The Weekly, October 23, 2024
Hi all,
Here in Lincoln our family has joined up with a church plant that is happening in the local PCA community. I wrote indirectly about it in my recent piece about three pastors—the first pastor in the piece is my former pastor at Zion Church here in Lincoln. To lay out the history more plainly:
Zion was the only PCA in town for decades. In the early 1990s, Stu Kerns came to town and after a few years as an associate became the senior pastor at what was then Covenant Pres. Then several things happened: A dying UCC called Zion Church that had been German Reformed in a past life offered their beautiful downtown brick building to Covenant Pres free of charge—the only terms were the church name would be Zion and the newly merged Zion Church would keep the UCC church’s pastor on staff for one year so he could have time to find a new role. Those terms being agreed, Covenant moved into their new building and became Zion.
Not long after, Zion called two guys to the presbytery—one to plant a church, which would be called Grace Chapel, in Zion’s former building and the other to launch a chapter of the PCA’s campus ministry, Reformed University Fellowship, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Those both launched around 2000. Then in 2008 Zion planted another congregation, Redeemer Church. Now after 16 years, Redeemer and Grace are planting Center Church together. So in 25 years the Lincoln PCA has gone from one church to four churches plus a campus ministry.
We’re part of Center, along with some other folks from Zion, with the rest of the core group coming from Grace and Redeemer. (One of Stu’s sayings that has filtered down through the presbytery: When one of us is planting, all of us are planting. So that means it is very common in Lincoln church plants for the core group to come from multiple congregations.)
Part of the magic of church plants is you get to see God’s providential hand and care in very obvious and tangible ways. I’ve mentioned before that the second senior pastor at Grace Chapel—the guy who took over for the planter, in other words—was one of the first adult converts at Grace. That’s a successful church plant.
Here’s another cool story for you: Yesterday was the seventh week of public worship at Center. It was our first time with someone other than the church planter in the pulpit. The guest preacher, the first one Center’s ever had, was the planter’s son, who is a PCA pastor in the Chicago area. I tried to discretely snap a picture during the sermon. Note that the preacher’s dad and younger brother are sitting in the front row on the right side of the frame:
To add another layer to it: The planter’s in-laws are attending the plant. They’ve been part of the PCA in town for a long time. His father-in-law was a long-time elder at Zion. So now they got to see their grandson, who was baptized nearly 30 years ago and who grew up in this presbytery, come back home to be the first guest preacher at the church his dad his planting.
Aslan is on the move, y’all.
Books
I haven’t made as much progress here as I’d like. But a few highlights: I’m nearly done with Holland’s Dominion, which is as advertised. I’d highly recommend it. I’m also reading Brands’ Heirs of the Founders, which has been fascinating. I’ve long been intrigued by the group sometimes known as the Great Triumverate—Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun. In terms of political talent, they are probably the closest thing the second generation of American politics had to the founders—yet remarkably none of them ever rose to the presidency. Calhoun rose to the Vice Presidency under two separate presidents while Webster and Clay both served as Secretary of State—a position that often at that time came immediately prior to one’s ascent to the presidency. But not in their cases. Indeed, the conflicts and limitations that defined each of them is largely indicative of why the first republic—the one which ended with the Civil War—was never going to be stable or sustainable long term.
The other project I’ve been enjoying is Meredith’s Fortunes of Africa. It’s an economic history of Africa from ancient Egypt to the present day. I’d highly recommend this if you want to get a better understanding of a large number of cultural and economic issues as they relate to modern Africa. Having the historical background from sources like Meredith (or Basil Davidson is also great) is really helpful when you then read someone like Willie James Jennings—if you take Jennings’s analysis in something like The Christian Imagination and line it up with the historical record, it just lines up really well.
Finally, I spent some time on Sunday reading in Delights and Shadows, an old Ted Kooser poetry collection I enjoy. Kooser was the Poet Laureate of the United States a decade or so ago and taught some classes in English at UNL when I was a student there. I never got to have him for class, but would occasionally see him in the hallways. Anyway, this one in particular is just wonderful.
Articles
Wendell Berry on the society that can’t protect its children
Joy Clarkson on Fiddler on the Roof
Freya India on the age of abandonment
Luke Bretherton on the conversion of public intellectuals
Clint Smith on Rwanda and forgiveness
Thomas Casey remembers his friend Gregory Hillis
A. M. Hickman on Emerson and America’s lack of roots
Elsewhere
Loads of news to report here: On the home front, we now have an advanced red belt in our house. Our son Wendell, who is nine, has been doing taekwondo for nearly two years, and passed his advanced red belt test last Friday.
It was no joke: sparring, board breaking, form (they actually didn’t test him on form this time but he had it down perfect), plus a physical test that included 100 jumping jacks, 30 pushups, 50 situps, 200 front snap kicks, and 100 punches—all completed within specific amounts of time. He did great. And if you’re wondering: From here all he has left are deputy belt, advanced deputy, junior black, and then black belt. We’re proud of him.
Two other items: This showed up in our mail on Friday. If you’re a Mere O member, yours should be arriving this week, I hope!
Finally, I’m very late on a book manuscript for IVP. It started out as a book about deconstruction, but after getting about 45,000 words written I came to the conclusion that I just had the wrong book. Which is a crappy thing to realize after all that work. But sometimes it happens. That said, I’ve landed on what this book needs to be now and I’m very excited about it. So I’d appreciate your prayers for that as I write.
Oh: My Comment piece on Tolkien is no longer paywalled. And I was on Preston Sprinkle’s podcast recently.
Thanks for reading!
Under the Mercy,
~Jake