Introducing David Schrock as Assistant Editor of JBMW

By Grant Castleberry

David Schrock is the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Seymour, Indiana. He was also recently named the Assistant Editor of the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (JBMW). As Assistant Editor of the journal, David will serve directly under Dr. Denny Burk, the Editor of JBMW. Dr. Burk had this to say about bringing David on board as Assistant Editor:

I’ve known David Schrock for many years. He is the consummate scholar and he cares deeply about the gospel and its implications for manhood and womanhood. I could not be happier to have him on board with JBMW.

Dr. Stephen Wellum, David’s Ph.D Advisor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also remarked on David’s new position:

David is a man of integrity who is committed wholeheartedly to the truth, exposition, and living out of God’s Word. David is discerning in how he wrestles with biblical and theological positions and evaluates them in light of Scripture. He is well suited and gifted by our Lord to serve in the role of Assistant Editor for the Journal. I have the highest confidence in David’s biblical and theological faithfulness.

I recently asked David several questions so that you could get to know him more:

1) What is the name of your wife and children:

I am married to Wendy, and we have two sons, Titus (5) and Silas (3).

2) Where did you do undergrad: 

Albion College (Albion, Michigan)

3) Most influential books in your life: 

Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman, Desiring God by John Piper, According to Plan by Graeme Goldsworthy.

4) You recently completed a Ph.D at Southern Seminary. Can you tell us about it: 

My doctoral studies focused on systematic theology with an emphasis on hermeneutics, typology, Christology, and the atonement.

5) What events/experiences have shaped you regarding biblical gender and sexuality: 

In high school, I began visiting Bair Lake Bible Camp in Jones, Michigan. This camp offered a weekend retreat called Purity & Holiness that taught high school and college students God’s view on sex, relationships, and marriage. From the end of the high school to the end of college, I attended this weekend and then became a counselor and recruiter for other students to come and think on these matters. By God’s grace, this ministry gave me a biblical foundation for understanding God’s view on sex and marriage—two subjects that are at the heart of biblical manhood and womanhood.

Next, before my senior year of college, I attended the Virginia Beach Summer Project with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). During that summer, Chris Sarver, a graduate from TEDS who had been deeply influenced by Bruce Ware spent the summer teaching men about biblical manhood. This was the first time in my life that I had been exposed to the Scripture’s particular calling on men to lead in the church and in the home. During that summer, Christ Sarver, who now leads theological development for Cru across Midwest also introduced me to the doctrines of grace. Through his persistent biblical counsel, he helped me understand how Scripture affirms God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility in such a way that any and all free actions are superintended, underwritten, and ordained by God’s sovereign will. This understanding undergirded my confidence in God’s word and his designs for men and women made in his image. In short, the summer of 2001 has had lasting effects on my understanding of God, his Word, and God’s complementary design for men and women.

Finally, at the end of college, I was introduced to John Piper and ministry of preaching and writing. For the last decade, he has been the chief influence on my theology. Coupled with Grudem’s Systematic Theology, I began to see how vital gender roles are for preserving and proclaiming the gospel. This truth was then stimulated and given further theological strength when I came to Southern Seminary where I took theology classes with Bruce Ware and Russell Moore, became good friends with Owen Strachan (among other leading complementarians), and worked for Randy Stinson.

Altogether, God has used these people and events to shape my heart for the ministries of CBMW.

6) What do you feel is the greatest need right now in our nation regarding sexuality and gender roles: 

I think the greatest need today is for the church and her members to learn how to articulate a bold and compassionate message of God’s design for marriage and sexuality, a message that follows the contours of the gospel and that is unashamed to testify to God’s wisdom in gender complementarity and heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Today, homosexuality is the litmus test that every Christian will face. It is the question that reporters have and will ask every Christian athlete, and it is the place where churches will show their faithfulness or their lack thereof.

Accordingly, we need to equip churches to engage the culture with a bold witness for the good designs of sexuality. Honestly, while I lament the ‘pornification’ of our society, I think that Bible-believing Christians have every reason to believe that the gospel will be effective in twenty-first century. It is, as Paul said, the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. While the world is sex-crazed, it is also blind to the beauty and story of God’s designs for sex, gender, and marriage. Therefore, I think we have an excellent opportunity to share the gospel via conversations about sex and marriage. This will require some major readjustments in our evangelistic approaches, but I am convinced that where unbelievers put up roadblocks to conversations about right and wrong, heaven and hell, the Bible and church, we can and we must engage our sexually-confused neighbor at the point of contact they are willing to talk about—sex.

Because Scripture regularly connects marriage and sex with redemption and the gospel, I think the church will have ample opportunities to proclaim the gospel to this culture. If we can learn how to move people from the brokenness of their sexual sin to redemptive purposes of Christ’s sacrifice for his bride, I believe we will see a whole new way of reaching the lost as we learn to transition conversations from sex to salvation by means relating fallen creation to the promise of a new creation. Every young man entering a brothel is looking for something more than what can be found behind the door. As gospel surgeons, we must learn how to interpret that young man’s deepest longings and show him that the God who made us as sexual beings has also made a way to redeem our wreckage and purify our longings. To sum up, I think the greatest need today is for the church to communicate the gospel with biblical fidelity, broken-hearted empathy, and evangelistic moxie.

7) Is there anything in particular that you are looking forward to working on regarding the Journal in the coming months:

My first priority is to get up to speed on the excellent work that Denny Burk has been doing with the journal.  I want to help him so that we can continue to put out a first-rate journal at a timely pace. Second, I will continue to interface the CBMW Reviews channel online with the bi-annual journal. We’ll do this by providing a regular stream of reviews online, and by selecting selecting the most outstanding and academic reviews for the journal. Last, I hope to provide energy and ideas for engaging the issues related to gender studies, theological anthropology, and how the gospel will find traction in a culture that is running away from its Creator. For instance, one thing that is lined up for 2014 is a writer’s retrospective with Daniel Heimbach, whose book True Sexual Morality turns ten next year. I will interview him to hear his perspective on what has changed in the last decade and what things he would say differently or more emphatically were he writing his book in 2013.