent to stellar how would you rate it? I bet most charitably argue for a 6 to 8. Few might place them self in a 9 or 10. Rating myself honestly, I am a solid 3. I know. That’s a low score! But let’s be honest. We live in a world of distraction. If we give ourselves to prayer for a cumulative 30 minutes a day, then that might be a good day. Think about it. Do you think you pray for 30 minutes a day? Okay, now compare yourself to a Jonathan Edwards or George Whitefield: two men who gave themselves to prayer for 2 to 4 hours a day. True, these guys are probably not the norm. But still, I imagine that people prior to TV, computers, and e-mail gave themselves to private prayer much more than we do. As I reflect on my prayer time, there ...

“Our kids need to go in the ministry. People are dying and going to Hell. Let the world provide the doctors and lawyers and carpenters. We need laborers in the field.” This was the message I heard, growing up, over and over again. The pastor was well-meaning. His desire was to see the church committed to reaching the world with the gospel. But while I’m grateful for the evangelistic impulse it created in me, this paltry doctrine of vocation did much damage. It crippled the ability of young men to discover their God-given gifts and talents and leverage them in the marketplace for the glory of God. The only “real” calling for a young man is the ministry, whether as a pastor or a missionary. My childhood church was an extreme outlier on this issue, I realize, but this kind of weak theology of...

It wasn’t by the sword, though that did come first. It wasn’t by persecution. It was through the pressures of peace and finances. Back in the 7th and 8th centuries, Muslim conquerors didn’t aim to destroy Christianity. They simply wanted to control it. However, they did manage to extinguish the church’s witness. And it happened by offering security and financial stability. Before the rise of Islam, Christians in ancient Persia experienced perhaps the most intense physical persecution any group of Christians have ever experienced. The church in Persia grew steadily, as missionaries from Antioch and Edessa ranged further east. Naturally, this caused some tension with the leaders of the established state religion, Zoroastrianism. The conflict between it and Christianity was often more acutely...