By Chaplain Mike
In our ongoing effort to keep Internet Monk up to date, tonight I added several new links to the Blogroll and Links side bars on the bottom right portion of the page.
I hope you’ll find some sites that will encourage and help you.
But. . . please keep coming back to IM!
You can also follow Chaplain Mike on Facebook and Twitter using the updated links at the bottom of the page.
We appreciate you!
By Chaplain Mike
Warren Cole Smith’s book, A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
So, on the one hand we love Jesus. On the other hand, we’re not quite sure what to do with the corporate community that represents him in the world. Many of us call ourselves “post-evangelical”—that is, we no longer feel comfortable within the system known as the American evangelical church. So we’ve moved out to seek something more deeply grounded in sound Biblical theology and the Great Tradition of the historic church, and more attuned to the Kingdom of God than the ephemeral culture of this world. Our quarrel exists not because we stand against the church, but because we want her to fulfill her high calling. Ours is a lover’s quarrel.
In this book, Warren Cole Smith sets forth the question many of us are asking:
What is it about evangelical theology or evangelical practice that is both so appealing and so troubling? (p.8 )
What follows is an incisive analysis of the “cultural captivity” of the American evangelical church, and its need for a new reformation.Continue reading “IM Book Review: A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church”
By Chaplain Mike
On Sundays, we hear the Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary. Sometimes, I share a message based upon this text. On other weeks, I ask you to share your observations for us all. Today, we’ll be teaching one another again.
Today’s Gospel
How many times have we had this desire in our hearts, if not on our lips—“Lord, teach us to pray!”? As Jesus leads the way to Jerusalem, and as his friends learn what it means to be his disciples; as the opposition increases and the road gets more challenging, there comes a point where it becomes absolutely necessary to talk about this all-important aspect of life.
This is what it means to be a Christian—to have a conversational relationship with the living God. From the earliest chapters of the Biblical story, when people “called upon the name of the Lord” and “walked with God,” to today, his people live in this world while maintaining communication with the One who dwells in invisible reality all around us.Continue reading “Sunday’s Gospel: Lord, Teach Us to Pray (Teaching One Another)”
Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Undated
THE CHURCH OF WHAT’S HAPPENIN’ NOW
Why American Evangelicals Desperately Need The World Christian Movement
Back in the day, I used to take small town teenagers to Boston and Chicago on mission trips to work with inner city churches. One thing I could be sure of: the experience of going to the inner city would result in severe culture shock for many of those students. No matter how much of the wide world they’d seen on television, standing in a Boston Metro subway car packed in like cattle was a distressing experience. I had a few hyperventilate and more than a few beg to go home.
Working with the inner city congregations provided another disorienting experience. These “ethnic” churches were so different from the small town, southern, First Baptist Church we came from. From worship to hygiene to food to the sense of time, the differences amazed my students (and many of their parents.) They didn’t have all the programs and staff we had, or all the nice amenities in their building. One church was worshipping in what used to be a kennel, next door to a car stripping operation. Another church had drunks sitting on the steps and homeless people wandering around in the building. My students wondered, why wasn’t everyone like us, and like our church back home? They should want to be like us, because the way we did everything was so much better—right?Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now”
Lexus is our usual horse for Saturday Ramblings. But as everyone deserves a vacation, we gladly granted her the weekend off. She said she had some shopping she wanted to do, get her mane done, things like that. Her pasture-mate, Majesty, is filling in today. You may say, “Big deal. A horse is a horse, of course.” Â Ah, but there you are wrong. Majesty is a horse of a different color. She is not costing us anything—in other words, she’s a gift. Don’t go looking in her mouth. Instead, stand by for Saturday Ramblings.
I knew it was going to be a slow week when I turned on the TV Monday night and saw the words “Breaking News.” Uh-oh, what happened? Another oil spill? Did a hurricane form in the Gulf? Maybe the Dow Index fell by a record amount. No, no and no. It was just a story about a Disney brat going to jail for being a brat. Sorry, no link provided here. You want to read about Lindsay Lohan, do your own search.
Don’t you just love it when someone tries to distill a person’s life—or, in this case, a group of people’s lives—down to a handful of “principles” or “secrets”? Here are five such bullet points to ponder from the lives of Trappist Monks. I have been among these monks, and there is no way you could make list of their character traits that translate into how you can live better. In order to live as they do, you would need to, um, live as they do.
By Chaplain Mike
According to Warren Cole Smith in his book, A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church (full review to come later this weekend), short-term mission trips may be more of a problem than a productive way of doing the work of Christ’s Kingdom.
He cites Robert Priest, professor of mission and intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, who said:
The number of lay people in the United States involved in short-term missions grew from an estimated 540 in 1965 to 22,000 in 1979. By 1989 it had grown to an estimated 120,000. three years later the figure had doubled to 250,000. It is now estimated that there were at least on million short-termers in 2003.
Source: “Short-term Mission Trip, or Donor-Paid Vacation?”
by Brittany Smith (Evangelical Press News Service, 10/19/06)
Estimates today range from 1-4 million North Americans taking short-term trips every year, with the cost of such trips surpassing the annual support of all long-term missionaries combined. Priest calls this explosion of participation, “the first mission movement in church history that is based largely on the needs of the missionary.” Other critics have suggested that these trips condition the people in the host countries to wait for help from their wealthier visitors rather than building their own ministries, businesses, and programs. In the process, pastors and other Christian leaders become glorified tour guides, the indigenous Christian communities develop a sense of dependence, and the more foundational work of missions—discipleship and church-planting—gets pushed to the back burner.
I’d like to throw this open to the Internet Monk community for comment. Talk to us about the good, the bad, the beneficial, and the detrimental of short-term mission trips. What questions and concerns do you have about them? What unqualified positive things do you have to say about them?
Everyone is welcome, but I would especially love to hear from:
Step up to the mic!
For further reading: Check out the 4-part series at Christianity Today that starts with an exchange called, “Are Short-Term Missions Good Stewardship?”
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. (Ephesians 2: 7-9, The Message)
With August fast approaching, it’s time to get out those summer reading lists. I know you had your heart set on finishing Calvin’s Institutes and Adam Clarke’s entire commentary series, but might I recommend something a bit more attainable?
We have asked the Writers’ Roundtable to be prepared to discuss Robert Capon’s Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace
So before I recommend that you buy and read Between Noon And Three, let me tell you why you might not want to do so.
Led by Chaplain Mike
Welcome to our second Writers’ Roundtable. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, To Kill a Mockingbird, one of our greatest American novels. I thought it would be fun and enlightening to have our writers read TKAM again, and have a discussion about it.
I, Chaplain Mike (CM), will be asking the questions and moderating the discussion as we sip sweet tea and talk about this remarkable portrait of the American South in the 1930s. Joining us at the table today are:
Pull up a chair, pour yourself some tea, and let’s get started. Continue reading “Writers’ Roundtable: To Kill a Mockingbird”
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit … John 15:5 NIV
You did not choose Me, but I chose you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain … John 15:16 NAS
I’d been working at my raspberry patch three or four seasons when the fruit began to be abundant enough to consider what I might do besides serving it fresh for breakfast in the mornings. Besides, it was a bit dismal having done all that work only to demolish the yield with a few thoughtless bites or have the ripe berries turn to mush overnight when no one ate them. Our household was beginning to take for granted our daily manna from the garden just as the Israelites did in the desert.
What to do? What to do? Someone suggested I make raspberry jam. Great idea. I can do that. Or so I thought. As it turned out, I had to tool up and study up. I sent away for a time-tested book on canning and preserving and began to scour garage sales for equipment. The pickings were slim, however, and I finally had to invest a few dollars. Having assembled what I needed, I made a study of preserving processes and almost scared myself out of doing anything when I read about botulism. What if I accidentally poisoned my family?
As it turned out, the fruit I was preserving wasn’t easily ‘botulized’ and the process was one of the simpler ones. At that point, my maximum yield per day was barely enough to make one batch of jam. Setting up all the boiling pots on my stove each day and sanitizing the jars was hardly worth it. Oh, this is too frustrating, I thought. There’s got to be a better way.
Reviewed by Michael Bell
The title of Bradley Wright’s Book, Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites… and Other Lies You’ve Been Told, certainly grabs your attention. The book itself does a pretty good job of keeping that attention. If you are looking for a book that gives an easy to read, yet comprehensive assessment of the status of Christianity in America, then this book is for you. While many statistical based books cause my eyes to glaze over, Bradley explains what is happening to Christianity in America in easy to understand language, and with a sprinkling of humor, that made for an enjoyable read. Graphs and figures are displayed liberally throughout the book which I found helped me quickly understand many of the concepts that Bradley was discussing.
So why did Bradley Wright write this book?
The purpose of this book is rather simple. Using the best available data, I will describe how Christians are doing in six areas: church growth, what we believe, our participation in church activities, family and sexual issues, how we treat others, and how others see us. In each of these areas, there are various myths floating around about American Christianity and I want to examine if these myths are true.
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