Broken Hallelujahs
Fragments of a Called, Ordained, and Crucified Ministry
- Church Leadership & Ministry
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
Ordained Christian ministry can be messy, raw, frustrating, and plagued with judgment errors. It swings between poles of despair and joy, resentment and gratitude, isolation and community, depths of pain and healing. It occurs in a church body wrestling over fundamental expressions of ministry in times of division. The word of God abides within all of it. Such is the experience which Neal Anthony--an ordained Lutheran minister for over twenty-five years--has woven together through various threads of first-person ministry narrative. Broken Hallelujahs provides at once a powerful narration of Christian ministry, both its personal investment and a penetrating development of many theological themes within that context. What results is more than a pastoral memoir, but a profound theology for ministry which sketches the crucified solidarity which unites minister and laity. Ultimately, Anthony professes, the beauty of the church's hallelujahs is not in the heights to which they soar, but the crucified depths from which they are uttered. In those depths stirs both the liturgy of Christ's presence and the healing begotten of that presence. Within these pages are narratives of the church's crucified praise, the majesty of Christ's Broken Hallelujah.
Endorsements (4)
“Broken Hallelujahs is a profound and gripping articulation of Christian pastoral leadership that relentlessly pursues Christ’s merciful grace in recognizing the image of God in each person. With ruthless honesty and through stunning stories, Rev. Dr. Anthony unmasks the pretenses and distortions that conceal the liberating power of the crucified and risen Christ. This work is eminently saturated with healthy insights of spiritual care. Read, digest, and relish this gift!”
“In a world like ours, brokenness lurks within everything that’s beautiful. But since it’s a God-created world, in everything that’s broken, something beautiful can be revealed. With riveting and raw storytelling, Neal Anthony traces the hand of God’s love amidst psychic pain, alcoholic rages, tribalistic identitarianism, prairie tedium, dissolute lust, and, frankly, the manure of ministry.”
“In Broken Hallelujahs, Neal Anthony candidly and vulnerably reveals the soul of pastoral ministry. Through anecdotes that are by turn poignant and humorous, sublime and ridiculous, he invites the reader to discover the depth of a life surrendered to the call to serve. With deep feeling and intellectual heft, Anthony makes these pages a portal not only into the breadth and depth of the pastor’s vocation, but into any believer’s—or seeker’s—exploration of what it means to live as a person of faith.”
“In his honest recollections, Pastor Neal Anthony reveals a truth of our calling to the ministry of Word and Sacrament: God’s people are always an absurd mixture of holiness and carnality, capable of exquisite beauty one minute and horrific trauma the next. Pr. Anthony’s deep love for the church is apparent—that same love shapes this memoir, which is at turns painful, authentic, troubling, and delightful.”
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