Archive for June 28, 2012


Jun 28

Interview with Nathan Sherman, Part 2

2012 | by Trent Hunter | Category: Interview

Last week we began a three-part blog interview with Nathan Sherman, DSC’s new Minister to Youth and Families. Part 1 explored Nathan’s ministry background and training. In Part 2, below, we will learn about some of the formative influences in Nathan’s life. We’ll start by learning a bit about the most important person in his life, Marcie.

We had a chance to meet Marcie during your visit with us in May. She’s a marvelous lady. Tell us a funny story from the early stages of your relationship. 

She is a marvelous lady, isn’t she? Marcie and I are both from Denton, TX, but we didn’t know each other growing up—we went to different churches and high schools. We knew of each other and had a lot of mutual friends but had never met. I went to college in Austin, and she went to the University of South Florida in Tampa to be closer to her family who had just moved back to Florida.

So there was this smarty-pants at Harvard that made this website that allowed you to put pictures of yourself on the internet to make people think that your life is a lot more exciting than it actually is. And in our junior year of college, we became “friends” on this Book of Faces. Always having a secret crush on Marcie, I messaged her, and apparently she had a secret crush on me too because it took about 15 seconds for her to reply. These messages turned into phone calls, plane flights, an engagement ring, and three sons.

How does she complement and strengthen you as a husband and father? 

First of all, she’s my best friend, which makes the whole one-flesh thing a lot easier because I genuinely love just being around her. She’s a place of rest for me, and I love to just sit and talk about ministry, talk about ourselves, or just watch a TV show with her. She’s bold and not afraid to confront me in the ways in which I’m blind to my sin, stupidity, and laziness. I’ve learned to be a better listener and not talk so much just because she often tells me to shut my mouth. She loves our boys, and even though we’ve only been parents for 3 ½ years, she’s already an exceptional and intentional mother as she’s at home with them.

She also has a Master’s from Southern Seminary in Biblical Counseling and is a really great counselor and discipler of women and girls. I’m excited for the girls in the youth ministry to not only spend intentional time in the Bible together with her but also for them to just watch her be a wife and mom.

What book has had the most impact on your life, besides the Bible?

If I had to only pick one book, I suppose I would pick Desiring God by John Piper. His ideas of Christian Hedonism—God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him—have been extraordinarily influential in my life. If God has created us to find joy, and the place in which we find maximum joy is in him, this changes the way we both pursue God and fight sin. If it’s true that “pleasure is the measure of our treasure,” then the amount of pleasure we have in God is a reliable barometer for our spiritual life.

Tell us about the most influential sermon you’ve heard? 

In October of 2009, my last year at Southern Seminary, pastor Matt Chandler preached in our chapel service. He preached from Hebrews 11 about those who through faith had conquered and stopped the mouths of lions but also about those who through faith were tortured, imprisoned and put to death. He preached not only about the inevitability of suffering but also its importance in the lives of believers. He prayed that when he inevitably encountered suffering, he would respond well and in faith. This was an extremely challenging sermon to a room full of seminarians who could sometimes tend toward faithless theology, and it would have stood alone as one of the most challenging sermons I ever heard.

However, the next month Matt Chandler had a seizure on Thanksgiving morning, revealing what was thought to be terminal brain cancer. Throughout treatment—and now through his complete recovery—he has been a faithful witness to God’s grace and mercy and absolutely practiced what he preached at Southern the month before. I pray that when suffering comes to me and my family—and it will come—that I will respond by faith in our good and loving Father.

Check back later for Part 3 of this thee-part interview with Nathan.