Jared Ayers has always been a lover of words, from devouring the stories of Greek mythology and Edgar Allan Poe as a child to studying Scripture and theological works as an adult. As a pastor with over two decades of experience, Jared understands the sacred power of words to build up the body of Christ and communicate truth. With this mindset, he’s written a new book, You Can Trust a God With Scars — a guide through Christian truth for people who aren’t quite sure what they believe anymore.

In today’s interview, we chat with Jared about rugby (an unexpected source of rest and brotherly camaraderie), the best class he ever took on teaching and writing, and the spiritual habits that keep him grounded as an Enneagram 3.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?

My favorite meals are the ones I prepare and share at my family table. That cherrywood dining table was given to my wife, Monica, and me on our wedding day. Since then, our family has grown and gathered around that table, welcomed family and friends to it, laughed and argued and told stories around it. It’s an artifact of our life together.

It was while we lived in Philadelphia’s Italian Market neighborhood that I developed a love for cooking, and the food and drink we taste at our table draw on the places and experiences that have shaped us. When we share a whole bronzino, grilled over charcoals and gnocchi with homemade pesto, it transports us to the summer we spent in Cinque Terre together. As our gathered friends pile plates with slices of herby porchetta, it keeps us connected to our old South Philly neighborhood. When we spend a slow evening picking over a pile of blue crabs in beer sauce, we’re savoring some of my wife’s roots from a small town on the Chesapeake. The meals we share at that well-worn dining table, in other words, tell our story.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?

The first time I set foot on a rugby pitch, I was 35. My daughter was playing in a soccer clinic. As I stood with the other parents, my gaze kept drifting to the adjacent field, where two men’s clubs were playing a match. I wandered over and struck up a conversation with a coach and a couple of players: was the club open to new members? Do you allow people to join who don’t have any experience in the sport?

“Absolutely,” I was told. “Come to training on Tuesday night. Make sure you’ve got cleats and some water. And health insurance.”

I’ve been playing rugby ever since, and I now coach my sons’ high school team. On the rugby pitch, there’s a fierce camaraderie forged from wildly different people undertaking a demanding sport together. Newcomers like me are welcomed without hesitation or question. A club will often be composed of players of very different body types, levels of skill and experience. And the sport draws together people from different backgrounds and walks of life who might not otherwise cross paths.

There’s also an unmatched gentlemanly culture to rugby that surprises many people, given its physicality. Two teams give and receive punishing hits for 80 minutes, wearing no pads or protection — and then afterward, shake hands and head to a pub together, caked in dirt, sweat and blood. It is, in so many ways, a picture of what a church community should be.

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 all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?

I buried my mom in Hanover, Pennsylvania, during finals week in my sophomore year of undergrad. Almost exactly a year prior, doctors discovered an advanced stage of cancer at what she thought would be a routine annual checkup visit.

I’ve processed that grief over the years, but this sort of loss isn’t one you “get over.” C.S. Lewis’ analogy for the loss of his wife resonates with me: he described in his journals feeling like an amputee. If you lose an arm, you may successfully undergo surgery and, in time, learn to get along in life again. But you’ll always be missing an arm.

In a similar way, although I’ve processed the pain of that loss and although I think it’s made me more compassionate to others in their pain, I still experience that grief in different ways and at unpredictable times as I move through the seasons and stages of my own life.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

I’m a writer, pastor and speaker. As a kid who stayed after school to read Greek mythology and Edgar Allan Poe stories in the school library and who grew into a pastor with a deep affection for the text and texture of Scripture, I’ve always had a deep sense of the holiness of words, language and story. And in my life’s work, I’ve always been drawn in a deep way to those outside of the church’s walls — to my many friends and neighbors over the years who live in the borderlands between faith and doubt.

My book, “You Can Trust a God With Scars,” is a hospitable conversation on Christian faith for thoughtful people both outside and inside institutional Christianity who ask the big questions about God, who wonder about Christ, who struggle with the church. It’s a guided tour of central Christian teaching that takes both faith and our questions seriously. I draw on Scripture and Christian theology and spirituality, and also on music, art, literature and many of the stories of the folks I’ve accompanied as a pastor to explore how, despite everything, it’s a good, beautiful, true thing to be a follower of Christ.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love 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?

In my early years as a pastor, I made a friend named Daniel. At the time, my family lived in a tiny apartment, so I’d often rise early on Sunday mornings, walk east and south through the dense tangle of city streets in our neighborhood and review my worship and sermon notes for the day in a neighborhood cafe.

Daniel would frequent that cafe around the time I did, and we were often the only two customers there. He’d be finishing off a Saturday night of club-hopping while I was starting my prep for Sunday worship. One Sunday, as he walked by me, he tilted his head to take a peek at my Bible and notes and asked, “Hey, are you some kind of priest or pastor or something?”

I admitted I was, sure I’d scare him off.

“Wow, no way. Well, see you next week, Father.”

And Sunday by Sunday, over the next few years, Daniel and I would spend the early hours of Sunday at that cafe, and he’d inevitably meander to my table, say hello and pose the same question: “So what are you talking about today, Father?”

I often think of my friend Daniel whenever I sit down to write or prepare to speak. Would Daniel, living his life outside the ruins of Christendom, understand what I’m saying? Would it provoke him, move him, make him wonder?

Daniel taught me the best preaching or writing class I’ve ever taken.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?

One of the practices that is shaping me most deeply in this season of life has been the practice of Sabbath — and it’s hard for me.

I’m the kind of person who always has a few projects cooking, whose to-do list is always growing, whose phone is often dinging. I’m an Enneagram 3, which (among other things) means I’ve got a semi-addictive relationship to accomplishing. Because of this, one of the spiritual practices I most urgently need is that of ceasing, resting.

So on Friday, I stop. I turn off my email. I put away the to-do list. I stay away from the office. And I rest. For me, this looks like savoring the carafe of coffee after the kids walk out the door to school. Praying the daily office slowly. Breathing. Listening to a piece of music on vinyl. Swimming in the ocean. Going for an unhurried walk. And taking time to cook a meal for my family.

Sabbath grounds me in creation: I was created for both work and rest. There is a King of the universe, and it’s not me. God is competent to keep running things when I’m not checking my inbox. And Sabbath grounds me in God’s redemption: the most important thing about me isn’t what I do but what was done for me.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?

1. The BibleProject app — hands-down the best resource for entering into the world of Scripture, experiencing its texture and meaning and experiencing in a fresh way what it says about the One it points to.

2. “The Supper of the Lamb.” This book was written by Robert Farrar Capon, an Anglican priest and also an accomplished chef. It’s part cookbook, part meditation on the spirituality and holiness of food, drink, the table and its guests. No other one book has so deeply shaped how I think about eating, drinking and sharing my table.

3. “Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.” Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, a prolific author, professor and literary critic, pens this fierce little work on the sanctity and power of language. It’s a tour de force for all of us who write, speak, preach, teach or in any other way employ words on the faithful stewardship and sacramental power of language.

Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?

I already mentioned the BibleProject app, but the Hallow app is another good tool. It has a resource that guides the participant through praying the Ignatian examen. I find that this daily spiritual exercise, developed by Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century, is an excellent way to finish the day: taking time to reflect on where God’s presence was with me and whether or not I noticed it, where I need God’s forgiveness and presence in my failings and missteps, and how I might commit my moments to God at the close of the day and the beginning of the one to come.

QUESTION #8: dream

God’s 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?

Birthing my book into the world — and the process of imagining it, playing with the sentences and paragraphs, pushing myself to do the work and to put it out there — has awakened a new sense in me of a vocation to write.

Which is funny, because as a pastor for more than two decades, I’ve been writing on a weekly basis for most of my adult life. But I’ve never thought about writing as inhabiting some dimension of my calling before. Even now, it makes me nervous to say, “I’m a writer,” and I often wonder whether I have anything really to say.

But I also have, underneath those insecurities, a burgeoning sense of desire to say things that will startle people awake to the holiness of life, make them wonder about God and invite them to be freshly amazed by grace. I hope to grow into the kind of writer whose words and sentences and musings and stories put people in touch with the mystery of the Word made flesh.

We loved Jared’s story about Daniel, the unexpected friend he spent Sunday mornings with at the local cafe. The anecdote highlights a powerful point: when we speak and teach, who are we communicating with? And are we keeping them — their needs, their hearts, their ways of life — in mind as we carefully craft our words?

This principle applies far beyond writing as a vocation. Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (ESV).

When we speak, email or even text another person, how can we keep their needs in mind so that our words are the exact gift of grace — seasoned with kindness, truth, and love — that their hearts are secretly aching for?

🎉 Easter Egg Activated!

Jared Ayers