Christopher Chelpka

The Nicene Creed contains core doctrines of the Christian Faith. It puts forth a set of objective truths about the triune nature of God, the work of Christ, the church, and more.

But those truths are framed in a personal way. The creed begins with these important words: I believe (in Latin, it’s Credo, hence “creed”), and it ends with Amen, which comes from Hebrew and means, “it is truly so.” These words that frame the creed are important to me because they remind me that these objective truths from God are also very personal.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

When I recite the Nicene Creed, I’m not listing a set of doctrines, I am stating my relationship to those doctrines. It’s the difference between saying trees, and saying I climb trees. And actually, in the case of the creed, it’s more than even that because I’m not primarily professing my faith in the doctrines but in the One who has revealed them.

So when I say, I believe, I’m not reading a grocery list of truths I found in some historical parking lot; I’m confessing what I truly believe and in Whom I truly believe.

This makes the Amen at the end of the creed equally precious to me. It’s the ancient way we say, Yes! I truly mean and agree with what I have said I believe. And, as such, a truly spoken Amen never really ends a confession of faith. The Amen is an exclamation point; it pushes my faith forward by demanding faithfulness.

In other words, if I believe is true, then the rest of what I do ought to conform to the truths I say I believe. Otherwise, I don’t really believe them.

So Lord, may my actions that follow my confession of faith, flow from the faith I confess. Amen.

I finished reading A Pastoral Rule for Today: Reviving an Ancient Practice. Drawing lessons from pastors of the past, the authors show how pastors today need structure in their ministries and suggest ideas toward that end. There were major and minor lessons throughout the book and lots of overlap (in a good way). Here were some major lessons:

• On the importance of theological friendship from Augustine.
• On the conduct of ministers among other pastors and among the congregation from Bendict.
• On the dual duties of service and contemplation from Gregory the Great.
• On the specific structures and practices of doing pastoral ministry jointing from Calvin.
• On the value rich conversation and the care required for edifying speech from Wesley.
• On the significance of disciplined and devotional study from Newman.
• On the education of seminarians in the context of community from Bonhoeffer.

Most of us are accustomed to a maximalist approach to technology. As long as it’s new and has some value to us, we adopt it. But according to Cal Newport, that sets the bar way too low and is leading to all kinds of negative consequences.

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, has written several books about what it means to do valuable work in ways that don’t lead to burnout. In his latest book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Newport focuses on how our approach to technology needs to change.

Newport calls his approach: digital minimalism. The digital minimalist doesn’t reject technology—Newport still has an iPhone—but chooses his or her tools carefully and optimizes them. As he puts it, digital minimalism is

“a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

Like Marie Kondo, Cal Newport, is helping us to understand that there’s a cost to having things that clutter up our lives. Even though digital things may not take up much physical space, they still require a lot of mental and emotional space. Digital minimalism is, in part, about becoming sensitive to the cost of our digital tools.

Digital Minimalism, is not all philosophy though. The book also offers lots of practical advice on how to become more focused and reduce “the hum of low-grade anxiety”—or worse—“that permeates [our] lives”.

For example, Newport believes that we use digital distractions to try and fill our true need for high-quality leisure, like eating a bowl of mints, one after another, when what you really need is some homemade chicken noodle soup. And these low-quality leisure activities tend to exhaust us instead of refresh us. They tend to make us feel less human and more lonely. I believe distraction has its place, but learning the difference between low-quality and highly-quality leisure is important. Newport gives examples and suggests ways to incorporate more high-quality leisure into your life.

He also gives this helpful advice: make sure you find high-quality leisure activities before you start “decluttering the low-value digital distractions from your life”. Why? Because removing these distractions without filling the need first “will be unnecessarily unpleasant at best and a massive failure at worse.” (UPDATE: An article on his blog explains this and gives some examples of people who have followed this advice.)

Sanely, Newport never promises that if you adopt digital minimalism that everything in your life will be perfect, the kind of overpromising that is common in self-improvement books like this. But he does think that digital minimalism will make a difference for the better. And he’s right about that. Being a digital minimalist hasn’t saved my soul but it has decreased my anxiety, increased my productivity, and improved my focus. It has helped me be a better husband, father, and pastor.

I’ve been on the path of digital minimalism for a few years now. Amoung other things, I’ve canceled or discontinued use of most of my social media accounts. I’ve reduced the number of podcasts, RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, etc. to about 15% of what it was. And I’ve optimized my phone to limit its ability to distract me. But the pull to a maximalist or reactive approach to technology, or life in general, is strong for me. So I appreciated the way Digital Minimalism strengthened my resolve and suggested new ways to grow.

I highly recommend you read this book and consider this approach for yourself.

Find Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World via WorldCat.

David sang,
My heart became hot within me.
As I mused, the fire burned;
Then I spoke with my tongue.

Without meditation
He would have been a cold man
Who looks at a fire from a distance,
And sees the flames, but never gets warm.
But David saw God’s dancing truths,
Moved closer, and in meditative praise,
Put out his palms.

When you feel the heat from meditation,
Don’t leave. Muse on the truths
Until you are warmed
And ready to speak to God.

Focus your thoughts on a heavenly thing.
Treasure its source, virtue, and blessing.
Then plant it like a seed in the soil of your heart,
And ask: “How this might bear fruit in me?”
Divine fruit.

Be resolute.
As bold as a puritan.
Like Watson, who said:
Leave not your mediations of God
Till you find something of God in you.

For godly musing
Melts the heart when it is frozen
And makes it drop into tears of love.

Paul ends Ephesians, with the following benediction: ἡ χάρις μετὰ πάντων τῶν ἀγαπώντων τὸν κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ. What does this mean?

The English Standard Version translates this verse: “Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible”. And so, perhaps you’ve wondered: How can anyone love with incorruptible love? There’s a good answer to that, but it may be the wrong question. That’s because in Ephesians 6:24, “incorruptibility” probably doesn’t refer to the love given to Jesus, but to Jesus himself. As my friend, S. M. Baugh, translates it: “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ, who dwells in incorruptibility.”

Dr. Baugh gives two reasons for this in his commentary on Ephesians. First, while it’s grammatically possible, there is no reason to link the prepositional phrases ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ back to the earlier participle phrase “all those who love”. The word order suggests, however, that ἐν ἀφθαρσίᾳ should be connected to its most recent antecedent: “our Lord Jesus Christ” instead. Second, the incorruptibility of Christian love was not a major theme in Ephesians, but the incorruptibility of Jesus was. Through Jesus, whom God raised from the dead and seated at his right and in the heavenly places, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing. In him we receive a glorious, incorruptible inheritance of life together worshiping the Trinune God. Ephesians begins with these things in mind, and with this benediction it ends with this way too. “As [Christ] dwells in incorruptibility,” writes Baugh, “so shall all his people dwell together evermore.” This is “the central message of Ephesians.”

And we can add another reason. Throughout the Bible, we see that the purpose of God’s pronouncing benedictions on his people is to bless them with his glory and the gifts of salvation. So naturally, these blessings tend to spotlight God’s work for us, not our work for him. We have that in the ESV translation, but it’s stronger in Dr. Baugh’s.

Before God loved us in Christ, we were corrupt and corruptible, able to decay and even already dead. “But God,” Paul writes in Ephesians 2, “being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”

Ephesians also teaches us that this salvation changes us. It turns us from enemies of God into friends with him and each other. It puts peace our hearts and it teaches us a new way in Christ. It incorporates us into a new body, with Christ himself as our living head. And as such, in this salvation we learn a new way to live: a way that is marked by love and sustained by the grace of our incorruptible Lord from his incorruptible kingdom.

John Cassian (ca. 360-435) was a world-travelling ascetic who thought a lot about suffering. And in his work, On the Death of the Saints (conference 6, chapter 11), he takes an aside to consider why God brings trials into our lives, both believers and unbelievers.¹

Here’s my summary of Cassian’s reasons for suffering, along with a verse for each reason. He includes some of these verses and many others in the work I’m summarizing, which you can read online or in Accordance.

God uses suffering for probation.

And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. (Deut. 8:2 ESV)

God uses suffering to warn us.

When a scoffer is punished, the simple becomes wise; when a wise man is instructed, he gains knowledge. (Prov. 21:11 ESV)

God uses suffering for punishment and justice.

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezek. 18:20 ESV)

God uses suffering to reject us, which is “worse than all other punishments”

The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by the fire; in vain the refining goes on, for the wicked are not removed. Rejected silver they are called, for the LORD has rejected them. (Jer. 6:28-30 ESV)

God uses suffering to improve us.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Rom. 5:3–4 ESV)

God uses suffering to prove his work in us.

You have been grieved by various trails, so that the tested genuine of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:7 ESV)

God uses suffering to manifest his glory.

“It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3 ESV)

What can a church do to prevent a shooting in their congregation?

Here are a four practical ideas drawn from Safe Schools Arizona: An Action Plan to Enhance the Safety of Arizona Schools and Communities. A plan David French calls,

perhaps the most intelligent policy response to school shootings (and, honestly, mass shootings more generally) that I’ve ever read.

Here are the ideas taken from the Ducey’s plan:

• Mental health first aid training
• Confidential, centralized reporting tip line
• [Procedures for handling tips] Ducey’s plan assumes these are already in place
• Lockdown training [and] clear procedures that differentiate between active shooter drills [and] fire drills

When the other disciples told Thomas that they had seen Jesus, risen from the dead, Thomas didn’t believe them. Their testimony to the truth wasn’t good enough for him.

Was this diligent truth-seeking or something else? And can we rely on the testimony of others about Jesus?

Michael Kruger addresses that second question in his excellent post, Can We Believe God’s Word is True Because our Parents Told Us? I draw from this article to answer the first question in my sermon this morning on John 20:24–31.

The testimony concerning Jesus is trustworthy. I hope that you will believe it. Because as John says:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

1. Shortcut: WorldCat Search
2. Shortcut: WorldCat Markdown Link

Until recently, I used Amazon almost exclusively for sharing links to books. But you may have noticed that in the last month or so I’ve been linking to WorldCat instead. WorldCat still shows you where to find a book on Amazon but it also offers other options, including which nearby libraries have what you’re looking for. I got this idea from @craigmcclellan who shares music in a similar way.

And thanks to Craig and his @theclassnerd co-host Robby Burns, I also learned how to create Shortcuts on iOS. So now, when I want to share a book on my blog, here’s what I do.

1. Look up a book on WorldCat through their website or through the WorldCat Search Shortcut, which will find your book on WorldCat after you scan its barcode.
2. With the book’s WorldCat page open, I run WorldCat Markdown Link. This copies a pre-formatted markdown link for the page to my clipboard.
3. Then, I paste the link.

If this looks useful to you, download the Shortcuts and try it for yourself. You can modify them to suit your needs.

At the moment, these Shortcuts work perfectly in Safari. In the future, I’d like to get the same results on other browsers. If you can figure out how to do that, I’d love to hear from you.