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About the Book
"The Art of Shepherding" by Dag Heward is a comprehensive guide for pastors and church leaders on the principles and practices of effective shepherding. The book covers topics such as spiritual leadership, pastoral care, discipleship, mentoring, and equipping the flock for ministry. Heward emphasizes the importance of leading with love, humility, and integrity, and offers practical advice for cultivating healthy and thriving churches.
Jerry Bridges
Jerry Bridges entered into the joy of his Master on Sunday evening, March 6, 2016, at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, the day after he suffered cardiac arrest. He was 86 years old.
Childhood
Gerald Dean Bridges was born on December 4, 1929, in a cotton-farming home in Tyler, Texas, to fundamentalist parents, six weeks after the Black Tuesday stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.
Jerry was born with several disabilities: he was cross-eyed, he was deaf in his right ear (which was not fully developed), and he had spine and breastbone deformities. But given his family’s poverty, they were unable to afford medical care for these challenges.
The separatist church in East Texas where the Bridges were members had an altar call after every service. Jerry walked the aisle three times, at the ages of 9, 11, and 13. But he later realized that he had not been born again.
His mother Lillian passed away in 1944 when he was 14.
Conversion
In August of 1948, as an 18-year-old college student right before his sophomore year began, Jerry was home alone one night in bed. He acknowledged to the Lord that he was not truly a Christian, despite growing up in a Christian home and professing faith. He prayed, ”God whatever it takes, I want Christ to be my Savior.”
The next week in his dorm room at the University of Oklahoma he was working on a school assignment and reached for a textbook, when he noticed the little Bible his parents had given him in high school. He figured that since he was now a Christian, he ought to start reading it daily, which he did (and never stopped doing for the rest of his days).
The Navy
After graduating with an engineering degree on a Navy ROTC scholarship, he went on active duty with the Navy, serving as an officer during the Korean conflict (1951-1953). A fellow officer invited him to go to a Navigator Bible study. Jerry went and he was hooked. He had never experienced anything like this before.
When stationed on ship in Japan, he got to know several staff members of the Navigators quite well. One day, after Jerry had been in Japan for six months, a Navy worker asked him why he didn’t just throw in his lot with the Navigators and come to work for them. The very next day, December 26, 1952, Jerry failed a physical exam due to the hearing loss in his right ear, and he was given a medical discharge in July 1953, after being in the Navy for only two years. Jerry was not overly disappointed, surmising that perhaps this was the Lord’s way of steering him to the Navigators.
When he returned to the U.S., he began working for Convair, an airplane manufacturing company in southern California, writing technical papers for shop and flight line personnel. It was there that he learned to write simply and clearly—skills the Lord would later use to instruct and edify thousands of people from his pen.
The Navigators
Jerry was single at the time, living in the home of Navigator Glen Solum, a common practice in the early days of The Navigators. In 1955 Jim invited Jerry to go with him to a staff conference at the headquarters of The Navigators in Glen Eyrie at Colorado Springs. It was there that Jerry sensed a call from the Lord to be involved with vocational ministry. He was resistant to the idea of going on staff, but felt conviction and prayed to the Lord, “Whatever you want.” The following day he met Dawson Trotman, the 49-year-old founder of The Navigators, who wanted to interview Jerry for a position, which he received and accepted. Jerry was put in charge of the correspondence department—answering letters, handling receipts, and mainly the NavLog newsletter to supporters.
When Trotman died in June of 1956 (saving a girl who was drowning), Jim Downing took a position equivalent to a chief operations operator. A Navy man, Jim Downing knew that Jerry had also served in the Navy and tapped him to be his assistant.
Jerry struggled at times in his role, unsure if this was his calling since his position was so different from the typical campus reps. After ten years on staff he told the Lord, “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. If you want me out of The Navigators you’ll have to let me know.”
Beginning in 1960, Jerry served for three years in Europe as administrative assistant to the Navigators’ Europe Director. In January of 1960, he read a booklet entitled The Doctrine of Election, which he first considered heresy but then embraced the following day.
In October of 1963, at the age of 34, he married his first wife, Eleanor Miller of The Navigators following a long-distance relationship. Two children followed: Kathy in 1966, and Dan in 1967. From 1965 to 1969 Jerry served as office manager for The Navigators’ headquarters office at Glen Eyrie.
From 1969 to 1979 Jerry served as the Secretary-Treasurer for The Navigators. It was during this time that NavPress was founded in 1975. Their first publications began by transcribing and editing audio material from their tape archives and turning them into booklets. They produced one by Jerry on Willpower. Leroy Eims—who started the Collegiate ministry—encouraged Jerry to try his hand at writing new material. Jerry had been teaching at conferences on holiness, so he suggested a book along those lines.
In 1978, NavPress published The Pursuit of Holiness, which has now sold over 1.5 million copies. Jerry assumed it would be his only book. A couple of years later, after reading about putting off the old self and putting on the new self from Ephesians 4, he decided to write The Practice of Godliness—on developing a Christlike character. That book went on to sell over half a million copies, and his 1988 book on Trusting God has sold nearly a million copies.
Jerry served as The Navigators’ Vice President for Corporate Affairs from 1979 to 1994. It was in this season of ministry that Eleanor developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She went to be with the Lord on November 9, 1988, just three weeks after their 25th wedding anniversary. On November 24, 1989, Jerry married Jane Mallot, who had known the Bridges family since the early ’70s.
Jerry’s final position with The Navigator’s was in the area of staff development with the Collegiate Mission. He saw this ministry as developing people, rather than teaching people how to do ministry. In addition to his work with The Navigators, he also maintained an active writing and teaching ministry, traveling the world to instruct and equip pastors and missionaries and other workers through conferences, seminars, and retreats.
Lessons
In 2014, Jerry published a memoir of his life, tracing the providential hand of God through his own story: God Took Me by the Hand: A Story of God’s Unusual Providence (NavPress, 2014). He closes the work with seven spiritual lessons he learned in his six decades of the Christian life:
The Bible is meant to be applied to specific life situations.
All who trust in Christ as Savior are united to Him in a loving way just as the branches are united to the vine.
The pursuit of holiness and godly character is neither by self-effort nor simply letting Christ “live His life through you.”
The sudden understanding of the doctrine of election was a watershed event for me that significantly affected my entire Christian life.
The representative union of Christ and the believer means that all that Christ did in both His perfect obedience and His death for our sins is credited to us.
The gospel is not just for unbelievers in their coming to Christ.
We are dependent on the Holy Spirit to apply the life of Christ to our lives.
His last book, The Blessing of Humility: Walk within Your Calling, will be published this summer by NavPress.
Legacy
One of the great legacies of Jerry Bridges is that he combined—to borrow some titles from his books—the pursuit of holiness and godliness with an emphasis on transforming grace. He believed that trusting God not only involved believing what he had done for us in the past, but that the gospel empowers daily faith and is transformative for all of life.
In 2009 he explained to interviewer Becky Grosenbach the need for this emphasis within the culture of the ministry he had given his life to:
When I came on staff almost all the leaders had come out of the military and we had pretty much a military culture. We were pretty hard core. We were duty driven. The WWII generation. We believed in hard work. We were motivated by saying “this is what you ought to do.” That’s okay, but it doesn’t serve you over the long haul. And so 30 years ago there was the beginning of a change to emphasize transforming grace, a grace-motivated discipleship.
In the days ahead, many will write tributes of this dear saint (see, e.g., this one from his friend, prayer partner, and sometimes co-author Bob Bevington). I would not be able to improve upon the reflections and remembrances of those who knew him better than I did. But I do know that he received from the Lord the ultimate acclamation as he entered into the joy of his Master and received the words we all long to hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” There was nothing flashy about Jerry Bridges. He was a humble and unassuming man—strong in spirit, if not in voice or frame. And now we can rejoice with him in his full and final healing as he beholds his beloved Savior face to face. Thank you, God, for this man who helped us see and know you more.
Jerry Bridges wrote more than 20 books over the course of nearly 40 years:
The Pursuit of Holiness (NavPress, 1978)
The Practice of Godliness (NavPress, 1983)
True Fellowship (NavPress, 1985) [later published as The Crisis of Caring (P&R, 1992); finally republished with a major revision as True Community (NavPress, 2012)]
Trusting God (NavPress, 1988)
Transforming Grace (NavPress, 1991)
The Discipline of Grace (NavPress, 1994)
The Joy of Fearing God (Waterbrook, 1997)
I Exalt You, O God (Waterbrook, 2000)
I Give You Glory, O God (Waterbrook, 2002)
The Gospel for Real Life (NavPress, 2002)
The Chase (NavPress, 2003) [taken from Pursuit of Holiness]
Growing Your Faith (NavPress, 2004)
Is God Really in Control? (NavPress, 2006)
The Fruitful Life (NavPress, 2006)
Respectable Sins (NavPress, 2007) [student edition, 2013]
The Great Exchange [co-authored with Bob Bevington] (Crossway, 2007)
Holiness Day by Day (NavPress, 2008) [a devotional drawing from his earlier writing on holiness]
The Bookends of the Christian Life [co-authored with Bob Bevington] (Crossway, 2009)
Who Am I? (Cruciform, 2012)
The Transforming Power of the Gospel (NavPress, 2012)
31 Days Toward Trusting God (NavPress, 2013) [abridged from Trusting God]
God Took Me by the Hand (NavPress, 2014)
The Blessing of Humility: Walk within Your Calling (NavPress, 2016)
For an audio library of Jerry Bridges’ talks, go here.
Funeral
Visitation for Jerry Bridges was held on Thursday, March 10, 2016, from 5 to 8 pm, at Shrine of Remembrance (1730 East Fountain Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80910).
The memorial service was held on Friday, March 11, 2016, at 2 pm at Village Seven Presbyterian Church (4055 Nonchalant Circle South, Colorado Springs, CO 80917).
a place to eat, sleep, and watch: emptiness in the modern household
I wondered if the editors at The New York Times  realized the irony in the title “The Pandemic Created a Child-Care Crisis. Mothers Bore the Burden.” Working mothers, who once bore their children in the womb, were forced by the pandemic to now bear what was called the burden of their children’s care. In response to this “child-care crisis,” the author writes, mothers “became the default solution.” Forced from work back into the home, “forgotten and shunted to the sidelines,” these women waited for their kids to get vaccinated before returning them to daycares and schools. The milestone reached in January 2019 — when women outnumbered men in the workforce for the first time in American history — crumbled before the triumph could be fully enjoyed: Men, once again, hold the majority. Only 56 percent of women are working for pay — the lowest since the mid-eighties. At stake for these working mothers, the author claims, is not simply a paycheck, but self-determination, self-reliance, and the survival of their complex selves. As this childcare crisis lingered over weeks and months, “the shock turned to despair at the drudgery of the days, the loss of their professional purpose, the lack of choice in it all.” Some of the women interviewed for the article expressed sentiments like, “I love everything about motherhood, and yet it doesn’t feel fair that I should have to sacrifice my career.” Others asked, “We think we’ve progressed so much, and then this pandemic happens and we all just revert back to these traditional behaviors. . . . And this is a good moment to reflect, why do we do that?” Have we arrived at the bottom when the Times  sees nothing amiss in including the example of a mother who walks dogs professionally, wanting out of full-time mothering in preference to being “out and dirty with animals”? Rather outside with dogs than inside with her kids. Much is amiss in our society and our families, as the article displays without realizing it. But instead of criticizing the disagreeable, I would actually like to defend these women and some of their sense of misfortune. The loss is greater than they suppose, and it includes us all, for it includes the household. Productive Women Have you ever considered how industrious and productive the Proverbs 31 woman is — how much work  she has accomplished? Over the course of a lifetime, this woman not only has raised admiring children in the instruction of the Lord, but has sought wool and flax, and worked with willing hands; brought her family food from afar; considered fields and bought them; planted a vineyard; dressed herself in strength; considered her merchandise with regard to profit; labored throughout the night; made bed coverings and clothes for winter; sold homemade garments and linens; contributed to the needs of the poor; labored such that her husband was respected in public; and not bowed to idleness or inactivity. Was she a stay-at-home mother or a working woman? Yes. “The modern home, in many respects, is hollow.” Her duties toward the people  of her home required production  for her home. She was not forced to choose between them. Her ideal was to love her husband and children and  to contribute her gifts and ingenuity to the production of the household. She did not replace Dad as primary worker, but she did work alongside him, in different ways in different seasons, to help build and manage their realm. When we read of women who express a distaste for confinement to the realm of the household, thinking of it as a sort of dungeon, we can hear in their complaint a groan that the household is not what it is supposed to be. The productivity, the ingenuity, the purposefulness — for mother and all members involved — no longer exists as it once did within  the household. The modern home, in many respects, is hollow. Though filled with more goods than ever, it has been emptied of purpose. Place to Eat, Sleep, and Watch The modern family can be described, simplistically, in terms of the household after the Industrial Revolution. During the mechanization and technological advancement of the world, work left the home — and men with it. This transition dealt a severe blow to the household as containing family business, as a productive realm. C.R. Wiley writes, We don’t think of our households as centers of productive work. That’s because the economy has largely moved out of the house. During the industrial revolution steady work in factories replaced the home economy, and many people were forced to leave home to make a living. In the process the household was reduced to what we think of today — a haven in a heartless world — a place to sleep and eat and maybe watch television. ( Man of the House , 31) In the preface to Wiley’s book The Household and the War for the Cosmos , Nancy Pearcey describes some of the effects that followed the exodus of men and work from the home: Education moved from the home to schools. Care of the elderly and sick went from the home to institutions. Grandparents and singles moved out to separate houses and apartments. Recreation allured beyond family bounds or became a privatized enjoyment. Family devotions, even, migrated from the home to churches and youth groups. The home grew thin. Its functions that tied members together were outsourced. People  were emptied (extended family, singles, sick, and school-aged children), productivity  left (home industry, education of children, good works in the community), and with it all, much of its purpose  fled. What remained for mothers? Housework and early childcare. Of course, neither housework nor childcare is a small matter — especially not childcare. Chesterton was exactly right not to pity Mrs. Jones, the former teacher and now stay-at-home mother, for the “smallness” of taking care of her children: How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness. ( What’s Wrong with the World?  95) Nevertheless, as production, people, and purpose have been outsourced to specialists — including ever-growing Father State — a loss has occurred. The modern mother has fallen from homeschool educator, industrious worker, healthcare provider, helper of the poor and elderly, and host to doing good for those in the community, to being tempted to insignificance and invited to send even her infant children out of the home and into daycare. Emptiness We All Feel Not just the mother has been affected. The father  went from the head leading a body, engaged in the education of children, the care of the elderly, the production of a family business, the passing on of a family trade, the shepherding of souls, the defense of the community, the regulating of relations between members, and the representation of the family in society, to the one who spends vast time away from his home, working for another’s household (a corporation or the government), giving what little he has left to his family when he returns. The son  went from heir of the family business, steward of the household responsibilities, co-laborer with his brothers, and recipient of discipleship from his father, to one who plays video games and charts his own path in his late teens. The daughter  went from early preparation for marriage, learning from a mother how to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, strong in her various realms of competency, building the household with her mother and siblings, being what Chesterton called the great universalist, competent in many different things, to being trained as a specialist away from her mother. The elderly  went from honored and provided for to regularly forgotten. Singles  went from their father’s house to their own, often greeted nightly by loneliness. The orphan  and widow  became dependent on the state. Learning from the Past I do not mean to idealize the ancient family or say that the modern family is in every way inferior. The pages of Scripture include records of deep brokenness in premodern families, even in families of great men and women of faith. Nor am I suggesting that a return to the past is possible (or even desirable). But I am suggesting that our frantic, detached, emptied, individualistic ideals of what a family should be stand to learn from times past. Ancient ideals can be reforged and remembered and reappropriated to match the new times and new challenges of today. The family can be bonded by more than mere sentiment and consumption, but by meaningful mission and output. One of the benefits of our modern situation, in fact, is how quickly reformation can happen. While a robust vision of reformation would require far more space, here are a few ways I’ve seen others (or tried myself) to bring people, production, and purpose back into the home. People.  Guard family rhythms like eating dinner together and going to church together. Schedule routine times to have neighbors, family, or church members in your home. For those who are able, consider living near (or with) your parents and extended family. Consider how you can be a blessing to them in their old age. Other ideas include inviting singles and widows over for family meals, trying homeschooling or hand-in-hand structures that leave responsibility with the parents as well as teachers, and having the father work some from home if possible. And of course, the most obvious way to fill your home with people is to have children. “Perhaps the pandemic didn’t so much create a childcare crisis as expose a household one.” Production.  Consider the talents and passions in the home (especially of the wife and young adults), and dream together about a family business. I know a family who has a T-shirt printing company in their garage, a family who does Airbnb, a family who gives music lessons, and a family who grows a vegetable garden and sells the produce. If you have sons, consider something like lawn mowing or snow shoveling. Consider bigger investments, such as real estate. Consider foremost how you can invest riches in heaven through creative ways of blessing your local church and those in your community. Purpose.  Consider developing a family creed to give direction to decisions. Consider family goals for now, later, and beyond. Establish the priorities of the home and how each member fits into them. Limit screen time and awaken the lost discipline of family worship. Envision how your family can strengthen your local church and serve missionaries overseas. New purpose can invigorate the Christian family to address the fact that perhaps the pandemic didn’t so much create a childcare crisis as expose a household one and gave us a fresh opportunity to find solutions.
