Curious Minds Want To Know: Does the IM Audience REALLY Exist?

C.S. Lewis said that the person who tries to be unique never is, and the person who sets out to be original seldom is.

I would suggest that the IM blog and IM radio podcast audience are made up of people who may, at least at some point, have felt they were “the only ones,” or one of a few.

Slowly, as books and blogs and stories and coffee shop conversations proliferated, their view changed.

Now, they/we know. There are thousands of us at a thousand different places in the evangelical wilderness. Our experiences in evangelicalism weren’t exactly what we originally thought. Given a place to stop, listen and talk, it turns out there are many of us, not just a few. No one seems to have a map, everyone seems to have a story. Very few of us want to go back to whatever evangelicalism was when we were happily going along with the show. [Continue reading]

iMonk 101: Is Mental Illness Demonic?

I am continuing to repost my 2005 series on “The Christian and Mental Illness.” This post, “Is Mental Illness Demonic?” has been edited considerably from the original. This post will deal with some controversial ideas. I am not pretending to have the last word on any Biblical text or any person’s mental illness. My primary point is that we do not have to abandon a compassionate response to mental illness in order to uphold the authority of the Bible.

Is it the Christian view of mental illness to categorize mental illness as the activity of demons and/or the result of sin?

This question really goes past a discussion of mental illness into questions of Biblical interpretation that have increasingly troubled Christians in the past century. The seeds for this controversy were sown as Protestant Christians expounded the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in their confessions. In order to keep Biblically authority sufficiently high to battle liberalism, words and concepts were applied to the Bible that have become more and more troublesome when the Bible interacts with secular ways of seeing the world. These claims for the sufficiency and inerrancy of the Bible inevitably come into conflict with the vocabulary and truth claims of science and medicine. [Continue reading]

Preaching for Grown-Ups: Mark 13

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.”

Internet Monk Radio Podcast #165

This week: Lessons from Chess. Get Over it. Gospel Cowards

Support the IM sponsors: Restoring the Soul.com. Real help for restoring the pastor’s soul. New Reformation Press. Reformation theology for everyone. Rockbridge Seminary. Family, ministry and online seminary all coming together. Alan Creech Rosaries (or aids to prayer. You decide) The Ministry to Children blog is “information central” for children’s ministry on the net. The Theology Program is your best non-seminary educational option. Sign up for classes or buy the whole program.

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Gambit: The NYT Chess Blog
Gospel Cowards
Get Over It

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Riffs: 11:14:09: Patrol Magazine and Evangelicals Who Won’t “Get Over It”

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]

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles and the Matt Chandler Bobblehead

Matt Chandler spoke at my alma mater this week (yes SBTS alumni, class of ‘84 and more). You can watch the message here, but one of the Thinklings excerpted part of Chandler’s message and the words were very familiar.

Chandler’s quoting Eugene Peterson, he who created the much vilified paraphrase “The Message” and who most recently endorsed The Shack with a glowing comparison to Pilgrim’s Progress. Suffice it to say you won’t read a lot of Peterson quotes at 9 Marks or hear his name dropped at Together for the Gospel. Classic mainline liberal, fiery prophet of learning from Dickinson and poets no one can pronounce, renegade translator of the original languages into even more original language, a curmudgeon who lives in Montana and doesn’t answer the phone, unapologetic advocate of “spiritual direction” and “contemplation,” and without question the most passionate advocate of the role of the classic Protestant pastor and the most fearsome critic of whatever it is that passes for a pastor today.

Chandler was reading from page 5 of the most underlined book in my library, Peterson’s nuclear attack on the contemporary re-invention of the pastor, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. If you think you are a pastor or might want to be, this book cannot be avoided. [Continue reading]

Gospel Cowards

A church-planting friend just wrote me about a conference he’s attended in one of our state Baptist conventions. Plant those churches, boys, was the rallying cry, but stay out of those pubs.

Take the Gospel into the world, but stay out of anyplace that serves beer. That’s someone’s version of how the Gospel applies to church planting. Go to jungles, mountains, into the tribes of cannibals or the roughest ghetto, but stay out of O’Charley’s.

Here’s my current theory: it’s not that we are simply ignorant of the Gospel. We can stop announcing that the church needs to hear the Gospel for the first time. It’s more than that. I think most people in most evangelical churches have heard it more than adequately. (Though I am not disagreeing with myself or anyone else that many in evangelicalism’s darker corners haven’t heard the Gospel with accuracy, understanding or personal application.) They may not have your footnotes on justification memorized and they may not be wrath-anxious enough for some of you, but a lot of Christians understand the Gospel.

The problem isn’t simple ignorance. It’s primarily cowardice.

Here’s the Gospel. Here’s life. Let’s apply the Gospel to life, to sin, to church, to ideas, to boundaries, to traditions, to power, to the accepted way of looking at everything. [Continue reading]

The Evangelical Liturgy 23: The Postlude

I’ve served at two churches with exceptional pipe organs and organists. Some of my best memories of worship are about the postlude.

The last amen had sounded, the congregation was leaving the worship space and the organist, with the help of Bach, was taking the roof off the building.

I absolutely soaked it in. Could not get enough. If you have this sort of postlude possibility, I am officially envious.

Those postludes sent us out with JOY. Wonderful waves of the majesty of God, going out the doors, out the windows, right through us into that broken world that Jesus loves so much. [Continue reading]

Circular Reasoning

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

iMonk 101: The Christian and Mental Illness II: Is There Such A Thing As Mental Illness?

This is the second in a series I did in November of 2005 on Christians and Mental Illness. Looking back at the comments that this post prompted, it’s apparent that many Christians are deeply suspicious of any model of dealing with problems of mental and emotional health other than using the Bible. This is a more mediating view for those who believe we can benefit from some of the scientific approaches used in contemporary psychiatric treatments. There remain large issues between secular psychology/psychiatry and religion. This is one layperson’s view. I am not a trained therapist of any kind. Talk to your doctor and your pastor if you have questions for yourself.

Because the Bible is authoritative in Christianity, it is often difficult to come to terms with forms of knowledge that ignore the Bible, and especially difficult to deal with systems of knowledge that threaten to transcend or neutralize the Bible. In America, this tension did not fully dawn until the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the early twentieth century. While Darwin continues to get most of the attention, it is more likely Freud who has created the most perplexing tensions for Christian believers.

Psychology does not appear to be an immediate frontal assault on the Christian view of truth. Many Christians, especially in more moderate communions, have been open to psychology as a way of compassionately understanding human beings. More recently, however, psychology has met with sterner opposition from many evangelicals, who have become aware that the discipline was atheistic, even religiously hostile, from the outset, and that its ways of explaining, understanding and helping human beings have potentially dire consequences for the Christian view of truth. [Continue reading]

What Did Jesus Know? (And How Does It Matter?)

Once again, Jesus is getting me in trouble. This time it’s over at the Boar’s Head, where a “discussion” on Jesus’ knowledge of medical conditions turned into real concerns that I am promoting a less than orthodox view of Jesus.

When I was in my Master’s program at seminary, I remember a full-on debate between one of our theology professors and a visiting big-dog regarding what scripture meant when it says “He emptied himself.” No one solved the question, but it left me with the clear impression that both sides had a strong case.

A bit of theological reading- even on the internets- will fully validate that observation. God became a man and in his human nature, Jesus was like us in every way, but without sin. But after that….it’s a free for all in regard to a whole basket of questions. [Continue reading]

iMonk 101: The Christian and Mental Illness (Introductory Questions)

I did a five part series on this topic in November of 2005. I’m going to rerun those 2005 posts over the next few days.

Several times a week, I have to read folders containing psychological evaluations of prospective students. They are often quite daunting and detailed. The stories range from ordinary to nightmarish and disturbing. I must read and review the psychiatric evaluations and counseling histories of all students who are seeking admission to our school. After reading, I make a recommendation as to their appropriateness for us. In some cases, I do an additional interview, and make an evaluation based on the interview and the information. [Continue reading]

The Evangelical Liturgy 22: The Benediction

We’re nearing the end of this series. I’m very honored by all of you who have stayed along for the entire ride. I hope that someone has given consideration to the lost glory of the Protestant liturgical tradition and the many wonderful Biblical, Gospel and ecumenical connections that are possible in re-establishing some form of it in evangelicalism.

The Benediction is the “good word” that brings the worship service to a formal close. For many Christians, some form of a scriptural Benediction will form these closing words, such as the Aaronic blessing we have all heard many times.

May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He make His face to shine on you and be gracious to you; may He lift up His countenance on you and give you peace. —Numbers 6:22-27 (NIV)

There are many Biblical passages that were either intended as Benedictions or can be easily formed into benedictions. [Continue reading]

Open Mic at the iMonk Cafe: Who Wants All That Music?

UPDATE: Please post on the question ONLY. Do not use this to complain about styles of music.

Catholics, etc can go have a coffee. This is for evangelicals and others to whom it applies.

Here’s my question:

“Who wants 30-40+ minutes of music in worship? Who? Why? I mean…explain this to me. I seriously do not get it.”

Internet Monk Radio Podcast #164

This week: Ecumenism on the streets. Praising the Book of Common Prayer

I’m concerned for my friend who is fighting for his life against Leukemia. Apologies for being a bit off my best game today. Real life and all that.

Support the IM sponsors: New Reformation Press. Reformation theology for everyone. Rockbridge Seminary. Family, ministry and online seminary all coming together. Modern Reformation Magazine. Featuring my current article on discipleship. The Ministry to Children blog is “information central” for children’s ministry on the net. The Theology Program is your best non-seminary educational option. Sign up for classes or buy the whole program.

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Book of Common Prayer

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