Writing Vulnerable God

How a book was born, slowly took shape, and finally got done.

The idea for Vulnerable God arrived during 2009. It was my fourth year at Holy Redeemer. I was spending a lot of time in a neonatal intensive care unit at a regional medical center, sitting with a particular couple and special tiny boy but also other families and children born very prematurely, requiring ventilators and other last-ditch measures to keep them alive.

Being that close to these helpless children and the ever-present prospect of death dredged up early childhood experiences of being in the hospital gasping for breath and the very early loss of my father to war. The nearness of Jesus to all of these suffering families and in my own hardships came to the surface.

Before this season, I had been contemplating the person of Jesus for about thirteen years. I battled extreme anxiety in my early thirties and over a period of years, contemplation of the human God helped center my life and became vital to my pastoral call.

I began writing out some of these contemplations in 2010 and sharing them on social media platforms and occasionally in online magazines. In 2013, I wrote an essay entitled “Vulnerable God” for a collection edited by my friend Cathleen Falsani. But I had not discovered a structure for a book, a scaffolding for bringing all of these meditations together.

Around 2018, it occurred to me that the sacred year, which I was annually walking out with the congregation at Holy Redeemer, provided a way to tell the story of the human God, and so I began to focus on the moments in the story of God with us that the sacred year elevates, that disclose his unfathomable mystery.

The original plan for Vulnerable God only foresaw half the number of chapters that ended up being written, but from 2018 to 2024 the bulk of the book was drafted, including six chapters on the ministry of Christ not in the initial outline. The final draft (originally 82,000+ words) went through intense editing from the fall of 2024 through the fall of 2025 and shrank some 20,000 words (including three whole chapters that went way).

I owe a lot to the Brazos Press team and to a number of friends and colleagues. There’s simply no way this book would be here without them. I credit each of them in the acknowledgements.

This book was written very much in the midst of a pastoral life, written in fits and starts—in waiting rooms, on the side of the road, late at night, and just about anywhere I could get a moment to peck out what I was seeing and feeling and hearing … often on my iPhone. It emerges from real engagement with people and the harder realities of existence.

I’m writing all of this to say that Vulnerable God had a long gestation and a longer season of drafting than I ever imagined; that it came through a sometimes arduous (but always joyful) process and by a lot of trial and failure. But it’s finally almost here. You can preorder it on Amazon (which helps the book). It arrives on September 29.

I hope you’ll consider buying Vulnerable God. If you like what you’ve read on here and on other platforms, I suspect this book will be a balm and a delight. Much love and many graces.