March 31, 2007 by iMonk
My friend Bill Kinnon is one of those people who, by most reasonable assessments, shouldn’t be in church. He got ahold of a bad one, got burned and you can still feel it in posts like this one: The People Formerly Known As The Congregation.
It’s a Must Read. So go do that. Then come back.
There are millions of Bill Kinnons who don’t know how to say it. Some of them are still in the same church, waiting for things to get better, but this is what they are feeling inside.
You can fault Bill’s post a dozen ways, but let’s be honest, shall we? (And I am freshly reminded this week of how little Christians value honesty about themselves.) This church growth driven, entrepreneurially generated, ego-enhanced pastor led movement to conquer the world through more and more megachurches really sucks. [Continue reading]
March 31, 2007 by iMonk
UPDATE: Here’s the whole and entire introduction to this book.
In I’m Ok– And You’re Not, John Shore has a big idea. Jesus gave the Christian movement two major pieces of instruction: The Great Commission to reach all people with the Gospel and the Great Commandment to love one another. In Shore’s opinion, American evangelicals have saturated our culture with the facts of the Gospel to the point that non-Christians are often filled with astounded dread that we keep telling them Jesus died for their sins and they must believe the Gospel to be saved. If that is the case, then Christians need to stop being annoyingly repetitive communicators (i.e. pressure sales, manipulation, rudeness, etc.) and start showing love, respect, concern, friendship and compassion to the non-Christians (”Normies”) they know.
That this premise will make a lot of pastors mad says volumes, doesn’t it?
Shore is a humorist whose work is more comedic than Donald Miller, and his appeal to Christians is more direct. Shore is preaching and teaching under the comedy, and he’s very effective as a critic and motivator. Shore turns evangelism upside down and engages in just enough hyperbole to effectively make the point. Readers of this web site will recognize many of the same critiques I’ve made in posts like Wretched Urgency. The problem in evangelism isn’t what we think. The information is there; the credibility of the Christian community isn’t. [Continue reading]
March 30, 2007 by iMonk
I’d like to thank Campbellsville University for hosting this conference. It’s been great and I hope they have many other similar events.
At his third session on “Lament,” Michael Card spoke about Jesus the Lamenter. These are a few thoughts I wrote down in my notebook as I listened.
Scripture reading: Isaiah 53. Then he read an essay from the new book, “The Hidden Face of God.”
At his uncle’s funeral, Card never heard what he most needed to hear: Blessed are those who weep.” [Continue reading]
March 30, 2007 by iMonk
The Spencer family poets are busy. Here’s an amazing Holy Week poem by Denise.
Clay continues to show that he is becoming a fine poet with these two outstanding poems.
March 29, 2007 by iMonk
I want to run through some of the highlights of Michael Card’s teaching sessions on “The Lost Language of Lament.” These are all short summaries from my notebook.
On 9-11, Calvin Seerveld called Michael and said, “See….you have no songs to sing.”
The language of Lament is the lost language of worship, and that loss leaves many people with no language for their experience.
At the end of his life, Van Gogh painted a church without a door. This is the experience of many people. They cannot find a way into the faith in God they once had. (Van Gogh was a minister for a while, known for his compassion for Belgian miners.) The faith was once there, but now there is no way in. [Continue reading]
March 29, 2007 by iMonk
I’m going to try and blog the conference a bit.
(Thursday morning, 9:09 a.m.) I’m at the “Worship and Arts” conference sponsored by Campbellsvile University. (Actually at a local church) Small crowd. Michael Card is the main teacher. John Mark Macmillan- who I’ve never heard of- is leading worship. He brought a band. It’s pretty obvious to me from the projections I’m seeing that the theme of the conference- “Lament: Passion and Praise In A Minor Key”- is going to be reflected in some of the worship songs. An immediate departure from the usual “happy clappy” start ups. One lyric said “I don’t need a fairy tale god who lives in a book.” Now we’re talking. [Continue reading]
March 24, 2007 by iMonk
BHT fellow Tom Hinkle reposts this confessional piece from a blogger at “The Parish.” If you want to read 1) the TR version of where the emerging church is going or 2) my opinion of what much of evangelical fundamentalism is producing, then this is your piece. It’s a rant, it’s honest, it’s harrowing, it’s a mixed bag, but it needs to be read.
A few thoughts: [Continue reading]
March 24, 2007 by iMonk
UPDATE: John at Confessing Evangelical adds to this discussion.
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” -Matthew 28:16-20, English Standard Version Bible
The Bible can be amazing. [Continue reading]
March 22, 2007 by iMonk
Ground Rules are a series of posts reflecting on what I’ve learned in some of my controversies and conflicts with other bloggers.
Who’s on your blogroll? Your RSS reader?
What are you saying by including or excluding them?
Somewhere in my future volume called “Blog Psychology: The Behavior of Bloggers Explained” I will have a chapter on blogrolls. Maybe I’ll even do that long lost doctoral thesis on “Blogrolls Explained: The Significance of Inclusion and Exclusion on Christian Blogrolls.”
Let me make clear at the outset that I put myself forward as an example of such behavior. I have included and excluded a number of people from my blogroll, and it will be on that basis that I’ll make any observations on what someone is thinking. [Continue reading]
March 21, 2007 by iMonk
A lot of missional musings.
Available from iTunes. Delivered to your door, hot, fresh and with a nice green bow.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
March 21, 2007 by iMonk
UPDATE: Blast you Kyle Potter!
You’ve read this blog for 7 years. You’ve read my confessional essays. You’ve got the bio memorized. Your iPod has the podcast all the way back to episode 1. You’re confident you could pass any quiz on the life and times of the iMonk.
You’re wrong.
Welcome to fifty things you (probably) didn’t know about me. And only one of them is an outright lie. (Can you find it?) [Continue reading]
March 20, 2007 by iMonk
One of the most talked about posts in the blogosphere this week is Mark Driscoll’s report on his exhaustion, health problems and current explosive growth church situation. Reformed Catholicism and others wrote excellent responses. When I read Driscoll’s post, I decided I wanted to get the reaction of one of the pastors of one of the healthiest growing evangelical churches I know about, Riverview Church in East Lansing, Michigan.
Noel serves as one of five pastors at Riverview, a growing church with a uniquely Biblical and common-sense approach to leadership and preaching. Check them out.
Here’s my questions and Noel’s answers. [Continue reading]
March 20, 2007 by iMonk
Josh at eucatastrophe and Pirate (at the BHT) have been writing about the public reading of scripture, something that is strangely absent in the worship and preaching of the vast majority of evangelicals.
If you wanted examples of preaching that completely left out the Bible and any reasonable use of it, I could keep you here all day with some stories that even I have trouble believing are true. But to be conservative, it’s become rather typical for the average evangelical worship experience to… [Continue reading]
March 19, 2007 by iMonk
“I’m not a supporter of the Emerging Church, but I’m sympathetic to some of the reforms they’re calling for in the Church as a whole. Yet I’m utterly mystified that a reform movement could be so lacking in any concept of the Holy Spirit. Pneumatology in the Emerging Church? I’ve not heard one peep about it. As far as I’m concerned, any reform movement that perpetually leaves out the mention of the Holy Spirit is nothing but flesh-centered hogwash.” -Dan Edelen, “The Holy Who?”
Yikes.
Always one of the more provocative writers on the web, Dan Edelen has stirred up a grande discussion with the charge that not only is contemporary evangelicalism without a proper emphasis on the Holy Spirit, but the emerging church in particular fails in its attempt to be a reform movement by leaving out the entire “concept” of the Holy Spirit (”not one peep”) and in amounting to “flesh-centered hogwash.” (I’ll wager that term’s never been used before.)
I’m generally a big fan of Dan’s writing, though his perspective as a charismatic and a revivalist differs widely from mine as a post-evangelical reformation Christian humanist who largely rejects the evangelical notion of revival. I’ll commend Dan’s article to you, and after you’ve read and digested it, I have a few responses. (Dan, I respect and love you as a brother, so don’t think I’m trying to be all up on it.) [Continue reading]
March 19, 2007 by iMonk
About a year ago I wrote this piece on one-culture warrior’s evaluation of the phenomenon of tongue piercing. You will find a link to another IM piece on a similar subject as well.
Posts about tattoos, piercings, fashion in general and other stereotypical attempts to portray the missional church as a collection of immature punk kids who have nothing more to offer than bad clothes, the latest trends and no soap are as common as ever. They keep the usual suspects in applause mode, and that’s always a good thing. Certainly better than discussing something divisive like dispensationalism.
You can make up your mind on these controversial subjects. That’s how it works. Here’s some of my thoughts. (BTW, this essay made one of my co-workers so mad, he stopped speaking to me, so it must be a good one.)
