And at the end of this Wednesday night circus event at a local church here in Tulsa, a young man was dead.

George Clinkscale, a 24-year-old former University of Tulsa football player, died after taking part in the “main event” of Guts Church Fight Night VI. Never mind that Clinksdale (nor any other of the participants, as far as I know) had ever trained for a boxing match. Never mind that the entire event was unsanctioned under Oklahoma law. A young man is dead for no reason other than to try to draw people to a church.

Guts is just like many churches, only more so. They have an annual Halloween event called Nightmare with the expressed purpose of “scaring the hell out of you.” It’s a haunted house where you get preached at after being frightened. Under “Beliefs” on the church’s web site we read that “God’s will for our lives as believers is to become whole and successful in every area of life” and “The actual meaning of salvation is to be complete and lacking nothing; spiritually, mentally, physically and emotionally.”

They conduct the “Ultimate Hitman” contest, awarding high school football players who hit the hardest in their games. Really. Here is what they say about it.

The Ultimate Hitman Program celebrates the “Hit of the week” in over 20 local high schools and 4 states around the country.

We send reps to each school every week to give the team a challenging word and award the Big Hitter with a Hitman t-shirt.  Each of these teams have scheduled team nights at our GYC services and we culminate the season with the Ultimate Hitman Awards Show.

Over 2,000 people will be in attendance at this years Hitman Awards as we show higlights in 5 categories with over 25 schools in attendance.  We are changing the culture of High School football – Hit Hard and Love God.

Hit Hard and Love God. Think about that. It’s enough to put me off of my feed for a week.

And the purpose of the sub-ministry of Guts called “sub30,” the host of Fight Night, reads:

sub30 Tulsa meets every Wednesday night on the main campus of Guts Church @ 9pm. It is a college church targeting college students and young adults from ages 18-30. Come out and get a powerful worship set, a very challenging word, and always fun food and events! If you are of age and in the Tulsa area for any length of time you need to visit sub30!

Last Wednesday, the “always fun food and events!” ended in the unnecessary death of a young man. And I for one am completely, totally done with the Evangelical Circus.

That’s it. I want nothing to do with it any longer. And thus I’m calling for a revolution. Will you join me?

I’m not going to waste time bashing Guts Church. Why? What good would it do? I know the choir here at the iMonastery would gladly sing along with me about the ridiculousness of holding such events just to draw people in. We could dissect their belief statement and hold court on their methods. Yet where are we at the end of the day? Guts will still be holding their Ultimate Hitman contest and their Nightmare haunted preaching. I don’t care about them any longer. The revolution I am calling for does not address circus-event churches any more than just ignoring them.

The revolution (reformation?) I propose is this.

First, rediscover the Gospel. Know that the Gospel of grace is not just for our entrance into the “Christian club.” The Gospel of grace is our very life. It is how we are to live every day, every hour, every minute. How do you rediscover the Gospel? You have your Bible. You have books by those who found it and lived it. You have the Holy Spirit of God living in you. Seek it with all of your heart. The journey will take you on a twisting, sometimes dark and often dangerous (to your beliefs) path. As you walk, you will have more questions than answers. But it is the path we each must walk if we are to break away from the Magical Ministry Tour.

As you are journeying to rediscover the Gospel, find other believers who are also on this journey. Yes, this may mean leaving the church you have become comfortable in and seeking one where others are seeking. No, not a “seeker-oriented service,” but seekers walking together in prayer, in encouragement, in commitment. These churches are there, but I doubt you will find them advertised on billboards or giving out awards to boys who hit other boys the hardest. These churches may be large or small, Catholic or Protestant, meeting in a beautiful building or a rented theater. What matters is that those in this church are not looking for entertainment but discipleship.

As part of this revolution, we will stop trying to attract people to church in hopes that they will get saved. (Salvation, by the way, is much larger than just being complete and lacking nothing, but that is a discussion for another day.) Instead, we will pray for those in our families and neighborhoods, our jobs and our clubs, listening the Holy Spirit, speaking into the lives of those who are willing to listen. More than that, we will love those in our lives, showing them the same unconditional love God shows us. When they show an interest in the Gospel of grace, that is when we can invite them to join us in community with other believers.

This involves great vulnerability on our part, and zero circus events to attract attention. It takes nothing to invite someone to “food and fun events;” it takes great courage to open your life to many in the hope that some will be rescued (the true meaning of salvation—but that is a topic for another day).

The other night a young man died in an attempt to attract people to a church. That was totally unnecessary. More than two thousand years ago, a man died so that we would no longer have to play religious games. He opened the door for us to have direct access to God, to live in the kingdom of Heaven right now. His death is enough.

My call for revolution starts now.

Are you with me?

I am a man of words. Not a man of few words—just ask those who have spent any time with me. I read and write and speak in words. We all use words everyday in one way or another. As Christians, we are people of The Word.

But I’ve noticed there are certain words we avoid because they make us uncomfortable. We’ll look at two such words today. Stand by to squirm.

Jesus.

Why is it that Christians of all people have so much trouble with the name of Jesus? “God?” No problem. “Lord?” Even better. “Father.” “Supreme Being.” “The Almighty.” All of these are perfectly acceptable names in referring to deity. God, etc., keeps us at arm’s length—and a very long arm at that—from any actual encounter with the divine.

But Jesus? That gets just a bit too personal. His name is raw and earthy. God is in the heavens. He is safely distant, coming only when we call for him. But Jesus? Jesus is intrusive. He is here. He wears sandals and a tunic and eats fish and rides donkeys and makes mud from spit and dirt. Jesus doesn’t wait to be invited—he barges right into life.

Jesus upends lives everywhere he goes, starting before he was born. Jesus invaded—in a very literal way—the lives of a young teenage girl and her fiance. An angel came to speak to the young girl in person, and in a dream to her fiance. Both of their lives were changed forever because of Jesus. Joseph and Mary were doing all the right things, and now were the center of a scandal not of their making. It was to this Joseph—we are told he was a good man—that it was told the child’s name would be Jesus.

Jesus. A real, common, ordinary name that now brings great offense when it is spoken.

Jesus changed lives wherever he went. He healed people who seemed to be content in their distress and disease. He cast out demons, one time destroying another’s livelihood by sending the evil spirits into a herd of pigs that went sailing over a cliff. He scared a servant silly by telling him to take a pitcher of washing-water to the host of a wedding to drink. How was the servant to know it would become fine wine? Jesus became a name associated with miracles—free food, coins in the mouths of fish, dead people suddenly undead—but also with crazy talk.

Yes, his sermons were delivered with authority the Jews had never before encountered. His parables were interesting stories. Yet it seemed whenever the crowds became too large, too interested in what was in this for them, that Jesus would say something to drive them away.

“Eat my flesh. Drink my blood.”

“Hate your spouse, hate your parents, hate your kids.”

“Don’t go bury your father. He’s dead. Leave him be. Follow me.”

This was Jesus speaking then, and he speaks yet today. And that is why the name of Jesus makes so many uncomfortable.

In the third book of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis’s character Mark Studdock shows his discomfort when he hears the name of Jesus.

And at the name of Jesus, Mark, who would have lectured on abortion or perversion to an audience of young women without a qualm, felt himself so embarrassed that he knew his cheeks were slightly reddening; and he became so angry with himself and Mr. Straik at this discovery that they then proceeded to redden very much indeed. This was exactly the kind of conversation he could not endure; and never since the well-remembered misery of scripture lessons at school had he felt so uncomfortable.

That is the case with so many of us still today. We are ok with talking about anything but Jesus.

Do you think I’m wrong? You think I am overstating my case? Visit just about any evangelical church you like this coming Sunday. Listen—really listen—to the lyrics of the songs sung. Count the number of times the name of Jesus is mentioned. You will hear “Lord,” “God,” “King.” But seldom will you sing the name of Jesus. In my own church we can go weeks without the name of Jesus appearing in any of the songs’ lyrics.

When the music is over and the pastor begins his sermon, start the count again. How often will he or she name the name that we claim is above all names? Michael Spencer wrote about Christless preaching many years ago. I dare say the situation has not improved in the least.

So is this just a straw man I am building? Does it really matter whether we use the name of Jesus or not? I believe it does for these reasons.

1. When we leave Jesus out of our songs, we tend to sing about us. The focus becomes on what we are doing for God, how much we love him, how we are dancing in the river, or whatever metaphor lends itself to making us feel good about ourselves. So many songs that leave out Jesus are simply emotional feel-good sing-alongs that are empty of any true worship of the only one worthy of worship. And that one is not you and it is not me.

2. Leaving Jesus out of sermons likewise allows the focus to be turned onto how we can become better people. Better parents, better employees, better church-goers. Without Jesus we end up with sermons on how to have great sex, how much is a true tithe, what party is God’s chosen party that election cycle. Without Jesus as the center of every sermon there is no Gospel message. And if we are not preaching the Gospel, we are wasting our time.

3. Without Jesus, all we have is a moralistic religion, and a not very fun one at that. We would be better off to each buy a copy of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, work the system, and try to make as much money and find as much happiness as we can. Without Jesus, there is no Christianity. Without Jesus we are left with churchianity—and that makes us of all men most miserable.

Jesus offends. The name of Jesus is in-your-face offensive, and especially to those who call themselves Christians but really are most interested in getting what they want out of life. The name of Jesus causes demons to tremble, even those demons we allow to ride on our shoulders. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow, so it is not surprising our knees buckle on hearing his name even now. Give me a nice, mellow “Lord” if you please. Keep your earthy Jesus to yourself. That way I don’t have to face his demands on my life.

When I began working with Michael on becoming a book author, I asked him a question I had asked hundreds of authors: If you could write only one book in your lifetime, what would that be? He didn’t hesitate. “I want to write about our need to be Jesus-shaped people,” he said. “We need our lives to be based on Jesus, not church, not religion.” Unfortunately for Michael, that is the only book he ever did write. Fortunately for us, he did write Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality. May we never forget we are Jesus people. May we never be offended at the name of Jesus.

May we say, sing, speak the name above every name every chance we can.

Jesus.

By Chaplain Mike

“The kingdom vision of Jesus is a kingdom filled up with people who are noted by one word: love.” (One.Life, p. 48) The Apostle Paul put it this way: “For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” (Gal. 5:6, MSG)

In the next chapter of Scot McKnight’s book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, he examines Jesus’ call to a life of love.

McKnight approaches this by first examining our tendency as Christians to approach the life of faith as a matter of being “right”—having the right religious opinions and following the right religious practices. The religious authorities in Jesus’ day taught people to live “right” by obeying the scriptures. In order to help them know how to obey, the leaders clarified the commandments, adding laws designed to set forth situational applications of the “big-idea” laws God had given.

The Torah contained 613 laws. To these were added “halakot”—official religious rulings that set forth specific ways of keeping the laws. The intention may have been good. They were “applying” the Scriptures. They were being “practical”— (1) The Torah said, “Keep the Sabbath.” (2) People want to know how to do that, so (3) here’s a list of examples. But we all know how this works. It is not very long before the big idea gets forgotten while the rules remain. The life of faith thereafter becomes defined as merely keeping the rules, and the religious leaders and institutions become invested in making sure the rules get kept.

Jesus opposed this approach. Read Matthew 23 and you’ll see how adamant his opposition was. But Jesus did more than cry out against the halakot approach of the scribes and Pharisees. He replaced theirs with his own halakot. Do you want to know how to keep the 613 commands of God? Jesus ruled that they could all be fulfilled if we would focus on just one of them (in its two aspects)—Love God, and love your neighbor (Matt 22:34-40).

What Jesus said to the religulous of his day was this: You are fixated on your love of Torah and judging others by whether or not they live up to your standards and your rulings, but what you must understand, is that God gave us a Torah of love. (p. 52)

In one of the key chapters in One.Life, Scot McKnight argues that this love is at the very heart of the kingdom Jesus calls us to imagine and embrace.

Scot has written about this in detail before. His most popular book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, is an examination of how Jesus’ halakot played out in his life and ministry and influenced every aspect of what he taught and did.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

Scot recommends that believers begin and end each day reciting “The Jesus Creed,” and that we recite it whenever it comes to mind throughout the day as a habit of recalling that Jesus’ kingdom is all about loving God and others. “The first word that should come to mind when we hear Jesus say the word “kingdom” is the word love.” (p. 53)

As nice as this sounds, we find it hard to get a handle on this. To show how our tendencies run, as I am typing these words tonight, my train of thought immediately starts heading down the track of application—Let’s see: Love God and love others. How do I do that? And I begin focusing on the ways and means of loving. I move from the “big idea” to the practical outworking. It’s so natural.

But it can become deadly. The next step is when I start making my own “rulings” about what love looks like. I start defining what it means to love God and others. I set up the game and clarify the rules. If I’m not careful, my focus will be on doing things that I have defined as love (following the “rules”) rather than responding in sensitive faith to the God who is present and active, and in appropriate acts of love to the actual persons I am dealing with in the given situation (following the Spirit). Just like the religious leaders in Jesus’ day focused more on defining who their neighbor was so that they could then love him, rather than asking, “How can I be a neighbor to everyone who comes across my path today?”

Agreeing with Jesus, and living after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostle Paul had a “law of freedom,” his own “halakot” for applying God’s command to love. When confronted with the call to love God and love others, Paul didn’t immediately try to come up with “practical applications” of the command. He didn’t make new laws to help us keep the “big idea” commandment. Instead, he said the way to go about fulfilling God’s call to love is to walk in the Spirit rather than trying to live under laws. He talks about his in Galatians 5—

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom….

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

• Galatians 5:13-18, MSG

It is by “walking in the Spirit” (as the more traditional translations have it) that we love others in the freedom of Christ. Walking in the Spirit, we will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Walking in the Spirit, we are free from a life that must be constantly defined and defended by “laws.” And the fruit of the Spirit—what the Spirit brings forth from our lives—is love (Gal 5:22).

Simchat Torah, Yales

This teaching can be frustrating for people who just want to be told what to do. We are constantly asking the “how” questions, thinking if we can just get the right, practical answers from a respected spiritual authority, then we can order our lives around their “halakot” and life will become a simple matter of “follow the yellow brick road.”

Entire churches today are trying to attract seekers with this “relevant” approach. They advertise “simple, practical” sermons, as if such messages can give people a clear template that will tidy up their lives. Some of it is just pop psychology and cultural “wisdom” dressed up in Christian terms. But much of it is “halakot”—rules for living designed to help people know “how” to keep God’s commandments; rules that turn into expectations that turn into laws that turn into prisons of moralism and legalism. It is a great problem for religion in general, and evangelicalism in particular.

But Jesus and Paul and the other Biblical writers won’t stand for it. The word from heaven is “Love God. Love your neighbor. Do it by walking in the Spirit.” Period. This is the heartbeat of life in the Kingdom of heaven. This is God’s dream that we are called to embrace. This is the world we are to imagine. This is his gift to us, through the love he demonstrated in the incarnation, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Messiah Jesus. This is the “newness of life” (Rom 6:4) that we have been raised to walk in, in union with Christ, through our baptism. This is the life of possibility and beauty he poured out upon his people through the Holy Spirit. This is the new creation that is coming.

I, for one, refuse to add to that.

I have always considered evangelicals (including myself) weak in the area of imagination. The evangelical or fundamentalist tradition has been, by and large, a prosaic tradition, characterized by simple logic, plain spokenness, common sense, and an iconoclastic rather than an aesthetic ethos. There is a certain literalism at its heart that carries with it a suspicion of metaphor, poetry, myth, mystery, ambiguity, symbolism, and open-ended questions. Evangelical faith is expository faith—it must explain. It values answers and certainty. It wants to “nail things down,” not set the mind and heart free to imagine and explore the possibilities. Its focus is captured in the immortal words of Detective Joe Friday, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

In some situations, this can be a strength. Overall, I think not.

That’s why I was so glad to see Scot McKnight take up the subject of imagination in his book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. Scot notes how reading fiction and entering into its stories and characters “lengthens the horizons of my life and expands my vision of what life can be,” and then talks about how and why Jesus used fiction in the form of parables to teach about God’s Kingdom. “His parables draw us into the kingdom world and then they set us back down in this world hungering for more, hungering for a kingdom kind of world now.” (p. 38)

In other words, Jesus did not give us “just the facts.” He told stories. He stimulated our imagination. He prompted us to envision a different life, a different world, different relationships, a different God than the one expositors explain in theological prose. The One.Life of following Jesus is the Imagined.Life.

The Sower (1888), van Gogh

Jesus’ parables help us “see” with our imaginations how God is at work in the ordinary acts and affairs of our lives. Surprisingly, we discover that God is not “religious”! He is out there with farmers planting seeds and with workers hiring laborers. He’s up early with women baking bread and up late at night when a neighbor knocks on the door to borrow bread. He’s out in the heat of the day with foreigners who help strangers in trouble on the side of the road. He is with fishermen pulling in their catch and throwing back the ones they don’t want.

These “ordinary” situations become “extraordinary” when our imaginations move us to realize that life has additional dimensions beyond what our senses can access. There is an unseen world around us, where the invisible Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all is constantly active, always at work, present and ever engaged in the life of his creation.

In Jesus, this unseen realm has intersected with ours in earnest—the Kingdom is at hand!—and because it has, we can believe that the smallest actions of our lives with him can have significant, even eternal consequences.

In One.Life, Scot McKnight examines several paradigm-changing insights that grow out of Jesus’ parables. But the big point is this: truth and life so wondrous as that which Jesus came to give cannot be held within theological definitions and teaching outlines, classroom lectures and debates. The world God wants to create can’t merely be explained, it must be imagined, and most of all, it must be lived.

Sower (after Millet), van Gogh

This parabolic dream kingdom begins, Jesus says, with the imagination. First you listen to his stories and enter into them imaginatively, the way you enter into your favorite novel’s characters.

… You begin thinking about very ordinary things, like fields and farmers and workers and women baking and men picking wheat and wounded people, and suddenly you find yourself transported into a brand new world and a brand new way of thinking. This vision of Jesus will take a conversion of our imagination… (p. 44)

In Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, C.S. Lewis wrote, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

Jesus’ stories open windows to that place, that realm, that Kingdom where God rules and God acts, which intersects with our world in the most surprising ways, making the ordinary extraordinary and beautiful.

By Chaplain Mike

This week, in addition to the daily “Stations of the Cross” posts, I will lead us in considering ideas from some good books I am reading. We will continue exploring James Davison Hunter’s brilliant, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. In addition, beginning here and now, we will consider some of Scot McKnight’s challenging and encouraging teaching from his new book, One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.

I am a self-described “post-evangelical.” Nevertheless, I still believe this movement which formed the context of my life for thirty years gets some things right. One concept they grasp well is MISSION. The evangelical groups with whom I have been involved have been committed to participating in the Missio Dei, God’s mission in the world. Now, they have sometimes narrowly defined that mission, and at other times they have perverted participation in God’s mission into a programmatic style of activism centered around the institutional church that misses the mark, in my view.

However, today, younger and more progressive evangelicals in particular are attempting to restore some balance and breadth to our understanding of the church’s missional activity. Scot McKnight’s book, One.Life, encourages that. In fact, he sets this missional identity as the framework for the entire Christian life.

Scot McKnight describes his early Christian life in two words: Saved, and Instructed. His training taught him that: “A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus; and the Christian life is the development of personal (private) practices of piety, separation from sin and the world, and a life dedicated to rescuing sinners from hell.” (p. 13)

However, a third stage in his development, “Discipled,” led him to study Jesus and the Gospels and respond to Christ’s summons to follow him.

I was a Christian alright. I was a devoted Christian. I was serious about theology. I was into personal practices of piety. But I wasn’t into Jesus, because I was a legalist. I was asking who was in and who was not, rather than simply … who is Jesus? And I was focusing on what I should be doing, rather than asking what Jesus taught, if I was following him, and if I was his disciple. (p. 15f)

He came to the conviction that Jesus defined the Christian life differently. He defined it as “following him,” and Scot came to realize that following Jesus is bigger than a single moment of accepting him and then following a plan of personal pious practices. Jesus is calling us to follow him into the divine dream he came to bring to pass in the world—he called it, “the Kingdom of God.”

McKnight calls Jesus, “A Dream Awakener.” When he came proclaiming that the time had come and that the Kingdom was at hand, when he called people to repent and believe the Good News, Jesus was calling us to join him in something much bigger than personal piety. The first hearers of that announcement would have thought of a King, and a land, and citizens living in that land, with influence that spread to the ends of the earth. When Jesus taught disciples to pray, he told them to say, “May your Kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And so the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed is about something that is meant to be accomplished here, in this world, in a society that his followers are called to embody.

And so, Scot McKnight came to embrace a new definition of what it means to be a Christian: “A Christian is someone who follows Jesus by devoting his or her One.Life to the kingdom vision of Jesus.” (p. 34)

A Christian is not just someone who experiences personal forgiveness of sins and learns to practice private acts of piety, who separates himself or herself from sin, and participates in church and religious activities. A Christian is one who has heard the call—“Follow me!”—and has, by grace, responded by joining God’s mission in the world, becoming part of his new society, following Jesus into the world as an agent of the Kingdom of heaven.

By Chaplain Mike

To conclude this week of remembering the founder of Internet Monk—the late Michael Spencer, who died a year ago—we point you to the crowning achievement of his writing life: his book, Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality.

If you have not yet had a chance to read this book, we encourage you to do so.

The book begins with a story about a youth group going to Dairy Queen, acting crazy and rowdy, leaving a mess without bothering to clean it up. Michael, who was the youth pastor, received a letter from a young person who worked at the DQ and had witnessed their behavior.

You also probably don’t know that I am a member of your church, but for the past year I have been an atheist. The reason is very simple: Christians like you have convinced me that God is a myth, an excuse used by religious people to mistreat others. As long as there are people like you and your youth group, I’ll never come to church or believe in God again. You are petty, selfish, and arrogant. I would rather be an atheist, no matter what the consequences, than have people like you accept me just because I was a “Christian.”

As Michael meditated on that incident, he recognized the incredible irony of “the Christian life” as it had been presented to him in the church. Though the church constantly challenged Christians to let people “see Jesus in us,” he realized that the following was true:

• We had no idea what Jesus was really like.
• We assumed that being in church would make us like Jesus.
• We seldom studied the Bible with the purpose of seeing how it connected to Jesus.
• In the name of Jesus, we were ungracious and unloving to people who didn’t believe exactly as we did.
• We knew very little about what Jesus was doing on earth besides dying and rising again.
• We assumed that Jesus bought into our idea of what was important in life.

The purpose of Michael’s book is to critique this “churchianity” that has little to do with Jesus, and to encourage us to seek a more “Jesus-shaped” way of trusting and following him.

Mere Churchianity is presented in four parts:

• The Jesus Disconnect: In which Michael diagnoses and describes symptoms of the problem, and introduces the way of Jesus-shaped spirituality. “What I need is a real transformation by the real Christ, not the one that is manufactured by organized Christianity.” (p. 44)

• The Jesus Briefing: In which Michael invites to take a closer look at Jesus as he truly is; especially as presented in the pages of the Gospels. “To understand Jesus and the God who comes to us in Jesus, we have to come to terms with the truth that Jesus is absolutely singular and unique. No matter how much research we might do, we can’t define him. He is remarkably exclusive compared to the phony versions of Jesus running loose in our culture.” (p. 77)

• The Jesus Life: In which Michael discusses what a believer’s life might look like if he/she followed Jesus into a Christian life without adjectives, reminding us that “it’s a bad idea to be a good Christian”—“Jesus was not clearing the road so I could ride victoriously through life. He was becoming the road that would carry me through all the garbage, falls, and disasters that were the inevitable results of my existence.” (p. 135)

• The Jesus Community: In which Michael addresses those who find themselves in the “wilderness” with regard to being connected to a church, encouraging us to find or start a community of those who long to follow Jesus himself. “The decision to pursue Jesus-shaped spirituality won’t take you to a building with a sign out front. You may have to look hard to find the overgrown path of the “road less traveled by…that has made all the difference.” (p. 210)

We invite you to participate in a journey into the heart and soul of Michael Spencer’s Jesus-shaped, grace-filled message by getting a copy of Mere Churchianity and reading it today. It represents what we are all about here at Internet Monk.

Raising of Lazarus, Giotto

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
From May 4, 2009

I can’t speak for anyone else, just for me.

When I became a Christian in 1974, I was immediately taught to define myself three ways.

First, did I believe that I was a sinner and that Jesus died for my sins so I could go to heaven?

Second, was I doing the the things my church taught me to do: attend worship, pray, read the Bible, tithe, “witness”, come to Sunday School, be a good Baptist?

Third, was I not doing the things my church taught me were sinful: drink, dance, use drugs, watch R-rated movies, listen to rock music, have sex outside of marriage, use profanity, work on Sundays, marry a Catholic?

That was the menu. Simple. Comprehensive. Understandable.

Jesus wasn’t absent. He was the door in. But then he seemed to vanish into the background.

God had other plans for me, however. One of my school friends introduced me to books. Christian books. He was reading C.S. Lewis. I didn’t get what that was all about.

Then he gave me a copy of J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. It’s a weighty book now, and it certainly was then. I read what I could, and that wasn’t much, but it was enough to reorient my understanding of the Christian life if two ways.

First, Packer impressed upon me that the Christian life was a relationship with God- “Knowing God.” I’d never heard this before. There was some “knowing” in my faith, but it was primarily about doing. Coming to me at a time when I was starting to awaken intellectually and grow personally, I was drawn to this new way of thinking about the Christian life.

Secondly, Packer’s book demonstrated that being a Christian was a much bigger project than I ever suspected. God touched on everything, not just in the sense of “being a witness,” but in the sense that everything was a way to worship God, serve God or experience God. Suddenly, all of life, not just witnessing or listening to sermons, became part of the experience of knowing God.

I took the book to my youth director and asked him if he’d ever heard of it. He looked at it, and read the title. He told me that being a Christian was about how many people you could get to go to heaven, not about knowing God. The book, he said, sounded off track and I should avoid it.

For the first time in my life, I realized I was being led in the wrong direction by one of my spiritual leaders. It was an uncomfortable place, and I was, for a moment, torn about what to do.

I’d gone a long way down the road of identifying with my church’s way of being a Christian. I won’t recite some of what I did to try and be a good witness, but it was between comedy and the sort of travesty that is exceedingly painful to watch.

My church specialized in certainty. They were certain that the Bible absolutely would lead anyone reading it to become exactly what we were, and anyone paying attention to the Bible would do exactly what we did exactly the way we did it.

Now here I was, a teenager, still in high school, a relatively new Christian, holding a book by some Anglican guy I’d never heard of, feeling drawn by the Holy Spirit toward a new direction in understanding God. Somehow being drawn, in a way I could never explain, toward Jesus; a Jesus to whom I felt like a stranger.

Here I was feeling that maybe it wasn’t about door-knocking confrontations, dress codes, sin lists and repeated trips down the aisle to finally surrender “all.” God was reaching out to me, and showing me more of himself. To know him, I would come to know Jesus.

It was the beginning of a journey. It would take me to the Catholic charismatic movement where I learned that Jesus was much more generous and amazing than I ever had been told in my church. It was a journey that took me on to a Methodist revival team called the “New Disciples for Christ,” where I learned about calling people to follow Jesus.

It took me to college where I gave up on the rapture, and into the first suspicions that I may not have ever truly known the Father heart of God. A longing for Jesus began in me; a longing amplified when my fiancee dumped me and I began to see myself as a man.

There have been times in my life that I did not move forward with God, but camped where I was, convinced I was finally surrounded by the “real” Christians with the “final” answers. Always, God moved me on, toward a deeper fellowship with Him. Always, moving me toward Jesus.

Washing the Disciples' Feet, Giotto

That journey wasn’t constant. In my years on church staff, I forgot about Jesus and focused on the church. I wanted to be successful. Jesus would always be there, creating his special kind of tension with the normal expectations of ministry in a large church. Under the influence of Tony Campolo, I began taking students to eastern Kentucky and into the inner cities of Chicago and Boston. In those experiences, I began to see and sense Jesus again. I began to grow past the approved, safe Jesus of the suburban church, and to understand that Jesus was a trouble-maker; a revolutionary turning the world upside down.

In 2006, God told me to leave a church situation I’d been part of for 12 years. The result, 3 years later, was my wife going to the Roman Catholic Church and my journey with God going into the evangelical wilderness, where the same God is beckoning me on. This wasn’t where I expected to find Jesus, but I should know better. It’s always him, making me his disciple, surprising me, taking me out of the safe places and putting me where he emerges more wonderful than ever.

It is, always, the same God I heard calling me in the pages of Knowing God. I haven’t chased every wind of doctrine. With the exception of a foray into Calvinism for too long, I’ve always been much the same Baptist believer I was when I started this journey. Jesus has shown me that he isn’t a franchised product of some denomination or the spokesman for some program or cause. Jesus is the source, the head, of his body. He’s present in all the places Christians seek him, but he’s present in some many more places and in so many more ways that we ever suspect.

The constant is that God isn’t through with me, and the older I get, the more excited I am about Jesus. The more I come to see glimmers of what it really means to know him and be known by him. I now have few doubts that God is at work in my life for his glory and my benefit, but the journey won’t be a standstill. It will be new discoveries and new adventures.

In the midst of knowing God through his Son, I’m discovering that I am a member of the human race, deeply connected to all other persons in my humanity and my sinfulness. I’m discovering I don’t need to make a demonstration of what I know about anyone else’s life or how God works. I simply need to learn humility and understand that God is surprising us constantly in Jesus. I need to be open to Jesus and not turn him into the sum total of my idea of what it means to be a Christian.

Every so often, things I’ve learned, but not connected, will powerfully come together, as they did today in finishing Andrew Marin’s book, and I’ll see the presence and power of Jesus and the Gospel in ways I haven’t before. I’ll discover that all my experiences with Jesus are preparing me for an epiphany. There is no controlling or predicting where or when or how Jesus will show up in my life. I only know that now, after 37 years, I am starting to see Jesus in magnificent new detail.

Christ’s Appearance Behind Locked Doors, Buoninsegna

I’ve come to understand my journey in new terms.

The church is about Jesus. The Bible is about Jesus. Christians are about Jesus. The creeds are about Jesus. A lot of great ministries, preachers and teachers are about Jesus.

But none of us- NONE of us- nowhere, no way have Jesus captured and commodified. He is, by the power of his Spirit, more than all of this and leading us to himself.

Everything we have that brings Jesus to us is ultimately used by Jesus to bring us to himself. We are always moving forward; always experiencing the Spirit remaking and revealing, empowering and epiphanizing…Jesus.

I have discovered that the maps, as important as they are, will run their course. The wise men are not as wise in the wilderness as they are in the safety of their sanctuaries. The way is lonelier, the companions more precious, the views and vistas more breathtaking.

Onward and upward, to Jesus. Into his Kingdom, and to greater glory and treasure. Always, no matter how much we know, discovering that we are only children, invited to trust more than understand.

Today, as I closed Andrew Marin’s book, Love Is an Orientation, Jesus appeared again, out in front of me, familiar yet strange. Always beckoning me on. I know less and less what is before me, but I am ever more certain he is the way, the truth and the life.

So I beg your pardon friends. It’s time to travel again.

By Chaplain Mike

I have found Will Willimon’s fine book, Why Jesus?, to be a perfect companion for my Epiphany meditations on Christ’s earthly ministry. Today, we’ll do one final post. Here are a few more of his vivid, memorable descriptions of our Savior.

On Jesus the Magician:
Maybe what we call “natural” is a perversion of what God intended and what we call “supernatural” is the way the world really is. Maybe the miracles, which to our eyes appear “supernatural,” are, to the eyes of God, the most “natural” thing in the world. Though Jesus was accused of turning the world upside down, maybe he was turning the world right side up. (WJ, 61)

On Jesus the Home Wrecker:
But “family values” is not Jesus’ thing. We know all about the prophet Mohammed’s kin; we know next to nothing about the family of Jesus. Though Mark says that Jesus had four brothers and several sisters, Jesus’ family plays a remarkably negligible role in his story. Jesus’ strange paternity made his birth an embarrassment for his would-be father, Joseph. Though Luke says that little Jesus “grew in wisdom and in years,” that does not seem to include the wisdom to cooperate with his parents. “You didn’t know that I would be about my Daddy’s business?” Jesus sassily asked Joseph and Mary when they reprimanded him for making them mad with worry by hanging out at the temple and arguing theology with the experts. Why, Jesus? Why focus on matters about which we couldn’t care less? And why assault those values—like home, parents, and family—that we consider so valuable? (WJ, 69)

On Jesus the Savior:
Just when I settle in and try to reduce Jesus’ love to me and my friends huddled in church, I hear him say to (us) the faithful, “The tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you!” (WJ, 82)

On Jesus the Sovereign:
God’s great rescue operation for a fallen world is Jesus Christ. The great end of that venture is the kingdom of God, that time and place when God, at last, gets what God wants. Many want a better world, a closer, more heightened sense of God’s nearness and God’s rule, but it is one thing to anticipate such a time and place; it is quite another actually to look at this lowly Jew from Nazareth, the Servant, and believe that, in him, the kingdom has come here, now. (WJ, 89)

Transfiguration, Buoninsegna

Internet Monk’s founder, Michael Spencer, urged all of us to pursue a “Jesus-shaped spirituality.” What did he mean by that? Here is a key characteristic, according to Michael:

It is a spirituality that is consciously, exclusively and intentionally Jesus-centered. The center and the boundaries of Jesus shaped spirituality are Jesus himself, as revealed in scripture, especially in the Gospels.

In these days following Epiphany, I encourage us all to contemplate Jesus, not only the most fascinating man who ever lived, but God in the flesh, our Savior and Lord, the beginning and the end. Willimon’s book can be of great help, but the best window of all through which to look at Jesus is the Biblical Gospel as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me!” (John 5:39-40, The Message)

May Jesus Christ be praised.

By Chaplain Mike

As we discussed last week, we are in the time following Epiphany. These are days to contemplate the earthly ministry of Jesus.

Jesus said to Thomas and the other disciples (before the Cross): “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) If you want to know what God is like, Jesus said, look at me. And we are to look not only at his “finished work” (death, resurrection, ascension, outpouring of the Spirit), but also at the words and works from the days of his earthly ministry. He came to reveal God to us (John 1:18), and during Epiphany, we focus on the vision of God’s glory that emanates from the days when Jesus walked in Galilee and Judea, preaching the Kingdom of heaven, reaching out with compassion and healing power to bring wholeness to people’s lives, and teaching and training his disciples.

Our guide this week has been William H. Willimon. His recent book, Why Jesus?, paints vivid word-pictures to help us appreciate how attractive yet disturbing and perplexing Jesus is. Last time, we discussed Jesus as Vagabond—a man constantly on the move; as Peacemaker—who provokes conflict, bears the brunt of suffering and thereby provides reconciliation; and as Storyteller—who weaves unforgettable yet cryptic tales that get under our skin and challenge our perceptions of God, life and what it’s all about.

Today, he points us to Jesus the Party Person, and Jesus the Preacher.

Feast in the House of Levi, Veronese

Jesus the Party Person
One of the most common portrayals of Jesus in the Gospels, and perhaps one of the more under-appreciated, is that of him enjoying dinner and having fellowship at the table with people in their homes.

Nowhere in Jesus’ human nearness (and, in a curious way, his divine distance) more apparent than in the portrayal of Jesus as moving from one dinner party to the next. He was no ragged renunciator of this world. He was a party person. He was never a priest bathed in incense up at the temple; he was a wandering rabbi who did some of his best teaching amid the festivity of the dinner table. Jesus was accused more than once of showing the unseemly behavior of “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (WJ, 39)

Did Jesus ever turn down a dinner invitation? It doesn’t seem like it! He visited all kinds of homes and shared meals with all kinds of people. Whether it was a Pharisee or tax collector, a friend or a religious opponent trying to catch him in a trap, a small gathering of the spiritual elite or a large, rambunctious party full of “sinners,” Jesus would sit at table with them, enter into conversations, tell stories, laugh, enjoy their fellowship, discuss important issues, and challenge accepted notions.

Jesus’ habit of relating to people at the table reminds us that God is personal and social, and intensely interested in personal fellowship with his people. It also challenges those who minister in Jesus’ name to remember that the only effective way to touch people with the Gospel is through face to face personal human contact—being present, listening, speaking, creating connections, calling people by name, visiting at home or work or over coffee. The big event, program approach misses the point entirely. Sure, Jesus spoke to crowds too, but there is no indication in the NT that this was the most fruitful aspect of what he did. And many times it only seemed to provide an opportunity for the real work of the ministry, which was with some individual or small group in private.

The most controversial part of Jesus’ habit of partying with people was his choice of parties. It seems he frequented places the pious folks avoided religiously. He consorted with characters whose reputation was renowned, and not in a good way. He touched people and let people touch him when it was sure to cause scandal. He welcomed the presence of spiritual losers and delighted in the company of common folks with little social clout. When he did get a chance to practice his etiquette with the glitterati, he wasn’t always appropriately deferential, challenging spiritual snobbery and questioning hidden idolatries.

There is nothing like a feast. We celebrate all our holidays and special days by eating together, with special, sumptuous foods, delightful traditions, wine and champagne, rich desserts, and with preparations and presentations that we reserve for just these occasions. Families enjoy more frequent lesser feasts like Sunday dinners. We look forward to warm weather holidays when we invite people over or gather at the park for cookouts. Friends convene at tailgate locations, or local pubs and sports bars to watch games and cheer on their teams together at tables piled high with food and drink. Church pitch-ins bring the saints together for potluck and pleasure.

And Jesus commended it all as a foretaste of the age to come, transforming that old saying—”Eat, drink, and be merry . . . for tomorrow we’ll be doing this forever!” Never mind the puritanical party-poopers; when Jesus is present, party’s on. Pull up a chair and grab a plate.

We dress up and engage in revelry because parties offer a respite from the dull, humdrum world where we live Monday through Friday. But in his partying, Jesus rejects a temporary respite from this world; he shows them a glimpse of this world healed, finished, redeemed, and restored to what God originally intended. (WJ, 42f)

Jesus the Preacher
Jesus, this man on a mission, this peacemaking servant, this weaver of enigmatic tales, who delighted in dining at table with people of all kinds, came thundering on the scene after his baptism with a proclamation: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15)

Jesus was a man with a message. He was a herald with a public announcement. Like a town crier, he went about shouting, “Hear ye! Hear ye!” He had breaking news which demanded that the normal program of life be interrupted. This was no test of the emergency broadcast system—this was the real thing. It was D-Day, and God’s invasion of this world had begun. Stop the presses! What Jesus had to say demanded a new headline, a new lead story, front page worthy.

Jesus the Christ is God garrulous, loquacious, and graciously talkative. (WJ, 47)

Will Willimon notes how, in his first recorded sermon (Luke 4), Jesus showed us all what speaking a word from God entails.

• It means being filled with the Holy Spirit, letting one’s words be directed by his power.
• It means drawing from Scripture as God’s Word.
• It means taking that ancient word and drawing out its implications for today, pointing to what God is doing now and what that might mean for you and me.
• And, it means being ready for all hell to break loose when people’s lives are challenged by the upside-down workings of a God whose ways do not resemble ours.

Jesus found a way of attracting big crowds of people through his preaching. They recognized an authority in him that was unique. They found his words intriguing, thought-provoking, winsome and wise. But Jesus also found ways of offending most of them too. On one occasion, he emptied out a whole auditorium by telling people the strangest thing: they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood if they wanted to have life. What’s that about?

When he asked his closest friends if they wanted to check out too, Peter spoke up, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life.” (John 6:68)

That’s the only reason for listening to Jesus. Not that his sermons give your life meaning, or put a lift in your step, or explicate life’s dilemmas, but rather because the one who is speaking just happens to be the Son of God, the Savior of the world, Lord of life. (WJ, 53)

It may be the rarest of combinations—party-person/preacher. Jesus is both. He brings Good News of a forever feast, and he invites us all to join in.

By Chaplain Mike

Will Willimon’s excellent book, Why Jesus?, is an extended meditation on the person and work of Jesus Christ as revealed to us in the Gospels.

Taken together, allowed to speak with their delightful peculiarities, these earliest witnesses to Jesus give us a trustworthy, irreplaceable rendition of him, the most interesting person in the world. We must meet Jesus as presented by his first followers, or we meet him not at all. (WJ, xii)

The author invites us, as Jesus himself did, to “come and see”—to take a contemplative journey along the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea with the One who came proclaiming God’s Kingdom and demonstrating its power by his words and actions.

Tonight, let’s consider him whom Willimon calls “Vagabond,” “Peacemaker,” and “Storyteller.”

Jesus the Vagabond
The first characteristic of Jesus that impresses Will Willimon is his activity. Jesus is God in motion, ever on a journey, a Man on a mission. Except for a few chapters in Matthew and Luke, we would know little of the birth and childhood of Jesus. However, all the Gospels are united in presenting “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1) as commencing with his appearance and baptism under John the Baptizer. That’s when Jesus hit the road. And he never stopped until he sat down at the right hand of his Father.

What the gospels deem important about Jesus is not his family or his youth but rather his embarkation on his ministry, his forward movement, his mission. Breaking like a wave across dusty Galilee, he thunders forth into a captive land—God at highest momentum. God immediately. Anybody who wants to meet Jesus, to understand or be with Jesus, must be willing to relocate. (WP, 2)

The Gospels portray Jesus as a man on a missional journey, and we are fellow travelers with him. Willimon reminds his readers that this Jesus will not let us sit down in a classroom, thinking that we can know God by memorizing definitions and accepting explanations. He is the Way, and knowing him means following him, learning like breathless children shouting out questions while attempting to keep up with their father’s adult stride.

Also, Jesus was a “vagabond” wanderer—while on his mission he put little stock in the things that make for comfort, and he encouraged us to take a similar view of settling down. He had nowhere to lay his head, and he invites us to roll out our sleeping bags and join him in sleeping under the stars. We travel light. We learn to depend on the kindness and hospitality of others. We practice living with open hands and non-grasping hearts. In Willimon’s memorable words, traveling with the vagabond Jesus teaches us that we have been “created for more than merely present arrangements” (WJ, 9).

Jesus is God on the move. He moves into the world, and toward us in constantly surprising, bewildering ways that pull back the curtains on God’s Realm and give us glimpses of its reality and re-creative power. “Fear not!” he calls to us, and “Follow me!” Like Jesus’ first followers, we “get to know Jesus only by catching some enigmatic whiff of his glory and stumbling after” (WJ, 11)

Jesus the Peacemaker
Jesus is commonly known as “The Prince of Peace.” But Will Willimon reminds us that the peace he brought, announced by the angels to the shepherds, came at the expense of a lot of trouble.

Jesus brings peace, but his peace often begins as disruption and despair before it is sensed as peace. It is not peace as the world gives, his peace. Prince of Peace Jesus was a threat to world peace. (WP, 13)

Not that Jesus initiated the trouble he and his followers experienced by their own violent attitudes or actions. Jesus remained firmly committed to “turning the other cheek,” “going the extra mile,” and refusing to resort to the sword when opposition arose. All the way to the cross.

Nor did Jesus rely on political power or the world’s system of justice to bring peace. Nor did he have the kind of clout that comes from having a lot of material possessions or money to throw around. He didn’t deify the state or rely on any of the human machinations we depend on to change the world.

This must have been hard for his more “practical” followers. He had a Zealot in his company, for heaven’s sake, a living, breathing revolutionary who had been actively involved with those who called for the violent overthrow of Israel’s Roman oppressors. He had James and John, “Sons of Thunder,” who wanted to go all prophetic on a group of Samaritans who rejected them, and call down fiery judgment from heaven. He had Peter, who revealed his inner warrior when he swung the sword that fateful night in Gethsemane. I don’t think he was aiming for anyone’s ear. The guy ducked.

Ultimately, it was through violence perpetrated against Jesus that true peace was purchased. “Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20). Then he committed to his followers the ministry of reconciliation and called us to be peacemakers by walking in his steps of humility, love, service, and suffering.

Jesus said, “Peace I give to you, but not as the world gives peace.”

I’ll say. (WP, 24)

Jesus the Storyteller
. . . he did not speak to them except in parables. (Mark 4:34)

Parables, these pithy, strange little stories from everyday life, are the most distinctive—and peculiar—aspect of the teaching of Jesus. . . .

Why, Jesus? Why do you explain God with unexplained stories, most of which lack neat endings or immediately apparent points? It’s as if Jesus says that God is not met through generalities and abstractions; God is met amid the stuff of daily life, in the tug and pull of the ordinary. Yet God is usually encountered, if the parables have it right, in ways that are rarely self-evident, obvious, or with uncontested meaning. In parables, the joke is on us. (WP, 26)

In his meditation on Jesus’ parabolic teaching ministry, Will Willimon vividly describes the disorientation we feel when we truly hear these stories.

• What? A businessman did what? He commended a servant who cheated him? God is like that?
• What? A widow constantly haranguing a wicked judge?—that’s what prayer’s all about?
• What? People who work only one hour get paid the same as those who worked all day? How is that fair?
• What? A guy finds out some land is valuable, containing buried treasure. He goes to the owner and slyly pays a discount price for it? That’s what embracing the Kingdom is like?
• What? A Samaritan is the good guy? What are you saying, Jesus?

In my Christian experience, the funny, shocking, surprising, subversive teaching of Jesus has often been quenched by analysis and exposition. We’re not good listeners. It’s hard for us to stay in the moment with Jesus the Storyteller. We want the explanation, the moral, the lesson. We want the punchline to be clear, the message to be practical and edifying. We resist being left hanging. We don’t want Jesus to respond to our questions with even harder questions. We’re impatient. We want the answers so that we can pass the test. Now.

Aside to Jesus: Some people buy books like this one hoping that the book will explain you, make the complicated simple and the mysterious comprehensible, and thereby make you easier to swallow without choking. I guess you aren’t going to let us get away with that, are you? (WP, 29)