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Articles by John Starke
On the Sabbath, We Act like God
In his Confessions, Augustine doubts we can really experience our present moment. Our objective “present” is merely an imperceptible moment with no duration. He believes our lived experiences are almost entirely built on the psychological tension of our past and future. How we experience our days is defined by how we relate to what’s happened and what’s coming.
What Pastors Need to Recover About Mental Health
“I think some in our church have come to the end of their therapy.” I was sitting around a table with a handful of our church’s leaders, and one of them expressed this thought. He went on to explain that many who have been in therapy for years now seem to be complaining that they keep circling around the same things and feel stuck. What he articulated wasn’t a problem with therapy, necessarily, but a cultural narrative around therapy and a confusion about its goals.
Why the Goal of Spiritual Formation Can’t Be Balance
“There was a good 10 years where it felt like somebody had a boot on my chest.” This is how Justin Vernon—known as Bon Iver—describes the season before making his most recent album, SABLE, fABLE. After years of relentless touring and the weight of fame he never expected, he says it all “eats away at you”—the overwork, the anxiety, the crushing sense of being overrun by it all. He couldn’t keep going in the way he was going. He reflects, I’m finally . . . in this place where I’m like, I’m OK.
I Have Calmed and Quieted My Soul
Our management strategies for anxiety are not enough. Let us hope in God's presence and power. Psalm 131 In our life with God in this world, we often need to sit quietly and be honest with ourselves. What worries and anxieties are occupying our minds and governing our behavior more than they should? Sitting quietly is difficult. We don't like what happens when we do. All the ghosts and goblins from below, which we have so effectively silenced in the hurry of each day, suddenly come to the surface.
The Loneliness of Church Planting
For the last decade or so, there’s been a deepened interest in urban church planting. Young guys move into big cities with visions of planting “a church for the city.” They want to live in the neighborhoods that many evangelical churches attempted to escape in previous decades. In the 1990s, I remember first reading Jim Cymbala’s Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, about the renewal of The Brooklyn Tabernacle. I was mesmerized by the foreign world of 1980s New York City described in his stories.
Disenculturation and Spiritual Formation
In 1979, Richard Lovelace analyzed what it meant for local churches to pursue strategies of spiritual revitalization in his book Dynamics of Spiritual Life.
Power Is Not a Place to Form Virtue
There was a church across town that was electing a new elder and they didn’t have enough other elders to form a committee of sorts, so they asked me and another pastor in town, who was in his early sixties, if we’d sit on the panel, asking the candidate questions to ensure his qualification. The candidate was young—if I remember right, he was 24. I was maybe 36 or 37 at the time, so I wasn’t ancient, but his youthfulness did catch me off guard.
2 Things to Consider Before Moving Out of the City
In recent weeks I’ve seen a number of headlines in newspapers, magazines, and my Twitter feed proclaiming cities like New York dead and the “age of the megacity over.” The biggest driver for these predictions is the seeming exodus from urban centers to the more spacious suburban (and even rural) corners of America. I read these articles with interest because I pastor a church in Manhattan, and some of those exiting the city have been part of our church.
Losing Freedoms and Finding Renewal
What was at first the promise of sexual liberation has turned into the burden that my happiness and well-being is dependent upon the sexual achievements of cultural expectations. If I haven’t had a certain amount of partners or certain kinds of experiences, I’m not keeping up. This is true in a myriad of areas. We have the freedom to travel, but suddenly that’s turned into scrolling through my Instagram and seeing that couple who is traveling to Europe, again.
BOOK RELEASE!! The Possibility of Prayer - Issue #19
I’d like to think that this book came out of the desires and experiences of my ministry in our church community. I really believe that a deep, vibrant prayer life is possibly for all of us. Not just for the spiritually elite and the full-time ministry experts. I’ve seen it happen in the lives of my friends here in New York City. I want this book to be a witness that prayer is possible because God has made it possible and God’s provisions are more powerful than your hindrances.
Searching for satisfaction and self-worth in 2020? Add a daily routine of prayer.
Many Americans set out to establish their identity by following desire and ambition. Individual freedom, self-determination and self-expression are our highest good. This is the cultural air we breathe. The problem is, it often doesn’t work out the way we had hoped. Traditions, religions, received wisdom and social ties (such as family and community) have historically been the “meaning building” things of life (as author Judith Shulevitz puts it), but these aren’t how we find meaning anymore.
Searching for satisfaction and self-worth in 2020? Add a daily routine of prayer.
John Starke, The Washington Post Published 9:15 am CST, Tuesday, December 31, 2019 Many Americans set out to establish their identity by following desire and ambition. Individual freedom, self-determination and self-expression are our highest good. This is the cultural air we breathe. The problem is, it often doesn't work out the way we had hoped.
Our Lives Aren’t Conducive to Prayer. But a Better Way Is Possible.
I grew up listening to my dad play the guitar. He was an amateur with the instrument, but what he lacked in training he made up for with his pristine voice, which would soar through the rooms and wash over you like warm water. He made up a lot of his own songs; some were forgettable, but there was one I have never forgotten. The chorus, which was really slow and always hit the top of his register, went like this: I don’t know how to pray / Don’t know what to say / I think I’ve lost my way.
American Pragmatism, Killing Podcasts, and Solving the Mid-life Crisis - Issue #3
Subscribe to our newsletter This thingy has to be empti pwieshh A while back I finished Rabbit Redux, the second book in John Updike's Rabbit trilogy. You can see wh American Pragmatism, Killing Podcasts, and Solving the Mid-life Crisis - Issue #3 By John Starke • Issue #3 • View online A while back I finished Rabbit Redux, the second book in John Updike’s Rabbit trilogy. You can see what I thought about it at the bottom of this page.
Pastoring Amid Depression
There was a darkness that had set in. My sorrow and discouragement began to wrap around me and squeeze. It was hard to not experience my entire reality (my family, work, rest, prayers) through the filter of sadness and sorrow.
Should Pastors ‘Get Things Done’?
The Apostle Paul instructs us to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16), not to be efficient with time. We are to redeem the time with the slow work of prayer, the slow work of meditating on and teaching Scripture, and the slow work of listening to others, praying for others, and being present with others. Your neighbors will ask how you got such a good gig of only having to work one day a week, and you will have to smile and bite your tongue. We have been born in the age of efficiency.
Should Pastors ‘Get Things Done’?
We have been born in the age of efficiency. We are the people who “get stuff done.” We have apps that aim at efficiency, blogs on efficiency, best-selling books on efficiency. Just dip into an old folder of mine on efficiency and you’ll find articles on how to organize your desk for efficiency, how to bring your e-mail inbox down to zero every day, how to most efficiently read one hundred books in a year, and how to best manage your time for work, play, and family while still getting things done.
Should We Choose Jesus over the Bible?
In response to the biblicism of some corners of Christianity, other Christians have wrongly pitted Jesus against the Bible. Do you know what biblicism is? It’s a careless way of handling the Bible concerning what to believe and how to behave. It assumes a no-creed-but-the-Bible stance on doctrine or denies that we all come to the Bible with an interpretive lens. Biblicism produces problematic ethics and clumsy theology. The remedy often given for biblicism is to emphasize Jesus over the Bible.
Should We Choose Jesus over the Bible?
Jesus understood His identity through the story line of Scripture. The themes, institutions, and figures of the Old Testament were all part of His understanding of who He was and what He came to do. Just read how Jesus understood the Old Testament’s teaching on sonship, kingship, temple, divine presence, covenant, the sacrificial system, or the priesthood, or His references to individuals such as Adam, Abraham, Moses, and David.
What Christians Should Learn from the Osteen Interview
“Let God be true and every man a liar.” That phrase from Romans 3:4 was stuck in my head after watching CNN’s interview Tuesday night with Joel Osteen on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. Osteen’s answer: “Yes. The Scriptures show that it’s a sin.” As far as I can tell, the interview didn’t win evangelicals a monumental cultural battle or give us some new insight into American’s happiest pastor. We will probably forget about this moment in a few weeks.
Edifying, Edgy Entertainment
N. D. Wilson’s 2009 book Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is a rambunctious and creative roadmap for why things are the way they are. The recently released film, or bookumentary (funny how my Word processor doesn’t recognize that word), is no different. Shot in obscure locations, the film features cinematography that is just as energetic, jumping from one angle to the next. Wilson is witty, emotional, and sermonic. Destabilizing Skeptics In C. S.
The Forgotten Influence of Martin Luther
In the early hours of February 18, 1546, Martin Luther confessed to his close companions around him that he was ready to die, trusting the Lord Jesus Christ and thanked God for revealing his Son in whom he had believed. A few hours later he suffered an epileptic stroke that first took his speech and, within a few hours later, his life. At the time of his death he left a world turned upside down.
Give Up Your Weak Definition of ‘Disciple’
Sermons, talks, and books on discipleship usually give a basic definition of disciple as “learner.” But the New Testament gives us a more thrilling and dynamic definition of a disciple and the cost that follows. Take for example the parable of the soils in Matthew 13. How do we know a disciple from merely a “learner”? Matthew 13:23 says, “He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” A disciple is, by nature—-by definition!—-a multiplier.
When a Gay Mayor Partners with Evangelical Churches in Portland
“You can’t choose how the mainstream portrays you,” says Sam Adams, former mayor of Portland, Oregon, “but I was desperate and impressed with how evangelicals offered to help.” But desperation doesn’t always drive cooperation, especially when the two parties disagree on abortion and gay marriage. Adams, in fact, is openly gay. Nevertheless, Adams and Kevin Palau, president of the Luis Palau Association, developed a partnership between churches and schools in the Portland area.
Reading for Preaching
Come to me, says Cornelius Plantinga, all who are weary and heavy laden with bad preaching, and I will give you something to think about. Except Plantinga is not talking to victims of bad preaching, the listeners, but to offenders, the preachers. Plantinga, president emeritus of Calvin Theological Seminary, has written a preaching book, though not a preaching book on better exegesis, exposition, or communication.
A Call for a More Reflective Christianity
I remember sitting with a young man in our church in a diner near my office. He was frustrated with me. For two months now, we’d been meeting about his anxiety. It wasn’t chronic or crippling, but it tended to put him on edge and came with occasional outbursts of anger his young wife and daughter had to deal with. Sitting in the same diner two months before, he had asked for help and we had agreed to start meeting. He wanted to change.
An Evangelical's Guide to the Enneagram
Tools are fashioned in the image of their user. Hammers are productive in the hands of carpenters and malignant in the hands of an angry mob. Spiritual tools are a little more complicated than material tools, because souls are complicated. Prayer walking, guided meditation, and lectio divina can wield wonders in the hands of a mature Christian, counselor, or spiritual director. They can also wield destruction in the hands of someone who has only read a pamphlet or written a blog post.
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