November 20, 2009 by iMonk
I’ve been trying to emphasize the Gospel as the foundational content of the Christian life for many years. While I’ve worked at fresh articulations of the Gospel, there are a lot of familiar articulations of the Gospel that show up in my preaching and teaching with high school students and the adults in chapel and in my classes.
For example, these are four different Gospel articulations that I’ve used repeatedly in speaking and teaching. They are not definitions or creeds. They articulations that summarize and balance the content of the Gospel as I understand it. It’s language I want my hearers to hear frequently. Sometimes in phrases. Sometimes in whole sermons or lessons.
Announcement: The Gospel is the glad announcement that God himself, through Jesus, has done everything necessary to rescue his broken world and save its broken people from judgment and ruin. All persons are invited to believe this glad announcement, to be forgiven and to become a disciple of Jesus who is King and Lord. [Continue reading]
November 15, 2009 by iMonk
Today’s Gospel reading was Mark 13:1-8. There’s a chapter with “Can o’ Worms” written all over it.
When I deal with this chapter, I try to show that the parts of the chapter that are easily understood plainly give us instructions on what we are to be doing and not doing. Hope this message is helpful for you. I didn’t read all of the chapter but that would be helpful for you as you listen.
Preaching for Grown-ups is my lectionary preaching at a small Presbyterian Church where I am privileged to supply. It’s the one time during the week I’m not preaching to mostly or exclusively teenagers, hence the name.
Listen to: “Mark 13: What to do While the World Falls Apart.”
October 23, 2009 by iMonk
Originally published at the Steve Brown, Etc. Guest Room Blog. You also might enjoy “The Great Pumpkin Proposes a Toast,” from deep in the IM archives. Here’s a good post on “How to have a great Catholic Halloween.” No Protestants are harmed. It’s OK. The best article on Hallloween remains James Jordan’s “A Different View of Halloween.”
As October 31st looms, it’s time for true confessions.
I grew up among Southern Baptist fundamentalist Baptists. The KJV-only, women can’t wear pants, twenty verses of “Just As I Am,” Jerry Falwell, Jack Chick, twice a year revival kind of fundamentalist Baptists.
We were serious about things like beer. By sheer quantity of attention in sermons, drinking beer was the most evil act one could describe. We were serious about movies, cards, and something called “mixed bathing,” which normal people would call “swimming.”
We were serious about the Bible, Sunday School, suits and ties, and walking the aisle to get saved.
And we were big time into Halloween. [Continue reading]
October 17, 2009 by iMonk
UPDATE: Comments are closed.
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. Joe Boysel is an Anglican (AMiA) priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
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.
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.
Eric Landry is the editor of Modern Reformation Magazine. In addition, he is a PCA church planter in southern California.
Here’s this week’s question: How does the theme and practice of spiritual warfare relate to ministry in your tradition? Where are the boundaries of your own “comfort zones” in the practice of spiritual warfare? [Continue reading]
October 14, 2009 by iMonk
I’m very happy to have Keith Williams, one of the editors of the “Mosaic” Bible (NLT) that I’ve recently promoted here at IM, answering some of your questions about the NLT and the special Mosaic edition.
You can find the entire Mosaic Blog tour schedule here. Check out the various sites and all the questions and answers that have been published. The NLT Mosaic web site is a great resource. (Want a Christian year calendar for your Google Calendar?) You can buy the Mosaic Bible at Amazon. You’ll find all these links and resources behind the clickable ad on the sidebar.
So let’s get down to some of the questions contributed by IM readers for Keith and his answers.
How will the Mosaic Bible help someone coming from a Free-Church background (ie, Baptist) who is completely unfamiliar with the Christian Year as well as other elements of liturgical worship connect with broader Christian tradition and incorporate them in his or her devotional life? [Continue reading]
October 12, 2009 by iMonk
I need to be very clear at the outset: we won’t be having a discussion on the theology of baptism. I will be talking about the place of baptism in liturgy, and I will be doing so from the standpoint of a credobaptist describing the Protestant liturgical worship service.
Most formal worship spaces, even simple ones, will have a baptistry or baptismal font. In those churches where the baptistry/font is a permanent part of worship architecture, there is a constant reminder of the place of baptism in the Christian life.
In my tradition, faith unites us to Christ, but baptism is the “confession” of Christ before men that initiates participation in the gathered people of God. The baptistry/font is frequently a part of worship as baptisms are performed and confessions of faith given in the waters of baptism. [Continue reading]
October 4, 2009 by iMonk
FIRST: Read “Evangelicals and Science” at Tim Stafford’s blog. Niki is fictionalized, but not much. I am hoping this post will make one point: the Gospel combined with anything- a view of science, political opinions, convictions on gender, etc.- becomes a non-Gospel. Let the Gospel be what Paul describes in I Cor 15!
Her name is Niki. (Not her real name.) She’s a Japanese student who lived with an American family for a year and attended a Christian school. She took a year of Bible. She attended worship and heard lots of preaching. The Gospel was explained to her many times. She was well liked and sociable.
A very smart girl. A great student, much advanced over the average American student. She made A’s in everything, including Bible.
She left America after graduation and went back to Japan. [Continue reading]
September 30, 2009 by iMonk
I discovered last night that the large church I’d passed several times this week here on Sullivan’s Island was an Episcopal church with a 10 a.m. Wednesday Eucharist service. After checking the church’s web site, I noticed that one of the contributors at Mockingbird, John Zahl, was a pastoral associate at Holy Cross. IM readers know of my appreciation for what these Lutheranized Anglicans are doing, so I hoped that John would be leading this weekday service.
I was delighted to discover that I was right, and that Pr. Zahl was the minister preaching and leading the service. [Continue reading]
September 20, 2009 by iMonk
Dear Well-Meaning Non-Evangelical Friend,
Please sit down, have a cup of tea or coffee…and listen.
I see that you’ve responded to some of us who are pilgrims in the evangelical community and who are on a journey within and perhaps beyond evangelicalism. You’ve offered up some “help” in the form of advice, comments, explanations and so forth.
If possible, I’d like to encourage you to consider a few matters that could prove useful to our shared ultimate goal of knowing the Trinitarian God and following Jesus.
1. It’s possible you may be able to claim a few of us for your particular church by arguing with us over the specifics of doctrine. There are some among us who are in the mood to be convinced. But you are making a mistake, in my view, in regard to most of us with this approach. Your assumption that we need to be battered with the clubs of better logic and more knowledge is not the pleasant experience you apparently remember it to be. Let us have a process that operates under our terms and with our perception of the leadership of the Holy Spirit. If this is an episode of Bounty Hunter, tell us. [Continue reading]
September 14, 2009 by iMonk
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. Joe Boysel is an Anglican (AMiA) priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
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.
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.
And we have a new gangsta! Eric Landry is the editor of Modern Reformation Magazine. In addition, he is a PCA church planter in southern California.
Here’s this week’s question: A pre-med college student in your congregation comes to you and says “I’ve been learning about evolution at school, and I can’t recall the subject ever being discussed or talked about here at church. I’ve never really asked if there was a conflict between evolution and being a Christian. Can I believe what I’m being taught, or do I have to oppose it because I am a Christian? [Continue reading]
September 14, 2009 by iMonk
From May of this year. It’s “Spiritual Emphasis Week” for the next three days. Very busy.
Commenter: Please explain what you mean by:”community as Jesus exemplified it”. Thanks
It is the community that Jesus created and demonstrated during his earthly ministry.
I would describe it as:
Cross cultural: Jesus crossed every available cultural barrier to announce and practice the Kingdom.
Counter cultural: Jesus was offering an alternative to the dominant cultural and religious options in his world.
Inclusive: Jesus was creating community that included all of the excluded at every level. He dd this– as he did all of his community movement– with total intentionality. [Continue reading]
September 7, 2009 by iMonk
Headed for 700,000 unique visitors this year, with a current Technorati rank of just over 2000. That’s in the world. (There is an error at Church Relevance. Alexa says I had 20,000+ unique visitors in July. That’s not correct. In July I had 58107 uniques and 454,000 unique visitors as of today.) That’s with 29 million hits. Last year: 44 million. Almost 6 million page views so far this year.
We have the most diverse audience in the blogosphere. No mere echo chamber, but independent thinkers from every tradition.
I can’t promise your ad will result in anything for you, but I can promise that associating with Internet Monk.com is an investment that places your product, ministry or cause in one of the best possible places to raise your visibility. You’ll get great placement on the front page and weekly plugs on the podcast.
So come on New Living Translation 
You know you want to
September 3, 2009 by iMonk
For beginners, read the Introduction to this series, then visit the categories menu and hit “Evangelical Liturgy” for all previous entries. In a sentence, I’m walking through all the parts of the traditional Protestant worship service and discussing the value of recovering our own liturgical tradition.
The invocation has the distinction of being one of the most included and traditionally placed remnants of the Protestant liturgy, but also of being one of the least seriously considered parts of the worship service. We can always count on an opening prayer, but there is no predicting what we’ll hear. (Unless you are in a church where it is completely predictable what you will hear, no matter what else is happening.)
The invocation reflects a congregation’s theology of God. The God addressed in the opening prayer must be the God of scripture and his relationship to the worship service that is beginning must be that of the God who calls his people together around Jesus, his Kingdom mission, his Word and his sacraments. This is the God of all the Biblical story, but also the God Jesus taught us to address as Father.
The invocation is a prayer. It is not a sermon addressed to the congregation but using God as the excuse. One of my pastors once called a prayer in our morning service “The finest prayer ever prayed to a Highland congregation.” [Continue reading]
August 29, 2009 by iMonk
I received two letters this week from friends/readers asking for input and advice on relating to atheists in their workplace/families. It brought to mind a number of things I’ve been wanting to say about evangelicals and their take on atheism.
When I was growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist church, the face of atheism was Madalyn Murray O’Hair. I knew three things about O’Hair: she had taken prayer and the Bible out of our public schools, she was trying to get religious programs off of television and she was a weirdo.
For years, O’Hair provided the face of atheism to America: an angry, ranting, God-hating, bitter old woman who wanted to force her bitterness on the rest of the country. The way to defeat O’Hair was simple: Christians needed to sign a lot of petitions and vote the right way when elections came around.
It was safe to say that few people wanted to be like Mrs. O’Hair, no matter what their case against God and religion happened to be. [Continue reading]
August 25, 2009 by iMonk
“Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in holy attire; Tremble before Him, all the earth. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns; indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and all it contains; let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord, for He is coming; for He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in His faithfulness.”
No element of the evangelical liturgy is as clearly Biblical as the call to worship. It is deeply rooted in Biblical language, Biblical history and Biblical theology.
God’s call is fundamental to the general announcement of salvation and the specific work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. God’s call creates, gathers and identifies. It invests an ordinary gathering with the significance of the people of God entering into the presence and purpose of God in worship.
The call to worship is a re-enacting of fundamental and highly significant aspects of the life of the individual and corporate people of God. We are called to God, called to worship, called to mission and called to present attentiveness to the Word and its work among us. We are called to think of God and to hear his commands and invitations. [Continue reading]
