Matt McCullough
How Pastoring Teaches You to Be “Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing”
By Matt McCullough | 04.24.2019In a healthy church, the work of bearing each other’s burdens and sorrows is never over. We’re always finding more problems to shepherd people through. And so I’m learning what it means to rest not in *my* finished work, but in Christ’s finished work for others.
Why Christians Should Think About Death
By Matt McCullough | 03.21.2019Considering the reality of death can point us to the promises of God.
3 Reasons You Should Preach through Ecclesiastes
By Matt McCullough | 10.11.2018Ecclesiastes surprises people. That’s partly because it says things you don’t expect to hear from the Bible.
Church Plants Need Pastors, Not Entrepreneurs
By Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Church Mergers and Plants | 06.20.2017We often assume church planting requires more entrepreneurial skills than other pastoral contexts. Is that a fair assumption?
Hope for the Melancholy Preacher
By Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Expositional Preaching | 06.10.2015How do we learn to live with the fact that no sermon will ever measure up to the depths of our text, to the needs of our people, or to our ideal images of ourselves? What does success look like when you know your preaching will never be good enough?
The American Jeremiad: A Bit of Perspective on the Rhetoric of Decline
By Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Vanishing Church? | 10.23.2014We must guard against responses to cultural decline that appeal to a past that never existed or a future God hasn’t promised.
Book Review: Homespun Gospel, by Todd Brenneman
Review by Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Vanishing Church? | 10.13.2014This book criticizes Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, and Max Lucado for their sentimentality. Is the critique convincing?
Book Review: The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, by George Marsden
Review by Matt McCullough | 09.16.2014George Marsden offers us a window into a lost world and, to some extent, the story of how that world was lost.
Steve Jobs and the Goal of Preaching
By Matt McCullough | 08.28.2014Jobs said it’s not enough to offer customers what they already think they need. He wanted Apple to be a transformational influence, exposing and then meeting needs that customers didn’t realize they had.
Wendell Berry and the Beauty of Membership
By Matt McCullough | 08.22.2014Berry’s stories bring to life truths at the heart of the community we’re aiming for when we emphasize church membership.
Book Review: An Anxious Age, by Joseph Bottum
Review by Matt McCullough | 03.25.2014An Anxious Age is an enjoyable and engaging read, thought provoking even where it isn’t fully convincing.
Book Review: The Great Evangelical Recession, by John Dickerson
Review by Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Is Scripture Enough? | 06.24.2013I found Dickerson’s information convincing overall: evangelical ministries are losing money, people, and the favor of the American public.
Book Review: Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, by Ross Douthat
Review by Matt McCullough | 9Marks Journal: Lay Elders: A User's Guide - Part 1 | 11.13.2012This book is a call for a renewed, robust, public confidence in the power of Christian orthodoxy. All faithful pastors should resonate with this plea.
