Jack Reese has spent more than fifty years in Christian ministry. He has served churches in Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas as senior pastor, executive pastor, campus minister, and teacher, walking alongside both young and old through seasons of faith, doubt, beauty, and fracture.
His work has also carried him into the academy, where he has taught students at every level, from freshmen to doctoral candidates, and has served as both college and seminary dean. He holds a PhD in theological studies from the University of Iowa
For five years, starting in 2013, Jack served as President and CEO of the Foundation for Community Empowerment in Dallas, addressing acute poverty and racism and helping create pathways of economic and personal advancement through college-level coursework in the humanities for adults living in extreme poverty.
Jack has composed more than twenty-five hymns and is the author of several books, including The Body Broken, At the Blue Hole, and Grace, Sideways.
He is married to Lesa, a speech-language pathologist, educator, and co-founder of Ethos Speech Language Learning. They live in San Antonio, Texas, where they enjoy cooking together, singing, traveling, reading (especially geeky social science books), hosting friends, and spending time with their six adorable grandchildren.
A deeply personal account of a church on the edge of death, tracing the hard truth that resurrection belongs only to those who face their own dying—whether through decline and loss or by costly, communal discipleship.
A witness to seasons of uncertainty and doubt, when old answers no longer hold and God seems hidden—and when faith becomes most alive.
A theological reflection on fragmentation and loss, showing how broken churches can embody the broken Christ and find the peace they seek.
Faith never rises from the soil whole. It pushes upward, seed to bud to fruit, through setbacks and seasons, in innocence when the questions are gentle and the answers safe, in the wonder of prayers fulfilled, in the uneasy waiting when hearts crave any answer at all, through confessions laid bare to the dark, in hope that lifts its face to the morning.
Faith is a mongrel. It is mixed, blended, crossbred, full of counterforces and contrasts, seeking wholeness, seeking light.
Doubt is crucial to these intertanglings of faith. To say doubts are mixed with faith is like saying wet is mixed with rain. Doubt is an indispensable voice in our spiritual discernings. Sometimes it leads. Sometimes it sits quietly in the corner, waiting to be noticed. But it’s always near, assuring us that the strength of our faith doesn’t depend on having all the answers but on choosing to believe anyway.
There will be days when faith goes quiet, when trust seems voiceless or afraid. Wait. Lean in. Stillness is necessary for faith’s ripening, which springs from both our devotion and our doubt. But doubt is not unbelief. Its presence does not mean faith is dead.
Doubt, rather, nourishes faith, keeping it from decaying into arrogance. Or apathy. What blooms from that soil may be slower, may be smaller, than the pumped-up, hollowed-out faith that avoids asking the hard questions, but it’s real. Not unbruised but real. And real faith will last.
—from Grace, Sideways
Image: EglantineShala/Pixabay