Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Thursday, June 2, 2022
 It is “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Col. 1:26; see also Rom.16:25 and Eph. 3:9). The vision is Jesus. The world would have us know a billion other things. The church would sometimes have us know many other things, as well. But those who have beheld the life-changing vision of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ know better.

Where there is no vision, the people perish . . .— Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)
Proverbs 29:18 may be one of the most misapplied verses in all the evangelical church today. Many a church leader has used it to spiritualize his strategies and blackmail followers into supporting his entrepreneurialism. Vision statements are cast. Mission statements are crafted to serve the vision. A list of values is composed to serve the mission. An array of programs is developed to serve the values. A stable of leaders is recruited to serve the programs. An army of volunteers is inspired to assist the leaders.
Much of what goes on in our local churches serves to make sure the church machine keeps running. In less healthy—but sometimes very big—churches, the entire machine is designed to put on an excellent weekend worship service. All of this would indeed perish if that vision were not cast.
But what if a leader’s good idea for church growth or success was not the vision Proverbs 29:18 had in mind?
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Saturday, April 2, 2022

Nobody gets out of here alive. Even the Christian must die. But dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. Dying after you die is the worst thing that can happen to you. But for those who are united to Christ by faith – we have unconquerable, eternal life.

Because Jesus is God we can know that he is able to save. But we are encouraged not just that Christ is able to save, but in knowing that he has actually exercised his ability to save us.
In other words, to say that God is able to save isn’t exactly the good news, because God is able to do many things that he nevertheless chooses not to do. Whenever he says “no” to one of our prayers, for instance, we should not construe him to mean that he’s saying “I can’t.” (Unless we’re asking him to sin or otherwise act against his nature.)
I’m thinking along the lines of the old Carl Henry saying: “It’s only good news if it gets there in time.”
That Christ is able to save is no benefit to those who do not find themselves taking refuge in him!
Well, Christ is an able Savior and because he’s always on time—indeed, he has authored time itself— he’s an unconquerable Savior.
Look, for instance, at John 17:9-19, where in his “high priestly prayer” Jesus turns from praying for himself to praying for his friends. Christ’s interceding on the sinner’s behalf is GOOD NEWS, and here it rises to the surface of his prayer in wonderful relief:
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
He has given us the only kind of life he has within himself – ETERNAL LIFE.
The primary facet of eternal life on display in vv.9-18 is the eternality of it, the forever protection Christians have by Christ himself. Review from the passage, for instance:
v.10 = all yours are mine and mine are yours, meaning we belong to God
v.11 = the Father is keeping us
v.12 = he has guarded us, and not one of them has been lost
v.15 = keep them from the evil one
vv.16-17 = sanctify them (or set them apart)
All of this points us the safety we have in Jesus!
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Treasured legacies are not really made in a few years or even in one’s own lifetime, but rather in the enduring impact of a life — even a short life — on the church or the ongoing fruit of one’s work through subsequent decades. There are reasons we are still reading the figures from 2,000 years of church history today. Their words have proven helpful, formative, or otherwise impressive through the ages. That’s the kind of wisdom I want to lean into more and more.

It seems every couple of months now the evangelical world is wrestling with the moral implosion or other kind of disqualification of yet another church leader. And while our first priority ought to be justice and healing for any victims of these leaders, one subject that inevitably comes up is what to do with all of these leaders’ works. Should we read their books any more? What do we do with all the ways they’ve informed or ministered to us through their preaching and writing?
The endorsements printed on the back cover of Paul Tripp’s 2012 book Dangerous Calling now serves as an ironic reminder of how many of our vaunted figures stand on feet of clay. Some of these “falls” we probably should have seen coming. Others startle us. I don’t know about you, but I am weary of having this rug pulled out from under me. There are more than a few quotes from fallen leaders I wish I could go back and take out of my books and past sermons.
Now, the solution, I don’t think, is that we no longer pay attention to living ministers! Loving the brethren necessarily means hoping and believing all things. I don’t think gracious discernment entails embracing a spirit of cynicism and suspicion about everybody. And as one who continues to be blessed by numerous colleagues in local and public ministry, I plan to continue enjoying that blessing. And as one who hopes to continue preaching and writing, I sure hope the solution is never paying attention to the living!
But there are still some reasons why it may be wise to prioritize the wisdom of those saints who have gone before us, who have already passed into glory. I’ve begun intentionally prioritizing the voices of departed brothers and sisters in my own work. I have a book coming out later this fall in which the vast majority of quotes from Christian works comes from departed saints.
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Friday, March 11, 2022
Leadership of all kinds is lonely and costly. It is tiring. For every person with a problem, he or she is essentially all that exists. Affliction has its way of self-centering. But all the problems that exist are the leader’s. And for spiritual shepherds who take it all seriously, there is “the daily pressure on them of their anxiety for the whole church” (2 Cor. 11:28, par).

But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.— Exodus 17:12
Once upon a time, when I was a pastor, I sat with a dying friend and read to her from 2 Corinthians. This was our second time through the letter together. She was resonating a lot with Paul’s talk of afflictions and “jars of clay” and thorns and weakness. But I began to think something else was at play here, and my friend might not have even been conscious of it. See, she was a leader. And while her illness, which eventually did claim her life, had by necessity caused her to withdraw from the fray of church service and thrust her into a fray of a different kind, when I read Paul saying “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15), I think it described her to a “T.”
She had poured out immeasurably over the years for her family, her friends, her church, and her community. She seemed a tireless servant, sacrificing constantly to live simply and therefore generously. She had been our church’s “queen” of benevolence. And she had been a tireless evangelist, maintaining several long-term relationships with unbelievers very dear to her, whose salvation she  labored for over decades. (She had high hopes and prayers that her illness and perhaps even her death would serve as a turning point for their receiving the gospel.) Given all of the hard work she had engaged in for so long, it bothered her somewhat to be in that vulnerable position. She had always been the one who helps, the one who takes charge. But sometimes leaders need to be carried too.
Paul assumes so. Continuing in 2 Cor. 12:15, he writes, “If I love you more, am I to be loved less?” Elsewhere: “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open . . . In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also” (2 Cor. 6:11,13).
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Sunday, October 17, 2021
The church is empowered by the Spirit through the gospel to bless the world as the overflow of God’s blessing of us. That the world may know the God we serve and worship him alongside us in spirit and truth. We love and believe and serve and bless, that the whole world might “go to church” with us.

Biblically understood, there is a lot more involved in “going to church” than simply attending a worship service. The gospel is designed to remake our entire souls, reorienting us away from ourselves and instead around God and others. The gospel makes the church, so the church that operates according to the gospel that has made it magnifies the Christ of the gospel more than the church that doesn’t. And yet, the commitments the church makes to “go to each other” must necessarily entail “going out” as well. The church that is not on mission, in fact, is not acting true to its own nature. The gospel is not meant to be hoarded but to be shared.
Over and over again, the apostle Paul in his letters necessarily connects the inner life of the church with the outer witness of the church. He transitions from inward relational harmony and service to outward acts of justice and mercy and blessing. For instance, in Romans 12, Paul is discussing what the inner life of the church looks like and then transitions into a statement like this:
Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  (Romans 12:17-21)
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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Saturday, September 4, 2021
The best parachurch organizations will continue serving the ministry of the church by supplementing her in the spread of the gospel, not just the doing of good works or the promotion of good values. The mission of the church is to make disciples of Christ, to plant and grow local churches—not local utopias. When a parachurch ministry understands this purpose and sets its efforts alongside it—in development of and in deference to the local church—the work that the ministry does will endure into eternity with the good pleasure of our heavenly Father.

The phone conversation was going well until I asked a surprising question. I had been speaking to a missionary from an outreach organization who was soliciting a commitment of financial support from our church for his efforts, and I guess I asked something he hadn’t been asked before. Or, maybe he had been asked before and was tired of the question. In any event, I didn’t think I was coming out of left field when I asked: “In what way does your evangelistic work serve the local church?”
He could not answer right away. This fellow knew his work was valuable to the kingdom of God because it involved spreading the gospel in difficult places. But I wanted to know if those won to Christ were also won to local churches in which to be discipled. I wanted to know if converts were baptized not just into the life of Christ but into the life of the covenant community of Christ’s body. I wanted to know the church where he held his membership and the pastor or elders to whom he was in submission.
My new friend fumbled around for an answer. It turned out he was more of a “freelancer.” He had a very clear idea about how his work would benefit the Church with a capital C, the universal church. But he was less clear on how it served any particular body.
And therein lies an important matter for the future viability of many parachurch models and the churches they aim to support. But before we get too far into some potential parachurch pitfalls, we should make some clear distinctions.
The Meaning of Parachurch
While we do not clearly see the presence of what we today call the “parachurch” in the Bible, we can see some historic precedents for the parachurch in religious orders and organizations operating alongside and in service to local churches, fulfilling particular ministry endeavors and spiritual enterprises. From Christian organizations mobilized to feed the hungry to nonprofit publishing ventures, so long as there has been the church, there has seemed to be some form of the parachurch.
A parachurch organization is exactly that—an organization that operates alongside (para) the church. Parachurch organizations are groups of Christians, members of the universal church, who engage in specific areas of ministry that serve or supplement the ministry of local churches.
Really, there seem to be as many kinds of parachurch ministries as there are Christian callings. A parachurch focuses on one particular biblical ministry or vocation of the universal church, ideally to serve the local church in its primary focus to proclaim the gospel and make disciples. “Thus,” Jonathan Thigpen writes, “we could say the purpose of the parachurch is to support and enhance the work of the local church, not to replace it.”
And yet this purpose is constantly in danger of being muddied.
The Work of the Parachurch
I was sitting in the back row of a plane from Atlanta to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. A few others from my fellowship and I were on our church’s annual mission trip. It looked as though many others on the plane were on a similar mission. There must have been forty to fifty young people, mostly college students, all wearing matching T-shirts, on their way to do works of service and ministry.
Sitting near a few of these team members, I asked them where they were going and what they would be doing. It turns out that very few of them knew each other.
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