Derek Vreeland — Centering Jesus

Title & Source Summary

Episode: BEMA 384: Derek Vreeland — Centering Jesus
Hosts: Marty Solomon and Brent Billings, with guest Derek Vreeland (Discipleship Pastor at Word of Life Church, St. Joseph, Missouri, and author of Centering Jesus)
Focus: Revelation 7:17 (“the Lamb at the center of the throne”), Christian spirituality, virtue ethics, the four sides of faith, and how the gospel bears on public and political life

In this interview episode, Marty and Brent talk with Derek Vreeland about his book Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms Our Communities, Ethics, and Spiritual Lives. The book grew out of Derek’s devotional reading of Revelation 7:17 during the unsettled fall of 2020. In that verse he found a needed picture: Jesus as the slain Lamb who rules from the center of the throne. The conversation covers Christian masculinity, the prophetic culture of Derek’s church, the idolatry of nationalism, the “spiritual but not religious” trend, Paul’s use of the word “spiritual,” and Derek’s four-sided model of faith: belief, confidence, trust, and allegiance. Throughout, Derek stresses that the Christian life is above all a way of living shaped by the cross and resurrection, not just a set of ideas to agree with.

Key Takeaways

• The Lamb at the center: Revelation 7:17 pictures the Lamb, not a lion or a warrior, at the center of God’s throne, shepherding a multi-ethnic multitude. That image is the foundation of the whole book.
• Christianity is a way of living: Theology matters and is necessary, but the heart of Christian experience is a cruciform life lived in the power of the resurrection.
• Compartmentalization is a malady: Many evangelicals keep their faith in one “cabinet” and their politics, hobbies, and other loyalties in others. Those other loyalties then shape their worship.
• Jesus makes us more human, not more “masculine” or “feminine”: Following Nate Pyle’s Man Enough, Derek argues that the quest for “biblical manhood” is foreign to the Gospels. The slain Lamb is an antidote to violent or hyper-aggressive masculinity.
• A discipleship void invites political discipleship: When churches reduce the kingdom of God to inner peace, political ideologies from the left and the right rush in to fill the gap.
• Nationalism as idolatry: When love of nation becomes the highest love, it is an idol. A strong emotional reaction to hearing this is often a sign that an idol is being disturbed.
• “Spiritual” in Paul means “of the Spirit”: Following Gordon Fee, Derek notes that Paul’s pneumatikos (spiritual) always points to the Holy Spirit. Christian spirituality is “spiritual” because of the Spirit and “Christian” because it centers on Christ.
• Faith has four sides: belief, confidence, trust, and allegiance. Most of us stop at belief.
• Faith is not certainty: Drawing on Greg Boyd, Derek describes faith as “enough confidence to act on what you believe.” That allows a person to stay tethered to God while wrestling with doubt.

Main Concepts & Theories

1. The Origin of Centering Jesus: Revelation 7:17

• Derek follows a two-year Bible reading plan and switches translations each cycle. In 2020 he was reading the NRSV.
• Revelation 7 shows the great multitude “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” worshiping before the throne.
• Verse 17 caught him: “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Other translations say “in the midst of the throne.”
• Context: Fall 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic, fights over masks and vaccines, a divisive presidential election, economic uncertainty, and renewed attention to racial injustice. Derek describes “rage in the air.”
• His response: The church needed “a fresh imagination of Jesus as the Lamb of God” at the very center of Christian life.
• This came out of devotional reading, close to lectio divina (slow, prayerful reading of Scripture), rather than formal study. A phrase “stuck” with him all day.

2. Christianity as a Way of Life

• Derek writes “for the church,” meaning books meant as tools for the church in North America to grow and flourish.
• Key distinction: Theological education and formation are necessary but are not the heart of Christian experience.
• The heart is “a way of living shaped by the cross and resurrection,” a cruciform (cross-shaped) life lived in resurrection power.
• Marty’s review called the book “grounded and safe.” Derek explains that it is safe because it is rooted in Scripture and the “Great Tradition” of historic Christianity. Even so, it pushes readers to act.
• Compartmentalization: Faith becomes one compartment among many (politics, hobbies, ideologies). Derek calls this a real malady in evangelical, post-evangelical, and non-denominational churches.

3. Rethinking Christian Masculinity

• Brent’s concern: Men’s ministries often assume a narrow cultural template (hunting, fishing, shared “struggles”) that leaves many men feeling they don’t belong.
• Derek’s thesis, built on Nate Pyle’s Man Enough (c. 2015): “Jesus didn’t come to make men more masculine and women more feminine.” Jesus came to make us more human, more alive, more connected to God, and formed into the image of God we were created to reflect.
• Derek affirms the historic Christian teaching that humans are created in God’s image and that bodies matter to God. However, the Gospels and the early church show no emphasis on gender performance.
• Why the emphasis exists: As culture has moved away from patriarchy (think of the 1950s world shown in Mad Men), some church leaders have tried to “reclaim masculinity” using cultural images that don’t look like Jesus.
• The Lamb as antidote: Jesus rules as a slain Lamb, a direct challenge to violent or hyper-aggressive models of manhood.
• Derek’s practice: Instead of “biblical manhood,” he asks, “How can we be men like Jesus?” He asks the same question for women: “What is it like to be a woman in the image of Jesus?”

4. The Prophetic Church and the Idol of Nationalism

• Word of Life Church is led by Brian Zahnd, who is known for a “prophetic edge.”
• Prophetic ministry: In the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, the church seeks God so deeply that it receives “a word from elsewhere” and passes it on to the people, even when that word is unpopular.
• Definition: Nationalism means loving one’s nation and national identity at a superior level. When love of nation becomes the highest of one’s loves, it is an idol.
• A pastoral diagnostic: When someone reacts viscerally to a sermon or post, Derek thinks, “I think your idol is getting messed with here.”

5. Kingdom of God vs. Privatized Faith

• The problem: Pietistic and revivalist forms of evangelicalism focus on the internal side of the gospel: God saves you, redeems you, and gives you inner peace. All of that is true, but it is incomplete.
• The irony: The kingdom of God was Jesus’s main teaching theme. It shaped his proclamation and parables and was what he taught between his resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:3).
• What follows: When kingdom language becomes purely personal, a political void opens up. Religious life gets separated from political opinion.
• What fills the void: Political ideologies from the left and the right “swoop in” and disciple people. Derek names the MAGA movement’s grip on white evangelicalism as the most striking example: shocking in one sense, predictable in another.
• Eugene Peterson’s insight (as Derek paraphrases it): The gospel is more political than we imagined, but “political in a way that no one guesses.”
• The Lamb’s way of ruling: Not the love of power, but the power of love, through self-giving and peace.

6. “Spiritual but Not Religious” and Pauline Spirituality

• Modernity’s “closed heaven”: The Enlightenment brought real benefits, but it also confined God and religion inside a naturalistic box. That has fed secularism and declining church participation.
• Grounds for hope: “Spiritual but not religious” people have a “crack in secularism,” an openness to transcendence. Derek says they have “a leg up” on purely secular or naturalistic people.
• Pastoral practice: Derek asks people about their “spiritual journey” and lets them define it, rather than asking about their religious background.
• Gordon Fee’s thesis: Every time Paul uses pneuma (spirit) or pneumatikos (spiritual), he is referring to the Holy Spirit, not simply to something immaterial.
  • Spiritual gifts, spiritual fruit, and spiritual knowledge all come from the Holy Spirit.
• Derek’s definition:
  • What makes Christian spirituality spiritual is our experience of the Holy Spirit.
  • What makes it Christian is that it is centered on Christ.
  • Because the Spirit’s work is to point us to Jesus, being spiritual in Paul’s sense means being centered on Jesus.

7. Virtue Ethics and the Theological Virtues

• The middle section of the book, “Centering Jesus in Our Moral Lives,” opens with an interlude on virtue ethics.
• In the Western tradition, especially Thomas Aquinas, faith, hope, and love are theological virtues: virtues that come from God and are given by God.
• The beautiful symmetry: The faith we have in God is itself a gift from God.
• The chapters on faith, hope, and love work together to keep Jesus at the center of each.

8. The Four Sides of Faith

Derek pictures faith as a square with four connected sides:

1. Faith as Belief
   • Christians have historically been identified partly by what they believe.
   • The Nicene Creed was called “the symbol of the faith.”
   • Essential doctrines have been handed down, and disciples have things to learn.
   • This side is necessary but elementary. It is where most people stop.
2. Faith as Confidence
   • This responds to the mistaken idea that faith means certainty.
   • It is especially important for people raised in fundamentalist settings where “everything’s first-tier doctrine” and the Bible is read hyper-literally.
   • Greg Boyd’s definition: “Faith is not feeling absolutely certain about what you believe. Faith is simply enough confidence to act on what you believe.”
   • Confidence lets a person cling to God while working through doubt.
3. Faith as Trust
   • Trust is action, behavior that grows out of belief and confidence.
   • It means putting your life and its direction into God’s hands.
4. Faith as Allegiance
   • This is where Derek originally meant the chapter to go.
   • Building on Matthew Bates, he notes that the Greek pistis (faith) often means loyalty or allegiance, especially in Paul.
   • King Jesus has our full allegiance in every area of life, which pushes back against the idolatry of nationalism.

9. Lectionary and the Christian Calendar

• Derek compiled his own Daily Office Lectionary and self-published it in about four weeks, releasing it just before the first Sunday of Advent.
• What a lectionary is: A collection of Bible passages arranged for reading. The Daily Office lectionary is a two-year plan with Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel readings every day.
• Why he made his own: The Book of Common Prayer version includes readings from the Apocrypha (such as 1 Maccabees and Ecclesiasticus) that many evangelical Bibles don’t contain. Many people also don’t need the rest of the prayer book’s Episcopal material, such as the service for ordaining a bishop.
• Appeal: It follows the Christian calendar, which Derek also discusses in Centering Jesus.

Examples & Applications

• Holy kiss test: When people say “I don’t interpret the Bible, I just take it the way it is,” Derek asks why they didn’t greet him with a holy kiss (Romans 16:16). Their move to a “holy handshake” shows that everyone interprets Scripture culturally.
• Men’s conference video: A large church in southern Missouri advertised a men’s conference with monster trucks, pro wrestling, and semi-automatic weapons. Derek asked, “What about guys who like to read? Who like to cook and clean the kitchen with their wife?”
• Accountability-group assumptions: Brent describes how men’s groups that assume every man shares the same struggles actually created struggles for him that he didn’t have before. Narrow assumptions can harm people.
• The baptism candidate: A woman preparing for baptism described herself as “spiritual but not religious” and found God through the 12 steps after struggling with drug abuse. Her openness to the transcendent was a doorway to faith, not a barrier.
• The visceral-reaction diagnostic: Pastors and individuals can treat strong emotional pushback against critiques of nation, party, or ideology as a prompt for self-examination: “Is an idol being touched here?”
• Grandpa math: Derek jokes that raising kids is 90% work and 10% fun, while being a grandparent is the reverse.
• Small-group use: Centering Jesus includes discussion questions for each chapter, and Derek is leading both in-person and online groups through it.
• Practical application: Try a lectionary-based reading plan that follows the church calendar (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost). This lets Christ’s life, not the election cycle or news cycle, set the rhythm of your year.

Potential Areas for Further Exploration

• The Lamb imagery in Revelation: Trace the “Lamb” (arnion) through Revelation 5, 7, 14, 19, and 21–22. How does John redefine power by showing a slain Lamb where the reader expects a Lion (Revelation 5:5–6)?
• Matthew Bates’s work (Salvation by Allegiance Alone, Gospel Allegiance): how pistis as allegiance changes our understanding of faith and salvation.
• Gordon Fee’s God’s Empowering Presence: Paul’s theology of the Holy Spirit and the meaning of pneumatikos.
• Greg Boyd’s Benefit of the Doubt: faith as confidence rather than certainty.
• Nate Pyle’s Man Enough: Christlike humanity versus cultural gender scripts.
• Brian Zahnd’s writings (e.g., A Farewell to Mars, Postcards from Babylon): Christian nationalism and the peaceable kingdom.
• Thomas Aquinas on theological virtues: how faith, hope, and love differ from the cardinal virtues.
• The kingdom of God in the Gospels: a survey of Jesus’s kingdom parables and how the Jewish expectation of God’s reign shaped his message.
• The Hebrew prophets and idolatry: how Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea confronted national idolatry and misplaced trust in political alliances.
• The Book of Common Prayer and the Daily Office: the history and spiritual formation of fixed-hour prayer and lectionary reading.
• The Great Tradition and creeds: the place of the Nicene Creed as “the symbol of the faith” and the difference between first-tier and second-tier doctrines.

Comprehension Questions

1. What verse inspired Centering Jesus, and why did its image feel especially important in the cultural setting of fall 2020?
2. According to Derek (building on Nate Pyle), what did Jesus come to do instead of making “men more masculine and women more feminine”? How does the image of the slain Lamb challenge popular ideas of masculinity?
3. Explain how a “discipleship void” in pietistic forms of evangelicalism can leave Christians open to being discipled by political ideologies.
4. Following Gordon Fee, what does Paul mean by “spiritual” (pneumatikos)? How does Derek use this to define what makes Christian spirituality both “spiritual” and “Christian”?
5. Name and briefly describe the four sides of faith. Why does Derek treat “faith as confidence” (rather than certainty) as so important for people from fundamentalist backgrounds?

Personal Summary

This episode keeps returning to one image: a slain Lamb at the center of the throne. Derek Vreeland’s Centering Jesus asks what would change if that image, rather than cultural masculinity, partisan politics, vague spirituality, or doctrinal certainty, actually sat at the center of our lives. His answers are both challenging and practical. Masculinity becomes Christlike humanity. Politics becomes allegiance to a King who rules by self-giving love. Spirituality becomes life in the Holy Spirit, who always points to Jesus. Faith grows from bare belief into confidence, trust, and full allegiance. Most importantly, Derek reminds us that Christianity is not a compartment of life but a whole way of living shaped by the cross and resurrection. The hardest invitation in the episode may be his diagnostic question: when something makes me react strongly, is the Lamb being challenged, or is one of my idols?