The course of my life  as well as my work in ministry has been largely taken up with helping others with the practical problems of their life, while grappling with the practical problems of my own life. Simply put: real world problems are always present. The fears and worries, now often called anxieties, of our lives never seem to go away. Most people come to religion or faith not to gain better logic or more effective ammunition for debate. Everyday people are looking for useful solutions to their own practical problems.

Against this backdrop, so-called “Christian” thought and theology is often wrapped up in theoretical matters. Everyday people can and often do get quickly lost in the very details that ministers, theologians, seminaries, and denominations think most important. Preachers well-known in the old days used a metaphor for preaching that it is the job of the preacher to take the cookie jar from beyond reach and put it down within reach on the bottom shelf for everyday people. The whole point is that ideas which are not clear or useful for everyday people are just that: neither clear nor useful.

I am beginning here a practical project to teach the gospel in a way that is clear and useful. If discussions are highly theoretical and even nit-picky, they are very likely of interest to a different audience than I seek to address and of little use to the very people I hope to engage. This past Sunday one of my ministers mentioned in his sermon that his walk with God, his relationship with Jesus, seems to vibrant and going quite well. Yet, he said, he has been struggling with an appetite for the Bible. We spoke afterwards, and I told him about my own struggle that so much “Christian” teaching whether in the form of sermons, books, theology, or devotionals does not actually offer us grace or Jesus.

Instead, much “Christian” teaching offers essentially duty in one form or another. We are engaged with what we ought to be thinking, what we ought to be doing, and how we should change in order to be happier or more successful or more pleasing to God. But these teachings do not offer us clarity about who God is, how God sees us and relates to us, or the freedom and joy available to us in our gracious God. This is saddening on one hand, but on the other hand it leaves me and many others like me without the resources and fuel to experience grace or live a life informed by God’s character and God’s concerns.

It is a real temptation to spend time and energy breaking down the failures of “Christian” teaching, in hopes of clarifying something useful. My purpose in life and here is not to get wrapped up in analyzing or correcting others. That is a well, which if I said that word in front of my brother he would remind me is a deep subject. Dad jokes are never far away. Correction and judgment are a deep well that can soak up exorbitant time, energy, and focus. That is not my purpose. My purpose is to do what I am talking about: offer teaching that offers clarity and usefulness for people of faith.

In the coming days, it is my hope to embark on a journey to set a basic frame of the gospel and then to work through specific books of the Bible with this frame in mind. My hope is to offer clear teaching which does not venture into theoretical topics. My goal is not to pierce the veil of God’s mysteries and theorize my way to making everything about God clear, since this is an impossible, unproductive, and possibly even ungodly pursuit. My goal is very simple, to clarify and stick to the very basics of the gospel, and to show what a grace-based approach to God actually looks like as we open up the Scriptures.

My intention is to write articles in the coming days that are about a thousand words. These articles should be relatively easy to read through in about fifteen minutes. I will set a theological frame of what the gospel is, and then begin to work that frame out through actual biblical texts. My intention is to work through one book of the Bible at a time, one chunk of text at a time.

It is not of interest to me to build a following or some kind of brand. If there are everyday people who share my concerns and interest, I welcome you joining me in my journey here. I welcome your interaction, whether through comments on articles here or through messages or emails ().