I’m going to take a brief breather from original posts for a while. I’ll be postings some iMonk 101 posts and some extended quotes from voices I believe are important and timely.

I have a lot of preaching to prepare for in the next few days, as well as some major school events to plan. I also need to spend some time considering what I’m going to try and do with Lent this year.

I’ll continue to moderate comments.

Here’s a wonderful summary of “What is the Church?” from Eugene Peterson’s book The Jesus Way.

But Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way. Jesus as the way is the most frequently evaded metaphor among the Christians with whom I have worked for fifty years as a North American pastor. In the text that Jesus sets before us so clearly (John 14:6) and definitively, way comes first. We cannot skip the way of Jesus in our hurry to get the truth of Jesus as he is worshipped and proclaimed. The way of Jesus is the way that we practice and come to understand the truth of Jesus, living Jesus in our homes and workplaces, with our friends and family. [Continue reading]

All of a sudden there are all these new people in the comment threads and sending me emails. And several of them don’t seem to know much about the web site. Do me a favor and run through this list: [Continue reading]

Ash Wednesday (and the beginning of Lent) is one week from today, so it’s an appropriate time to point you in the direction of some good Lenten Links. If you’ve made the big step into observing Advent, Lent should be next in your appreciation of the Christian year..

Since most of you have already done 40 Days of Purpose, you’ve got the 40 days down. Now just get them in the right order, add the weekends, and head for Holy Week. (Just don’t give up my blog for Lent, unless you’re “Truth Unites….” Then by all means…)

I enjoy observing Lent devotionally. I haven’t fasted in past years, but may do so this year.

I hope these resources are helpful to all of you who are interested in a more intentional spiritual formation in worship and prayer.

The Weekly Lectionary for Lent.

Read the Church Fathers during Lent. This is really a great project, which you can do online or print out a rather large pdf. (Watch out for Cyprian, Protestants. He’s hard core [Continue reading]

Is there a compelling reason to read Brian Sanders’ version of “Why so many of us are leaving the traditional churches for emerging churches?”

Maybe. Life After Church is a book many of my readers will appreciate.

I think Sanders gets many things right. I certainly appreciated his emphasis on scripture; a gift to all of us, by the way, from the church of the past. His helpful and pastoral advice to those leaving the church is mature and practical. [Continue reading]

The following post could possibly be the largest discrepancy between the subject of a post and the actual title of a post you’ve ever read in these spaces. I’m hoping someone will nominate the title for an award.

Seriously, if you never thought about the topic of this post, don’t ridicule me. I’ve watched a lot of TV in my life, and it’s taken a toll on my theology.

I’ve seen Cloverfield twice. I could write several posts about the film. If I wanted to talk about art, I’d have some things to say about the reinvention of genre through a change of point of view. If I wanted to talk apologetics, I could discuss the emerging story of redemption that becomes far more important to us than the destruction of Manhattan by an angry lobster.

Instead, I want to venture into really dangerous waters in the blogosphere: eschatology. Go get your charts and slide rules. I’ll get a cherry coke and meet you back here in 2 minutes.

***Commercial for New Reformation Press. Great Lutheran and Reformation gear. Check out the t-shirts.*** [Continue reading]

***Music by The Doors: “The End.”***

There was an elf that met the children at the door. Also in this room was a store that had Barbies, action figures, Brats Dolls, and all of the most popular items that you would find in a Toy-R-Us catalog the day after Thanksgiving. In order for kids to get the merchandise, they had to say a memory verse and earn store credits. The first thing my kids said to me when I went to pick them up was ”Daddy, can we start going to this church?” Can you blame them? For kids, this was a dream church.

If you listened to the interview I just did on Steve Brown, Etc., you may recall a moment when Steve and Eric asked me what was wrong with evangelicalism, and I said it was over. Steve gave a more hopeful view and I admitted that there were some hopeful signs out there, well off the media radar and among ordinary people.

Well Steve, it was a moment of weakness. You were being nice and I fell under your influence. But then I read C. Michael Patton’s post “The Entertainment Driven Church,” and I realized I was right: Evangelicalism is over. Long live post-evangelicalism. (Whatever we are/it is.) [Continue reading]

For the past hour, I’ve been trying to find a Protestant church nearby where I can go for Ash Wednesday service on February 6.

If you don’t know where I live, let me put it this way: There are probably more churches marking Ash Wednesday in some Muslim countries than there are churches doing so within an hour of me.

My research says that participating in this ancient and meaningful beginning to the season of repentance and preparation for Holy Week and Easter will require me to go no less than 50 miles in any of three directions. In two of those options, I wouldn’t bet they will have a service because they barely have enough living people for Sundays and must share a minister with other congregations.

My closest sure thing is an hour away, which is sounding pretty good right now. (They’ve even got pancakes going on Tuesday night, which is even more persuasive.) [Continue reading]

I had the great honor of being the guest on today’s Steve Brown, Etc. Program. Steve is a real hero of mine, and if we ever got together in real life, we’d need lawyers and bail money.

Here’s a link to today’s program. Enjoy it and thanks again to Steve and the whole crew.

I’ve had very few posts on abortion in this space, and there’s a reason for that. You can’t have a reasonable discussion most of the time. Everything devolves into a rhetorical, emotional conflict that resembles professional wrestling. In a cage.

It’s really embarrassing that so many of us can’t talk about abortion like intelligent, civil people. It just seems to be too much. And here are twenty reasons why. Twenty myths- and yes, that’s what I said- that keep Christians from discussing abortion.

They seem self-explanatory to me, but I’m sure some of you will appreciate explanations, but I’m wanting to focus on the myths themselves, not the debates about each one. I may or may not write much more in the comments, but I will be moderating this comment thread more than a little closely.

Let’s see if we can at least put these myths aside and recalibrate one of the most important moral issues we’ll ever examine; one we all have a stake in settling.

Remember: these are MY myths. You may disagree strongly. Just express yourself appropriately.

The Twenty Myths That Keep Christians From Discussing Abortion [Continue reading]

Steve Brown Interview. Read Eugene Peterson.

Eugene Peterson Books at Regent College. His books at Eerdmans.

Peterson interview.

Steve Brown, etc.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I haven’t talked about Robert Capon in a while, so here’s a visit to one of my favorite past IM posts: “Jesus = Salvation.” I say this all the time in teaching and preaching. It’s been very helpful to me and hopefully to others. Capon got me there. I love you, Fr. Robert.

If you aren’t familiar with Robert Capon and the influence he’s had on me, a search of the site will find him hiding out everywhere. This post riffs off his book The Mystery of Christ…and Why We Don’t Get It.

I wrote this while I was being denounced by the Fide-o boys over my lack of belief in the reformed doctrine of limited atonement. That’s why the post starts out as it does.

READ: Jesus = Salvation.

I don’t plug schools or teaching ministries in this space, and I don’t promote what I’m not convinced represents the values of this audience just because I get some free materials. If I tell you it’s worth your time and money, it will be. And if it proves to be otherwise, I’ll eat crow in this space.

The Theology Program gets my complete, unqualified support. The new semester of The Theology Program begins in a week. If you are looking for online theological education that’s quality from start to finish, this is your ticket.

While there are lots of ways to access TTP, the online program is worth a serious consideration by those of you who want “seminary without seminary costs.” Here are the features of the online certificate program: [Continue reading]

Peter Chataway has a great interview with Steve Taylor at his site.

Every year during Martin Luther King, Jr. week I try to show a film that raises issues of racial reconciliation. Last year, one of my teacher friends, Jim Kelly, recommended I use Steve Taylor’s feature film directorial debut, The Second Chance. My initial reaction was “Christian movie. It will be an embarrassment.” Then I saw that Michael W. Smith was one of the leads, and I knew enough about Smith to deduce he wasn’t going to be the next Daniel Day-Lewis. So I was expecting a dud. I wasn’t going down the route of Facing the Giants.

I did trust my friend’s judgement, however, and I knew two other things: Steve Taylor wasn’t predictable in anything he’d ever done artistically. He was a person with craft and edge. I also knew that Michael W. Smith has talked about how deeply he was affected by the life of poverty chosen by Rich Mullins. So I took the chance and showed the movie to three of my classes. I’m doing the same this year, with similar results. It’s a wonderful, well made, deeply “Christian” film that speaks to exactly what evangelicals need to hear these days. [Continue reading]

Over at Frank Turk’s blog, he has something of a motto up on the sidebar. It’s a phrase his pastor offered in a comment thread sometime in the past. Here it is: The Gospel is the solution to culture.

I’ve often wanted to riff on this statement. While I’m pretty sure how Frank and his pastor see the truth of “The Gospel is the solution to culture,” I’m more than a little puzzled by the statement.

Perhaps the fault is entirely mine, but it appears that the motto is being translated like this: “Culture is always a negative, and the answer to the problem that is culture is the Gospel. Whatever problems culture brings us, the preaching of the Gospel will resolve those problems.”

If I’m getting it wrong, I apologize in advance and invite Frank to come over and shed some light on what he’s hearing in that statement. In the meantime, let me apply it to the “12 Churches, 12 Calvinists” thought experiment. [Continue reading]

How about a little thought experiment? No hidden agenda; just a way to explore the contention that certain things make all the difference.

Imagine for a moment 12 Baptist churches (that may be enough for some of you right there) in my own little Appalachian corner of the world, southeast Kentucky. These 12 churches are scattered across our area, which is almost entirely rural, quite poor, deep in Appalachian culture and all that goes along with it. They are churches dating back a century or more, the people are largely uneducated and some are even illiterate. There are deep problems of unemployment, health care, family dysfunction and substance abuse.

The churches are declining. For the past 15 years, the membership has been ingrown, with no significant influx of outsiders into the area and no significant church growth. The churches are growing older in average age, though several of the churches keep some kind of youth ministry going on. It is very rare to see young couples in church, and the congregations are graying rapidly.

The churches have been led by a variety of area men called to be pastors, with only a couple of local Bible school graduates in the mix. Pastors come and go quickly, with many leaving before two years have passed. Going from one church to another in a type of “Merry-Go-Round” is often a reality. [Continue reading]