Mikey Lynch

Leading a local church can be overwhelming. Just when you have the volunteer lists to fill, yet another key family announces they’ll be on an overseas holiday for six weeks. There’s a wedding to officiate, a member to visit in hospital, and child safety training to coordinate. While pastors struggle to stay afloat in this sea of pressures and demands, parachurch organizations can seem intimidating, like circling sharks waiting to devour more of your members’ time, energy, enthusiasm, and money.

Don Carson has been based at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School since 1978. Together with Tim Keller, Don Carson founded The Gospel Coalition (TGC) in 2005 and he was the president until 2020. He could rightly be seen as a successor to John Stott: both wrote an enormous amount on a range of theoretical and practical topics; both invested significant time to global Christianity, preaching, training, and evangelising; both established and strengthened important parachurch organisations.

In the context of rapidly changing and diversifying attitudes to sex, marriage, and family, theologically rich, historically aware, and pastorally sophisticated ethical studies such as Danielle Treweek’s The Meaning Singleness, are of great importance. A very substantial proportion of any contemporary Christian congregation will be single for at least a sizeable period of their lives.