Recently, I’ve been enjoying Bennett Rogers’ biography of J. C. Ryle, one of my spiritual heroes. While best known as the evangelical Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, England (from 1880-1900), he also served as a pastor in several congregations prior to that. Among his many other traits, Ryle was known for his pattern of regularly visiting each family in his parish and often leaving a tract when he left. While we think of tracts primarily as short evangelistic booklets, Ryle’s tracts were typically more like a pamphlet. And while evangelism was certainly one of the recurring themes, they also focused on other practical subjects in the Christian life: how to read and understand the Scriptures, what a faithful Christian life consisted of, how to suffer well – and many others. These short booklets had two goals: they were meant to get the people of Ryle’s parish thinking and growing, and they enabled Ryle to leave a bit of himself behind – something that might be helpful even when he had left or couldn’t otherwise be present.
As I’ve thought through this aspect of Ryle’s life, I wondered: what would be the modern equivalent to his helpful tracts? How can I, as a pastor, point us toward encouragement, promote faithful thinking, and call us to Christ-like living throughout the week?
Part of the brilliance of Ryle’s tracts were that they met people where they were at – a printed piece of truth that was sitting right there, in the home, ready to be read and thought through. In our own congregation, the vast majority of us spend hours each day online. In many ways, the world of the internet is where we are. Yet, so much of what is promoted in social media feeds or made popular by cultural, political, or personal controversies simply isn’t worth your time to reflect on.
So I wish to offer an alternative: the goal of this series is to draw our attention to just a handful of things each week which are worth thinking on, praying about, and being formed by. Things that are worth your time.
Here’s the initial outline: most weeks, I intend to post something helpful to the church blog. This might be one or more articles that are worth reading, it could be a podcast or sermon that is worth hearing, or a video that is worth watching. Sometimes it might simply be a quote or poem that is worth thinking on. In every case, my goal is quality rather than quantity. It’s to get us thinking more deeply and carefully and wisely, all with the goal of forming God’s people in ways that will make us more like Jesus. Interested? Let me point you to hope and help for navigating this changing world that we find ourselves in…
