“All his scruples were wound tight around his axle, and the more he gunned the engine, the more things were starting to smoke deep inside his head” (Evangellyfish, p. 80).
High Standards on a Low Setting
“He was a classic paper-clip counter, correct-department-code-numbers-for-the-copying-machine maintainer, and one who generally focused on pennies, policies, and those blank ‘spirit of the law’ spaces in between the lines of all written procedures — but only so long as ‘spirit of the law’ was interpreted and applies by a committee of first-century Talmudic scholars, all of …
Where the Answers Hide
“John Mitchell began to feel like something hot and wet was crawling up his spine . . . John had learned years before that there are no coincidences in pastoral ministry . . . ‘What do you want?’ Cindi asked him, ‘I’ll get it for you.’ ‘I want,’ John said darkly, ‘answers.’ ‘You’re the pastor,’ …
Especially Verse 15
“Pastor Winmore had been the pastor of Grace Reformed prior to John, the one who blew up one day in the middle of Romans 9 — an easy thing to do, admittedly” (Evangellyfish, p. 73).
Real Slippy
“He jumped down the hall and slid into the kitchen the way he always did when nobody was home. He wasn’t sure that the apostle Paul would do something like that, but there was no clear prohibition of it anywhere. And besides, his socks were slippy” (Evangellyfish, p. 71).
Fifty-Pound Heads
“He rocked back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the picture of his family on the opposite wall, just above the sofa covered with multiple stacks of books, all of them written by men with fifty-pound heads” (Evangellyfish, p. 70).
Literary Dabbling
“‘I mean that you believe that Chad Lester is guilty of every sexual offense a man can be guilty of, except for the one he is actually accused of, and it makes you wonder if there is any justice in the world or, if there is justice, whether it is dabbling too much in literary …
Pulpit Presence
“He looked severe enough that no one really noticed that he was not severe at all, and this meant that no one had a conscience attack or felt like they were going soft in their Calvinism because he always looked like he was being strict with them. So things were swell at Grace Reformed” (Evangellyfish, …
All Grace, No Slack
“The sermons were of the ‘all grace, no slack’ variety, and more than a few worshippers were concerned about just how much more grace their families could stand” (Evangellyfish, p. 67).
For Additional Emphasis
“The previous three pastors had been there for about a year and a half each, and the last of the three had been the kind of fellow who typed long doctrinal screeds to errant fellow ministers, single-spaced, and with typing up the sides of the margins. Some thought that he had mastered the art of …