Saturday Ramblings 8.14.10

Well Rambling fans, it’s packing time here at the iMonastery. I am taking flight tomorrow for a week in England. In addition to looking for the best pub food available, I will be speaking at The Turning, a “prayer camp” in Suffolk. If you are going to be near England next week (that would be you, Martha) or want to be near England next week, there is still time to register for The Turning. Or at least stop by and point me in the direction of the best pub for steak-and-port pie. Next Saturday, ramblin’ Adam Palmer will share the week’s leftovers with you. In the meantime, sit yourself down and enjoy and heapin’ helpin’ of this week’s Saturday Ramblings.

When is the last time your pastor took a vacation? Or, if you are a pastor, when did you last allow yourself to really take time off? Could it be that the drive to be available to everyone, everywhere 24/7 is something that is driving people from the ministry? This New York Times article offers some good insights into the burnout problem and some ways to avoid it. Could it be that our pastors have totally forgotten how to honor the sabbath? Your thoughts?

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 8.14.10”

“Wish Dream” Community

By Chaplain Mike

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this.

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1935

When you think about “Christian community,” what are your perceptions? When you read, “They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers” (Acts 2:42, The Message), how do you picture in your mind what that was like? What does it mean for Christians to live “the life together”? What is the nature of genuine Christian fellowship? What do you imagine it to be?

One of the classic books on fellowship and intentional community as a way of Christian life is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community. This is no theoretical study; it grows directly out of his experience of living in intentional community with other believers.Continue reading ““Wish Dream” Community”

iMonk Classic: What Have I Learned from Living in Community?

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Originally posted March 1, 2009

When you’ve lived in an intentional Christian community for almost 17 years, you’re a pretty sorry excuse for a person if you haven’t thought about how your life has affected that community or how that experience has shaped you as a person. You live together on the same campus, eat together for most meals, live by the same rules, worship together, serve one another, labor together, suffer together, counsel one another, sin with and in proximity to one another and offer your particular gifts and ministries together. You make an impact and the community impacts you.Continue reading “iMonk Classic: What Have I Learned from Living in Community?”

The Sad State of Pastoral Thinking

By Chaplain Mike

Every time I think I see a ray of hope in the evangelical church, I come across some pablum that reminds me how many asylums across the land have been taken over by the inmates.

Take this recent example of pastoral “insight” from Perry Noble, published in the Christian Post. Please.

The wise Pastor Noble informs us that there are arguments against the kinds of ministry being promoted today that “sound spiritual but are actually stupid.” Three examples of criticism he says he has heard are:

  • ”The Church Is Not A Business But Rather A Hospital For Sinners
  • ”Too Many Churches Are Just Chasing Cool and Relevant
  • ”Too Many Pastors Today Are Obsessed With Dressing Cool And Shopping At Buckle

Noble trots out a few adolescent-style “answers” to these criticisms:

  • On #1: ”Hospitals are businesses too, and the church should be the “best ran business” (sic) of all!
  • On #2: ”So, what should we be chasing — ”uncool, boring, predictable and meaningless? Quote: “Somehow I believe that the church is supposed to be reaching kids WAY better than Disney — they have a mouse — we have the MESSIAH who gave His life and rose from the dead. Our message is SO much greater and should be told in the most effective way possible.”
  • On #3: ”“Honestly, I was not aware that surrendering to ministry meant that I also had to surrender to the pleated/cuffed khaki, sweater vest, comb over club!”

This is what passes for ecclesiology and pastoral theology these days?

I hereby sentence Perry Noble to solitary confinement until he memorizes everything Eugene Peterson has ever written about pastoral ministry.

Sigh…

Difficult Scriptures: Luke 18: 1-8

1 One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. 2 “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3 A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ 4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”

6 Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. 7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (Luke 18:1-8 NLT)

We have started a new series here at the Internet Monastery, Difficult Scriptures. It is a chance for you to get down on the mat and wrestle through some challenging passages. You did a great job last week. Now, let’s take a look at a difficult passage from the New Testament.

In this parable, we are told straight up that Jesus is telling this to his disciples to “show that they should always pray and never give up.” But then it takes a strange twist. We have a widow who is a nag. And we have a judge who doesn’t care about God or other people. Who does that leave for him to care about? Oh yeah, himself. Are we to put ourselves in the shoes of the widow? If so, does that mean God is the unjust judge? And are we to take from this that nagging God is the way to get what we want or need?

Then we have that final verse. It seems to be unrelated to the rest of the parable. “When the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith? Just what does he mean by that?

Ok, monks. Go to. This is a difficult passage. Help us out here.

Death Of An Autonomist

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Matthew 16:24-26, The Message)

Damaris Zehner wrote an outstanding essay earlier this week on the myth of autonomy. This is a challenge for many who call themselves followers of Jesus. We’ve read the self-help books and a lot of what they say makes sense. Self-sacrifice leads to finding the true self? Come on.Continue reading “Death Of An Autonomist”

Extreme Community

By Chaplain Mike

“To have all things in common means to love our neighbor, to have with him, to want with him, to suffer with him and to endure the ups and downs with him.

“In Heaven (as it should be on earth) there is no ownership and hence there is found contentment, true peace, and blessedness.”

– The Hutterite Chronicles, 1525

* * *

Over the course of history, and church history, people have sought to establish ideal communities. We sometimes call these “utopian” — a word coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book bearing that designation.

The word has a double meaning. In Greek, it can mean “the good place,” and thus it has been used to describe a community that fulfills ideals humans long for: peace, justice, economic equality. However, changing one letter in Greek results in a word with the same pronunciation but a different meaning. In this spelling, “utopia” means “no place.” The ideal community is, realistically, out of reach. “The good place” is nowhere to be found.

As so, as God’s community of Christ-followers, we continue to pray, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”Continue reading “Extreme Community”

First Thoughts on “Community”

By Chaplain Mike

Today, I heard an interesting interview on the NPR program, Fresh Air with Todd S. Purdum, national editor of Vanity Fair, who has written a piece in the latest edition called, “Washington: We Have a Problem”

For this article, Purdum spent a day at the White House with the president and his top aides, learning about the incredible challenges of governing in an age when “the modern-day presidency would be unrecognizable to previous chief executives — “thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systematic corruption and disintegrating media.”

This post is not about that. Save your political points for another time, OK?

Today, I’m writing about something Purdum said in his interview about Congress, and how things have changed historically with regard to relationships between the members. Congress functions differently today, partly because the nature of the human connections between the members has changed. Continue reading “First Thoughts on “Community””

My Five Favorite Novels

Ok, so I am answering a question you didn’t ask. For some reason I think you want to know this anyway. You have been sitting there thinking, What is Jeff Dunn’s favorite fiction title of all time? What else would he recommend? And if you haven’t been thinking that, now you are. So I am now obligated to answer your question. Glad to do so.

(By the way, each of these books are available by clicking on the links below and ordering through Amazon. When you do, you help support InternetMonk.com. Or you can also visit our resource center, iMonkPublishing. Thanks for your help!)

A couple of honorary mentions before we get to my top five. And, yes, I am going to cheat by lumping some books together as a series and calling them one book. Why? Well, why would you read only one book in a series? Besides, this is my list.

Continue reading “My Five Favorite Novels”

Opinion: Are We “At Our Courageous Best”?

By Chaplain Mike

At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed.

• G. Jeffrey MacDonald

How wonderful to open the New York Times Sunday edition this week and find a thoughtful word of critique and challenge about the nature of pastoral ministry and preaching in American churches. The op-ed piece is called, “Congregations Gone Wild,” and was written by G. Jeffrey MacDonald, a minister in the United Church of Christ, and author of Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul.

MacDonald laments that many clergy are suffering from burnout, not only because of their hard work and the natural demands of their vocation, but because congregational expectations in today’s church are forcing them away from their true calling and into work that they are ill-prepared to do.Continue reading “Opinion: Are We “At Our Courageous Best”?”