Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland celebrates the one-year anniversary of his book, Centering Jesus. He shares his journey of discovering his calling as a pastor and writer, starting from his high school days to his time in college and seminary. Derek emphasizes the importance of keeping Jesus at the center of our spiritual formation, moral lives, and common life together. He describes the day the seed for the book was planted and why it is such an important message for the church today.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Centering Jesus by Derek Vreeland
Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:
Revelation 7:16-17
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I’m glad you’ve joined me for this episode because today is a special day. Today I am celebrating the one-year anniversary of my book, Centering Jesus. So on the episode today, I want to talk to you about this book that I love so much. I was called to be a pastor when I was young. I was probably 15 or 16 years old when I sensed this call to be a pastor. It is all that I’ve ever wanted to do. But as I have grown, I’ve discerned what my calling is. I think God gives us callings. I think some people go through their whole life trying to discern what that is. It’s a challenge sometimes to know, am I really doing what God wants me to do? But I think part of the way we discern that calling is a little bit of the duck in the pond, squirrel in the tree analogy Because if you’re a duck trying to climb a tree and it’s not working, you begin to figure out, wait a second, I wasn’t created to climb trees. Similarly, a squirrel trying to swim in a pond, struggling to stay afloat, will quickly discern that they are not made for the pond. Squirrels made for the trees, ponds made for the water. And so I think as we grow in life, we begin to engage in different activities, and then through the satisfaction and delight, or dissatisfaction of certain activities, we begin to discern what our call is. And I have been writing since I was a high school student. And in those early days, I didn’t know that writing would be a part of my calling It was really my track coach in high school who was the first one who recognized that I had a voice, that I had something to share, not just. a voice in terms of public speaking, but he was reading some of what I was writing in high school and had encouraged me. It’s actually a funny story. In high school, I was not necessarily the best student. I wasn’t the best reader. And my sophomore year of high school was a time of transition in that I really began to take my faith seriously. And it was in the summer between my sophomore year and junior year of high school that I sensed God calling me to be a pastor. And so my junior year, I spent a lot of time Well, I’d spent a lot of time in Bible study. I was probably studying my Bible more than I was studying for school. And I was in an English class, and we were assigned to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. It’s a short little book. A lot of high school students will read it. It’s actually a great story. You know, it was later turned into a movie of My Camendo. Great novel. But I didn’t want to read it. I didn’t want to read it because I didn’t want to take the time and invest the energy into reading it. But I unfortunately used my faith convictions to try to weasel out of a homework assignment. I told my English teacher. that I was not going to read of my sin men, because I had scanned it, and it uses the Lord’s name in vain multiple times, and that offends me as a Christian person, so I’m not reading this book. Well, my English teacher didn’t know what to make of that. So she was in the uh lounge, the teacher’s lounge. talking to other English teachers about me and this predicament of not wanting to read this book on moral religious grounds. Well, my track coach was also the tag teacher. Tag is talented and gifted humanities. He had been teaching senior-level English courses at our high school. He’s also my track coach, and he overheard my English teacher and said, now, what student was saying this to you? And she said, Derek Vreeland. And my track coach, Coach Reynolds, said, Well, don’t worry, I’ll talk to him. Well, the next day I was in English class and there’s a knock at the door and it’s Coach Reynolds. And he said, Derek, can I can I see you in the hallway? I said, sure, coach, of course, I’m gonna do whatever coach says. So I get out into the hallway and coach Reynolds begins to chew me out. He completely blasted away this facade I had created. I don’t want to read this book on religious moral grounds. He said, you are being lazy and you are using your faith to get out of work, and you need to rethink this. He said, if you have a problem with the content of the book, don’t skip reading it but read it and then write your book report from a Christian perspective. And that was a little C. I hadn’t ever really considered that And of course, I was caught uh in in being lazy. And so I apologized to Coach Reynolds, I apologized to my English teacher, and I said, I’ll read. I’ll read the book. I have enough time. I’ll read it and I’ll write my book report. And so I did what Coach suggested. I wrote my book report, the review of the book, from a Christian perspective. And I got a B minus on that book report. The first time I had ever gotten anything higher than a C in in term papers or anything I was writing. And Coach Reynolds wanted to read it. He read it. And he told me after track practice one day, he said, you have a voice. You have a perspective that’s important. You have something to say. You should continue writing In fact, this was the end of my junior year, and he had said, you should take the the test to see if you can get into tag. And I said, Oh, I’m not the best student. I’m not really much of a writer. I took the test. I got into tag and did that my senior year. And as I was graduating high school, uh Coach Reynolds encouraged me. to keep writing. Well, I go on to college and I started college as a philosophy and religion major But then I transferred schools, and when I transferred, the school I was transferring to, to be closer to home, didn’t have a philosophy degree. In fact, they only had one philosophy class. And when I was looking to change my major, I was looking over things and I saw in the English department that they had a major that would emphasize writing. And so that was my declared major. And I did it because I knew I was going to go on to Bible college or perhaps seminary, and I would be writing a lot of papers. in that next phase of education. So I thought, well, you know, I don’t mind writing. It would probably be easy. At this point, I was enjoying reading, I was enjoying writing, and I thought it would prepare me for the next stage of education. So I graduated from college with an English writing degree. Again, I never imagined that that would be a part of my calling as a pastor. I thought as a pastor, I’ll be working with people, I’ll be leading A church, I’ll be teaching and preaching and doing Bible studies, but at that point writing had never factored in So after seminary, I moved on into church ministry. And the first four or five years I was trying to discern as a pastor, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to start my own church? Am I supposed to lead a church? Am I supposed to be just an associate pastor? And I went through a process of trying to figure out if I was supposed to start a new church, to plant a new church. And I spent a few months praying and talking to people that I really respected. And at the end of that process, I really discerned that I wasn’t created. I wasn’t the personality type. I didn’t have the gift mix to be a church planter. I didn’t have that entrepreneural type spirit That I wasn’t I was called to serve the church, but not to start something new. And in a very distinct moment of prayer, I sensed that God was saying to me that He was calling me to teach and to write and to be a voice. And this would have been in probably 2004, 2005, about that period of time, some 20 years ago. And I live with that calling not knowing what to do with it. I was writing Bible studies, and I would write small things for our church. And I was still writing papers. Three years after beginning my time serving the church as a pastor, I went back to school. I did a doctoral program. And so I was writing papers for three years. I spent about 12 months writing a doctoral dissertation. And so when I finished my doctorate in 07, I really began to rethink my calling. Not just to be a voice, not just to teach, but to write. So I self-published a book in 08. I self-published another book in 2011. And then we moved from southwest Georgia to northwest Missouri, where I’m at today. And in that move, I was getting oriented in a new church, in a new position, and didn’t really write for a couple of years. And then in 2014, I was celebrating my fortieth birthday. My brother Jeff and I and a mutual friend. spent nine days hiking on the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina and Georgia. And part of what I was doing on that uh backpacking trip is discerning, okay, what is happening in the next phase of life. And the recurring thought was, I need to write. So I continued when I got back home to self-publish. Um, I self-published two more books, two readers’ guides, to longer theological works. I wrote a discipleship book in 2019 and then came 2020. Oh, do you remember 2020? What a crazy time to be alive. 2020 was the year of the pandemic. It was also a very contentious uh election season. There was economic uncertainty. There was the resurfacing of racial injustice, all sorts of things happening in twenty twenty. And I was on a particular fall morning doing my morning prayer and Bible reading This is something I do every morning. I have a form of prayer which includes Bible reading, and I read what is on my Bible reading plan. And on a particular, I think it was a Tuesday morning, maybe a Monday morning, I was reading in the book of Revelation. And this is fall 2020. So the pandemic really hit, you know, spring. I think it was March of 2020. So we are in the thick of the COVID pandemic. And so I sit down in the morning to have my time of prayer and I open up my Bible to do my Bible reading. The reading plan that I use is the Daily Office Lectionary, which has daily Bible readings in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And in the New Testament, there’s something from the epistles, which would be from the book of Acts through Revelation, and something from the Gospels. And I love the Bible reading plan because I get Old Testament and New Testament, and the last thing I read in the morning is something from the Gospels. So it’s something from Jesus or something about Jesus. And on this particular morning, the epistle reading was in the book of Revelation, and I was reading from Revelation chapter 7. And I won’t read the whole passage. So the last two verses of Revelation 7 are verses 16 and 17. Here’s what I read on that morning. They will hunger no more and thirst no more. The sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes So I continued with the rest of the Bible reading and closed out the time of prayer that morning. But that one image of the Lamb at the center of the throne That image just was on my heart. It was in my mind for the rest of that day. And that evening, I began to think: you know what we need? In the church right now, this is fall of 2020. What we need right now is a fresh imagination of Jesus as the Lamb of God. And keeping that image of Jesus as the Lamb at the center of everything that we do And that became the seed that then flourished into this book centering Jesus And so today, August 22nd, we are celebrating the one-year anniversary of this book. And it continues to receive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. I appreciate that. I did become a finalist in the ECPA Book Awards this year. Centering Jesus was a finalist in the area of ministry resources. And I say that not to brag, but to celebrate. That what my track coach told me to do in high school, I’m doing today. And that is, I’m writing from a Christian perspective. I’m writing books because I want to help people. I want to help build up the church. And reading my Bible like I do every morning in the fall of 2020, planted a little seed that became centering Jesus. So I begin to wrestle with the idea, the image first, but then this idea, okay, what does it look like to keep Jesus as the Lamb at the center of our Christian life? And I begin to think about three distinct areas of our life, our life of spiritual formation. Which is extremely important for me. The goal of the Christian life is to become more like Jesus. It’s God the Holy Spirit Who is forming and shaping our hearts to look more like Jesus for the joy of God the Father? This is very central to my understanding of Christian discipleship. That we are becoming more like Jesus. So if we’re going to become like Jesus, we need to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of how we think about spiritual formation. Well, I also thought about how do we keep Jesus at the center of our moral lives. I’m quite concerned as a pastor that we in the church have set aside virtue for what philosophers would call consequentialism. In other words For centuries, character mattered for Christian people. When we thought about morality, we thought about it in the context of character, integrity, the kinds of people we are becoming Sadly now for Christians, moral right and wrong is not determined by the kind of people we are, but rather what are the outcomes. So I begin to think, well, I want to do some work in virtue ethics. I want to be a part of a renewal of virtue. So Let me think about the cardinal virtues, or even underneath the cardinal virtues, are what St. Thomas Aquinas called the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. So what does it look like to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of our faith? I mean, you would think Jesus would be at the center of our faith. We are Christians, after all. But as a pastor, I’ve seen we can often Misplace and misalign our faith where it’s not Jesus at the center. So, what does it mean to keep Jesus at the center of our faith? What does it mean to keep Jesus at the center of our hope? Because I I’ve come to believe that our ethical life is connected to our hope. And I spend time in centering Jesus talking about this in greater detail. Maybe I’ll do a whole nother episode on this. But our ethics follow our eschatology. eschatology is our understanding of the end. So the values that shape our character and our moral lives are values that come from the future, what we’re headed towards. Not this broken down world, but the new world that God is creating. So what does it look like to keep Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of our hope? And then of course Jesus as the Lamb at the center of our love. Christian ethics and our Christian moral lives are sustained by love, because Jesus said the grace commands what we are to do: love God and to love neighbor. So I was thinking about these three areas. One, our lives of spiritual formation. I was thinking about our moral lives. But then I was also thinking about our I ended up calling it our common life together, our communal life. What does it look like to keep Jesus as the Lamb at the center of our worship life, our church life together? Of course, a church is founded on Jesus Christ, any local church, but churches, their identity can be formed and shaped by different thoughts, ideas, ideologies, images I think healthy churches are centered on and around Jesus. But then also, what does it look like to keep Jesus at the center of our advocacy for justice? I believe that justice is the mission of God. It’s God’s work to set right a world gone wrong. So if we are to work alongside with God and what God’s doing in the world, what does it look like to keep Jesus at the center? My friend Derwin Gray has said that justice without Jesus is just vengeance. And certainly justice can get off the rails for Christians if we don’t keep Jesus at the center. And then finally, there is a chapter on keeping Jesus at the center of our political engagement. I kept that chapter towards the end on purpose because I talk about politics. And in 2020, there was a lot happening. And uh so yeah, you can read more. The chapter there about Jesus at the center of our political engagements uses the metaphor of elephants and donkeys and lambs. Because again, the central image of the book from Revelation 7. 17 is Jesus as the Lamb of God at the center of the throne. So if I’m going to emphasize Jesus as the lamb, then of course donkey and elephant metaphors work really well. And the title of the chapter really gives away the content of that chapter in particular, because I call the chapter not a donkey or an elephant, but a lamb. And so in that chapter, I am calling Christians to walk in the way of the Lamb. And I understand that some Christians who love Jesus, who keep Jesus at the center of their heart and life, tend to vote towards the right. Some who love Jesus and keep him at the center of their lives tend to vote to the left. What I’m most concerned about is that Christians are following in the ways of Jesus in how they engage. in politics. And so that was a fun chapter. I’ve actually received a lot of great feedback on that chapter. I was a bit nervous. Anytime you start talking about politics, people start getting riled up. So I was nervous, but I heard great feedback on that chapter. And then I I closed the book with returning to Revelation. The book of Revelation continually uses this image of the Lamb who rules and reigns. And so I had this idea. I had the seed that was planted from Revelation 7:17. And then I had these three areas. But before I started writing the book, what I did in early twenty twenty one is I led an online small group. So back in the thick of the pandemic, a lot of churches were either shut down and all online or churches like ours that were a hybrid. We had online services on Sunday morning and of course in-person services But we weren’t doing any in-person groups. The only kind of small groups we were doing in 2020 and 2021 were online groups. So I took this idea and I called it the Lamb at the Center. And I did, I believe it was an eight, nine-week online small group. And I walked a group of people, probably 25, on Zoom through the content. So I would present some information, some thoughts, and then we would discuss it. And so the members of that online small group were so important for me because they really gave the shape to the book. So once I finished the online small group in 2021, I then went shopping for a publisher. I didn’t want to self-publish. I know that’s always an option. I prefer to go the route of traditional publishing. So I began to write book proposals. And I had connections with some publishers and sent it off. And of course, I heard lots of no’s. Being a Christian author is tough. And often self-publishing is the only route because a lot of doors are closed. And you gotta be thick skinned in writing and presenting these book proposals because you’re gonna hear a lot of no’s. And I did, and I was disappointed. There were some publishers where I had some connections. I really thought they were gonna pick it up. They said no. And then I made a pitch to David Zimmerman, the publisher at Nav Press, and he was excited about it. And so Nav Press picked it up and in 2022 I signed a contract with them and one year ago today. on August 22nd, 2023, Centering Jesus was born. And I often use uh the metaphor of having a baby because that’s what writing feels like for me. Writing is a very individual and solitary process. You’re just working and working. I mean I wrote for seven or eight months. Centering Jesus is sixty thousand words. So I spent a little under a year in the writing process. And then I worked with editors. I had such wonderful editors at Nav Press. I appreciated them so much. The editing process is really the hard work for me. I enjoy the initial draft process. I enjoy the editing process, but it can be very tedious. And then the book is born, it’s released, and now I get to share my writing with much trepidation with other people. And the response has been wonderful. And so I wanted to take time today on this episode of Peaceable and Kind to tell you some of these stories. to talk about this book because this book, which is like one of my own children, is one year old today. And so if you’d like to celebrate the birth date of this book, what you could do is write a review. Reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever really help. So if you’ve read Centering Jesus, but you never wrote a review, I encourage you to do that. If you haven’t read the book, I encourage you to get a copy. It is available in paperback. There’s also an audiobook version. I was very happy to be asked to narrate the book. That was a fun story. I could tell you about uh being in a studio for two solid days reading sixty thousand words. I won’t give it away, but there was one moment I’m telling a story about one of my sons. And when I was narrating it, when I was in the studio recording the audiobook, I was moved to tears and I had to pause. I told the uh the producer, the engineer, you’re gonna have to pause the tape for just a second. I gotta collect myself. But in reading my own words and telling the story about my son, I was moved to tears. So go get a copy if you haven’t. Write a review. I would appreciate it so much. All right. Well thank you for listening today to this episode as I celebrate the birthday of one of my books.
Guest: That’s all we have for today. Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.