Our churches, seminaries, and other institutions should do all they can to enable young men like Dan to accomplish their goals, to step into those places in academia where these intellectual battles are taking place. J. Gresham Machen spoke about this more than 100 years ago: “The church is waiting for men of another type. Men to fight her battles and solve her problems. The hope of finding them is the one great inspiration of a seminary’s life.” 

It took me a while to remember who Joshua Harris was when he “kissed Christianity goodbye.” The news didn’t really rattle me; he’s so far from the mainstream of my life that I missed whatever it was he was selling. And yet it was a big deal in Christian circles.

Christians should look for other kinds of heroes. In the spirit of that thought, I had a chance to grab lunch with a young man, Dan, from my church a few weeks ago. He used to be the Program Manager at the PCA church where I’m a member; now he’s returned to Pittsburgh, having completed an MAR at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. At present, Dan is working toward a Master of Theology degree (ThM), with hopes to continue on to PhD studies in Old Testament.

My lunch with Dan turned out to be one of the most fascinating things I’ve done in a long time. He spoke of the sense of surprise that he felt while listening to a Yale Biblical Studies course online several years ago.

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