Many Christians in the US seem poised to take on a variety of issues from county clerks not processing same-sex marriage documents to what books should be included in school curricula. How do we decide? Do I boycott Starbucks as one brother encouraged me to do because of their support of same-sex marriage or do I applaud Starbucks for their use of ethically produced coffee beans?

Daniel was a captive in a foreign land. It would be like Russia taking our best and brightest and putting them in service to Putin in Moscow. What issue(s) did Daniel take on?

• “Literature and language of the Chaldeans”

Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. (Daniel 1.3, 4, ESV)

• “Daily food that the king ate”

The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. (Daniel 1.5, ESV)

When I was growing up, if I were faced with that choice, I’d said, “I’ll eat your bacon and pork chops, but don’t pollute my mind with your pagan literature!” With Daniel, however, it was the opposite. Jewish dietary laws anchored him to his Jewish heritage.

Daniel chose to battle over the food while excelling in the education program:

As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. (Daniel 1.17 – 20, ESV)

Yet he handled the food matter with wisdom and humility:

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself…Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” (Daniel 1.8, 11 – 13, ESV)

The plan worked:

At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. (Daniel 1.15, 16, ESV)

And the chapter ends with a matter-of-fact summary:

And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus. (Daniel 1.21, ESV)

A lifetime of service to foreign governments. Daniel was most likely a teenager in chapter 1. When we get to the Lion’s Den episode in chapter 6, he’s probably 80. Thankfully, God has people everywhere, May we choose our battles carefully and fight them with wisdom and humility.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3.17, ESV)

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2.13 – 17, ESV)

The Reading Plan takes us into Daniel, starting tomorrow. Here’s the (dry) introduction from the ESV:

Exiled to Babylon in 605 B.C., Daniel was one of several young men chosen to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s court. When Persia conquered Babylon in 539, Daniel was again given a position of power. He remained faithful to God in both of these hostile environments.

From the interpretation of dreams, to the familiar stories of the fiery furnace, the lions’ den, and the handwriting on the wall, to the prophetic visions, the recurrent theme is God’s sovereignty over human affairs.

In the historical sections (chs. 1–6) God supernaturally rescued Daniel and his friends. The rest of the book consists of visions of future judgment and deliverance by the Messiah. Some of Daniel’s prophetic themes are echoed in the New Testament, especially in Revelation.

I like this part of Peterson’s introduction as recorded in The Message:

Daniel is composed, in approximately equal parts, of stories and visions—six stories (chapters 1–6) and four visions (chapters 7–12). The stories tell of souls living faithfully in obedience to God in a time of adversity. The visions are wide-screen renditions of God’s sovereignty worked out among nations who couldn’t care less about him. Six soul stories; four sovereignty visions.

“Six soul stories” – a lot of fun and easy to understand. “Four sovereignty visions” – no fun and hard to understand, even for Daniel himself who labored over one vision for three weeks until an angel came to help him:

In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Belteshazzar. And the word was true, and it was a great conflict. And he understood the word and had understanding of the vision. In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks…Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.” (Daniel 10.1 – 3, 12 – 14, ESV)

So here we go. See you tomorrow as Daniel starts his adventure in Babylon as a teenager.

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.

Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. (Daniel 1.1 – 4, ESV, emphasis mine)

Well, our reading plan in Ezekiel comes to a close tomorrow, and we start Daniel on Tuesday. It’s been tough going, but I said from the beginning, it’s a book to be felt more than analyzed. Beginning with chapter 40, we have a detailed vision of the new temple and life back in the land. “We’re in exile now, but one day…we’ll be home!”

The vision culminates in chapter 47 with a beautiful description of life-giving water from the temple. Again, let’s feel it, not analyze it:

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar…

Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river.

As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes…

And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” (Ezekiel 47.1, 5 – 9, 12 ESV)

The water flows and brings life. Trees grow, bearing fresh fruit every month(!). “Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”

Trees…reminds me of people who meditate on the Word:

They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. (Psalm 1.3, NLT)

It was Ezekiel’s vision…and John’s:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22.1, 2, ESV)

Life’s a mess now, but one day we’ll be home.

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.20, ESV)

There are those who say that God quit speaking when the canon of scripture was closed. I’m not one of them, and I’ve written about that before. For example, “Led by the Spirit” and “A Word of Knowledge.” That said, I’ve never had an experience quite like this one…

A friend of mine writes a blog, approximately weekly, and he usually sends them to me in advance for editing. I correct minor typos and occasionally suggest wording changes to clarify what he’s trying to say. We don’t always agree, and from time to time I make more substantive suggestions. Sometimes he takes them and sometimes not.

A few days ago, he wrote an excellent essay that was rocking along just fine until he inserted a paragraph, next to last, that echoed one of his favorite positions. It was completely unnecessary to the current essay, and including it distracted the reader from the points he was making. I told him so and recommended he delete that paragraph.

Imagine my surprise to receive this note the next day:

Morning Bob

I meant to get back to you to say thank you for your edits… and your suggestion re: deleting that one paragraph.  I took your suggestion, or rather, heard the Lord Jesus say to me last night as my wife and I worshipped Jesus at our church’s Friday evening Adoration service: “Bob is right. Delete it.”

Did it. Joyfully, I might add!

Thank you.

Wow. I responded, “Bless you, my brother. It’s not every day Jesus agrees with me and makes his agreement known!”

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30.21, ESV)

I apologize. I thought I was done ranting about the essay urging pastors to just “Run the Play” Jesus gave us. It’s the wrong play, and it’s not the one Jesus gave us!

Josh Howard, writing eloquently for discipleship.org, published “The 45-degree Shift that changes everything” on August 22, 2026. Please read it in its entirety. Here’s the idea: the 45-degree shift is changing a plus sign to a multiplication sign.

Here’s the heart of his blog:

Our team decided to make the shift—from addition to multiplication—and it changed nearly everything about how we operated:

• Our job description flipped. We went from players to coaches. Our job wasn’t just to do ministry, but to train everyone else to do it too.
• Our structure flipped. Leaders moved from the top to the bottom—lifting and supporting, not commanding.
• Training became universal. If you were breathing, you were being trained to share the gospel and make disciples who make disciples.
• Sunday morning changed function. Instead of treating our gathering as “the game,” we started treating it as the locker room—where the team gets equipped to go play the real game all week.
• We released control. And in exchange, our influence multiplied exponentially.

Note the fourth one: “Sunday morning changed function.” It wasn’t “the game” where we ran “the play.” It was “the locker room – where the team gets equipped to go play the real game all week.”

I rest my case.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 18.18 – 20, ESV)

Please note that “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” includes the command he just gave! And “teaching them to observe” is more than teaching the commands, it’s teaching them how to do the commands, i.e., training.

That’s “the play.”

This is the fourth in an unplanned blog series beginning with a pastor’s arguing for continuing to run the Sunday morning “play.” I think this is the final entry! Thanks to Sahil Bloom (again!), I’m reminded of another reason why it’s sometimes hard for churches and pastors to add in more intentional discipleship. They can’t add because they’ve already added too much!

Here are snippets about subtraction from Sahil’s August 21 newsletter:

Dr. Leidy Klotz, an engineering and architecture professor at the University of Virginia, pioneered the study of the psychological bias toward addition.

After watching his young son fix a Lego structure by removing a block, an action the boy took while Klotz was reaching for a block to add, he became interested in studying this effect in the lab.

…

Klotz and his co-authors summarized their findings across eight experiments, writing, “people systematically default to searching for additive transformations, and consequently overlook subtractive transformations.”

Leidy Klotz has written a book: Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. Here’s the promotional paragraph from Amazon:

We pile on “to-dos” but don’t consider “stop-doings.” We create incentives for good behavior, but don’t get rid of obstacles to it. We collect new-and-improved ideas, but don’t prune the outdated ones. Every day, across challenges big and small, we neglect a basic way to make things better: we don’t subtract. Klotz’s pioneering research shows us what is true whether we’re building Lego models, cities, grilled-cheese sandwiches, or strategic plans: Our minds tend to add before taking away, and this is holding us back.

Do I need to tell you that most churches continue to add programs and ministries while not taking away any existing ministries, even if they’re not effective? My friend and former pastor John Ed Mathison succinctly articulated the solution:

If the horse is dead, dismount. – Dr. John Ed Mathison, Pastor Emeritus, Frazer Church, Montgomery, AL

The Apostle Paul said it first:

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent… (Philippians 1.9, 10, ESV)

In our personal lives, our churches, our businesses, we need discernment to “approve what is excellent…” and I would add, “subtract that which is not excellent.”

We’ve observed the past two days that pastors like to run the Sunday morning “play” with hymns, preaching, and Communion without necessarily giving thought to whether Sunday morning alone is sufficient or even primary for disciple-making. One brother, when he was the Minister of Discipleship of a large church often questioned the effectiveness of Sunday morning. Now, he’s the lead pastor of a small church, and doing Sunday is all he seems to have time for.

So there’s definitely inertia going for the traditional Sunday morning form, so much so that if a slight modification is considered, the response is “That’s Not Church!”

Sometimes, pastors themselves see no need for change other than to try to constantly improve the Sunday morning presentation. Why? Maybe because ALL their training and ALL their experience leads them in that direction.

On August 19, 2026, Sahil Bloom told this story:

In 2013, a group of researchers at the Visual Attention Lab, a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, asked 24 trained radiologists to ​review chest CT scans​ for the appearance of lung cancer nodules.

On the final scan, an image of a gorilla, 48 times larger than the average nodule, was inserted into the scan image. 83% of the expert radiologists (20 out of 24) failed to see it. More damning was the fact that eye-tracking data showed the majority of the radiologists who had missed the gorilla had actually looked right at it.

Sahil explained:

The radiologists weren’t blind. Their attention had just been specialized and refined over years of dedicated effort to find one specific thing. It worked exactly as designed for the task they were trained for. It found what they were looking for. But missed what they weren’t.

It’s called inattentional blindness. The term was coined in 1992 by cognitive psychologists Arien Mack and Irvin Rock to refer to the mental lapse where you fail to notice an unexpected event or object in view because your focus was trained on a specific task.

Inattentional blindness is the source of your internal gravity. Each year you spend narrowing in on one thing is a year that builds the gravity that blinds you to everything else. It’s a sort of gravity you never even feel. Because it’s not that the change feels too heavy. It’s that it never occurs to you in the first place.

You can’t choose a door you can’t see.

Chilling: “You can’t choose a door you can’t see.” The Pharisees and other religions leaders missed Jesus:

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. (John 9.39 – 41, ESV)

When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. (John 12.9 – 11, ESV)

Why did they miss Jesus? Because they were looking for a different kind of Messiah. Why do some pastors miss disciple-making, at least the kind of disciple-making that involves skills training and character transformation? Because disciple-making doesn’t fit the Sunday morning model, and they can’t see it.

If you’re a pastor and you don’t have my book That’s Not Church!, write to me, and I’ll give you a copy. You don’t even have to read all of it: it’s filled with standalone blogs from The Ewellogy.

If you’re a (lay) church leader, don’t force your pastor to spend all his or her time on the Sunday morning service. Encourage your pastor to get in touch with me or someone from Navigator Church Ministries to get some coaching on how to add some new plays to the playbook.

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. No prolonged infancies among us, please… (Ephesians 4.11 – 14, MSG)

PS The gorilla is black and near the top of the right-side dark gray area.

PPS Dolly Parton passed away yesterday at the age of 80.

The country music legend combined great talent with gratitude, generosity, humility, and good humor. Erica Andersen, “Dolly Parton’s Legacy,” published by World Magazine, August 26, 2026.

The only thing I would add to Erica’s tribute is that she was married to the same man, Carl Dean, from 1966 until his death last year. Nearly 60 years, quite an accomplishment and an inspiration for us all.

Yesterday, I reacted to an essay which argued for pastors being faithful running Sunday morning, likening it to a football team’s successful play:

Week after week, the work of the church looks about the same. We gather to sing and pray and open the Bible and preach it. We baptize new believers and bury old saints. We take the Lord’s Supper together. We sit with the sick, we comfort people who are grieving, and we go looking for the ones who have wandered off. The songs and the sermons change, but the shape of the thing stays remarkably steady. Sunday comes, and then it comes again. – Josh Reavis, “Run It Again,” August 18, 2026.

That would be fine except the mission of the church is to “equip the saints for works of service” (Ephesians 4.11, 12), and one duty of pastors is to train “reliable people who shall teach others also” (2 Timothy 2.2). A pastor friend of mine used to say, “We can’t put all the weight of the church’s mission on the Sunday morning service. It can’t carry it all.” Amen.

My friend and Navigator colleague Ron Bennett has written a marvelous little book: Intentional Disciplemaking: Cultivating Spiritual Maturity in the Local Church. He explains that if our objective is making disciples, we need more than the Sunday morning service. He likens the process to golf: you can’t put the ball in the hole with just the driver. You need…

• a Driver: the Sunday morning service – worship and celebration
• the Long irons: mid-size groups (20 – 70 people) – community
• the Short irons: small groups (3 – 12 people) – training
• a Putter: one-to-one – in-depth training/mentoring

To go back to “the play” analogy, football teams have more than one. Moreover, to run that play (or any play) requires individual disciplines, training, and practice.

This is not rocket science, but many pastors seem to have trouble getting beyond the Sunday morning service as their primary ministry method. Why? Stay tuned.

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Colossians 1.28, ESV)

I’ll probably get in trouble for this blog…

A brother wrote a powerful essay published by World Magazine. He opens by talking about how football teams should run the play that’s working until it doesn’t. He applies that principle to churches:

Week after week, the work of the church looks about the same. We gather to sing and pray and open the Bible and preach it. We baptize new believers and bury old saints. We take the Lord’s Supper together. We sit with the sick, we comfort people who are grieving, and we go looking for the ones who have wandered off. The songs and the sermons change, but the shape of the thing stays remarkably steady. Sunday comes, and then it comes again. – Josh Reavis, “Run It Again,” August 18, 2026.

He continues:

Here is what I have to keep preaching to myself. We do not keep doing the same things because we lack imagination. We keep doing them because Jesus told us to. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). That is the play, and He drew it up Himself. He did not hand His church a playbook and then invite us to improvise a better one. He gave us the ordinary means of grace, His Word preached, and His people gathered around the table, and He promised to build His church through them.

But is the “play” the author described in his essay really what Jesus meant in what we call “The Great Commission,” Matthew 28.19 – 20?

When people ask what I do, I reply with something like, “I help pastors and church leaders make disciples. Churches are very good at running Sunday morning, but not so good at making disciples, at training and sending.” I’ve never had a non-pastor disagree with that assessment. Once I told some friends I was on my way to India to teach pastors how to make disciples. The response was immediate: “We need that here!”

I posted a comment to the essay:

I marvel that we can take our form of church, the “play” that churches all over the world are running, attribute it to Jesus and call it making disciples. Jesus didn’t run that play, he trained 12 men (Mark 3.13, 14). Paul said the job of church leaders was to “equip the saints” (Ephesians 4.11 – 12). Paul also told “Pastor Timothy” to train reliable people “who will also be qualified to teach others.” (2 Timothy 2.2)

I’ve written about this problem before:

• Primary Tasks? reviews an essay in which the pastor’s functions are described around “the play,” and DON’T include training and equipping.
• That’s Not Church! tells the story of what happened when a pastor suggested a Sunday morning format different from “the play,” demonstrating people’s commitment to “the play” over Bible-based alternatives.

FYI, here are the verses I cited in my comment:

And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach… (Mark 3.13, 14, ESV)

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ… (Ephesians 4.11, 12, ESV)

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)

PS This is NOT a stand-alone blog. I’m criticizing an over-reliance on one “play.” Let’s continue our discussion tomorrow.

A few pictures from a sunset dog walk at YMCA of the Rockies at Estes Park a few days ago.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19.1, ESV)