The phrase Imago Dei captures one of the most critical and profound truths about the human experience. We have all been made in the image of God. History reports contention with this idea. The reality that we have all been made in the image of God should have at least been a sufficient discouragement to prevent man’s multiple inhumanities to man throughout the course of human history. Sadly, it has not, but yet the truth that we are made in the image of God, because it is an eternal truth, still persistently and even defiantly remains unchanged. The Imago Dei is indomitable; it is a truth that will not yield. There are implications of understanding oneself as made in the image of God that perhaps shine brightest when the world around us is darkest.

In 1896, George Washington Carver began a new career at what was then called the Tuskegee Institute and is now called Tuskegee University. Imani Perry writes the following in her book Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People:

“Carver also noticed their efforts even in the most modest of circumstances to love with some elegance: whitewashed walls, swept yards and hand stitched textiles. He ached at the depth of their poverty and as a scientist worried about the exhaustion of the soil they worked for a pittance.”

The people among whom Carver lived and worked were unlike Carver in that they had not been afforded the opportunity to pursue education, but they were like Carver in the fact that they were children of slaves and lived in an unkind world. And yet Carver noted among them a feature that some might think strange: dignity. There is a beautiful refrain in the words of a Gospel standard that has been sung in every church I have ever attended. Consideration of its lyrics is apt here.

“This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me.
The world didn’t give it, and the world can’t take it away.”

The sense of dignity and personhood that characterized the lives of people who lived in aching poverty was not given to them by the broader culture but was the result of an awareness that they were made in the image of God, and regardless of who ignored it, they did not forget it. Carver found that even in the midst of poverty and pain, there were people who had indomitable dignity. They worked to make their lives, however humble, more beautiful. Carver found beauty in a strange place.

Carver had not had an easy life. He was born the child of a slave and was removed from the care of his mother as a young child, never to be reunited with her again. Carver did not have conventional social desirability. He did not fit the norms of attractiveness of that era, both in and outside of his community. Carver was the opposite of Booker T. Washington, for whom he worked, in almost every imaginable way. Washington was tall and fairer-skinned. Carver was very short and darker-skinned. Washington is described as having an elegant, mellifluous voice. Carver is described as having a high-pitched, soprano-like voice. Yet Carver maintained an indomitable sense of dignity, lived a full life, and enjoyed his life.

In addition to being a scientist, Carver was an artist. Perry describes Carver as “an art enthusiast” who “painted canvases with large extravagant flowers.” Carver found beauty and joy in the lives of others and in his own life, but more than that, Carver worked to create more beauty and joy in the world for others. Perry writes:

“He didn’t just make paintings however. He made the paint too and not just for his own use but for the surrounding community. Carver called them ‘rich colors for poor people.’ Using the skins of sweet potatoes, he made lavender and orange and from tomato vines and peanuts he made yellows, slates and brown. So that they might be reproduced by anyone who wanted the rich colors.”

To Carver’s mind, even the poor should not be denied a life filled with beauty, joy, and satisfaction. Carver applied his gifts and talents to the task of ensuring that the poor would have a more richly colored life. In this small work Carver did, I can see a great image and imprint of Jesus, who gave the poor a pathway to a more meaningfully rich and richly colored life. Jesus’ first sermon could have been titled “Rich Colors for Poor People”:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,”

Luke 4:18

There were poor people in the life of our Lord. People who were spiritually, socially, economically, and politically destitute. The causes of poverty were myriad. Some were poor because they had invested their lives in the promises of this world and ultimately found it to be bankrupt. Others were poor because their lives and labors were the means by which others had enriched themselves.Whatever the particular circumstances of their poverty, Jesus brought them good news. His coming into the world was the good news they needed.

There were people who could not see any color outside the black, white, and gray of their own captivity in the life of our Lord. They were captive to systems and structures, rituals, rhythms, and relationships that had robbed their lives of joy and meaning. The horizons of their own futures had shrunk. He would free them.

There were those who were blind and oppressed. Blinded by their own ambition, blinded by hatred, blinded by the accumulation of what felt to be unfulfilled promises. There were those who were oppressed by the polytheism of Rome or by ritualism and law-keeping, by their failures and unfulfilled ambitions, or the failures and unfulfilled ambitions of others. Their lives were dark and gray. The Savior had come to give rich colors, a new redeemed vision of life, to poor people.Through Christ, people made in the image of God gain a clearer vision of their Maker and, in seeing Him more clearly, come to see themselves and their world in richer colors.

Commitment to our life with God despite work that often feels meaningless and repetitive, reflects our commitment to serve God faithfully and to serve in ministry fully. Scripture directs us to believe that the monotonous, unthanked, unseen work of ministry is still meaningful.

The Text

1 Kings 18:30–35 (ESV)

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” And all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that had been thrown down.

Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the LORD came, saying, “Israel shall be your name,” and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD. And he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two seahs of seed.

And he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.”

And he said, “Do it a second time.” And they did it a second time. And he said, “Do it a third time.” And they did it a third time. And the water ran around the altar and also filled the trench with water.

We should remember the broader context of Elijah’s ministry. The prophet who now commands water to be poured upon the altar is the same prophet who had earlier declared that the heavens would withhold their rain. Reflecting on this remarkable moment, Dr. Matthew Johnson, whose Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology is from the University of Chicago and who is one of the most thoughtful preaching voices and theological scholars of our day, describes the scene this way:

“When he left, the rain went with him. The storms gathered themselves together and ran off to some lonesome place in the sky. Empty white tufts rose high in the upper atmosphere as worried winds hurriedly pushed them along, lest any errant droplet dare defy the divine decree: no water on the land.

While he was away, the parched earth began to mourn as crops withered, while aborted fruit fell dead from the vine.Formerly fertile fields lay fallow. The once-generous earth turned grudging-hearted and mean as the stubborn soil turned rock hard and fought against the plow.

While he was away, babbling brooks lost their lighthearted laughter and began to weep dust in its place. Tortured tributaries surrendered their free-flowing march toward the sea, and rivers were reduced to mud holes.

While he was away, plush green hills turned brown and forbidding. Lush green grasses turned to straw-like stubble. Emaciated livestock looked to helpless shepherds who, unable to draw water from wells too low and too deep, made their way toward suffering villages and sickly cities. Tensions mounted.”

Against that backdrop, Elijah’s command becomes astonishing.

In a land where every drop of water mattered, the prophet commanded that water be poured over a sacrifice that was to be consumed by fire. The request must have seemed like a strange, irrational, and unnecessary use of an exceedingly rare resource.

Yet perhaps even more scarce than water during the drought was the presence of sincere, faith-driven devotion among the Lord’s people.

The result of the scene on Mount Carmel would be the reunification of God with His people, but before the miraculous fire falls, we should not overlook the scene that reminds us that our life with God is made up of both the miraculous and the monotonous. We should not miss the example and the wisdom of the water-pouring work.

1. We Need to Be Freed from the Trap of Expecting Instantaneous Results

Latency is the time delay between an action and its corresponding response within a system. Our contemporary culture is committed to eradicating latency; however, latency in our relationship with God is a feature, not a bug.

They poured the water again and again and again, and nothing happened. The fire did not fall until they poured the water, yet they poured the water multiple times before the fire fell.

2. We Need to Be Freed from the Trap of Conflating Recognition with Effectiveness

We do not know who the people were who poured the water in this passage, but the result of their commitment to heeding God’s instruction through the prophet was that the people were drawn back to God.

Even when our efforts go seemingly unrecognized, we need to pour the water.

3. We Need to Attend to the Witness of Our History of Men and Women Who Were Faithful Water-Pourers

I am grateful for the African American Christian tradition that has shaped my faith and history.

We stand in a long line of faithful Christians who served the Kingdom and their communities, often through seemingly mundane and monotonous work. Yet they served faithfully and waited expectantly, pouring water while waiting for fire, not knowing when God would move but having confidence that He would.

They did not know when God would carry them through, but they did not allow the length of their wait to disrupt their confidence in God’s ability. They were pouring the water while waiting for fire.

They committed themselves to the difficult, laborious, monotonous, unglamorous, unthanked, repetitive work of pouring the water. Many of them went to their graves unknown, but they died in the Lord. Now they rest from their labors, and their works follow them.

But what of our work?

We must decide how we will navigate the wait and how we will do the work before us. We must determine whether our waiting on God will demonstrate that we trust He will come.

In the meantime, we must pour the water.

Clark and His Mother

C.A.W. Clark, born in 1914, was preaching from Psalm 66:1–4 a sermon entitled Selah. This sermon is one of his masterworks. It is about the divine function of God-ordained pauses in the lives of believers. He exhorts his listeners to realize that pauses are not places of divine abandonment and to recognize that God is at work even in periods of pause and transition. As he is closing the sermon, Clark shifts his focus from navigating time to expecting eternity, thereby reminding those gathered under the sound of his preaching of the distinctions between this world and the world to come.

He reflects:

“...In this world, when you stop at the selah of sorrow, you know there’ll be more sorrow. When you stop at the selah of error, you know there’ll be more error. When you stop at the selah of mistakes, there’ll be more mistakes. When you stop at the selah of ups and downs, there’ll be more ups and downs. But I think I ought to tell you that by and by the morning comes.

Well, my brothers and sisters, as I hurried to the close, when I was at Clarence, Louisiana, out on the farm—yeah, my parents were not farmers. We were tenants. That’s what we were.

And one morning we were in the field, and a white man rode up on a horse. I don’t know what he said to Mama, but when he rode off, Mama leaned on her hoe handle, and I heard her say,

‘Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world.’

I don’t know how you feel about it, but soon I will be done with the troubles of the world. One of these mornings, or one of these evenings, when I have fought a good fight, when I have kept the faith and finished my course, I’m going down to the River Jordan in the morning.

You’ll hear me say, ‘Glory, glory, glory! Hallelujah! Since I laid my burdens down.’“

C.A.W. Clark pastored a congregation of more than 5,000 during his fifty-eight-year tenure as pastor of Good Street Baptist Church in Dallas. He was a highly sought-after revivalist and a highly revered and respected preacher during his lifetime. He was a friend and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but his experience in the fields of Clarence, Louisiana, never left his mind.

Yet he does not come forth from the trauma of poverty, anguish, and insecurity empty-handed.

His faith drives his thinking to arrive at two important conclusions.

First, there is sorrow in life, but there is more to life than sorrow.

Secondly, this life is not all there is for believers. We have eternity, eternal joy, and eternal peace to look forward to.

Jackson and His Father

Before his death, J. H. Jackson, born in 1900, would become the senior pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, a church of more than 20,000 members, and serve as the longest-tenured president of the oldest and largest African American Baptist convention. He was raised in poverty in the Mississippi Delta.

Jackson shares a vignette from his childhood that is both small and big enough to contain an ocean of sorrow:

“We were very poor. I saw my father lead his mules away and come back with just the bridles.”

I read that line in a recent biography of Jackson.

I could not stop thinking about how that walk must have felt for Jackson’s father.

I wonder if he knew his son had seen it all.

Jackson would come to historic, national, and international prominence before the end of his life, but the dirt of the fields had been under his nails.

What he saw there never left his mind.

Me and My People

My grandmother and her siblings grew up in the fields, picking cotton alongside their parents for meager wages or working in their family garden for their own food.

There is an expression I heard the elders use to describe the endless work to which they were subjected by necessity. It captures the tension between being exhausted and never having the satisfaction that the task was complete.

“Sometimes all God gives you at the end of your row is another one.”

One of the greatest challenges to a life of faith is holding fast to the truth that God is good, loving, and faithful in the midst of seemingly ceaseless and often monotonous work. We envision something greater, grander, and, more importantly, easier than the field.

Painful, persistent, and systemic injustice are as much a part of the image of the field in the African American imagination and experience as the soil itself. The field conjures the experience of harrowing trauma, and yet faith could be found there, and it survived. Faith, sincere conversion, the experience of redemption, and the reality of eternity reminded a generation who lived in the midst of the flames that though their wounds were fresh and many, their wounds—their wounding—would not be eternal.

Soon they would be done with the troubles of the world.

The fields remind us of the unavoidability of unequal outcomes, that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. We are often left holding bridles without mules, often trying and often failing in our trying. Yet God, who is good when our circumstances are not, enables us to endure the failure of our last row and empowers us to try again in the next one.

Lord, continue to give us strength for today and hope for tomorrow.

Flannery O’Connor is coy and complicated.

Maybe more than any other writer, I read her work on tenterhooks, waiting for the turn, poring over her phrasing and use of illustration and metaphor, dissecting what she said and trying to decipher what she may have meant.O’Connor’s use of language reflects a dynamic present in the worlds she constructs. Truth, light, and hope may seem faint in a fallen, broken, and morally complicated universe, but they are real and perceptible. Similarly, falsehood, deception, and despair may seem ubiquitous, but they are not ultimate.I find myself constantly in a kind of middle while reading her work—between the outcome I want and the one before me.

Highly Valued Coffee, Dirty Water

Some years ago, I was working on a project that required me to research the history of coffee. Most historians agree that coffee was discovered in or around modern-day Ethiopia. Ethiopia in particular, and Africa in general, continue to occupy a meaningful place in coffee culture.Some of the most prized and increasingly rare coffees in the world come from Ethiopia. One of them is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.This variety of coffee is highly sought after, fairly expensive, and increasingly rare because of instability in global trade and climate.

Yet there is an irony that reflects the uneven mixture of reality and expectation that characterizes life writ large.Because of systemic poverty and governmental instability, many of the people who grow the coffee so treasured by the rest of the world do not have clean water with which to brew it themselves.In the place where coffee may have been discovered and where some of the most sought after coffee in the world is being grown, that highly valued coffee is often mixed with dirty water.

O’Connor’s Mixed World

O’Connor’s writing reflects the mixed nature of the human experience.Joy and sorrow are both distinct and inseparably intermingled. There are moments in life when finding the seam that separates them is nearly impossible.O’Connor presents the world as mixed and draws characters who are as mixed as the world around them.

Tom Shiflet in The Life You Save May Be Your Own trumpets his “moral insight” but becomes a clear exemplar of moral blindness. He swindles a family out of their automobile and yet feels morally obligated to pick up a hitchhiker.There is a subtle but undeniable theological undercurrent in O’Connor’s writing. The conditions of the narrative universe that the characters occupy are beyond their control, but within that universe they still have choices.Furthermore, it is possible to live in a morally and existentially mixed world filled with mixed moments and still make morally consistent choices.

Ezra’s Mixed Moment

The Book of Ezra records a mixed moment.

“But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy.”
— Ezra 3:12

The generation who had seen Solomon’s temple wept when they saw the new one.Perhaps the emotional release of surviving exile and seeing their sacred community restored lead to their being overcome with joy. Or perhaps they recognized that what once had been was gone forever, what had been rebuilt was much smaller and that drove them to overwhelming sadness .Further complexifying the moment was the fact that shouts of joy were mixed with weeping.

Another generation had arisen for whom this could only be understood as triumph. This was the high watermark of their lives, and their celebration, though in close proximity, was undeterred by the sorrow of others.Yet both generations stood together as the people of God.Whether their response was joy or sorrow, the proper place for it was within the life of the covenant community.The disappointments of the disappointed were not grounds for abandoning God.The celebrations of the joyful belonged not to private triumph but to public worship.

The Christian Life Is Mixed

Ezra tells us that the people could not distinguish the sound of joyful shouting from the sound of weeping.The moment was mixed.That reality is not confined to this scene in Israel’s history. It is the ordinary condition of the people of God.Every congregation contains neighbors experiencing the height of joy and the depth of sorrow at the same time.

In some congregation someone is celebrating the birth of a child and they are sitting next to someone who just buried a parent. Someone is beginning a new chapter while another is grieving the end of one. The church has always sounded like both rejoicing and lament.Perhaps it always should. This mixed picture becomes an image of both our individual lives and our common life together. We experience joy and sorrow simultaneously while making the choice to remain together—with one another and with God.

Sometime ago I was invited to speak to a group of fairly prominent Christians in one of my favorite cities, Charleston, South Carolina.

I was overjoyed to receive the invitation. Charleston is one of my favorite cities. I have a complicated relationship with the South and what it means to be a Southerner. Some corners of its history are truly heinous and loudly testify to the depths of man’s inhumanity to man. To be Southern and understand the history of the South is to be haunted in equal measure by beauty and dread.

I have never lived anywhere else. Yet I am routinely told, with either suspicion or relief:

“You don’t sound like you are from here.”

The bifurcation in those reactions perfectly mirrors the bifurcation I feel about being in and being from the South.

Charleston, in many ways, is a quintessentially Southern city. It is a confluence of cultures, histories, and cuisines. Charleston is scenic and architecturally striking.Charleston is the best of the good and the bad.

Before receiving this invitation, I had only been there once, but I was captivated by it and eagerly looked forward to returning. I had great expectations for what could come from the trip. Before my visit was over, I would meet a range of people from some of the finest colleges and universities in and around Charleston.

This was meaningful.

There were people in the crowd I was invited to speak to who possessed the resources and relationships to help advance a growing interest of mine: teaching, lecturing, and preaching in the academy.

It is important for me to say that my growing interest in the academy is not something I view as coming at the expense of my engagement with and calling to pastoral ministry. I am grateful for and humbled by the opportunity to serve where I serve. Increasingly, I view the academic work I have been able to do as an ideal accompaniment to pastoral ministry rather than a replacement for it.

I found it enriching to lecture on the New Testament from an academic perspective with the purpose of enlarging historical understanding and contemporary relevance and then to teach from that same text from a theological perspective with the purpose of spiritual formation.

As fate, or perhaps Providence, would have it, however, it has never been more difficult to make inroads into the academy. There are fewer jobs overall, and there is stiff competition for those positions from people infinitely more qualified and experienced than I am.

I have an unfortunate condition: the things I want are almost always endangered.

My presentation did not yield the results I hoped for. It did not go badly. In some ways, my memory of the experience would be easier to navigate emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually if it had gone badly rather than well, but apparently not well enough.

The “Silver Medal Effect” is a phrase from psychology and behavioral economics that explains why silver medalists often express higher rates of dissatisfaction than bronze medalists. Scientifically speaking, being almost good enough to win gold is harder than barely making the podium.

Life and ministry both have their share of silver medal moments.

I found myself in an undesirable emotional state and yet in one of my favorite cities. I decided to go out for a meal. How and where I chose to eat is much more involved than we have the time or space to explore in sufficient detail here, but I eventually found myself having lunch at Amen Street in downtown Charleston.

My waiter took my order and asked what brought me to town. The wound of my silver medal finish was still fresh. I hoped for nothing more than a polite but ultimately unimportant conversation.

The very opposite took place.

I explained what brought me to Charleston, confident that my explanation would extinguish any interest in further conversation. After all, who wants to talk to a preacher and aspiring scholar after a rousing silver medal presentation?

My waiter did.

Soon he was asking about the title of my talk, my thesis, and what led me to my conclusion. Surely, I thought, this was nothing more than divine punishment. I was Prometheus. I had been too vain, too ambitious, too impatient. This waiter was the eagle divinely appointed to punish me again and bring to my remembrance the great depth and high cost of my failure.

I patiently, though begrudgingly, shared a brief overview of my talk and answered each of my waiter’s questions. Then came a pause.

It was short, but long enough for me to hope that it was not merely a pause but the beginning of a much longer silence, one that would allow more distance between me and what had gone not badly but decidedly not as well as I had hoped.

Then my waiter, apparently unwilling to let the silence linger too long, asked the fateful question:

“How did it go?”

Why?

I thought.

My “why,” however, was not merely directed toward my waiter. It was for God. Why had He allowed this to happen?

Some important considerations are necessary here. First, when I received the invitation, I was certain that God, in His infinite wisdom, had ordained it and obviously intended it for the best possible outcome from my perspective. After all, God knew how much I had enjoyed my first trip to Charleston. God knew about my growing passion for the academy. God knew about the resources and relationships possessed by the people who invited me and how much they could potentially do to speed me toward my desired destination.

Yet an all-knowing, infinitely loving God with a perfect will had allowed me to have this silver medal finish. Naturally, I felt I had warrant to ask why.

Looking back on this episode now, with the clarity that only hindsight can provide, I see that my theological framework still needed more work.

“Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?”
— Job 2:10

I said to my waiter, the eagle who had surely come to inflict further suffering upon the suffering:

“Not as well as I hoped.”

Then my waiter said something that changed everything.

“Could it be possible that you came to Charleston to share that word with me? I really needed to hear what you had to say.”

I had a friend once, a much older pastor, who gave me a piece of wisdom I have never forgotten:

“Sometimes we go armed to feed the five thousand when the Lord is sending us to bring one person a sip of water. It is important to remember that one person needs their water just as badly as the five thousand need to be fed.”

I sat there stunned for a moment. Perhaps my waiter was not Prometheus’s eagle sent to torment me but Noah’s dove bringing a small sign of a larger truth.

My earlier talk, which I had been convinced went so poorly, was merely a prelude to the conversation that truly needed to happen with a smaller but no less important audience.

I had gone to Charleston hoping to advance my vocation, but somewhere between disappointment and lunch, God reminded me that ministry is not measured only in crowds, platforms, or outcomes. Sometimes Providence hides its greatest purposes inside conversations we would have overlooked had our ambitions first been satisfied.

I had a good meal at Amen Street, but I learned an even greater lesson.

IV. Why the Generational Distinctiveness of Hebrews Matters

What we encounter in Hebrews is not simply a historical moment, but a pattern that begins in antiquity and extends beyond the early church and into our own time. The challenges of second-generation Christianity are not confined to the ancient world; they reappear wherever a movement matures into a tradition and must learn how to sustain what it has received.Terms like anxiety, imposter syndrome, and gaslighting have become increasingly common in our cultural vocabulary. Contemporary American culture is marked by a growing awareness of mental and emotional health, along with the widespread use of clinical psychological language. This development reflects a broader shift in the kinds of problems that occupy the center of human concern.

In earlier generations, the most pressing threats were external. The specter of war, the realities of violence, and the persistent presence of material deprivation shaped the daily lives of individuals and communities. The soldiers and citizens who lived during the era of Lexington and Concord were more concerned with cannon fire than with gaslighting. Those who lived during the era of the Civil War were more concerned with survival than with imposter syndrome.I do not write this to dismiss the importance of mental and emotional health, but to recognize a historical pattern. As societies become more stable and materially secure, their central challenges often move inward. External threats recede, though they do not disappear, and internal pressures begin to take on greater significance.

This is precisely the dynamic reflected in Hebrews. The Christian community is no longer defined primarily by the threat of destruction from without, but by the risk of deterioration from within. The issue is no longer simply endurance, but perseverance. Not merely survival, but faithfulness over time.My grandparents, born between 1937 and 1940, grew up in conditions of poverty and instability. They understood hunger and material want. They worried about racial violence not as a possibility, but as a reality. Their anxieties were tied to physical survival, food, safety, and the ever present but unpredictable uncertainties of daily life. Their experience of anxiety was not absent, but it was structured by different conditions and different concerns.

If I told my grandmother, who loved me dearly, that I was experiencing anxiety in spite of having enough food to eat and enough money to pay my bills, she would listen patiently and then politely tell me that what I said was nonsense. She would tell me that I needed to do more reading of my bible and cleaning of my home. Modern neuroscience, however, would disagree with my beloved grandmother. Modern neuroscience argues that if one is experiencing psychological pain due to anxiety, the brain registers that psychological pain in much the same way that it would register physical pain, such as a broken arm. Internal problems are not unimportant. Sustaining faith is as needful as cultivating faith.The form of the problems relating to our faith evolve but problems themselves persist no matter how much we advance. After we have built anything we must guard against its erosion.

Hebrews speaks directly into this reality. The problem facing the church and the believer in its pages is not simply opposition, but exhaustion. Not merely pressure, but weariness. It is the slow and often unnoticed process of drift, the gradual loss of urgency, the quiet weakening of conviction. When we are wearied from the journey we must be even more careful not to quit.

“I don’t usually have ‘being tired’ as a theological category—but it is. It really is.”

I am in full agreement with Craddock here.

III. Shaping the Concerns of Second-Generation Christianity Through Hebrews

“How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and attested to by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”
— Hebrews 2:3–4

What emerges in Hebrews is not merely a description of external opposition, but a revealing portrait of the internal condition of the Christian community. The emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and ecclesiological pressures facing the church are shown to be as urgent and serious as the political, religious, and social pressures it has endured.

External persecution has not disappeared; political, social, and economic challenges remain. Yet the character of the struggle has changed. Christianity has become a recognized and established religious tradition. The movement is no longer primarily preoccupied with its existential survival; it is now equally concerned with its internal survival.

Hebrews places us at a moment in which the internal life of the community, its attentiveness, its coherence, and its endurance, has become as significant as the opposition it faces from without. It is a moment that has much in common with many moments in the life of the individual Christian and with the particular moment facing Contemporary Christianity today.

The greatest threat to the Christian faith tradition is not dissolution through violence. It is not the spectacle of martyrdom or the fear of the coliseum that most endangers the faith. Rather, it is the quieter and more insidious danger of lethargy, exhaustion, and disconnection.

Erosion is imperceptibly slow, but its impacts are undeniably dangerous.

An observation attributed to Benjamin Franklin offers a helpful parallel. Upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was asked by one of the many people who had waited long and expected much what kind of government had been formed. His response: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

What Franklin expressed captures the inherent vulnerability of anything that must endure over time. Existence does not guarantee persistence.

The author of Epistle to the Hebrews is, in a way, in conversation with Franklin’s sentiments. Salvation is not achieved by human work, but commitment to the faith must be maintained individually and collectively. Hebrews does not present a theological argument about the loss of salvation, but a pastoral warning about the loss of fidelity.

The writer insists that a community will retain its faith tradition only insofar as it actively preserves it. What is at stake is not merely belief, but continuity.

Hebrews is written for a moment much like our own, when the primary concern is no longer survival in the face of external threat, but sustainability in the face of internal erosion.

The great danger we must overcome is not persecution, but drift.

Not only opposition, but exhaustion.

II. Defining Second-Generation Christianity

“Therefore, we must pay close attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by the angels proved to be reliable, every transgression or disobedience received just retribution.”
— Hebrews 2:1–2

As we come to Hebrews, we find that Christianity has matured from being an insurgent movement to being an established tradition. Christianity has developed from its nascent stage around Jerusalem to a globally present religious identity. A great deal of time has passed between the first generation of Christianity and the second generation of Christianity.

First-generation Christianity can be understood as the initial movement of the faith, shaped directly by the ministry of Jesus and the testimony of eyewitnesses (the apostles). It is marked by rapid expansion, strong communal identity, and a primary focus on survival amid external pressures such as persecution and social opposition.

Second-generation Christianity then refers to the phase in which the faith has moved beyond the original eyewitnesses and become an established tradition, received and transmitted by those who did not directly encounter Christ. It is marked by the need to preserve teaching, sustain community identity, and address internal challenges such as doctrinal drift, spiritual fatigue, and disengagement.

The term second-generation Christianity is appropriate because it captures this historical and theological transition from a movement defined by direct witness and external struggle to one defined by inheritance, continuity, and the internal work of maintaining faithfulness over time. Christians continue to face a variety of problems, among them political, social, and economic persecution. Over the preceding generation, Christianity had been able to grow in spite of those problems, but as we come to Hebrews, a new problem has introduced a new threat.

Hebrews reflects the way in which the challenges facing Christians during this moment have not only multiplied but evolved. Old challenges remain, but new challenges have developed and bring us into conversation with a particular set of problems faced by second-generation Christianity. This transition marks a shift in the nature of the church’s primary struggle. The central issue is no longer simply external opposition, but the internal challenge of remaining faithful over time, of resisting drift, fatigue, and gradual disengagement.

Henry Ward Beecher, at one point the most well-known preacher in America, is quoted as saying:

“It’s not the work which kills people, it’s the worry.

It’s not the revolution that destroys machinery; it’s the friction.”

Hebrews is in conversation with the worry and the friction. The Christians to whom this letter is addressed have not suffered a radically destabilizing catastrophe. Their problem seems to be the gradual erosion of confidence in the promises of God and the presence of God. It is easy to overlook the friction until it has destroyed us completely. The erosion of our spiritual lives happens quietly. We may not notice the slow hampering our devotion and the cooling of the flames of spiritual passion until after much of the damage is done.

We are wrong to believe that cooling devotion is not as significant a problem as doctrinal error. If we train all of our attention on the dangers that motivated devils pose to the collective faith and the individual Christian, we could be at risk of overlooking the danger of unmotivated saints.

Therefore, we must pay close attention to what we have heard.

The Weighty Letter

I taught a New Testament Survey course this semester. My lecture on the Book of Hebrews was centrally focused on the way in which the Book of Hebrews is helpful in helping us to both frame the context of second-generation Christianity in the ancient world and understand its distinctive challenges. I began my lecture with a clip from a sermon Dr. Fred Craddock preached from the Book of Hebrews, “Great Cloud of Witnesses.” Fred Craddock offers us some important and particularly helpful pieces of our framework for understanding Hebrews historically and for understanding Hebrews contextually. Craddock and I share some theological differences, but in spite of them, he is one of my favorite preachers. Here is what he said:

“I imagined that different letters in the New Testament were sent with different degrees of haste to those who were to receive them. Paul wrote an angry letter to the church at Corinth, but I would imagine it lay on the table for several days. It’s one thing to write a letter like that; it’s something else to mail it. We all have to write those letters—everybody here writes letters like that—but do we mail them? We don’t always mail them.

First Thessalonians consists almost entirely of prayers, songs, confessions, and words of praise, and I’m sure when Paul mailed that one, he said to the postman, “Just as long as it gets there by Sunday—they want to use that.”

Philemon—when he wrote that brief letter to Philemon and Archippus and Apphia and those in the church in their house—when he handed it to his friend and brother, the former slave Onesimus, he probably said, “I want Philemon and Apphia and Archippus and the church there to have this.” “Well, I’ll mail it immediately.” “No, I don’t want you to mail it—I want you to take it. It’ll get there quicker. I want you to take it.”

Jude—I don’t know what the writer thought, but if it never got there, it wouldn’t hurt a lot.”

For the record Craddock and I have some particular disagreement around Jude’s importance. I am sure to be fair he is being a bit glib but perhaps a bit too glib however but I will state my objections

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV.

Another victory for historically orthodox biblically conservative Biblical interpretation but perhaps that is not the only battle we are fighting. Craddock continues:

“Hebrews—very heavy, very ponderous. Put it on the scales—took three extra stamps. This is heavy. But even though it costs a lot, I’m sure it was stamped by the writer on the outside of the folder: “Send it away—special delivery, overnight mail, Federal Express—get it there.” And the moment you open it up, you know why. It’s filled with expressions of urgency.

“Hold on.” How many times in the book does the writer say, “Hold on. Don’t fall back. Don’t shrink back. Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Lift your drooping hands and knees. Stir up each other. Encourage each other. Don’t become discouraged. Don’t stop going to your assemblies and worship services.”

All the way through are those words, because the writer—a pastor—is trying to revive a church.

What’s wrong with the church?

If you read the letter, it’s obviously a church that once was full of love and fellowship, enjoyed each other, and was very busy. They took delight in serving each other, attending to the needs of all the saints, practicing hospitality, and helping the world around them. But it’s not true anymore. Between that wonderful time and the present time falls the shadow of something dreadfully fatal.

What’s wrong?

If you read the letter, there seems to be some heresy in the church. There are some who are worshiping angels—obviously from chapter one. And I can understand that. Angels are very attractive. Angels are not born in a manger. Angels are not poor. Angels don’t suffer. Angels are not rejected, denied, or betrayed. Angels don’t carry crosses. Angels don’t have scars. “Why are we following Jesus? Let’s pick ourselves up an angel and go with that.” I can understand that.

But I don’t think the answer to the despair and discouragement—the approaching death of this church—is to be found in the heresy, because every church has a little heresy. If churches died because they had a little weird doctrine, none of you would be here. All of our churches would be gone. Just ask around your friends and say, “Would you tell me what you really believe?” It’s amazing.

What are you doing in this church? “I didn’t kill it—I didn’t do it.”

Craddock plays a little fast and loose with the importance of doctrinal fidelity for my taste. Again, he is probably being glib, and perhaps I am being critical. Having said that, I wholeheartedly believe and affirm that doctrinal fidelity is critically important for the formation, development, and sustainability of a healthy, Christ-centered, God-glorifying church. I believe that this is true, has always been true, and will always be true. I believe that we should be, as the Reformers have said, semper reformanda, always reforming, working to ensure that our study, our preaching, and our living are in alignment with Scripture, and that Scripture is faithfully interpreted, applied, and lived out.

You can make the case that the spiritual condition of the church that the writer of Hebrews is addressing could be the result of laxity and misunderstanding in their doctrine. If so, a return to effective, sound, historically orthodox biblical teaching and preaching is, in fact, in order. We should not be worshiping angels or spiritual ancestors; Christ alone is worthy of our worship. Only He lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, and only through believing in Him can we be saved. If doctrinal fidelity is the problem, then doctrinal fidelity is the answer, ok? But what if doctrinal fidelity is not our only problem? Craddock continues:

“The old life is looking pretty good right now. The former life—before I was a Christian—is beginning to look a little better every day. And that’s understandable. Every one of us has a time like that, because in becoming a Christian, my faith doesn’t just solve problems—it creates new problems, new tensions, new difficulties, new burdens to bear. Nobody told me that. “Just believe,” they said—and I did. And now I carry this.

So the old life is beginning to look pretty good. But that’s not killing a church, because any church that comes together once a week can’t be killed by the old life. Every time I’m at the altar and some man or woman meets the bread and cup in the name of Christ and says, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you,” the rest of the world just shrinks away—stale, flat, tasteless, of no value.

That’s not it.

Persecution? Sure, there’s persecution. “You haven’t resisted unto blood,” he says, “but you’ve had your property confiscated. You’ve suffered social abuse and ostracism.” Sure, it’s painful and suffering. But why isn’t that making the church stronger?

I used to lecture that one thing that will make a church strong and galvanized as a unit is persecution. People who visit places like Poland, East Germany, and Russia come back almost inevitably amazed at the strength of the Christian people. Why? Because they’re not a bunch of “fat cats.”

So why isn’t it strengthening the church? I don’t think that’s it.

It may be a theological problem. It could be that their pastors and Sunday school classes haven’t prepared them theologically for the life before them—that they’re finding something out of joint, some radical disjuncture that they’re not able to put into perspective.

I know it’s easy enough—whenever suffering and pain and persecution follow disloyalty and infidelity, then the word is “repent, straighten up, get with it.” But if suffering and pain and abuse follow loyalty and fidelity—now what?

Maybe that’s it.

“I am the vine, and my Father is the vine dresser.” And the vine dresser comes into the vineyard with the great big hooked knife and starts cutting away at the vines. Some are cut off, and some are cut back. But if you’re being cut, you don’t know whether you’re being cut off or cut back—the pain is the same.

Am I being pruned so I’ll be more fruitful, or am I being cut off to be burned because I am fruitless?

People who experience the knife of God don’t know what it is.

Maybe that’s it.

I don’t know.

I do know that the church is tired.

I don’t usually have “being tired” as a theological category—but it is. It really is.

I quite simply cannot put that last sentence out of my mind. What Craddock said and what the writer of Hebrews says, both have much to say to us today.

The Book of Hebrews is often approached as a dense and highly structured theological text, but at its core, it is a deeply pastoral response to a community in crisis. This is not merely a crisis defined by persecution or external opposition, but one shaped by something quieter and more difficult to diagnose. In this essay, I explore the challenges facing what we might call second-generation Christianity—a moment in which the faith has moved from movement to tradition, from immediacy to inheritance. Drawing on Hebrews and the reflections of Fred Craddock, I argue that the greatest threat to the church is not opposition, but exhaustion. What happens when the urgency that once sustained a movement begins to fade? What happens when a community is no longer fighting to survive, but struggling to sustain what it has received? Hebrews speaks directly into that moment, offering both warning and insight. This series traces that tension and reflects on why it remains so relevant for contemporary Christianity today.

Questions This Series Seeks to Answer

1. What distinguishes first-generation Christianity from second-generation Christianity and what does that have to do with us?

2. Why does Hebrews frame the central threat to the church as drift rather than persecution?

3. How does the problem of exhaustion in Hebrews illuminate the challenges facing contemporary Christianity today?

I have been blessed with an extraordinary mentor who regularly dispenses these pearls of wisdom and insists in the subsequent conversation that they are really not all that profound. Within the canon of what he has shared with me over the years is an insight that I have thought about every day since he shared it. I’ve written about it before, but it bears repeating.

“We often make the mistake of assuming only God speaks to us, but Satan speaks to us, our ego speaks to us, our conscience speaks to us, the culture around us speaks to us, and all of these voices can be louder than God.”

With my mentor’s words as the backdrop, I can confidently say I heard something. and I want to make the claim for why I believe what I heard was God.I was getting ready to give a lecture one morning recently. I’m not a morning person, and so I have to get up really early to get anywhere on time in the morning. I need time to fret, regret, and get dressed.

It happened; this was not the voice but the thing that happens to me at some point every morning after fretting and regretting, but before I get fully dressed.It happened while I was going through my obligatory routine; finding something to wear that would read as being academically serious to my students, but not overly serious. Something that would articulate to my colleagues at the college that I take my job seriously but not myself too seriously.I put together the wardrobe that I thought would do the trick.

Then it happened.

The deluge of all that I needed to do that day and ultimately that week, the cascade of how my goals, plans, and ambitions for the week fit into my larger vocational and academic plans.

How well is the sermon coming along?
Am I prepared for my lecture?
What about Bible study?
Who do I need to call today?

This is part of my morning routine.

I spend some time each morning reflecting on the incredible things that God has enabled me to do thus far in my life and career and feel a sense of gratitude.Then, after I feel that sense of gratitude, comes another feeling.I imagine it is how one feels when they have begun another day of a long mountain climb, the sense that there is much more mountain before them than behind them. Sometimes that feeling can be overwhelming.I stood there for a moment between two states of readiness. And that is when I heard something.It was between something I heard and something I felt; it was something I realized.

It’s not going away.

At that moment, I realized that since my grandmother’s passing nearly a year ago, I had been relentlessly busying myself.I realized that I had unwittingly placed myself in a cycle of obligation and accomplishment to distance myself from my otherwise overwhelming grief.I had done this unconsciously, of course, noticing over time that if I was writing, or reading, or working toward some goal that my time would be occupied with that. I was as if I was working to fend off a swelling tide of grief armed with little more than a tea cup. To be sure I had been fortunate in the preceding few months to reach some significant vocational milestones.I was hard at work trying to replace what I lost with new accomplishments. I was working hard but what I was doing wasn’t working.

Accomplishment is an insufficient sedative for grief.

In reality there is no sedative for grief.Grief is more than pain that can be numbed and forgotten.Grief is a mountain that cannot be moved; we can only seek to navigate it, careful step by careful step.Sometimes the steps are slippery. Sometimes the spaces between the steps are so long that for a moment you feel lost and forget you are on a larger journey.

Using my mentor’s wisdom as a heuristic, I asked myself whose voice it was that I heard.

I asked myself if it could have been the evil one tempting me to despair, reminding me of the yawning and gnawing chasm in my life where my grandmother’s presence and laughter used to be.It was possible, but when I heard that it wasn’t going away, I was not moved to despair or doubt.

Could it have been my ego?In this case, I thought that was doubtful. When we lose someone who had so much to do with making us who we are, we imagine a version of ourselves that would exist if that person were still here.Confronting the reality that the grief would not go away also meant confronting the reality that the better version of myself that I imagined I would be if my grandmother were still here was nothing more than my imagination.

I was certain that it was not the culture.Ours is a culture of remedies, solutions, processes, and methods of optimization.What I was feeling could not be easily remedied, processed, or optimized. So I stood for a moment, trying to make sense of what I am fairly certain was the Lord speaking, wondering how I might understand and live in the light of this insight.

Then it hit me.

In my trying to run away from my sense of loss, perhaps I was also running away from the comfort that could be found in the reality that Christ is alongside the wounded and the suffering.At the risk of reusing another quote, Aeschylus wrote:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

That is grief.

Pain which cannot forget.

A wound that seems it will never heal, that we are confronted with by every movement; and yet our healer is greater than any wounds that remain in the place of what we lose.We have not been promised lives without heartbreak, but we have been promised the presence of God who is near to the brokenhearted.Accomplishment is an insufficient salve for the wound of grief, but there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.

The grief is not going away, but neither is God.

In 1951, at the annual session of the National Baptist Convention USA, Rev. Joseph H. Jackson rose to deliver what had become one of the most anticipated moments of the gathering.

Jackson was already a towering figure—pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, a congregation that would grow to nearly 20,000 members under his leadership. By the time of his death in 1990, he would be known, with a mix of reverence and critique, as “The Negro Pope.”

He was a complicated man, but even his detractors agreed on one thing:

He could preach.

That day, tens of thousands waited.

And then, he read a letter.

The Letter

The letter was written decades earlier—likely in 1907—by three unnamed women from Little Rock, Arkansas. Sent through a delegate to the Convention, it read:

“Dear Brethren, in spite of the recent overflow of disasters, lynchings and the burning of that man in Texarkana, we are thankful to say through the kindness of Divine providence we are able… to send to you $15.00 to help serve the cause of missions in Africa…”

When Jackson finished, he paused and said simply:

“That is the story of the National Baptist Convention.”

He was right.

But the letter is more than a denominational artifact. It functions more like a fragment of the Rosetta Stone—not because it tells us everything, but because it gives us enough to begin translating a world that might otherwise remain opaque.

The Rosetta Stone did not explain all of ancient Egypt.
What it did was far more important: it made interpretation possible.

This letter does the same.

Three Phrases. One World.

If we read it closely, three phrases become our points of translation:

• “The recent overflow of disasters”

• “The kindness of Divine providence”

• “The cause of missions in Africa”

Each phrase is not just descriptive—it is interpretive.

Each one helps us decipher the language, theology, and lived reality of Black Baptist life in the early twentieth century.

I. “The Recent Overflow of Disasters”

The twentieth century did not begin gently for African Americans.

Slavery had ended—but its consequences had not. The wounds were not healed before new ones were opened. The same forces that had shaped the nation’s economy and social order did not disappear; they adapted.

Racial terror, economic exclusion, and political betrayal formed the backdrop of Black life.

We often point to events like the Red Summer as turning points—and they were—but this letter helps us translate something we might otherwise miss:

Violence was not episodic. It was ambient.

The phrase “overflow of disasters” names a condition, not a moment—a world in which instability and danger were ever-present realities.

Even after emancipation, freedom was partial.

As Frederick Douglass described it, it was “freedom to hunger.”
Later, Martin Luther King Jr. would call it “freedom and famine at the same time.”

And yet—

They worshipped .
They worked.
They wrote.

In a world defined by precarity, even small acts of agency carried disproportionate weight.

Their very existence was an act of resistance and yet they did more than exist.

They gave

The Institutional Grammar of Black Life

The letter begins with individuals—three unnamed women whose lives were shaped by instability, violence, and uncertainty.

Uncertainty, but critically not inaction

Their decision to give, modest in amount but profound in meaning, represents the first layer of interpretation. If this letter is our Rosetta Stone, then the individual is the first impression and the most intimate level at which this chapter of Black Christian life can be read.

But the letter does not remain at the level of the individual.

From Individual → Church → Institution

Their gift moves outward into the life of the church.

The Black Baptist church in the twentieth century was not merely a site of worship; it was the primary arena in which faith was practiced, identity was formed, and dignity was affirmed. Within the church, theological language—providence, suffering, hope, endurance—was not only taught.

It was embodied.

Churches gathered scattered individuals and formed them into a people. They translated private belief into shared conviction.

If the individual is the first impression, the church is the second.

But even the church was not the final horizon.

The Institutional Voice

The movement from individual to church culminates in the institution—most clearly represented by the National Baptist Convention USA.

The Convention functioned as the institutional expression of the ambitions, convictions, and commitments of thousands of Black Christians and their churches across the country.

If the letter is our Rosetta Stone, then the Convention is part of the language it helps us decode.

Through it, we see how Black Baptist life operated at scale:

• A theological tradition shaped by suffering, survival, and hope

• A social network connecting congregations across distance

• An educational system forming leaders

• A political force mobilizing communities toward justice

The Convention did not create these impulses. It organized them.

It gathered scattered energy and gave it coherence, direction, and reach. In a society that persistently fragmented Black personhood, the Convention provided something essential a galvanizing function that allowed 20th Century African American Christianity from individual voice to institutional vision. This institutional vision provide a landing upon which a community of people could stand and together imagine more than mere survival .

II. “The Kindness of Divine Providence”

This phrase is perhaps the most difficult to translate.

How do you speak of “kindness” in a world marked by lynching?

How do you affirm providence in the presence of terror?

To modern readers, this can feel like contradiction.

But the problem is not the text.

The problem is our lack of fluency.

Within the theological language of the Black Baptist tradition, this statement is neither naïve nor evasive. It is formed—shaped by preaching, Scripture, and a long history of suffering and survival.

The women who wrote this letter lived within what W. E. B. Du Bois called a “double consciousness.”

They were both insiders and outsiders.
Citizens and exiles.

And yet, they spoke of providence.

To translate this rightly is to understand:

• Suffering was not evidence of God’s absence

• God’s presence was not dependent on the absence of suffering

Divine providence does not deny tragedy.
It reframes it.

This is lived theology—formed in the crucible of history.

III. “The Cause of Missions in Africa”

The letter turns outward giving voice to Godly ambition that stretched beyond the contemporary situation of its readers - to Africa.

At precisely the moment when these women are naming disaster and affirming providence, they also commit themselves to a global mission.

Through the lens of our Rosetta Stone, this too becomes legible.

To support missions to Africa was not merely religious—it was corrective:

• A rejection of cultural superiority

• A reimagining of global Christianity

• An act of Christian solidarity

Their giving reflects a broader vision—one in which Black identity was not confined to the American experience, but connected to a global story.

Their $15.00 was not just an offering.
It was a declaration.

What This Letter Still Teaches Us

This letter is small.

But it is not insignificant.

It teaches us:

• Suffering does not eliminate faith—it reshapes it

• Faith does not remain private—it organizes communities

• Communities do not remain local—they imagine the world

It also reminds us that history is not exclusively preserved not in grand movements and canons, but it can also be found in fragments.

History can be found In small letters written by people facing and fighting large battles

Great meaning can be found in In small gestures of kindness by people with meager means but boundless generosity

Purpose can be shaped by quiet choices made amidst the cacophony of life

Through these fragments, a world we never knew can become more visible and we are able to see our own world and life in it with greater clarity and purpose

I started writing on Substack six years ago, and I have spent much of that time either writing, thinking about writing, or thinking of reasons why I should quit.

Today, I am very glad that I didn’t quit writing.

My Substack has grown pretty considerably over the past few days. I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the first twenty-five subscribers who subscribed before I wrote my first post on Substack. As a result of your support of me as a writer, I continue to be awed by your support.

Perhaps I am unworthy of it, but I am not ungrateful for it.

Then there are the next fifty.

This group came along as I began to find myself more as a writer, a task that is yet ongoing. You all gave me confidence as I was finding my voice, that though I was finding my voice, I had something worth saying.

Ideas that I first wrote during that chapter of Substack have matured and gone on to be published in The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, Plough Magazine, and some other academic publications.

I have learned about writing that it is something of an ongoing battle between two preoccupations. One is the preoccupation with trying to say what you feel, to explore and express your thinking and feeling—the development of your thought and feeling. The other is the preoccupation to matter, to have the sense that your writing is impactful and meaningful to the people that read, and for people to read it.

If I will ever be a writer, it will be because I have readers.

When I have been tempted to give up writing, I have been reminded of your encouragement and put those thoughts aside for a while.

One of the greatest honors we can receive is the news that something we said or did inspired someone to keep going.

You have inspired me to keep going. Thank you.

Finally, to the two hundred or so who represent the newest addition to my readership:

I am honored, awed, and profoundly encouraged by your willingness to support my writing.

I’ve written a little over sixty essays on Substack over the past few years on a range of topics. Some of them are best categorized as theological reflection. Some of them are more historical and cultural analysis. Some of them are pastoral or biographical, and some of them are harder to put into a genre.

What follows is a small selection of essays that, taken together, offer a way into my work. They are not meant to be exhaustive, but representative.

If you are new here, this may serve as a helpful place to begin.

These aren’t my “favorites,” in the same way that those of you who are parents don’t have any favorite children…right?

I hope that you are inspired and encouraged by reading my writing in the same way that I am inspired and encouraged by your reading my writing.

On Substack

A Ministry of Asymmetry
An exploration of how what feels uneven and unexpected in ministry may, in fact, be deeply aligned with the pattern of Christ.

Miles in The Wilderness
A reflection on formation in difficult places, where growth is less about breakthrough and more about endurance, dependence, and time.

The Weight of the World and The Song of a Friend
A meditation on how the voice of a friend helps us carry what we cannot set down.

On The Butter Notes
A brief study on how God refines the composition of our lives through subtle, often unnoticed details.

Life After The Break
A reflection on what happens after something important breaks—the slow, often unclear work of rebuilding meaning and direction.

Epigenetic ‘Nobodiness’
An exploration of how we come to feel invisible—or as though we don’t quite matter—and through the life of two Kings

Outside of Substack

The Killer in Our Choir
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/the-killer-in-our-choir

Weary Pastor Look to The Shepherd
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/dying-batteries-tired-sheep/

Gospel Matriarch Lucie Cambell Looked to God
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/gospel-matriarch-lucie-campbell-looked-to-god/

From Decay to Redemption
https://mds.marshall.edu/sermonstudies/vol8/iss1/4/

Part I: Our Need for God
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” — Jack London

It is easy to spend our time, to fill our time, or to manage our time, but how do we make meaning? We do not know how much time we have, and yet we are responsible for how we live within it. Much of life is devoted to maintenance to health and wellness and the things that are essential to living a healthy life and maintenance is important, but maintenance is not meaning.

Existing is one thing; living is altogether different.

What does it mean to truly use our time?The answer must be found outside of ourselves. In Plain Theology for Plain People, Charles Octavius Boothe writes,

“Before the charge ‘know thyself’ comes the far greater charge know thy God.”

Boothe’s insight is both chronological and existential. We must know God before we can truly know ourselves because God is not merely an external reference point—He is the Creator, the giver of life, and the one in whom our purpose is grounded.

Without the Creator and giver of life, we grasp in the dark to make meaning of life. We are, in a very real sense, a mystery to ourselves. We are prone to self-deception and self-delusion. We struggle to determine meaningful priorities and often confuse activity with significance.

To know God is to be delivered from that confusion.

The pursuit of meaning begins not with introspection, but with revelation. It begins with knowing God.

Part II: The Gift of Others

If knowing God is the foundation of self-understanding, then relationships with others are one of its primary instruments.

The Johari Window is a psychological framework developed in 1955 by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham to help individuals better understand themselves and their relationships with others. It is commonly used in personal development, group dynamics, and leadership training.

At its core, the Johari Window divides self-awareness into four “quadrants”:

Open Area – what is known to both you and others (your public self)
Blind Spot – what others see in you, but you do not see in yourself
Hidden Area – what you know about yourself but keep from others
Unknown Area – what is unknown to both you and others

The model illustrates that self-understanding is not achieved in isolation. Rather, it grows through honest self-reflection, feedback from others, and meaningful relationships. There are aspects of ourselves that remain hidden from our own view—what the model calls “blind spots.” These are traits, tendencies, and patterns that others can see more clearly than we can. This insight is both humbling and helpful.

It is humbling because it confronts the illusion of complete self-knowledge. We are not as transparent to ourselves as we might imagine. But it is helpful because it suggests that growth is possible—not in isolation, but in community. Others help us see what we cannot see, and in doing so, they become participants in our formation.

Yet the Johari Window, valuable as it is, does not stand alone. It finds its fullest meaning when placed alongside our relationship with God.Others can reveal our blind spots, but God reveals our hearts. Others can offer perspective, but God offers truth. Others can help us adjust our behavior, but God transforms our being.There is part of the Johari Window that is called “The Unknown”. God knows the unknown.

Together, these relationships create the conditions for genuine self-understanding. In this way, the pursuit of meaning is not a solitary endeavor; it is relational at its core. We come to understand our lives and how to use them not only through divine revelation, but through the faithful presence of others who help us see ourselves more clearly.

Part III: The Challenge of Contemporary Culture

If our need for God provides the foundation for meaning, and our relationships with others provide the context for growth, then contemporary culture often presents the greatest obstacle to both.

In 1980, biblical scholar Eugene Peterson wrote a book entitled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Peterson describes the land of ancient Palestine as rocky, with only a thin layer of soil covering bedrock. Seeds could sprout quickly, but they could not endure. The soil lacked the depth necessary for sustained growth. What Peterson wrote about ancient Palestine in 1980 serves as a powerful metaphor for our present cultural moment.

We live in a world of thin soil.

Our attention is fragmented, constantly pulled in competing directions by the demands of an attention-driven economy and our desires. Our relationships can be equally numerous and shallow, and our inner lives can become stunted, underdeveloped, and crowded out by noise, distraction, and the relentless pace of modern life.

In such an environment, the pursuit of meaning becomes increasingly difficult. The central insight of Peterson’s book is that depth and growth take time. Depth, growth, and time all seem to be in short supply in contemporary life.

Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, gives us additional context for understanding the challenges of our contemporary moment. Haidt reasons that the replacement of in-person interaction with technology has brought about a generation that is more virtually connected than ever before and yet more relationally and existentially lonely. Reading Haidt helps us to see the way in which distraction and anxiety are fraternal twins—one scattering our outward focus and the other disturbing our inward peace. If we are formed by a culture that undermines depth, distorts priorities, and fragments our attention, we will be malformed and miserable.

We do not know how much time we have, and we are regularly confronted with questions about how we are using our time. But we are not without guidance on how to use it. We are fully known by God, who has made us and calls us to Himself. He speaks and can be heard. He can teach us to number our days if we listen. We have been given the gift of others who can see what we cannot and help us learn what we did not know, even about ourselves.

We live at a challenging moment. The soil is thin and rocky. It is hard to sow meaningful seeds and believe that they will grow.

but we are not alone, and we can make it.

We can use our time.

There was a small sentence that was as much a part of the Easter season as the eggs that we dyed, the eggs that we searched for, or the food we looked forward to eating when the Sunday worship service was over. That small sentence functioned as a coda to nearly everything my grandmother said leading up to Easter. It is a sentence that I fear is disappearing from our lexicon, but a generation heard it, and it will never be far from our minds:

“I know one thing. You better know that Easter speech.”

The Easter speech was a distinctive institution for many of us who grew up in the African American church. Before I learned phrases like spiritual formation and the meaning of words like catechesis, I knew that I “better know” my Easter speech. The tradition of the Easter speech is deep and rich, and though it is mostly a relic of a bygone era today, like much of my past—and much of our past—I understand it now with greater clarity.

What my community, my church, and my family were teaching through the Easter speech was profound. The Easter speech was the point at which generations of young Black Christians began the lifelong work of personally internalizing Christian language, Christian truths, and the eternal significance of the Resurrection. If you could talk, you had an Easter speech. Even the toddlers were required to stand before the gathered family of faith and recite simple phrases like:

“I didn’t come to stay, I just came to say Happy Easter Day.”

My grandparents insisted that their children, grandchildren, and all children in the community learn their Easter speech and commit it to memory. In many ways, it became a foundation for my rhetorical development. It was a requirement and expectation that when one stood to deliver that Easter speech, it was done without notes or visual aids—only what had been internalized. If I learned mine too quickly, my grandmother would require me to learn my sister’s as well.

I can see with great clarity that their intentions went beyond public speaking, rhetorical training, and religious language. Those who had gone before us in their speeches had not just learned Christian language—they believed it. They insisted that their children and their children’s children internalize the truths of the Resurrection. They wanted us to develop a deeper relationship with this crucial part of the Christian story.

It can be reasonably argued that the institution of the Easter speech fits within the rhythms of the largely narrative and oral African American Christian tradition—a tradition that articulated and came to understand the Christian story through story itself and shared the story by telling the story.

It could also be surmised that the Easter speech functioned as a form of grade-level appropriate instruction in rural and under-resourced urban African American congregations that may not have had access to a wide range of academic institutions, tools, and pedagogical techniques. It could be effectively reasoned that, without necessarily knowing pedagogical terminology, these Christian communities were engaging in deeply effective Christian educational practices and processes. I could say much more about the Easter speech as an institution and the ways it speaks to the often overlooked academic, intellectual, and—more importantly—the theological sophistication and conviction of the Black Church and the legacy of the African American Christian tradition.

But all I know is that Easter is coming, and—

You better know that Easter speech.

2 Chronicles 7:14

“...seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways…”

Lent is a season that calls us to pay attention—to our souls, to our habits, and to the quiet ways distance can grow between us and God.

Living in the South during this time of year offers a fitting picture. The pollen is everywhere—both present and approaching. The weather refuses predictability. Within the span of a few days, we can move from winter’s chill to spring’s warmth and back again. For peach farmers, this instability is not merely inconvenient; it is dangerous. Peach trees bloom early, and that early beauty makes them vulnerable. A sudden frost can destroy what was just beginning to grow.

The frost is a danger.

But frost is not only a problem for orchards. It is also a problem for the soul.

There is such a thing as spiritual frost—a quiet settling over the heart. It rarely arrives all at once. Instead, it forms gradually, almost imperceptibly. We begin to drift. Prayer becomes less frequent. Scripture becomes less central. Devotion becomes optional rather than essential. What once felt like life begins to feel like obligation.

Spiritual frost leads to spiritual drift.
And drift, if left unattended, leads to disconnection.

At the center of this condition is often a subtle but powerful force: apathy.

Apathy dulls our desire for God. It shifts our attention away from who God is and toward what we want from Him. Over time, we may find that we are more interested in God’s benefits than in God Himself. This is the quiet intrusion of a consumerist faith—a posture that treats God as a means rather than the end.

And yet, Lent reminds us that diagnosis is not the end of the story.

There is a remedy.

In orchards, farmers take intentional measures to protect their trees. In Chilton County, Alabama, some have burned hay bales between rows of peach trees, creating warmth to push back against the cold. The threat is real, so the response must be deliberate.

So it is with the soul.

The remedy for spiritual frost is repentance.

Repentance is not merely feeling sorry; it is returning. It is the reorientation of the heart toward God. It is a turning away from what has numbed us and a turning toward the One who gives life. It is, as 2 Chronicles 7:14 reminds us, to seek His face and to turn from our ways.

Repentance restores relationship.
It interrupts drift.
It melts the frost.

Lent invites us into this work—not as a burden, but as blessing. It is the season where we name what has grown cold and bring it before God, trusting that He is both willing and able to renew us. May the call to repentance this season rescue our hearts from the frost and bring us back into the warmth of the love and fellowship of Christ.

In recent years, researchers have increasingly noticed a troubling trend: Americans are becoming less happy. According to the annual World Happiness Report produced by the Well-Being Center at the University of Oxford, the United States recently fell out of the top twenty happiest countries for the first time in more than a decade. Surveys show that Americans feel more lonely, more stressed, less supported by friends and family, and less satisfied with their lives.

Many observers believe that our understanding of success may be part of the problem.

Writer Sahil Bloom attempts to address this issue in his book The Five Types of Wealth. Bloom argues that modern culture has adopted a narrow definition of wealth—one focused almost entirely on money. In response, he proposes that a truly fulfilling life requires cultivating five forms of wealth:

1. Time Wealth

2. Social Wealth

3. Mental Wealth

4. Physical Wealth

5. Financial Wealth

Bloom’s insights are thoughtful and often compelling. Yet Bloom does not write from a Christian perspective. For believers, Scripture must be the ultimate authority for understanding both our lives and the world around us.

When we place Bloom’s ideas in conversation with the Bible, we discover something important: many of his insights are helpful, but the Christian worldview ultimately reframes what wealth really means.

Time Wealth: Our Time Belongs to God

Bloom begins with time wealth, which he defines as the freedom to choose how we spend our time, who we spend it with, and what we prioritize. He argues that many people feel trapped in cycles of busyness—running faster without making meaningful progress.

One of Bloom’s strongest observations is that our time with certain people in our lives is surprisingly limited. Time with parents and siblings declines sharply after childhood. Time with children peaks in their earliest years. Friendships become harder to maintain with age.

His warning is simple but powerful:

The days are long, but the years are short.

Bloom encourages readers to cultivate awareness of time’s value, focus their attention on what matters most, and gain control over how their time is spent.

But this is where the Christian worldview introduces a crucial correction.

Psalm 90:12 declares:

“Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

The biblical perspective differs from Bloom’s in one key respect: we do not ultimately control our time—God does.

Our lives are not possessions that we own; they are gifts that we steward. Our time is not primarily for designing our dream life but for fulfilling God’s purposes. True wisdom comes not from mastering time but from seeking the Lord who gives it.

Christians therefore approach time with three commitments:

• Seek God’s wisdom for how to use it

• Value the relationships God has given us

• Establish priorities rooted in faith, Scripture, and community

Social Wealth: Relationships That Lead Toward God

Bloom’s second category is social wealth, which he defines as the depth of connection with the few people who matter most in our lives.

Modern technology allows us to connect with more people than ever before, yet loneliness has become widespread. Bloom cites research showing that strong relationships are one of the greatest predictors of long-term health and happiness.

The lesson is clear: relationships matter more than achievements.

Yet Bloom leaves one question unanswered:

How do we evaluate which relationships are good for us?

Scripture provides a crucial principle.

Proverbs 12:26 says:

“One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.”

The Bible teaches that relationships are not morally neutral. Our relationships either guide us toward righteousness or lead us away from it.

Christians therefore evaluate relationships differently. We ask questions such as:

• Is this relationship helping me follow God more faithfully?

• Is my example guiding others toward righteousness?

• Are the people in my life drawing me closer to Christ?

Healthy relationships are not simply those that make us feel good; they are those that move us toward God.

Mental Wealth: Curiosity, Growth, and Purpose

Bloom’s third category is mental wealth, which he builds on three pillars: curiosity, growth, and space for reflection.

Curiosity drives learning and intellectual engagement. Growth reflects the belief that our abilities can develop over time. And space—the ability to step back from constant stimulation—allows us to reflect and recharge.

These ideas resonate strongly with biblical wisdom. Scripture repeatedly calls believers to pursue understanding and wisdom.

Proverbs 9:10 declares:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Curiosity is valuable—but Christian curiosity must be anchored in reverence for God.

Bloom also writes extensively about the importance of purpose. Yet his definition of purpose is largely self-defined: individuals must discover and construct their own meaning.

Scripture offers a very different perspective.

Jeremiah 10:23 reminds us:

“I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself; that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.”

Our purpose is not something we invent. It is something we discover as God reveals His will for our lives.

Mental health and spiritual growth therefore intersect. A mind that is shaped by Scripture, nourished by prayer, and open to learning is a mind aligned with God’s design.

Physical Wealth: Caring for the Body God Gave Us

Bloom next turns to physical wealth, emphasizing three habits that strongly influence health:

• Movement

• Nutrition

• Recovery (especially sleep)

While the wellness industry promotes endless fads, Bloom argues that most physical health outcomes come from simple practices: move your body, eat real food, and sleep well.

Interestingly, Scripture affirms the importance of physical well-being.

In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah becomes emotionally overwhelmed while fleeing for his life. Before addressing Elijah’s spiritual discouragement, God first provides something very practical:

Food and sleep.

The angel of the Lord tells Elijah:

“Get up and eat, for the journey is too great for you.”

Even one of the greatest prophets in Scripture needed rest and nourishment before he could continue his work.

Christians are not only spiritual beings; we are embodied creatures. Caring for our physical health enables us to better serve God and others.

Financial Wealth: Stewardship Without Idolatry

Finally, Bloom addresses financial wealth. He emphasizes three principles:

• Generating income through valuable skills

• Managing expenses carefully

• Investing consistently for long-term growth

Many of his practical recommendations—budgeting, avoiding lifestyle inflation, and saving early—are wise.

But Jesus offers an essential warning about money.

In Luke 12, Jesus tells the parable of a wealthy man who builds larger barns to store his increasing harvest. The man believes he has secured his future.

But God says to him:

“Fool! This night your soul is required of you.”

The lesson is unmistakable:

“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Money is a tool. It can help us serve others and steward resources well. But when money becomes the center of life, it becomes an idol.

Financial wisdom must therefore be paired with spiritual humility. Everything we have ultimately comes from God.

The Wealth That Matters Most

Sahil Bloom is correct that modern culture often misunderstands wealth. A life defined only by money will always feel empty.

Yet the Christian worldview goes even further.

True wealth is not merely balancing five categories of life. True wealth is knowing God and living faithfully within His purposes.

Time, relationships, intellect, health, and finances all matter—but they are not ultimate. They are gifts entrusted to us.

When we understand them as stewardship rather than possession, we begin to live wisely.

And perhaps then we begin to experience the deeper kind of wealth that Scripture points us toward:

A life ordered by God, guided by wisdom, and rich toward Him.

There Is a Balm in Gilead: The Black Church and the Epidemic of Loneliness

History does not repeat itself, but it echoes. Drought, famine, and depression are three notes that echo through biblical history and American history, and together they form a chord that reverberates through contemporary American life. These converged perhaps most visibly and viscerally during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The combination of poor agricultural practices, ecological disaster, and economic meltdown culminated in one of the most acute and prolonged episodes of suffering in American life. In the wake of every tragedy, a great deal of time is given to discourse and decisions about how similar tragedies can be avoided in the future.

Almost inevitably, when much of the suffering has been endured, the solution that would have ended it usually becomes most apparent. After the Dust Bowl, rampant crop failure and famine swept across America, and the Ogallala Aquifer was discovered. The aquifer was an ancient reservoir believed to have contained as much as three billion acre-feet of water flowing beneath the regions in America most severely affected by the drought. In discovering the aquifer, geologists uncovered a harrowing truth: an important part of the solution to one of the most pressing problems of the day was literally right beneath the feet of those most impacted the whole time. The Dust Bowl, then, was not only an ecological catastrophe; it was a failure to recognize and mobilize resources that were near at hand.

We are contending with drought again in American life—a drought of human connection leading to a famine of human relationships, with death and despair following in its wake. Public health officials have identified one of our most pressing problems as an epidemic of loneliness. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory characterizes social disconnection as an “epidemic” associated with higher risks of heart disease, stroke, dementia, anxiety, depression, and premature death, effects the advisory notes are comparable in magnitude to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

Defining the Loneliness Epidemic (Three Dimensions)

Public health literature and national advisories typically define loneliness not as mere solitude but as a subjective distress arising from a mismatch between desired and actual social relationships. For practical ministry, we can parse the phenomenon into three overlapping dimensions:

• Emotional loneliness: the absence of close, intimate relationships that provide consolation, confidentiality, and pastoral care.

• Social loneliness: the absence of a broader, dependable social network or sense of belonging within groups and institutions.

• Existential loneliness: a deeper hunger for meaning, vocation, and theological anchoring—questions about “Who am I?” and “Do my life and work matter?” that produce spiritual isolation even in the presence of people.
  
  

Neuroscientists have documented that acute social isolation activates midbrain craving responses analogous to food hunger, underscoring that loneliness is not merely relational but neurobiological. The negative consequences of loneliness are not evenly distributed across the population. Several surveys and analyses indicate that Black Americans face distinct vulnerabilities. Mental health reports have found higher rates of loneliness among Black respondents in some samples, and large U.S. surveys show that Black adults are, in many contexts, less likely than White adults to report robust nearby social support—patterns that intersect with structural stressors and discrimination. The work of epidemiologists and neuroscientists clearly reflects that this drought of human relationships is quite literally killing us.

Yet I believe we are not unlike the people who found their crops ravaged by the impact of the Dust Bowl; our answer is nearby. I believe that a careful study of the history of the Black Church tradition reflects that it possesses the theological resources, social structures, and communal patterns of life that have long enabled Black communities to weather the storms of life—not least of all, the problem of loneliness. Furthermore, I believe that reengaging with the Black Church and reconnecting with its best practices and patterns is an important part of the way out of the loneliness epidemic for Black communities. The Black Church has within it the sociological and theological resources that correspond to each major dimension of the contemporary loneliness epidemic. There is a balm in Gilead. I believe the Black Church is an important part of curing the loneliness epidemic in Black communities.

How Black-Church Practices Respond to Each Dimension

1. Emotional loneliness: pastoral presence, lament, and small-group care
   Emotional loneliness is remedied first by sustained, intimate presence. The Black Church’s pastoral and congregational rhythms—home visits, hospital calls, extended pastoral prayer, and corporate lament—provide relational contexts where grief and need are named and shared. Pastoral visitation and the broader congregational network of deacons, ministry leaders, and church members at large embody incarnational theology, expressing Christ’s presence with the bereaved and the anxious (cf. Gal. 6:2). Recent faith-based interventions that organize structured spiritual and social supports have shown reductions in perceived social loneliness among older adults, suggesting these approaches are more than anecdotal.
   

2. Social loneliness: worship, networks, and intergenerational belonging
   Social loneliness is a failure of networks. Historically, Black congregations created durable social capital. Examples include mutual-aid societies, women’s auxiliaries, youth choirs, civic partnerships, and neighborhood ministries. These historic models demonstrate the competency of creating dense networks of reciprocal obligation and connection. Secondly, the act of gathered worship itself in the context of the Black Church—with its repetitive, embodied, and communal patterns—cultivates a sense of continuity and belonging that counteracts atomizing modern life (cf. Acts 2:42–47; Heb. 10:24–25).
   

3. Existential loneliness: discipleship, vocation, and theological formation
   Existential loneliness demands theological resources and formational practices. The Black Church’s preaching tradition is a tradition of finding and articulating meaning. Its rootedness in the lordship of Christ and connection to the life of Christ has provided the capacity to consistently find Christ-centered and Christ-shaped significance. Even amidst suffering, the Black Church has served its community, insisting that dignity can be found even while contending with denigration—and teaching how. The Black Church has modeled and taught the capacity for resilience and helped the hurting find hope. It has always been filled with people who understand isolation and who have recognized contending with isolation as part of its mission. Since its inception, the Black Church at its best has insisted to its members that we have Christ and salvation and personhood in Christ and has emphasized the Imago Dei. The Black Church has affirmed that we have Christ and we have each other. Theological conviction and communal commitment have long been the two components that have shaped the Black Church into a community, emphasizing an understanding of meaning beyond personal fulfillment and an ethic of contribution rather than consumption.
   

Important Considerations

The illustration of the aquifer containing the needed water beneath the soil parched by drought is not only illustrative but also instructive in its historical and contextual details. Large-scale efforts to dig for an underground water source were taking place during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Geologists and researchers digging for water were working on top of and around the aquifer but were never able to dig deeply enough to find the source and realize the goal of large-scale extraction. It was a problem of methodology and technology. Large-scale extraction from the aquifer did not begin until after World War II, when diesel-powered pumps replaced windmills. The needed resource had to be approached the right way.

The Black Church is different from the aquifer in some ways and bears striking similarities in others. First, the differences: technology and methodology are not what is needed to access the Black Church. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the Black Church is not a cultural resource to be extracted or commodified; it is a living, breathing, transformative community. However, the Black Church and the aquifer share important similarities. First is proximity—the aquifer was close to those who needed it most. The Black Church has never been far from those who needed it most. Secondly, both the Black Church and the aquifer represent parts of the solution to a larger and more complex problem. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression required water as part of the solution. Crops needed water to grow, but water alone was not enough. Policies and practices needed to change as well for the broader issues to be resolved. Similarly, reconnection with the Black Church—and more importantly, with its faith story—is greatly needed for a renewed sense of community, a positive construction of Christ-centered personhood and identity. Yet more is needed in the way of changes to policies and practices to ameliorate the loneliness epidemic in society at large.

Anticipating Objections and Limits

Some leaders will rightly respond, “Isn’t loneliness a clinical problem requiring therapists, not sermons?” Yes. Churches are not substitutes for licensed mental health care. But they are community institutions that can identify need, provide sustained pastoral companionship, and create contexts that reduce risk—complementary roles recognized in public health literature and pilot interventions.

Another objection: “Not all Black churches are healthy communities—some are sites of exclusion.” True. Churches can also reproduce gossip, hierarchy, and judgment. The claim here is not that every Black church is already a cure; it is that the tradition retains assets—communal worship, mutual obligation, and theological formation—that, when reformed and intentionally deployed, address loneliness more robustly than atomized alternatives.

Conclusion: A Sober Hope

We need neither triumphalism nor despair. The loneliness epidemic is real, measurable, and costly—physically, psychologically, and spiritually. But the Black Church carries resources—liturgical life, mutual obligation, and a theology of dignity and vocation—that are important parts of the solution to a pressing problem. Fellowship within the family of the Black Church offers a path to soothing individual pain and renewing communal life in ways Scripture commends (Acts 2; Gal. 6:2). What the Black Church has to offer is greatly needed, and more is needed. The aquifer held ancient water, not magic water. While more than water was needed, water was needed. With the benefit of hindsight and history, we find that an important part of the solution to an important problem was not far away. The Black Church has never been too far away.

I grew up in a small, obscure town that had unique and particular relevance. When I was in elementary school, I noticed a strange trend. My classmates and I were constantly taking some kind of test that my teachers would tell us was “from the state,” meaning that someone at the state department of education had decided it was a good idea to disrupt my early childhood ambitions and playground conversations with more bubbles to fill in and multiple-choice questions to consider.

Our school and its population had the unique misfortune that always seems to befall people in obscure places.

We were, to my memory, constantly taking tests and very rarely receiving the results. I thought, as an elementary schooler, that this was an unconscionable waste of my valuable time. I had learned the basics of democracy; I had a right to petition. I asked one of my teachers what was going on. I was prepared to take the matter to the Supreme Court if needed.

She explained that the demographics of our school were perfectly representative of the demographics of the state of Alabama. Across multiple measures—the male-to-female ratio, the racial makeup, and the economic distribution—our school matched the state demographics so closely that when the state wanted to pilot a test or initiative, they could pilot it at our school and receive a representative sample.

I found her explanation sufficiently explanatory but personally unsatisfying. Alas, we still had to take the tests.

Standardized tests as a way of measuring aptitude and academic progress had fully come into vogue during my early elementary school years, as did all the conversations around them. Each year, after the tests were taken and the scores were calculated—scores that determined the academic standing and progress of each state—I heard a familiar refrain from my teachers when discussing our state scores

Each year, the only state in the union with lower scores than Alabama was Mississippi. Downward social comparison is perhaps the most Southern of all social mechanisms. We were near the bottom, but thank God we were not at the bottom.

Yet time is filled with swift transition.

Something has happened in Mississippi that has completely reshaped the contemporary conversation around education, and particularly literacy. This event was so improbable but ultimately so undeniable that it has been termed (by people outside Mississippi, of course) the Mississippi Miracle.

The Mississippi Miracle refers to the dramatic improvement in reading proficiency achieved by Mississippi public schools beginning in the mid-2010s after the state implemented comprehensive literacy reforms. Once ranked near the bottom nationally in fourth-grade reading scores, Mississippi rose significantly in national assessments through a coordinated strategy that emphasized early literacy intervention, structured phonics-based instruction, intensive teacher training, curriculum alignment, and third-grade reading accountability standards. The term highlights how intentional, system-wide educational reform focused specifically on the science of reading and early skill development produced measurable and sustained gains in student literacy outcomes.

I contend that the Mississippi Miracle has much to say to us about how we might set a course to reclaim biblical literacy. It provides a framework for understanding and solving one of the most urgent challenges facing the modern church: the decline of biblical literacy.

The Biblical Literacy Problem Is a Literacy Problem

Christians often frame declining biblical literacy primarily as a spiritual problem. And it is spiritual. Scripture is central to Christian formation, and disengagement from Scripture weakens discipleship.

But biblical literacy is also something more basic.

It is literacy.

It is the ability to read a text carefully, understand its structure, interpret its meaning, and situate it within a larger narrative. And like all literacy, biblical literacy does not develop automatically. It develops through structured exposure, skilled instruction, and sustained reinforcement.

For generations, churches and Christian schools benefited from cultural conditions that reinforced biblical literacy. Scripture was read regularly in homes, churches, and schools. Biblical language saturated public life. Students encountered Scripture repeatedly and consistently.

Those conditions no longer exist.

Today, many students encounter Scripture sporadically. Biblical knowledge is often assumed rather than cultivated. Teachers may lack formal training in biblical interpretation. Scripture may be referenced, but not systematically studied.

The result is predictable: declining literacy.

The Mississippi Miracle helps us understand why.

Mississippi’s Insight: Literacy Must Be Built Intentionally

Mississippi’s educational leaders recognized a crucial truth: literacy does not develop naturally. It develops through intentional systems.

The state implemented reforms grounded in several core principles.

First, literacy instruction began early. Students were exposed to structured reading instruction in their earliest years, when literacy development is most formative.

Second, teachers received training in the science of reading. They were equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to teach literacy effectively.

Third, literacy was treated as a foundational priority rather than a peripheral concern. Curriculum, instruction, and assessment were aligned around literacy development.

Finally, students experienced sustained, repeated exposure to reading itself. Literacy developed through practice.

These principles transformed Mississippi’s literacy outcomes.

They also provide a diagnostic framework for understanding biblical literacy decline.

Biblical literacy has declined not because Scripture has lost its power, but because the systems that cultivate literacy have weakened.

Biblical Literacy Cannot Be Assumed

One of the most significant lessons of the Mississippi Miracle is that literacy cannot be assumed. It must be built.

Many Christian educational environments unintentionally assume biblical literacy. Students are asked to interpret Scripture before they have developed familiarity with its language and structure. Teachers are expected to cultivate literacy without systematic training in interpretation.

This creates an educational gap.

Students may physically possess the Bible but lack fluency in reading it.

Mississippi’s reforms demonstrate that literacy gaps close when instruction becomes intentional and structured. The same principle applies to biblical literacy.

Biblical literacy develops when students encounter Scripture regularly, systematically, and progressively.

Teachers Are the Critical Variable

One of the central components of Mississippi’s reform was teacher preparation.

Literacy improvement did not begin with students. It began with teachers.

Teachers were trained to understand how literacy develops and how to cultivate it effectively. This training transformed classroom instruction.

The same is true in Christian education.

Biblical literacy will not improve until teachers themselves are equipped with confidence and competence in interpreting Scripture. Teachers must understand biblical narrative structure, historical context, and interpretive principles.

Teachers who are confident readers of Scripture produce confident readers of Scripture.

Teacher formation precedes student formation.

Exposure Produces Familiarity. Familiarity Produces Literacy.

Another key insight of Mississippi’s reform was the importance of sustained exposure.

Students became literate by reading.

Not by discussing reading in the abstract. Not by hearing about reading. But by reading itself.

Biblical literacy develops in the same way.

Students must encounter Scripture directly and repeatedly. They must read biblical narratives in full. They must become familiar with its language, themes, and structure.

Literacy emerges from repeated encounter.

One of the most significant threats to biblical literacy today is not hostility to Scripture, but unfamiliarity with it.

Familiarity produces fluency.
Fluency produces confidence.
Confidence produces engagement.

Biblical Literacy Requires Institutional and Communal Commitment

Mississippi’s literacy gains were not the result of isolated efforts by individual teachers. They were the result of institutional commitment. Literacy became a system-wide priority.

The church and the Christian community must make a similar commitment.

Biblical literacy must become a central institutional priority rather than a peripheral aspiration. This means structuring our life together as believers—and the curriculum of our churches—around sustained engagement with Scripture. It means investing in teacher formation. It means recognizing that biblical literacy is foundational to Christian formation, not supplemental to it.

The church cannot assume the literacy it does not intentionally cultivate.

The Path Forward Is Clear

The Mississippi Miracle demonstrates that literacy decline is reversible.

The principles are neither mysterious nor unattainable. Literacy improves when exposure increases, instruction improves, teachers are equipped, and institutions commit themselves to the process.

These same principles can restore biblical literacy.

This is not merely an educational challenge. It is a discipleship challenge.

Christians are people formed by a text. Scripture shapes Christian identity, theology, and practice.

If biblical literacy continues to decline, Christian formation will weaken.

But if biblical literacy is rebuilt, Christian formation will strengthen.

The Mississippi Miracle reminds us that literacy is not a cultural accident. It is the result of intentional formation.

The same can be true of biblical literacy.

The church does not need new Scripture.

It needs renewed commitment to teaching it.

I never thought I would say this sincerely, but thank God for Mississippi.

My grandmother was a woman of many words. She had many favorite expressions, and as she grew older, her list of favored expressions grew longer. One often-used quip was a coda that she would offer when dispensing wisdom and deepening understanding. In her closing statement, she would quote a passage of Scripture and remark,

I got a kick out of hearing the way she would say it, and as I got older, I would casually reference Scripture in our conversations just to hear her say,

“That’s The Book!”

She never failed to recognize the Bible when she heard it.

There is a quiet crisis unfolding in American Christianity. It is not primarily a crisis of attendance, institutional survival, or even public perception. It is a crisis of literacy. Increasingly, Christians possess Bibles they cannot meaningfully interpret. As Christianity becomes increasingly a nominal and cultural designation, people are inheriting religious identity without inheriting an understanding of the Christian faith that can only come from deep familiarity with the text that defines it. Increasingly, people are coming of age knowing only fragments of the Christian story but lacking a cohesive understanding of the whole.

I have written elsewhere about the shifting cultural and religious tides in African American Christianity. The church that taught my grandmother The Book, and later taught me, is no more; however, I have come to believe that there is a greater and broader problem. I have come to believe that the erosion of biblical literacy is perhaps one of the most consequential developments of this generation. And nowhere is this crisis more historically and theologically significant than within the African American Christian tradition.

Biblical literacy did not merely shape African American Christianity. In many ways, it created it.

A People Formed by a Book

The African American Christian story has a unique relationship with literacy, and particularly with biblical literacy. It bears repeating that not all Africans encountered Christianity through slavery. Africa appears throughout the biblical narrative, and Africans have made profound contributions to Christian theology and history—from the Ethiopian official baptized in Acts 8 to early North African theologians like Augustine and Athanasius. Christianity was present in Africa centuries before it reached Northern Europe.

However, for many enslaved Africans brought to America, Christianity represented a striking encounter between cultures. West African societies were largely oral cultures, where knowledge was transmitted through memory, speech, story, and song. Christianity, by contrast, was a religion rooted in a written text. It was a faith defined by a Book.

Enslaved Africans were often permitted—even encouraged—to hear Scripture preached, but they were frequently forbidden from learning to read it for themselves. Slaveholders understood what literacy represented. Literacy was not merely an intellectual skill. It was a form of agency.

To read Scripture for oneself was to encounter its truths without mediation. It was to discover stories of deliverance. It was to see oneself reflected in Israel’s bondage and liberation. It was to encounter a God who acted in history on behalf of the oppressed.

Literacy was dangerous because Scripture was powerful.

The Desire to Read Was a Theological Desire

As African Christians in America began to develop their own religious identity, their desire for literacy was deeply connected to their desire for Scripture. They did not pursue literacy merely for social mobility, though literacy would eventually provide that. Many pursued literacy primarily because they wanted to read the Bible.

This fact cannot be overstated.

The development of literacy among enslaved and formerly enslaved African Americans was, in many cases, driven by theological motivation. To read was to access divine revelation. To read was to participate more fully in the life of faith. To read was to hear the voice of God through the written Word.

Christians are people of the Book.

For early African American Christians, access to that Book was not assumed. It was achieved through struggle, sacrifice, and perseverance. And once accessed, it became foundational.

Scripture shaped preaching. It shaped worship. It shaped theological imagination. It shaped identity. The African American Christian tradition emerged not merely as an emotional or cultural tradition, but as a deeply textual tradition rooted in engagement with Scripture.

Biblical literacy was not peripheral to the tradition. It was central to it.

Biblical Literacy Was Cultivated Through Community

Biblical literacy has never been automatic. It has always been cultivated through intentional formation. Historically, African American churches functioned as powerful literacy-forming institutions. Scripture was read aloud. It was preached. It was memorized. It was discussed. It was sung.

Even when formal educational opportunities were limited, the church became a site of literacy development.

Exposure produced familiarity. Familiarity produced understanding. Understanding produced theological depth.

Biblical literacy emerged not simply from possession of Scripture, but from immersion in it.

This pattern reflects a broader truth: literacy develops through sustained encounter within structured communities. And when those communities weaken, literacy weakens with them.

The Contemporary Crisis: Possession Without Literacy

Today, we face a troubling reversal. Many contemporary Christians possess unprecedented access to Scripture. Bibles are widely available. Digital access has made Scripture more accessible than at any point in human history.

And yet, biblical literacy has declined.

Access alone does not produce literacy. Literacy requires formation.

Students and adults alike increasingly struggle to read Scripture with confidence and understanding. They may recognize individual verses but lack familiarity with the broader biblical narrative. They may inherit Christian identity without inheriting biblical fluency.

This represents not merely an educational problem, but a theological and historical one.

Because within the African American Christian tradition, biblical literacy was not incidental. It was foundational.

The ability to read Scripture was once understood as a treasure. It was pursued with intentionality. It was protected. It was cultivated.

Its erosion represents more than an educational shift. It represents a weakening of one of the central pillars of the tradition itself.

Biblical Literacy and Christian Faith Are Not Inherited. They Are Formed.

One of the most important truths we must recover is this: biblical literacy is not automatically transmitted from one generation to the next. It must be cultivated intentionally.

Historically, biblical literacy developed through repeated exposure to Scripture within structured communities—churches, schools, and families that organized themselves around engagement with the text.

Today, many of those formative structures have weakened. Christianity is increasingly treated as a cultural identity rather than a formative practice. Communal learning environments have declined. Sustained engagement with Scripture has diminished.

This is not primarily a failure of intelligence or sincerity.

It is a failure of formation.

Literacy develops through encounter. And fewer Christians are encountering Scripture in sustained and structured ways.

What Is Lost When Biblical Literacy Declines

When biblical literacy declines, something more than knowledge is lost.

Formation weakens.
Theological depth weakens.
Historical continuity weakens.

For African American Christianity in particular, the decline of biblical literacy threatens to sever contemporary believers from one of the most important sources of theological strength and resilience in the tradition’s history.

Biblical literacy was not simply an educational achievement. It was a spiritual inheritance purchased through sacrifice.

To neglect it is to risk losing more than familiarity with a text. It is to risk losing connection with the very foundation upon which the tradition was built.

The Path Forward Begins with Recognition

The decline in biblical literacy is real. But it is not irreversible. Literacy can be rebuilt.

But rebuilding literacy begins with recognizing its importance—not only for individual spiritual growth, but for the preservation and continuation of a historic Christian tradition.

The African American Christian tradition was built, in part, by believers who fought to read Scripture for themselves.

The question before us now is whether we will demonstrate the same intentionality in preserving that inheritance.

Because Christians are still people of the Book.

But we cannot remain people of the Book if we cease to read it.