August 31, 2007 by iMonk
There’s a place in Ian Morgan Cron’s Chasing Francis where his spiritually-brokedown-now-on-pilgrimage pastor protagonist returns, looks his congregation in the eye and says “When I left here, I wasn’t sure what a Christian looked like anymore. My idea of how to follow Jesus had run out of gas.” The characters may be (barely) fictional, but with those kinds of sentiments at the bottom of this book, it should receive a wide audience.
Cron is pastor of Trinity Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, an evangelical/Anglican/emerging church that is intentionally designed around the emphases of ministry that come from the life of Saint Francis. Chasing Francis isn’t exactly Cron’s story, but it’s close. It is a kind of narrative fiction that allows the author to tell his story in the form of another story. Chase Falson’s loss and recovery of faith entails a breakdown in the pulpit, a pilgrimage to Italy with a posse of Franciscans, mysticism, food and an unlikely love story. It’s well written, with lots of catchy humor. I read the book in three hours and made plenty of notes along the way. [Continue reading]
August 29, 2007 by iMonk
UPDATE III: While we wait for CBD to apologize, we can all play Oprah or Osteen.
UPDATE II: Can anyone in a Lifeway Store or working for Lifeway confirm that Lifeway is selling this book? Please tell me it isn’t true. If TIME Magazine can tell us this fraud is a prosperity preaching wolf in sheep’s clothing, what does CBD know that TIME doesn’t? UPDATE: Ed Stetzer is in the comments with a response. Short version: They will order it, but they want to recommend customers avoid it. That’s about a C+, but I’m glad it’s not what I was afraid I’d hear. Thanks Dr. Stetzer.
UPDATE: My infamous Joel Osteen post. With lots and lots of links. Read the Harry Smith Interview. Also, read Ben Witherington on Osteen. Here’s Osteen from the Harry Smith interview:
Smith compared Osteen’s preaching to Norman Vincent Peale’s, and Osteen agreed.
“It’s amazing,” Osteen said. “I was preaching two or three years when someone gave me one of his books. I was going to say, ‘He thinks like me.’ I think like him. It seems like it’s the same base there. God is on our side and if you think right, I believe, like Norman Vincent Peale did, that your life follows your thoughts. You get up negative, oppressive, you’re (sic) day will go that way.”
Did someone once say “I find Peale appalling and Paul appealing?” Not Osteen.
Dear CBD, [Continue reading]
August 28, 2007 by iMonk
Here’s an essay from the archives that discusses that part of post-evangelicalism some find the most obnoxious: the confession that I believe in the catholic church and a catholic Christianity. It’s called “A Generous Catholicity.”
With discussions of ecclesiology beginning to heat up in Southern Baptist life and among the many new church leaders looking at the future of denominational alignment, catholicity is a vital issue. The earliest Christian creeds set the table, but many contemporary conservatives refuse to come and eat a fellowship meal.
August 27, 2007 by iMonk
It’s not often that I don’t have anything to say, but I would insult you to try and add to anything my brother Jared Wilson says in this post lamenting the “cool Christian/uncool Christian” video ads used by some churches.
This is raw, honest, real stuff. It’s the lament for and about the gospel we need to hear in pulpits and pews.
Read: Jared Wilson on “A Gospel Rant.”
August 27, 2007 by iMonk
“Will God punish people forever in hell?” In this last segment, I talk about how to not get cornered by the usual traps in this question.
Coffee Cup Apologetics now has its own website: ccapologetics.wordpress.com
All the episodes of Coffee Cup Apologetics are now on iTunes. Go to iTunes and search for “Apologetics.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
August 25, 2007 by iMonk
How do you know I like this book? I spent three hours writing the review, hit publish and Wordpress promptly ate it.
I’m rewriting it.
Tyler Wigg Stevenson is a writer, preacher and political activist with credentials as wide-ranging as a Yale Divinity M.Div., a year as an assistant to John Stott and being part of the beginnings of a Strategic Security think-tank with the late Senator Alan Cranston.
He’s also part of the new voices within evangelicalism that defy easy categorization as “left” or “right,” but who are offering evangelicals a new, more honest, view of themselves as Christians living in “the empire” that is the modernized west. The discussion of Christians and empire involves mostly scholars from the center/left of the evangelical spectrum- Wright, Crossan, Walsh and Keesmaat- but the applications of that study are desperately needed among Christians and churches that are unlikely to ever hear it from their pastors. [Continue reading]
August 23, 2007 by iMonk
UPDATE: I am not going to publish comments claiming that Roman Catholics are not Christians.
Critics- atheistic, fundamentalist, truly reformed and those too correct to be labeled- will probably go completely bonkers with pleasure at the revelation that Mother Teresa struggled with the dark night of the soul much of her life and ministry. In letters kept after her death, her doubts and struggles confided to spiritual directors and confessors tell a story of lifelong struggle with a sense of God’s presence and the certainties of faith. Time Magazine’s detailed quotes from an upcoming book and sympathetic story and analysis will only feed those who already consider Mother Teresa to be a phony, over-rated, medieval throwback and Roman Catholic myth.
Of course, many of us will recognize in Mother Teresa’s words the familiar story of our own faith and the faith of others we revere and seek to emulate. While none of us are cut from identical cloth or have identical experiences of God’s presence or absence, there is a familiar aire to what Mother Teresa writes. Many of us have been there; some of us for years; some for a season; some of us for longer than we can recall. If you are familiar with the stories of the spiritual journeys of other honest human beings, you will recognize in Mother Teresa a fellow pilgrim down what is often a dark road. [Continue reading]
August 23, 2007 by iMonk
I don’t usually link people who riff on my work, but I have tremendous respect for Jared at Gospel Driven Church, and his use of one of my better pieces “To Know We’re Not Alone,” is a real honor. Take a moment and read “The Hard Stuff of Real Lives.”
I want you to read Jared and consider what he’s saying and what we are saying together. There’s a real battle going on here, and it’s not a battle about calling people out and making fun of your adversaries. It’s about whether you can sit in front of a real person and HEAR THEIR LIFE SPEAKING TO YOU. [Continue reading]
August 22, 2007 by iMonk
I’d read Eugene Peterson for a while in his IVP Old Testament books when I purchased and read a book on pastoral ministry called Working the Angles. Wow.
No book in my library is more underlined. This is what I needed to hear in seminary. It’s what I needed to hear from older men in my denomination. If you are like me as a young minister with dreams of success, this is the cold cup of water that will wake you up.
Working the Angles is still in print, but you won’t find it recommended by many of the pastors you hear at conferences. Here’s why: [Continue reading]
August 22, 2007 by iMonk
iMonk 101 reruns posts from the IM archives.
This is the first “parable” post I ever did at IM. (I actually wrote it back when I was on michaelspencer.us.) “A Parable for Our Church-Growth, Seeker-Sensitive Friends.”
This kind of story illustrates what happens to us when “boredom” becomes the big problem, and we take the pragmatic road to solve the problem.
Perhaps, combined with some of my other recent posts, this parable can provoke some discussion among evangelicals who are interested in taking a second look at the methods that so many are taking for granted.
Use this at your next staff meeting. Blame me if you need to.
Read: A Parable for Our Church-Growth, Seeker-Sensitive Friends.
August 22, 2007 by iMonk
My wife Denise is an excellent dramatic writer, and every year she creates wonderful Christmas programs that any church could use to put together something really classy. She’s posted a free creative ministries Christmas program, since now is the time some of you may be in the market for a similar program. It’s a grouping of several dramatic monologues around a common theme, with suggestions for music that can be done by an adult choir, children’s choir, solos, or any other option or combination.
Stop in at her web site and help yourself.
August 20, 2007 by iMonk
The August 19th edition of the White Horse Inn contains a large segment of interviews asking people at a Christian conference what happens to a person if they died with unconfessed sin.
Whatever you do, get this podcast/mp3, listen to it and keep it around. The answers may or may not shock you, depending on your experience with and perception of evangelicalism. In my experience, this is how the majority of the evangelicals that I know think of salvation, right down to the overt appeals to good works. When Rod says that 75% of Lutherans turned out to be functioning Roman Catholics on soteriology, I find myself wondering if the numbers would be any different among my Southern Baptist friends.
A few years ago I was showing an R.C. Sproul series on justification, and one man who had been studying the Bible with me for about 5 years got so angry he stormed out. Why? A standard explanation of the reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone. This brother- a fine Christian man with a real servant’s heart- was determined that repentance and good works were necessary to be declared right with God. When R.C. set down that we are justified by grace alone, with repentance and confession in vital, but non-saving relation to that declaration, he couldn’t deal with it. Where was our part? Where was what we did to keep salvation? Where were the works we did- like confession and repentance- that God would look at and say we were “worthy” to be Christians? (I hear that prayer all the time.) [Continue reading]
August 18, 2007 by iMonk
Propositions and Spiritual experience, Rice endorses Hillary, Tithing.
Internet Monk Radio is on iTunes Podcasts for free. Search for Monk.
The Internet Monk Radio Podcast is brought to you by The Theology Program.
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August 18, 2007 by iMonk
“Will God punish people forever in hell?” In this third segment, I suggest what we are compelled to believe and what we are still seeking to understand.
Coffee Cup Apologetics now has its own website: ccapologetics.wordpress.com
All the episodes of Coffee Cup Apologetics are now on iTunes. Go to iTunes and search for “Apologetics.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
August 18, 2007 by iMonk
I love the word “juxtaposition.” If you don’t know it, it means the placing of two things side by side. Often, the connotation refers to two things that are not usually put in proximity to one another.
Because of the way I live my life, I seem to have many experiences of unusual juxtapositioning. I am, by nature, an eclectic person who often finds myself partaking of several different worlds. This has its advantages, but it also creates certain dilemmas.
For example, this Thursday was the day our school formally opened the new school year. The first thing we do together is have a worship service for all our 150 staff members, and in that meeting we remind ourselves of our calling and mission to the students who will come to us in the next few days.
In our mission to students, we consciously take many students who have suffered from losses and abuse, dysfunctional and incompetent parents (and other adults) as well as students who have made poor choices. All need an opportunity to begin again, and as Christ’s ambassadors and God’s Kingdom people, we offer mercy and compassion to these students. [Continue reading]
