Virtue and the Limits of Vulnerability

I received some thoughtful mail as a result of my response to Mark Driscoll’s book on marriage. Here is one of the best examples:

Man Writing a Letter, Metsu

Dear Chaplain Mike,

I have just finished reading your post Top of My “Don’t Read” List. In it you mention that American culture has a strong “therapeutic ethos” and that this often finds expression in Christian circles by way of using “’vulnerability’ as an approach to ministry.”

In his book Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri Nouwen, Michael Ford notes that both Nouwen and Thomas Merton have been criticized for “never having an unpublished thought.” Indeed, Nouwen thought that what he most had to offer as a spiritual thinker and writer came out of the brokenness in his life, and as a result, he was always quite open about such things.

Now, as I know that you have an appreciation for both of these writers, it must be the case that you believe there are both helpful and healthy approaches to being vulnerable as well as unhelpful and unhealthy ones.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what differentiates a constructive from a destructive expression of vulnerability in ministry. Not only so, but I believe this would be of considerable interest to the iMonk readership as well. This is not just a matter of personal interest to me but also an issue of integrity as I attempting to work through this same issue of “vulnerability in ministry” in my own life at the moment.

Would you consider writing a post on these issues? I believe I would benefit not only from your thoughts on this matter but also from the input of those who respond to the post.

Regards,

Stephen L

Stephen writes, “It must be the case that you believe there are both helpful and healthy approaches to being vulnerable as well as unhelpful and unhealthy ones.”

Yes, that’s right. Let’s talk about it today.

Continue reading “Virtue and the Limits of Vulnerability”

And in this Ring…

Ed and Lisa Young, founders of Texas-based Fellowship Church, will spend 24 hours in bed on the church roof next week and stream themselves live on the Internet to encourage married couples to see firsthand the power of a healthy sex life as prescribed in their new book, Sexperiment.

Two days after their book, Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, is released Tuesday, the Youngs will take part in a 24-hour “bed-in,” which will be streamed on the book’s website as they engage the audience on issues related to intimacy in marriage.

The book encourages married couples to have sex for seven straight days – a challenge that made headlines in 2008 when Pastor Young first introduced it to his church – with the promise that the “amazing results” will last far beyond the week.

“Tragically, culture has kicked the bed out of church and God out of the bed,” says Ed Young, who has been “happily married” to Lisa for almost 30 years. “It’s time to bring God back in the bed and put the bed back in the church. That’s what this bed-in is all about.”

• From Christian Post

Sermon: Three Unwise Kings

NOTE: Sometimes during and after preaching a sermon, even when it has been written out beforehand, you realize connections and nuances you had not noticed when writing it. That happened this morning as I preached this message. So I have done a bit of editing to reflect that, including a change in the title.

• • •

Today, as we look as this familiar story about the Magi bringing their gifts to the baby Jesus, I would like to invite us to think about three kings — but they are not the three kings you might imagine.

Adoration of the Magi, Fredi

MATTHEW 2:1-15 (KNT)

When Jesus was born, in Bethlehem of Judaea, at the time when Herod was king, some wise and learned men came to Jerusalem from the east. “Where is the one,” they asked, “who has been born to be king of the Jews? We have seen his star rising in the east, and we have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this, he was very disturbed, and the whole of Jerusalem was as well. He called together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, and inquired from them where the Messiah was to be born.

“In Bethlehem of Judaea,” they replied. “That’s what it says in the prophet:

‘You, Bethlehem, in Judah’s land
Are not least of Judah’s princes;
From out of you will come the ruler
Who will shepherd Israel my people.’”

Then Herod called the wise men to him in secret. He found out from them precisely when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem. “Off you go,” he said, “and make a thorough search for the child. When you find him, report back to me, so that I can come and worship him too.”

When they heard what the king had said, they set off. There was the star, the one they had seen rising in the east, going ahead of them! It went and stood still over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were beside themselves with joy and excitement. They went into the house and saw the child, with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. They opened their treasure-chests and gave him presents: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

They were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod. So they return to their own country by a different route.

After the Magi had gone, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “and take the child, and his mother, and hurry off to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to hunt for the child, to kill him.”

So he got up and took the child and his mother by night, and went off to Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod. This happened to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet:

Out of Egypt I called my son.

Change is hard. Of course, changes are happening in our lives and in our world all the time. Part of what it means to be human and to be Christian is to learn to be flexible, to adapt to change, to grow and develop in faith, hope, and love through all the different seasons and circumstances in life.

Major change is especially hard. When life itself seems to go in a different direction from the way it has been proceeding, we struggle to accept the new ways.

I often work on the east side of Indianapolis. After WWII, Indy’s east side was the place to be. Major manufacturing companies had their plants there. People moved from places where there was no work, settled there and prospered. They built houses, neighborhoods, churches, and entire communities. They raised their kids there. They had good lives.

Then, in the 1970’s and 80’s, things began to change. As our economy gradually shifted from manufacturing to an information and service economy, as deregulation broke up major businesses like the phone company, as corporations began to look for other places in the world where they could make their products using cheaper labor, life changed. Many folks on Indy’s east side relocated, workers grew older and retired, plants closed, strangers moved in to the neighborhoods — things changed. Many of the older folks I visit each day struggle with that. They lament the changes. The pictures on their mantles reflect what were to them happier, more secure days. Some of them have become bitter.

Change is hard. Major change is especially hard. And especially when it threatens our way of life.

Continue reading “Sermon: Three Unwise Kings”

iMonk Classic: Stupid Ministry Tricks: The Best of My Bone-Headed Ministry Mistakes (+ A Bonus!)

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
From June 2009

It came to me today that many of you have probably felt that this web site was remiss in offering practical encouragement to those who are laboring in the work of ministry. Here I am, 33+ years into this business, and I haven’t really shared much of the wisdom of my own experiences. I intend to correct that with today’s post.

In the following paragraphs, I am going to rescue those of you in ministry from the feeling you have that no one could ever be as bone-headed as you. From the annals of my own life and ministry, I share with you now the following true stories meant to encourage you to start tomorrow with a smile, saying “I may be an idiot, but I’m still way ahead of Spencer.”

As a bit o’ background, I was a youth minister- mostly- from 1976-1988. Then I pastored four years, but also did a lot of youth ministry in that church after the youth minister quit. NONE of the incidents recounted below happened where I’ve served since 1992.

BTW- in order to protect the innocent, I will change a few facts here and there, but I assure you that what you are reading is not fiction. 100% true.

1. I love hayrides. Ours got rained out, so smart guy here gets the church bus (used for senior adult trips), fills it with bales of hay and drives the kids around for a couple of hours. I’m not sure that bus ever was clean again. I got yelled at, deservedly.

2. I showed a movie to a large mixed group of families that had a flash of a woman’s breast. Everyone gasped. Of course I didn’t preview it.

3. I took my youth group to see the movie “Darkman.” I just didn’t realize that it was rated “R.” No sex or language, just a lot of intense violence, much like the average meeting of our junior high ministry. This one did not go unnoticed by a parent, so she arranged for a called deacon’s meeting and read the schedule of every movie ever played at that theater for the last couple of years. It was the closest I ever came to being fired and I totally deserved it.

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: Stupid Ministry Tricks: The Best of My Bone-Headed Ministry Mistakes (+ A Bonus!)”

Saturday Ramblings 1.7.12

Twelve? Did I just type “12” in the headline? I did. It’s 2012 now! Our first Rambling session of the new year. And it’s a doozy. Mr. Bones is back from a long but well-deserved vacation. Adam Palmer checked in with yet another technology as religion story. The Synonymous Rambler went back into hiding. We’ve got a lot to cover, so … shall we ramble?

Let’s go ahead and get this one out of the way. It’s a topic very few of you care about, seeing as Chaplain Mike’s essay on this topic drew (as of this writing on Friday night) only 232 comments. CNN found time to look into Mark and Grace Driscoll’s tome on their sex life. Slow news week, I guess. And now we are learning there are such things as “Christian sex toys.” And you thought the Jesus Toaster was bad? Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start building another ark right now.

Ok, if that last story didn’t make you toss your cookies, this one will. Ted Haggard was called to start a new church in Colorado Springs so he could show that the “resurrection power is for today”? Really? Oh, God, forgive us. (If you really want to learn about Ted’s time on Celebrity Wife Swap, I seriously think you need to reconsider your priorities, but ok—you can do so here.)

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 1.7.12”

Top of My “Don’t Read” List

NOTE: Before you read this post, please read the Moderation Rules in the box below.

• • •

Unless something unforeseen arises, I won’t be reading Mark Driscoll’s new book, Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship & Life Together. I have read the first chapter and several passages quoted in reviews, but only in preparation for this post.

It’s simply not the kind of book I think is wise or helpful.

Besides the fact that it is not written for people like me, who have been married for a few decades, I can’t imagine wanting to read this book. Is this because I am older and wiser now? Who knows? I guess I did read a few books like this when I was younger, but to be honest, even then I never found them that helpful for me personally or for the people I was trying to serve as their pastor.

Mark Driscoll disagrees.

Because we are a pastor and his wife, we really do want this book to be used of God to help people. It’s the kind of book we wished we could have read earlier in our marriage, and wish we could have given to those we served in ministry. So we wrote what we hope is a book that is biblically faithful, emotionally hopeful, practically helpful, sociologically viable, and personally vulnerable.

I think what he has given us is just another evangelical circus act.

First of all, what pastoral theology taught Driscoll to be a marriage counselor or sex therapist?

That is not a pastor’s job.

I know. I know. Driscoll believes that the church is called to be missionaries to our overly sexualized culture. Hmm. How did Paul serve people as a missionary in the immoral, pornographic world of his day? Does Driscoll’s approach bear any resemblance to apostolic ministry?

For someone touted as truly Reformed with a high view of Scripture, where in the Bible do you find anything like this kind of self-focused, self-promoting, sensational (note how “Sex” gets pride of place in the subtitle), confessional-style, behind-the-scenes peek into someone’s home and bedroom employed as a legitimate tool of ministry? Packaged and promoted to be a bestseller, to boot. Become a big shot, write a book. Act all vulnerable and real. It’s the American way, not the apostolic pattern.

The very last thing any of us need is a purportedly Christian “how to” book exposing the intimate revelations of some hot-shot celebrity pastor and his wife to guide us in the most important relationships in our lives.

This, in a nutshell, is the bane of American religion.

What I have read from the book convinces me that I would have some criticisms typical of the usual flak Driscoll receives for the persona he sets forth, the coarse, in your face style which is his trademark, and, not least, his opinions about men and women. For example, if I were a strong complementarian like Driscoll, and believed it was my duty as a husband to protect my wife, why in the world would I encourage her to share the intimate details of her sex life with the world? And how is it that a biblicist like Mark Driscoll has bought into the therapeutic ethos of the culture, promoting this kind of “vulnerability” as an approach to ministry?

But I don’t even want to go there. The whole approach is off-base. I find the very idea of this book as misguided and distasteful as Ted Haggard appearing on Celebrity Wife Swap as a “testimony” to his “resurrection.”

This is our idea of Christian “impact”? Of helping people see Jesus? Of helping people become truly mature, pure, and loving followers of Jesus? If I want to experience a little boy running around the room all day shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” then I will invite my three-year old grandson over to spend some time with me.

What we need are real people in our lives. Real family members. Real friends. Real brothers and sisters. Real pastors. Real churches. Real neighbors. Who will tell us and show us what real life is like. And actually walk beside us in it. Not hand us a juicy book.

Furthermore, we need people who are courageous enough to refuse to pander to our personal preoccupations and our culture’s obsession with sex, even within marriage. We need people to help us discern what is and what is not an appropriate topic for public conversation among followers of Christ. We need spiritual mentors who will look us straight in the eye and tell us to get real help if we need it. We need older men and women who can come alongside younger men and women and mentor them about virtues like chastity, privacy, respect, modesty, and restraint.

And…we need pastors to hear our confessions and pronounce absolution through Christ’s finished work. Pastors who will nourish us with the Word of the Gospel and food from Christ’s Table. Pastors who will catechize us and teach us and pray for us so that we will die to ourselves each day and rise again to walk in newness of life with Jesus — a life of faith that works through genuine love for others, including our spouses. Pastors who will encourage us to seek first the Kingdom, to involve ourselves in an enterprise bigger than ourselves and to serve others with grace, kindness, and humility. Pastors who can help us put all of life in perspective in Christ and not focus our attention on such things as which sex acts are permissible for married couples.

We need spiritual nourishment and spiritual formation. And I am not using the word “spiritual” in some dualistic sense that leaves out matters like marriage and the marriage bed. I mean it in the sense of our deepest selves, our very lives and all that they encompass.

What we do not need is rock star celebrity pastors pontificating on the big screens of their cool megachurches about how Song of Solomon is a sex guide or writing books laying bare the intimate details of their lives in wrongheaded attempts to be relevant and edgy. Hurting and bewildered people deserve better than that.

Even if Mark Driscoll says some good, helpful things in this book — and I’m sure he does — I wouldn’t be able to hear them over the circus music.

You see, this rant is really not about a pastor and his wife and the book they wrote. It’s about the system of American evangelicalism that glorifies all the wrong things and seeks “answers” in all the wrong places.

• • •

For further analysis, here are two critical reviews of Real Marriage:

 

Moderation Rules for This Post

  • Short comments only. Anything longer than one reasonably sized paragraph (3-4 sentences) will be deleted.
  • No provocative sexual language will be tolerated.
  • No links.
  • I will be the judge. I will not explain my decisions.
  • Don’t take moderation personally. It’s not. It’s just the rules by which we are playing this particular game.

 

Meet The Team

It’s a new year, and there may be some who have not been at the iMonastery for very long. Perhaps you don’t know the faces behind the names here, or the stories behind the faces behind the names. So I thought as we kick off 2012 we would start with a look at the iMonk team. Here is a directory of those whose writings make up InternetMonk.

 

Michael Spencer: Michael is the Internet Monk. Period. There is no other. Michael parted ways with this world nearly two years ago, but he will always be our founder and guide. That being said, the direction he set was one of afflicting the comfortable, so beware! If you did not know Michael when he was filling these pages with his heart twice a day, you should go back and read his essays found in the Archives section. You can read a further bio of Michael here.

Continue reading “Meet The Team”

My New Year’s Non-Resolution

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The time when retailers parade merchandise in front of our eyes to guilt us into buying things we’ll never use, like juicers (“Just put in one large bag of oranges, and Viola! Out comes a small glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice!”), self-help educational materials (“Learn to speak Mandarin Chinese as you drive to the gas station!”), and stationary bikes. Ok, well, we really do use the bikes. But not for exercising. They do serve as a nice place to hang your clothes, though.

Manufacturers and retailers prod us to make resolutions so we will then drop coin with them to buy things to help us keep these resolutions. Motivational speakers and preachers (hard to tell them apart at times) also encourage us to set goals for the new year. I used to do this, but it was frustrating every year to see how quickly I broke my resolutions. So a few years ago I resolved not to set any more goals or resolutions—other than this. I resolve to stay dead.

Dead. For only what is dead can be resurrected. I love what Robert Capon says so often: “Jesus did not come to teach the teachable, correct the correctable, or fix the fixable. He came to do one thing: Raise the dead.” Capon likes to answer those who insist we play a role in our own sanctification with this illustration.

You want a role to play? Ok. Imagine yourself standing next to Jesus and Martha outside of a tomb. Jesus says, “Roll away the stone!” But Martha interjects, “Wait a minute, Lord. He’s been dead for four days, and by now he stinks!” There you have it. Your role. You’re dead, and you stink. If you can do that, you can be resurrected. (Paraphrased from Between Noon And Three.)

Oh, I stink all right. I stink with the breath of one who has been talking a good game. Who says all the good and acceptable Christian things. I smell with the sweat and body odor of one who’s been working hard to build a healthy Christian life twelve ways. I wreak with the stench of doing, doing, doing. Then of being, being, being. I stink like last week’s fish. I’m dead, but I keep flopping around, hoping to impress myself, others and—most ridiculously of all—God with all my activity.

Continue reading “My New Year’s Non-Resolution”

IM Book Review: The Great Emergence

If I were a certain kind of preacher or Bible teacher, I might try to make some “spiritual law” out of this. As it is, I will take it as a interpretive way of looking at history that may help people of faith who are concerned about the Church discern some instructive patterns and enable us to live more faithfully in our own day. Note the pattern:

  • c. 2000 BC: The Patriarchal Era begins when God calls Abram.
  • c. 1500 BC: The Exodus of Israel out of Egypt
  • c. 1000 BC: King David rules over Israel
  • c. 500 BC: Israel resettled in the Land after the Babylonian Exile
  • c. 0 AD: The life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the beginnings of the apostolic Church
  • c. 500 AD: Schism splitting Oriental Christianity from the eastern and western Church, the Fall of Rome, the “Dark Ages,” the rule of Pope Gregory I
  • c. 1000 AD: The Great Schism between eastern and western Churches
  • c. 1500 AD: The Protestant Reformation

In her book, The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle cites Rev. Mark Dyer as saying, “about every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale.” That is, about every five hundred years, the institutionalized religion of the day is shattered and new, more vital forms of the faith emerge. The previously dominant form does not disappear, but is “reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self.” In addition, this breaking, emerging, reconstituting, and revitalizing leads to a dramatic expansion of the faith into new areas of the world.

Key to understanding the contemporary significance of this observation is to note that we are at such a five hundred year mark at the beginning of the 21st century. Thus, the subtitle of Tickle’s book: “How Christianity is Changing and Why.”

Continue reading “IM Book Review: The Great Emergence”

Paul Wallace Says, “Intelligent Design Is Dead”

Johannes Kepler

“Because ID is established in scientific ignorance, it cannot last. It is passing even now.”

• Paul Wallace

• • •

In an article on the Huffington Post, Paul Wallace has stated his agreement with those who declare that the Intelligent Design movement is dead. But rather than list and explain the scientific reasons for this position, Wallace instead goes back to fundamental principles, giving readers a history lesson that speaks to the relationship between faith and science.

He takes us back to the 1600’s when Johannes Kepler was working on his theories of astronomy. One day, he came across a new star that had appeared, and in his 1606 work, De stella nova, he sought to understand how such an event could have happened. As he considered various possibilities, Kepler set forth the possibility that God had created the star in a special act of divine intervention.

He began to consider special creation: a deliberate, separate act of God unconnected with any other natural event, direct and special tinkering by the divine hand. But in the end he withdrew from that conclusion, writing “before we come to [special] creation, which puts an end to all discussion, I think we should try everything else.”

Why did Kepler reject supernatural creation as an explanation? Not because he had a small view of God, or was predisposed against divine intervention in the universe. He did not view creation as a closed system in which God could not tinker. Rather, it was because he held a conviction that God had created a comprehensible universe and made human beings in his image who were capable of discovering creation’s design. He believed there must be an explanation, though he could not name it at the time.

As Wallace notes, Kepler’s fundamental axiom was: The universe has been designed; therefore it must be comprehensible.

He contrasts this with the work of Michael Behe and other purveyors of Intelligent Design. When examining the complexity of the bacterial flagellum, Behe came to the conclusion that it was irreducibly complex, and therefore must have been specially designed.

As Wallace observes, Behe turned Kepler’s fundamental axiom on its head: The universe is incomprehensible; therefore it must have been designed.

In other words, Behe and the other proponents of ID have chosen an approach that puts an end to further inquiry and discussion by inserting a special act of God at a point where we do not yet have understanding.

Wallace points out how contrary this is to the spirit of Kepler and other scientists for whom the rationality of the created universe prompted never-ending curiosity and perseverance in the scientific enterprise.

Looking upon the new star in September 1604, could Kepler have envisioned stellar evolution, mass-transfer binary stars, and explosive carbon fusion? No, and so he remained silent. His humility, his belief in the richness of creation, and his expansive faith allowed him to admit ignorance while leaving the door of causal science wide open.

ID denies its proponents that freedom. Having opted to close the door on science, they steal from themselves the opportunity to see nature more deeply. In so doing they dig in their heels, refusing to be drawn, Kepler-style, closer to the creator God they all believe in. This is the great irony of ID.

Out of reverence for God, people of faith and science will reject any approach to comprehending the natural world that closes the door on further inquiry and discovery. Learning more about creation can only increase our appreciation for the infinite wisdom of our Creator. As we grow in our understanding, it will certainly pose challenges with regard to treasured interpretations and “certainties” that we have embraced in the past. It will require diligence, patience, generosity, and trust to work through the questions that will be raised. We must not bow to fear as our ruling principle or merely substitute God as a convenient answer when none is immediately at hand. Ignorance is no crime, and saying, “I don’t know yet, and maybe I never will” is not something from which to shrink. But to keep learning and trying to learn is a way of loving God.

As Paul Wallace reminds us:

Kepler reminds us that religious people do not need to shrink from science and its naturalistic methods, because they more than others have a rich tradition in which to locate these things, a context that allows them to take science seriously but not too seriously, and a strong bulwark against the lull of materialism.