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Small-Town Pastors Should Preach Like Poets (w/ Stephen Witmer) · Small Town Summits

• Ben Whittinghill: And so I I would say that God uses means. Those means are not decisive. God could use boring speech to bring revival. He could do that if he wants. But that's not what he usually does. He usually uses beautiful words, evocative words, fresh language to grab people. And he uses it as a means of grace. So we don't rely on it, but I'm gonna give my best effort to caring for people's souls through the words I speak and the way I speak. Welcome to the Small Town Summit Podcasts. I'm one of your co-hosts, Ben Whittinghill. I'm delighted today to be joined by Stephen Whitmer. And today we're talking about his new book, In All Things The To See, A Devotional Guide to Selected Poems of George Herbert. If you've heard Stephen preach, you may have heard of George Herbert quote or two in the past. And this conversation is really centering around how Herbert's poetry has changed the way that Stephen thinks about. preaching and teaching and has really helped him to become a better communicator. And so we've titled this episode Small Town Pastors Should Preach Like Poets. We're grateful for you listening. I hope this conversation is a blessing to you. Steven, man, I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast, especially for this long awaited discussion, because we're getting to talk about your newly released book and all things need to see, and it's this devotional guide to Shocker for everybody, the poetry of George Herbert. So we've all been waiting for this man ever since you started bringing Herbert into all your preaching for like a while. At least all the preaching that I heard. I dedicated I dedicated the book to my my congregation, my my church family, Pepperal Christian Fellowship, and in the acknowledgments I said, thank you for bearing with all my sermon references to George Herbert. Because it it's not you know, when you bring it in, it's almost like this endearing thing for me. For them, they might come with an eye roll because they're getting it a lot. But for I'm like, I'm right at home. I'm hearing Stephen preach, you know, here comes a Herbert fire. You know, but you switched it up so much. So you never felt like you got the same Herbert. So man I'm excited for this resource. I I just told you I wish I h was holding it in my hand, but I even though I previous how beautiful. This is so we're just doing this video podcast. If people are looking at it on if they're just listening, you gotta go look at the video because it's a really it's a beautiful copy, man, and you've gotta be proud over just how it turned out and I'm thrilled. Crossway did a great job. I yeah, I've really loved publishing with Crossway. I ordered it eight months ago and I'm just waiting To get my hands on it, but it was my fault. It was a payment issue. Yeah. Wait ready to get my hands on it. So I would love for you to fill people in on the backstory of how you came to appreciate George Herbert and then because of him poetry. So Yeah, well, this is actually part of my I I feel like my qualification for writing this book is that until about ten years ago I I wouldn't say I was allergic to poetry. I would say I always wanted to light poetry and never quite did. It was always intimidating to me. And my entrance into Herbert was actually very closely connected to small town summits and thinking about small town ministry. So about eight years ago, maybe it was a little more than that, eight or nine years ago, I was beginning the work that was gonna lead to small town summits and a big gospel in small places, my book on small town rural ministry. And somewhere along the way, I can't even quite remember how, I recalled that George or I heard that George Herbert had written a book in the sixteen hundreds, it was published posthumously, on small town rural ministry. And for hundreds of years it was very impactful. People knew about it, read it. And it was influencing a lot of small town rural pastors. And so I read it in preparation for writing my book on small town ministry. And I was helped by it. Even more, I just got intrigued by this guy, George Herbert, and the amazing arc of his life, born in fifteen ninety three, ascended through elite educational institutions at the University of Cambridge, public orator of the University of Cambridge, addressed the king. Kind of bound probably for a career in the court of the king, and then something happened somewhere in he he wound up in a small town called Bemerton near Salisbury, a country priest in the in the Church of England, in this tiny little parish, mostly agricultural workers, and he pastored there for about three years and died at the age of thirty nine. He was writing poems. He wasn't publishing those English poems, but he was writing them. And after he died, he sent the manuscript of about a hundred sixty poems to his best friend, Nicholas Ferrar, and said, If you think there these are of any worth, publish them. If you don't, throw in the fire. And Ferrar published them and they've been in print ever since. And I started reading those poems and that led me into poetry. It was the it was the clarity. of his language and the beauty of his language. It was his clear love for God, reform theology, and also authenticity and vulnerability and a weakness and struggles and anxieties that he puts on the page. And I just I connected with all that. I what I loved and stood out the first time you introduced me to George Herbert. And After I've heard like I've listened to a couple of podcasts of you talking about this book. We're trying to I'm not copying it, but we're doing something fresh. But I also thought, wow, Stephen went to Cambridge and Stephen went to a small place. You know, there's like this resonation through that. But it's so neat and it reminds me of one of these first talks I heard you do at one of the summits, that God just scattering his world with good gifts. Here's this Amazingly gifted brother. And God called him to this very small, relatively obscure place. And he was producing gold and he was giving that gold to his people. You know, in like he didn't stop being a poet when he's ministering to people. And God decided to to give this town this amazing gift. It wasn't famous while he was alive, right? That while he wasn't like this well known poet. He would have been probably known as the public orator, the former public orator of University of Cambridge, but I think I say in the introduction of the book, none of his parishioners I don't think would have walked by his house and said, Hey, there's the famous poet. Because his poems weren't published. They would have said, There's the the there's my priest, you know, there's my pastor. And I actually think his pastoral identity is key to his poems. He was not writing to produce great art. He was not writing in order to to do self expression, although there certainly was a lot of self expression. He tells us why he wrote and it was to help people, to shepherd people. So I I think of him as Pastor George. That's what I call him in my own mind. He's he's a pa he's been a pastor for me. And he is he's writing in order to shepherd souls. And he is aware that poetry can shepherd souls in ways that prose cannot. You know, I think the other interesting thing that You just reminded me of is we don't have any of his sermons. We have a lot of like John Dunn, who's more famous than George Herbert, but was George Herbert's godfather and was pre a little bit older than him, friends of his mother, was preaching in London at St. Paul's around this time. We have a lot of John Dunn sermons. None of Herbert's sermons survive, but we do have a record of his response to the first sermon he preached. And apparently it was very ornate And rhetorical as you might expect it from the public order of the University of Cambridge. And somewhere in the middle of the sermon, he basically recognizes, I think he must recognize this is not working for agricultural, the agricultural congregation, the blue collar workers in front of him. And he basically commits to them in the sermon, I will not preach this way to you from now on. I will preach simply. I will preach directly. You know, I think what that is communicating is this is a guy who right he can modulate. He can he can speak to the people right in front of him. And he's got this pastoral heart and a love for specific people, his his flock. And I do think that's a key to his poems as well. someone just said to me recently, I I find Herbert kind of uniquely accessible compared to other poets of Maybe his his period. And I agree. I think he's extremely accessible. And I think it's because he's writing to help people. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about how much more accessible because he was writing a lot of this poetry during that time and he's interacting with all these like compared to the previous crowd that he was normally around, they were some like more simple people. And and then you said something at the beginning of our conversation, like you weren't allergic to poetry. But maybe you had this low grade guilt as a scholar, like I've got a lot of people that are colleagues or peers of mine that, you know, I should be loving. I mean, I love words. I should be delighting in this poet. It should be easily understandable. And it it sounds like from what you've said is that Herbert helped give you that accessibility and that love that previously was more aspirational, like fake it till you make it, and then you found Herbert. Exactly right. Yep. That's exactly right. Here's the good thing for people who are a little nervous about poetry like I was, it just takes one poem that you actually like. One one poet or one poem. And Abram Van Engen, who who wrote my favorite book on a Christian approach to poetry, Word Made Fresh. It was just published by Erdmans a couple of years ago. He says, You know, you're an adult now. You don't need to read anything you don't want to. There's no quiz on this. There's no assignment. You don't need to write a paper on it. So just start reading poems until you find one you like. And you don't even need to know why you like it. You just need to like it. It might sound good. It might have one thought or one word or one phrase that intrigues you and just kind of lingers with you. So you just just read until you j you know, if you if you don't like it, discard it and move on. Find one you like. Start there. And then you can begin to unpack it and understand it and grow with it. And maybe if you like one by this o this poet, you'll like another one and another one. That's that's the best way in. It's to read for pleasure. Not to read because you want to be articulate or educated or thought well of or whatever, you know, you like I wanna be able to listen to high listen to to symphonies or view high art and appreciate it. Just read for read for pleasure and it will change you as you discover the ones that resonate. Yeah. How would you speak to the pastor listening in or anybody listening in? They f they feel like I have friends like this, right? They don't they don't read fiction books. Some of these things feel like a waste of time or it feels like, you know, they're they're slogging through. Yeah. How would you give them counsel like why should they read poetry? Yep. Well, I I guess I would say I probably there are a lot of reasons. I would say poetry has changed me. It has changed the way I think and the way I express myself, the way I preach, and it's given it's given a greater joy to me. Those are all things that are invaluable for life and certainly for ministry too. So I I would commend it from my own experience. And I think it will it will will impact you and it will fire elements of your mind and heart that nonfiction doesn't and can't. So y you're saying it actually has changed the way that you seek to communicate with your people in the preaching? Yeah. Yeah. Like like what are some practical I mean, 'cause all right, so you're an author, you're good with words, right? So maybe that's thinking anyways, like they They probably just think it comes easily to you. But I would be curious to know, like, all right, what do you feel like has changed about your preaching since you've gotten into poetry? Well, I I have a few thoughts on that. And I think in many ways, here here's how I'd frame it, specifically in terms of preaching. I'm kind of working on this idea of pastors should preach more like poets. And when I say that, I don't mean We should use dense, compressed, elusive language, ambiguous language. We shouldn't make our sermon part one, like part A. Yeah. The part that you apologize for. Yeah, right, exactly. It it should it should not be stained glass voices and unusual expressions that people don't get. There there should be a simplicity and a clarity and a directness and an authenticity and a bible rooted quality. to all our preaching. So I'm I'm not denying any of that when I say we should preach more like poets, but what I do mean is for instance, we should think and express ourselves more in metaphors and images. So this is one of the main ways my preaching has changed as a result of reading poets like George Herbert or Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet, or Billy Collins, the US poet laureate, or Malcolm Geit or or others. I have begun to to use in my writing and in my preaching more concrete images and metaphors. So I'll I'll I'll give you an example of this. If you say God is a fortress, that's different from saying something in in more in prose, saying, for instance, God is God protects you, God shields you, God shelters you. those are all true things. But if you say God is a fortress, at least here's what I I start to feel something when I hear God is a fortress. I feel, I see big, thick walls and stone. And I feel myself protected. Maybe there's like arrows flying and bouncing off those stone walls. I feel surrounded by God. That's a metaphor. That's a that's a biblical metaphor. The Bible is full of images and metaphors and A a metaphor compares two objects, two unlike objects, and and asks the listener or reader to say, Okay, I'll take my experience of a fortress, whatever that is, and relate that to how God protects me. And you carry those associations over. George Herbert once wrote one of my favorite poems of his is called Prayer. And the entire poem is twenty-seven metaphors for prayer. in a row. There's not a single verb in the whole poem. It's just pr it starts prayer, the church's banquet, angel's age, and then twenty five other metaphors in a row. So you could just think for a long time about the tr prayer is the church's banquet. I have given thought to that metaphor. Among other things it means that prayer is not just a private experience, and it's not a joyless experience. It's a banquet. It's a feast. And it's something you experience together. That's an that's an example for me of like I I'm trying in my preaching, I've done this even recently, employ more metaphor, more concrete imagery. And you and I have both been thinking, because of Matthew Bingham's book, A Heart of Flame for God, that we both recently read, we've been thinking about meditation on God's word. And as I hear you talking about giving people more concrete imagery and metaphorical language, it's like you're giving them a foot forward or an aid, a walking stick to be able to go down that road of meditation. Yes. You know, when you're describing a fortress and all of a sudden when you're describing a fortress, now my mind's going to like helms deep and I'm picturing this imagery or this protection. And then you know what I mean? Like there's more like one thing leads to another He said church is banquet, and you're like and you you've you've already started taking that and now you're but you're curious now too because you're like, Well then how is prayer though like a church's banquet? I've got this imagery and it's leading you down this pathway of meditation that's rich and meaningful that they may not have even opened that door until you gave it to them. Yeah, and you know, Bingham writes about the the Reformation triangle of scripture meditation and prayer. And it's I think it's the meditation that's such a rich part of our Reformation heritage, but has been largely neglected by our more recent evangelical experience. And Bingham says meditation is that middle step where you take what you've read and you ask questions of it and you linger with it and you set it on your heart. And that's all it's all to do with the affections and with the imagination. And I do think a lot of us as evangelicals, we are Bible people. And so we should be metaphor people and we should be image people. We should be poetry people. A third third of the Bible is poetry. But all too often being Bible people for us means just saying what's there in sometimes it to drive away in not a fresh way, in not a very imaginative way. I'm not saying add things to the text, but I'm saying let it as you meditate on it. Let it fire all of you. Let it fire your your thoughts, but also your imaginations, your imagination and your affections. And so th that's another thing I feel like poetry is helping me to do. I am intentionally not just preaching to the mind of my people, but aiming for their affections and aiming for their imaginations. I want to stir their hearts. I want to care about these things myself because often people will forget what they what you say, but they'll remember what you care about, what fires you up. And I I I want to reach for that kind of deepest of the people who are listening to me. And and because I've experienced that in poetry, it's helped me to to care more about that and and also it's given me fresh words and fresh language to get in there to where to where people actually are, not just in their minds, but in their their whole persons. Do you think that I mean, it just seems like a pretty organic process and sometimes you're looking at something beautiful that God has done and it's like hard to parse it out. But it sounds like from listening to you that a love for words and saying things beautifully then leads you into better meditation in your sermon prep that leads you to better like exaltation while you're preaching. You know, it's not just communication of ideas, but you're trying to help them To feel what you saw. And how do you how do you give them that? And all you have is words. So you gotta paint these pictures. Yeah. The best the best writers are good readers and the best preachers are good readers who have been impacted by other people. And I think the more you read others who can fire you up with words and really connect at a deeper level. I wonder who that would be for you. Like C. S. Lewis would be one of those people for me. Something sings when I when I Yeah, mine's like Stephen Whitmer and some others. No, I mean I I I agree that Lewis has been one of those for me. I be I think there's a lot. I felt that a lot though, even reading that Bingham book and I'm like, phew I'm gonna go meditate some. I mean it's I got fired up reading that book. So Yeah, the Puritans often would be that way too. They they stir something at a deeper level. No, I'm just bas basically saying That's what certain poets have done for me. As I as I read them, they're I I'm I'm they're addressing me more as a whole person. And I I wanna connect with whole people. I wanna be a whole person in the pulpit connecting with whole people in the pew. So maybe maybe the last thing I would say about preaching like a poet would be poets care enormously about words and sounds. And Because they do, they are able to speak with a force and a memorability that I find lacking in a lot of preaching. So I felt kind of deadened inside sitting under some sermons where they're not saying anything untrue, but they're just not saying it in a way that is enlivening, that is memorable. In fact, they're taking sometimes even biblical phrases and using them in ways that are it just feels like they're filler words. I hear the the phrase grace and mercy, mercy and grace, pretty often. And those are amazing biblical words, but I I fear that sometimes they're just used as filler. And there's something about saying beautiful things. This is George Herbert's language, saying beautiful things in beautiful ways. Or I would also say troubling things in troubling ways, reflecting the content of what we say in the way we say it. There's something about that that sends it much deeper. Poetry has, among other things, it just made me consider how do I say things in a way that's going to capture my people and stick more deeply in their memory. So I'll give you an example here. Recently I was reading a poem by Seamus Heaney. This Irish poet, and it's called A Chow. And it's about as a young adolescent, his first experience of chewing tobacco. And he's describing a plug of tobacco. Here's just one line. Here's his description of a a plug of tobacco. Bogbank Brown embossed forbidden man fruit. You can hear all the bees. He loves alliteration. That's one of the reasons I love him. But Bogbank brown. So if you know anything about like a you know, a peat, a a bunch of pe in Northern Ireland or a bog, it's that kind of rich chocolatey color, bog bank brown, embossed. So in his youthful imagination there's maybe something luxurious about this. It's an embossed plug and it's forbidden man fruit. That takes some effort to describe a plug of tobacco that way, but I'm not gonna forget it. I'm gonna remember that description. When we care about words, we send them deeper into people and they can do better and longer work inside. I even think about the authors we love, like J.R. Tolkien, his words reflect reality. So I think about this especially in in his names for characters. Think of names like Worm Tongue and Treebeard or Gandalf. Mordor or Gollum. Like all those names reflect the personality of the character of the place and help us into an experience of them. So there's a there's a match between the word and the reality. And that's what I want more of in my preaching as well. That's also rich, man. And I so I guess one question I have two main ones, come, because I'm I'm trying to think ahead for listeners. Of where the objections might lie or where the insecurities might lie. And so I'm curious about what you would describe as the difference between nature and nurture on this, if like a God-given facility with words, some people are going to be just have like a greater God-given giftedness in this area. And others might cultivate it, but some people may feel like it's this is just not me. It's not for me. So how would you talk to people about working at a a metaphor muscle or a you know, how could poetry help them? I think it's probably like anything. Some people have more natural aptitude and inclination toward it, but we can all improve. I will never dunk a basketball, but I can get better at basketball. You know? Just like any other skill. I might be starting behind you, but I can continue to improve and enjoy the game more than I currently do. So I would say there are lots of things we can do. even if we feel a little behind in terms of our aptitude with language or the the way words flow to us or our enjoyment of them. I already mentioned one of them. One of the most important is simply read people whose language thrills you and sticks with you, people you remember. Listen to preachers who preach that way. Or read novelists who write that way. Or poets. So y y we we often pick up on things by not just by direct instruction, but as we experience something and then we imitate. So that's a big one. Another would be for those who are preaching regularly. This has been important for me and I've grown in it, maybe even over the last five years or so, 17 years now into pastoral ministry and weekly preaching of the Word. Schedule times when you can do sermon prep when you are not exhausted and times even times in the day, not just the week, but times in the day when you can give creative energy to your preaching. So if you're always doing sermon prep in the afternoons and you're not an afternoon person, you're not gonna be able to do creative work. Maybe you could you can read a commentary and summarize the commentary, but you're not gonna have any fresh thoughts and you're not gonna there won't be fresh words coming to you because you're just struggling to stay awake. So if you're a morning person, make sure you get two or three hours of sermon prep in the morning. Or if you're a late night person, make sure you do sermon prep late at night. I the the point is do it when you have not just the kind of energy that allows you to grind it out, but when you have fresh creative energy. There there are times in the week where like a Thursday morning off often, even I could do more fresh sermon prep work in an hour and a half. than I could in five hours of an afternoon. Like things will just come, ideas will come, metaphors will come, there'll be a freshness and a confidence. And it's partly because of the time of day. I mean, that's just the way God's made me and and it'll be different for all of us. But so find when you can do original, fresh creative work, imaginative work and work then. And then maybe the last thing I would say For those who kind of struggle with this and they feel you know, I'm I'm not good with words and I revert to old cliches and it when I'm preaching or when I'm in public, have someone you know, respect and trust listen to one of your sermons if you preach regularly and ask them this might be a little sensitive, but ask them to identify verbal ticks, lazy language, ways that you just kind of phone it in. especially ways that you repeat, wa ways that you do this that that are repetitive over and over again. If you say right all the time, like ten times in your sermon, that needs to be pointed out. And ask them to lovingly put their finger on that so you can begin to not just give in to, you know, speech that is gonna bore you and the people who are listening to you. Those are some some very practical ways to to grow in this. Yeah, and I've I'm challenged by it. Steven, because I hear you saying it's actually not just like you can get b better at basketball and that is something that you can get better at. But this is really like if you're gonna love your people and adorn the gospel with words that are worthy of the gospel, then you need to work at this. And it's not gonna look the same for everybody, but he's worthy of you laboring over words and communicating things beautifully. That is so thank you. That's so well said. Ultimately, this is a labor of love. The reason we do it is not to be well thought of or to be articulate. Because that's not love. That's selfishness. The reason we do this is because we want the gospel to go deeper. And it does often God uses means and it does go deeper when people's imaginations and hearts are captured and fired. Okay, so Paul even says that like speech. Spoke in such a way that many people believed, you know? Like there's the there's a way of speaking even that was more persuasive than otherwise, even though it was God all throughout, but there was a way that he spoke. But I I'm curious, you know you may have just answered this before I give you the objection, but I've you've even just heard this, right? People are like, all right, well, what about First Corinthians two? Preach nothing but Christ and him crucified. I didn't come to you with Plausible words of wisdom or a lofty speech. And so people might say, well, Stephen, isn't this kind of trying to have lofty speech? And and are you are you kind of unwittingly saying, well, the the cross and the message of the cross are not enough. You need your little witticisms, your your metaphors. So how do you speak to that kind of objection? One of the best one of the best places where this question is wrestled with is in John Piper's biographical talk on George Herbert, which he gave a number of years ago. And he r he talks about this very passage, First Corinthians two. And he he says, Yes, there is a way that reliance on wisdom or oratorical technique could empty the cross of its power in your ministry. That is if you think your speech is decisive, if you're relying on your eloquence or your rhetorical power to persuade people. So we need to avoid that at all costs. That's not what I'm saying. But Paul himself writes incredibly powerful letters. He's not writing boring letters. He uses words and he uses arguments and images. That have resonated for two thousand years. So this guy is not averse to the careful use of language. He's a master at it. And so I I would say that God uses means. Those means are not decisive. God could use boring speech to bring revival. He could do that if he wants. But that's not what he usually does. He usually uses beautiful words, evocative words, fresh language. Think of George Whitfield. Or Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, to grab people and he uses it as a means of grace. So we don't rely on it, but we also say, God, I want to make myself available. You do everything, I'll do something. Part of my something is I'll work out I I'm a craftsperson. So and my use words. That's what I do as a pastor, as a counselor, as a preacher. So I'm gonna make I'm gonna give my best effort to caring for people's souls through the words I speak and the way I speak them. All right, man. Well, I want to highlight two other things. So in the book, you have a kind of savoring the poem and then being shepherded by the poem. So I wanted to give you opportunity even to read some George Herbert and to kind of talk about those two ideas, but I really appreciate that you're doing this because I've read some poetry books before and they are analyzing the poem, but it can feel more scientific than it is savory. Savoring the like the beauty that's trying to the poet's trying to communicate. And I feel like some of them might have rolled over in their graves being like, I don't I I didn't write that so that you could just dissect it and and then leave it open on the table. I wanted it to take you somewhere and and it seems like you've labored to help people get where Herbert was trying to get them to go. Yeah. That's right. I I do think Herbert's trying to fire our imaginations and so my my and our affection. So my task is not just to gloss words. Like I I do that because language in the sixteen hundreds is not the same as the twenty-first century. And so there's some words we we don't know right away. So there are a few simple definitions. But the main thing I do in this volume with 40 Herbert poems is first to say here's what we can delight in about God through this poem. And then second, here's how the shepherds are souls. So maybe I'll just read one poem and I was saying to you before we started recording, this is called The Glance. It's one of my very favorite poems and I think it's often missed in collections of George Herbert. It it's it's I it's not usually the anthologized one, and I do believe it's one of the most beautiful. It's one of the ones that fills my soul with the most yearning. It's not all that long, it's a few stanzas, so I'll read the glance. Herbert says When first thy sweet and gracious eye vouchsafed even in the midst of youth and night to look upon me, who before did lie weltering in sin, I felt a sugared strange delight. Passing all cordials made by any art, bedew, embalm, and overrun my heart, and take it in. Since that time many a bitter storm my soul hath felt, even able to destroy, had the malicious and ill meaning harm his swing and sway. But still thy sweet original joy, sprung from thine eye, did work within my soul, and surging griefs when they grew bold, Control and got the day. If thy first glance so powerful be, a mirth but opened and sealed up again, what wonders shall we feel when we shall see thy full eyed love, when thou shalt look us out of pain, and one aspect of thine spend in delight more than a thousand suns disperse in light in heaven above. That's the glance. And I feel like you don't even need to understand exactly what that all means to love that poem. This is what I say in my comments on the poem. Just start by savoring that language even before you understand it. Phrases like thy full-eyed love. I just love that phrase. So the the poem is about God looking, it's a very biblical image, you know, this is frequently reported, recorded in scripture that God looks over the earth and he strengthens the heart of the one whose heart is fully devoted to him. He he looks out upon the inhabitants of the earth. So God looks at Herbert and he looks he he draws him to himself. And Herbert says even after that initial look, things have been hard and painful. But if that first glance was that powerful, a mirth But opened and sealed up again. What wonders shall we feel when we shall see thy full eyed love? So he's looking forward to the future when he sees God and knows as he is known. When thou shalt look us out of pain. I mean, that's worth the whole poem right there, that phrase. people whose marriages are in the midst of breaking up and there's such pain and Herbert's he experienced a lot of physical sickness and he's letting his imagination soar to a time when God is gonna his full eyed love is gonna be evident and he's gonna look Herbert out of pain. So that that language has just resonated over and over again with me. I love what a commercial that is for how biblical he is and you mentioned like he's trying to pastor People with this. So I mean, you hear in all that poem there's this strength that's drawn from remembering the beginning with God and what God has done and remembering his faithfulness and also a strength that's drawn from looking ahead in this beatific vision to come. So it this is like a trusted guide, like he's using very biblical concepts, it's looking back and looking ahead, but he's doing it with language that would probably make you cry if you weren't on camera. Yeah. This is rich, man. It's great. So Steven, if you what's your desire for this book? Who did you write it for? I wrote it mainly for people who are kind of in the place I was in a decade ago who would sort of be interested in maybe in reading poetry, but feel intimidated by it. They feel like it's kind of a puzzle and once they try to crack the code. They're not sure whether they did or not. They always feel a little bit dissatisfied when they walk away from the poem. It doesn't feel efficient for them. They feel sort of like, well, I could have I could have read a nonfiction book or a news article and gotten information a lot more quickly. It's too hard work for recreation. I'd rather watch Netflix than try to wrestle a poem to the mat. And I want to just come alongside people with It's just the this volume is forty George Herbert poems and they're they tend to be shorter, they tend to be a bit simpler. I've chosen those forty out of the one hundred and sixty or so. And so, you know, this is like my I I want to take your hand and guide you through these forty world class poems. And my hope would be after reading these and meditating on them and having your your soul blessed and excited and helped, you would think, maybe maybe I could read more George Herbert poems, or maybe I could read some Malcolm Geit or s some Gerard Manley Hopkins or some John Dunn. And may may maybe there's this whole world that I've not been delighting in and exploring. Or or maybe maybe I could think more carefully about biblical poetry and understand the Bible itself as a book of poetry and have my heart more captured. That way, you know, th my my my ultimate aim is not that you become a poetry lover, it's that you fall in love with Jesus. And for pastors, that your love for Jesus and your love for people results in a greater attendance to the way you communicate Christ to your people. It's a beautiful hope. And man, I I always feel this way. I'm so thrilled that God's given you the gifts that He has and that you steward them. like you do. So thank you for putting this out and I'm excited for it to finally get my hands on it. But I hope even just this conversation would would stir people. One of my questions was, Well how how do we do this? And it sounds like this is such a great place to start, you know? If if you wanna be better at laboring over words, then get a trusted guy that c can guide you through somebody who did it really well and that's what you've done with George Herbert. So Appreciate you as always, man, so much and thanks for taking the time for the conversation. This is really fun. Thanks, Ben. Thank you again for listening to the Small Town Summit Podcast. We hope that it was a blessing to you, and if you are interested in learning more about the Small Town Summit Ministry, check out our website, smalltownsummits.com. We also want to let you know about an exciting opportunity to join us, the World Home Missionary Association in Desiring God, at a new England-wide conference October 5th through the 6th in Newberryport, Massachusetts. Our speakers, Dave Mathis and Scott Hubbard of Desiring God, We'll be helping small town pastors and ministry leaders remember that Christ is our treasure and goal in gospel ministry. For more information, visit stsfallconference.com. Again, that is stsfallconference.com. We hope to see you there.