Hello, this is Pastor John. I get to start this episode by talking about another

Pastor John, John Newton. Newton was a key leader in England in the 18th century, as you know,

the author of the incredibly popular hymn, Amazing Grace. Newton was a former captain of

a slave trading ship and was dramatically converted from this life of sin and eventually

helped William Wilberforce and the British slave trade. So I wanted to take a moment to introduce

you to a new book about a part of Newton's life that goes overlooked. His 40 plus years in pastoral

ministry and the amazing ministry of writing letters to people in need. The book is written by Tony

Rankie, the host of this podcast, Tony calls his book Pastoral Synthesis. He wants you to be

pastored by John Newton and so he gathered up all of Newton's many published letters, about a

thousand of them in various collections. Many of them preserved in old, rare, fragile volumes in

libraries around the world. He found them, studied them and then identified Newton's key answers to the

perennial questions of the Christian life and then Tony wrote all his findings into a guided tour

of Newton's thought. It's a kind of Aspastor John Newton. The book releases this week, it's titled

Newton on the Christian life to live as Christ. I commend it very highly.

Levi, a podcast listener in Indiana writes in Pastoral John. On whether or not to listen to music that

includes themes of sexual immorality, materialism and other forms of worldliness,

is this a decision of individual conviction or is this music categorically sinful? I know many

people who say that it is a matter of conscience for individuals to determine for themselves. I would

love your biblical thoughts on this. The first thing that comes to my mind that needs to be addressed

is a cynic, maybe or I don't know what you'd call them, a Christian who thinks good grief,

don't we have bigger fish to fry than talking about what kind of music we listen to. Don't

you guys know that people are suffering in the world and here we are squabbling about music.

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