It was time for a refresh.
\n\nAfter running brettwagner.me on a Jekyll theme for several years, I decided it was time for a refresh. Same name and purpose, just rebuilt feel and some backend tweaks (thanks Claude!). Field Notes is a place for dispatches from ordinary life: what I’m reading, what I’m thinking about, and the occasional polished article.
\n\nThe design goal was to get out of the way of the words. I liked the simplicity of the Hitchens theme, but wanted something a little simpler with some other custom tweaks. It is another static site hosted on GitHub Pages, which means I can write and update in Markdown with very little friction.
\n\nIf you’d like to follow along, there’s an RSS feed and a\nJSON feed. Otherwise, wander in whenever you like. Older entries\nlive under their tags.
\n", "date_published": "2026-08-08T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["meta","reflections"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/08/Optimism,-Pessimism,-and-a-Dose-of-Reality/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/08/Optimism,-Pessimism,-and-a-Dose-of-Reality/", "title": "Optimism, Pessimism, and a Dose of Reality from Ecclesiastes", "content_html": "Are you an optimist? A pessimist?
\n\nAs Christians, we often feel pressured into being optimists. After all, the gospel is good news. This story has a happy ending, and therefore, we have every reason to call this a good life. But sometimes, this well-intended optimism can unfortunately come off as disconnected naivety.
\n\nBecause another person can look at the exact same life, know there is good news, know there is a happy ending, but get hung up on the hurt, the injustice, the reality of loss that is in this world. And sometimes, this clear-eyed pessimism can unfortunately come off as jaded cynicism.
\n\nFrom time to time, both our pessimism and our optimism need to go to the chiropractor. There is a glib, superficial Christianity that sounds strange and out of joint among the watching world, and there is a pessimistic, jaded Christianity that is out of place amongst the good news of the gospel.
\n\nEcclesiastes gives us a dose of reality, but be warned: its medicine doesn’t go down as easily as the other familiar books of the Bible. Many people who love their Bibles and bookmark passages in Romans, Ephesians, and Psalms aren’t sure what to do with Ecclesiastes.
\n\nThe author and pastor Zack Eswine compares books of the Bible to visiting towns and neighborhoods.
\n\n\n\n\nMany Christians have grown up traveling the prophetic roads of the Old Testament and the Pauline highways of the New Testament. Wisdom highways are less traveled. The Song of Solomon is like a back-road brothel to us. (As a young man, I was told by a pastor not to read this book until after I was married!) Job is like a long stretch of desert road with no night light and no gas stations or rest stops for miles. People can get stuck out there with no help, so we rarely travel there without a great deal of preparation. James is like an old law building that doesn’t seem to fit the gospel landscape. We drive around it and wonder if we should bulldoze it. Ecclesiastes sounds like a crazed man downtown. He smells like he hasn’t bathed—looks like it too—and as we pass by he won’t stop glaring at us and beckoning to us that our lives are built on illusions, and that we are all going to die. So, most of us choose to get our lunch at a different shop on a less dreary corner of town. – Zack Eswine, Recovering Eden, 5.
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For some of us, spending time in a book of wisdom like Ecclesiastes will be new or even strange territory. But let me remind us of another well-worn and well-loved passage:
\n\n\n\n\n“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV)
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Ecclesiastes is a necessary book for well-read, Bible-saturated, theologically robust Christians.
\n\nTake a moment to quiz yourself:
\n\nLikewise, there are some questions many of us would like to keep tucked away in a drawer, out of sight and out of mind. The sort of experiences, questions, or uncertainties that don’t tie up nicely with a symmetrical bow. It is helpful, from time to time, to open that drawer of misfit toys and take an honest look. We need not fear that there is no answer, but we may want to be slower in providing the trite and didactic answer.
\n\nIn the end, God will put everything right, and we should prepare ourselves now to meet him, so that we can receive this fleeting life as the gift it is. Because life is short, like a mist, a vapor, a wisp of smoke. That can either be the greatest frustration or bring great freedom. It all depends on what you expect from this world and what this world is for.
\n\nIt’s time to listen to the Preacher, the son of David, the king of Jerusalem.
\n\nVanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-08-07T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["preaching","anthropology","ecclesiastes"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/07/What-Makes-for-a-Great-Vacation/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/07/What-Makes-for-a-Great-Vacation/", "title": "What Makes for a Great Vacation?", "content_html": "During each vacation for the past couple of years, I have made a habit of reading Josef Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture. He writes, “not to give advice and draw up a line of action” but to “make men think.”
\n\nAnd these are my thoughts.
\n\nThe soul of leisure is not idleness. It is not simply a break from work or the motivation to return to work. The soul of leisure is celebration.
\n\n\n\n\nCelebration is the point at which the three elements of leisure come to a focus: relaxation, effortlessness, and superiority of “active leisure” to all functions…The meaning of celebration, we have said, is man’s affirmation of the universe and his experiencing the world in an aspect other than its everyday way. – Josef Pieper, Leisure The Basis of Culture, p. 65
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Only a worshipper of God can truly experience leisure.
\n\n\n\n\nThe celebration of divine worship, then, is the deepest of the springs by which leisure is fed and continues to be vital…Leisure cannot be achieved at all when it is sought as a means to an end, even though that end be “the salvation of Western civilization.” Celebration of God in worship cannot be done unless it is done for its own sake. That most sublime form of affirmation of the world as a whole is the fountainhead of leisure. – Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture, p. 72
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A great vacation is not a tool to fix a burnt-out life. It cannot become a savior to restore a life that is bent and weakened with stress fractures. Even the best vacation will buckle under the weight of those expectations. It will never deliver. A great vacation begins by laying hold of man’s purpose, and specifically, man’s purpose in God’s creation.
\n\nCelebration, feasting, wonder, and contentment are the hallmarks of a great vacation. This is my Father’s world, and I have been set within it as his image bearer. In many ways, “a great vacation” is merely a drawn-out experience of the weekly rhythm of feasting and resting experienced each Lord’s Day. An extended meditation upon creation, fall, redemption, and restoration becomes the rich soil for the celebration of leisure.
\n\nAnd the past three weeks have been filled with celebration.
\n", "date_published": "2026-07-23T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["leisure","books","reflections"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/01/What-I-Read-in-2025/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2026/01/What-I-Read-in-2025/", "title": "What I Read in 2025", "content_html": "I recently listened to a lecture on the virtue of making lists. There is neurotic list-making as a form of control, but there can also be virtue in our list-making as an expression of attention and even love. For the past 5-6 years, I have made a habit of writing down what I have read each year. It is a small way to give attention to what I am thinking about and I enjoy going back through these lists years later and perusing through what captured my attention.
\n\nOf note, on this year’s list, I decided to finally read through the Harry Potter series. I am through book 4 and thoroughly enjoying them!
\n\nI want to begin with a confession. I did not grow up with a Classical Education. I did not have house groups, identifying me with Augustine, Carey, Edwards, or Tolkien. I had mascots, which meant I was a Roadrunner, a Rattler, and a Bruin. Nor did I grow up with an emphasis upon virtues. These were categories, but of no relevance to me, assuming they were the time-capsuled language of the Victorian Era, and I gave them little to no thought.
\n\nI have another confession. I did grow up in a Christian home. I am so thankful to have parents who pointed me to Christ, drove me to church, opened the Bible, and led by example. And embedded in this Protestant Christian heritage is the emphasis upon godly character, morality, and being an example to others.
\n\nWhat I am confessing to you is not entirely unique. While you may have come to faith later in life, your participation at Legacy and your presence tonight reflect a shared desire to cultivate godly, well‑formed children in the setting of a Classical Christian education.
\n\nThe question is, “how?” We often stress the importance of rules. Homes need rules. Civilizations need laws. Christianity is built upon commandments that Christ came to fulfill. Yet rules often fail us. We can write them, memorize them, enforce them, and they don’t seem to produce the results we had hoped.
\n\nEarlier this year, I was reading a book by Karen Swallow Prior, and she made a passing observation that captures the dilemma. It became a philosophical earworm. Just like that song that gets stuck in your head, the concept became inescapable.
\n\nIn her book, “On Reading Well,” she said,
\n\n\n\n\n“…because no number of rules or laws could cover every moral or ethical choice we face, virtue picks up where rules leave off. And where rules abound, virtue, like an unused muscle, atrophies.” KSP, On Reading Well, p 34
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Her comment identified a gap I’ve long felt. A rule-heavy approach to character leaves us unready for the real demands of life.
\n\nAdhering to rules is much easier than growing and walking in wisdom. But where rules abound, virtue becomes like an unused muscle, atrophied and underdeveloped.
\n\nBefore we get too far down the road, let me try to apply some definitions and context for my argument.
\n\nFirst, what do I mean by “rule following?” Let me give you two illustrations.
\n\nRule following becomes a punch list, a checklist of items that must be completed and closely followed. Much like Ikea assembly instructions, you just follow the steps. Now, this approach is helpful if you want to build Billy Bookcases, but what if someone asks you to build a different bookcase? Or, what if you don’t have that painfully awkward tool that comes with every piece of Ikea furniture? Can you still build something without your punch list of box-checking?
\n\nRule following becomes like working on an assembly line. It is possible to stand at the workstation and assemble part A into part B, move it down the line, doing that 100 times a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. You did your job, you assembled widgets. But a factory worker can “do his job” yet have no idea as to what the factory is actually producing and no concern for the bigger picture.
\n\nIf we approach life as mere rule-following, we will be incomplete creatures, able only to build bookcases and widgets, unable to respond to environments beyond the programmed rules.
\n\nIf we view our responsibility to be merely faithful rule followers, we will end up in situations where:
\n\nThe irony of rule-following is that it imagines itself to be the faithful example of godliness, yet often produces immature, ill-prepared people. But through the habit of virtue, we grow in wisdom.
\n\nBut before we go any further, we need to address an important concern that sounds something like this: “Rules are good. God gave us 10 of them called commandments. If we downplay rules, are we downplaying something God commanded?”
\n\nThis is an important objection. As a Protestant with a high view of Scripture, shaped by a confessional tradition that upholds the moral law, I take God’s commandments seriously. In my pastoral vows, I promised to teach in line with the Second London Baptist Confession, which devotes an entire chapter to God’s law.
\n\nWhat’s striking is that earlier generations applied God’s commandments without falling into the rule-following problems we’re addressing. Dipping into the 16th and 17th century writings, we hear that the 8th commandment of “do not steal” should be understood as a duty to:
\n\n\n\n\n“…truth, faithfulness, and justice in contracts and commerce between man and man; rendering to every one his due; restitution of goods unlawfully detained from the right owners thereof; giving and lending freely, according to our abilities, and the necessities of others… (Westminster Larger Catechism, Q 141)
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And though the 9th commandment says plainly, “you shall not bear false witness,” Christians before us understood it as far more than simply “don’t lie.” They saw it as:
\n\n\n\n\npreserving and promoting of truth between man and man, and the good name of our neighbor, as well as our own…a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for, and covering of their infirmities; freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces, defending their innocency; a ready receiving of good report, and unwillingness to admit of an evil report…and practising of whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely, and of good report. (WLC Q 142)
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My point is that Christians who have gone before us have not looked at the rules given to us by God as “merely rules” to be blindly followed or superficially adhered to. They, too, used the language of virtues to explain, unpack, and apply the principles given to us by God.
\n\nConsider William Wilberforce. He opposed the slave trade not because a rule told him to confront Parliament, but because the deeper demands of the moral law (love of neighbor, justice, and mercy) compelled him. Those principles shaped his virtues: courage to stand almost alone, diligence through years of defeat, and a steady commitment to justice. Virtue gave him the moral imagination to see what the law required when Scripture offered no step-by-step instructions.
\n\nAllow me to pull all of this together by suggesting three principles that help us understand the contrast between a rule-driven life and the cultivation of virtue.
\n\nIn her book, “Ask of Old Paths,” Grace Hamman writes,
\n\n\n\n\n“It is significant that virtues are not rules, laws or even guidelines, but habits of creatures oriented toward love of God and neighbor. As a result, the virtues are not one-size-fits-all. They are incredibly flexible, diverse, contextual, and sometimes hidden from plain sight.” – Grace Hamman, Ask of Old Paths, p 17
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She emphasizes that while rules are narrow and often context-dependent, virtues expand and contract to fit individual lives and moments in history.
\n\nCourage remains courage, but it expands and contracts to fit the person or situation. A knight in combat, defending his realm, has been an emblem of fortitude for centuries. A six-year-old would hopefully never have to go into battle, but we can think of some pretty courageous six-year-olds who nobly face difficulty at great cost.
\n\nConsider also diligent reading and study. It should look one way for an eight-year-old and another for an eighteen-year-old. Rules stay narrow, but virtues adjust to the person and the moment.
\n\nRules would say, “If you are in a battle and someone throws a grenade, you must fall on it to save your brothers.” But what if there are no grenades? What if I am not in the Marines? Do I need a whole new set of rules?
\n\nHow do I live when someone lobs a slanderous remark about a classmate into the group discussion? Rule followers will comb through their Ikea-based rule book, and if they don’t find a step that outlines their current situation, they will either wrongfully conclude there is nothing required of them or be uncertain as to how they should respond.
\n\nBut virtuous living recognizes categories of injustice and justice (giving each one what they are owed), and recognizes that slanderous comments are unjust. Upholding justice often requires courage, because defending a neighbor’s reputation may invite the offender’s scorn or even cost you a “friend.”
\n\nRules are rigid, virtues are flexible.
\n\nRules address narrow slices of life. Their usefulness depends on whether circumstances match the scenario they were designed to regulate. Virtues, by contrast, apply everywhere because they shape the kind of person one becomes.
\n\nAquinas saw this as well. Laws offer broad direction, yet life often presents situations that the letter of the law can’t cover. For this, he pointed to prudence—the virtue that knows the right action, in the right way, at the right time, and applies the moral law wisely to real circumstances.
\n\nIn our own era, Alasdair MacIntyre has warned that modern moral life has become a web of fragmented rules divorced from the traditions that once gave them meaning. Without shared virtues, rules lose their coherence and become arbitrary. But virtue restores unity by forming people capable of understanding both the aims of a community and the goods toward which our actions are directed.
\n\nThis is certainly the emphasis of Scripture as well. Solomon gathered thousands of proverbs because wisdom cannot be reduced to a simple set of commands. Wisdom literature assumes life’s complexity: one proverb urges answering a fool, another warns against it. The tension is intentional. It signals that wisdom, not rule following, determines the faithful response.
\n\nVirtue enables someone to know which word fits the moment, which path preserves righteousness, and which action serves neighbor and honors God.
\n\nRules are limited, virtues are universal.
\n\nIn many ways, rules function like the grammar of character formation. Grammar is essential, as no one becomes a writer or orator without learning the basic structures that make communication possible. Yet grammar is never the goal; it prepares a student for clear logic and the cultivation of beauty.
\n\nIn the same way, rules establish the foundations of moral life, but they are only the beginning. They give shape, boundaries, and early guidance, yet they cannot produce maturity on their own.
\n\nA child relies on rules because they lack judgment. They need explicit instructions for what to do and what to avoid. But as they grow, we expect them to move beyond “nobody told me to do that” or “I didn’t know that was required.” Those phrases are expressions of immaturity, evidence that the person still depends entirely on external direction.
\n\nVirtue, by contrast, forms people who anticipate good, perceive what love requires, and take responsibility without being prompted. Maturity shows itself when someone recognizes the right action before a rule is invoked: seeing a need and meeting it, guarding a reputation without being asked, exercising patience when no one is watching.
\n\nRules can restrain, rebuke, and redirect, but only virtue can propel a person toward the good with wisdom and steadiness.
\n\nCould it be that some of our frustration in parenting comes from raising children who know how to follow isolated steps but have little sense of what they are ultimately meant to build?
\n\nWhen we emphasize only rules, we inadvertently produce factory workers who repeat motions without understanding the larger purpose or the beauty of what they are called to build. But Scripture, the Christian tradition, and the classical vision all point toward something richer. We are not forming compliant workers; we are forming image bearers. People meant to exercise judgment, love, courage, and discernment in a world where the most meaningful decisions rarely fit into prewritten instructions.
\n\nRules remain necessary. They give clarity, shape, and guardrails. But if rules are ~all we hand down~, our children will be unprepared for every moment when life goes off script. Virtue, on the other hand, forms the kind of person who can navigate the unscripted moments with wisdom.
\n\nThe task before us, parents and teachers, is not to produce well‑behaved rule followers but to cultivate men and women whose lives are maturing into greater expressions of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude.
\n\nWe are working and praying that by God’s grace, faith, hope, and love will blossom. This is slower work, deeper work, and oftentimes the hard work. Yet this is the wonderful and sobering task before us as faithful stewards of God’s grace.
\n\nIf virtue is caught, not produced by rules alone, then our greatest work is to become the kind of people whose lives invite imitation, growing in virtue so that others can see the path ahead and say, “follow me, as I follow Christ.”
\n\nThis was originally delivered as a lecture at the Classical Journey event for Legacy Classical Academy.
\n", "date_published": "2025-11-19T00:00:00-08:00", "tags": ["classical-education","virtue","lecture"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2025/10/Worth-Considering/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2025/10/Worth-Considering/", "title": "Worth Considering", "content_html": "Issue number eight of Mere Orthodoxy arrived in the mail this week and I was greeted with some wisdom from T.S. Elliot.
\n\n\n\n\nI confess, however, that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very fast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue.
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If you replace “publicists” with “pastors,” the wisdom remains equally as true.
\n", "date_published": "2025-10-17T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["poetry"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2022/09/What-is-Your-First-Thought-of-God-as-Your-Father/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2022/09/What-is-Your-First-Thought-of-God-as-Your-Father/", "title": "What is Your First Thought of God as Your Father?", "content_html": "I recently picked up a book I have read before but is worth reading again and again. Owen should be read slowly, thoughtfully, and repeatedly for there is so much good fruit to glean from his writings.
\n\nFor example, how would you answer this question: “what is your first thought of God as your Father?”
\n\n\n\nGot it? Now compare your answer to Owen’s:
\n\n\n\n\nLet us then see the Father as full of love to us.
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\n\n\nDo not see the Father as one who is angry, but as one who is most kind and gentle. Let us see the Father as one who from eternity has always had kind thoughts towards us. It is a complete misunderstanding of the Father that makes us want to run away and hide from him. The Psalmist said, ‘They that know you will put their trust in you.’
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\n\n\nHow sad that we cannot stay long with God in spiritual meditations! The Father looses the company of his people because they are so ignorant of his love to them. His saints keep thinking only of his terrible majesty, severity and greatness, and so their hearts are not drawn to him in love. We must learn to think of his everlasting gentleness and compassion. We must remember his kind thoughts towards us which have been from eternity. Let us remember how ever and willing he is to accept us. If we did this, then we would not be able to bear one hour’s absence from him. Instead, we find it difficult to spend even one hour with him.
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\n\n\nLet then this be the first thought that we have of the Father, that he is full of eternal love to us. Let our hearts and thoughts be filled with his love to us, even though many discouragements may lie in our way.
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If this sounds foreign to you or contradictory to what you know of God’s holiness and justice, please pick up Owen and read more. Chapters 2 and 3 lay the foundation for why this wonderful news is not only true but transformative.
\n\nHow frequently and how urgently we need the promise of the gospel to shape the way we think of our Heavenly Father!
\n\n", "date_published": "2022-09-07T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["books","theology"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2021/01/Pulling-Up-My-Anxiety-By-the-Roots/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2021/01/Pulling-Up-My-Anxiety-By-the-Roots/", "title": "Pulling Up My Anxiety By the Roots", "content_html": "Do not be anxious about anything.
\n\nDoes such a command strike you as unhelpful or even insensitive? Does it seem like the last thing you would want to say to a friend weighed down by anxious care?
\n\n\n\nGiven the state of our world, the responsibilities of life, and our limited abilities, worry seems quite understandable. But the Scriptures point us in a different direction. The child of God is commanded to not be anxious.
\n\nBut this prohibition of anxiety is not based on will power or even a shameful, “you should know better.” The antidote for anxiety has everything to do with what we know of God himself.
\n\nAt their roots, anxiety and worry seethe over the things that cannot be controlled. After all, if I could just fix these things, I would not need to be anxious! This is the folly of anxiety in the Christian’s life. For the only areas we have reason to be anxious are the ones in which God has alerted us that he is unable to handle.
\n\nI checked, and that list is blank!
\n\nBut have you noticed that most often, our obsessive concerns are for things for which God has made no promises?
\n\nGod has NOT said that we will have loads of money left over at the end of the month, or never know illness, or live a very long life, or that we will all marry and have children, or be spared from trials or hardships, or that we will see days of revival. Nowhere does God promise every Christian such things.
\n\nBut, God DOES promise every single Christian that all things will work for our good, that he will make all grace always abound to us, grace that will be sufficient for every trial.
\n\nSo, in this sense, when Christians worry and become consumed with anxious care, we live as functional atheists.
\n\nI may profess Jesus is Lord with my mouth, but my worry exposes my true unbelief. After all, my anxiety is behaving as if God is not going to keep his word. I am acting as if God is unaware of my situation or unable to intervene. But Scripture and history prove neither of those are possibilities! For God’s ability and God’s compassion are two areas in which he has gone to great lengths to prove.
\n\nThe problem with anxious care in the life of the Christian is that it is incompatible with the greatest revelation of God’s care for us, the giving of Christ on our behalf. God has never given us the slightest reason to doubt his goodness or faithfulness to us.
\n\n\n\n\nIsaiah 40:25–28 (ESV) — To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
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Ultimately, the problem with anxiety is that it views the concerns of life detached from God’s character. When I lie awake at 2:30 in the morning continually turning my problems over in my mind like a Rubik’s Cube I am failing to see my concerns by the illumination of God’s goodness, wisdom and power.
\n\nSo, it would make sense then that the solution for our anxious cares are not rooted in pragmatic techniques or a change of circumstances but soaked in communion with God himself.
\n\n\n\n\nPhilippians 4:6–7 (ESV) — do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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Does it seem trite to suggest that prayer is the antidote to anxiety? “Just pray about it?” Well, it is only trite if we have a superficial view of prayer.
\n\nPrayer is not a magic spell or an incantation you speak to magically dissolve anxiety. No, prayer is an exercise of faith! If anxiety finds its root in unbelief, prayer is a declaration of faith that God is both willing and able to care for his people.
\n\nThink about it, what is REALLY happening when we pray? When we pray, we are acknowledging two truths:
\n\nTherefore, supplication and thanksgiving are spiritual battles against the anxious cares of my soul as I engage all I know to be true about God!
\n\nHow can such worries exist as I let my requests be made known to this God who has declared he will never leave me or forsake me?
\n\nHow can such worries survive in a climate that testifies of God’s infinite power and wisdom?
\n\nSuch knowledge not only repels anxiety, it continues to guard us against its assault as well. When we cast our cares upon God, we are promised God’s own peace (which is beyond our understanding), will become a military garrison around our hearts and minds.
\n\nThe two areas of my life that perpetuate worry and anxiety, my heart and mind, are now guarded by God’s own peace.
\n\n\n\n\nWhatever my lot, thou has taught me to say
\n
\nIt is well, it is well with my soul
Let’s be perfectly clear: this sort of comfort and peace belongs to the Christian alone.
\n\nFor the only one who could ever know peace in anxious times is the one who calls upon God as Father. And the only one who can rightfully do this has trusted in his God’s son Jesus.
\n\nTherefore, the wonderfully GOOD NEWS is that this sort of peace is extended to ANYONE who places their hope in Christ, as they repent of their sin and believe in the promise of the gospel.
\n\nThings like joy, gentleness, and peace are not detached blessings we get from God; they are experienced as we get Christ himself!
\n\nFriends, our great need is not merely the detached blessings from God, but God himself. Do not be anxious about anything. For our God is sufficient for all things.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-20T00:00:00-08:00", "tags": ["reflections"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2021/01/Reading-Psalms-Theologically/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2021/01/Reading-Psalms-Theologically/", "title": "Reading the Psalms Theologically", "content_html": "Matthew Emerson has written a really helpful article on reading the Psalms theologically. He makes the point that it is pretty easy to love particular psalms (like Psalm 23 or Psalm 1), but the better question is how can we grow in our love for the Psalter as a whole?
\n\nHe writes that there are at least two truths about the book of Psalms that help us read it well:
\n\nI highly recommend reading through the article especially if you have primarily thought of the psalms as individual devotional thoughts more than a prayer book for the church.
\n\nLink: Reading the Psalms Theologically: Part One
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-19T00:00:00-08:00", "tags": ["theology","hermeneutics"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2019/01/6-Reasons-A-Church-Plant-Will-Fail/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2019/01/6-Reasons-A-Church-Plant-Will-Fail/", "title": "6 Reasons a Church Plant Will Fail", "content_html": "I’m 0–2 in church planting. That’s right, of the two church plants I have helped start, I have also been the last guy standing, turning out the lights, and locking the door one final time. Now granted, the second of these church plants actually became a full-fledged church, the kind with members and deacons and elders. We covenanted together and shared in the Lord’s Supper. We supported a missionary, we saw conversions and prayed for more, we wept over the sin and hurt of others, and we rejoiced together in one another’s triumphs. The whole deal. But in the end, this work closed as well.
\n\nI bring this up because, in the process of starting and ending, you learn a lot. You make some progress, you bang your head, get some bruises, and learn from it all–hopefully. Consider these scrapes and bruises as the testimony of lessons learned along the way. Either from personal experience or observing other churches, there is something to be gained in all of this.
\n\nA new church doesn’t have the advantage of a proven reputation in the community. It doesn’t have a public testimony, faithfully displayed over the years allowing the surrounding community to know what you are all about. All that a new church has is its current members.
\n\nTherefore, gathering a group of people who are fed up with church, in love with “small church,” on the run from a string of churches, or just fascinated by shiny new things will seriously plague church health. No church is ever going to have perfect people, but gathering members who are covenanted together and rowing in the same direction is a vital piece. Gathering a crowd is easy. But a healthy church is more than a crowd.
\n\nPeople are important. Pastoral care is important. One-on-one discipleship is important. But if this is the dominating focus of the elder’s week, especially the preaching elder, the church will struggle. There is one essential conviction that must pulsate within the life every pastor and member: the Word of God builds the church.
\n\nTherefore, one of the best things a new pastor can do is preach good sermons. And in part, good sermons comes by carving out sufficient time for study. If the tyranny of the urgent and the endless list of people’s needs consumes the calendar week, church health will flatten.
\n\nPastors are not bookish sermonizers locked away from the messy lives of others. Pastors are shepherds who care for sheep. Therefore, it is vital that the preaching pastor spends time around the kitchen tables, in the backyards, and daily lives of individual members. Many church plants are small, and that advantage allows a pastor to realistically know most everyone in the church and visit them regularly. By neglecting this responsibility for unnecessarily extensive study time, the health of the church will suffer.
\n\nPreach better sermons by caring for members by listening to them and praying with them. A preacher will be at his best when he is a faithful pastor among his fellow brothers and sisters.
\n\nElders are the God-given leaders of the church. Their influence and importance within a church cannot be overstated. Therefore, having the wrong men in such an influential position can mean certain misery, or worse, being in disobedience to God’s Word. After all, the biblical qualifications for these men (1 Timothy 3:1–10, Titus 1) are not mere suggestions, they are Christ’s clear commands for how he wants his church to be ordered. A church plant should consider seriously just who it is they are affirming for this position.
\n\nPerhaps the greatest challenge within the context of a new church is the question of these men being proven. Time just seems to work differently within a church plant. Weeks can seem like months, and some early milestones feel monumental. So just how long should an elder be observed and known within a local church before being affirmed as an elder? After all, some character qualities and qualifications cannot be known over a few lunches or small group studies. It is at this point right here where the necessity of a sending or initiating church comes into play. So much of the murky waters of identifying elders early on are clarified by sending the newly formed church plant with qualified elders who have been known, affirmed and serving faithfully.
\n\nThe saying “time proves all things” should be a chapter in every church planting manual. A church can begin with a well-crafted vision statement and publicly visible confession of faith yet wrongly assume that the mere presence of those statements will produce doctrinal and philosophical unity.
\n\nIt gets even more complicated when these statements are particularly vague, especially on essential matters, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper. To say that you affirm The Gospel Coalition’s statement of faith is terrific–if you want to gather a bunch of people who hold to a variety of positions on baptism. But, the real fun begins when it actually comes time to approach the table (who should partake?) and the waters of baptism (who should get wet?). It is right here, at this critical intersection of belief and practice that many a church unravels.
\n\nAssuming there is unity within a young church just because the documents exist, or have even been read through often proves disastrous as time moves on. Church plants should not only have clear documents statements of faith, but those guiding documents should also regularly be taught, explained and referenced.
\n\nThe blunt reality of church planting is that the vocational elder/preaching elder ends up doing most of the work. You become a generalist. You can stack chairs, dabble in graphic design, run a spreadsheet, troubleshoot a temperamental soundboard, and pray for the dear widow after service while simultaneously making a mental note of the Lord of the Flies vibe coming from the children’s class. Church planters are used to doing a lot, usually bearing the brunt of the heavy lifting.
\n\nHere’s the problem: isolation can become a way of life. Just because you are not surrounded by multiple staff members, a pastoral assistant or other pastors throughout the week, it does not mean you must labor alone. Unfortunately, I have observed a cynical aloneness amongst some church planters, and it is not good. Eventually, you end up becoming a committee of one, making important decisions without the counsel of others. You form opinions based upon your own limited perspective. You make judgment calls and assessments with bias. Flying solo will kill you, and possibly the church.
\n\nFind a pastoral network or association. Find veteran pastors. Find like-minded churches. Go learn from them, be honest with them, and ask for help. Don’t make the same mistaken assumption as Elijah, you are not the only one out there. God is smarter than that.
\n\n", "date_published": "2019-01-17T00:00:00-08:00", "tags": ["church","leadership"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2019/01/Take-Up-And-Read/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2019/01/Take-Up-And-Read/", "title": "Take Up And Read!", "content_html": "A few years back, I took up the habit of writing down the books I read throughout the year. I know there are services out there intended to do this, but I always found them to be more cumbersome than helpful. In part, I wanted to measure my reading habits and consumption over the years, but I also knew that the simple act of writing the completed books down would help jog my memory of what I read last year or even last month.
\n\nFor me, keeping such lists is not so much a prod to read even more or a yardstick to compare with other readers, but a personal habit to better retain the content that I read and get a better vantage point on what I have been reading.
\n\nSo, keeping that in mind, here is my reading list of 2018.
\n\nAs you peruse the attached list, I have included a couple of points in regard to reading that I have found helpful.
\n\nI am a pastor, so various theological subjects, biblical studies, biography, leadership, and church-related topics are the primary focus of my reading.
\n\nHowever, as necessary as these subjects are, I have found that those primary subjects are enriched by reading poetry, fiction, and even fantasy. The style of writing, the use of imagery, and narrative not only provide the spice of variety but help me write and think better within my primary vocation.
\n\nSomewhere along the way, I became conditioned to read books primarily to finish them. I sought to consume the print on the page to turn the last page. The goal of starting a book became dominated by the ambition to finish it. Thankfully, this practice has been curbed by a change of approach.
\n\nInstead of reading to gobble up the content of the book, I think of reading as a conversation with the author. I am hearing what the author is saying and engaging with their own words. Particularly within non-fiction, this habit has caused me to slow down, to ask questions about what I am reading, and to vary my pace through a book and reflect.
\n\nPractically, this looks like underlining, annotating with a “?” if I don’t agree, a “!” for a hearty amen, or even a scrawling thought across the top margin. Upon reaching the end of the book, I feel I have done a much better job of engaging with the book and walking away with the author’s big ideas.
\n\nBottom line, don’t be afraid to mark up your books, you will be better for it in the end.
\n\nThere were several books I read this year that were not new to me. Some of these re-reads were volumes that I hadn’t picked up for several years (The Christian Ministry, Animal Farm, MLJ Letters), while others I read within the last year.
\n\nThe value in this is that books strike you differently at different seasons of life. The last time I read Bridges, “The Christian Ministry,” I was in my late 20’s serving as an associate pastor, with two fewer kids and ten fewer years of marital experience. Bridges’ exhortations to pastoral care and preaching to all kinds of people are appreciated now in a way I could not then.
\n\nThe sum and substance of a book just hits you differently further on down the road. New books are good; reading older books again is often better.
\n\nAt times I have felt frustrated in looking at a particular spine on my shelf and not entirely sure I could summarize the various points, flow, or narrative of that book. Sometimes this panic even creeps in mid-book. “Am I getting all of this?! Can I regurgitate all 12 sub-points and the major headers thus far?”
\n\nI had noticed there was this underlying anxiety that I was reading, but not milking every last drop of worth from each book. Somewhere along the way, I remember someone writing about the mistaken idea that to read well, we must remember every single chapter, argument, insight or point. But unless we are gifted with a photographic memory, we will forget something.
\n\nInstead of fretting over what I might not remember, I focus on retaining what I can and trust that even if I don’t remember the complete outline of a book, this doesn’t mean that a book hasn’t been helpful to me. After all, if perfect retention were the yardstick for successful engagement, our conversations, the hearing of sermons, and correspondence would also be failures!
\n\nAbove all — take up and read. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a reader, read more books than you read last year. Read different books and read some well-worn favorites. Make a list of what you read and watch the list grow.
\n", "date_published": "2019-01-04T00:00:00-08:00", "tags": ["books","reading"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2018/05/3-Reasons-Why-Creeds-are-Essential-for-Our-Present-Culture/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2018/05/3-Reasons-Why-Creeds-are-Essential-for-Our-Present-Culture/", "title": "3 Reasons Why Creeds are Essential for Our Present Culture", "content_html": "The historic creeds of the Christian church have always served a vital role, but I would argue we need them now more than ever. Modern-day evangelical Christianity is facing a crisis of identity, and if we are to survive, creeds and confessions must play a central part.
\n\nI recognize there can be some suspicion towards anything written outside of Scripture as being “man-made” and therefore irrelevant, as all orthodox Christians look to the Bible alone as the supreme authority. However, no orthodox creed or confession claims to hold authority over Scripture, but a summary of the very truths that are proclaimed in Scripture. In this sense, a creed serves as a public conversation or consensus of what the Scriptures teach. And this is of particular importance for our present culture that emphasizes individualism and subjective experience.
\n\nWhile Christianity is most definitely personal, it is not private, and one aspect of this reality is seen in how we study and apply the Scriptures.
\n\nIf we agree with Scripture that we are finite creatures, ruined by sin, we would also have to admit that our ability to reason, interpret, and apply could also be mistaken. Therefore, a creed or confession exists as a public conversation that has been worked out and confessed by numerous Christians over hundreds of years.
\n\nIn this way, a creed guards against relying upon our individualized theological statements, and brings us into a broader circle of truths confessed by a multitude of Christians. This public agreement is not only significant in breadth, as in the number of Christians that affirm them, but also in length, as it reaches back to previous generations. This sort of breadth and depth pushes against our cultural blindspots or mistaken assumptions.
\n\nSo, creeds serve to unite Christians across varied cultures and centuries as they affirm these to be faithful summaries of Scripture. This practice is far more trustworthy than a private insight among a particular person immersed in their modern subculture.
\n\nCreeds remind us that Christianity is first and foremost historical.
\n\nThis might sound strange to our post-modern ears, but it is of utmost importance. The message of the gospel is that God did for us what we could not do for ourselves by sending Christ to redeem us from our sins and reconcile us to himself. This act of redemption was accomplished upon a real cross, under the oversight of a real governor (Pontius Pilate) in an actual point in time.
\n\nThe experience of Christian new birth and life in Christ is real, not because I feel it, but because it is true. This is why the Apostles Creed lines out, “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”
\n\nHere is why this matters: in our post-modern, experience-driven culture, Christians can often try and evangelize or convince non-Christians of their faith based on their personal experience. But if we are trying to convert people to our particular experience, we are, in essence, arguing for our favorite color or flavor of ice cream. “Who are you to say that chocolate chip is better than my favorite, Rocky Road? How arrogant of you! How can you dismiss my experience as invalid?”
\n\nRather than debating subjective experience, the Christian faith is first and foremost truth, which most definitely creates the most important experience ever—communion with the triune God.
\n\nWe live in a post-Christian culture where the practices and assumptions of Christianity are no longer shared or validated by the greater culture.
\n\nThe overlap of belief and practice between the church and culture is shrinking at breakneck speed, and in most regions, they are increasingly opposed. Therefore, Christians cannot expect that upon leaving the church gathering, the particular language, teachings, or Scriptural principals will be reinforced even permitted in the surrounding culture.
\n\nChristianity is now a cultural minority, and minorities must work to preserve and pass on their beliefs and practices to future generations if they are to survive. Creeds (and especially catechisms on this point) serve a vital role in distilling the essential elements of the Christian faith into bite-sized summaries that are intended to be memorized and handed down to new believers and younger children.
\n\nIn this way, creeds serve as an accessible teaching method to instruct and affirm the faith of present and future generations.
\n\nAbove all, creeds serve as a means to the end, as they are not the end itself. The end of the matter is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our understanding of how this can be done and must be done is ultimately through the Scriptures. Creeds must never replace Scripture, but creeds most certainly play a role in helping us define, summarize, and teach what the Scriptures say. For these reasons, the modern-day church would be well served by looking to, adhering, and teaching from the historic creeds of our Christian heritage.
\n", "date_published": "2018-05-17T00:00:00-07:00", "tags": ["theology","church"] },{ "id": "https://brettwagner.me/2018/02/Justification-by-Faith/", "url": "https://brettwagner.me/2018/02/Justification-by-Faith/", "title": "Justification by Faith", "content_html": "At the heart of the gospel lies the radical proclamation that God justifies the ungodly.1 To make such a claim would seem impossible, even blasphemous, was it not announced in the Scriptures themselves.
\n\nIt is true that to misunderstand this great doctrine of justification is to inflict massive damage upon the clarity of the gospel promise and the experience of all it contains. As Thomas Watson notes, “An error about justification is dangerous, like a defect in a foundation. Justification by Christ is a spring of water of life. To have the poison of corrupt doctrine cast into this spring is damnable.” 2 This great doctrine of justification has been called the hinge upon which religion turns 3, and the article by which the church stands or falls.4
\n\nFor these reasons, clarifying and proclaiming the biblical teaching of justification became the rallying point of the Reformation and the subsequent confessions that would be written in the following years.
\n\nLikewise, it is a doctrine that is worth our attention and efforts to keep clear in our own minds. Therefore, I am giving several posts to the subject of justification by walking through various paragraphs given to this in the 1689 Baptist Confession.
\n\n\n\n\nThose God effectually calls He also freely justifies. He does this, not by infusing righteousness into them but by pardoning their sins and accounting and accepting them as righteous. He does this for Christ’s sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them. He does not impute faith itself, the act of believing, or any other gospel obedience to them as their righteousness. Instead, He imputes Christ’s active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in His death as their whole and only righteousness by faith. This faith is not self-generated; it is the gift of God. – Confessing the Faith, Chapter 11.1.”
\n
It may be helpful to approach this paragraph by asking several questions: whom does God justify, how does it happen, why does God do this and lastly, what exactly transpires?
\n\nFirst, there is the question of whom does God actually justify.
\n\nThe confession states plainly that the justified are those that are effectually called, and this is all of God’s doing. Chapter 10 of the confession gives thorough explanation of effectual calling, but the main emphasis here rests upon the completeness of our salvation.
\n\nBear in mind that salvation is not merely conversion; it the entire transaction that secures our rescue from sin and union with Christ. “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans 8:30, ESV).
\n\nAll the promises and assurance accomplished in justification are most surely given to the Christian.
\n\nSecondly, there is the question as to how this actually transpires.
\n\nThis was a critical point for the writers of the confession, especially in an attempt to call out the very different understanding of justification that the Roman Catholic Church upheld. The confession uses a negative and positive statement. Negatively, justification is not achieved by “infusing righteousness,” meaning, justification is not moral transformation. Justification is not a change in us; it is a verdict about us.5 Positively, our justification is a declaration; more specifically, it is a forensic term, “borrowed from law-courts, wherein a person arraigned is pronounced righteous, and is openly absolved.” 6
\n\nUpon hearing such news, the natural question is, “why would God do this?” The confession answers, “He does this for Christ’s sake alone and not for anything produced in them or done by them.” The writers of the confession want to make clear that the Biblical mandate of grace, not works. Our justification does not arise from something within us, but solely and squarely with Christ alone and what he accomplished.
\n\nThe final statement of the confession speaks to the details of justification.
\n\nIt is here we ask, “what actually transpires in our justification?” Again, the writers use a negative and positive statement to explain, both dealing with the issue of imputation. Negatively, our justification is not obtained by God imputing faith or any other sort of obedience.
\n\nAgain, this stands against the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the Council of Trent that declared a mixing of grace and works in justification.
\n\nPositively, justification is an imputation of Christ’s own righteousness to our account. We are assured of the forgiveness of the guilt of our sins, which is provided in Christ’s passive obedience upon the cross. We are assured of the gift of positive righteousness through Christ’s active obedience to the law.
\n\nConsider the wondrous news of the gospel: the righteousness that God demands he also supplies in Christ!
\n\nRomans 4:5 ↩
\nThomas Watson. A Body of Divinity, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2012), p 226. ↩
\nJohn Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, J.T. McNeill, ed., F.L. Battles, tr., (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 2006), 3:11:1. ↩
\nPaul Althaus. The Theology of Martin Luther, (USA: Fortress Press, 1966), p 224. ↩
\nSam Waldron. A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith (Darlington, CO: Evangelical Press, 1999), p 157. ↩
\nThomas Watson. A Body of Divinity, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2012), p 227. ↩
\n