One of the great privileges of my life has been worshipping with Christians all around the world. As I travel, I always try to prioritize Sunday mornings with a local church, and that’s true whether it is in North America or North Africa and whether it worships in English or another language. And while I’m always especially interested in worshipping with a church that is Reformed and Baptist like my own, I am also glad to worship in any of the gospel-preaching Protestant traditions. And so I’ve spent Sunday mornings with Baptist and Presbyterian congregations, Brethren and Anglican congregations, Christian Missionary Alliance and Dutch Reformed congregations, and many more besides.
It can be jarring to worship in a church that adheres to an unfamiliar tradition. Customs may be strange and patterns may differ from what I am accustomed to. And it is at the point of such differences that I immediately find myself tempted to pass judgment. After all, my tradition and my church have thought deeply and come to firm convictions about the elements and circumstances of our worship. Everything we include and everything we exclude has been carefully considered. My first instinct, then, is to assume that other churches have not thought well about these matters or perhaps not thought about them at all. My instinct is to assume that a church is faithful to Scripture only to the degree that it is similar to own.
But I have learned that a crucial discipline when visiting other like-minded churches is to observe without judgment. It is to observe quietly and humbly and then, when appropriate, to ask clarifying questions. And more often than not, I have been encouraged and even challenged by these clarifications. This is true whether the church has been around the corner or around the world.
In one church I looked at the bulletin and saw a woman listed there as a pastor. This surprised me because I had been under the impression that this church was complementarian. As I observed further, I saw that several other positions also listed a female pastor. A clarifying question helped it make sense. In this country, they use “minister” or “ministry” where we use “pastor.” Hence, they were every bit as complementarian as my own church but simply use different nomenclature. Their “women’s pastor” is our “women’s ministry leader.” I was glad that I had withheld judgment.
In another church, I immediately noticed that the men and women split up when they entered the sanctuary so that men sat on one side with women on the other. This cuts hard against my own cultural understanding of the equality of men and women. But when I asked, I was told that separating the sexes in formal settings is normal in this culture and that it would be a significant hindrance to evangelism if men and women were to sit side by side. Men and women alike would be uncomfortable sitting pressed together. I was glad I had withheld judgment.
I have attended churches whose services included an element of dance. This was not interpretive dance or dancing in the Spirit, but a style that was obviously celebratory. I learned that in these cultures no celebration is complete without a dance and that it would be more scandalous to omit one than to have one. They also explained their understanding of Scripture to show their conviction that even while God does not demand this kind of dance, he also does not forbid it. Once more, I was glad that I had been slow to judge.
In still another, I attended a prayer meeting in which every person prayed at the same time—hundreds of voices crying out to the Lord at once. In my setting, we apply the biblical admonition that “all things should be done decently and in order” to mean that one person prays at a time and then ends his or her prayer with a hearty “amen.” This then signals that someone else can begin to pray. But a church in which everyone prayed at the same time struck me as chaotic and disorderly. Yet when I asked, I was told that this church arose out of a time of revival and that the kind of fervent prayer that birthed the church has forever remained present in the church. Not only that but the prayer meetings are carefully organized and led—just in a different way from my own setting. As I continued to observe, I felt a growing appreciation for that kind of prayer and was thankful that I had been slow to judge.
I have been in churches in which I was told they have female pastors but then learned that something had been lost in translation so that what they called pastors actually function as what I would term deacons. I have been in churches in which women were not permitted to participate in certain elements of the service that I believe are open to all believers but received a helpful explanation of why such public participation would be inappropriate in that culture. And, as it happens, I have been in churches in which women were permitted to participate in elements of the service that I believe are restricted to pastors but received a helpful explanation of why they believe such participation honors Scripture. I could go on and on.
I might not agree with all of these decisions even after gaining the necessary interpretive facts, but in every case, I have had an opportunity to learn and to grow in my respect for other Christians and the way they’ve wrestled through the issues and come to their decisions. And so, because my tendency is always to judge before carefully observing, I have trained myself instead to observe without judgment. It has become a key discipline as I visit other churches and join them in worship.

A friend recently asked if I could help him figure out what to do with all the quotes and highlights he has collected over the years. As a pastor and author he reads a lot and as he reads he highlights and underlines passages while sometimes jotting down notes in the margins. Yet he’s not sure what to do with these highlights, how to remember them, and how to make them useful. For his sake I wrote out the system I use and thought I’d share it here. While I’ll freely admit it’s a bit geeky, it has served me very well for quite a long time now.

Two Components
This system has two components.

The first component collects my highlights, stores them, and regularly brings them to my attention. This helps me with retention (as I read the highlights that have been resurfaced), with creativity (as I search for and find highlights) and with inspiration (as I serendipitously encounter those highlights on a regular basis).
The second component also stores my highlights but additionally allows me to powerfully search them and to explore complex relationships between them.

The first component depends upon a service called ReadWise and the second upon Roam Research.
Many people will not need both, but will find ReadWise sufficient for their purposes. For that reason, I will begin there.
ReadWise
According to ReadWise, the service “makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights.” It also makes it easy to learn from your printed book and other highlights. It collects those highlights and then routinely prompts you to review them.
❖
Begin by visiting ReadWise and creating an account. You’ll qualify for a free 30-day trial to try it out. You should not need to add your credit card details until after that time, should you choose to keep using it.
Once you have created your account, your first task will be getting some of your stuff into their system. After registering for an account it should immediately take you to the Import Highlights page. If it doesn’t, go to the “Connect & Sync” tab at the top of the screen and choose “Import Highlights.” You will see a long list of different ways to get content into ReadWise, and they are broken into two main categories: “Connect & Sync” and “Import & Upload.”

The options listed under “Connect & Sync” are automated ways of getting content into the system (e.g. as you create highlights on your Kindle or as you create highlights in articles you have saved to Pocket, they are automatically imported into ReadWise).
The options listed under “Import & Upload” are manual ways of getting content into the system (e.g. after reading a paperback edition of a book, you manually type your notes and highlights into ReadWise).
Note: some of the automated options require you to do the setup procedure using Chrome for your browser rather than Safari or others.

❖
Let’s get some content into ReadWise.
If you read via a Kindle device, tap on the Kindle option. You will be prompted to install a browser extension, then to login to your Amazon account using your Amazon credentials. ReadWise will take a few minutes to go through your books, then tell you that it has sent you your first newsletter. In theory, you should now have an email in your inbox that contains 5 random highlights from your Kindle books. This is what ReadWise refers to as your “Daily Review.” From this point forward, ReadWise will continue to automatically import your Kindle highlights on a daily basis and send you a Daily Review email.
If you do not read via a Kindle device, you will need to import highlights another way. What I would suggest is beginning with “Freeform Input” which you’ll find under “Import & Upload.” You will be prompted to create a new book by adding a title and author. After you do that, you’ll be prompted to add a new highlight from that book and, optionally, to include a page number and your own notes. So simply type in a bunch of highlights from that book, one after another—at least 6 or 8 to start. You can repeat this for as many highlights as you would like to include. When you are done, click on the “ReadWise” header to get back to the “Import Highlights” page. It will prompt you to add some Supplemental Books. This is a way of importing the most popular highlights from various books. ReadWise will want you to select at least three. When you hit “continue” it will tell you that it has sent you your first newsletter. In theory, you should now have an email in your inbox that contains 5 random highlights from the books you imported. This is what ReadWise refers to as your “Daily Review.” It will be sent to you each day.
❖
Okay, so that has gotten ReadWise configured in the most basic way. What I would suggest now is continuing to add highlights to it since its power will grow with the volume of information you add to it. You’ll need to decide whether you want it to contain highlights from books alone or also highlights from articles and/or podcasts and/or Twitter. Additionally, you’ll need to decide whether you want to keep those Supplemental Books that you may have added before (which is to say, whether you want other people’s highlights in your system or only your own—I initially suggest not using Supplemental Books which means you’ll need to erase any you added earlier). Here are some ideas to try:

Download the ReadWise app to your phone and try its scanning feature on a book you have read in a physical format. It should be able to scan those highlights directly into ReadWise.
If you have only imported Kindle highlights, try importing some manual highlights from a book you have read in a physical format. Do this through the Freeform Input button or, as in the last bullet, through the app’s scanning functionality.
If you have highlights in PDF documents, use the PDF button to upload them and extract the highlights. (It would be good to read the help document to understand the limitations on this method.)
If you use Logos, try exporting your notes into a format that can be imported into ReadWise. (It used to be straightforward to export Logos notes into a CSV file, but this appears to have been removed in version 10.0. You could perhaps try exporting it into an RTF file and then converting that to a CSV or copying and pasting them into a spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can do it via the methods in either of the first two bullets. Also, upvote this feature request.)

❖
For what it’s worth, I only use ReadWise to import highlights from books I have read. I don’t care to know what other people deem important in books and don’t use the service to save highlights from articles and other media.
❖
If you are going to use only ReadWise, you may want to consider adding tags to all or some of your highlights. This will add some taxonomy to them and help you navigate between them (so, for example, you can pull up a list of all of the highlights tagged “prayer” or “marriage”). Tags will be especially important if they are for words that don’t actually appear in the quote but still represent its content (such as a quote about marriage that doesn’t actually contain the word “marriage.”). If you plan to also use Roam Research, this step may be redundant.
❖
If you are going to import lots of notes from physical books, it may be best to add them into a CSV file and then import that file. This could prove a better method than adding them through Freeform Input. So play with the options to see which suits you best. You can find sample CSV files here.
❖
After you have added a fair bit of content, try searching using the search icon at the top of the page. This will search all of your highlights for whatever keyword you type. You’ll notice the search is helpfully “fuzzy” so that, for example, a search for “duty” will also turn up results for “duties” and “dutiful.”
❖
You may want to tweak your Daily Review. To do that, click on the Account icon in the top right and select “Configure Reviews.” Here you can choose how many highlights you receive per day and tweak a few other settings. Frequency Tuning is especially important as it allows you to set how often different books will show up in your highlights—from very often to not at all. You’ll want to adjust these settings to suit your purposes, and especially to turn off books that you have read but don’t care to remember or encounter again.
❖
Adding highlights manually is simple and effective—but the system is at its absolute best with Kindle highlights, since they get added automatically and in the background. The deeper you get into this system, the more you may find yourself wanting to read via Kindle simply to gain that functionality.
❖
You can try the Mastery function to see if it appeals. It is meant to help you with retention by using the spaced repetition technique.
❖
ReadWise seems to be a stable app but, like every other service, there is always the risk that it will shut down some day. Thankfully they make it very easy to export your data, so you shouldn’t have to worry too much about losing it permanently.
❖
Before we move on, let’s consider what you’ve accomplished so far and what benefits you’ve gained.

You now have an electronic home for all your highlights.
You now have a way to search across all of your highlights.
You will now have a selection of highlights sent to you each day to help you with retention and creativity.
You may have highlights being regularly and automatically fed into your system (e.g. if you synced with your Kindle).

Roam Research
The second component of my system is Roam Research which is described as “a note-taking tool for networked thought.” It is essentially a tool for personal knowledge management that allows you to enter, organize, and then re-discover information. In that way it is kind of like a “second brain.” It uses a non-hierarchical method of relating notes to one another in which its “bi-directional links” create relationships between related pieces of knowledge. It’s kind of hard to describe, but once you see it and understand it, you can’t help but be impressed by it.
If ReadWise is the tool that imports highlights, stores them, and regularly resurfaces them, Roam is the tool that stores them, allows you to relate them to one another, and to work with them. There is some duplication between the two services, but each still has its own distinct purpose in my system. The two play very nicely together because ReadWise can automatically export all of its highlights to Roam Research.
You may want to try Roam Research if:

you want to do more than just store and remember highlights, but also to work with them and integrate them into articles, books, and sermons.
you want to also be able to search across your own writing—articles, books, sermons, and notes.
you want to be able to look for complex relationships between ideas you have imported into Roam Research or added manually.

If that sounds interesting, then read on.
❖
Visit Roam Research and click “Sign Up.” You will be prompted to either create a new account or to login with your existing Google account. You will need to enter your payment information, but will not be charged until after a 31-day trial period. Set a reminder on your calendar to cancel in 30 days, just in case. (“Hey Siri, remind me in 30 days at 9 AM to cancel Roam Research.”)
You will begin at a Daily Notes page. This is a place for you to make, well, daily notes. But where I would begin is with importing your ReadWise highlights. Go back to ReadWise and to “Connect & Sync,” but this time to the “Export Highlights” option. You will see many options for getting your information out of ReadWise and into other applications. Click on the Roam button. You’ll need to use either Chrome or Firefox for this and add the ReadWise browser extension. Simply follow the process and, soon enough, you should see all of your highlights appear in Roam Research. It may take a few minutes, so be patient.
❖
Now you will want to “tag” your highlights by one of the two methods Roam provides. Select a book in Roam Research and scroll through the highlights. Find a word you’d consider especially important. Double click on it and tap the left bracket key ([) twice; you will now see something like this: [[marriage]]. This has turned that word into a link. If one of your highlights has an idea but not doesn’t contain the specific word (e.g. a quote about marriage that doesn’t contain the word “marriage”), click at the end of the highlight and type the number sign followed by the word in this format: #marriage. This creates the very same kind of link but using a different marriage. Try to create links like that for as many of your highlights as possible. Now when you click on the word “marriage” it will take you to a page that contains all of the links that contain the word.
❖
You can also highlight particularly interesting highlights. To do that, select the text and tap cmd+h (Mac) or ctrl+h (Windows). This is useful as you skim through your content later on as it makes key information stand out.
❖
Once you are on one of the pages for your keywords, scroll to the bottom and look for the words “Unlinked References.” Click the little triangle beside it. This will now show you all of the highlights in which that word appears but has not yet been tagged. You can tap the “Link” button to automatically tag them. This is a great way of finding references to what word that you would have otherwise missed.
❖
You can always click the question mark icon at the top right of the page to see help menus. Visit this tutorial page to get a little deeper into the system. You will also benefit from searching for tutorials on YouTube and elsewhere. There are tons of good resources for using Roam. It is much like Logos in that even if you only learn some of the basic functions and never become a true power user, it may still make a huge difference in your life.
❖
Roam, like ReadWise, works best when you commit to it and use it over the long-term. A half commitment will get half results. It is not for everyone, but if you are interested, make sure you at least give it a good go. That means continuing to import highlights through ReadWise while also adding content directly into Roam. You can conduct your research in Roam as well, actually using it as your writing app.
❖
Now, when you are doing research and want to pull up information about a subject, go to Roam and use the search button at the top. Type your keyword. Then begin to explore those bi-directional links to see where they take you. On any page, go to the … icon at the top and select Open Graph View to see where your keyword is used and what other concepts it relates to. Continue to explore the software and learn how powerful it is.
❖
If you don’t want to pay for Roam, you can take a look at Obsidian which is very similar, except that it is free in its basic form and resides on your local computer rather than on someone else’s server.
❖
And that’s that. I’d suggest you commit to the system for a few days or a few weeks and see if it can serve you. I have been using it for years and benefiting from it tremendously. I look forward to receiving my Daily Review every morning and always keep a Roam tab open so I can add information or search it at any time. So give it a shot and let me know how it works for you…

Westminster Books has deeply discounted the excellent Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series. I’d especially recommend Schreiner on Romans and Revelation, Moo on Galatians, and Beale on Colossians & Philemon.
I added quite a number of excellent Kindle deals yesterday and plan to add some more this morning.
(Yesterday on the blog: My Favorite New Songs of 2023)

This is an important article about what it means to die with dignity. “The conversation around MAiD puts front and center the questions of what makes life worth living and, by implication, in what circumstances a life might no longer be worth living. In the modern Western ethos of entrepreneurial individualism, the cardinal virtues include efficiency and productivity.”

“We often show what is important to us by what we do. It’s easy to say, ‘I want to please the Lord more than anything else,’ but it’s another thing to act like it.” I think we can all attest to our own inconsistencies there.

“A baby who was the High King of Heaven. In a feeding trough. It’s a shocking picture, really, when you think about the humility of Christ. To step down from the literal throne of Heaven itself, take on our humanity, and enter our world as an infant born into poverty among an oppressed people is hands down the most extreme display of humility in all of history. Nothing else comes close.”

This article explains how and why Uzzah was struck down for touching the Ark of the Covenant.

Samuel discusses the role of personal experiences in shaping people’s understanding of the world. “When it comes to empathy, many people who say they ‘believe the victims’ are carrying experiences and knowledge around that is literally impossible to transmit effectively. They dislike Calvinists or complementarians, partially on principle, and then partially because over the years, in dozens of obscure articles, personal conversations, and unspoken observations, they have built up an idea whose origins are mostly inaccessible to anyone else.”

Wes spent a year reading the New Testament in Greek rather than English. His reflections are really interesting and make me wish I had progressed a bit further in Greek!

As we parted ways that day, Aileen and I both knew without the smallest shadow of a doubt: God did this. In fact, Aileen has often said that this was the very moment she really understood that God was caring for us in our loss. And it was not through a miracle, but through providence.

The anguish which love endures for others’ sins is among the saddest of earth’s sorrows.
—J.R. Miller