The Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have generously granted me a sabbatical from February 1, 2025-July 31, 2025. This is the first sabbatical of my academic career, and I’m very grateful that the institution I am blessed to serve at carves out space for its faculty to devote themselves with full focus to research and writing projects. Such generosity cannot be taken for granted, especially at a time when Christian higher education is experiencing many challenges.
Because a portion of my ministry is outward-facing, I wanted to give a brief update about what my schedule and pace of life will look like during my sabbatical. I felt it necessary to do this because my availability to field outside requests, speaking invitations, press inquiries, and other general inquiries will look quite different. Sabbaticals present a rare opportunity to turn off the busyness and distractions of life and to focus more in-depth on deep intellectual work. I want to take advantage of what has been given to me.
So what will I be doing?
The biggest project I will be working on is my book with the great folks at Crossway. The very tentative title of the book is Frayed: American Despair and the Hope of the Gospel. A book of 50-60,000 words, this will be a work of cultural apologetics. I will be looking at what I am calling “subterranean” threats to human flourishing. The fact that secular social science and even progressivism are noticing just how unwell our society is provides an excellent common ground for establishing why Christianity provides the solutions to our cultural despair. Ideas like the “loneliness epidemic” and demographic shortfalls in marriage and family demonstrate that major pillars of human civilization and human flourishing are under threat. Of course, I believe Christianity best answers these problems, so I will be writing this book as a source of cultural apologetics for Christianity.
I will also be writing an essay for the print edition of National Review on why it is better to be a social conservative today, despite the many challenges to social conservatism. In short summary, in trying to evade principles of social conservatism, social conservatism’s importance reasserts itself.
I also plan to write an essay for Table Talk magazine on how the structure and design of the body tells a story about the purpose of human existence.
Lastly, I hope to get a book proposal written and submitted. It would be an edited volume looking at the moral theology of various Christian theologians.
There will also be a chapter on religious liberty for an upcoming volume on Baptist social ethics that I will begin researching (it is not due until January 2026).
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has kindly invited me to give the 2025 Scudder Lecture. I will use that opportunity to share research I have done on what I am calling a “public theology of free speech.”
By way of travel, I will be traveling to Vienna, Austria for a good portion of February 2025 where I hope to get a couple of chapters of my book written. I was kindly afforded the opportunity to use ADF International’s offices while there. While in Vienna, I have a couple of public events where I’ll be interviewed by some European Christian organizations. I will also make the trek to Budapest, Hungary to visit a friend one of the weekends in Europe.
My responsibilities with WORLD Opinions will continue as normal, as well as keeping up with the doctoral work of students I am overseeing. As will my weekly participation on The Bully Pulpit podcast.
For students at Southern Seminary planning on what classes to take starting in the Fall, I plan to teach Survey of Christian Ethics and Public Theology in the Fall of 2025.
I will also be speaking on a panel at TGC 2025 in late April. If you’re there, please do find me and say hello!
For fun, I’m still thinking about whether I want to run the Louisville Marathon in 2025 in April. I turn 40 on April 7, and so I’m trying to determine whether I want to put a 40th-birthday challenge before me and do a marathon. Getting one’s head properly into that commitment takes as much consideration as the physical preparation itself!
All that said, I am going to take a break from the normal upkeep of my email inbox. This does mean there is a real possibility you may email me and will not get a reply.
If you need to get a hold of me for any reason with a pressing request, please use the contact form on my website.
Please do pray for me while on sabbatical. Pray that my respite from regular classroom teaching will provide me with a renewed commitment to the gravity and responsibility of teaching seminarians and edifying the church through teaching. I love teaching at Southern Seminary, and it is important that faculty members always stay vigilant in guarding the stewardship it is to teach.
