A Lesson from a WWI Chaplain: “Woodbine Willie”

In saying goodbye to a beloved friend (Judy Butler – who is doing quite well in Maryland), I met a new friend.  In downsizing to fit into her new retirement lodgings, she was leaving a considerable collection of books behind.  At her invitation, I had gone through them and selected a number that I would add to my library.  And then, when I arrived at her old California home with a group of Oak Park High School lacrosse players, we assisted her kind landlord by taking all the books – not just the two or three boxes I had originally chosen.

Those books sat in my overcrowded garage for weeks – in boxes, in stacks, singly balanced on power tools and bicycles… much to my wife’s chagrin they were everywhere!   And when I finally got around to going through them and determining which would go where, I met this new friend.  Judy had two books by someone I had never heard of before: “Woodbine Willie.”

That was not his real name.  He was born Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy in 1883 in an Irish ghetto called “Quarry Hill” in Leeds, England.  His parents were a poor parish minister and his wife.  Geoffrey himself went into the ministry and served as a chaplain to the English troops during World War I.  He saw the worst of the worst – being present even at the deadly Ypres Salient.  And he shared his soldier’s risks and suffering.

And he shared the ubiquitous soldier’s habit of the twentieth century – he smoked. Evidently, he smoked ” Will’s Wild Woodbines.” You have to love a pastor whose nickname is based on his favorite cigarette brand!

I am still getting to know this man and his literary remains, but one thing he shared really caught my attention.  He wrote a poem about the nickname his soldiers gave him, and it carries with it a solemn reminder of the essential focus of our ministries to those with whom we share this world.

They gave me this name like their nature,

Compacted of laughter and tears.

A sweet that was born of the bitter,

A joke that was torn from the years…

…Their name! Let me hear it – the symbol

Of unpaid – unpayable debt,

For the men to whom I owed God’s Peace

I put off with a cigarette. [1]


Can you imagine that scene from your favorite war movie?  The one where the grievously injured soldier is in pain and his buddy lights him a cigarette and kindly lays it on his dying comrade’s lips?  Now imagine the chaplain doing the same thing.  And missing his opportunity to share the gospel –to extend God’s own peace to the man who has been victimized by the wars of mankind.

There is a lesson for those of us who are engaged in the kind of Christian warfare that Paul describes in the last chapter of Ephesians.  We are to have our feet fitted with the gospel of peace – and we are to be bold ambassadors for Christ.  Do we often get too distracted by our good desires to meet people’s “felt needs?”   Do we spend our time handing out cigarettes and whatever else the folks around us feel and say that they need?  And are we distracted to the point that we completely miss the opportunities we might have had to give them what we truly owe them: the blessing for which we have been blessed? This blessing is nothing other than the good news that in Christ, God is reconciling people to himself.  Wounds might not be healed but sins can be forgiven.  The curtain will drop on our earthly lives – but eternal life is the gift of God to all who believe.  Dear Christian, make that simple message your stock in trade.  Make it your calling card.  Make it your passionate goal to distribute that promise and assurance as widely as you possibly can.  Do not let that debt go unpaid.

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas


[1] G.A. Studdert Kennedy, After War Is Faith Possible?” An Anthology, ed. By Walters, Kerry (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2008) front matter.

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Name Recognition and Christian Ministry

Branding our churches, ministries, and even personalities in Christian, vocational service is a thing.  Really.  And it is an important thing.  If you want to publish a book, Christian publishing companies want to know how many friends you have on social media.  How many subscribers your blog has.  How many likes and shares your posts receive.  They want to know other things as well – and yes, the content has to be solid and edifying.  But name recognition is a huge thing in today’s world.  It was also a huge thing in the ancient world.  And this fact led me to a rather qualmy thought yesterday afternoon while reading an old sermon from one of my favorite nineteenth century Anglican clergymen (everyone should have one of those).  In a sermon Edward Pusey preached from the familiar text “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” he offered a simple yet profound illustration from Genesis 11-12:

“What became of those who said, ‘Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth.’?  What, but that they brought upon them what they feared?  ‘The LORD scattered them abroad from thence,’ from the very place of their might, ‘upon the face of all the earth.’  And who of those times is loved and reverenced yet, not among Christians and Jews only, but among those alien to the faith, as ‘the friend of God,’ who but that lonely wanderer, an outcast from his home, who left his country and his kindred, and his father’s house, and went out, not knowing whither he went, only that he followed the call of God?”[1]

In those much, much older days, men sought to make a great name for themselves.   They desired two things: (1) not to be scattered, and (2) to be remembered.  And yet from what Pusey called “the very place of their might,” they were in fact scattered – and we don’t remember anything about them except their folly.   This is the record of Genesis chapter eleven.

But turn the page of scripture, and in Genesis chapter twelve we are introduced to a man named Abram.  And God has called Abram to do the exact opposite of what his culture thought would accomplish fame!  Abram is asked to leave everything and everyone he knows – he is asked to live as a transient on his way to an unknown destination.  And God tells him, “I will make your name great.”  (Genesis 12:2).

This text, the “call of Abram,” is a foundational text for God’s people.  There are principles embedded in this text that must inform every generation of believers as God continues to unfold his purposes in human history.  And it must be noted that the ‘recipe’ for the success that God promises Abram is obtained in precisely the opposite manner endorsed by the world of his day.  They would build a city?  You must live in a tent.  They would gather together?  You must wander away.  At this constitutional moment in the history of God’s people, God is signaling that His ways are not our ways.  And our ways are not His ways.

And yet we chase the world.  We imitate the ways of Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and now even Broadway.  The secular formulas concerning money, advertising, and entertainment values have saturated our thinking about church growth – and even church health.  I would dare to say that we have never in the history of the church had as many professional resources available for facilitating church growth according to these principles.  Yet, as is often noted, sixty to eighty percent of U.S. churches are not growing!  And most of those that grow are simply attracting Christians from other churches. Statistically, that includes the church I pastor.  Thus the qualmy thought.

When we pursue spiritual ‘greatness’ using the world’s ‘best practices,’ are we necessarily following God?  Is it possible that he has revealed his intent, from the very beginning, that we embrace a counter-cultural pursuit of a great name that only He will give us – that can only ever be attributed to his grace and favor?  Is it possible that God would have us perform the culturally equivalent acts of scattering about and living in tents?  And if so, what might those cultural equivalents be today?

We all want a great name.  We want to be recognized and remembered.  This is not only human nature – but in some ways sanctified human nature.  We have a God-given drive to ‘do,’ to create, to establish, to perform…  And God does not offer Abram an ungodly blessing when he says that he will make Abram’s name great!  It is not a bad thing to desire to be remembered often and fondly – perhaps that topic will be another blog post.

The critical question is “How will we pursue the kind of name recognition that we believe will honor God and enable us to bless others?”  Will we strive after tall towers and the big gatherings of the world?  Or will we venture out in faith, perhaps even in the opposite direction?

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas


[1] Edward Bouverie Pusey, “Seek God First,” Selections from the Writings of E.B. Pusey (New York: E. and J. B. Young and Company, 1883), p. 97.

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A NEW TRANSLATION?

There is a story I have been told that may verge on the apocryphal.  I have heard that one of my emigrant Norwegian Great-Grandmothers was somewhat distressed when her Norwegian Lutheran Church in Minnesota switched from using the Norwegian Bible to an English Bible.  Reportedly, she stood up in the congregation and said, “If Norvegian vas gud enuf fur Yesus it is gud enuf fur me!

Whether that was my Great-Grandmother or not, and whether that was spoken in a congregational meeting or at a coffee urn, I am quite sure that it was spoken.  I have heard any number of exact replicas of that warm-hearted but less cogent logic passionately disclaimed across a whole spectrum of our deeply held preferences and convictions when it comes to that crucial hour and a half on Sunday morning that we call worship!

As attached as we get to our translations, we must always remember that translation is important.  And it is also something we see in the Bible itself.  This happens several times in the Gospel of Mark, the most well-known instance is found in Mark 15:34.  In that text we read:

“And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ – which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

In this text we see the Aramaic words Jesus spoke from the cross spelled out in Greek letters – and then translated into the Greek.  From this we derive an essential doctrine concerning knowledge that is absolutely necessary for our pursuit of the Great Commission that Christ gave his church: truth can be translated from one language to another.  Meaning can in fact be trans-linguistic.  Words and ideas can be meaningfully translated from one langue into another.  We are not so wedded to the precise syllables uttered by Jesus that we don’t make every effort to render those words intelligible to as many readers as possible.  Aramaic was good enough for Jesus, but Greek is better for Mark’s original readers – and English is better for us!

Additionally, given the difficulty of translation work, translation is an ongoing task of the church of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps the best known committee of translators in the western Christian tradition is the group of men known at the time as the “King James Translators” (and yes, they capitalized all three words![1]).   At the conclusion of their 1611 “Preface to the Reader” in what we know as the King James Version, they make it clear that the work of translation is ongoing – finding the best way to communicate most clearly is a process:

“Yet before we end, we must answere a third cavill and objection of theirs against us, for altering and amending our Taanslations [sic] so oft; wherein truely they deale hardly, and strangely with us. For to whom ever was it imputed for a fault (by such as were wise) to goe over that which hee had done, and to amend it where he saw cause?”

(I think it is both funny and appropriate that they misspell “Taanslations” in that quote – but then I am easily amused!  All of the other misspellings were actually legitimate alternative spellings for words at that time – but ‘translations’ always needed an ‘r.’)

Clearly the seventeenth-century ‘Translators’ were aware of the liability of human limitations, but they were not as aware of the changing nature of language itself. This constitutes another factor necessitating the need for renewed translations.  Language changes over time.  Translations need to reflect that.

At Church in the Canyon, the Session is considering changing our pew Bibles from the 1984 NIV to the ESV.  It may be a hard change for some of us!  In some ways they sound and ‘feel’ different.  Speaking for myself, the NIV is the translation I memorized and have preached from since my first sermon way back when I was a mere nineteen year old kid!  Both are good translations and have been and will continue to be used by God to accomplish great things.   But one may serve us at this time better than another.  So let’s entertain a cheerful flexibility as we learn more about the pros and cons of embracing a new translation.  And always remember, God can use ‘Norvegian’ as well as English – and he can use the old NIV as well as the newer ESV.

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas


[1] For an exciting read, check out the award winning book: Adam Nicols, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (New York: Perennial Press, 2004).  This book was first published by Harper Collins under the title Power and Glory.

N.B. The old Bibles pictured at the top of this post are all old and dearly loved NIV Bibles that have been significant to me over the years. From left to right, the first was given to me by my parents in 1979, on the title page I recorded the date of my becoming a Christian: December 7, 1980; the second was a gift from my Young Life Leader when I was in high school: Troy Mackin; the third was the Bible I bought at the beginning of my seminary studies in 1991 – it is held together by duct tape, electrical tape, and staples; the fourth was a gift from my friends at Memorial OPC in Rochester, NY – where I interned in 1996; the fifth is the Bible I was using when I was ordained. I have always and always will love the old 1984 NIV! And my eternal thanks to all who have gifted me Bibles over the years!

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Work in Heaven!

Ministry, like life itself, is full of odd coincidences.  The lines of our lives, interests, or efforts intersect in strange and wonderful ways that often surprise.  I love to be surprised in my work – if the surprises are nice, anyway!

This past week in my preparations for Sunday’s ministry I have been studying two different texts: Ephesians 6:9 and Revelation 14.  I don’t follow lectionaries or calendars – I practice the old custom of what is called lectio continuo – a continual reading.  This means that I preach and teach through whole books of the Bible – currently Ephesians in the morning worship service and Revelation in the teenage Sunday School class.  And those two readings had a neat, serendipitous intersection this week – concerning work.

In Ephesians 6:5-9 we see a context of struggle – socio-economic differences are emphasized, tendencies towards half-hearted work, threatening bosses, and workplace favoritism are assumed.  We are called as Christians to rise above such secular norms.  In Revelation 14:13 we read that the Holy Spirit himself declares that those who die trusting in the Lord will “rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”  And in studying both of these texts this week, I was encouraged by a wonderful thought from a godly nineteenth century minister – Charles Spurgeon.[1]

Work is good.  Adam and Eve had work to do before sin brought the curse of toil, thorns, sweat, and ultimately death itself.  And we will certainly be active in heaven – we will be working at something!  But as Spurgeon points out, from our “labor” we will rest.  That word in the original Greek of the New Testament is kopon, which means “wearisome and painful striving.”  And it is this difficult and tedious aspect of work from which we will rest.  Spurgeon offers three particular areas of rest:

  • We will rest from the toil of labor.  As a result of being fallen creatures in a fallen world, the fields of our work are full of stones and thorns (Genesis 3).  Not so heaven!  Our fields will be level and our work will be pleasant.
  • We will rest from the faults of our labor.  None of us does our job perfectly.  Our sinfulness spoils every aspect of our work.  Our attitudes are imperfect, our efforts are imperfect, and our production is imperfect.  We make honest mistakes, we deliberately cut corners.  We are inconsistent, sometimes belligerent, often frustrated by our own selves. But!  The day will come when we are finally free from the remainder of sin and God’s work in our lives is complete (Philippians 1:6).
  • We will rest from the discouragements of our labor.  We all have our critics.  Not simply because our work is imperfect, but because people love to complain and argue.  Even when you have done your best there are those who will find fault with who you are and what you have done.  You may count on it: on this side of heaven there will always be those who think you are not very good at x, y, or z. Perhaps you aren’t!  But perhaps those critics are profoundly unjust and wicked in their judgments.  Both of these statements could be true.  Isn’t it wonderful that there will be no complainers and “arm-chair quarterbacks” in heaven, and we will no longer have to be constantly guarding ourselves against discouragement?

If you know his story, you know that Spurgeon himself had a very difficult career.  This is not the place to tell his story – I like to keep these notes brief!  But imagine Spurgeon now.  Doing whatever work the Lord has set before him without any of the burdensome liabilities that suck the joy out of our hearts as we try to serve the Lord and others.

Yes, there will continue to be difficulties and challenges in all of our socio-economic relationships here and now.  We will struggle with “mailing it in.”  We will be subject to both sides of favoritism and cronyism.  We will not be dealt with according to justice and equity.  But can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?  The day will come, dear Christian, when your work, whatever your work might be, will be unalloyed joy and you will be free from the burden of your labor.  Until that day, may we be faithful in doing whatever work God has set before us in a manner that anticipates the smile of our Savior and the reward of heaven!

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas

N.B. The image is cropped from Vincent Van Gogh’s oil painting “Workers.” If anyone can tell me more about this painting, I would appreciate it!


[1] I am indebted to Richard Phillips for his citation of Spurgeon’s sermon on Revelation 14.  Phillips, Revelation: Reformed Expository Commentary (P&R Publishing: Phillipsburg, 2017), p. 414.

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Examining Ourselves

A couple of times a month I am able to sit back in my wonderfully comfortable office chair and read through the most recent couple of issues of Christianity Today and World Magazine.  Keeping abreast of the ‘goings-on’ of the church in our day is an important albeit time-consuming part of a pastor’s work.

In the February 16 edition of World Magazine, I read something that caught my attention in the ‘Mailbag’ section – the place where reader’s comments and feedback on the previous issue are printed.  One of the selected correspondents wrote to the editors of the magazine in reference to the magazine’s obituary column for people we lost in 2018.  Here is their comment:

“Perusing this list makes me wonder what they would write about my life.  What are my priorities, values, and loves, and does my life reflect them?”

I have both read and heard similar sentiments before and there is something about such thoughts that troubles me.  Let me state why I am troubled by such thoughts in the form of a thesis: Your life always reflects your priorities, values, and loves.  Always.

When we wonder whether or not our life reflects our values, we are in one sense looking at the challenge of living from the wrong direction.  It would be better to ask ourselves the question “What does my life reveal about what my priorities, values, and loves really are.”

All of us, to some extent or another, know the correct answers when it comes to what we should value and love: things like humility, honesty, our spouses, missions and evangelism, worship, the Washington Redskins, etc….  And we tend to credit our awareness of what we ought to love as if that awareness alone constituted an actual love of that object or activity.

Take fishing for example.  I can say that I love fishing.  There was a time in my life when I used to go fishing several times a week.  In my office I have some fishing-themed artifacts that demonstrate an interest in the pursuit. But I actually go fishing only when I am in Minnesota at the Bjerkaas family reunion every other July.  In almost twelve years of living in California, I have been fishing three times.  Looking at how I actually live my life, it appears to be the case that my priorities, values, and loves no longer privilege fishing – over almost anything at all!  My priorities, values, and loves have changed – and the ‘mirror’ of my day timer and checkbook make that clear.

For a different kind of example, take evangelism.  Most Christians would unreservedly express a conviction that they value, love, and prioritize evangelism.  But!  Our lives all too often tell a different story. 

With respect to all of our loves and values, we need to be careful to allow the facts of our life actually lived to reveal to us what our priorities, affections, and attitudes actually are!  When Jesus told the Pharisees that it is from the “overflow of our hearts that our mouths speak” he lays down a principle: our inner condition is demonstrated by what comes out of us.  And this is a HUGE help to us.  Because only when we realize that we need to do the hard work of changing from the inside out will we grow.

If I delude myself into thinking that my priorities, loves, and values are all proper but that I just can’t do x,y,or z, I will probably never actually do x,y, or z.  But if based upon my actual life I conclude that I need to change my priorities, repent of poorly ordered affections, and realign my values, then I just might see some change.

Your Pastor,

Bob Bjerkaas

N.B. The picture of a man startled by his reflection is an illustration from the book Samantha at the World’s Fair by Marietta Holley (Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1893). The illustrator was Baron C. De Grimm. Thanks to the website

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