Mark Fugitt has been a pastor for eighteen years and an adjunct professor for a decade. He has a bachelor’s in history; master’s degrees in history, theological studies, and theology; and his PhD in biblical studies and historical theology. He lives with his wife Laura and four children on a farm in the hills of Missouri.
He joins me to talk about his new book: Lost Shepherd: What Believers Once Knew About Paslm 23 That the Modern World has Forgotten
Mark Fugitt has been a pastor for eighteen years and an adjunct professor for a decade. He has a bachelor’s in history; master’s degrees in history, theological studies, and theology; and his PhD in biblical studies and historical theology. He lives with his wife Laura and four children on a farm in the hills of Missouri.
He joins me to talk about his new book: Lost Shepherd: What Believers Once Knew About Paslm 23 That the Modern World has Forgotten
You're listening to episode 214 of the Pastoral Writer podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Rep, local. Well, it's a new year and I'm excited to be able to bring you new episodes. I've got a series of guests lined up in the coming weeks and I'm looking forward to many of the conversations. Some great books I've already been reading this year and I'm hoping in the weeks ahead to have some updates for you on my own writing. I haven't talked about it over the last couple of years since the Five Masculine Instincts came out, but I've been hard at work on other book projects and 2024 should be a year with some updates, maybe even a chance to read some of that work. So I'm excited for things ahead and looking forward to today's conversation.
Speaker 1:Mark Fugut has become a friend and somebody that I respect as a pastor and it was great being able to read his new book, lost Shepherd. We have a great conversation about Psalm 23, the way nostalgia forms around passages of scripture and the place of history and the role history plays in growing as a believer. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Well, I'm joined on the podcast today by Mark Fugut. He's been a pastor for 18 years and an adjunct professor for a decade. He has a bachelor's degree in history, master's degrees in history, theological studies and theology and a PhD in biblical studies and historical theology. He lives with his wife, laura, and four children on a farm here in Missouri.
Speaker 1:As we were just discussing I think he is the closest in proximity to me that I've ever had on the podcast, so certainly a neighbor here in Missouri, and he joins me today to talk about his recent book Lost Shepherd what believers once knew about Psalm 23 that the modern world has forgotten. Well, mark, it's a privilege and honor to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me, chase, thanks for having me on. Well, maybe a good place to start is I'd love to hear a little bit about your current place of pastoring, as well as the academic work that you've been doing. I know those are two things that you've integrated together well, and so I'd love to hear just a little bit more about the place you're serving.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we had an opportunity about a year and a half ago to actually come back to a church that I knew and loved. It was the first church that we my wife and I had moved to, as I was the associate and youth pastor about 18 years ago over 18 years ago now and since, after several years here, we moved away and pastored other places and we're able to move back back to this area and so we knew a lot of the people. We love the church and we love the mission here, and so we've been in rural ministry our whole lives and just focusing on why God has us here as a church and why now I think there's a lot of, just a lot of sadness around ministry in general right now you talk to pastors and just a lot of defeat in Christian many Christians and being able to come back to an area and just remind them that God has us all here on purpose, despite the challenges, in fact, maybe because of those challenges is why God has called all of us not just me as the pastor, but all of us as members to wherever we are, wherever we're called to serve. So I really feel like that's my calling. It's been a big part of my ministry, just bringing together rural ministry and the value that God sees in that, and revitalization, bringing life back to churches that desperately need it as they are closing all around us.
Speaker 2:I have been an academic my whole life. You listed some of the degrees. I've basically been in full-time school forever until just a few years ago when I finished my PhD, and what I've seen with that is throughout it. It's made me a better pastor. It's made me more aware of what I don't know, and I feel like I thought I knew a lot more 18 years ago than I do now, and so that has really been a good thing because it's driven me to go deeper. It's been made equipped me to be able to handle different things. So I think academia and pastoring for those that are called in that direction it's a great combination.
Speaker 2:But one of the things I wanted to do when I kept pursuing degrees was not only becoming better pastor, but I wanted to be able to write. I've always loved reading and writing and I don't know it's been going around online lately what book you were reading when you're 12. And I haven't posted, but I was trying to think of what it was and I was just thinking of like stacks of books that I was reading then and just already thinking about writing and what I wanted to do, and so I wanted to be able to get those academic credentials and understanding and research ability to be able to feed that writing and really see writing as a way to serve the church and serve the people around me. That's been my goal, and so anything, any project, even articles, different things I've been working on, including this book on Psalm 23,. I've really been born out of that combination of wanting to bring together academics and writing.
Speaker 2:So I trained as a medieval historian, which is strange for a Protestant. It seems that we're kind of rare in this field, but since I've worked in a lot of different areas of history, so now I get a chance to teach part time on the side for three different universities, and this has been a big, big week because we started everywhere this week. But I love being able to do that keeps my academics fresh, keeps my research fresh and allows me to interact with students, and so that's just a great opportunity to be able to do that. So I think they've partnered well in my life. I know it doesn't work for everybody, but it just is two passions, I feel like that have come together and equipped me.
Speaker 1:Well, so much that resonates with me too.
Speaker 1:I mean not only being here in Missouri, which is not as we were sort of choking before we hit record not really the center of publishing or writing or maybe even the arts, maybe probably not a medieval theology as well, I imagine, yeah, but the opportunities we have to to pastor, to pursue sort of these other, I think, are really calling these other vocations, and the interesting, unique ways God sort of mixes those things into work is something I've resonated with and it often feels like when I interview authors.
Speaker 1:There's certainly a good number of them that are in the, you know, the portlands and the Nashville's and the New York's, and thank goodness for their work there. But I always find it really encouraging and I hope listeners catch to that there's so much good writing and good work and good pastoring and just good thinking taking place in places all over the country, all over the world, that you've not heard of and in a unique way, I think. Those perspectives, that those writers who are doing that work in those places, I think that that work matters a lot. So I'm really grateful for what you've been doing there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that I appreciate that and I think that speaks to really one of the interesting things about pursuing a writing career in while, while pastoring, while doing ministry where God has called you, you don't know where that's going to be and you find yourself there and I think often we're put in that place where we feel like we have to pick between moving to a location to be a part of something or we're not, and I think this has just been a blessing to be able to bring these things together here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, certainly, and unexpected ways and places as well. I want to get into the book. I got a chance to read an early copy of Los Shepard and was really grateful for the opportunity and particularly struck by this idea that comes through in the title itself. The image of Christ as a shepherd is certainly a familiar one, but I think it's worth sort of letting you articulate why that that image resonates. But then, as you sort of articulate in the book itself, what about that image of Christ as a shepherd has actually been lost to us. That needs some recovery.
Speaker 2:The idea of Jesus as shepherd was brought up by Jesus himself in John. So this is not a new idea at all, like you said, and it's been a really popular image of Christ throughout church history, in fact the early church. One of the most common images in the early church was Jesus as kind of a beat-up shepherd, kind of a roughed-up shepherd. In art that would depicted him as a kind of a rough-and-tumble guy that was willing to go to the far reaches of the earth to find the lost, and so that image really sustained the early church as it struggled through persecution and different issues that it faced in those formative first couple of centuries. The image stays with Jesus throughout history but the impression of it on believers has changed. And really what I wanted to do with this book was sparked out of my own research, my own Bible study, and I was doing research for something else and I can't remember what project it was because it's been about five, six years ago and I came across a Latin translation of the first verse of Psalm 23 that instead of saying the Lord is my shepherd, it had the word for rain as a king. There the Lord reigns over me or is king over me and that image. I kept going on with something else, but that image all of a sudden just kept coming back and I thought about how different that impression of Christ as our shepherd leader might be, had I memorized that version instead of the one that we all know. That really set me on the trail, then, of thinking about different historical impressions, not just of that verse but the whole Psalm, and we know, if we've studied our Bibles, that in different times in history, even in our own lifetimes, people take different verses different ways, and it kind of a dominant interpretation takes over in certain ways. Well, you add a couple thousand years to that and you really start to see what's going on with Psalm 23 specifically. And so I noticed then, with the idea of the king or the rain, medieval history the time when the Latin translation came out was a time when they understood hierarchy. Everything was interpreted through hierarchy, and so it made sense to see Jesus, your caretaker, the one that was going to watch out for your well-being, defend you as being akin to the good king, the good ruler. If I am under his care, everything is okay, because they knew what it was like to be under somebody a bad king's care or a bad leader's care. They also knew the value of being and living under somebody good, and I think that starts to remind us of how Scripture spoke to them as people and how they connected Jesus's idea of being the good shepherd to what they experienced in their lives. So that idea got me going through Psalm 23 in a lot more depth over the next few years and I started to notice things.
Speaker 2:One of the other big things that stood out to me is what happened during the Reformation, specifically in England, with Psalm 23, as Bible translators were beginning to look at the text again and to bring it into English and they had a different view, or maybe an elevated view, of Scripture than most of us today. Not that they saw it as more important, because I think most of us, at least in our circles, see it as very important but they realized what it was to be without it. So they had experienced scriptural scarcity and during the Reformation, when they read lines like he leads us to pastures and to waters, they didn't just see those as an opportunity to take a break, that God was leading us to rest. They saw those as sustenance. Scripture became food, and so they interpreted those passages differently because they realized how vital it was to have access to Scripture and to have access to God Himself and to understand God in that way.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a great example of how that passage can speak to us again and kind of revitalize us as we understand how other people have deeply appreciated the necessity, the total dependence that they saw in Psalm 23, that we maybe in our modern understanding have kind of lightened the impression of what that means, the magnitude of what God is talking about in that passage.
Speaker 2:And so I think those types of examples and so many more are what we see if we look deeply at the Psalm historically and kind of appreciate what other people have said. And I think one of the biggest challenges for us as modern Christians is to be willing to learn from Christians of the past and to not fall into this pit of presentism where our interpretation right now is the best that there ever has been. You and I as pastors, we know that we do want to have stand on some beliefs. Right, we don't want to just say that nothing is for sure. But as we stand on those beliefs we do realize that those beliefs are built on the understanding and interpretations of others and they're a response. Sometimes they're a better response to a mistake in the past, and sometimes they're building on what the people in the past got right, and so I think we've got to work through that as modern believers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what you're describing CS Lewis's idea of chronological snobbery or this idea of progress that we've sort of we're always getting better and smarter and sort of leaving behind history and I think you articulate well what you do well in the book, which is this intersection of both scripture but also what we have through historical writings to help us better understand not only the scriptures but the moment we're in.
Speaker 1:I recently was reading Philip Brief of philosopher, who talks about I think he simplifies it for the sake of the point, but he talks about these phases that we've gone through, from the religious man he calls it the economic man to what he now calls the psychological man, and he makes the point that the religious man was born to be saved and the psychological man, the time we're in, is born to be pleased.
Speaker 1:So much of the way we think about faith and values and the world today is about our own consumption, our own pleasure, our own affirmation and fulfillment. And I think you see that in kind of what you're describing as Psalm 23, having turned into this simply a word of comfort, certainly it is, but exclusively this sort of word of comfort or affirmation, and so maybe you could talk a bit about the sort of nostalgia that has built up around Psalm 23 and how we go about the work of recovering some of these passages that have become. I mean, if there are two passages of scripture that a person has memorized, it's probably the Lord's Prayer and it's probably Psalm 23, which, for as great as that is, can actually make it a challenge to hear in a fresh way, which is what I think your book is trying to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the therapeutic gospel, the idea that the story of Christ has been reduced to something, as you said, in this psychological era, something to make us feel better. Certainly, I believe the gospel should make us feel better. I think emotions are an important part of being human and I think the fact that the gospel is proclaimed as good news and in fact means good news, should make us feel better. But if that is where it only resides, then we have a deep problem and Psalm 23 has certainly fallen victim to that. Certainly has the Lord's Prayer, and we could talk about the Lord's Prayer for a while too, I'm sure. But to Psalm 23, we're not really sure the exact moment in history when it started to evolve, but I think it basically followed what you just described kind of as those eras in history over the last 300 or 400 years as we moved from the, at least in the Western world. We moved from kind of a deeply religious aspect to through the enlightenment and the influences of that good and bad, and into what we see today as we kind of analyze everything and look at it for our own psychological good. Psalm 23, as we all know, became a funeral psalm. Most scholars think that this probably happened right around the United States Civil War and different scholars give different reasons, but it basically breaks down to the time of one of the reasons a massive loss. People were experiencing loss in their families at an accelerated and acute rate and they were trying to cope and at that time there was a high level of biblical literacy. People had access to the Bible. If they had no other books, they tended to have a Bible and it became a spot to go to. One of the other reasons speculated is that Abraham Lincoln used the psalm in some of his writings and some of his talks at that time and so almost what it began is it kind of ushered the psalm into what we now as historians today call the civil religion of the United States, this notion that really wasn't culminated until people like Eisenhower and others historically, but this idea where we could be as people kind of secular but keep some pieces of Scripture in our lives, not because they spoke the truth of Christ and our need for him, but because they made us feel better. And that's really the sad thing that's happened to Psalm 23.
Speaker 2:Now I still use Psalm 23 at funerals. I think it does speak volumes to people that are hurting, but I think it speaks about the people that are living, to give them hope in Christ for today and to carry on despite their feelings of loss or whatever is going on around them. And so I think really, as Christians, recovering Psalm 23 is just a start. One of the things I wanted to do with the book was to really just give a sample of what we could do with all Scripture. But Psalm 23 just stood out because it's so nostalgic, it's so well known, it's part of the vernacular of America, christian and un-Christian, and I really wanted to dig in to see. Why is it still Christian? What is there that can still speak to us and how can we be better followers of Christ if we understand the Shepherd of Psalm 23?
Speaker 1:What does that process look like for pastors, but also just believers, who may have, as you mentioned it, these sort of stocks out of Scriptures memorized, or at least familiarity the language of it? What does it look like to begin recovering that and trying to read it, perhaps in a new way or, I think, as you've articulated it well, in a more historically rich way, to really be able to understand what we have in front of us when we turn to these passages that are so familiar? How do you go about that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a great conversation the other day with somebody at church basically about this idea they were wanting in the new year they were wanting to get more in depth with their Scripture reading and they've read the Bible before, so this was not a new thing to them. That's a different conversation. You know, when I have that, just, you know, get somebody excited about the Scripture for the first time. This was somebody who was dealing with the same problem that we're just talking about. They've read the Scripture before and it's familiar. And they're saying how can I get more out of what I'm reading? Because I tend just to be, they said they tended to be skeptical, they tended to just kind of read it for the sake of reading it. And it really brought me back to this question and what we're talking about with the book. Whenever I approach a Scripture, I don't need to do anything dramatically new to it for it to speak to me. And I think that's one of the temptations, especially in a progressive world that says I've got to find some new thing to do with Scripture. I want to find the old thing to do with Scripture. I want to find the depth of meaning that's spoken to people and inspired people for centuries because of what God did in His Word. And so what I told them this individual the other day was let's change the questions we're asking. When we're reading the text, I can read the same verse that I read last year, but let me go to it now and say and you know these as a pastor but basically ask these questions why, why did this make it in the Bible? Why does God have this? And then what should I do? This idea of putting action and sometimes it's just a mind action it's not that I'm having to read every verse and then get up and leave the building, but it's what do I do with this Word, what do I do with this Scripture so that it becomes alive again to us? And I think those are the first questions that I ask. That, I think, will get us on this road to recovery. It helps us get over the nostalgia.
Speaker 2:The other day I was talking to a pastor from New England and he said the people up there, he's just introducing them to the idea of church and idea of Scripture, and I think here in the Ozarks we understand that here the problem is reintroducing folks that have just become so familiar with the Gospel story. That's not always the case. There's a lot of new people here and I have all kinds of conversations, but generally people have heard the stories before, they've heard Psalm 23 before and it just doesn't do anything for them anymore. It doesn't mean anything. So we've got to get in there and look at what the truth of it is. Why is it still there? Why did God give it to us? And ask those hard questions? Because I don't believe that God gave us Scripture just for nostalgia, just to make us feel good. We talk about the Scripture being the truth of God. It's God showing us truth. That means he's doing something with it. So I think that that is a good start.
Speaker 2:The historical aspect of it can come into, bolster that to help us answer that question. When I get to a passage and say, well, why is this in here? Sometimes I need some historical help. Sometimes that's in the footing of my study Bible. Sometimes that means I need to go a little deeper and bring in those other voices that help answer that question for me. Because I have an inkling that there's a similar reason 500,000, 1500 years ago, that God had a passage in Scripture like Psalm 23. Back then I feel like he has a similar reason for that, today to speak to Christians. We have different challenges, but we have the same need for him.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the areas of your work has certainly been this integration of history and perhaps you could talk to the role of history in the life of a believer. And I asked the question partly because I think history often feels like something you're either into or not. Right, it's kind of like a hobby or an interest. I saw a meme the other day that said congratulations, you're in your 30s. You now have to decide if you'll get really into smoking meats or World War II history, right, exactly, this is just kind of a hobby to be into history. But what is? Certainly? You've studied history, it is a part of your calling and your work. But what is the place of history in the life of a believer, and particularly in the spiritual, like this growth in trying to become more like Christ, the role history plays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wish it wasn't that dichotomy, but that seems to be the way it is, and so many people have had a bad experience with history and so they feel like they don't want, they just don't like to study history. They don't like it or, like you said, they like some unique aspect of it as they age. I think I'm kind of in my World War II era. This week I'm reading a little bit on World War II, but the struggle then and I think it starts with maybe us as pastors is an opportunity to lead in that direction is to introduce history and theology or study of God, to introduce those things as partners and as a way to encourage the church, not as separate. Now I know some great historians that are not theologians and that they just do pure history, and I love their work and respect them for that. But I think we have a different calling at least, and I can speak for myself.
Speaker 2:I feel like the Psalm 23 book and really what I've tried to do with all of my work is to see it as an intersection, to see it as an opportunity for me as a historian to dig into some of these things. To be honest, some historical research is not real exciting and it is. Sometimes you're sifting through stacks and stacks of things, but you're looking for those bits of value then to bring back. I feel like it's almost the treasure in the field. I'm finding these things that help us understand Christ better and I'm bringing them back and I just want to share those with the people around me. And that's really been a description of what I try to do with my writing, and really what I try to do is I preach.
Speaker 2:I feel like I try to integrate these stories, these individuals, these basically testimonies of past Christians, so that today's Christians can realize that their roots are deeper than just themselves or just themselves and their parents or grandparents or however they came to faith.
Speaker 2:And I think that richness really helps us, especially in a world that is really confused. It's really struggling with identity, it's struggling with what's next, to realize that we're part of something bigger. It doesn't mean we can't learn new things and make corrections along the way, but it certainly, I think, helps to understand us as somebody that is deeply rooted, and so I think that helps. And so I think history should be a tool, and I think pastors can lead the way on that by gently bringing in elements of history. I think we don't want to make a sermon a history lecture, nor do we want to hand our church member a 400-page monograph on something that happened 700 years ago. But what we can do is begin to broaden our examples as we preach, our stories as we write, and to bring in some of these voices that I think can just add a richness to our understanding.
Speaker 1:I've certainly also found my historical readings to be beneficial in writing and pastoring, and I often tend to think of it as an ongoing conversation, and often I find the best conversationalists are the people who have gone before me. Some of my favorite writers, some of my favorite books, some of the things that have impacted me most as a Christian are not the things that feels like we're trying to figure out in current history, in this current conversation, but those things in the past, as you sort of engage in that conversation, going back, and discover oftentimes though sometimes the language or the context is different that there really are these same fundamental human questions that people are wrestling with, that same ongoing conversation, even as you move back in time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we live in a bombastic time when everybody wants to say that whatever is happening right now has never happened before and the challenges we face are completely new. Therefore, we need new tools, new solutions, all these things and every political side, every seems like even Christian, non-christian, everybody does this and we need to be people that bring this back, and I think history is a good tool for that to say, and that's why I agree with you a lot of these past writers that have really gone through very similar challenges, just like you said different settings, different scenarios, but deeply disturbing challenges and they write on it and they give us that great perspective to say how is Christ going to help us make it through? And the same solutions that were found in him before are still the same solutions we need today.
Speaker 1:As you were applying this work, the reading of history, the sort of trying to recover a sense of Psalm 23,. You alluded to some of this at the beginning, but what do you feel like you found or recovered, even just for yourself, from Psalm 23 that had been missing, from that sort of nostalgic reading that so many are familiar with?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing for me, the notion of total dependence, the reliance on God that I mentioned before, but also recovering the Psalm as a Psalm for the living. I think, like a lot of us, it had just become a funeral Psalm and I think bringing it out of that typecast and bringing it back into devotional life like it was meant to be, was the biggest plus for me, just personally as a Christian, and what I have seen then and through history is just the different interpretations have just made it richer, even when the different interpretations disagree or disagree with where I stand on it. Even I was also fascinated at just the depth of thought that went into some of these different things, even things that interpretations I don't necessarily agree with, like sometimes, whenever believers in the past see the phrase the still waters, they thought well, that means baptism. You got some people in the early medieval period that every time they saw water in the Bible they thought baptism. I'm not necessarily sure that the waters of baptism is what Psalm 23 is talking about, but it sure makes us think. Same thing with the table. Whenever God prepares the table before them in the presence of their enemies. Some Christians immediately saw that and thought, oh, he's talking about the communion or the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist ceremony. I'm not 100% sure that that's right either, but I was encouraged by reading those accounts, those theologians, as they worked through the text and really tried to defend their position, because it made me think deeply about the words that I had been reading.
Speaker 2:One of the things to snap us out of nostalgia is to start thinking deeply about something again. Nostalgia at its very core is just a shallow impression. It's a memory more than it is a depth of study. I think once you start to really dig deep, it can't be nostalgic anymore. Because now when I read Psalm 23 and hopefully after people read the book they'll have the same feeling you can't help but think of all these other things. You have to make a decision on where you're going to stand and what you're seeing there.
Speaker 2:It helps us dig deeper into the text, similar to what I feel like I'll do this for you, so you don't have to do it what Eugene Peterson did with long obedience in the same direction with the Psalms of Ascent. You read that and you can't read those Psalms in the later part of the book of Psalms. You can't read them the same way because you've thought deeply on them. Now they speak much more richly as I read them. I got an opportunity to preach Psalm 122 the last day of the year. It was just a richness that maybe I wouldn't have had had I not thought deeply on it.
Speaker 1:I would like to talk a little bit about the process of writing as well. I can't help hearing in your language the way that your work as a pastor is integrated with your work as a writer. How do those two things fit together for you, and how are you going about the work of writing as a pastor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think many of the things I do as a pastor over into writing, because a lot of this is built, a lot of ministry is built on questions. Concerned people come to us as pastors and they ask us questions and what I? Over time you start to see certain types of questions. You start to kind of get a feeling for what are the needs, where are people at? And then you couple that with things you see online and in the broader world and you bring that together what you're seeing locally and you start to kind of see what are some of the questions that maybe I am equipped to answer. I don't think I'm equipped to answer all questions. I think there are some pastors that fall into that trap that think that they're an expert on everything. I think God has called us and equipped us in certain areas and when I see questions come together that I am equipped to answer, that's what I try to write on. So that's what becomes maybe an article or a book proposal, something that can speak to my people right here, right now. Well, you know the writing process something they'll speak to my people in two to three or four years when it all shakes out. If it's a book, but I think writing should. As a pastor, I feel like my writing should try to be helpful, it should try to answer those questions, and so I've tried to do that.
Speaker 2:For me, writing it has to fit into the margins. It kind of is is relegated to the edges of just because of my time. We've got four kids and we've got a farm, and then I have the church full time and I'm teaching, and so there's a lot of other things that that kind of take the front, second and third and fourth seats there. But writing is one of those things that I love to do and I just able to kind of go back to that and to think about how could I have a longer conversation? I always feel like I get to do a little of it on Sunday mornings and in my Bible studies I teach during the week.
Speaker 2:I manuscript my sermons because I've always been a writer before I was a speaker and so I feel like Sunday morning is an opportunity to give five or six pages, if I'm talking fast of of of a thought. Writing is the opportunity to be able to do that longer and that's why I like it so much. I think it works well for the pastor, because it allows you to to finish on a Sunday morning, close your mouth and to sit down and say all this other stuff that I wanted to give you, I'm going to give it to you in another way maybe, or I'm going to find an avenue to deliver that to you that carry on that conversation. And so I like that as a pastor because it allows me to to have a almost to use writing as the cutting room floor for the sermon, to be able to say I want to expand on this, I want to dig deeper into this, and so maybe I need to write a blog post or an article or or even a book on some of these things that I've discovered, even some twenty three.
Speaker 2:I preached through the Psalm verse by verse right at the beginning, before this was even a submitted project, when it was just kind of in my head and I was working on it. One of the first things I did that summer was preach through it verse by verse, and so it was kind of out of that in depth research that I did for that, and then the whole book then was able to kind of expand into a proposal and then into an actual project, and so I don't know. I feel like, as a pastor and a writer, those things really can integrate well if we allow them to and we see them as as one in the same.
Speaker 1:The way you describe it mirrors so much of my experience and I hear in your description this sense of patience but sort of faithfulness to the work that I think is required and it so often feels like the writing advice you get is you've got to write so much a day, you've got to be. You know, you've got to be all in on it. You've got to write towards what is what is sort of a breaking topic, is you know you're right at the forefront of a conversation. It's about how quick can you get this work out. But this idea of sort of writing in the margins, of recognizing these projects do I don't think people realize books are normally projects of years and not weeks or months. But your willingness to sort of just stay faithful to that work into those topics, I think it's a really helpful model for those of us who are who are not trying to just make it as a full time writer but trying to do that writing out of some other work, like the pastoral work itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love to maintain a Stephen King schedule and, you know, write 1000 plus words every morning and then continue on with the rest of my day, but it just doesn't happen and that's not what God has called me to in this season and I think we've got to recognize that and say that's OK. If my writing needs to progress a little slower, that's OK.
Speaker 1:Well, mark the book. Again, we've been talking about Lost Shepherd. What believers once knew about Psalm 23, that modern, the modern world has forgotten. A really helpful book. I'm grateful to have been able to have read it and also to endorsed it. I'd love to hear if people are interested in your work. Is there a place they can follow you? Of course, they can pick up the book wherever books are sold to have links to it. But then also maybe what, what you're working on now? Is there any sort of long project in the works we can be looking forward to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find me at markfugitcom and everywhere on most social media places. Social media happens. I am working on a couple of projects right now and I so they're in different stages of acceptance. Nothing is official official At this point.
Speaker 2:One of the projects I'm really excited about is is digging into Jesus and his teaching outdoors, kind of connecting the theology of how Jesus used the outdoors in his analogies, his stories, his comparisons just to, and how our understanding needs to be Maybe tuned up a bit in that area for us to really fully appreciate and understand what Jesus is teaching for us today, and so that's one of the projects I'm working on right now. I'm excited about that. I've also got a biography kind of in the works and we're working on some of that. But, as you know, there's a Word document a mile long with all the different things that I would love to write if I live long enough, and I think I think I have a Word document open right now from something about three days ago where I had an idea and I stopped everything else and wrote two pages completely unrelated to anything else I'm working on. So I just I'm excited that have an opportunity to have a conversation with any reader through the book, and so I'm looking forward to people reading it.
Speaker 1:I always like to ask about dissertations as well too, because nobody when do you get to talk about your dissertation? So I'm curious what the PhD work? What was the dissertation?
Speaker 2:on. So most of my academic study has been on medieval Christians, and violence is not a popular topic to bring up, but and so thank you for bringing it up by all means right at the end. Yeah, so I wrote on the Cathar heresy in southern France in the 1200s, basically a dualistic, almost Gnostic heresy that came out, kind of an adaptation of Christianity into something else in southern France, but I wrote specifically about the crusade against it and how Christians weaponized scripture to promote violence. And one of the things that I was trying to push back on and one of the things I always try to push back on is this myth that access to scripture was, or lack of access to scripture is, what really created some of these terrible things that we see in medieval history terrible violence and the crusades and those types of things.
Speaker 2:What I wanted to say was it wasn't access or lack of access, it was interpretation. So that's the same reason they were able to look at the same scripture that we see today and do terrible things and justify it. It's to push back on this idea that, well, with the Reformation we got access to scripture and now we are going to be better people. Well, unfortunately, we still see Christians misusing scripture to do terrible things in the name of God and as true believers and as people of hope, as God has called us to be, we should be aware of that and we should realize that, yes, people can do terrible things with scripture, and we don't want to be those people. We want to keep the gospel, good news of great joy for everyone. And so, anyway, I wrote about how that scripture was weaponized and then, in the 1200s, to do terrible things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds really interesting and you're a great pastor and writer. You contextualize that down for all of us that aren't familiar with 12th century French history. I'm sure, if anybody out there is interested, I'm sure you could reach out. He'll pass on a link to the dissertation. But of course go pick up a copy of Los Shepard, all of those links in the show notes. And, mark, really a privilege to talk to you and excited about work to come. We'll have you back on, for sure.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. While you're there, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a time to subscribe to the show and possibly leave a review. You can do that by clicking one of the stars, a rating, or typing out a short message. I always love getting that feedback what you've been enjoying, what you'd like to hear more of, plenty more to come in the weeks ahead. I'm looking forward to those conversations with you, as always. Thanks for listening, until next time.