The Internet Monk Archives

Reaching the Rough and Tumble of Society: An Historical Example

By Chaplain Mike

OK, so you have a heart to reach men for Christ—working class men, work with your hands and bring home the bacon kind of men, hard working and sometimes hard living “men’s” men, men who are not afraid to break a sweat and get dirty.

These are not the kind of men that grace church pews. You’ll find them in the pubs after work, downing a pint or two and using indelicate language. In their rare free time, you might find them playing sports with such a competitive fire that it leads to a brawl now and then. You’ll find them placing bets on the ponies. You’ll find them out in the woods hunting or on the lake fishing. At home, they are likely to be chopping firewood or wielding a hammer to mend some flaw on the roof.

You want to reach these men for Christ. You want to see them humble themselves and repent and go to the Cross and trust in Jesus. You long that they will become disciples. You hope to see them in church among the congregation, praising God in song, becoming hearers and doers of the Word, partaking of Christ’s body and blood at the Lord’s Table. You want to teach them to love their families, to do their work to God’s glory, to love their neighbors, to be generous, kind, and hospitable people. Perhaps some will find opportunities to improve their lot in life and they will do great good through their charitable works on behalf of the less fortunate. Perhaps some will become leaders in their communities, peacemakers, promoters of good order and all that is good and right.

What is your strategy for reaching these men, the rough and tumble of society?

What kind of a person would you choose to speak to them?

If you had fifty years to try and impact this working class culture dramatically with the Gospel, who would you pick as your leader, as the face of that movement?

I’ll tell you who God chose.

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Driscoll, Masculinity, and the Missional Church

By Chaplain Mike

Mark Driscoll.

It would be easy to pile on right now. You know…

The guy is full of himself.
The guy’s language is crude and offensive.
The guy can’t control his tongue.
The guy is a bully.
The guy is a misogynist.
The guy is a homophobe.
The guy is a loose cannon.
The guy has a theology of “masculinity” that is Philistine.
The guy needs other leaders to hold him accountable.

To be honest, I can’t say those things. I don’t know the man, and it’s really not my call anyway. One could make a pretty good case for many of those evaluative statements based on Driscoll’s sermons and interviews and writings. But I’m not going to do that.

I will be honest and say I don’t get Driscoll and I don’t understand his appeal. First of all, the whole megachurch thing remains incomprehensible to me, for all the reasons I’ve stated here the last two years, and for more reasons I haven’t put into words yet. In addition, the persona Mark Driscoll projects is not one I admire either. His dress and demeanor, the attitude he gives off, and the constant references he makes to himself and his church do not attract me. I’ve watched and read his sermons and I see some depth of content there, but the communication style is so casual and vulgar that I can’t stand to listen for long. He represents one extreme form of that broader evangelical circus I have decided to abandon, albeit a more conservative and doctrinally-oriented form. He does not speak to me.

But he is not trying to reach me.

Bottom-line, Driscoll represents the restless and reformed version of the church growth movement. He is seeker-oriented and his ecclesiology is missional through and through. He has a target audience in Seattle (and elsewhere now) and he believes that a combination of conservative reformed baptist doctrine and radical cultural identification is the way to go to evangelize his community and build the church. In particular, he has a personal passion to reach certain kinds of people, and it is this aspect of his ministry that has sometimes led him into controversy, especially with regard to his style and issues such as “masculinity.” Because, at least according to his own words, Mars Hill Church has a priority of reaching men for Christ.

It may be a “chicken and egg” thing, but I wonder which came first for Mark Driscoll—his passion to reach men, especially young men (the hardest demographic to incorporate into a church family), or his strong complementarian theology. However it went down, he has consistently offered a potent blend of patriarchal teaching and practical confrontation of men to come to Christ and practice a robust faith.

After the jump, I have reproduced parts of a sermon he gave from Proverbs on the subject of “Men and Masculinity.” You will see that this issue is personal for Mark Driscoll. It grows out of his own experiences. He thinks the church has dropped the ball when it comes to reaching men and building ministries in which they will participate. He also looks around his community and sees a lot of men who are not taking proper responsibility for their lives, their work, their relationships, and their walk with Christ. This stirs his heart and informs his approach to ministry.

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A Faith that Surpasses Abraham

doreruth1 — Naomi and Her Daughters in Law, Doré

By Chaplain Mike

Ordinary Time Bible Study 2011
The Book of Ruth (5)

In Ruth 1:1-5, we are introduced to a family that became beset by severe trials. Forced to leave their home and journey to a neighboring country during a famine, the patriarch of the family then died. Subsequently the two sons, who had taken wives but not produced children after ten years, also passed away. That left three desperate widows, the Israelite Naomi and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.

At the end of that concise introduction to the Book of Ruth, Naomi finds herself in the position of having lost everything that gave a woman identity and significance in that culture. By the end of verse 5, the author doesn’t even call her by name, but designates her, “the woman.” She had been emptied of everything. Her daughters-in-law likewise found themselves bereft and childless.

Ruth 1:6-19

So she decided to return home from the region of Moab, accompanied by her daughters-in-law, because while she was living in Moab she had heard that the Lord had shown concern for his people, reversing the famine by providing abundant crops. (1:6)

The first mention of God in the book provides a ray of hope. Literally, the text says that Naomi heard a report that “the Lord had ‘visited’ his people.” This beautiful word describes the Lord’s concern and care for his covenant people. It describes him coming personally to deliver blessing to them.

Genesis 21:1—The Lord visited Sarah, and Isaac was conceived
Genesis 50:24-25—On his deathbed, Joseph foretells that the Lord will visit his people in Egypt and bring them back to the land
Exodus 3:16, 4:31—Moses is to tell the people that the Lord is visiting them with his deliverance
1Samuel 2:21—The Lord visited Hannah and she conceived Samuel
Jeremiah 29:10—God promises to visit his people and deliver them from the Babylonian captivity
Luke 1:68—Zechariah praises God that he has visited his people and provided redemption through Jesus
Luke 7:16—When Jesus restores a young man’s life, the crowds proclaim that God has visited his people
Luke 19:44—Jesus calls the time of his ministry “the time of your visitation”

Note that all these texts are found in narratives that record key moments in the story of redemption. When God visits his people, he certainly does provide for their present need. But a personal visit from the Lord usually implies something beyond that need as well—something related to the outworking of his plan for the ages.

Will the provision of bread for his people in Naomi’s day likewise portend even more significant events?

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Do We Really Want God to Intervene?

In today’s worship, we heard the Gospel parable from Matthew 13 about the wheat and the weeds.

Jesus told them another parable:
The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man sowed good seed in his field. One night, when everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. When the plants grew and the heads of grain began to form, then the weeds showed up.
The man’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, it was good seed you sowed in your field; where did the weeds come from?”
“It was some enemy who did this,” he answered.
“Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?” they asked him.
“No,” he answered, “because as you gather the weeds you might pull up some of the wheat along with them. Let the wheat and the weeds both grow together until harvest. Then I will tell the harvest workers to pull up the weeds first, tie them in bundles and burn them, and then to gather in the wheat and put it in my barn.” (13:24-30, GNT)

The text goes on to record other parables as well: about a tiny mustard seed that grows up into a huge plant, and about yeast that is mixed into a bowl of flour and causes it to rise.

What do these parables tell us about the nature of God’s Kingdom that has dawned in Jesus?

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A Hymn for Ordinary Time (4): A Favorite Spiritual

We have talked a bit about discouragement this week. For some of us, music that points to Jesus and the Gospel can bring us refreshment. Among the great historical examples of this are the spirituals that grew out of the unjust and tragic experiences of African-Americans in the U.S. during and after the days of slavery.

On “Negro Spirituals”
Here are two good resources to learn about the history of Negro Spirituals:

Also, see this article from the Atlantic Monthly by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, which gives an eyewitness account of the lyrics and performances of spirituals shortly after the Civil War.

Negro spirituals were the first uniquely American music to come out of this country. European classics, Anglo ballads, hymns, and Irish jigs and reels dominated American music until the slaves created their songs of sorrow and hope to sustain them while the institution of slavery lasted. Spirituals were created over a 200-year period, but not until after the Civil War were most Americans aware of their existence. This music, so rich and varied, so deeply emotional and expressive, is a testament to the strength and tenacity of the African people who adapted to and enriched all of American culture.

• Tom Faigin, “Negro Spirituals: Songs of Survival”

One of the great spiritual influences on Dietrich Bonhoeffer that he experienced during his time in America (1930) was his involvement with African-American religious life at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, especially through a black student who befriended him, Franklin Fisher. He collected records of spirituals and was profoundly affected by these songs.

The most influential contribution made by the Negro to American Christianity lies in the “Negro Spirituals,” in which the distress and delivery of the people of Israel (“Go down, Moses . . .”), the misery and consolation of the human heart (“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen”), and the love of the Redeemer and longing for the kingdom of heaven (“Swing low, sweet chariot . . .”) find moving expression. Every white American knows, sings and loves these songs. It is barely understandable that great Negro singers can sing these songs before packed concert audiences of whites, to tumultuous applause, while at the same time these same men and women are still denied access to the white community through social discrimination.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Negro Church”

Perhaps the following well known spiritual that has been published in many hymnals over the years and sung by congregations of people all over the world needing encouragement, can bring a bit of comfort and strength to our hearts today.

There Is a Balm in Gilead
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul

Sometimes I feel discouraged
And think my work’s in vain
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again

Don’t ever feel discouraged
For Jesus is your friend
And if you lack of knowledge
He’ll ne’er refuse to lend

If you cannot preach like Peter
If you cannot pray like Paul
You can tell the love of Jesus
And say, “He died for all”

iMonk Classic: The Conversion of the Evangelical Imagination

Harry Potter photo © 2008 Joya Wu | more info (via: Wylio)Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
December 9, 2005

NOTE from CM: With the release of the final Harry Potter film, I thought this little meditation from Michael Spencer would be appropriate today.

Father Andrew Greeley may be writing with a wink when he wonders if evangelicals have considered the possible irony of their current interest in movies, but the point is still well made.

Secondly, it seems to me that the evangelicals slip dangerously close to Catholic idolatry when they embrace a wondrous allegory as a summary of the biblical story. Jesus is not and never was a lion like Aslan in the film. To interpret him as a lion is to go light years beyond literal, word-for-word inerrancy. The evangelical enthusiasm about the sufferings of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” put them one step away, it seemed to me, from importing crucifixes and Stations of the Cross into their churches. I’m afraid that their enthusiasm for both films shows just how seductive the Catholic temptation is. We delight in pictures and stories and allegories and symbols and signs because they appeal to the whole human person and not just to the rigid, rational mind.

There is nothing that is more of the essence of conversion than the capturing of the imagination. This is a truth that has confronted me in my mid-life years as have few others. Despite the neglect of the imagination in my own fundamentalist tradition, I have discovered that it remains a essential part of human nature. Fallen and fragile, but powerful and influential. To understand how to appeal to the imagination effectively is to be able to influence human beings on a much more deeper level than the appeal of reason alone.

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Saturday Ramblings 7.16.11

Oh my. Talk about a mess. The sink got backed up last week, so we weren’t able to do any of the dishes. And the leftovers in the fridge are about to turn. I think if you pick some of that green off of the bread it will still be good. Help us out here, iMonks. We have a lot of cleaning to do after being off-the-air last week. So don your apron and get ready to do some rambling…

We now know who to blame for all of our technical issues. You. That’s right. You and more than 60,000 of your fellow monks visited our site in one day last week. We had just migrated to a dedicated server (after getting kicked off of the server we shared with others because of, well, you) when our traffic spiked beyond what the new server could handle. So we had to pack up and move once again. First of all, I want to once again say that without the almost round-the-clock efforts of Joe Stallard, we would not still be up and running. And iMonk Sean came in to help as well. The new, new server will cost us even more each month, but it’s necessary because of the amount of traffic we are dealing with. That leads me to another thank you card I need to write to … you. You stepped up with donations that totalled almost $1200, which is enough to pay server and hosting costs (as well as a few other small costs–we operate on a shoestring budget here) for the next seven or eight months. We are humbled and incredibly grateful at your generosity.

And your donations came right on the heels of you giving another $1200 toward a new computer for Adam Palmer, one of our iMonk writers-in-residence. As you may recall, Adam was robbed at gunpoint in his own home a few weeks ago. His computer—which for a freelance writer is his livelihood—was stolen, then returned in less than stellar condition. Thanks to you, Adam now has a new (refurbished, but new to him) Macbook on which to try and string words together in a fashion that makes sense. Good luck with that, Adam.

Now, to our regularly scheduled rambling…

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IM Recommended Reading: Mark Galli on Today’s Vulnerable Pastors

By Chaplain Mike

Must Reading:
The Most Risky Profession, by Mark Galli at CT.

I do not have time to do a full post on this at the moment, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this article since I read it last evening. I encourage you to go read it tonight, come back and comment as you like. I will take it up on Sunday afternoon in more detail.

Here’s a little of what Galli has to say:

The modern American church is very much a product of its culture—we’re an optimistic, world-reforming, busy, and ambitious lot, we Americans. In business, that means creating a better widget, and lots of them, and thus growing larger and larger corporations. In religion, that means helping more souls, and along the way, building bigger and better churches. Alexis de Tocqueville marveled in the 1830s how American Christians seemed so blasé about doctrine compared to their enthusiasm for good works. Religious busyness will be with us always, it seems.

Translate that into church life, and we find that American churches exalt and isolate their leaders almost by design….

…The inadvertent effect of all this is that most pastors have become heads of personality cults. Churches become identified more with the pastor—this is Such-and-Such’s church—than with anything larger. When that pastor leaves, or is forced to leave, it’s devastating. It feels a like a divorce, or a death in the family, so symbiotic is today’s relationship between pastor and people.

No wonder pastors complain about how lonely and isolated they feel. The success and health of a very demanding institution have been put squarely on their shoulders. They love the adrenaline rush of success—who doesn’t? But they also live in dread that they may fail. Wise pastors recognize that unique temptations will assault them, and some set up accountability structures to guard their moral and spiritual lives. They try to have people around them who can speak truth to their power. But in reality, since this is an accountability structure that they have set up and whose membership they determine, in the end it can only have limited effectiveness.

And so we have a system in which pride and hypocrisy are inevitable….

Mark Galli’s point is that we should not be surprised when pastors and church leaders like C.J. Mahaney (see iMonk Bulletin Board) become exalted and then have to take leaves of absence because of charges of pride and authoritarianism against them. Apart from the individual accountability of the ministers who eagerly embrace this organizational system (and I think Mark downplays that part of the story in his article), the structures and expectations of megachurch culture put leaders in positions of great spiritual vulnerability. Even those with the best of motives and intentions struggle with being “stars.” They need our prayers.

Start there. More to come Sunday.

Take that, Milton

Blame Jeff, not me.

Okay, blame me as well for all the quoting of Dante I do on here, which is probably what put the idea into his head. So now you are going to be afflicted with what is most definitely not a reasoned work of considered literary criticism, so beware and be warned.

Why do you love Dante? Jeff asked me. And I have to answer, like all love, I don’t know why, I just do.

It happened way back when dinosaurs walked the earth and I was a fourteen year old schoolgirl in a convent school in a small town in south-east Ireland. In the classrooms, there was the detritus of past times with old bookcases bearing on their dusty shelves various long outdated volumes, from old textbooks to novels to ‘classics’ to improving literature of days gone by. Nobody, as far as I could tell, ever touched them. It wasn’t exactly forbidden, just that no-one much cared for what used to be the hit novels of the 1930s or odd volumes of the 1912 “ Encyclopedia Brittanica”.

No one, except me. I was (still am) an undiscriminating and voracious reader, and had by this time read my way through the children’s section of our small local branch library (you had to be at least sixteen to qualify to join the adult section). I fell on these quaint relics like a hyena scavenging after a lion and spent my break-time and lunch-time reading my way through the wreckage. That was the first time I encountered Shakespeare, before we officially did one of his plays for the English curriculum, and I was expecting it to be dull, obscure, difficult and dusty, if not downright boring (because the impression I had gotten was that Shakespeare wrote in verse, and all the verse we had done to date was just like that – and may I digress here to say, whoever made the teaching of poetry to young children that kind of an experience, I hope Cerberus is gnawing his entrails in Tartarus).

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Lose the Lists, Please, I’m Getting Discouraged

Let me start with the bad news. There is no “answer” for discouragement. You would never know that from listening to some preachers. I did a web search on “discouragement,” and here is an example of some of the typical results I found:

The following is from an article on “15 Steps to Overcoming Discouragement,” by Dr. Don Wilton, Sr. Pastor of First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC.

Here are the “steps”—

Pray
Remember Who God is
Prepare yourself for the discouraging situations you’re bound to encounter
Stick to your assignment
Get guidance from a Christian counselor
Refill your spiritual energy tank
Take care of your physical health
Spend time with someone who isn’t discouraged
Give to people in need
Simplify your life
Share your faith with others
Use the talents God has given you
Resist Satan’s efforts to discourage you more
Choose faith over fear
Never give up!

With all due respect to Pastor Wilton, that’s discouraging!

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