Generosity, Church, Gratitude, Leadership
John Beeson
Invisible Generosity

I’m normally the second person to arrive at church on Sunday morning. Nick is always first. Nick arrives at 5am, straps on his blower, and cleans the sidewalks and patios. What a heart of hospitality: to volunteer to make sure that the church is looking her best come Sunday morning.

This is one notable act of service among countless others. A few years ago, two members of our connection group showed up within an hour of my text to help me move a jacuzzi. In our two local moves, we’ve had more than two dozen help us. Our connection group dropped off meals at our doorstep when we had Covid.

Invisible Generosity
Culture, Death, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack

I’ve had four bags in my (nearly) ten years of pastoral ministry at New Life. I bought a leather briefcase that was too small and came apart at the seams followed by a leather briefcase that was too large and stiff. I gave up on the briefcase experiment and for the past three years I have used my son’s hand-me-down backpack from his middle school years. My wife and kids constantly teased me about my middle school backpack. But you know,

Four years ago, I was tagging along on my wife’s shopping trip and found a backpack tucked away on a clearance rack. It was love at first sight, and not just because of the 60% off tag.

Planned Obsolescence and My Backpack
Recommendations, Christian Living, Culture, Heaven
John Beeson
This Week's Recommendations

  1. Four good questions to ask your tech: Tim Challies says, “We are in constant communication with our devices and through our devices. And since we are already in the habit of asking them our deep and personal questions, perhaps it would do us good to ask them some good and honest questions about themselves. Here are four questions I propose we ask of any technology that has become (or has the potential to become) deeply embedded in our lives.”

  2. Embracing the silence: Christopher Cook says, “We’re spiritually exhausted, disoriented, and desperate to hear from God. And in our desperation, we turn up the volume, hoping that more input will lead to more clarity. But the Lord doesn’t compete with the chaos. His voice doesn’t cut through the noise. It waits for stillness.”

This Week's Recommendations
Death, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
The Ruin of Me

Today I have the pleasure of sharing a poem by my daughter, Camille (age 21). It is from the perspective of King Ahaz (see 2 Chronicles 28).

The Ruin of Me
Christian Living, Evangelism
John Beeson
Open Dumpster Living

Along the route from my house to the church is an undeveloped intersection on three of its four corners. Two medium-trafficked two-lane roads converge at a stop sign. A while ago, inexplicably, two massive forty-yard dumpsters showed up on one of the undeveloped corners. They sat empty for a few days, and then some observant neighbors, likely determining that the dumpster didn’t have another purpose, dumped a ragged armchair in the dumpster.

The proverbial floodgates opened. Old TV sets, broken dressers, bikes, and couches filled the two dumpsters to overflowing. Over the next two months, the dumpsters were emptied multiple times and then quickly filled.

Open Dumpster Living

Christian Living

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      What's the Most Costly City in the World to Live in? An international report says that five of the top ten cities are in Europe. There are no US cities in the top ten, but two in the top twenty. What's the most expensive city you've ever lived in? For us, it was Princeton, NJ.

2.      When Obsessing About Theology Prevents Obedience: Andree Seu Peterson reflects, "Carolyn did Greek boot camp with me at seminary. She was a Carolinian, a people person, and outspoken in her love for Jesus, everything that I was not. I chalked it up to Southern culture. I explained that I was reserved by natural endowment, and more prone to wait for the right moment. She wasn’t impressed: 'I’ve got plenty of faults, but shutting up ain’t one of them.' I did not like Carolyn. Forty years later I’m still waiting for the right moment, and Carolyn’s probably blabbed the gospel all over Dixie. She has offended many people, I’m sure, and won a few to faith. After all, the law of averages."

3.      Two-Thirds of Americans Believe They're Sinful: LifeWay Research reports that while 2/3rds of Americans agree that they're sinful, only 33% of women and 22% of men depend on Jesus to overcome sin. And 52% of Americans believe that you can help earn your way into heaven with good deeds. 

4.      7 Ways Grief Becomes Sinful: The Bible does not tell us to stifle or suppress our grief, but there are ways that grief can become sinful. Paul Tautges draws wisdom from John Owen: "It moves us to take strange pleasure in sadness. 'Strange it is that we should find some kind of pleasure in rousing our sorrows.'"

5.      Online Traps: How so called 'dark patterns' online trick you.

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Our Story: Restoration

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Our Story: Restoration

The week following Angel’s (her words will be italicized) confession of adultery I was in a state of shock. I was still trying to navigate the situation with my identity as a pastor intact. Even when we came to our Senior Pastor, I said that I could still preach Sunday (just a few days away) as I was scheduled. Fortunately, wisdom prevailed.

I was asked to take a leave of absence, which was difficult for me to accept. The next six months would be the most difficult months of my life. Angel’s confession of her affair would be peeled back. Her confession of one affair became confession of a series of affairs and I would have to come face to face with the ugliness of my own heart. From the time I was ten, my understanding of my identity was inextricable from my calling as a pastor. I was about to not be a pastor any longer.

Days after we met with our Senior Pastor, we met with the Ministry Director at the ministry where Angel was working. They graciously allowed her to shift her job and stay on as their book store manager.

Our church’s leadership was not only generous enough to support us with counseling, but they also brought in a conciliation ministry called Live at Peace. The partnership would initially be difficult for me, in particular, as our conciliators recommended that my leave of absence become semi-permanent, with a two-year reconciliation period. “How is that fair?” I questioned. “Why am I being punished for what my wife did against me?”

Counseling was really rocky as well. I thought we would be working to repair our relationship and work through the damage, but what our counselors quickly became aware of is that Angel had compartmentalized a significant amount of the previous two and a half years. Every session peeled back more hurtful layers.

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Our Story: Confession

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Our Story: Confession

The only thing that was left of our picture perfect marriage was glass shards. The seemingly petty heart issues that we entered marriage with had destroyed us. A week before Angel (her words will be italicized) confessed her infidelity, she contracted the flu, bronchitis and then walking pneumonia. Picking up on the language of James, the Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard calls sin “the sickness unto death.” God’s hand was heavy on Angel. She had beat her fists against his chest, but he would not stop pursuing her. That January he laid her out. Her spiritual sickness was manifested physically. God would not relent.  

Unable to get out of bed, I just so happened to pick up John Piper’s ‘This Momentary Marriage’ to look for answers. It was yet another means of sweet conviction God used to pursue my heart. Against my better judgment, I was serving as a ministry fellow for a campus ministry at Princeton University. They were on their winter retreat in upstate New York. We received a call from my Director who was concerned by my sickness. He asked if we would be able to come up, even just to have them pray over us. There was no reason for him to ask us to do that. There was no reason for us to say yes. We said yes.

We got our kids in the car and drove, Angel nearly comatose next to me. We pulled in and walked straight into the back of the main room where the evening session had just begun. After a few minutes Angel was shaking and sweating next to me. Then tears began to flow.

I knew I had to break the power the lies held over me. I felt compelled by God to live in truth. I had been trapped by the fear of losing John and our kids. But my fear of God ultimately trumped my fear of losing my family. With all of my being, I realized that my only hope was in trusting God with everything while being willing to lose it all. I was broken.

 “Are you okay?” I asked.

“No” I mouthed. “I’ve been having an affair.”

My body went numb.

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Our Story: Foxes Loosed

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Our Story: Foxes Loosed

In the Song of Solomon 2:15, the bride pleads to her husband, “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.” Little foxes cause big problems. Little sins, little heart issues can destroy marriages. Angel (whose words will be italicized) and I know that all too well.

The seeds of heart-issues of our childhood would, like foxes, cause big problems. For me, that seed was not understanding my identity as a child of God, but rather as a pastor.

For me, the seed was not understanding my identity as a child of God, but rather as a pastor’s wife.

These destructive seeds turned into seedlings in our seminary years. But it wasn’t until I took my first calling as a pastor that these seedlings quickly grew into saplings, and then destructive trees.

I still remember my first day at Westerly Road Church as a pastor. I was only 27, but for a young man who had felt called to vocational ministry at ten years old, it felt like I had been waiting a lifetime. Like a thoroughbred, I was released from the gate, and, with a kick of dirt, was off and running. In the weeks before I was hired the elders made a commitment to relocate the church to another property (where we would build a new church) and the responsibility of leading that charge was tasked to me. “Fun!” I thought (oh, the naïvete!). A few months after I began, our Care Pastor moved on to be a Senior Pastor. “No big deal,” I thought. His role wouldn’t be filled for several years.

Meanwhile, my ministry wheels were whirring…

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Our Story: The Start

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Our Story: The Start

We were just kids. Angel was 14 and I was 16. A freshman and a junior. We went to the same high school and the same church. I was the leader of our campus Christian club, and, as Angel tells it, the first time she met me she thought, “That’s the man I want to marry.” We were married at 21 and 19 and were the kind of couple most thought were ideal. We heard it many times: “I want a relationship like yours!”

Fast forward 18 years to a campus ministry retreat in Lake Pleasant, New York. As the worship swells, Angel, my wife of twelve years, begins weeping and shaking as we stand at the back of the room. She sits down and I sit down next to her. Between sobs and the throbbing music, she tells me, “I’ve been having an affair. “

What happened to what looked like our picture perfect marriage to this tragic place? And how did God rescue and restore a marriage that had fallen apart?

In this series Angel (her words will be italicized) and I will share our story. We do so with the hope that we can offer hope and help for marriages that might be headed toward a cliff or may have already plunged over it.

At the heart of our story is a rescuing and redeeming God.  

What would become issues that would steer us off the road were in our hearts from early ages. For me, I lacked an understanding of my true identity. This would ultimately steer me to a dangerous place.

And for me, I not only lacked an understanding of my true identity, but also had an idolizing ideal of John as my husband.

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Jesus and His Family; You and Yours

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Jesus and His Family; You and Yours

The untouched idol of the American evangelical church is family.

I love my family. No family is perfect, but I couldn’t be more grateful for a healthy family: a mom and dad who loved me and celebrated 43 years of marriage this year, a sister who is still one of my best friends.

And I overflow with thanksgiving for my wife and two children, who are a source of constant love and joy in my life.

It’s hard to make sense of what Jesus taught about family and lived out in his life. Jesus’ relationship with his family is complicated. At a first pass, you would probably say that his relationship with his family is flat out bad. Is that the case? And how should Jesus’ relationship with his family influence our relationship with our family?

The Hard Edges

Let’s examine four scenes in Jesus’ life that involve family. The first three of these scenes have some pretty hard edges in what Jesus says about family.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Danger of Forgiving Too Fast: Mike Glenn tells a story and then offers this sober wisdom, "My mom rushed me back to the oral surgeon who looked at me and said something I’ve never forgotten. “Mike, you healed too fast.” When I asked him what he meant, he said the gum tissue where he had made the incision had closed before the wound could totally drain. When that happened, the bacteria were trapped causing a major infection... I’ve ended up retelling that story a lot—especially to my friends who have been wounded and hurt. They want to forgive. They want to deal with it, move on, and get past the pain. In their rush to get over it, they heal too fast and trap the anger, bitterness, and hurt inside before it can drain out. Just like our bodies, our souls can get infected. If we fail to properly treat our wounds, the anger, embarrassment, and hurt will fester into bitterness and despair."

2.      These Two Statements Changed My Ministry: Dave Travis writes that 30 years ago the first statement shook and changed him, "The first statement came from Kennon Callahan: 'The day of the professional pastor is over. The day of the missionary pastor is here.'"

3.      What if Solomon's Example Was Bad, Not Good? Ian Duguid takes the provocative position that Solomon's example is negative, not positive in Song of Solomon. It's an interesting position. One doesn't have to agree with the position itself to agree with Duguid's main point, " But by connecting the song with the name of Solomon, with all his sexual brokenness, the writer reminds us that there are many dangers associated with marriage and sex. It is not easy to find the right person, or to be the right person, and faithfully waiting for that person is perhaps the hardest part of all."

4.      People Aren't Yes or No Answers: Stephen Altrogge with a great article on addressing the heart behind the pointed questions, "Behind every yes-or-no question is almost always a series of deeper questions, struggles, fears, and challenges. When someone asks me whether abortion is wrong, there’s usually much more lying beneath the surface. The question is simply the tip of the iceberg... When someone asks me whether homosexuality is a sin or whether abortion is wrong, is it simply because they’re curious about my opinion? Are they just searching for a conversation topic? Probably not. Simple questions about massive issues are like weeds with a roots that runs incredibly deep. The questions themselves are connected to things much deeper and more profound happening in a person’s life. Giving a simple answer is like plucking the weed without dealing with the root. It doesn’t solve the issue."

5.      How Evangelicalism Has Shifted Over 50 Years: I wish these graphs were clearer, but their content is fascinating. Some of the interesting facts: since 1970, Mainline Christianity has shrunk from 30% of the population to 10% and those who say they don't have any religious affiliation has gone from 5% to 20%.

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Playing God by Andy Crouch

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Playing God by Andy Crouch

There is a strange dissonance today. In a time where we embrace conversations about developing our leadership and influence, we are allergic to power. Andy Crouch wants us to have an honest conversation about power and recognize that it is a gift given by God and “rooted in creation… intimately tied to image bearing.”

The oft-quoted Lord Acton quote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” shows our distrust of power (the fact that we usually drop the “tends to” in the quote shows our hand even more. We are cynical about power. But we typically define power too narrowly, in ways that exempts us from possessing it. But that is false.

What is power? “Power is simply (and not so simply) the ability to participate in that stuff-making sense-making process that is the most distinctive thing that human beings do.” We ought not flinch, then, from owning up to the fact that we all have power. In fact, if we did not have power, even our purest impulses for love and justice would be impotent (the word itself meaning “without power”).

And we serve a God who we worship, in part, because he is all-powerful. If God was not omnipotent, he would “not be a God worth worshiping,” unable to bring justice. The question, then, is how to we steward our God-reflecting power well? How are we leveraging our power for justice? How are we creating margins in our power in Sabbath? And how are we leaning into institutions which utilize power in holy ways and chasten our desire to play god?

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.       An Open Letter to a Suffering Christian: David Powlison with simple, but powerful words, " Suffering must be walked through one step at a time. Be honest. Don’t take any shortcuts. Let each day’s trouble be sufficient for that day. Seek your Father. If you seek him, you will find him."

2.       Don't Settle for Artificial Intimacy: One of my favorite author on marriage, Gary Thomas, with an insightful look into artificial intimacy, "Every season of life tempts us to stop building our marriages. Rather than grow together in true intimacy, far too many couples exist only on what I call "artificial intimacy." They've never intentionally built intimacy but rather were trapped by an infatuation that felt like it fell from heaven. They never had to work at it; it just was. Once it died, their intimacy died with it. An artificial intimacy can be sustained for a time by the common events of life, but usually it comes to a huge crash..."

3.       Moms Have Always Worked: Hannah Nation's study of the Puritans reveals a deficiency in the way we typically think about work. I wholeheartedly agree with Nation's thesis, "Although these divides still haunt us to this day, our economy is changing once again. As more and more work goes online and we transition to an information economy, the options available to women are also changing, making the demarcation between “working mom” and “stay-at-home mom” less visible. Arguably, then, we are shifting (even if slowly) back toward the more holistic and unified world of Puritan New England."

4.       A Father's Memoir of Miscarriage: Powerful reflection by Eric Schumacher, "We discussed it and chose silence. We told no one. We feared drawing attention away from their loss onto ours. Others were suffering “worse” than we were. After all, how did the uncomplicated and almost unnoticed loss of an unexpected and unannounced pregnancy compare to their painful and public suffering? They “deserved” the sympathy and the support more than we did. And there it was, that first little fox in the vineyard of grief—comparison. A ruthless enemy, comparison is quick to use your family, your wife, your children, and your friends against you. Comparison sunk its teeth in deeper with each of the three subsequent miscarriages, further stifling my grief... The gospel speaks a better word than the bark of comparison. It speaks of a Father who notices and values the minutia of his world—even the parts that others deem worthless by comparison."

5.       It's Not You: How our Phones are Designed to Be Addicting:  The 3 design elements that make smartphones more like slot machines than tools, explained by Google’s former design ethicist.

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Are You Under or Over the Bible

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Are You Under or Over the Bible

If you asked the difference between Evangelical and Mainline churches in America today, most in the media would frame the difference as a political one. Evangelicals are Republicans, Mainline Christians are Democrats. But this is not the defining issue. The question that is at the crux of the division between Christians lies in the answer to this question: how authoritative is the Bible in your life?

There has never been a generation, never a time or place, where Christians haven’t had to come to grips with whether they will bow the knee to the prevailing norms or whether they will serve God alone. And how do we know what God wants? His word to us. When push comes to shove, when the Bible calls me to believe something or act a certain way, will I believe? Will I obey?

The reason, then, that sexuality has become a litmus test for what “camp” you are in has little to do with political leanings, but rather this question of authority. I truly don’t mean to be glib when I say this (and it may well be good fodder for a post later), but there just isn’t a strong biblical argument for sex outside of a heterosexual marriage to be anything other than sinful. That’s not, of course, to say that some don’t try to make such arguments, but rather that those arguments are inevitably grounded in a progressive ideology.

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