Will You Write More Biographies?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Well, Pastor John, you are known for writing biographies.
00:00:06.360 | I think you have 27 biographies written
00:00:09.640 | and preached to date,
00:00:10.840 | and those biographies are all very popular downloads
00:00:13.880 | at DesiringGod.org over the years,
00:00:16.760 | and they've been published in what is now
00:00:18.760 | a series of seven volumes in a book series titled
00:00:22.120 | "The Swans Are Not Silent,"
00:00:23.920 | which is being published by our friends at Crossway.
00:00:27.080 | In light of that project, here's a question.
00:00:29.160 | Quote, "Dear Pastor John, my name is Christian Lee,
00:00:31.240 | "and the biographies you have done in the past
00:00:32.880 | "have been some of the most life-changing experiences
00:00:35.260 | "for me.
00:00:36.280 | "I was wondering how you do your research
00:00:38.360 | "and how you go about getting all your resources together.
00:00:41.520 | "Also, will you be writing any more biographies
00:00:44.700 | "in the future?"
00:00:45.780 | - I really would like to encourage others
00:00:50.740 | to do what I have done in those little biographical talks
00:00:55.740 | that I give,
00:00:57.200 | namely tell the life story of some Christian
00:01:01.640 | in a way that inspires others to love Christ
00:01:07.640 | and gives them insight into perplexing aspects
00:01:11.000 | of the Christian life
00:01:12.880 | and motivates them to follow Jesus,
00:01:16.760 | no matter what the cost.
00:01:19.080 | That's what I would like to encourage others to do,
00:01:22.580 | even now as I'm answering this question.
00:01:24.680 | One of my reasons for doing those biographies
00:01:27.160 | for about 26 years or so at the Bethlehem Conference
00:01:30.880 | for Pastors is to model for pastors
00:01:33.880 | how they could do the same thing for their own people,
00:01:36.760 | like on a Sunday evening service or on a Wednesday night
00:01:39.640 | or in a youth group or at a retreat setting
00:01:42.960 | or something like that.
00:01:44.120 | So I would be eager to answer this question
00:01:49.120 | with the same aim.
00:01:52.000 | I'd like to motivate people to do it.
00:01:54.520 | I hope others will do these kinds of talks.
00:01:59.320 | It does take a lot of work.
00:02:03.320 | And so I think people need to be persuaded,
00:02:08.080 | if you're gonna be motivated to do a lot of work,
00:02:09.780 | you need to be persuaded it's biblical to do it,
00:02:12.680 | it's profitable to do it, and it's enjoyable to do it.
00:02:16.480 | So let me take those one at a time.
00:02:17.980 | It's biblical.
00:02:19.200 | Hebrews 13, seven, "Remember your leaders,
00:02:22.880 | "those who spoke to you the word of God.
00:02:24.700 | "Consider the outcome of their way of life
00:02:28.000 | "and imitate their faith."
00:02:30.240 | Wow, what a mandate for reading biography, right?
00:02:33.000 | Christian biography.
00:02:34.360 | Or Hebrews 6, 12, "Don't be sluggish.
00:02:36.780 | "Be imitators of those who through faith and patience
00:02:40.900 | "inherit the promises."
00:02:42.520 | You ever seen anybody live the Christian life
00:02:44.440 | all the way to the end and triumph over all the sins
00:02:47.020 | in their lives and make it to the end?
00:02:49.560 | Well, be like that.
00:02:51.760 | Study that life.
00:02:53.080 | Or Philippians 3, 17, I love this
00:02:56.280 | 'cause it's got four generations of imitation in it.
00:02:58.880 | "Brothers, join in imitating me and fix your eyes
00:03:03.820 | "on those who walk according to the example
00:03:08.820 | "you have in us."
00:03:12.080 | Four generations, Jesus, Paul imitating Jesus,
00:03:16.160 | those who walk like Paul,
00:03:17.560 | and us watching those who walk like Paul.
00:03:19.360 | That's four generations of imitation.
00:03:21.560 | So wow, this is really biblical.
00:03:25.000 | So the Bible gives us encouragement
00:03:27.320 | to look at the lives of believers
00:03:29.660 | and imitate their faith and patience.
00:03:32.320 | And the assumption is now that it's profitable.
00:03:36.560 | I don't think the Bible would encourage us to do it
00:03:38.840 | if it weren't profitable, and it really is profitable.
00:03:42.200 | Watching someone live a lifetime with Jesus
00:03:47.600 | is incredibly inspiring and enriching.
00:03:52.000 | Biography is such an efficient way of study.
00:03:56.520 | It's like it's got history, it's got theology,
00:03:58.880 | it's got psychology, it's got counseling, it's got politics,
00:04:01.780 | it's got economics, it's got geography,
00:04:03.900 | it's got devotion and piety, all wrapped into one good book.
00:04:08.900 | So it's really valuable to our faith and life and thinking.
00:04:14.020 | And thirdly, yes, it is enjoyable.
00:04:17.040 | I mean, who doesn't love real life stories?
00:04:22.040 | And so a good biography is enjoyable.
00:04:25.920 | So how do I go about it?
00:04:28.280 | So please know now, in the rest of what I'm saying,
00:04:31.360 | this all really reflects my weaknesses.
00:04:34.940 | Really, weaknesses?
00:04:36.720 | Everybody does things to compensate for their weaknesses.
00:04:40.920 | It's what we do.
00:04:41.780 | We figure out how to live with our weaknesses.
00:04:44.400 | So what I'm gonna describe is what I do,
00:04:46.960 | you can do it differently, maybe.
00:04:48.820 | First, pray like crazy for help.
00:04:56.200 | You can't do anything without God,
00:04:58.840 | and so pray, pray, pray, pray while you're doing it,
00:05:01.440 | otherwise you will just spin your wheels,
00:05:02.940 | waste your time, nobody will get help,
00:05:04.520 | they'll just have their imaginations titillated
00:05:07.520 | and you won't do anybody any good if you don't pray.
00:05:10.540 | Then I choose one or two biographies to read,
00:05:15.720 | not five or 10.
00:05:17.320 | That's a weakness.
00:05:18.360 | If I had time, I could read 10, I'd love to read 10,
00:05:20.600 | but I can't, so I'm gonna read one or two.
00:05:23.760 | I begin that reading, or I used to begin it,
00:05:30.040 | on vacation in July,
00:05:33.020 | before I was gonna give the talk in January.
00:05:36.200 | And I would give the lecture then
00:05:38.480 | at the Pastors Conference in January,
00:05:40.680 | and I tried to read at least a scholarly biography,
00:05:45.360 | if one existed, and an inspirational biography,
00:05:49.280 | because frankly, neither of those
00:05:53.080 | has any corner on the market.
00:05:54.660 | The scholarly biography often misses things,
00:05:57.660 | 'cause they're so bent on being scholarly,
00:06:00.360 | and the inspirational one,
00:06:02.320 | while seeing some glorious things,
00:06:04.200 | misses other things that the scholarly biography,
00:06:07.360 | precisely because he's so focused on facts
00:06:10.240 | and cultural relationships that he spots things.
00:06:13.480 | So I just think it's great if you can find
00:06:16.520 | a great biography of a scholarly type,
00:06:20.480 | and one that's more inspirational.
00:06:23.280 | And I read these very carefully, slowly and carefully,
00:06:27.800 | marking them with pencil as I go,
00:06:31.000 | keeping a running index with little short index thoughts
00:06:36.480 | in the front fly leaf of the book,
00:06:38.860 | with page numbers indexed to those thoughts,
00:06:43.140 | if you use Logos for reading your books,
00:06:46.900 | I know Tony, you're a big Logos fan,
00:06:48.540 | I love, I mean, I would do things very differently today
00:06:52.340 | with Logos books available.
00:06:55.420 | If you do Logos, the indexing that you're able to do
00:06:59.380 | in the quote gathering is enormously easier
00:07:02.780 | than when I used to do it.
00:07:04.180 | Then, let's see, what's next?
00:07:09.340 | I read as much as I can of what that person himself
00:07:14.340 | has written, so important, letters, sermons,
00:07:18.740 | books, essays, autobiography, journals, diaries,
00:07:22.940 | anything you can get your hands on
00:07:24.500 | because original sources are 100 times more important
00:07:29.320 | than secondary sources for getting the real,
00:07:32.220 | true deal of the person.
00:07:35.060 | And I mark those up, same way.
00:07:37.660 | If I could get paper versions, I marked them up
00:07:39.740 | and put the indexes in the front.
00:07:41.660 | Now, by this time, usually some focus or theme or angle
00:07:46.660 | has arisen in my mind that I want to focus on.
00:07:52.420 | You can't just tell a life in general,
00:07:55.620 | you got to have a point or a focus.
00:07:58.860 | It's just too broad, it would be pointless
00:08:01.300 | to try to tell somebody's story with no point.
00:08:03.780 | I mean, like, literally, I mean, people would go out
00:08:06.220 | and say, "What was the point of that?"
00:08:09.260 | And you would just maybe have told
00:08:10.820 | a few interesting anecdotes and everybody would wonder
00:08:13.100 | why you did that.
00:08:14.620 | So I think it's, for my purposes anyway, I want a point.
00:08:19.620 | So I have zero pretense to being unbiased
00:08:23.580 | in my presentation.
00:08:25.060 | I am choosing a theme from their life
00:08:28.620 | and I make that the point of the message
00:08:32.980 | that I'm gonna give and it really is a message,
00:08:36.660 | not a lecture.
00:08:38.180 | I saw myself as driving home a biblical point
00:08:43.180 | about God or about life with God.
00:08:47.420 | I was preaching a biblical truth,
00:08:51.000 | only 95% of my sermon was illustration.
00:08:53.980 | (both laughing)
00:08:54.820 | It's like, it's called the biography.
00:08:57.680 | That's really what I was doing.
00:08:58.740 | I'm unashamed in that.
00:09:00.380 | I mean, it's not the way a scholar would do it,
00:09:01.940 | I know that, but I'm preaching.
00:09:03.780 | I'm trying to make a point about something
00:09:06.660 | like Luther's love for the Bible
00:09:09.260 | or Calvin's commitment to hard work
00:09:12.220 | and his view of the sovereignty of God
00:09:14.180 | or something like that.
00:09:16.020 | Now, with the biographies and some primary writings,
00:09:19.720 | and believe me, it was limited.
00:09:21.780 | I was not comprehensive.
00:09:23.620 | I began to assemble quotes from all that material.
00:09:27.820 | Now, before Logos existed, I would dictate
00:09:32.740 | into my computer with drag and dictate for Mac
00:09:35.540 | or in the earlier days, the PC,
00:09:39.000 | I would dictate hundreds of quotations
00:09:43.240 | from the biographies and from the works
00:09:45.380 | and I was influenced in which ones I dictated
00:09:50.340 | based on my indexed, my front fly leafs,
00:09:53.100 | I was influenced by the point I was going to make.
00:09:58.020 | And while I was doing this, ideas would come to my mind
00:10:02.040 | about the things I was quoting
00:10:03.420 | and I would dictate those ideas as well.
00:10:06.540 | Now, when all of that was in the computer,
00:10:09.700 | there would be about maybe three or 400 entries
00:10:13.860 | in different paragraphs.
00:10:16.540 | So each one was a paragraph.
00:10:18.540 | And then I put that entire document,
00:10:22.900 | maybe 60 single pages in the cursor,
00:10:27.220 | that's a single space, single space pages,
00:10:29.900 | 60 single space pages.
00:10:31.300 | I would put it in the cursor of Microsoft Word
00:10:33.860 | and I would click at the top to tell it to number
00:10:37.700 | all those paragraphs.
00:10:38.820 | So it created a list and every paragraph now had a number.
00:10:43.820 | And now I maybe have 60 pages of single space,
00:10:47.060 | 300 plus quotes and ideas.
00:10:49.300 | And then I would read through this new document
00:10:54.300 | that I created and I would index those 300 paragraphs
00:11:00.500 | according to topic.
00:11:02.380 | And I would be able to narrow it down to maybe,
00:11:05.220 | oh, I don't know, 100, 60, 60 ideas.
00:11:10.220 | And for example, one of my little ideas might be
00:11:14.620 | Martin Luther on the authority of scripture.
00:11:17.500 | And beside that, I might have 10 numbers,
00:11:20.980 | one, 36, 210, 301, referring to those paragraphs.
00:11:25.980 | So now I've clustered all the quotes in all my reading
00:11:31.860 | relating to that issue into a new index.
00:11:36.820 | And then I would do that one more time
00:11:39.540 | and distill my 100 topics down to a handful.
00:11:44.780 | And that more or less became what I started writing with.
00:11:49.780 | And then I wrote and I cut and pasted
00:11:52.980 | from those quotes into the document.
00:11:55.500 | I printed it out, I marked it up, I prayed like crazy
00:11:58.980 | and I went over and I gave my talk and I loved it.
00:12:03.500 | I loved all the reading, I loved the composition,
00:12:05.820 | I loved the delivery.
00:12:07.280 | I recommend it to pastors or anybody else,
00:12:09.920 | school teachers or friends.
00:12:13.400 | Question, will I do more?
00:12:15.480 | Well, I still read biography for sure.
00:12:18.060 | I'm reading biography now.
00:12:20.540 | We will see whether that or any of my reading
00:12:24.860 | finds its way into new biographies, that remains to be seen.
00:12:28.620 | Yeah, well, without making any promises here,
00:12:31.260 | who are the key figures
00:12:32.740 | that you haven't gotten around to yet?
00:12:34.460 | Wesley, John Wesley.
00:12:36.760 | I think I owe Wesley, even though he's not a Calvinist,
00:12:41.100 | I think I owe him one.
00:12:44.880 | John Knox, I never did.
00:12:47.300 | And I think that's worthy.
00:12:50.600 | Dietrich Bonhoeffer, never done.
00:12:53.060 | Okay, that's enough.
00:12:56.820 | Well, those all sound really great.
00:12:58.760 | Preached biography, may this tribe increase.
00:13:02.320 | And you can find all 27 of Pastor John's biographies
00:13:04.680 | right now at our site, desiringgod.org/biographies.
00:13:09.640 | That's desiringgod.org/biographies.
00:13:12.760 | Check them out.
00:13:13.600 | They're very popular and for good reason.
00:13:15.480 | You'll find out why.
00:13:16.700 | All seven of the Swan's books
00:13:18.000 | can be downloaded from the site as well.
00:13:19.880 | And we can give away all of this content online
00:13:22.880 | free of charge because of our generous financial donors
00:13:25.480 | around the world who support this ministry
00:13:27.000 | and make it all possible to begin with.
00:13:29.640 | And if you support us,
00:13:31.080 | well, it's hard for me to briefly express my gratitude
00:13:33.280 | to you in this little outro, but thank you.
00:13:35.320 | We appreciate it.
00:13:36.760 | And this is also my chance to let you know
00:13:38.780 | that you can subscribe to the Ask Pastor John audio feed
00:13:41.920 | and you can search our episode archive
00:13:43.480 | and even reach us by email
00:13:44.600 | with a difficulty you're facing in life.
00:13:46.560 | You can do all that through our online home
00:13:48.960 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:13:53.320 | Well, body image is a preoccupation for many,
00:13:57.080 | such as it is for a man named John
00:13:59.680 | who lives and works in Washington, DC,
00:14:02.120 | and who wonders about what's really motivating him
00:14:04.760 | to get to the gym.
00:14:06.400 | Body image and self-glory.
00:14:09.020 | That's the topic on Wednesday when we return.
00:14:11.460 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:14:12.460 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:14:14.780 | We'll see you then.
00:14:15.740 | (upbeat music)
00:14:18.320 | (upbeat music)
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