Speaking

I am available to speak on the topics below. Each presentation can be tailored to fit the nature of your audience, whether church-oriented or secular. Each can be delivered as a stand-alone presentation or expanded into a series of workshops. For speaking inquiries, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page.

10 Metaphors for Life

In this presentation, I develop the ideas in my read-aloud children’s book A Good Life. Though based on the themes in a children’s book, it is a talk for adults. The metaphors include: life is a garden, game, race, canvas, test, symphony, battle, journey, story, and gift. I delve into each of these metaphors, offering insights from literature, nature, and human experience. I discuss the insights each metaphor has to offer, how they can supply us with a sense of direction and purpose, and how they can be combined to give us rich and meaningful lives. Metaphor has been a focus of mine for the last decade, so this is a topic I am passionate about and love to interact on with others.

Sixteen Lenses: Find Your Purpose by Understanding How You See the World

My passion to understand and apply the insights of personality theory began with a desire to better understand my wife and children. I delved deep into the subject, reading widely and even obtaining certification as an MBTI practitioner. The insights I gained transformed my marriage, helped me love and understand our children in profound new ways, and provided me with a sense of purpose I had previously struggled to obtain. This presentation features the fruits of that intellectual journey, which will also be available soon in my forthcoming book, Sixteen Lenses. In it, I explore the insights of personality theory via the metaphor of lenses. Each of use “sees” the world in a unique way, but there are consistent patterns we can identify that help us understand how our “lens” works. There are things we easily notice, attend to, and focus on, and other things to which we tend to be almost blind. Understanding our lens and the lenses of those around us can give us clarity as to where we can best serve others while also improving our relationships, effectiveness, and sense of purpose.

What Others Saying

“C.S. Lewis noticed that when his friend Charles Williams died, he lost not only Williams but Williams’ part of their mutual friend J.R.R. Tolkein. There was something in Tolkein that only Williams could bring out. No one of us is big enough to bring out every facet in another. It helps me enormously to appreciate you when I realize that you have a lens I need to see through. And maybe you need mine too. I am indebted to Jeremiah Pent for bothering to clarify the variety of lenses we each go through life with.” Andrée Seu Peterson, World Magazine

“When Jeremiah Pent explained my wife’s lens and my own, it was easy to see the source of so many of our challenges. Understanding our lenses is like discovering a roadmap to success. Before, I couldn’t fathom why certain people had difficulty with tasks I found easy. Now I realize that everybody has unique abilities that will let them thrive, as long as their duties line up with their lens. It’s been amazing to watch people flourish in their given roles and enjoy lasting achievements as they contribute their talents to the church.” Jason Brannan, Pastor

The Bible is About . . .

In graduate school, one of my favorite classes focused on tracing individual metaphors through the Bible since each tends to create its own “metaphorical world” to explore. I became fascinated (and still am) by the idea that the seemingly mundane physical things we do daily (the “quotidian” things for you word people) are used as metaphors throughout the Bible to highlight its major themes. This talk focuses on how the Bible takes the ideas of washing, dressing, eating and drinking, walking, and sleeping and uses them to teach us the most important ideas it has to offer. 

To inquire about booking a presentation for your group, please use this form.