Fred Zaspel:
Hi, this is Fred Zaspel, executive editor with Books At a Glance. We’re talking today with Dr. Sam storms. He is general editor of the ESV men’s devotional Bible. Dr. Storms is the lead pastor for preaching and vision Bridgeway church in Oklahoma City. He is the author of a number of books. He has been in ministry for probably more years that he would like me to say right now but many of you know him, he is familiar to a lot of our readers. Dr. Storms it’s great to have you with us.
Sam Storms:
Fred, it’s great to be with you today. Glad to be on your show.
Fred Zaspel:
All right, what is the men’s devotional Bible? I have to say this book is not at all what I expected when I heard about it and I think it would be good to clarify up front that this is not a Bible, it is not a study Bible as such. Tell us what it is.
Sam Storms:
Well, it is a Bible. It is of course the entire text of the English standard version that many people and most of your listeners are probably familiar with. It’s the one that I typically use. We have the ESV in our church here in Oklahoma City, but you are right it is not a study Bible. The ESV study Bible is a separate resource. It’s actually about twice the size and weight of this one. It has notes at the bottom of the page covering most of the verses and extensive charts and maps and the like. This is a Bible that is designed uniquely for men in the sense that we have provided 365 daily devotional readings. So you can go through it you know if you’re committed to reading the Bible through in one year there will be one devotional that can be read in less than five minutes that is uniquely tied to a very important passage in a particular book of the Bible so we do provide brief introductions to each book.
We taught very briefly about when it was written and why and then we have a special element that you won’t find in other Bible, even in study Bibles, where the introduction will talk about how this particular book of the Bible speaks to the heart of a man, to the inner life of a man. And so we designed it really to do more than just fill us with knowledge, although knowledge is absolutely essential. Any devotion that is devoid of knowledge is probably fanaticism. But it is designed to really inflame the heart, awaken the affections and challenge men to really think deeply about the relationship with the Lord, their responsibilities to their spouse, to their kids, to their jobs, to their friends, to their local church.
So you’re right this is a kind of unique Bible. I’ve been recommending here in our church that the ladies purchase one of these for their husbands or fathers or sons or brothers or uncles or whomever, because it’s a great gift and it’s one that they can use just as they would a regular ESV Bible, but it has this added dimension of this devotional emphasis throughout the course of the year.
Fred Zaspel:
That really is good, I have to say that when I first heard of it I was a little bit skeptical. You know there’s everything for men and everything for women and for every select group anymore and so I was wondering what is this going to be? And when I got it I was just really impressed. This is just an excellent thing in fact I bought an extra copy and gave it to my son for Christmas. How did this idea come about in the first place?
Sam Storms:
Well that’s a good question I’m not sure I have the answer other than there is also an ESV Women’s Devotional Bible and that came out I think probably about a year to year and a half ago and the reason I know about it is because I wrote, I think I wrote about eight of the devotional studies together with my wife. We collaborated on those and so that’s how I was familiar with it.
It does very much the same thing for women and so Dane Ortland who is the senior vice president of Bible publishing a Crossway contacted me and said, Sam we want to do one for men would you consider being the general editor for it? And I prayed about it and thought this sounds like a really good project, because my guess is, Fred, like you, when I first heard of the idea, like when you first saw the announcement about it, we both went immediately in our minds to the kind of fluffy kind of devotional things that you can buy you know at the airport on the Christian book counter or the sorts of things that really are not that helpful. You know it’s kind of the Reader’s Digest approach to Christian living. And that’s not what we have done here.
We have gathered together an incredible array of both biblical scholars, Old Testament and New Testament, pastors in churches, men that that most men would know and recognize and they produced substantive biblically grounded studies of these particular passages with the focus on application to the challenges that men face in life.
Fred Zaspel:
Well that is exactly the way I thought when I saw it initially, but at the same time I have come to expect much better from Crossway, so I thought well this must be worth looking at indeed. All right next: what distinguishes these daily devotional readings as suitable specifically for men? We’ve talked about that a little but what are you hoping to accomplish here?
Sam Storms:
Well, I say something in the introduction to this is a preface that I wrote that I think all the men listening will agree that men are facing unique challenges today. Our world is changing so fast and the temptations and the struggles and the needs of families are constantly rapidly transforming and it really puts a massive burden on the shoulders of Christian men who want to lead well. And so what we did was we can figure this in such a way those issues that are again, not to suggest that women couldn’t profit from reading these daily devotions I’m sure they could, but how did these biblical truths apply to the unique challenges that men are facing. So we hope that we have produced something that is unique. I don’t know of anything that is comparable to it. I don’t know of any other kind of Bible that is specifically addressing the challenges that men face day in and day out at work, in the home and everywhere else they find themselves.
Fred Zaspel:
Tell us more about the purview of the book. You provide 365 daily readings, but in terms of its purview and content this is not the kind of daily devotional you’ve ever seen before as you say, so what’s up? What do you cover? Where did the devotionals come from and so on.
Sam Storms:
Sure. Well what we did together with Dane and Erika Allen, who also works for Crossway, the three of us really collaborated most on this. We selected what we thought were the most immediately relevant and important texts in every book of the Bible so the longer books like Genesis and Isaiah in the Psalms are obviously going to have far more devotional studies than would a book like I, II and III John, and we specifically set down and spent hours asking ourselves, “Who do we know in the evangelical world who has addressed perhaps in the past or perhaps even written on certain books of the Bible that would be especially suited to write the devotionals on these particular books?”
So for example, thinking right off the top of my head, where I used to teach at Wheaton College, Philip Ryken, who is the president of Wheaton College, has written a massive commentary on the book of Exodus so we asked Philip to write the devotionals for Exodus and he did that. Jay Sklar who teaches at Covenant Seminary has written a commentary on Leviticus and so he does the devotionals on Leviticus. And it’s not just college presidents and scholars that we have numerous pastors. I wrote the devotionals on Joshua and Jonah. We have, for example, Colin Smith has written on Ezra and Nehemiah. Zack Eswine, who has written a commentary on Ecclesiastes does the devotionals on that. Dane Ortlund who obviously works for Crossway did all the ones on Isaiah. So we have numerous pastors and professors who perhaps have devoted themselves to particular books of the Bible more than others that we contacted and so I don’t even know how many total there are. There are probably 55 or 60 authors. Some of them do double duty for more than one book. So we are really excited about it and especially the special articles that are have included in the Bible.
Fred Zaspel:
I was going to ask you about that. There are a good number of stand-alone articles, I think maybe 14 of them or something like that. Tell us about what we can expect to find.
Sam Storms:
These are articles that are probably three or four times the length of any one of the devotionals that you read and we sat down and said, “All right, what are the 14 or 15 most pressing issues that men are facing, and who can best address that?” So David Powlison who many people know is an incredible author and leads the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation wrote on a man’s identity. Who are we as men? What does it mean to be a Christian man? Kelly Kapic from Covenant College wrote on communion with God. Thabiti Anyabwile has written on a man’s inner life. We have an article on what does life in the local church look like for a man? Tom Nelson from Kansas City wrote on a man’s work. What’s the unique perspective that a man brings to his job? We have a chapter on singleness for men who aren’t married. We obviously have one on marriage. Ray Ortlund, a very dear friend of mine in Nashville, wrote the article on fathering. Ed Welch wrote on the subject of pornography. So we covered about 14 or 15 of these pressing issues in more depth and they are included at the end of the devotional Bible. They are all very, very good. Needless to say as general editor I read and edited all 365 devotionals and all of these articles and all of the introductions, and I was just very, very pleased with the quality that these men brought to bear on the biblical text.
Fred Zaspel:
Just a curiosity then, the three of you that you mentioned who collaborated in doing this initially, you selected the passages to be commented on for the devotionals and the topics for the stand-alone articles at the back?
Sam Storms:
Yes we did. And then we spent a lot of time pairing up, matching up those texts out of those particular books and articles with the individual that we thought was best suited to address it. For example, Dave Harvey who has written a book entitled, “Am I called?” wrote the article on calling. People wonder what does it mean to be called? Am I called to ministry, am I called my secular job and how can it be spiritual as well. So we tried to match those up as best we could with people we thought we do the best job.
Fred Zaspel:
How long was the book in the making?
Sam Storms:
Oh my goodness let me think. I think we gave most of the contributors a little over a year to submit their contributions and they came in you know we gave them a little bit of an incentive to get them in early, and then I would read them initially and make all the edits and then submit them back to Dane and Erika and they would go over them yet again and then they would show me the final version so we spent a lot of time on email over the course of about a year and a half. And then once everything was done production went remarkably fast it was just a few months I think Crossway has this ESV down pat so once they are doing things along those lines they can get it done. They have the Gospel Transformation Bible, as well as the Men’s and Women’s Devotional Bibles, the ESV Study Bible so the production actually went really, really fast. So it was a little over a year I think to get all the articles written and edited.
Fred Zaspel:
One last one: Have you been encouraged with the books reception so far?
Sam Storms:
Well I’ll tell you if my church is any indication I think the reception has been wonderful. Now granted I am able to stand up there on a Sunday and promote this. We have sold hundreds of copies. It comes in a variety of forms: it’s got a really nice black leather softbound version, it’s got two different kinds of hardback, so you can go on the Crossway website or probably on Amazon and see the variety of formats that it comes in, but it’s the same content. I’ve been told that it’s doing extremely well and I spoke with Lane Dennis back in November who’s the president of Crossway and he’s very pleased with how it’s doing.
Fred Zaspel:
That’s great. Well thanks for being with us we been talking with Sam Storms editor of the ESV Men’s Devotional Bible from Crossway. Check it out. Sam, thanks for being with us.
Sam Storms:
Thanks for having me.
