The Internet Monk Archives

Open Mic: A New “Emerging” Church

CM: I’m sorry I haven’t been able to moderate as closely as I’d hoped today. I’m going to close the comments. I think we’ve covered this enough for now. I’m more convinced than ever that we as Christians are going to have to learn to talk about issues like this in more loving and helpful ways. We’ll give it another try soon.

. . .

As I have been driving around the city lately, I’ve noticed billboards for a “new” church. The slogans are catchy and direct people to their website. So I checked it out.

The billboards are advertising a name change for a congregation that emphasizes ministry to the LBGT communities. They are a fully “affirming” church, in fact, the original congregation was founded by 18 gay believers who felt unwelcome in other churches. They are known for their intentional outreach to and inclusion of LBGT folks, and this ministry has come to define them.

But now, in their informational and promotional materials, they report that they are trying to broaden their appeal and become known as an “Emerging Church” that goes beyond the old categories of thinking, welcoming all people, celebrating diversity, and encouraging independent thought.

…our Vision is to become one of the world’s foremost Emerging Churches, then share that model of ministry with others, ultimately affecting the course of the global Christian movement.

Although there is no one fixed definition of an “Emerging Church,” we define it as a church that operates in accordance with the Guiding Principles listed above.

Congregations who self-identify as Emerging Churches are generally motivated by a deep desire to move beyond the conservative/liberal divide that has come to characterize modern Christianity and get back to focusing on the basics of following Jesus, as presented in the Holy Gospels. Emerging Churches encourage honest questions and allow room for freedom of thought and conscience.

What interested me as a subject of discussion was their statement in which they contrast their vision with that of “traditional, institutional” churches. In essence, they are saying that many churches today are not presenting the true Jesus, while their aim is to recover an accurate presentation of who he is and what he came to do. Here’s the statement:

There is a huge gap between how Jesus is described in the Bible and how he’s often presented in many churches. It’s almost as if the real Jesus (generous and loving) has been kidnapped, and a false Jesus (mean and judgmental) has been trotted out in his place. At ____________ Church, we’re under no illusion that we’ve got it all figured out. But we are genuinely concerned and want to spark an honest dialogue.

Consider the evidence:

The real Jesus taught that his followers should take a flexible approach, doing what love requires in any situation (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 3:1-6). Many churches today teach that rules are more important than love.

The real Jesus offered hope (Luke 4:18-19); one of his most common statements was, “Be not afraid” (Luke 12:32). Many churches today actively promote fear.

The real Jesus defended sinners from attack (John 8:1-11). Many churches today lead the charge against them.

The real Jesus empowered women spiritually (Luke 8:1-4; John 20:11-18). Many churches today teach that only men are worthy of spiritual leadership.

The real Jesus encouraged simple living (Luke 12:13-34). Many churches today celebrate flashy materialism.

The real Jesus celebrated diversity in God’s creation, including gay and transgender people (Matthew 8:5-13; Matthew 19:1-12). Many churches today call diversity an abomination.

The real Jesus boldly crossed racial and ethnic boundaries (John 4:1-30; Luke 10:25-37). Many churches today are segregated by race and ethnicity.

The real Jesus celebrated life and loved having a good time (Matthew 11:16-19). His first miracle was to create wine (John 2:1-11). Many churches today give the impression that fun is dangerous.

The list could go on and on. There’s a huge gap between the real Jesus and the Jesus often presented by institutional Christianity.

Now, it is no secret that Internet Monk has a well-earned reputation for being critical of the church, especially in its lack of a “Jesus-shaped” spirituality.

But I would like to know what you think about this statement, the contrasts it draws, the criticisms it levels against the traditional church, and the vision of Jesus it promotes.

WARNING: I am not going to tolerate belligerent behavior in the comments. Speak clearly, speak directly, and feel free to express your opinions strongly. However, keep in within the bounds of courtesy and respect. Any questioning of salvation or use of demeaning language is strictly prohibited and I will not hesitate to “trash” offensive comments.

The Merton Prayer

Merton-sketch — Merton portrait by Victor Hammer

One of the books I will be reading and meditating upon during my sabbatical is Thomas Merton’s Thoughts In Solitude.

A well-known passage from this book has been called, “The Merton Prayer” (see below). This prayer acknowledges that, despite our human tendency to think we know what life is about and how we can manage it, we really have no clue. As the Jews say, “Man plans; God laughs.”

“The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.” (Prov 16:9)

In the chapter following this prayer, Merton writes, “In our age everything has to be a ‘problem.’ Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

“…Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.”

Merton suggests that it is learning to live in “silence” that enables us to live at peace with the contradictions that lie within us. The contradictions remain, but they cease to be a problem for us.

The prayer that precedes this counsel expresses the peace that comes from knowing and trusting in God’s presence in a life with so many unknowns and irresolvable conflicts.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

• Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”

© Abbey of Gethsemani

Key Themes in Merton

I’ve been reading William H. Shannon’s fine book, Thomas Merton: An Introduction, as a way to begin knowing the famous monk better for myself.

Shannon wrote this for folks who have little or no acquaintance with Merton, with the intent to show that his life and writings can still speak powerfully to people today. Along the way, he traces what he considers to be the key themes that surface throughout what Merton said and wrote, and he suggests a possible order for reading Merton’s works.

William Shannon suggests that there are eight key themes in Merton’s writings:

Interiority
Prayer and contemplative spirituality
God
Human identity
Community vs. Collectivity
Freedom as the expression of one’s inner truth
Nonviolence
Zen

Here is an overview of these themes. Words in quotes are from Merton himself.

Interiority. “Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.” Thomas Merton hoped that all people would become more aware of the inner depths of their own being and not just settle for living on the surface of life, content with externals.

Prayer and contemplative spirituality. “Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive.” Contemplative prayer is the means by which we become aware of the inner world wherein God dwells and meets with us. This is not something we seek out of “spiritual ambition” in order to reach heights of spiritual “achievement.” Rather, as Merton wrote, “To love prayer is, then, to love our own poverty and His mercy.” Through contemplation, the idols in our hearts and minds are smashed to pieces and we come to realize the overwhelming Reality of God and our total dependence upon him.

“In the long run I think progress in prayer comes from the Cross and humiliation and whatever makes us really experience our total poverty and nothingness, and also gets our minds off ourselves.”

• Thomas Merton

Continue reading “Key Themes in Merton”

Pope Benedict on Common Ground and Present Challenges

Yesterday, we noted the historic meetings the Pope has been having with his Lutheran brethren in Germany. In his address to representative of the Evangelical Church, Pope Benedict XVI expresses his appreciation for Martin Luther, particularly his focus on the most fundamental questions of God, sin, and how human beings can know the grace of God.

Furthermore, the Pope extols Luther’s focus on Christ — the God who “has a face,” who “has spoken to us.” “Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: ‘What promotes Christ’s cause’ was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life.”

He urges the various branches of Christendom to remember that we have much more in common than that which divides us: “It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds.” He notes the ecumenical progress that has been made in the past fifty years and calls believers to continue to stand together on the “undying foundation” of Christ as we live in this secularized world.

However, Pope Benedict sees two challenges to worldwide Christianity and to progress in our witness.

Continue reading “Pope Benedict on Common Ground and Present Challenges”

A Call For Revolution

It was their sixth annual show, billed as Fight Night VI. The card featured twelve fights, each one three rounds, with each round lasting only one minute. Fighters wore sixteen ounce gloves, but also headgear. The referee had officiated many amateur bouts before.

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.

Continue reading “A Call For Revolution”

Song for Ordinary Time (14): Order My Life

This is a simple worship chorus I wrote years and years ago, linked with two verses from a favorite hymn. Together, they form a prayer that God will bring order to our inner worlds and cause us to cling to him. The recording is by no means professional, but I hope it will not detract from the message of the song.

ORDER MY LIFE/DEAR LORD AND FATHER OF US ALL

[powerpress url=”https://internetmonk.com/wp-content/uploads/Order-My-Life1.mp3″%5D

Order my life, make it new
Grant me a quiet spirit in You
Take away my restless fears
Establish me in your truth

Order my life, give me rest
Grant me a spirit that clings to the best
Show me Jesus in all that I do
Lord, order my life in you

Dear Lord and Father of us all
Forgive our foolish ways
Reclothe us in our rightful mind
In purer lives Thy service find
In deeper rev’rence, praise
In deeper rev’rence, praise

Drop Thy still dews of quietness
‘Til all our strivings cease
Take from our souls the strain and stress
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace
The beauty of Thy peace

Order my life, give me rest
Grant me a spirit that clings to the best
Show me Jesus in all that I do
Lord, order my life in you

Lord, order my life in you

• • •

“Order My Life,” Words and music by Michael Mercer
“Dear Lord and Father of Mankind” (alt), Words by John G. Whittier, in the Atlantic Monthly, April 1872

iMonk Classic: The Monk Who Wouldn’t Go Away

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Undated

Note from CM: As I prepare to spend a few days at The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, I am catching up on my Thomas Merton. Merton, as you will read below, was Michael Spencer’s hero. I am not nearly as acquainted with the monk as Michael was, but I hope to know him much, much better in the next few weeks. I hope you will too, as we run posts about him in the days to come. We will start today with one of the iMonk’s classic posts, giving tribute to and expressing personal appreciation for Thomas Merton.

• • •

The Monk Who Wouldn’t Go Away

One of the joys of having a hero is sharing him/her with someone else. If you know me very long, you’ll hear about my hero, Thomas Merton: monk, writer, poet, activist, Christian, enigma, good looking bald man. Merton (1915-1968) is one of the most significant religious writers of the twentieth century and a lasting influence on untold numbers of Christians (and non-Christians) from every tradition and culture. For those of us in the Bluegrass state, he also holds the distinction of being perhaps the most significant religious figure to reside in Kentucky, being a monk at Our Lady of Gesthemeni monastery near Bardstown for twenty-seven years. He is buried there today.

Merton is a strange kind of hero for me. I am a conservative Reformed Protestant. He was a liberal Roman Catholic who could easily have become a Buddhist. Merton was a former communist sympathizer turned Democrat who found Gene McCarthy too tame. I am a libertarian-Republican who wishes Pat Buchanan’s brain could be surgically altered and put in George W’s body. Merton befriended and praised the sixty’s liberal pantheon; wrote poems about them, wrote letters for them. I think those people- Baez, Berrigan, etc- were alternately amusing and frightening. Merton hated systematic theology and loved modern literature. I hate modern literature and love systematic theology. Merton choose monasticism over marriage. I think that was a crying shame. Merton thought a good time was walking barefoot in a cornfield reading Muslim mystics. I’d prefer a Dave Mathews show. He loved jazz. I love bluegrass and rock. Merton died by touching a faulty electrical fan after taking a shower, thus becoming the patron saint of all clumsy people. I haven’t yet decided how I’m going to go, but it could possible involve all the White Castles I can eat.

So how did I ever pick this guy to be my hero? Certain qualities have such an innate attraction, that when you encounter them in anyone, no matter how different from you they might be, they draw you into admiration. Tom Merton made an unforgettable impression on everyone who met him. No one ever nominated him for perfection. He could be selfish, manipulative and vain, often putting his friends through absurd abuses to get him out of the monastery and into the city. He gossiped, and often whined. He seldom paused to be content, and often enjoyed being an irritant. He sometimes drank too much and could hold a grudge for years. Yet, the unanimous verdict of those who knew him in life and those who know him through his voluminous literary output is that Merton was an authentic human being of the rarest sort and master of the things of the spirit. Words like genuine, self-knowledgeable and deeply spiritual occur again and again in descriptions of Merton. People sought him out from all over the world because of what they sensed in his writing. I’m no different. If he were around today I’d be throwing rocks at his window like the rest of the gawkers. “Come down, Tom, and put on some Coltrane.”

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The Monk Who Wouldn’t Go Away”

Pope Benedict on “The Burning Question of Martin Luther”

On our iMonk Bulletin Board (in the right column) we recently posted news of historic meetings the Pope has been having with his Lutheran brethren in Germany.

In an article from the Catholic News Service, Rev. Nikolaus Schneider, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany introduced Pope Benedict XVI and noted his hopes for the visit. “It is time to heal the memories of the mutual injuries in the Reformation period and the subsequent history of our churches; it is time to take real steps for reconciliation. I would like to invite you to do so,” he told the pope. Catholic and Lutheran experts are working on a joint document that will assess ecumenical progress 500 years after the Reformation.

I found the Pope’s address to the Evangelical Church of Germany to be remarkable and hopeful. In essence, he called for a continuation of the spirit of the Reformation, saying, “The burning question of Martin Luther must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too.”

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting representatives of Council of the Lutheran Church of Germany here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt. This is where Luther studied theology. This is where he was ordained a priest in 1507. Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. On this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that. What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey. “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle. For him theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make an impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching?

Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. Insofar as people today believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. But are they really so small, our failings? Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted? Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation? Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us?

I could go on. No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful. The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – this burning question of Martin Luther must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too. In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

More on this profound, challenging message tomorrow.

You can read the entire address HERE.

Saturday Ramblings 9.24.11

I feel like a kid in a candy shop. This week’s cornucopia of stories is perhaps the best ever. I’m serious that I cannot make this stuff up. Alert iMonk readers sent me emails this week with many of these stories, and I am so thankful. We have unisex squid, cowboy monks, a money-saving web site called Jewpon, and Ted Haggard swapping wives with Gary Busey. To cap it off, our bonus video stars a moose and a squirrel. Are you ready? Then let’s ramble!

Mars Hill (in Grand Rapids, Michigan) pastor Rob Bell announced this week he is leaving his church to pursue “broader interests.” Bell, of course, took a lot of heat from readers (and those who couldn’t be bothered to read, but felt the freedom to comment anyway) about his perceived stance on hell in his latest book, Love Wins. Other pastors, including Francis Chan and N.T. Wright, have left their churches in the past few years for other pursuits. It will be interesting to see what God has next for Bell.

Busted in Alabama? Now you have a choice of going to jail or going to church. Isn’t that nice. I’m sure those who attend under a court mandate are coming with a hungry heart. Is it just me, or does this seem to equate church with punishment?

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 9.24.11”

Watering the Garden

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Christian, taught extensively about the inner life of prayer and communion with God. She compared it to watering a garden. Without prayer our capacity to love will wither and die. But not all prayer nourishes our souls the same way, just as not all forms of watering a garden are equally effective. Teresa said the “first water” of prayer is akin to hauling buckets from a well. We expend a great deal of energy, but it results in very little impact. This sort of praying puts the emphasis on our work, our words, our striving. Rather than finishing refreshed, we feel exhausted and wonder if prayer is worth the effort. Those who remain in this stage often give up on prayer entirely.

The “second water” of prayer is like attaching a rope and pulley to the bucket. The focus of prayer is still on our labor, but the work becomes a bit easier as we begin to relinquish control. Rather than filling every moment with our words and thoughts, we begin to slow down and experience moments of refreshing silence. Teresa’s “third water” takes this a step further. Rather than manually watering our garden one bucket at a time, this form of prayer is like a stream irrigating the field. We become less hurried and find rest as the flow of the water does the work. Periods of silence become more common in our prayers as we entrust ourselves to God and seek only his presence rather than striving for a specific outcome.

Finally, Teresa compared the “fourth water” to rain. It is a total surrender to and union with God in which we are passive recipients of his grace. It is this kind of prayer that most effectively waters our gardens and saturates our lives with an awareness of his love. Henri Nouwen saw this kind of prayer as the beginning of ministry—the way our reservoir becomes filled with love so that we might be equipped to love others.

From Skye Jethani —
With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God