Advertise on podcast: The Monday After

This story probably sounds familiar. A college student has been a Christian for two years. He meets with his campus staff worker every Tuesday, leads a Bible study on his dorm floor, is excited about missions, and was baptized in a lake last summer at the ministry’s training camp. He has never been a church member. No elder knows his name. Subscribe to the newsletter.

"Hey Coach, I have a question." The person sending me the message hasn't played for me in more than twenty years, but he still calls me Coach. This month marks my 22nd season coaching basketball. I started coaching my first team when I was just 17. This year I am coaching my son, who turns 17 this season. Subscribe to the newsletter.

If there is a door to adulthood, it is harder to find today than in past generations. There has always been a clear break between a child and a man. No civilization has ever tried to run endless adolescence. We are the first. Subscribe to the newsletter.

One of my pastor friends was told on his first Sunday, "Don't worry. I'll be here when you leave." That wasn't meant cruelly, but it underscored that people saw the pastor as a chapter, not the story. When people expect you to move on soon, relationships can easily become transactional. They call when they need you, but rarely just to check in. He is not alone in that. Peter DeHaan has cited a claim that only about one in forty people who enter vocational ministry finish their careers there. Josh Reich has passed along another: the average person loses a handful of significant relationships in a lifetime, while a pastor loses several every year. I can't verify those figures, but I don't doubt them. What gives? Subscribe to the newsletter.

Last week I sat in the wrong coffee shop for 20 minutes before realizing I was meeting someone else. I rushed to the right one, apologizing on the way in, and still ended up having a great hour of mutual encouragement with a man I admire. Subscribe to the newsletter.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus keeps returning to the same pattern: "You have heard that it was said," and then, "But I tell you." He is not correcting the Old Testament. Jesus is on the hillside correcting what the religious teachers had done with it. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart Subscribe to the newsletter.

It took 99 days to extinguish the fires. Last week we marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11. My parents' generation remembers where they were when John F. Kennedy was killed. I vaguely remember the Challenger exploding on television. But for Generation X and many millennials, 9/11 is the event in American history most seared into our minds. If you are under 25, you were not alive. The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff Subscribe to the newsletter.

A woman in her 20s at your church has an Instagram bio that reads, before her name, before a single photo: ADHD. Anxiety. CPTSD. Not what she loves or enjoys. Just a diagnosis to frame her life. The rising generation has received more therapy than any generation before it. The results are not subtle.  Resources: Resisting Therapy Culture by Matthew Loftus Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier Subscribe to the newsletter.

I will never forget Maie Sullivan.  Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever by Andrew Wilson Subscribe to the newsletter.

You talk to a friend and walk away from the conversation convinced you heard exactly what they said and meant, only to find out you misunderstood what they were trying to tell you. Has that happened to anyone else? Subscribe to the newsletter.

Well. I struck a nerve last week. Go back and read it here. Here's the main thrust, stripped down: you can live a godly life without ever cracking a book, including the Bible. You cannot live a godly life apart from the regular gathering of God's people. Full stop. Subscribe to the newsletter.

You can read. You've been able to read since you were a small child, so long that you can't remember what it felt like not to. You can't look at a stop sign and not read it. Literacy has rewired your brain. And because you read in English, you've been shaped by a particular civilization — its categories, its assumptions, its way of organizing the world. You were educated in subjects that make almost no difference to your daily life, and it never occurred to you to ask why. Reading is the water you swim in.  Subscribe to the newsletter.

Ecclesiastes 10 is a chapter about how small things ruin big things — dead flies in the perfume, one sinner destroying much good. Qohelet walks through an upside-down world where fools sit in high positions and princes walk like slaves. But before he describes that world, he tells you how to live in it: "If a ruler's anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest" (Ecclesiastes 10:4). Do not leave your post. Do not flee, do not explode, do not match his agitation with yours. Stay, and stay calm. Subscribe to the newsletter.

"As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife." — Proverbs 26:21 (NIV) 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke Subscribe to the newsletter.

"There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God." (Psalm 46:4) Psalm 46 mentions water twice, and the contrast is the whole point. What Makes Any Marriage Difficult: Three Questions to Help Yours Grow Subscribe to the newsletter.