Palm Sunday and the Point of No Return

In preparation for my fifteenth Palm Sunday standing in a pulpit, I was reminded of a particularly lucid quote from an oft-used passion week commentary. On Palm Sunday Jesus enters Jerusalem as a king riding on a baby donkey, and is heralded by crowds with the very words of Psalm 118:25-26, which ask the Lord for his messianic salvation, rejoicing that he’ll provide in due time. For crowds to praise Jesus as the king from David’s line who fulfills these words would not have only been controversial. It would have been treasonous. Here they’re saying Jesus—not Caesar—is king. And Jesus, who often would deflect such treatment because it wasn’t yet time for him to be treated as king (cf. Jn.6:15), here receives the treatment as appropriate. 

Reflecting upon this Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor conclude:

The whole city is shaken by the events, and the crowd keeps spreading the word to any in Jerusalem who have not yet heard who Jesus is (Matt.21:10-11). Some Pharisees instruct Jesus to rebuke the crowds for their dangerous messianic exuberance, but he refuses to correct or curtail the excitement of the crowd over his entrance into the city (Matt.21:15-17; Luke 19:39-40). It would be hard to overestimate the political and religious volatility incited by Jesus’s actions—the Pharisees were taken by surprise and had no idea how to respond (John 12:19). Up to this point in Jesus’s ministry, he could still have managed to live a long, happy, peaceful life but his actions on Sunday set in motion a series of events that could result only in either his overthrow of the Romans and the current religious establishment—or his brutal death. He has crossed the point of no return; there would be no turning back. Caesar would allow no rival kings.*

Imagine what must have stirred in Jesus’s heart as he rode the colt, treated with praise by a crowd likely mixed with true believers and unbelievers who are just subject to that day’s zeitgeist. The latter would, in a few days, call for his crucifixion. Was Jesus smiling at people? Was he looking at them with a broken heart because he saw their fakeness? We know that he then weeps as he enters Jerusalem (Luke19:41-44). We also know that when the religious leaders told him to tell the people to stop praising him, he responded that if they stopped, the rocks would cry out (Luke 19:40). So he’s engaged in the moment, then gets emotional when approaching Jerusalem, understandably so. 

But whatever was going on internally, this Sunday was no normal Sunday, and neither was it the typical bright, celebratory and somewhat chipper Sunday that precedes the darkness of Good Friday. No, this, as the quote above said, was the point of no return. To receive the label of promised King from David, and to do so with signs that reflect both Solomon (1 Kn. 1:33) and a newly anointed king of Israel (2 Kn. 9:13), was to challenge the (divinely-appoint) establishment and say, “This whole creation, from the Emperor of Rome down to the scum on the public bathroom floor, is mine, for the purpose of glorifying me.” Jesus knew what he was doing, and that his kingship would soon include with a painful crown of thorns, and a throne from which he’d hang until his breath gave out.

So I don’t know what he felt and thought as he rode. But I bet the heaviness was beginning.

 

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*Andreas Köstenberger, Justin Taylor, The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 32. 

Piper on Anxiety and the Promises of God

Where I live it is currently deep winter. There are about 18 inches of snow on the ground outside, and the temperature hasn’t risen above freezing all week. There is supposed to be more snow coming this weekend. 

Now let me be clear: I very much enjoy winter. Snow is beautiful, and I think American life is so hopelessly busy that the slow-down of winter storms is a healthy thing. It’s also basketball season, to which I look forward all summer. 

But it’s no secret that the short sunlight days, long hours inside, and relative isolation has a depressing and angst-producing effect on many people. Whether it’s some sort of seasonal anxiety or depression thing or whatever, the majority of winter, following Christmas, can be a hard time of peace for many. 

So I was especially struck rereading through a section of John Piper’s monumental Future Grace today. I call the book “monumental,” because I think that if only one of his many books is still being read generations from now, if Jesus doesn’t return before, it might be this one. The chapter in which this section comes is entitled “Faith in Future Grace vs. Anxiety,” and in the chapter Piper does well to show the reality of fear and anxiousness all of our lives, and how it is in those moments that we learn God’s nearness. 

For example, the psalmist says “When I am afraid, I trust in you” (Ps.56:3). As Piper shows it is not “So that I’m not afraid, I trust in you,” but “When I am afraid.” It is in the moment of fear that there can also be trust. Consider also Peter’s words, “Cast all your anxieties on him (Christ), because he cares for you” (1 Pet.5:7). There is never promised a time when there won’t be anxieties; but there is definitely promised the ever-present nearness of Christ in those times, so that we can cast our anxieties onto him.* Indeed, he is an ever-present help in time of trouble (Ps.46:1). 

So, Piper concludes the chapter with an excellent list of Scriptures he recites to himself in times of particular anxiety. See, we’ll fight unbelief all the time: Abraham followed God despite his unbelief (note that no unbelief made him waiver in following God, Rom.4:20, which must mean that he had some unbelief in the first place. But he didn’t let it win). But we fight the unbelief with God’s promises, and therefore we “live not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God’s mouth.” Here’s Piper’s helpful list for particular anxieties: 

-For some risky new venture, Is.41:10: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for 

I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” 

-For the fear that ministry will be useless and empty, Is.55:11: “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” 

-For weakness in work, 2 Cor.12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 

-For hard decisions, Ps.32:8: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” 

-For facing opponents, Rom.8:31: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

-For our children’s well-being, Matt.7:10-11: “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” 

-For fear of sickness, Ps.34:19: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all,” and Rom.5:3-5, that “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, for God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” 

-For fear of getting old, Is.46:4: “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” 

-For fear of dying, Rom.14:7-9: “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” 

-For fear of making shipwreck of faith and falling away from God, Phil.1:6: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ,” and Heb.7:25: “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”**

By such promises, Piper says, we make war with our own unbelief. Armed with God’s loving, Fatherly promises, we can be confident, because as Luther famously wrote, God “must win the battle.” 

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*John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, rev. ed. (New York: Multnomah, 2020), 54.

**Ibid., 58-59.

Christ in Home Alone?

Via Twitter/X, from Jeremy Wayne Tate: 

Annual reminder that Home Alone is a Christian movie.

Watch this scene (where Kevin enters the church) very carefully, where Kevin is drawn to the beauty and warmth of the church. As he walks inside to "O Holy Night", he hears the words "Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!" A sanctuary candle passes across the foreground, indicating that Christ is present inside the church. Kevin then has an encounter with a Christ figure: Old Man Marley. Kevin makes a confession to him, then shakes his hand and we see a bandage on Marley's hand. It's never explained why his hand is wounded, but earlier in the movie we saw that his hand was actually pierced ALL THE WAY THROUGH — like the nails driven through Christ's hands on the cross. At the end of the movie, Kevin cannot save himself from the burglars, and so Marley appears again to rescue him. Home Alone is a Christian movie.

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Interesting thoughts that I've never considered, but it seems like either Chris Columbus (director) or John Hughes (writer) wanted to place a sort of gospel easter egg into the story. Being Christ-obsessed I get the impulse to want to find Christ in everything. But being a little OCD, I also want to be careful not to stretch too far. This construal of Home Alone seems un-forced because it's so robust. 

A little later in the twitter/X thread, a user named BeachComber replied: 

Interesting. Kevin has the only truly Christmas experience in the film, as for the rest of his extended family it's all consumerism and travel and the 'holiday season'. So Kevin's loneliness and abandonment brings him to a faith experience, which is the message of Christmas. 

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My hope is that if the holiday season is a little lonely for you, you'll have a sense of Christ's drawing near to you to draw you near to him. That's what Christmas is about: Christ comes to us to bring us to him (1 Pet. 3:18). And you're included. 

John Owen on Christ in the Old Testament

I’m sharing a quote from John Owen’s awesome little book The Glory of Christ. This book has long been available as a Puritan Paperback (hereafter just "paperback") from Banner of Truth trust, but has more recently been included in Crossway’s new Complete John Owen Works. Personally—and probably to your surprise—I’m partial to smaller books, so I appreciate the paperback. 

The quote below is long, spanning an entire page of the paperback. Here Owen, arguably the greatest protestant theologian of the 17th century, shows us a mature understanding of Christ’s presence in the Old Testament. To me, reading Owen is like reading CS Lewis: Much of what I find is challenging to my assumptions and presuppositions. But as I process it and give it time, I find that I agree with it. Before I know it, I’m listing the book in which I found the challenging quote as a personal influence. I think the below quote, typical of Owen’s mature theology but atypical of (even early) modern theology’s shallowness, is a worthy example of my point. 

In expounding “The Glory of Christ Under the Old Testament,” Owen says: 

The glory of Christ was represented and made known under the Old Testament in his personal appearances to leaders of the church in their generations. In these appearances he was God only, but appeared in the assumed shape of a man, to signify what he would one day actually be. He did not create a human nature and unite it to himself for a while. Rather, by his divine power he appeared in the shape of a man. In this way, Christ appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Joshua and to others. 

Further, because Christ was the divine person who dwelt in and with the church under the Old Testament, he constantly assumed human feelings and emotions, to intimate that a time would come when he would assume human nature. In fact, after the fall everything said of God in the Old Testament ultimately refers to the future incarnation of Christ. It would have been absurd to represent God as grieving, repenting, being angry and well-pleased and exhibiting all other human emotions, were it not that the divine person intended to take on him human nature in which such emotions dwell. 

The glory of Christ under the Old Testament was (also) represented in prophetic visions. So John tells us Isaiah’s vision of the glory of the Lord was a vision of the glory of Christ (Isa.6; John 12:41). ‘The train of his robe filled the temple’ (Isa.6:1). This symbolized the glorious grace which filled the temple of his body. This is the true tabernacle, which God pitched, and not man; it is the temple which was destroyed, and which he raised again in three days, in which dwelt the fullness of the Godhead (Col.2:9) This glory was revealed to Isaiah, and it filled him with fear and astonishment. But by the ministry of one of the glorious seraphim, his iniquity was taken away by a coal from the altar, which symbolized the sacrificial blood which cleanses from all sin. This is food indeed for the souls of believers.**

Note just a few things: First, to Owen many Old Testament theophanies (appearances of God) were in fact Christophanies (appearances of Christ). When God appeared in the shape of a man—think Jacob’s wrestling match God (Gen.32), Abraham’s sight of the three angels of the Lord (Gen.18), Moses’ sight of God in the burning bush (Ex.3) as well as his time speaking to God on the mountain (Ex.33-34), and Joshua’s conversation with the commander of the Lord’s army (Josh.5)—it was actually Christ showing himself in a form like he would one day appear. Thus the idea of an incarnation should not have seemed off-limits to the scribes of Jesus’ day, nor should it seem odd to the scribes of our day. 

Second, note that Owen subsumes the Old Testament’s teaching about God’s “emotions” under the prophetic scope of Christ’s eventual coming as a man. That is, the fact that God was “sorry” that he made man (Gen.6:7), or “regretted” making Saul king (1 Sam.15:10) doesn’t indicate that he experiences emotions the same way that man does. And truly he couldn’t, since he a) prophesies his wrathful response to sin (Deut.31:17) meaning that he is in utter control of his wrath, b) doesn’t change but remains the same (Mal.3:6), and therefore, c) is not like man in having regrets (1 Sam.15:29). Rather, these examples of God’s “emotions” were intended prophetically to point to Christ who would one day come as the radiance of God’s glory in human body, with emotions the same as man, yet without sin. Just see Jesus' exasperation with his generation (Matt.17:17), and his emotions over Jerusalem's unbelief (Lk.19:41). In these moments we see God the Son responding to the world's sin as the antitype of God's earlier prophetic "emotions" toward Old Testament sin. What an interesting explanation for God’s emotions! 

Finally, note that to Owen the heavenly glory which Isaiah peeked (Is.6)—which the Apostle John very clearly states was the glory of Christ himself (Jn.12:41)—was itself a type of God’s glorious gospel. Isaiah saw heavenly temple glory as a type of the fullness of God’s filling Christ in his coming to earth (Col.2:9). The touching of the coal to Isaiah’s mouth to atone for his sin was a type of Christ’s working to atone for our sins in fullness. The reason such a vision of glory must be thought of as an accommodation is that God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim.6:16a), and no one has seen or can see God (Jn.1:18, cf. 1Tim.6:16b). So it must be that Isaiah’s sight of glory was an accommodation to his senses. Owen’s reading of it as a picture of the gospel is not only appropriate but unavoidable. 

As you can see, Owen read the Scriptures as a witness to the Incarnation of God the Son in the person of Jesus. Owen’s world was a Christ-centered world, like it was for the church fathers all those generations ago. Truly, the world is Christ-centered; it is only for us to labor to see it. But as we meditate on the types of things Owen says above, we find our blurry eyes beginning to see a little more clear. And indeed this gospel truth is food for the soul! 

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**John Owen, The Glory of Christ: Abridged and Made Easy to Read by RJK Law (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), 70-71.

A Dedication Post to John MacArthur, and a Life-Changing Book From His Pen

John Macarthur was the pastor of Grace Community Church in Southern California from February 1969 until November 2024. He went to be with the Lord in July 2025, nine months after preaching his final sermon. 55 years in the same pulpit is almost unheard of in late modern times—the only other example of whom I’m aware is Peter Masters, the pastor at Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle since 1970. As a preacher who has done a lot of moving over the years, I’ve only grown in my admiration for John MacArthur staying in the same place for as long as he did. He was committed to biblical exposition, and God used and blessed his ministry probably beyond anything he could have imagined when he first began. 

As a young pastor who had cut his teeth on the likes of Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll (by the way, could pastoral approaches be any more different?), I hadn’t really spent much time listening to John. But after a year or so of preparing and delivering regular Bible exposition, I began to be drawn to the faithfulness and steadfastness of John’s ministry. I’ve so appreciated his work over the years. The fact that he spent his first 42 years preaching through the entire New Testament is nothing to be sniffed at. 

I disagree with some positions that John held. His understandings both of the relationship of ethnic Israel to the church and of the end-times are not the same as mine. No big deal; he and the late RC Sproul were close friends, sharing pulpits and conference platforms regularly, while Sproul held decidedly divergent views from John. To be clear, I don’t agree with all of RC’s views either! (Neither do I agree with my own views all the time, constantly reconsidering, changing, etc.) 

Now for why I wanted to write this post: To praise God for John’s likely most well-known book: The Gospel According to Jesus (hereafter GATJ). John wrote GATJ after a sermon series on Matthew’s gospel proved transformative for Grace Church. He had been confronting and challenging the so-called Free-Grace Movement, arguing that while Christ saves by grace, the saved must follow and obey him. It took John some seven years to preach through Matthew, but the church had been transformed into a thriving ministry center by the end of it. The literary outcome was (by the final edition) a 24 chapter book explaining the gospel from Christ’s own teaching in the writings of the Evangelists. 

At the time that I read GATJ I had been struggling with reconciling what I perceived to be opposing messages when comparing Paul’s letters with the gospel accounts themselves. This supposed dichotomy “between Paul and Jesus” was nothing new, having been present in theology for 100 years or so prior, and continuing now. J. Gresham Machen, the great critic of theological liberalism, wrote The Origin of Paul’s Religion in 1921 because of the “Paul vs. Jesus,” debate. I had also read some cases made for a real dichotomy from the likes of current Christian thought leaders like Scot McKnight. In short, and probably at the risk of being reductive, proponents say that while Paul preaches salvation by grace through faith, Christ preaches obedience and works. There’s more to it, but if you can get your hands around that summary you can get an idea of what’s at stake in the debate. I found myself comforted reading Paul but struggling reading the gospels. I believed it all. But I had a sort of background anxiety about the issue. 

Into my own struggle came John’s GATJ. I found it at a used bookstore in Pittsburgh, and I started reading it at a Panera while Kate was at a work meeting. I was stunned at what I found: Jesus preaches the same salvation by grace that Paul did, explaining it in a way that we should expect the incarnate God-man to explain it. The difference in his explanation compared to Paul is easily understood when one considers perspective: Christ is the author of salvation, and Paul is a herald of it. If you dig in, you see that the gospel is the gospel is the gospel, whether from Jesus’ mouth or Paul’s or Peter’s or John’s or David’s or Isaiah’s, etc. There is no dichotomy, only the seemingly paradoxical marriage of depth and clarity. So, after reading GATJ, the gospels opened up to me in a way that has proved transformative.

At the risk of keeping you from reading GATJ yourself, what follows is a brief summary of every chapter under section headings. Please know, such a summary will never replace reading Gospel According to Jesus yourself; it is so helpful if one wants the gospels to come alive. Nevertheless, I hope that a quick survey of the chapters might stir you up to seek it further. 

(I Introduction: I’m skipping this section, which includes chapters one and two, in my summary)

II Jesus heralds his gospel

3 He calls for a new birth (Jn.3: To Nicodemus, “you must be born again”) 

4 He demands true worship (Jn.4: To the Woman, “Father must be worshiped in spirit and truth”) 

5 He receives sinners and refuses the righteous (Mt.8-9: Only the unwell/sinners can get  in on this) 

6 He opens blind eyes (Jn.9: Blind man didn’t “see the light”; Jesus opened his eyes) 

7 He challenges an eager seeker (Mt.19: Rich young man was proud and didn’t know it; Jesus wasn’t going to let him come amiss) 

8 He seeks and saves the lost (Lk.19: Zaccheus) 

9 He condemns a hardened heart (Judas—heart can harden though in Jesus’ presence) 

10 He offers a yoke of rest (Mt.11:28-30 Invites broadly, promising rest; but we only come if He gives it to us, 11:27)

III Jesus illustrates his gospel 

11 The Four Soils (Mt.13:3-9, 18-23: only one soil was ready to bear the desired fruit; most who hear the gospel won’t come and stay following Jesus) 

12 Wheat and Tares (Mt.13:24-30, 36-43: the ungodly can seem righteous and fool everyone. But God knows who is who) 

13 Treasure in the field (Mt.13:44 coming to faith means joyfully leave all for Christ) 

14 Laborers in the field (Mt.20:1-16: It’s all grace, no one earns more than the other. All who come to Christ want to labor for him because he’s good.) 

15 Lost and found: Lost sheep, coin, and son (Lk.15: God is active in seeking and finding; the lost must see themselves as lost in order to “come home”) 

16 Vine and branches (Jn.15:1-12 believers are united to Christ by faith; but some are broken off because they’re not fully plugged in, bearing fruit) 

IV Jesus explains his gospel 

17 Call to repentance (Mt.4:17, 21:28-32 Parable of two sons: God becomes preeminent in our lives; there are only two types of people, those who feign repentance and those are rebels who then repent) 

18 True faith (Mt.5, 18: True faith is lowliness (Mt.5:3-12 beatitudes) & child-like dependence, Mt.18:1-5) 

19 Promise of justification (Lk.18:9-14 parable: no delusions, the man begs for mercy) 

20 The way of salvation (Mt.7:13-23 Two ways, two crowds, & two destinations. Choose wisely) 

21 Certainty of judgment (Mt.7:21-27: Saying without doing=empty words; hearing without obeying=empty hearts) 

22 Cost of discipleship (Mt.10:34-49 “I’ve not come to bring peace…father and moth”: Unquestioning loyalty to Christ) 

23 Jesus is Lord (Jn.7:30: his arrest didn’t happen prematurely, because he’s Lord of all) 

V Jesus fulfills his gospel 

24 “It is finished” (Jn.19:30: we don’t need to add to his work, because it’s magnificent in itself; our work shows him in us.) 

If you would have told me in early 2017 that by late 2025 we would have lost Sproul, Packer, Keller, and Macarthur, I would have said, “No way—what can happen if we lose them all so close to each other?” But a work like GATJ stands as a testament that Jesus’ gospel continues on wherever there are faithful believers opening their Bibles, choosing “the good portion” (Lk.10:42), and inviting others to do the same. I’m so grateful for all of these men; or, put better, for the Lord’s work through them. His working through us explains why we can sometimes still be fools and yet be capable of doing great, life-giving things. None of these men were perfect men (though they are now), but God used them powerfully. If the Lord wasn’t in us, our lives would be only foolishness, right? Better is to plug into the Author of life (Ac.3:15) under his promise that he’ll use us to bring saving goodness into the world he created for his glory. 

Thanks Lord for John MacArthur, and for how you used his gospel labors to crystalize my utter confidence in Scripture. Raise up more gospel laborers, great Lord of the Harvest. 

Greetings from Rhode Island: After a Long Summer

It’s been almost six months since the last time I wrote a blog post. Much has changed in that span. Let me bullet point the most important: 

1. I left my ministry post in New Jersey. 

There were a lot of reasons, but the main two were these: 

a) The fit in NJ was never a really good one. I knew this early on. But when I had earlier gone back to seminary at a reformed school, I realized I was more of a baptist (not presbyterian) in my understanding of baptism and ecclesiology, so I assumed that I should be in that kind of church (a baptist one). I was a little ignorant, however, of the cultural norms and expectations that accompany (most) baptist settings. When I got to NJ, I began to learn early on how I don’t fit that type of church culture as well as I assumed I would. But I was able to last 7.5 years, and am grateful for the Lord’s kindness in sustaining us there—nothing in the Christian life is ever wasted. Much good came out of my time in NJ. I’m so thankful for the friendships and fellowship gained there. That said, the second main reason… 

b) The hurt I experienced at a lack of support from some prominent church members while under heavy attack from a once-trusted brother was so overwhelming that I couldn’t stick it out any longer. The vast majority of church members* were so loving, embracing, appreciative, etc. Then there are others, and I’ll leave it at that. I think (a) above influences this sub-point (b) to some degree: Few Christians ever intend to “bite and devour” (Gal.5:15); usually biting and devouring comes by over-comittment to tradition and under-commitment to the gospel.** Maybe that is what happened in NJ, but only the Lord knows the heart. In any event, it was time to leave.

2. It took time figuring out what was next for Kate, the kids, and I. 

After finishing my PhD last year and publishing my dissertation this year I applied to many theology teaching jobs. I was burnt out and over the ministry grind. So I thought, “I’ve been teaching part-time for years. Maybe it’s time to go full-time." Nothing opened up—the well couldn’t have been dryer for me. So, begrudgingly, I applied for church jobs again. I had one church on the Jersey Shore that took me really deep into the interview process (I preached there) before telling me that their fifteen-person search committee (!) didn’t pass me through to the congregation as a candidate. That crushing news came on my last Sunday at the church I pastored, so it was like two break-ups in the same day. Effectively, I became a pastor without a pulpit, a dad and husband without a job. 

So I kept applying, talking, interviewing, etc. Kate and I packed up the parsonage in storage and then took the kids down to Memphis and Florida for time with family. I interviewed deep with churches in South Carolina, Chicago, Rhode Island, and Brooklyn. While the time was scary, I also felt free. I went three months without a paycheck, the longest time in my adult life. I know this isn’t long relatively; but for me it was. But it was a time to truly trust God, with no contingencies. In hindsight the time passed quickly, though it didn’t seem quick then. 

3. We moved east, and I’m finally healing. 

I mentioned Rhode Island as one of the churches at which I interviewed. Darlington Congregational Church is a reformed congregation in Pawtucket, just north of Providence. To be clear, I considered DCC to be the third of three high probabilities, after churches in South Carolina and Chicago. But the process here was so clearly of the Lord, I couldn’t resist: 

a) My interview was fun and laid back while also gospel-serious; 

b) My Sunday preaching and meeting the church felt at home; and 

c) I got an almost 100% vote to be called. 

In God's kindness we have been made able to buy our own house (the church helping), and we’ve been here since late August. The Stines have become Rhode Islanders. My brief morning commute has me head east out of Rhode Island and into Massachusetts, then south back into Rhode Island. I’d never been to either state before I interviewed here. I’m amazed both at the Lord’s lovingkindness to us, and at his wisdom. 

My journey as a man, Christian, and pastor has been unusual. I was a Christian Churches/Churches of Christ kid who went to a Nazarene school for my undergrad before going back to the Christian churches for a youth and worship call. When early 20s depression led me to read Scripture as it is intended to be read—as God’s Word to me—I became convinced of the so-called reformed doctrines of grace, and I had to preach. Taking a pulpit in the Christian Churches showed me that I would eventually have to leave that family of churches I’d called “home” most of my life. So I went to a reformed seminary for further training, and eventually took the NJ job in a baptist church. But since I clearly didn’t fit there very well either (all the reasonings are for another blog), I kept on with training and school, finishing my PhD, seeing if the Lord would lead somewhere else, or have us stay in NJ. I never guessed I’d become the pastor of a congregational church…aren’t they infant baptizers, and liberal? Not Darlington CC. We’ll dedicate infants, sure, but we won’t baptize. And our theology is far from liberal: We’re a reformed congregation that wants the nations to see the grace of God in Christ, and how life-changing and life-giving it is. 

I can tentatively say, for the first time in a long time, that I’m happy to be in ministry. My recent dark summer had me rereading John Piper, CS Lewis, and Jonathan Edwards. Piper reminded me what ministry is, Lewis reminded me what the gospel is, and Edwards reminded me what the purpose of all this is, namely, that God would be glorified in sharing his love and goodness with us. I can honestly say, with cautious optimism, that I’m healing. But for Christ, even the wounds and affliction, which all the godly must endure, are worth it. 

Also I'm never moving again. 

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*I've chosen to remove the name of the church from the original post.

**See Ray Ortlund, Sam Allberry, You're Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Weary Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 16-19.