Internet Monk Radio Podcast #24 is the first installment of an interview with Riverview Church pastors Noel Heikkinen and Dan Price. They are part of an amazing church growth story going on in Lansing, Michigan. Enjoy the podcast and more of the interview is on the way.

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leif rigney, University English prof and original Internet Monk writer, penned a great essay on superstitous, irrational Christians. It’s an older IM piece, but still funny, truthful and helpful. Put it in your Imonk 101 folder and reread it. Then pass it around.

To all those hiding from $6.66 in change, this essay’s for you.

Read: A Persistent Irrationality.

Sometimes when I am interacting with other Christians, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that I’m exchanging ideas with someone very, very different from myself in significant ways. I don’t insist that people be like me, and I don’t want to hold myself hostage for being different from other people. There is one difference, however, that’s becoming increasingly more obvious: a lot of Christians in my circles don’t see the virtues of education. [Continue reading]

Internet Monk Radio Podcast 23. Using movies as illustrations. The value of education.

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I get called a lot of names around the blogosphere. Everything from “pomo devil” to “respected blogger.” (Now there’s an oxymoron.) When you’re a “cage phase” blogger (there goes another one) you write long posts defending yourself and being outraged about this. For instance, my use of the name “truly reformed” used to bring about huge posts at the “truly reformed” blogs, almost as long as mine on whether I was “emerging” or “postmodern.” But not nearly as well written or as funny.

Over at the BHT, I have a new name that’s been stuck on me. I’m a “reductionist.” Visiting the dictionary, I think I’m being told that, in regard to my Christian faith, I have a tendency to “…. reduce complex data and phenomena to simple terms.” I know dictionaries aren’t supposed to have value systems, but it that a bad thing?

I wish I could say I’m being accused of being a good teacher, but it’s a bit more nefarious. I’m generally being told that I’m reducing Christianity too much; that I’m taking a complex, inter-related whole, and attempting to simplify it excessively. So much so that what’s left isn’t the thing itself, but only part of it. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: At The Margins has a page of Irresistable Revolution links, and some of them have lots of quotes.

Trust me, folks, no one gave me this book, a check or a donut to write what I’m going to write in the next few paragraphs. I’m just very excited about this book.

Someone told me that Shane Claiborne had written a heck of a book, and I wanted to read something from the new Christian left, so I ordered a cheap used copy. I’ll tell you, without exaggeration, that I haven’t read anything as invigorating to my own faith journey and missional calling here at OBI in 15 years. I cannot think of a book that was more exciting, genuine, idealistic, persuasive and compelling than this odd little book by a young leftie Christian zealot from East Tennessee. [Continue reading]

You will have to forgive me. Being post-evangelical should mean that denominational follies no longer surprise me, but I guess I’ve just got a soft spot.

I was imagining a conversation. Two college students, Bob and George, discover their mutual Christian faith and begin a friendship. One evening, a sensitive matter comes up…. [Continue reading]

Throat problems slowed down this week’s podcast, but here it is.

A review of the eventful week. Preaching on 5 minutes notice. Laundering IM posts. Some blog announcements. Piper leaves broadcast radio for the net.

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I have been wanting to write this major essay on adultery for almost four years. It was just never there. Yesterday, for whatever reason, I knew it was ready for “birth,” and so in a few hours this morning, it arrived. It is a plea for men who are somewhere in the vicinity of committing the sin of adultery to stop, return home, and take hold of the wonderful Good News of the Gospel. If I have earned a few more readers this week, I pray this essay would go out to as many as possible, and help those men and those marriages that can be helped before the plague of adultery destroys what is precious. On this weekend of my 50th birthday, thanks to all of my readers, and if this isn’t for you, it is for someone you know.

This is dedicated to Mike M and Michael A, both gone to be with God, both men whom I loved as fathers and brothers, both men who yielded. God’s peace to them.

I spend my days teaching the Bible to high school students. While there are many matters of fact and text that occupy my teaching, the great emphasis of my classes is that this book is about God’s message to “you”, the reader. The human person.

I’m not denying the God-centeredness of the message or the centrality of Jesus Christ. I simply mean that the point of a message is to talk to you in ways you can understand, that you can know the truth about God, about yourself, about why things are the way they are, and what God has done in Jesus to make them right. When you are finished with the text, it is a faith response from you- a “yes” to the message and person presented- that matters. Unlike almost any other kind of literature, the Bible is a personal appeal from its author for you to place your trust, faith and confidence in him, and to live with him as the Lord of your life. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Apparently I was supposed to know that James Allison was gay when I wrote this post. I didn’t. Sorry. If that has anything to do with the truth and perspective of this piece, then disregard it. Homosexual sin is just as offensive to God as heterosexual sin, and I don’t approve or endorse either.

The cover story at Christian Century this week is a thought-provoking interview with James Allison on the subject of Jesus as “The Last Scapegoat.” This is an outstanding theme for preachers to explore, and one that is almost totally neglected within evangelicalism.

(I explored this idea in the IM essay: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery: A Theological Reflection on the Gospel of the Scapegoat.” Jackson’s story- if you’ve never read it- is linked at the beginning of the essay.)

I am really getting my eyes opened to the systematic blindness of many evangelical theologians to the dimensions of the cross that would most challenge white, middle class, suburban Christianity. We have people who can write all day about how N.T. Wright gets it wrong in his theology of justification ***yawn*** but when it comes to the kinship of Jesus with the marginalized, abused and rejected, they have nothing to say past “Accept Jesus as your Savior.” [Continue reading]

Thomas Merton, my hero and mentor, often mused about the irony of being a famous monk. Living in a monastery in the farmland of central Kentucky, Merton had the famous coming out to see him, reporters at the fences and his name in the papers and magazines of the sixties. True to form, the Internet Monk has followed in Merton’s footsteps and also found fame while here in the hills of the Bluegrass state. Well….kinda…not really fame exactly. Ok….one sentence in a magazine.

As many of you know, I’ve been quoted in the current issue of Time Magazine. I thought the regular readers of this site would like to know a little of the background of this and a few of my thoughts about it. [Continue reading]

I’m looking at a promotional flyer for a typical American youth ministry ski retreat. I used to get these all the time when I was in the youth ministry biz at large Southern Baptist Churches. I don’t get this much anymore, which probably counts for how I started looking at this one with a different perspective.

It looks cool. Snowboards. Happy kids. Fireplaces. Fun. Food. Worship. Speakers.

Someone is going to pay about $300 a person for their young people to go for a skiing weekend. If the youth group has 30 kids, it’s 9k. Add in some the incidentals for the church (gas, leaders, insurance, etc.), it’s a $10,000 investment for the weekend. Lots of churches pay this kind of money all the time for their big-time youth ministry.

This youth event is a Christian event with a purpose. The themes for this ski retreat are all about radical discipleship. Extreme commitment. Change the world. Be the generation that God uses. Getting serious for God. Stop the Silence. Confront the Culture. Finish the Work. Good titles. [Continue reading]

What does a post-evangelical worship gathering look like? This is the soli deo worship service for this coming Tuesday night. The responsive boldface is gone and the formatting is still set for two columns, but it’s all here. We don’t print all song lyrics in the liturgy if we have them on a handout, etc. Many of the responses are actually sung, such as the Alleluia, Holy Holy and Agnus Dei.

I’d welcome your comments and questions about this particular liturgy.

Sept 12, 2006

The Fourteenth Week of Pentecost in Ordinary Time [Continue reading]

Internet Monk Radio Podcast 21: Star Trek and fanaticism, Where’s my Apple Bible software?, Osteenia.

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What I mean by the name “post-evangelical” keeps coming up in discussions. Though I have addressed the meaning of the term in a previous post, I’d like to make some further contributions to the discussion.

I want to note, first of all, that the “Truly Reformed” blogosphere is now using the term without any explanation as well. For example, in this quote a well-known reformed apologist criticizes those who accept Roman Catholics as fellow Christians. [Continue reading]