I’ve been in this mood before. Remember the famous/infamous “I Hate Theology?”

Some of you won’t like what I’m about to say, but trust me, I’m not shooting at you. I’m not shooting at anyone. I’m trying to be pastoral, if there’s any hope that I have any pastoral instincts left.

Here’s the word: Some of us need to let go of some of our theology.

***bottle flies through air***

No, seriously. Some of us need to get to the trash can and empty out some of what’s in the theology file.

***tomato in flight***

Some of you people have got some seriously bad theology, and it’s stinkin’ up your life.

***pitchforks and torches sighted*** [Continue reading]

This morning our school community lost one of its most loved and influential members, Mrs. Betty Hasty. For 21 years she’s been my personal accountability group. No one on the planet has more to do with my passion for the Gospel in the place where I serve than Betty. She was the person responsible for Denise and I coming to where we now serve almost 17 years ago.

I never knew a person more ready to go to heaven. I feel guilty missing her. Really, for Betty this was everything she’s lived for and dedicated every waking moment to. She’d done all she could do in this world. Her heart was through and she was more than ready to see Jesus. This morning at 7:30 a.m., she got her wish.

I don’t know if I will be writing about her for a while. She’d not like what I’d have to say, because it would be too much about her.

So Denise, the better writer in the family, has written a beautiful tribute at her blog: Butter and Cream. Please read it and think of our friend. (BTW, the rainbow pics are on my facebook page.)

READ: Butter and Cream.

If you don’t know what a complementarian is, please do that bit of research first. Thanks.

I’ve harped on this subject a bit before while wondering where is the secret book.

I’ve not been one to be convinced by a great deal of the exegetical reasoning I’ve heard from complementarians. I assumed the problem must be with my sources- internet pundits and preachers with little scholarly acumen. So I asked around for the best serious, scholarly treatment of the complementarian position on all issues related to gender, marriage and family. The recommendations were unanimous, and I dropped the cash (not Kindle format even) and acquired the recommended book.

I’ve just finished the chapter that explains the complementarian exegesis of Genesis 1-3.

I want to be impressed. I’m really open to seeing that scripture says Jared Wilson was living in sin when he was a stay-at-home dad. But I’m sorry. I’m not getting there. [Continue reading]

Prosperity Gospel: Yes or No?

You decide. Here is a collection of statements, products, ministries, etc. Some of them are the Prosperity “Gospel” while some are not.

What do you think? [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Alan Creech has added his answer.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: How do you interpret Matthew 5:48 within a larger picture of the Gospel and the Christian life? (48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.) [Continue reading]

What pitch?

This one, from the NAE President Leith Anderson article I’m not responding to.

Everything depends on definitions. My short definition of an evangelical is someone who takes the Bible seriously and believes in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

That pitch. Now excuse me while I take a swing.

By this definition, all Roman Catholics are evangelicals. Francis Beckwith should still be the President of The Evangelical Theological Society. I’m pretty sure the term “evangelical Catholic” was meant to mean exactly this.

Unless you want to get involved in some required confessional theology that will define Jesus, Mormons and several other cults are evangelicals by this definition. Latter Day Saints regularly write me and inform me that’s the case, by the way. [Continue reading]

Several of you sent me links to a quote from National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson saying that yours truly was 1) somehow like Hugo Chavez (??) and 2) was in the midst of my own personal evangelical collapse. (”Autobiographical.” Unfortunate word choice.)

I decided not to respond, mostly because I know that keeping up the hype that there are 35 million actual evangelicals (as opposed to about 15 million evangelicals and a lot of wallpaper) must be time consuming.

But I will say this: the implication that my evangelicalism is collapsing is an unfortunate thing to say about anyone you don’t know. Maybe President Anderson needs to contact me and let me know where this autobiographical collapse is occurring. What “current events” took control of my mind and led me into panic mode? Am I under surveillance by the NAE? Can they read my mind? Hand me some tin foil…quick!

You see, the fact is that I’m more evangelical and Protestant than ever, and I’m more optimistic about being evangelical than ever. Just because I think the balloon is deflating doesn’t mean I am not optimistic about the great things that are happening.

I agree with President Anderson in all the points he makes regarding the next ten years of evangelicalism world wide. I don’t think his spin, however, has much to do with what I wrote, but then there’s no evidence in his comments that he ever got near part III of my CSM piece, where I say exactly what he said. He can work it out with the ARIS study. My conscience is clear. [Continue reading]

I don’t really care for Susan Boyle’s voice. But I’m very interested in her looks.

I’ve always had a thing about ugly rock stars. Tom Petty. Bob Dylan. That guy in The Cars. The drummer in Cheap Trick. Willie Nelson. Ugly men. Seriously ugly.

Do you remember Dave Roever, the preacher who had most of his face blown off in Vietnam? I loved watching that guy work an audience.

One of my fellow staff members had a horrific gun accident years ago, and is seriously damaged. Watching students and staff encounter him for the first time is always interesting. He has a great sense of humor about it all that cracks me up, and I truly am in awe of his contentment in Jesus. [Continue reading]

This week: Garbage and Baggage We Put With The Gospel. (This is a redo of 136)

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Ferguson on Baptism
Jars of Clay
Mockingbird blog
PBS Video portal

Intro music by Daniel Whittington. Exit Music by Randy Stonehill.

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My posts so far have carried an agenda. I would like readers to consider what church discipline looks like when it is the church’s compassionate ministry to those who are suffering, rather than primarily a punitive action toward those who are sinning.

I am aware that, according to a full understanding of church discipline, it is compassionate to deal with someone in a way that their need for repentance and returning to faith in Christ becomes obvious in their life. What concerns me is that the paradigm for church discipline is assumed to be radical surgery rather than the promotion of health in as much of the body as possible.

There are Christians who need church leadership to step up and take church discipline seriously, but not by attempting to turn an issue into a “bring it before the church,” I Corinthians 5 kind of response. These are persons who need church leaders to show an interest as shepherds, offering oversight, accountability, resources or mentoring, as needed, in situations that might normally be ignored. [Continue reading]

NOTE: I have chosen not to post a larger number of comments than usual. If you want to know why comments aren’t posted consult the IM F.A.Q. where this is addressed in one of the questions.

I could have posted some perfect examples of moral reasoning following our love, but I think the point is clearly made.

I recently searched my email archives and found a letter from a reader about the use of marijuana by a Christian. It reminded me of why I am more than a bit annoyed at the unhelpful moral reasoning that leaves out Jesus.

First, the highlights of the letter:

1) Almost everyone in America smokes marijuana or assumes it’s not wrong. (A statement that is factually untrue and if so, means nothing to the Christian. Great portions of the Bible were written to people living in empires and kingdoms that insisted everything from child sacrifice to emperor worship was universally the right thing to do.)

2) It’s no different than moderate use of alcohol. (Again, factually untrue from any number of angles, but it doesn’t matter. In scripture, comparing one thing to another without reference to God is meaningless. Similarities between legal and illegal behaviors don’t address why we make those distinctions. Why is it illegal to have sex with a consenting 17 year old but not with a consenting 18 year old? And the question for the Christian isn’t anything like “How is smoking week like drinking?”) [Continue reading]

It’s interesting to read the comments of the previous two posts and see how many people immediately see church discipline as….

-about public sins, usually sexual
-hopelessly prone to be a tool of abusive leadership
-unable to make needed distinctions
-destined to ignore some kinds of sin entirely

This is rather typical of the discussions I referred to in the first post. [Continue reading]

Without any intro, I’d like to get right into what I would be saying about Matthew 18 if I were lecturing on the “What does Matthew 18 tell us about church discipline?”

I’d begin by noting that the church discipline material in I Corinthians 5 predates Matthew 18 in composition. Assuming Markan priority, it’s safe to assume that the matter of what to do with certain kinds of situations in the early church moved Matthew to include more material for that context than you find in Mark or the other Gospels. There is a focus in Matthew on catechetical material and church context.

The epistles (including Revelation 2-3) are evidence enough of what these situations were and why they were of the utmost concern. They ran the gamut from interpersonal conflicts, family issues, business disagreements, immorality of various kinds and division. Evidence in the epistles also is clear that leaders were to function as shepherds in working toward the resolution of these conflicts. The matter in I Corinthians 5 is a matter of scandalous immorality, but it is also part of the larger Corinthian church problem: complete lack of functioning leadership, resulting in a kind of “charismatic” leadership that was allowing the church to go down the route of Thyatira in Revelation 2. [Continue reading]

Down through the years, I’ve been part of a few in-church discussions about church discipline. They were all memorable. Almost everyone was against it and treated me like I was going off the deep end for bringing it up. Being against church discipline was an issue worth yelling over, and I’ve been yelled at more than once.

In my denomination and tradition, church discipline of a certain kind was common in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. I recall reading the business meeting minutes of a church I belonged to that was founded in the late 1700s. In the the late nineteenth century, many business meetings involved the discipline of members for things as trivial as card playing and as serious as shooting another church member.

In the 1920’s, church discipline began to disappear and today is almost totally unknown in Southern Baptist circles. The reason is clear. Southern Baptists and most evangelicals completely lost the ability to see anything positive in church discipline, at least by the measurements they now use to measure what is positive and helpful in church life.

Church discipline was punitive and exclusionary, overstepping the church’s role and destructive to the church’s mission too represent Christ. [Continue reading]