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THE UNWAVERING PASTOR: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times
Jonathan K. Dodson
“Lyrical, subversive, tender, raw, grace-filled and profoundly counter-cultural, The Unwavering Pastor is a beautifully different book which speaks and embodies the gospel for this moment in a way in which we desperately need. Read it and drink deeply from its grace and truth. ” - Gary Millar, Principal, Queensland Theological College, Australia; Author, 'Read This First'
“Pastors are facing discouragement and burnout at unprecedented rates, and the factors contributing to these challenges are complex. That’s why I’m grateful for Jonathan Dodson’s The Unwavering Pastor. This book brings a biblical wisdom and a surprising candor to helping pastors navigate the journey through the thicket of conflict, division, criticism, and even depression, always holding out the healing comfort of grace for the weary pastor’s soul. This is a really good book.” - Jared C. Wilson, Assistant Professor, Pastoral Ministry, Midwestern Seminary; Author, 'Gospel-Driven Ministry'
“As exhausting, and often spiritually depressing, as normal ministry may be, the last few years press us to go to deeper wells. This book is a deeper well—a very refreshing one.” - Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary, California
“A biblically driven, beautifully written book about being a pastor and a human. Dodson’s honesty and vulnerability demonstrate that the key to leading through divisive times is to learn to suffer, grieve, and look to Christ. Every pastor who reads this book will learn principles and lessons to lead through divisive times, but even more, they will be moved by the kind of man and pastor Christ calls us to be in these difficult days. I heartily commend this book.” -BRIAN CROFT, Executive Director, Practical Shepherding; Senior Fellow, Church Revitalization Center, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
FOREWORD by Dane Ortlund
"I needed this book. If you’re a fellow weary pastor, you do too. And I didn’t know how much I needed it until I read it.
Jonathan Dodson has already proven himself to be a wise and steady guide for the church today through his books and his ministry at City Life Church in Austin. We don’t need to be told what bizarre and perplexing times we live in. We know that. We need to be given guidance for how to negotiate these times as pastors. That’s what Jonathan Dodson’s 'The Unwavering Pastor' gives us.
What kind of guide do I need and urgently welcome?
First, someone who is communing with God and commends that communion to us. To quote Francis Schaeffer, someone who knows the all-determining significance of “reality with God” for soul health—an actual moment-by-moment fellowship with the triune God. Sometimes books for ministry leaders have much incisive counsel but miss the nuclear core of communion with God. I was reminded time and again as I read of the freeing truth that all the obstacles of ministry are navigable if I walk through them with God. Jonathan brings us back repeatedly to this non-negotiable of pastoral health.
Second, someone who is biblical. But by “biblical” I don’t mean someone who feeds Scripture into a family of other equally competing influences—cultural insights, common sense, personal experience, historical lessons, Barna surveys. I mean someone for whom the Bible is the all-determining treasure chest of truth and wisdom in how to lead fruitfully in these days. Jonathan is this.
Third, someone who is honest. Throughout the book Jonathan reflects on his own ministry experience with a refreshing transparency to which I can immediately relate. That candor builds trust as we read and serves us well.
Fourth, someone who is tested. It is obvious in these pages that Jonathan has been tried and found true. “Through many dangers, toils, and snares” he has already come. And we can learn from his experiences.
Fifth and finally, someone who writes well. Jonathan does. The greatest temptation confronting every pastor right now is not one of resigning, though I know that many are contemplating that route (and if they do, Jesus won’t love them any less). The greatest temptation is more subtle. It is to continue collecting a paycheck from the church while shifting our hearts into neutral. It is to carry forward the ministry at the level of activity, while quitting ministry in terms of our hearts and longings. This is the fork in the road that the criticism and adversities that Jonathan writes so poignantly about, and which we in the pastorate are facing more persistently than ever, presents us with.
Jonathan understands this greatest of temptations. He helped me understand it more acutely. And 'The Unwavering Pastor' helps all of us, through these tumultuous times, fend off that ministry hypocrisy—smiling outside, quitting inside—as it is written by a man who is communing with God, biblical, honest, tested, and articulate.
I’ve only been a pastor for a few years. So I needed this book more than most. And already in that short time I have been tempted to waver: to withdraw—if not vocationally, in resignation, at least emotionally, in cynicism. God has kept me thus far, and this book is one means that will help me to keep going, dancing my way cheerfully through the Normandy Beach of pastoral ministry. If you read it with an open heart, unhurriedly and reflectively, then you will, like me, conclude your reading of this book deepened, freshly energized, and fortified with sage counsel as we all keep going.
Thank you for blessing us with this seasonable word, Jonathan."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Dane Ortlund 13
Introduction 17
1. Divided Times 21
2. Questioning Christianity 41
3. Redeeming Pain 57
4. Divisive Words 73
5. Age of the Self 89
6. Preach the Word 105
7. Continue in the Faith 123
8. Grace to All 137
Acknowledgments 143
Endnotes 145
The Author closes his Introduction with these encouraging words:
"This book is, in a sense, a long prayer. A flaming arrow shot into the darkness of trial, with the hope that every leader who reads it, and every pastor who engages with it, will feel seen and known, not merely by me but by their Father in heaven and the compassionate Savior at his right hand. I hope you sense divine attentiveness, and even if you don’t, that you will believe in it—and in a God who is always for you and not against you, especially when things are bleak."
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