I asked for permission to reprint an entire editorial column from the always provocative and frequently dead-on-target Patrol Magazine. It’s entitled “Get Over It.” It’s the latest installment in The Coming Evangelical Collapse, as far as I’m concerned. There aren’t enough ways to say “Yes” and “Amen” to this editorial. I’ll have more to say about this on the podcast.

Patrol Magazine is consistently on top of the current evangelical evolution. David Sessions and the Patrol staff have been doing outstanding journalism for two years now. It’s a young evangelical Rolling Stone, the magazine Relevant would like to be. There’s more to say, but this is a true note amidst the confusion that surrounds us. Expect this editorial to get the “people who criticize the beautiful bride of Christ are pathetic” treatment, but don’t be deterred. Evangelicals have their strong suits, strong churches and worthy messengers, but overall, this is what mainstream evangelicalism is cooking. Add Patrol to your feed and stop in frequently.

(Reprinted with permission from Patrol Magazine)

HOWEVER LONG it may take to relinquish its hold on American culture, evangelicalism in the United States—still probably best defined by the British historian David Bebbington as a movement whose members adhere to conversionism, Biblicism, activism and crucicentrism—faces near-certain extinction. It has been blinded by its symbiotic relationship with the Enlightenment, and has perpetually failed to see beyond its hopelessly Western perceptions. Confined to the paramaters of liberal rationalism, it has mounted no challenge to the present political order and offered no intellectually acceptable explanation for how one is to live and think in the postmodern world. As this magazine has chronicled, its brightest children are throwing up their hands in record numbers, defecting heavy-heartedly to less temporal churches, or to no church at all. [Continue reading]

From the inimitable, irreplaceable, absolutely necessary Naked Pastor, David Hayward:

Visit Denise’s blog where this review first appeared.

When I first began this book I was rather dubious. What did this author have to say about such a tried-and-true topic that hadn’t already been said a hundred times? My reluctance was unfounded, however, and I’m happy to report that I enjoyed the book immensely.

Father Haase seasons his prose with stories from his own and others’ experiences to illustrate his points. Each chapter ends with “Reflection Questions” and “Gospel Passages for Meditation and Prayer.” This makes Living the Lord’s Prayer a book that could easily be featured in a study group as well as read by individuals. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Dr. George has an article at Christianity Today this week: What Baptists Can Learn From Calvin.

As a student at Southern Seminary in the early 80’s, I was blessed beyond measure to have a young, brilliant and engaging church history professor named Dr. Timothy George. I’ve long admired Dr. George and his teaching on the Reformation ranks as some of the most formative teaching I ever received. His books and talks bear all the marks of a true Christian statesman, scholar and ecumenist. He ranks among the foremost Baptist historians in the world.

Today Dr. George continues to serve as the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham and a senior editor of Christianity Today. He is a participant in the project known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together and also serves on the International Baptist-Catholic Dialogue team.

I recently wrote Dr. George and asked for his comments on this question: “How can Baptists respond to Catholic and Orthodox Christians who challenge our view of the Lord’s Supper as having no deeper historical/Biblical roots than Zwingli?”

Dr. George was kind enough to send along this reply. I’m deeply appreciative of his generosity. [Continue reading]

A few weeks ago, IM reader Chris Giammona made it possible for 20 IM readers to receive a free copy of Andrew Marin’s significant and helpful book, Love Is An Orientation. As a condition for receiving the book, each reader agreed to write a brief response. Here are the first five of those responses. The name of each writer appears at the end of their review. One paragraph was moderated because of a formatting issue.

My three main responses:

Christians and non-Christian Gays:
God loves every human he has made. What he wants most is not for gays and lesbians to become heterosexual, but for them to choose a relationship with himself through Jesus.  For us as conservative Christians, this means acting in a way that encourages all people to pursue a relationship with God, rather than defending God’s moral law.  Frankly, it’s a lot easier and more comforting for me to defend moral laws.  I think this is because, deep down, I don’t think the Holy Spirit can do the defending.
 
Christians and Gay Christians:
A Christian’s spiritual journey towards a deeper relationship with God is a personal journey that requires a community to support and encourage it.  The path of that journey is different for everyone. Straight Christians tend to judge the gay Christian journey by how heterosexual the person is becoming.  But God may be more interested in another area of growth for many years.  Gays need room to attend church, be in Bible studies, and be loved and accepted while they are still gay.  They need room to be Christians while still gay. They need to have a community of fellow believers, straight and gay, that allows them to talk and think about what their same-sex attraction means in their spiritual journey.  This doesn’t mean “accepting” homosexuality.  It means accepting that we are all sinners seeking wholeness in whatever way the Holy Spirit works in us. [Continue reading]

Our friend Michael Patton at Credo House, Renewing the Mind Ministries and The Theology Program has an announcement at his site that may be of interest to some of the IM audience.

“I have designed a theological toolbar to lead you to all the best and most trustworthy sites on the web.

Included:

* Online Bibles Sites
* Bible Study Software
* Christian History
* Theological Sites
* Built in MP3 with the entire Theology Program fed into it.
* Easy to access RSS feed to the must read Theological Blogs (IM included of course)
* Google search engine
* and more…

It is very clean. Check it out.”

This is a useful tool and your downloads will also help support Michael’s ministry. Check out the dates for the next Theology Program term. At $100 a course, it’s a great way to learn theology.

My wife Denise is on her way to sainthood and is eminently qualified to review Jason Boyett’s new book.

Before I could begin this essay, I had to pull up my thesaurus and check for alternatives to the word “delightful,” because I could very easily overwork that adjective in a book review of Jason Boyett’s Pocket Guide to Sainthood.

The Pocket Guide to Sainthood is just that. At 219 pages and dimensions of 5″ x 7″ x 5/8″, this little book just might fit into a large pocket. Definitely a purse or backpack. But wait–I’m beginning to sound just a bit like Boyett.

Subtitled “A Field Manual for the Super-Virtuous Life,” the Pocket Guide is a fast-paced, easy-to-read volume chock full of general information, biographical summaries, interesting tidbits and Boyett’s quirky sense of humor on every page.

Continue Reading At Denise’s blog…

Lots of great Cornerstone personality videos at Prof Rah’s You Tube page.

NOTE: Richard Twiss is going to be at Asbury October 15-17.

Guest blogger Ted R is one of the good guys at New Reformation Press. Our discussion on the struggles of some evangelicals with assurance brought up some of the very helpful teaching available through that fine IM sponsor. See them on the sidebar if you like this post.

I thought I’d post a small sampling of Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation which iMonk mentions, The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church, since it’s so timely in discussions regarding justification, sanctification and assurance. It’s hard to cherry-pick the presentation, though… it’s essentially one big cherry. I still listen to it regularly.

For your consideration I submit this sample of the PDF version of Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation:

If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief. Tragic, despairing, sad unbelief. (It is not unlike the [unhappy] Christian equivalent of “Jack Mormons” i.e. those who finally admit to themselves and others that they can’t live up to the demands of this non-Christian cult’s laws, and excuse themselves from the whole sheebang.) A diet of this stuff from pulpit, from curriculum, from a Christian reading list, can do a work on a Christian that is (at least over the long haul) “faith destroying.” You might be in just this position this evening. [Continue reading]

Welcome back IM First Officer Michael Bell as the guest blogger today.

You may have heard people say that the “average” sized church in the U.S. or Canada is about 75 people. You also may have heard someone say that the “average” sized church in North America is about 185 people. Who is right? It all depends how you define “average”.

Statisticians use three terms when describing populations. “Mean”, “Median”, and a third term that won’t really enter our discussion today called “Mode”.

I have borrowed, and expanded upon, an analogy from the The National Congregations Study that was released last month, to help us understand the differences in these terms and why they are important to our understanding of churches in North America. What you will read here is U.S. data, but the numbers are very similar for the Canadian situation as well.

Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attenders.

If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number. [Continue reading]

Prof Rah’s Youtube channel has the entire Saturday panel on “The Future of Evangelicalism.” It’s excellent video and in seven parts. There is some minor editing (no introductions for example.) Thanks to Jonathan Choe and crew for great work in producing the video.

Frank Turk and I have been tossing the Mark Driscoll guilt/repentance issue back and forth a bit. So we decided to both post on the subject and link the other fellow’s post. Then you can argue in the comments.

Here’s Frank’s take on the matter. Expect uproarious applause. Trust me that Frank is serious about this. We wouldn’t even be friends if he hadn’t publicly called on me to resign the ministry several years ago.

So here’s my take. Expect Dan Phillips to denounce me as an apostate and Truth Unites and Divides to be banned from the comment thread.

The passage that seems to have the most bearing on what we are discussing is I Timothy 5: 19 Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 20 As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. 21 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. 22 Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure. [Continue reading]

I’m sure that many of you have noticed that I have been publishing essays by Michael Bell. I’m now going to introduce a second “occasional” contributor: Steve Scott.

I’ve been impressed with Steve’s blogging at “From the Pew” for quite a while. We share many of the same perspectives and Steve has been a positive and helpful commenter here at IM. You can now look forward to him writing once a month or as he has something worthwhile to say. I also hope you’ll be a regular reader at “From the Pew.” As you might expect, Steve and I don’t completely agree (note the Rushdoony reference), and that’s in keeping with the environment I try to encourage here at the most diverse Christian discussion in the blogosphere. His journey is unique and I look forward to reading his contributions.

I’ve asked Steve to describe some of his journey in evangelicalism so you can know a bit more of where he is coming from as a contributor.

I “became a Christian” in 1994 at the age of thirty. I put this in quotes because my conversion was a long, arduous process rather than a point in time. For simplicity, I use 1994 because it is the time when I started attending church regularly.

I was tossed into the fire from the very beginning. In 1989 I discovered a teacher on the radio who emphasized the Bible heavily, and for the first time I considered my sin and my destiny seriously. [Continue reading]

Internet Monk First Officer Michael Bell returns with a look at some of the recent Pew Forum data on changes in American religious affiliation.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
- Bob Dylan 1963

For years I have heard about the many changes that have been taking place within the Christian World. Churches and denominations growing, churches and denominations shrinking. We have had a pretty good idea of who has been growing, and who has been shrinking, but with birth rates, death rates and other factors, it has been pretty hard to pin down the source of the growth and decline. Have Evangelicals been growing? If so, has the growth come from the non religious, Catholics, Mainline Protestants, or other religions? What sort of outflows have they experienced that have offset the inputs? Is the back door larger or smaller than the front door? How are the Catholics, the Mainline Protestants, the non religious and others doing?

Well now we know. [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.