Josh White
12 min read ⭑
“My reawakening to grace is driven by an understanding that we may never understand why we hurt, but when we look to the cross, we can trust that God, through Jesus, has done something about it.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
It’s hard for me to truly speak to what would be a go-to meal for me in a hometown that has as much culinary diversity as Portland. I recognize the irony in using the word diversity in connection with the whitest city in America, but there are many things that make PDX an enigma, and it’s truly a foodie’s paradise.
I could speak of the early years of Door of Hope, the church my wife and I planted in 2009 and that I still lead. Back then, we had two Sunday evening services packed with spiritually hungry bohemian kids that filled the room with as much excitement as they did patchouli and B.O. I would often end the night with fellow pastors and friends by inhaling a bowl of crab pad thai served only after 10 p.m. at the Whiskey Soda Lounge.
However, being from “Portlandia”—it currently feels more like “Beyond Thunderdome”—it’s easy for one to assume that I’m one of those pastors who try to keep up with the cultural snobbery of my urban environment by drinking only $4 cups of designer black coffee that tastes like tea, the nest whiskeys, or microbrew beers that taste like tart cherries and smoked chocolate or by eating ice cream that comes in flavors like arbequina olive oil or fish sauce caramel, maple donuts with bacon, quail eggs on steak tartar, and white curry with smoked brisket.
Yes, I have enjoyed some of those things in the past, but I no longer drink or eat sugar, and the contrarian in me makes me proudly drink Starbucks with cream, which horrifies my fellow Portlanders.
So if I were to be honest, having grown up a poor white boy in a depressed mill town in the rainy Northwest, fine dining throughout my childhood and a guilty pleasure still to this day is a quarter pounder with cheese (no onions) and a medium fry from McDonald’s.
Josh White
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
Ever since reading Tremendous Trifles by G. K. Chesterton some 20 years ago, I’ve embraced the title of amateur. The word amateur comes from the Latin amator, which simply means “lover.” My blessing and curse is that almost everything interests me. I tend to give myself to those interests with near obsession. I can love with a recklessness that can quickly overwhelm others, but whatever the downsides, this much is true: When I love, it is sincere.
Being an amateur also means I can be a scattered optimist. My mental glitches and complicated childhood make it extremely difficult to embrace a singular creative endeavor without feeling panicked and queasy. Being willing to dabble in nearly everything has led me to consider my life as simply an unfinished event.
This leads to ideas often piling up and ultimately being forgotten. However, the ideas and interests that do make it out of my mind into “the real world” (as my wife calls it) are romanced with such passion that I become convinced everyone should be as enthusiastic as I am about the object of my affection. At least, until I am not. Much like Don Juan, once the romance is over, each passion is soon discarded for a new lover.
So outside of leading a church, writing, and making music, I continue to lose myself in a variety of interests that include: the ideas of Jacque Ellul, Rene Girard, and Owen Barfield; the literature of Cormac McCarthy, Rachel Cusk, DF Wallace, and many others; 20th-century poetry; boxing; home renovation and interior design; and tattooing. Such is the life of the amateur.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
I came to faith at 27, so I’ve never been able to comprehend the “Stepford Wife” approach to Christianity. I also recognize that those who fit into that category have no idea what I am talking about. There is a lot of talk about vulnerability these days among Christians, which usually means they read a Brene Brown book. I mean no disrespect, but I suspect that our often unnatural approach to letting others into our menagerie of artificial needs is the outcome of some lingering Puritan hangover. We have been so trained to present to the world an ideal we can’t keep, that honesty around how broken we are is viewed as the kryptonite.
To avoid being accused of deflection or performing some kind of sleight of hand to avoid sharing, here are a few of my albatrosses.
1. I have a bent toward a libertine spirit. “More is more” tends to be my life motto. I had to stop drinking last year due to me dangerously moving toward becoming “the whiskey priest” of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. Sobriety has been a gift—for everyone involved!
2. I was forced into a four-month sabbatical last summer because I lost sight of Jesus in my service to him. Like Jonah, I had become a reluctant prophet. My frustration over what was happening in my city bled into the pulpit and the home, turning me into a bitter martyr who had very little love for others. Confession has been catharsis and acceptance of my limitations restorative!
3. Finally, an area where I continue to struggle and have found no rest is the mental-verbal rage I experience behind the wheel in Portland, especially when stuck behind the smug cyclist who, while saving the environment, feels justified in holding me up. I find my mind can quickly transform into something like the ultraviolent scenes of Clockwork Orange. According to Jesus, that makes me a daily murderer. Thank goodness grace is always unfair.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
One of the most powerful things that have happened for me as of late is a reawakening to the very real grace of God and a hunger for revival in our city. As I come up on 14 years of leading Door of Hope, it has been a profound time of reflection and renewal around a vision that I lost sight of somewhere along the line. It’s funny how quickly we forget to remember. The completion of my book, Stumbling Toward Eternity, last summer was the beginning of that journey home.
The book is a combination of a theological exploration of the seven words Jesus spoke from the cross and a literary memoir. I wanted to interpret the brokenness of my past, the anxieties of the present, and the fears of the future through the lens of the cross.
I emphasize my difficult relationship with my father, a man who struggled with severe lifelong addiction and lived in isolation in rural Alaska until his death last February. This was a relationship that found healing in the cross on both sides. There’s the son who found peace despite the inexplicable suffering he experienced from his father’s abandonment and the Father who was pursued and found by Jesus at the close of his lonely twilight. I was with Dad when his appointed time came. I was looking into his teary eyes. I couldn’t stop that “fearful owl” death, but I was able to comfort him as he crossed into that unknown.
All I can say is my reawakening to grace is driven by an understanding that we may never understand why we hurt, but when we look to the cross, we can trust that God, through Jesus, has done something about it.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
Martin Luther once wrote to an anxious Melanchthon the shocking phrase, “Sin boldly!” The first time I read it, I thought to myself, Now this is some crazy, cheap grace. But the more I thought about it, the more convicted I became. I, like Melanchthon, was struggling with grace, because I didn’t understand what I now call the “law of mixture.”
Mixture is the frustration that lies at the base of human existence. We want to be our ideal selves but never seem to be satisfied with the self we currently are. As believers, we know its root is sin, but what seems to be a blind spot is that mixture does not dissipate as Christians. In fact, Christ’s very presence amplifies it.
This is why Luther went on to write, “But cling to Jesus and his grace more boldly.” This isn’t cheap grace; it’s a revelation of what grace is—love without contingency. It can’t be stopped, but we can lose sight of it. Why? Because intimacy with Jesus means living in the light, and we can’t come into the light without being continually exposed.
One of the great and painful lessons I’m still learning is that the victory I have in Christ is not the conquering of my mixture. It’s the victorious Christ working in and through my mixture because, in his loving freedom, he chooses to do so. The question I must ask daily is, Am I willing to actually surrender this glitchy vehicle called me to its rightful owner?
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
I have discovered no greater or more difficult practice than that of confession. Confession reminds me that my sin may be forgiven, but if I hide it, it hides God from my senses, no matter what disciplines I adhere to. Confession is my acceptance of the forgiveness that is already mine in the context of community. Remember the first thing God said over humanity in an unfallen state: “It’s not good for man to be alone” (see Genesis 2:18). This is why confessing our sin is often where Jesus meets with us most powerfully and intimately.
As much as I love to think, study, and pray in solitude. I’ve been increasingly aware of how quickly our practices can put us back on the ladder of self-improvement rather than lead us to the foot of the cross. For artists like myself, the tendency to spiritualize wild independence under the guise of spiritual formation has led many—including myself—into that opaque world of secrecy and selective sanctification, those things we do to make ourselves feel okay in the world.
The replacement of surrender and relationship with behavior modification and privatization will always be a problem in the church.
A few years back, I began to push into radical confession and witness with Door of Hope. It has been revolutionary in bringing healing to relationships, authenticity to the community, and an atmosphere that’s genuinely compelling to the lost in our city. However, for me, it’s much harder than the contemplative practices I’ve adhered to over the years like fasting, solitude, silence, and so on. Why? Because it doesn’t allow space for hiding, and it turns the church into something more akin to an AA meeting, which I think is the path forward post-COVID.
The world is not compelled by our pretense or our silence but by our radical vulnerability—our honesty about our sin and our loving witness to the King who has forgiven us. Why? Because we know that on our worst day, Jesus is crazy about us, and that communicates more than we can imagine.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are some resources that have impacted you?
As someone who can be obsessive, it’s very difficult to narrow down just three key resources that were spiritual game changers. Because my personality is so excitable, every time I find something that scratches an existential itch, at least for a while, I think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever discovered. I can burst into a staff meeting and yell out, “You guys have to watch Fleabag! It has so many pinpoints of grace.”
And before I can finish the sentence, someone will sarcastically reply, “Is it the best show ever?”
My answer, though exasperated by the rude mockery of my sincerity, is, “Yes, in fact, it is.”
So I will list works that I’ve returned to again and again over the 22 years of my faith. And a disclaimer here: I’ve never read anything in which I agreed with everything. So here are more than a few transformative works. Forgive my indulgence.
1. As a new believer, both The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and The Saving Life of Christ by Major Ian Thomas gave me a hunger for revival—personally and communally.
2. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis introduced me to the idea of sacred romance and paradox.
3. Everything by George MacDonald and the strange novels of Charles Williams taught me to live with a sacramental cast.
4. Lit by Mary Karr, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman reminded me that literature and poetry are still the best guides into the power and beauty of language and the universal longings of what it means to be human.
5. Incarnation by T.F. Torrance and Athanasius, Church Dogmatics by Karl Barth (especially Vol. 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation), How to Be a Theologian of the Cross by Gerhard Forde, and The Cruciality of the Cross by P.T. Forsyth have all solidified for me an unwavering commitment to keeping Christ and him crucified at the center of all Christian discourse. For it is in this center we find grace.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
If I had to pick one thinker who could potentially change the approach of the church positively post-COVID, it would probably be Jacques Ellul (1912-1994). That said, Rene Girard, another French Christian thinker, and his invaluable work on Mimetic Theory is a must as well. Ellul has one work, though, that is more accessible than anything else he or Girard ever wrote, and that is Presence in the Modern World (2016, Wipf and Stock Publishers). Written in 1948, this book is prophetic and a must-read. I’ll just share two quotes from the book:
“In the world, everyone seeks to be a wolf; no one is assigned to play the sheep’s role. Yet the world cannot survive if no one bears living witness to this sacrifice. This is why it is essential for Christians to guard against being wolves spiritually, that is, spiritual dominators. Christians must accept others’ domination over them and daily sacrifice their lives, reflecting in this way the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.”
“Thus we are caught between two necessities that form an unresolvable tension. On the one hand, we cannot make this world less sinful; on the other, we cannot accept it as it is. To reject either side is to reject the actual situation in which God has placed those whom he sends into the world.”
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
Right now, I’m preparing for the release of Stumbling Toward Eternity, and instead of looking to it as a possible escape from leading Door of Hope, it has actually caused me to double down on my faithfulness to a church that, like so many in the city, was cut in half during the pandemic. Although there has been a migration out of Portland and we’ve lost many pastors and churches, God is moving and strengthening those who have stayed. And although I’m heartbroken by friends who have abandoned their faith (and there are more than I’d like to admit), there’s a new wave of people meeting Jesus for the first time, and the church is thriving again.
My heart now is to simply integrate my writing with my role as lead pastor and embrace the prophetic role God has called me to. I’m already working on a new book called Kingdom of Grace: Interpreting the Sermon on the MountThrough the Cross of Christ. I also work closely with the Luis Palau Association and am finishing a new record. But mostly, I’m loving the Jesus who loved me first and enjoying my beautiful wife, two amazing kids, and friends. Oh, and I’m honing my tattoo skills on my son’s friends. And since prison-style tattoos are popular right now, I can continue to be an amateur without fear of retribution.
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16, ESV).
In our Western culture, the idea of confession is somewhat strange, isn’t it? After all, we pride ourselves on our individualism. In how unique we are. Self-made. Independent.
But when we give our lives to Jesus, we find that his kingdom operates very differently. Instead of self-effort, we find grace. Instead of individualism, we learn dependence. And instead of pride, humility.
Perhaps that’s why so many believers—Josh included—have found a deeper level of intimacy with God and his people through confession. As we humble ourselves and get vulnerable, open up to others, and admit we desperately need grace, we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts in a new way.
This culture of ours may call confession strange, but the Bible calls it powerful—and the first step toward healing. Which message will we trust?
Josh White is a speaker, recording artist, author of Stumbling Toward Eternity, and founding pastor of Door of Hope, a thriving church community in the heart of Portland, Oregon. Josh is a self-proclaimed amateur, a lover of learning. And although everything interests him, above all, he’s serious about Jesus, obsessed with grace, and holds tenaciously to the centrality of the cross. In May of 1996, Josh met his wife, Darcy, at the now-defunct Satyricon nightclub in Portland. They have two beautiful children and have been back in the city where they fell in love since 2007.
