April 2026: The Quiet Ambition

Greetings! I pray for a blessed April to you and yours, and as we get there very soon this month, a Happy Easter.

Last month I began reading another book; one worthwhile to share with you all in my monthly newsletter. It’s a great book by a seminary Professor, Dr. Ryan Tinetti, called The Quiet Ambition. I first heard about it on my family vacation to Camp Arcadia, where Dr. Tinetti presented a summary of his ideas. The premise is that in one way or another, all people have a yearning to accomplish something. That often leads to what Tinetti calls (quoting Henry David Thoreau) “quiet desperation.” "Quiet desperation. A bone-chilling phrase, that.” Says Tinetti, “Thoreau doesn't bother to define it, and maybe he doesn't need to. I've come to think of it as the slow seeping of hope."

He seeks to counteract this with what he calls “quiet ambition.” This idea is rooted in a small Bible verse in Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians 4:11-12. “And to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.” Each one of these elements, Tinetti claims, helps us to live lives that are full of hope.

Back in August, I was skeptical. I resonated well with a comment Tinetti makes early in his book: "A quick search of [Paul's] letters and you see that 'ambition' follows 'selfish' the way that 'armpit' follows 'smelly'; it's practically redundant" (He writes with wit that I have found worthy of a good laugh in middle of serious text). Ambition is often not a very nice word for the humble Christian, in other words.

But neither Paul nor Tinetti are directing us towards a selfish ambition, but a quiet ambition. He also refers to it as an unambitious ambition. It’s less about “making a name for ourselves” a la the builders of Babel, and more like the humility that we see from Jesus. It is finding that sweet spot that takes us above a resigned passivity (“Nothing I do matters anyways, God must not want to work through me.”) but keeps us below arrogance (“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” – Invictus).

The key to this sweet spot comes through these elements Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians. These are: 1) Live quietly, 2) tend to your own business, 3) work with your hands, and 4) walk gracefully towards outsiders. Over the next few months, I’ll share some of what Tinetti has to say in hopes that you may be convinced, as I was. And if you’d like to borrow a copy of the book, let me know! I’ll be happy to share (once I’m done, of course).