UPDATE: Here’s my review of Crazy For God.

I’ve been reading quite a few novels and autobiographies. Some of you need to shut off the theology and read something else. Maybe read Calvin’s Institutes for a year or something.

That was joke. Anyway…

I just finished Frank Schaeffer’s Calvin Becker Trilogy. (I talked about them a bit on the last podcast.) This includes Portofino, Zermatt, and Saving Grandma. All are available cheaply in used copies.

I won’t rehash the books for you beyond this: Schaeffer turned his adolescent life into three novels about a teenager boy being brought up by Presbyterian missionaries in Switzerland. The whole family is there, and so are all the typical issues of a 13, 14 and 15 year old boy. If you are looking for a mixture of absurdity, comedy and honesty about growing up fundamentalist, these are your books. Calvin Becker is as good a narrator as Huck Finn. If you’re an evangelical with roots in the last 40 years of evangelicalism, you are going to laugh, cry, get angry, throw the books, be amazed, pray, applaud and generally have a good time. [Continue reading]

Well 2008, here we are. The dance is almost over and it’s very nearly time for you to go.

We’ve been together for 12 months now, and there’s something I want to say before we go our separate ways. Something special, just for you.

2008…..I know you’re just a way of marking time, and I know there’s nothing all that personal between us. You didn’t know what the year was going to be like. It was as big a surprise to you as it was to me. The writing from day to day wasn’t there when we first met. It unfolded, a day at a time, for you just like it did for me.

But there is something I want to say, and I’m searching for the right words. [Continue reading]

For those of you who take an interest in our lives and pray for us, and for those of you who really, really don’t have much of a life, I’m posting the Spencer Family Christmas Newsletter.

If you read this site, you won’t learn much you don’t know, but maybe someone out there who has better things to do than read this page will actually be fascinated by the array of significant and insignificant detail on display in this year’s letter.

I am sorry there’s no Starbucks coupon on the back, but if you take this to White Castle, stand on a table and wave it really fast while yelling “Stop Shopping!!” you’ll be arrested. That could break up the monotony of your life.

Download the Spencer Family Christmas Newsletter. (A one page pdf. We’re down-sizing this year.)

In the eight years (this month!) that I’ve been writing here at Internet Monk.com, I’ve said a lot less about parenting than I should be saying.

Recently, a reader wrote me to say that he valued my view on many issues of life and family because I was older (52) and I’ve been through many of the stages of life experience that others are still looking forward to.

A conversation with my Advanced Bible class about God’s love as expressed in parenting, and my own reflections on parenting as my son announced his engagement have stirred up all kinds of potential posts about parenting.

So, instead of writing them all, I’d like to attempt a quick walk-through of some of my own observations about parenting. I’ll stir up more than I can respond to, I’m sure, and I don’t want to create the impression that I know the answer to all of the issues related to parenting, but perhaps this overview will help us locate some good topics for future posts. [Continue reading]

Paul made a lot of sin lists. You know, lists of sins.

If you’re a preacher or teacher, you’ve probably used Paul’s sin lists a few times as the raw material for a talk or sermon. You’ve walked through the list, one sin at a time and said a little something about each one. It may not have been the most interesting talk you ever did, but it took up some time and sin is always relevant, right?

Those lists can be pretty spectacular.

Romans 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Comprehensive, that’s for sure. [Continue reading]

Some Christians love to talk about the sins of Obama or gays or the mainstream media, but get really animated when I suggest we need to talk about our own, even if they are listed in the Bible dozens of times.

If the Gospel isn’t grabbing you by the real sins in your real life, just exactly what is the Gospel doing for you? Or you with it?

I don’t like the fact that I can give a really good talk on prayer when I rarely pray.

I don’t like it that I can read Matthew 5:23-24 and, as far as I can recall, never take a single step toward obeying it.

I don’t like that I can sin and then condemn someone else’s sin in almost the same breath.

I don’t like it that I’m convinced people need to understand me, but I take so little time to understand others.

I regret that I’ve spent so much of my life seeking to make myself happy in ways that never led to real happiness at all. [Continue reading]

I enjoyed worship at St. Peter’s Church in Lexington, and a lunch visit today with the abbot himself, my friend Alan Creech.

For you people that don’t know this story, I’ve pulled almost everything off the site that refers to it, so I’m sorry about that.

I got some nice things for my 52nd birthday. A new iPod. (Blue, 4th generation Nano. Be envious.) A book of Benedictine Daily Prayer. (I’m figuring it out.) Birthday cake (Oatmeal. Mmmm) with my wife, daughter and son-in-law. (Their rendition of Happy Birthday somehow made me feel I was boarding a train for Siberia.) A lot of Facebook greetings. Two cards. Many birthday wishes from my students. And right after I’d preached, a large lipsticky kiss on my cheek from a long-time co-worker. (It’s a tradition where I work. My wife approves.)

I missed getting a birthday card from my mom. Twenty-five dollars, as regular as clockwork. I miss hearing her voice on the phone telling me she was in labor for two days and it almost killed her.

I would have liked to go to church on my birthday, but instead I preached for our students. I Corinthians 3:5-9. “On Christians and Those Who Grow Them.” I enjoyed that opportunity. [Continue reading]

Back in the day, many of you counted on me to write about my personal journey. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, almost all of that kind of material has gone into storage or been deleted. Hopefully, this piece will recalibrate us all on the journey, but not cause quite the chaos in my environment as before.

Many of you know the start of this story, but you may find some new things in the retelling.

In April of 06, I felt God instructing me to resign from the church I was serving. It was the church our family called home for a decade. I’d served them for 12 years. I had no idea that it was the end of almost any sense of spiritual “home” at all, and the beginning of a season of much change.

In May of that year, my son left home for college. In June, my daughter married. A few weeks later she would move to another state and temporarily quit college. (She’s graduating OSU in a few days, and I am very, very proud. But at the time, it was tough.) [Continue reading]

It’s Thursday of “Baseball Week,” and I’m in a library getting some of my Cornerstone talks polished off before heading for central Ohio to meet my daughter and son-in-law. Sabbatical is certainly rushing by.

Yesterday’s day game gave me a really nice case of sunburned knees. Knees. It’s so much like my life to get sunburn in a weird place where all compassion will be swallowed up in laughter.

Every day should be dollar dog day. That’s hot dogs at the ball park for the uninitiated. The only thing better would be dime dog night, but I doubt if the hot dogs would be as good. [Continue reading]

Baseball fans: what are some of your thoughts and feelings as the new season begins? Best memories? Ironies? Tragedies?

Tomorrow at 1:05 EST, the Cincinnati Reds will take the field against the Philadelphia Phillies in Clearwater, Florida.

The long, dark winter of the soul will be over here in the Spencer household.

My life runs on three calendars. The first is the calendar of the ministry where I work, a school calendar full of breaks and beginnings, graduations and finals. I enjoy the academic calendar and the rhythm it provides for my life. If I had to give it up, I’d be sorry for all those lost opportunities to enjoy grace and sabbath.

The second calendar is the Christian year. If you read this site you know how I feel about that. My faith journey is formed around the time-keeping of the church’s way of marking time. No single thing has been more helpful to my own growth as a disciple and worship leader. I always know where I am with the people of God, and it’s always relevant, despite the fact that Baptists don’t understand it. (I’m kidding.)

The third calendar is the informal, but thoroughly religious and essential calendar of the baseball universe. [Continue reading]

You are invited to add your insights on the similarities of these three stories.

Three stories. Three men in the second half of life.

Story one. An almost perfect man loses everything. Unknown to him, God is in a contest with Satan, proving that the this man’s righteousness is no fluke. He loses family, wealth and health. He is exiled from his community, watches his reputation dissolve, despairs of life and demands that God give him an opportunity to argue his innocence. Instead, he hears three friends and a young theologian repeat the conventional wisdom that his losses are punishment for his hidden sins. After insisting he has done nothing to cause God to punish him, the sufferer witnesses God’s arrival in a whirlwind to present the sufferer with a series of enigmatic questions. Does the sufferer know his place in the world? Is he competent to put God on trial? Does he know God’s purposes and perspectives? The sufferer abandons his case and embraces humility. God pronounces him innocent, condemns his friends for their theology and restores the man to his place of prosperity and blessing. [Continue reading]

In a church in Georgetown, Kentucky this week, there is going to be a funeral for one of my fellow teachers at the ministry where I serve. His name was Henry.

Henry came to our school from a career in ministry, public school administration and teaching. After retirement he lost his wife, and a great sadness came to him, but he stayed with us. The support of friends, Christian community and the opportunity to serve drew him to stay. In his years on staff, he taught political science, history and Bible. For a year he served as principal. He was a college trained pastor, and he preached in chapel from time to time.

Off the clock, Henry liked his solitude. He enjoyed his books, his writing and his jazz music collection. And he liked to have conversations about life, faith and what mattered. His living room became an unofficial pastoral counseling center, and he was friend, pastor and mentor to dozens and dozens of young men. [Continue reading]

This essay would be appreciated most by those who read my essay recounting my history of appreciating Roman Catholicism. Sadly, I could not write that essay today.

I took an hour out of my time this afternoon and reread a large section of Thomas Merton’s outstanding spiritual biography, The Seven Storey Mountain. I was looking for a single sentence, and I finally found it.

Merton is attending mass for the first time. He’s not yet a Christian or a Catholic. As he comes into the church, he comments that the people gathered for worship were there to pray and there was no sense that they were aware of one another. This, he says, is different from Protestant churches where it seems that everyone is conscious of being in a crowd and has half an eye on the other people present.

I wanted to find that sentence because, as far as I know, it’s the single instance that I recall of even a moderate criticism of Protestantism in Merton’s writings. [Continue reading]

Went to the post office this morning (where Crazy For God and an Exodus Commentary by Peter Enns were waiting for me) and got my mail. Last letter in the stack was from the Louisville Institute.

It opened with the usual “Thanks for applying…..400+ applicants….lots of deserving people….” And so on…

And then the second paragraph. Congratulations. You have received a $10,000 grant for your 8 week Sabbatical proposal.

I had my iPod going and was standing in line with four other people. I looked up at this guy behind me and grinned like an idiot. He probably took a couple of steps back. [Continue reading]