About
Welcome to the Church Reset Substack! I’m Jack Wilkie, the author of Church Reset: God’s Design for So Much More and Failure: What Christian Parents Need to Know About American Education. I also co-host a couple of podcasts (mentioned below) and spent 9 years in the pulpit as a full-time preacher in the churches of Christ.
For 12 years I’ve written almost every single week for the Focus Press website. I’ve occasionally posted on my personal site as well, usually on topics more related to my personal interests or when I wanted to make clear that I was not speaking for Focus Press with an article. You’ll find my spicier takes on the Covid debacle there, for example. And, of course, I’ve been known to journal my thoughts on Christianity, culture, politics, and more via Facebook.
It seems like the right time to put them all in the same place. With Substack’s seamlessly easy subscription service as an option, it’s a natural fit for what I’ve been wanting to do for some time.
What to expect
My aim is to continue to write an article weekly. Life with 4 kids under school age, plus house hunting, plus my numerous other irons in the fire may mean I don’t complete one every week, but that is my goal.
What about Focus Press?
I’m still very much involved with Focus Press. My writing here will point to Focus Press often, and vice versa. Think Deeper Podcast, Who Let the Dogma Out?, and all of the other works I’m involved in there will continue.
When is the next book due for release?
I’m currently working on a Bible class guide through Mark’s Gospel. It will be available through Focus Press soon. Once that is done, I will begin in earnest with crafting chapters for my next book, Becoming a People. It will be a follow-up to my 2020 book, Church Reset, which critiqued consumer Christianity and called for a return to the Christ-centered, familial nature of the church we see in the New Testament.
Becoming a People will focus on the nature of authority in the church and how it is wielded by Christ to form the bounds of our unity. It will be largely an examination of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Many of the articles here will be related to this theme as I study for the book.
The aim is to have the book released by late summer to early fall 2023.
Do I have to pay to subscribe?
No, the majority of the content here will be free.
However, ahead of the publication of Becoming a People I plan to make the chapters available here, but those posts will be put behind a subscribers-only section for a few bucks per month. Subscriber feedback and questions will be highly encouraged as I craft the final draft of the book.
If you haven’t subscribed, please do. If you enjoy an article on the site, please share it on your social accounts. If you have thoughts on any article, please leave a comment or send an email to jack@focuspress.org. If there’s enough demand I may introduce an occasional Q&A.