Why You Should Probably Read ‘The Anxious Generation’.

Social Media might soon come with a warning label, just like cigarettes.1

It seems that across the globe, something is shifting in our relationship to social media. The US is seriously considering outlawing data-based algorithms for those under 16. The UK has toyed with raising the age of access to platforms like facebook from 13 to 16. Here in Australia, we’re considering a stricter kind of age verification in the hope of keeping young kids from exposure to the big bad world of the world wide web too early. Everywhere you look, it seems that there’s a growing unease with what it might be doing to our mental health, and especially the mental health of young people. As all this is happening – an academic named Jonathan Haidt has recently released his latest book – ‘The Anxious Generation’.

I first came across Haidt via his famous ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, simply because preachers kept talking about it in sermons. When I finally picked it up, I became aware that he was working on this volume – centred on Gen Z and their growing anxiety. As a youth minister interested in the philosophy of technology, I was naturally intrigued. I just didn’t fully expect how important this book would be.

Since it was released, a global storm of legislation around age verification, digital consent and social media restrictions seems to have broken. Recently, the principal at my daughter’s school gave a brief review of the book in her monthly update, and virtually pleaded with every parent to read it as soon as possible. In addition to giving practical suggestions for families in their own homes, Haidt makes no apologies for trying to start a wider groundswell movement to sway policy-makers – and it seems to be working.

The basic premise of the book is this – we’re in the midst of a youth mental health epidemic. The digital world that Gen Z’s are living can be pretty toxic, and the rest of us have not prepared them for it well.

The volume is full of confronting statistics as he outlines that something has gone wrong. The value of the book is not just in the numbers though – it’s his nuanced analysis of how we got here. Following on from the first chapter, he presents a two-pronged narrative about how Gen Z have been overprotected from the real-world, while being under-protected in the digital world. He goes on to outline how this has played in males and females differently, which forces seem to have been the most influential, and what parents, schools, and policy makers might be able to do about turning the tide.

Just like ALL sociology, there’s probably more going on than fits into a single book. But I found it a compelling diagnosis of where Gen Z seem to find themselves, which managed to avoid unnecessary alarmism without papering over some serious concerns that we should all share as human citizens.

But why should Christians read it?

People of Faith Seeking Understanding

Social media is to Expressive Individualism what the printing press was to the Reformation.2 To be sure – they’re different things. But without social media, there’s no way the worldview of the expressive individual takes root as fast and as far as it is has. If we’re in the business of discipleship, and social media is the single most influential discipleship delivery system amongst Gen Z, we’d do well to try and understand the contours of what’s going on.

As Haidt himself says: We need to develop a more nuanced mental map of the digital landscape. Social media is not synonymous with the internet, smartphones are not equivalent to desktop computers or laptops, PacMan is not World of Warcraft, and the 2006 version of Facebook is not the 2024 version of TikTok.3

Take for example Haidt’s insightful observation that the uptick in poor mental health outcomes doesn’t isn’t largely brought about by the advent of the smartphone. It’s far more impacted by the arrival of smartphones with front facing cameras a few years later. 4 If you’ve simply assumed that ‘screen-time’ is the problem, you’re burying the lede. It’s the toxicity of comparison driving the poor mental health outcomes we’re seeing – especially for girls.

Likewise, not all social media is created equal. Remember the ‘Facebook wall’? It was the once-default home page, where you’d go to see what your friends were saying to you before heading to someone else’s wall to look in at what people were saying to other people. Around 2010 – this got replaced by the ‘News Feed’, a place where communication changed from the ‘person to person exchange’ of a wall, into a ‘person-to-audience’ exchange of public posts. At the time, the change seemed subtle and small. But it represented a deep shift in the way we use Facebook, and even the way we thought about ourselves. What was once a communication device to connect people together, became much better suited as a platform of performance, a place where our communications tend to resemble press releases more than private messages. And that’s all before we begin to consider the algorithmically curated, infinite feed which resulted designed to keep the rest of us there as long as possible.

If you’re a leader or pastor of young people who’s prone to treat technological forces as a one-size-fits-all problem with ‘young people these days’, that betrays more than a lack of understanding of modern media – it comes across as a lack of willingness to engage the culture in which young people find themselves. Don’t worry, seeking to appreciate what’s going on doesn’t mean you need to start TikToking, or even approve of the social media habits of those who do. But if you begin to disagree with something you clearly don’t understand, it’ll be hard to gain much traction with the people who do.

I teach the Bible to teenagers for a living. And I’ve found the content of this book (as well as the Substack of supporting material) compelling, helpful and strangely hopeful. I understand the people I’m trying to serve better. I’ve got more conviction about the kind of advice I’m giving them. And, I’m much better equipped to understand the digital world they’re living in, alongside their dissatisfaction with it. In addition to that, I’m finding most young people already have a sense that there’s something off about social media. If, through a degree of sympathetic understanding, adults who are invested in their discipleship can help give language to experiences and categories which resonate with their anxieties, we help them in their quest for better alternatives.

A Plausible Counter-Community

The most common objection to simply unplugging from Instagram that I encounter is simple. It’s social suicide.

Even a teenager totally dissatisfied with their doom scrolling habits is likely to give in to the FOMO, and stay plugged in to social media. Because if you want to be ‘in the room where it happens’ – (or even to understand that reference) – if feels like you have to be connected. But what if we could ensure that they weren’t missing out at all?

It seems to me that youth groups are uniquely placed to be counter-communities; discipleship forces which enable alternative ways of life to seem plausible.

In practical terms, what if a bunch of families at your church adopted a ‘smart-phone covenant’ together? What if all the 16 yr olds at your church turned their phones off at 8pm? What if most of the kids in your youth group agreed to only 30 mins of Instagram each day, and tried to help each other keep to it? What if a couple of families got together, decided to get their pre-teens the same dumb-phones, and all adopted the same rules around them?

It wouldn’t be easy. But it would make change seem a little less impossible. And given how stuck we seem to feel in our social media status quo, perhaps that’s all we’re after.

In years to come – it will interesting to see where historians locate ‘The Anxious Generation’. Either it’s a book which single-handedly sparked a cultural landslide, as people unplugged in unprecedented numbers and legislation finally caught up with the dark side of our digital revolution. Or, it could just be one of many books which rode the wave of social media suspicion we all felt about halfway through the 2020’s.

Either way – it seems that the tide is turning in our unbridled adoption of social media. And after spending time in this book – I’m not mad about it.

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html ↩︎
  2. I might have heard this line from Steve McAlpine first, but I can’t for the life of me, find it anywhere. ↩︎
  3. p138. ↩︎
  4. p35. ↩︎

Lessons From a Garden Bed

When we started a vegetable patch in our backyard, our two toddlers were so into it. Squishing the seeds into the dirt and drenching the soil in water were the perfect ingredients for an unbelievably wholesome afternoon activity. Predictably, the afternoon turned into an evening of imagining: How tall will they grow? How good will they taste?

What I didn’t see coming was the awkward conversation that followed the next day. The girls ran in to our room with kid-on-Christmas-morning-energy demanding that I take them outside immediately. Why? Because they couldn’t wait to see how much the plants had grown.

Needless to say, it was a pretty underwhelming exercise.

To combat the disappointment, I tried to explain that when you’re tending seedlings, they really do grow big and tall, and they really will taste good one day.

It’s just that growth takes time.

I guess that’s why experienced gardeners don’t tend to water a seed and come back the next day to measure the success of their efforts. If you expect to see veggies after a day, or a week, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. If you go looking for growth too early, all you’ll see is dirt, and all you’ll feel is discouraged.

If you’ll excuse me the obvious analogy, veggies are a bit like youth ministry. As the seed of the gospel goes forth, it really does grow. As people spend time in the soil of deep, thick, rich Christian community and extend Christ-like love to one another, we really can expect to see fruit.

Friends saved. Sin overcome. Lives changed. It’s all on the table.

But… it’s ill advised to go to the garden bed every morning and expect to see visible growth every time. Because if you go looking for too much progress too quickly all you’ll see is dirt, and all you’ll feel is discouraged.

If it is true that God’s word works… then we can trust that there really is change, and God really is growing things. And it’s worth trying to notice exactly where God has been at work, so that we might be able to praise him for it and play our part in watering those seeds some more. But as we begin the treacherous task of trying to quantify and understand ‘growth’ in the context of youth ministry, there’s a couple of things to remember.

Look at the Right Time

When you’re trying to work out how your youth are going – don’t measure your success or failure at the end of your time together each week. The fact is, you probably have no idea what God has been doing during your time together. And the kind of fruit we’re on about takes time to grow.

A far better way to measure your success is to look back over a longer period of time. Use terms and years, rather than weeks and months as your measuring stick. For only when you look at the fruit that God has produced in your group over a really long period of time can you really start to get a picture of how he’s been growing the people in your group.2

So here’s my tip: Don’t waste your Christmas party.
It’s maybe the best chance you get all year to reflect on all the highlights, moments of growth, and learnings from the year just gone – and see real fruit for the labours of your ministry. We do an open mic night every year, asking people to share their highlights. You could do it however you want. But a clear moment at the end of the year to take time to reflect as a youth community on all the God has done will encourage everyone in the room, and serve as a powerful reminder of why we do what we do.

I meet so many leaders who are feeling discouraged at a lack of fruit, simply because their data sample is too small, or they’ve gone searching in the wrong garden bed. But when we take a longer view of the way God works, and look back over months and years, every leader unfailingly has so much to be encouraged by, so much to be thankful for, and so many reasons to turn up next week with Bible open and a heart full of hope.

Look for the Right Things

It would have been pretty strange if my daughters and I went out to our veggie patch looking for zucchinis when all we planted was lettuce. Or, if we went to the backyard next door to check on our progress. In the same way, when you begin to assess ‘how’s our youth ministry going?’, it’s worth asking – where are we looking, and what are we looking for?

The simplest option is always to look at the numbers. It’s easy to feel like things are going well when the numbers have an upward trajectory. And that might be the case, it might not. But I don’t know of a single youth group who’s vision is to ‘be a bigger youth group’. And so it seems strange to measure your success or failure based on your numbers rather than the things you’ve actually got in your vision statement. Attendance is helpful, but it may not be the indicator of fruit that you think it is.

So what other options do we have?

Another place we might look is feedback. What are the young people in our group saying? I’ve observed that one of the big differences between young people and their older counterparts is that teens don’t always have the same tendency to articulate what’s going on for them. It’s not a lack of ability to do so – they just choose not to. And so the chances that they’ll share verbal encouragement to their leaders is just smaller than your average congregation member.2 It’s not that they don’t appreciate all that the youth leaders do for them, it’s just that almost every adult in their life spends time trying to teach, train, instruct and shape them somehow. So it may not feel completely extraordinary to them that someone from church would take time to do the same. Therefore, waiting for feedback from the youth to let you know you’re doing a good job might not be the best indication that God is at work. In addition, loud people tend to live on the edges of spectrums. Those who are most satisfied AND those who are most dissatisfied are the ones you’re most likely to hear from. So just keep in mind that whatever you’re hearing – there’s probably a silent majority somewhere in the middle.

That’s why I think there’s totally a place for just asking how people are finding your ministry. Obviously, there’s weird ways of forcing the issue, like asking ‘how have you been encouraged by my teaching?’ But there’s other ways of helping young people reflect on and articulate how they’ve been growing, which can help everyone in the room be encouraged by what God is doing.

Questions like – ‘what was your favourite topic this term?’ or ‘what has God been teaching you recently?’ are simple ways of helping people reflect on where God has been at work. You can probably come up with any number of others that work too. But one exercise I really like is this: Every time someone joins our group, I ask every one else in the group what they like most about being a part of it. Every time someone leaves, I ask that to share what they’ve most appreciated about their time with us. Now, the point of youth ministry isn’t for me to be encouraged in my leadership. But I’m convinced taking a moment to notice what God has been doing in the lives of our youth group is faith-building for everyone.

So… next time you’re wrapping up a night of youth group – remember the veggie patch. Feel free to have a look around for growth, just be conscious of what you’re looking for, and when you’re expecting it to sprout.


  1. Of course, God does miraculous things – and there are moments of rapid growth and massive fruit that we long for and pray for too. But given that the nature of extraordinary things is that they’re extraordinary, they may not be the best way to get an accurate indication of how our ministry inputs are going. It may be lovely to get to your garden bed and discover a beautiful zucchini that you never planted and weren’t expecting. But that may not help you work out if your approach to gardening is sound. ↩︎
  2. In fact, I’m noticing a slight tendency in youth leaders to favor the young people who are most willing and able to articulate themselves to adults. I get why – it’s nice to talk to someone who is encouraging, engaging, or feels like a peer. But giving special treatment to the ‘adultiest’ teenagers in our youth group is dangerously similar to a western missionary giving preference to the most ‘western’ locals they encounter on location. It’s the homogenous-unit principle gone wrong, a small but significant kind of cultural-colonization which fails to grasp the dignity of teenagerdom as its own thing worthy of dignity, even if it is different. ↩︎

How Many Pizzas Should I Buy for Youth Group? (And Why You Might Need Tertiary Training to Work it Out).

At one level, the formula is pretty simple.

Ready?

P = (f/3+m/2)x1.2

Whoop. There it is.

The pizza formula.*

Based on years of refinement across multiple cities, demographics and group sizes – the pizza formula has never let me down. It’s simple, scaleable and adjustable based on the size of pizza (this one being based on your standard 12 inch pie).

Here’s the thing though.
The formula only tells half the story.

While it’s been commonplace to assume that the work of youth ministry mostly involves keeping young people fed, entertained, and positive towards the ideas of God and church – working out how much Dominos to order is the least important decision you’ll make at a youth pizza party.

Here’s just two examples.

  1. You’d think that older teens eat more than younger teens. But you’d be wrong. 12 year olds approach their fast food with the kind of reckless abandon you might expect… but 15 year olds – not so much. The ones I know tend to read self help books, diet, hit the gym, count calories, and sometimes go vegan altogether, either for environmental or ethical reasons. Not only do they do this stuff – they manage to do it more effectively than their adult counterparts, because they’re all doing it in such close proximity to one another. In reality, the phrase ‘eats like a teenager’ is just as likely to mean whole foods as it is junk foods.

    22% of Australian young people have battled disordered eating of some kind. The mere presence of dinner at an event is enough to cause anxiety for some, temptation for others, and all manner of serious issues for others. That doesn’t mean you should avoid pizza – it just means your job as a minister to young people goes way beyond event catering.
  2. When there are both guys and girls present, the pizza formula holds true. But when only one gender is around, you can basically throw it out the window. Why?

    Self-consciousness, of course.

    Broadly speaking, girls tend to eat less when they know there’s boys in the room. Boys tend to be in the room less when they know there are girls there. And everyone is more conscious of how they’re coming across in every way, including how they look when they eat. And so, the pizza goes untouched. After all when your stomach is full of butterflies, there’s not much room left for anything else.

What’s my point?

Teenagers are complex. They’re constantly changing, making major decisions about how they live life now & into the future, and they’re really different to how you were at that age. Which means pizza alone isn’t gonna get it done. Effective youth ministry requires regular slices of deep pastoral sensitivity, anthropological wisdom, and cultural awareness. And that’s before you even open the Bible – which will use every ounce of brain-muscle you’ve got.

*In case you do happen to need it for your own ministry context though:
f=females
m=males
P= 12″ pizza

Predestination Derailed My Small Group Again. Here’s What I Wish I Said.

It took one week.

There we were on the first Friday night Bible study of the year, a perfectly innocent circle enjoying a casual conversation about Genesis 1. Then, like a tiger, leaping out of the weeds to tackle an unsuspecting baby zebra, it happened.

The Predestination Question.

I’ve seen this before, and I’ve been around long enough to know that it was only a matter of time before someone dropped the ‘P-word’. I just wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly.

Everyone shuffled nervously in their chairs, none more than my co-leader and I. As the ranking leader in the group, I breathed deeply… and spoke. I honestly don’t remember much of what came out of my mouth. I talked about God, and the corridor of time, and total depravity and the Book of Life (though, not in that order). Upon reflection, I think I got away with my answer. It was true, somewhat biblical, and even mildly relevant at points. But I wasn’t totally happy with the clarity and conviction of my response.

So it got me thinking – what will I say next time? With 20/20 hindsight, here’s three points I’ll try to mention next time it comes up.

The Issue is Secondary

The last thing we want to do in our two minute side-track is undermine the assurance of our members. I’m totally convinced of reformed theology. But there’s an irony at play if we turn the doctrine of election into something that makes young people wonder whether God really loves them.

I think you can feel free to take a position on this as a leader, or a leadership team. But if you should be slow to disqualify people on this basis – especially where they’re yet to encounter these doctrines in any depth. God’s gracious election, by it’s very nature, is counter-intuitive. So it’s fair to expect that people aren’t going to come at this doctrine for the first time and expect it to be true (if they come around at all). Which means the way you treat and talk about people who think differently ought to be humbly seasoned with salt.

I’m happy to tell our youth what I think. But I’m keen to ensure that our youth feel free to have questions, or even to disagree. If nothing else, it’s a great opportunity to train them to argue with their Bible open, and a great chance to model loving, non-anxious disagreement.

The Idea is Super-Complicated

I’ve thought a lot about this. But I’ve still got some questions (supra-lapsarianism, anyone?) What’s more, I became convinced of my position through an integrated combination of exegesis, biblical theology, church history, and formal logic, which took years. And it’s OK to own that.

Just because something is complicated, doesn’t make it more or less likely to be true. But just because it’s true, that doesn’t make it simple. So, I want to acknowledge the complexity of God’s sovereignty, and highlight that we probably can’t dive into it all in one night, let alone a night that’s supposed to be about a different topic entirely.

By all means, teach on these questions, especially if you’re dealing with one of the key passages that deals with issues of God’s sovereignty in salvation. But beware the drive-by-download, when you neither have the time or the text in front of you to walk through the arguments properly. You neither respect the passages you appeal to, nor the people asking the question when you pretend that this is completely resolvable in mere minutes.

The Implications are Pretty Simple

In my experience, when people ask about predestination, they usually do it with some degree of nervousness or fear. If God chooses people for salvation – has he chosen me? If salvation belongs to the Lord, why hasn’t he chosen my loved ones yet? Are they beyond help?

In emphasising the sovereignty of God – the Bible never negates the responsibility of humans – both in responding to the gospel and in holding it out to those who don’t believe. Romans 9 is followed by Romans 10, after all.

With that in mind – I’m keen to ensure that anyone asking these questions hears the biblical commands about what to do about God’s work of salvation. After all, while the epistemological realities under the hood of predestination might be complex, the application of it is pretty simple:

1) If you’re nervous about whether God has chosen you – you should repent and put your faith in Jesus. As one famous preacher said – ‘if you don’t like hell, don’t go there’.
2) Likewise, if you’re worried about family and friends, you should pray your butt off and tell them the good news at every opportunity.

Landing here doesn’t depend on you making up your mind, as everyone can agree on those two action points. But it does keep you from paralysis, and gives those who are fearful a way forward. Even if the answer to your question is unclear… the implications of that answer are already known. Believing, praying and evangelising are the job of every Armenian and Calvinist alike.

So that’s the 3 things I’ll try and hit next time. It’s my attempt at respecting the question, easing some of the tension within it, and keeping us from spending the rest of the night in a rabbit hole.

There’s a whole different article in ‘what I’d say + where I’d go in the Bible if I had 30+ minutes’. And where I can, I’ll gladly follow up the questioner with an offer of a much longer follow up conversation. Whether they accept my invitation is up to them.

Or up to God.


It’s definitely one of the two.

WISH: A Review

I love kids films.

I didn’t used to. As a kid longing to be older than I was, they felt too childish for my PG- rated palette. Now that I’m not a kid any more, turns out injecting a little dose of child-like wonder every now and then is good for my soul.

So, I was excited to take my kids to see Disney’s latest offering – Wish.

Here’s some thoughts, structured around the three questions that lead me to read any kind of movie review.

What is it?

Given it’s the 100th anniversary of Disney, the film worked hard to incorporate as much Disney history as it could get away with – and it was done well. The whole thing was visually stunning, as the creators deployed a beautiful blend of modern animation techniques with that classic watercolour feel that made Disney famous. The colours were striking from the get go, and only got better throughout the film.

There were also easter eggs aplenty from the Disney canon, taking an adult viewer straight back to their own childhood regardless of which decade that happened to be. I love a good callback, and found myself smiling at all the subtle tips of the cap that populated the first half of the film.

As a tribute to the past, it was cute, and nicely done.
As a piece of literature in the present – it left me feeling ultimately dissatisfied.

Never mind that the songs weren’t especially memorable, the jokes weren’t that funny, and there were only a couple of characters I cared about. It was the narrative that let the film down most.

From the start, it was clear that the film was designed as a thinly veiled swipe at monotheistic faith.

With musical refrains like ‘We are made from stars’ & ‘We are our own origin story’, together with the unjustified assumption that our dreams are the most important part of us, there were a whole lot of moments to make your friendly neighbourhood atheist smile and nod.

Chief among them was the portrayal of the King. ‘Magnifico’ was an apparently benevolent, omnipotent higher power, who demanded the trust and praise of all the people, but certainly didn’t deserve it. Unsurprisingly, dethroning the oppressive monarch became the main goal of the protagonists, along with the requisite ballads of longing & token comic-relief animal.

What Should I Make of it? (Spoiler Alerts)

As a critique of monotheism, it felt a little clumsy, as it’s pretty difficult to recognise the God I trust in the caricature designed to critique him.
As a promotion of humanist hope, it’s not just a swing and a miss – it’s an own goal.

At first, I thought this was because the film was narratively confused. My kids couldn’t really follow all the plot lines, and I’m not sure they could have caught the intended morals of the story if they were trying to. So if the goal was to build suspicion towards faith, it was a little ineffective. But the thing that interested me was – I’m pretty sure that it was necessarily narratively confused. It turns out that when you wish upon a star – things get weirdly complicated and paradoxical.1

Here’s a few:

-We’re supposed to look inside ourselves for our own destiny...
…And yet, somehow the answer to overthrowing the oppressor is not found in an individual. It’s based in a communal, shared unity. Ironically, the unity is centred around our individuality – but it’s unity all the same.

-We don’t need a King…
…And yet, a queen takes his place without question. Rather than do away with the monarchy, it’s unquestioningly adopted again, because people presumably didn’t feel safe.

-There is no higher being worthy of our complete trust.
…And yet we seem to require some sort of transcendent power outside ourselves (in this case, the stars) to become all that we can be.

Essentially, the film tied itself in knots trying to build a kingdom without a king, which resulted in a series of confused & contradictory messages.2 While the problems of the king were obvious – the solutions were not. Some might say that’s because the screenplay just wasn’t very good. But I wonder if it’s simply because the storytellers couldn’t shake the deeply human desire be part of a kingdom. The longings for a unity and a transcendence we can trust remained, long after Magnifico was overthrown.

Should I See it?

So, if you’re a discerning parent wondering whether to take the youngsters in your charge out to the nearest cinema, it depends what your question is:

If it’s a question of quality – I’d save my money and wait til it’s streamable. A week on, and my 3&5 year olds can’t name a single character or hum a single tune from the film, so I can’t see it going down as a classic. (And if you’re a church leader reading this, I doubt you’ll need to see it to keep pace with the people you serve. Go re-watch Barbie instead.)

If it’s a question of morality, and you’re wondering whether to let your kids see it all – I would, but I’d watch it with them. Not because I see it as a threatening secular attempt at indoctrination. Quite the opposite. I’d recommend watching it together because it’s a beautiful opportunity for children and adults alike to be reminded that when you reach into the treasure chest of humanism for hope, the cupboard is bare. What’s more, it provides great chance to imagine how much more satisfying our stories could be if some day, somewhere, there was a better king on the throne.

  1. I’d be happy to concede that the decision to make ‘wishing upon a star’ the central hope of the film was just a forced attempt to pay tribute to Disney’s past; a solution in search of a problem. On the other hand, it could also be understood as a revealing expose of all that’s left when you reaching into the tool-chest of humanism to find the tools you need to construct a kingdom without a king. ↩︎
  2. I’m not sure who came up with the language of ‘a kingdom without a king’ first, but it’s certainly wasn’t me. I first heard it from Mark Sayers in the ‘This Cultural Moment’ podcast. ↩︎

Sleeping

“Let’s Begin by taking a smallish nap or two.”
— Winnie the Pooh

I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, on demand. Perhaps having small children helps, putting me in such a perpetual snooze debt that I can cash in at will. Or maybe I’m just lucky. Either way I try not to take it for granted as I’m all too aware of friends and family who’ve faced the dreaded insomnia dragon, devouring their sheep night after night before they can even be counted.

In describing my special talent, I’ve often joked that I have ‘the spiritual gift of sleep’. But the longer I go on, the less funny the joke seems. For I am becoming more and more convinced that there’s something deeply spiritual about sleep.

Take Elijah in 1 Kings 19. After a long day of trying to rouse Israel from their spiritual lethargy, realising his own sin, and running for his life, he was ready to die. Then, in a surprisingly pragmatic act of angelic intervention, he slept, ate a square meal, and slept again. When he woke up he was able to face the world. And sometimes, that’s just the ticket.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t think all my problems come down to being tired. Nor are they solved by getting a solid few hours on the pillow. But I think it helps more than I’m willing to admit.

If I had to guess why it helps, and why I’m so reluctant to admit that, it comes down to two pretty basic facts that I seem especially good at forgetting.

Observation #1: I’m Not Just Spiritual

As a Christian (and someone who works in the industry), it’s all too tempting to emphasise the spiritual realities we are included into as heavenly-bound-beings, especially as I stand in contrast to a secular world which is closed to the possibility of transcendent spirituality altogether. But to emphasise spirituality at the expense of remembering that we’re profoundly physical in nature is a pretty sad mistake. And it’s one the Bible doesn’t let us get away with.

For example, in Romans 12, Paul effortlessly connects physicality and spirituality in the pursuit of worship:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Rom 12:1

In other words, what you do with your body is a deeply spiritual, worshipful thing, not just an irrelevant fleshy addendum to the inner-life where the action is. And I’d do well to remember that more often, because when I start messing with my circadian rhythm by watching a little too much cricket each night, it’s all too easy to spend the next day snapping at the kids, being less than present with people, and generally resenting the good works that God has prepared in advance for me to do. These failings are spiritual issues, parts of myself that need further conforming to Christ. But they are intertwined with my physical state, and a good rest usually makes it a fairer fight.

The recognition that I’m a physical being helps with my spiritual practices. But the reason I’m slow to admit that to myself? Well that’s deeply spiritual too.

Observation 2: I’m Just Not Sovereign

I’ve got a twisted predilection to believe that I’m more important than I am. I’m not the worst workaholic I know, but I’m still led to believe that unless I stay up late or get up early, everything in the world will fall apart.

To be sure, there’s great reasons to stay up, or to rise at the crack of dawn. Laying down your life by getting up to nurse a crying infant is also a deep act of worship. So is setting up chairs on a Sunday. But an ongoing, over-developed sense of your significance that keeps you up at night is more than just a recipe for burnout. It’s bad theology.

At the end of the day world doesn’t need me, because it’s got God. And he’s better at sustaining the world than I am. What’s more, he doesn’t need sleep. (Ps 121:4)
With this freeing recognitiion, the Psalmist is able to rest his head, saying:

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; 
for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. (Ps 4:8).

So I can fall asleep, because I know God won’t. It’s ok for me to spend about a third of my life not really contributing much, helping anyone in particular, or making a difference anywhere, because the world simply doesn’t revolve around me. It keeps turning because God makes it so. And just as he invites me to contribute to his work in the world, he also invites me to stop for a while, and lay down in peace.

At the end of the day, sleep is an acceptance of my finitude. A warm, blanketed acknowledgement of my limits and God’s sovereignty. A clear but quiet declaration that ‘I’m dependent on rest, and the world is not dependent on me’. When I can start to see things that way, closing my laptop, locking my phone and shutting my eyes isn’t always lazy or negligent. It’s a courageous spiritual act of worship. A humble act of dependence on the God who is truly sovereign, and a celebration of his sheer dependability.

So here’s one of my goals during this series: as I learn, think and pray about a whole host of spiritual practices over the next seven weeks, I’m going to try and do it on 8 hours of sleep. Every night. That’s my starting point. Through trial and error (mostly error), I’ve learnt that’s just what I need to function sustainably. For others, it’ll be different in either direction and that’s ok too. But that’s my aim.

And as nice as it sounds, I don’t imagine it’ll come easy. (After all, Netflix has identified that sleep is their main competitor.) Given that sleep is a contested space, my goal will mean saying no to a whole host of things, many of them really, really good in their own way. But if I can start with some decent sleep, I’m hoping that I’m ever so slightly more awake to my dependence on God for all things, and his wonderful dependability for the day ahead. Which, if you ask me, is not a bad way to start the morning.

The Futility of Proper Praying

‘Pray until you pray’.

It’s an old puritan saying – nobody seems to know where from. But I hear it every so often.

The idea is that you should pray deeply. With focus, and tenacity, and patience. That you should persist in your prayers, until eventually you find yourself praying differently somehow. That eventually, your prayers will morph, and they’ll have more… gravitas, or something. And until you can do that, you’re not really praying properly.

As someone who seems to find focus depressingly hard to come by, this advice seems like a fair rebuke. In my world, the path of least resistance doesn’t just meander towards distraction occasionally – it’s slippery, and downhill the whole way. And if I’m not careful, I waste my day in a flurry of hurry… without ever slowing down long enough to do much of anything meaningful. Like a smooth stone tossed across water, I may move fast, but I only ever skim across the surface of things.

Needless to say, ‘Pray until you pray’ seems like something I should do more. Suck it up, quit being a victim of my own neuroplasticity, and just concentrate long enough to pray properly for once.

But there’s a problem with ‘pray until you pray’ – it’s fundamentally futile.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s possible that if you work hard enough at it for long enough, your own experience of prayer could shift a bit. And that could be an encouraging day. But even if you manage to reach such a state – it’s worth keeping in mind: you can never change the fundamental effectiveness of your prayers.

Which is such a relief.

Prayer is ultimately dependent on God. He is the only one who makes it effective. So, rather than reaching the end of your prayer time and stressing about whether you prayed long enough, or hard enough, or ‘proper’ enough prayers, try asking some other things instead.

Is God still my Father in heaven?
Does he sit on the Throne?
Is Jesus at his right hand, interceding for me as my great high priest?
Am I cleansed by the blood of the Lamb?
Is the Spirit dwelling in me?

If so, then every prayer is a proper prayer.

Every jumbled mess of thoughts and reflections and desires and distractions you send in God’s general direction hits the mark. Your request for a carpark carries the stamp and seal of the King. Each sigh of ‘help’ whispered from the tram echoes through the halls of heaven. Each request brought to God from the middle of a messy lounge room and cut short by the kids… it all shifts the outcomes of eternity somehow.

Every prayer is a proper prayer.

Are there some benefits to praying more frequently? Yes. More persistently? Sure. Less distractedly? You bet. But do any of those things make your prayer more acceptable to God? Not in a million years. Because 2000 years ago, Jesus did enough to make all your prayers acceptable to God.

Nothing in my hands I bring – simply to your cross I cling.

This is not just the basis of our forgiveness. It’s the very bedrock of our prayers. I should only be concerned about not praying properly, if I’m also concerned that Jesus didn’t save me properly. Otherwise, my prayers count just as much as his do.

When we pray, we pray in Jesus name. In other words, we come on the basis of what he has done – not what we can offer. The efficacy of prayer is not dependent on our effort, because the hardest work of prayer has already been done for us.

So by all means, keep pursuing a more persistent, less distracted, more satisfying prayer life. But don’t ever confuse those things for a ‘proper’, effective prayer life.

You’ve already got one.

Psalm 23 for Grown Ups

For months, Psalm 23 was our evening routine, and I didn’t love it.

Each night, I’d read it to my daughter from her kids Bible. When she’d inevitably point at the pictures of the sheep, and say ‘woof’ – I’d start to wonder if she was missing something. But at least her enthusiasm was high. Which is more than I could say for my own.
 
The pages were stamped with pictures of rolling hills, sunny skies and winding streams, and the sheep were always smiling. The problem was – my I couldn’t see my life in any of those pretty pictures. Things were messy, and I was often sad. I had a vague sense that I was supposed to be as smiley as the sheep, but when I couldn’t muster it, guilt swept through my soul and I’d start to wonder if I was the one missing something.

But God, in his shepherdly kindness, gave me reminders like this one:

When we look to the language of God given in the Bible, we find within it a language that the miserable would recognise as native and not foreign to the geography of their inward anguish. (…) Without this (kind of language) we offer mere Band-Aids to the broken – tokened, topical lotion for the internal bleeder. We describe the choking-gray breath of wheezing anxiety with pastels. And when thorns and thistles take over, all of our balloon words pop. Zac Eswine, Spurgeon’s Sorrows, 71-72

Psalm 23 is a perfect place to find Band-Aids and balloons for those who want them.
But for those who need it, there is also a more honest, more robust, more grown-up hope nestled amongst these hills.

This Psalm is full of tensions – and in those tensions, we find a hope that doesn’t pop so easily. Let me show you three of them.

Tension 1: A Sheep at Odds with His Shepherd.  

The Lord is my shepherd – I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me by still waters.

Straight away we’re carried away to rolling hills and sunny skies. This is ‘the happy place’ you imagine when you try and imagine a happy place. But as we sit with these words, we begin to notice some conflict.

He makes me lie down…

As though, somehow, the sheep is unwilling. This paddock is somehow not what the sheep imagined. But the shepherd insists. He makes the sheep lie down in green pastures, and in doing so, its soul is restored.

And of course, from our vantage point… We side with the shepherd.
‘Silly sheep – you’ll be fine’.

But what if we took a moment to listen to the anxieties of the sheep?

No… we can’t stop here.
We need to keep going.
What if something happened?
I think I hear wolves.
I’m too nervous to lie down.
Please don’t make me sleep here.

Maybe the sheep has a point after all?  

But, praise be to God, the sheep’s unwillingness is met with the shepherd’s firm love, and the sheep lies down. And suddenly we see – the hope of this image is not found in rolling hills and sunny skies… or even in the absence of anxieties.

The hope is that this shepherd knows what’s best.

Though this sheep may not quite understand the situation he finds himself in – there is rest available. Even when fear leads to sleeplessness – this shepherd is trustworthy. And so is ours. For Jesus said in John 10:27-28
 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

The Second Tension: A Path that Doesn’t Lead Where it Ought.

Diving into Psalm 23, I’d never noticed the apparent contradiction in verse 3+4 before.

Verse 3 is simple enough:
He leads me in paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake’.

Which is such a beautiful idea – that out of loyalty to his character – God won’t let us go astray. He chooses the paths we walk on – and he will not lead us in the wrong direction.

The problem is… verse 4 comes next.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

And now we have to admit that the path of righteousness doesn’t always wind its way around the valley of the shadow of death. Sometimes, it leads through it.

The hope of Psalm 23 is not that we’ll stay out of the valley. That’s a band-aid, balloon kind of hope. It’s that we’ll never be left alone there. For our shepherd is with us. And his staff guides us. His Rod protects us. The promise here is not that we will avoid the suffering of the valley. It’s that God will be with us in all of it.

And… Jesus proved it.

‘I am the good shepherd, and I lay down my life for the sheep.‘

The Path of righteousness – his path – walked straight through the valley of the shadow of death. So now we have a shepherd who knows what’s there because he’s walked the path before us. And he’s with us there now.

John Stott captures this hope so simply:
My security lies not, then, in my environment – whether green pastures and still waters, or the darkest valley – but in my shepherd.

That hope seems less pop-able to me.

The Third Tension: A Banquet Where You Watch Your Back.

When we arrive at verse 5, The scene changes. We go from still waters to flowing wine, from green pastures to a banquet table. And even there… there’s a tension.

We are brought to a banquet table… but we’re not the only ones in the room. As we sit at this table, we do so in the presence of our enemies. And our cup overflows, even while threats surround us.

The hope is not in a comfortable meal. It’s that even though there are many things that would want to keep you from this banquet – you have a seat at the table at all. And this hope wins out, in the end.

Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Conclusion

This Psalm offers us more than balloons and Band-Aids.
It’s better than that. It’s real. It acknowledges the realities of darkness.

And still… it gives us hope.
Robust hope. In darkness and danger, a hope that stands up.
A grown-up hope.

Which is such a relief. Because at the end of the day, I don’t want someone to make my circumstances better. I want someone to sit with me, and acknowledge the darkness.

When I’m scared to lie down, when it’s too dark to see the path ahead, and I feel the need to keep looking over my shoulder… I need far more than a good mood – I need a Good Shepherd.

One who’s with me. Who protects me. Who fights for me.
One who’s walked this path before me, and stands beside me now, even as I struggle to recognise myself in the pretty pictures of this kids Bible.

Sister, Brother, Muddle Through your Prayers

Since the news of our latest lockdown has hit, most of my conversations with people have been tinged with grief, disappointment, frustration and fear. And as we contemplate the renewed restrictions ahead of us, it strikes me that cheap joy is a little bit like cash these days – not many people are willing to accept it anymore.

So in the face of another setback, it can be hard to know what to pray. 

But in the midst of our foggy fear and muddled confusion, God promises to help us in our praying. 

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Romans 8:26

God is not some distant grumpy force, who looks on at us as we stand in a storm soaking, waiting for us to get our prayers right, and dry ourselves off. By his Spirit, our Lord stands with us in the rain, and prays on our behalf the things we can’t think to say right now. Then, he listens. Generously, patiently, kindly. And then, he acts in power for the good of those who love him. 

J.I. Packer & Carolyn Nystrom capture it beautifully:
‘Don’t fret, just pray. God fixes our prayers on the way up! If he does not answer the prayer we made, he answers the prayer we should have made. And that’s all anyone needs to know.’ 

So sister, brother. Even when the wind is strong, the rain is heavy and your feet are cold, turn up, and muddle through your prayers. God will take care of the rest.

5 Things My Birth Class Taught Me About Welcoming People to Church

To an introvert like me, three hours in a closed room talking about intimate things with a group of random strangers sounds about as enjoyable as swallowing a fork. But when you’re thirty-something weeks’ pregnant like my wife and I, birth classes become a necessary part of life. So that’s where we went. 

After we eventually found the right part of the hospital, we walked in and found a seat. As is my custom in these situations, I began trying to scope out the other 12 attendees, while avoiding eye contact with them at all costs.

Everyone else looked right at home. I probably did too, but in reality, I was terrified. Questions began creeping through my mind: “Why don’t I know more about childbirth?” “Why haven’t I done more preparation?” “Is the emergency department here set up to treat traumatically awkward social interactions?” 

I was terrified. As I began to realise just how panicked I was, a thought hit me like a bolt of lightning: this is what it’s like to be new at church.

The similarities were striking: I don’t know anyone. I don’t know anything about this topic. I don’t know what to expect from the next three hours. I don’t even know what’s normal here.

It’s been a long while since I’ve been new at a church, so I don’t often get the chance to see things through the eyes of a newcomer. However, I do find myself involved in the welcoming ministries of our church. So once I realised that this birth course could teach me to welcome people better, I began to pay extra attention. Over the three weeks that followed, I picked up a few things about what helped me to feel most at home in this strange environment. Here are the five that have had the biggest impact on the way I want to welcome at church:

1. The first 20 seconds matter most

I can’t tell you how nice it was for someone to simply acknowledge my presence, and tell me that I was in the right place. Having the vague sense that somebody was glad to see me made a bigger difference than I expected. From now on, I’ll never underestimate the value of the person standing at the front door of our church with a smile.

2. The people leading matter least

I expected the leaders to be kind, welcoming and inclusive. It was the people next to me I worried about most. Even if the instructor turned out to be unwelcoming, it was the acceptance of my peers that I craved most. I want to belong with them: to like or dislike this session with them, to laugh and cry along with them. And it wasn’t until I had a friendly conversation with them, that I began to feel comfortable about the whole situation. The best parts of the night were the unsupervised small groups where we were able to make our own conversation. After that, I had at least three other allies in the room and felt like I could breathe a little easier.

3. Laughter is the best medicine

Nothing unites a group of random strangers like laughter. Every chuckle we shared served to bring us closer together and normalise the whole situation. Next time I lead a newcomer’s event or a brand new small group, I want to help us laugh early and often.

4. Name-tags might be cheesy – but they too get better with age

I might be late to the party on this but this class convinced me that name-tags are great. In fact, they got better the longer the course went on. They helped a little on the first week, sure. But they really came into their own once we reached the stage where I really should have remembered people’s names but didn’t. They might not seem that helpful to me at my church now that I’ve been there for years. But through this class, I was convicted about just how helpful they are to people who haven’t been around very long. It’s a simple equaliser, helping everyone to feel on the same level. With that in mind, I’ll wear one with pride every time I get the chance.

5. It’s only awkward if you say so

As soon as I walked in, I felt like the whole situation was awkward. I’m sure everyone else did too. But for some reason, when an instructor told us we were in an awkward social situation, that made it even more awkward. We had a number of instructors across the course, and I noticed that the best ones didn’t just play the role of teacher, they acted like a flight attendant too. When something went wrong and the wheels started falling off, they were the calmest person in the room and gave us the sense that everything was totally normal. Next time I’m leading from the front, I’ll try to resist the urge to make light of any awkward vibes. It only makes them worse.

In a class designed to teach me about welcoming a baby into the world, those are a few of the things I learnt about welcoming a newcomer to church. Rest assured, I also learnt plenty about the wonderful world of child-birthing, but that’s another article.

This article was originally published at:
https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/birth-class-welcoming/