About
Howdy! I’m Derek Penwell, an artist and an author, but not especially good at either. I like to draw portraits of people I love and admire and write things that give some people heartburn. I have a Ph.D. in something or other, but I don't like to talk about it because it reminds me of how much money I owe. I live in Louisville, Kentucky, with my beautiful wife, Susan. We have three great kids, three Pugs, an English Mastiff, a terrier named Winkie (who may be among the vanguard of the apocalypse), a rabbit, and various fish and snails—all of whom live in Louisville. I’ve been amazingly fortunate to serve as pastor of Douglass Blvd. Christian Church since 2008 and a lecturer at the University of Louisville in the Comparative Humanities department since 2006.
After having run for the Kentucky State Legislature in 2021-22 (and gotten beat like I owed the wrong people money), I decided that I needed to cultivate a hobby. So, I decided to teach myself to draw. After a few lessons and hundreds of hours of practice, people started asking me if I’d be willing to sell some of my pieces. Despite Imposter Syndrome torturing me forever (as is my custom), I’m also selling pieces here for the same price.
I’m the author of Outlandish: An Unlikely Messiah, a Messy Ministry, and a Call to Mobilize from Chalice Press. Outlandish asks the question: "What if you found out that the way Jesus is represented by popular Christianity gets him exactly backward, reinforcing the narrative of power and success that his life and ministry challenged?" This book takes a careful look at Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, arguing that, taken together, they show not only the cost of following him but how following his counterintuitive lead can transform the world—not with the superstars who lead charmed lives, but with the people nobody in their right mind would expect.
I’m also the author of The Mainliner's Guide to the Post-Denominational World, also by Chalice Press. It's a book that offers the paradoxical answer to the question of whether the Protestant Mainline is dying: Yes. So, the only thing left to do is to quit trying to hang on and live with reckless regard for justice and peace.
I also write other stuff, like his blog here. You can also find past columns at The Good Men Project and over at the Huffington Post, where I’ve tended to offer up what people who love me call “prophetic” and people who don’t much care for me call wildly presumptuous pontifications on what declining churches should quit doing.
I’m also an activist, unashamedly offering my support in the pursuit of justice for LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, BIPOC people, immigrants, refugees, and those people regularly dumped on by the tools who always seem to find themselves in charge of everything. In addition to which, generally speaking (and usually unprompted), I pop off on Facebook (here and here) and Twitter . . . trying to keep the fires hot under the pedicured feet of the suits who run roughshod over the prostrate bodies of those on the margins.
Welcome aboard! (But don't expect too much: I still have trouble with Imposter Syndrome.)
Jesus was a lousy Messiah…
“What is it about Jesus that calls to people? What is that makes people think that, even though they themselves have no commitment to Jesus, he and his people represent something different from the troubled politics of division and distrust—something that reassures people that, when the black boots come, people committed to the Jesus they’ve heard about in the Gospels will stand up and say ‘no’ to any authority that discounts the weak, that grinds the poor and the powerless to dust? Where do the people who call themselves by Jesus’ name get the resources to live this life of faithful resistance, of holy political subversion?”
This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of these questions.
