Danny Morgan

Plating a new church in East Central Austin.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@sdutKevinAcee Huge loss for the boys. Ramon is a gamer.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

Geeze… Protestants do not argue Scripture contains all revelation. Instead all Scripture is revelation and the only infallible rule. And, in the church father pre-Nicaea point… Irenaeus is a good read. Also, please defend magisterium as an infallible rule without appealing to the magesterium.

[Counsel of Trent Podcast @counseloftrent]

3 Facts Sola Scriptura CANT explain🤯👇

Watch the full episode here: https://t.co/GLsT8Nvcvu

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@rdhasler I've only read about half... need to read it carefully.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@cath_menarion Do you think this is unique to Western Catholicism, or is it present globally?

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@gziegler Not just GFS... but a pre-determined difference! I thought that was a no no.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@BadTheoloTakes The conversations I've had are, "I don't need to believe in transubstantiation," and "justification is the same between Presbyterians and Catholics." Pretty basic categories and stuff that takes about ten seconds to show the chasm between.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

It is wild when evangelicals think they can join the Roman Catholic or Orthodox church and just import their evangelicalism. I've talked to 3-4 people in the last week who say, "I don't need to believe that" when they are thinking about joining these traditions...

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@gziegler @presbyterianpew @lrj0hns1 The .01% of the Christian pie we are and the way we squabble as if we’re diametrically opposed to one another is insane. There is always someone more liberal and always someone more conservative than us no matter where we are on the reformed spectrum.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

Welcome to Texas, where space is king over place.

[Aaron M. Renn 🇺🇸 @aaron_renn]

Man, the blows keep coming for downtown Dallas.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

When people are like, "baseball is boring..." Buddy, have you seen a non-baseball playing proffessional athlete try to play baseball? Do you know how difficult this sport is for human beings?

[MLB @MLB]

When Victor Wembanyama threw the 1st pitch in New York 👀

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

Ben's influence is remarkable. He's spending the end of his life preparing millions to die. So, here is a post about what it's like preaching to @BenSasse at the end of his life, preparing him to die.

Preaching to the Dead: A Young Pastor's Reflections on Preaching to a Man Everyone Knows is Dying.

“You're preparing people to die,” said a veteran pastor to me as I sat across from him in his office. It was a particularly timely perspective on pastoral ministry. It was the COVID era, when fear of death and disease in the Modern era of medicine seemed to be peaking around the world. This pastor was also facing death, needing a significant medical intervention, without which his body would fail him, and he would die. His statement was a response to a question I asked about his philosophy of ministry: Preparing people to die. It reminded me of the inaugural 1517 legacy conference, when Donovan Riley taught on the Lord's Supper and said something like, "When you come to the table, you are meeting with Christ preparing to die so that when you come to your death, you are prepared to meet with Christ." That sentence has stuck with me for years. And, I've thought about it often in my own ministry.
The church I've served since the Summer of 2022 in Austin, TX, is no stranger to death. It's a church of older members who face the reality of their death more often than some of the younger churches I’ve pastored. I’ve even helped some of these older members order their funeral services! And, many of them have died. Some old. Some young. I’ve done a decent number of funerals as a young pastor. None of them, though, for anyone who has died of old age. It's always been due to disease, suicide, or another tragic cause. The closest to an old age funeral I've led was for my own Grandfather. Βut even he died of health complications younger than the congregants passing at Redeemer Pres Austin. The reality of our sin-afflicted world is that death rages like the dying of the light. And, we rage against the dying of the light, believing as modern people we’ll somehow escape it. There is even, famously, now a movement led by millionaire Bryan Johnson that death is escapable through nutrition and health-hacking. But even Bryan will learn that there is no escaping death. Of course, everyone is dying spiritually. The Bible is clear that “none are righteous”, and “all have fallen short of the glory of God” and therefore are spiritually dead. And, we who are called to preach the gospel and life in Jesus Christ, are dead men preaching to the dead.
But when former US Senator Ben Sasse walked into Redeemer Pres Austin this year, “preaching to the dead” struck me in a new way. I’ve preached to members with terminal cancer diagnoses, I’ve done their funerals (I even evangelized a 22-year-old dying of cancer, evangelized him, served him his first communion, and done his funeral three weeks later). I’ve sat with people on their deathbeds, and I’ve seen deathbed conversions. I’ve talked to people on the last day of their life. And, I’ve been on the phone with someone who was moments away from ending their life, doing everything I can, trying to convince them to (while in public holding my one-year-old daughter at the time, by the way). I’ve comforted parents who have lost their children. I’ve helped atheists and unbelievers process the death of loved ones. It’s the Christian ministry. The atheist French philosopher Luke Ferry says that part of Christianity’s success in the first century was the deeply unsatisfying way paganism dealt with death. Ferry's argument is basically, why would anyone who has spent their life as a slave serving someone more powerful than them want to spend their eternity serving a god more powerful than you? But Christianity teaches that when you die, because of faith in Jesus Christ, you're not a slave, but an heir. In fact, you will live in the house of the Lord forever. You won’t spend eternity being a slave working off your debts, but a son enjoying your inheritance because, in fact, Christianity is about the God who served you.
And, seeing Ben Sasse this year was clearer than any instance before; I was preaching to the dead. Here is a man that everyone knows is dying. He's been talking about his death. People are talking about his death. In fact, it seems like he’s welcoming death, not without grief, but he's facing it with courage. He is a fragrant aroma of hope, courage, and love in the stench and misery of this life. He's preparing millions of people to die, and it struck me as a young pastor taking my turn in the pulpit a handful of times with Ben and his family in the congregation, I'm preparing him to die.
Christianity teaches that death is not our master. Death is not permanent. Death is a servant, in fact. Late Presbyterian minister Tim Keller famously said, "death can only make you better." And, Ben is gently dismantling the unsatisfying death of secularism and the hopeful death of Christianity. He's showing the world his core belief, that because of Jesus Christ, death will make Ben better. No one I’ve known has conveyed what Christianity teaches about how we can face death better than Ben Sasse. Before I met him, I knew who Ben Sasse was, but I didn’t know what Ben Sasse looked like. The first time I heard Ben was on White Horse Inn when I was in college. I’m not a politico type at all, but whatever Ben was peddling, I was buying as I listened to him share the biblical vision for the common good and the vocation of citizenship. I’ve read his books and articles and heard him speak on occasion. But I’d never seen his face. In fact, he and his family have come to Redeemer Pres in Austin (where they were former members before my time) on occasion over the years. “After the 4th or 5th time over a few months, I finally introduced myself, “remind me of your name?”
“I’m Ben. Great to see you.” About 30 seconds later, I realized,
“Oh crap. That’s Ben Sasse.”
Over the years, I’ve preached maybe 5-6 times when Ben and his family have been at Redeemer. But the times I saw him as he was dying hit me differently. Here is a man not just dying, but dying in public. Here is a man not just well-known, but influential to tens of millions, including myself. Here is a man who has had power, influence, and authority, and is literally dying, as his body rages against him. Here is a man who is Ivy League educated, a director of one of the most influential institutions in my life, Modern Reformation, and probably knows more about the Bible than I do, and I’m about to preach to him at the end of his life. And, in that moment, as the insecurity about my intellect and the inferior rhetoric of the sermon I’d prepared rushed to the surface, so did the words of that veteran pastor and Donovan Riley, “prepare them to die.”
The Apostle Paul says to the world, “The word of the cross is foolishness, but to those of us being saved, it is the wisdom and power of God” (1 Corinthians 1). Foolishness it is that a man born in a town of a few hundred people in a barn was God in flesh. He left Heaven, came to Earth, and lived our life. He faced our misery. He took on our sorrows. He did perfectly what each of us is responsible for doing: love others as we desire to be loved. He saw death, and he did the most human thing anyone can do. He wept. He subjected himself to the most powerful empire on the planet and the most shameful and gruesome torture device humans are evil enough to have created, crucifixion, and somehow the author of Hebrews says, Jesus Christ faced it with joy. Foolishness indeed that His being lifted up in his death is how the world will be attracted to him (John 12). But when sin and death raged against humanity, Jesus took on humanity and raged against sin and death. He cast out demons and bound Satan in his first coming, and when he returns, he will finally vanquish him. Jesus healed the sick and lifted up the poor, pushing back the effects of the Fall, restoring those afflicted by sin and its curses by inaugurating his Kingdom (Isaiah 61). And, Jesus raged against death. He faced death on the cross, subjected himself to its dominion for a time. He raged against the grave, he raged against the powers of hell, against the evil of humanity, preached to the dead (1 Pt. 3), and faced the curse of sin by becoming a curse for us (1 Cor. 5:21). And, Jesus Christ did it with joy. He faced it with courage. He was brave. And that is the gospel. That is what I preached to the dead man walking, Ben Sasse. A man I didn’t know, but I was able to help, hopefully, prepare him to die. He'll meet with Jesus in glory, and Paul says, somehow, the “future glory is not worth comparing to present suffering” (Romans 8). Somehow, the glory of the resurrection, which Christianity is centered on, will crush even the most intense of earthly sorrows. And Ben's sorrows will be crushed by the glory of the resurrection. No sickness. No tears. No darkness. Everything sad being made untrue.
My hope is that the foolishness of my preaching, not with eloquent words lest the cross be emptied of its power, has prepared Ben and everyone else who has sat under my preaching to meet with Christ. We pastors ourselves are dead men, preaching the hope of the resurrection to the dead. As one of my mentors would say, “When I sit in the pew, I don’t want to hear church bureaucracy. I’ll walk out. Plaquered Christ” Or one of the seminary professors who taught me how to pick hymns, “if you wouldn’t sing it on your deathbed, don’t sing it in church.” And, everyone is dying. Prepare them for it. Every Sunday, we take the pulpit with the foolishness of the cross, and to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. The power of God to face death with courage, to be brave, to face death with all the hope and joy of heaven because, in the beautiful words of George Herbert, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel has made him just a gardener.” The world is watching Ben Sasse die like a Christian because he's been prepared to do so through the foolish preaching of Christ.
Pastoral ministry is a sacred privilege. To proclaim the victory of Christ over sin and death and to prepare people to die and meet with Christ is our task. We are preaching to the dead, pointing them to the eternal hope of the Resurrection. Because Jesus Christ died and was raised, everyone who believes in him will be saved and share in His Resurrection. Doesn’t that make even cowards brave? Doesn’t that make even the anxious courageous? Doesn’t that fill even those who have been brokenhearted in this life filled with love and hope? No one has loved us as much as Jesus Christ has. No one has subjected themselves to more pain and misery for us than Jesus Christ. And he did it with joy. Which means, believing in him means yes, you’ll share in his death, but you’ll also share in his resurrection. When you “pass from yonder river and reach the farther shore”, Rise in glory, Ben, receive your inheritance and glorious hope; “But then there breaks a still more glorious day: the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!”

[John McCormack @McCormackJohn]

New: @BenSasse sits down for an interview with me at a bar in Manhattan.

We talked about many topics—from his childhood to politics to Heaven—and why his message about “redeeming the time” after his terminal cancer diagnosis is resonating with so many.

https://t.co/qTBhOjcnHv

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@ProofOfRest Yeah. Kingliness (startegic vision/ assessing risk) is always present in leadership. But mapping business/ expectations models onto church models/ expectations has probably exceeded its limits.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

Ok, so I write a thread like a month ago when open pulpits was a topic and let it be. Is relevant here though: Lots of chatter here about open pulpits/ and leader gap and not enough men to fill them. More seminary grads will not fix that issue; Congregational expectations will.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

@johncdirks Colossians 2

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

7. Leadership is about growing in your failure and adapting to the changing landscape before you. You can’t get it without the opportunity but often because you didn’t have the opportunity… you keep not getting the opportunity. PSC’s have to be coached to see character first.

[Danny Morgan @DannyMorgan0]

6. Boomers have not raised up the next generation of leadership. Millenials and Gen Z are/ will just have to stumble through it and figure it out. I've been in ministry since 2011 and never once had a boomer mentor me. All my mentors are Xers.