“That Pitch Seems A Bit Up In The Strike Zone”

grifWhat pitch?

This one, from the NAE President Leith Anderson article I’m not responding to.

Everything depends on definitions. My short definition of an evangelical is someone who takes the Bible seriously and believes in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

That pitch. Now excuse me while I take a swing.

By this definition, all Roman Catholics are evangelicals. Francis Beckwith should still be the President of The Evangelical Theological Society. I’m pretty sure the term “evangelical Catholic” was meant to mean exactly this.

Unless you want to get involved in some required confessional theology that will define Jesus, Mormons and several other cults are evangelicals by this definition. Latter Day Saints regularly write me and inform me that’s the case, by the way.Continue reading ““That Pitch Seems A Bit Up In The Strike Zone””

Riffs: 04:26:09: Is My Evangelicalism Collapsing?

bapSeveral of you sent me links to a quote from National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson saying that yours truly was 1) somehow like Hugo Chavez (??) and 2) was in the midst of my own personal evangelical collapse. (“Autobiographical.” Unfortunate word choice.)

I decided not to respond, mostly because I know that keeping up the hype that there are 35 million actual evangelicals (as opposed to about 15 million evangelicals and a lot of wallpaper) must be time consuming.

But I will say this: the implication that my evangelicalism is collapsing is an unfortunate thing to say about anyone you don’t know. Maybe President Anderson needs to contact me and let me know where this autobiographical collapse is occurring. What “current events” took control of my mind and led me into panic mode? Am I under surveillance by the NAE? Can they read my mind? Hand me some tin foil…quick!

You see, the fact is that I’m more evangelical and Protestant than ever, and I’m more optimistic about being evangelical than ever. Just because I think the balloon is deflating doesn’t mean I am not optimistic about the great things that are happening.

I agree with President Anderson in all the points he makes regarding the next ten years of evangelicalism world wide. I don’t think his spin, however, has much to do with what I wrote, but then there’s no evidence in his comments that he ever got near part III of my CSM piece, where I say exactly what he said. He can work it out with the ARIS study. My conscience is clear.Continue reading “Riffs: 04:26:09: Is My Evangelicalism Collapsing?”

We Interrupt This Religion To Recognize….All The Ugl….Unattra…..Uh, “Ordinary” Christians

I don’t really care for Susan Boyle’s voice. But I’m very interested in her looks.

I’ve always had a thing about ugly rock stars. Tom Petty. Bob Dylan. That guy in The Cars. The drummer in Cheap Trick. Willie Nelson. Ugly men. Seriously ugly.

Do you remember Dave Roever, the preacher who had most of his face blown off in Vietnam? I loved watching that guy work an audience.

One of my fellow staff members had a horrific gun accident years ago, and is seriously damaged. Watching students and staff encounter him for the first time is always interesting. He has a great sense of humor about it all that cracks me up, and I truly am in awe of his contentment in Jesus.Continue reading “We Interrupt This Religion To Recognize….All The Ugl….Unattra…..Uh, “Ordinary” Christians”

Internet Monk Podcast #137

podcast_logo.gifThis week: Garbage and Baggage We Put With The Gospel. (This is a redo of 136)

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Ferguson on Baptism
Jars of Clay
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PBS Video portal

Intro music by Daniel Whittington. Exit Music by Randy Stonehill.

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Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? (Part 4): Does Church Discipline Always Look Like Church Discipline?

My posts so far have carried an agenda. I would like readers to consider what church discipline looks like when it is the church’s compassionate ministry to those who are suffering, rather than primarily a punitive action toward those who are sinning.

I am aware that, according to a full understanding of church discipline, it is compassionate to deal with someone in a way that their need for repentance and returning to faith in Christ becomes obvious in their life. What concerns me is that the paradigm for church discipline is assumed to be radical surgery rather than the promotion of health in as much of the body as possible.

There are Christians who need church leadership to step up and take church discipline seriously, but not by attempting to turn an issue into a “bring it before the church,” I Corinthians 5 kind of response. These are persons who need church leaders to show an interest as shepherds, offering oversight, accountability, resources or mentoring, as needed, in situations that might normally be ignored.Continue reading “Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? (Part 4): Does Church Discipline Always Look Like Church Discipline?”

The Love Of Jesus Is Enough: A Meditation on Morality

NOTE: I have chosen not to post a larger number of comments than usual. If you want to know why comments aren’t posted consult the IM F.A.Q. where this is addressed in one of the questions.

I could have posted some perfect examples of moral reasoning following our love, but I think the point is clearly made.

I recently searched my email archives and found a letter from a reader about the use of marijuana by a Christian. It reminded me of why I am more than a bit annoyed at the unhelpful moral reasoning that leaves out Jesus.

First, the highlights of the letter:

1) Almost everyone in America smokes marijuana or assumes it’s not wrong. (A statement that is factually untrue and if so, means nothing to the Christian. Great portions of the Bible were written to people living in empires and kingdoms that insisted everything from child sacrifice to emperor worship was universally the right thing to do.)

2) It’s no different than moderate use of alcohol. (Again, factually untrue from any number of angles, but it doesn’t matter. In scripture, comparing one thing to another without reference to God is meaningless. Similarities between legal and illegal behaviors don’t address why we make those distinctions. Why is it illegal to have sex with a consenting 17 year old but not with a consenting 18 year old? And the question for the Christian isn’t anything like “How is smoking week like drinking?”)Continue reading “The Love Of Jesus Is Enough: A Meditation on Morality”

Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 3: Who Needs It?

It’s interesting to read the comments of the previous two posts and see how many people immediately see church discipline as….

-about public sins, usually sexual
-hopelessly prone to be a tool of abusive leadership
-unable to make needed distinctions
-destined to ignore some kinds of sin entirely

This is rather typical of the discussions I referred to in the first post.Continue reading “Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 3: Who Needs It?”

Where is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 2: What does Matthew 18 Teach?

Without any intro, I’d like to get right into what I would be saying about Matthew 18 if I were lecturing on the “What does Matthew 18 tell us about church discipline?”

I’d begin by noting that the church discipline material in I Corinthians 5 predates Matthew 18 in composition. Assuming Markan priority, it’s safe to assume that the matter of what to do with certain kinds of situations in the early church moved Matthew to include more material for that context than you find in Mark or the other Gospels. There is a focus in Matthew on catechetical material and church context.

The epistles (including Revelation 2-3) are evidence enough of what these situations were and why they were of the utmost concern. They ran the gamut from interpersonal conflicts, family issues, business disagreements, immorality of various kinds and division. Evidence in the epistles also is clear that leaders were to function as shepherds in working toward the resolution of these conflicts. The matter in I Corinthians 5 is a matter of scandalous immorality, but it is also part of the larger Corinthian church problem: complete lack of functioning leadership, resulting in a kind of “charismatic” leadership that was allowing the church to go down the route of Thyatira in Revelation 2.Continue reading “Where is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 2: What does Matthew 18 Teach?”

Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 1: A Better Approach

Down through the years, I’ve been part of a few in-church discussions about church discipline. They were all memorable. Almost everyone was against it and treated me like I was going off the deep end for bringing it up. Being against church discipline was an issue worth yelling over, and I’ve been yelled at more than once.

In my denomination and tradition, church discipline of a certain kind was common in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. I recall reading the business meeting minutes of a church I belonged to that was founded in the late 1700s. In the the late nineteenth century, many business meetings involved the discipline of members for things as trivial as card playing and as serious as shooting another church member.

In the 1920’s, church discipline began to disappear and today is almost totally unknown in Southern Baptist circles. The reason is clear. Southern Baptists and most evangelicals completely lost the ability to see anything positive in church discipline, at least by the measurements they now use to measure what is positive and helpful in church life.

Church discipline was punitive and exclusionary, overstepping the church’s role and destructive to the church’s mission too represent Christ.Continue reading “Where Is Church Discipline When You Need It? Part 1: A Better Approach”