Billy Gillispie and Your Pastor: What do they have in common? (Part 1 of 2)

The commonwealth of Kentucky where I reside is currently completely captivated by the drama surrounding the firing of University of Kentucky Men’s basketball coach Billy Gillispie. Gillispie had only been at UK for two years. Both years featured lackluster performances in comparison to fan expectation, but Gillispie was just starting to recruit his own players. It’s odd- very, very odd- to see a coach dismissed after two years, but we’re talking about a state where University of Kentucky men’s basketball is the official religion of 90% of the population.

Gillispie’s firing followed one of the strangest and most dramatic paths of the demise of any coach of a major sports program. Gillispie was hired because of his single-minded focus on basketball. He was fired, apparently, because of his single-minded focus on basketball.

The mystery resides in that part of Gillispie’s job description labeled “being an ambassador for Kentucky basketball.” As former Coach Joe B. Hall, the successor to the legendary Adolph Rupp, said, the job of being the UK coach involves being custodian of the entire legacy and meaning of basketball in the state. It’s a job that happens at the practice court, in recruiting and on the floor, but it also happens in visiting high school games, signing balls, going to hospitals, speaking at Rotary, having dinner with boosters, participating in charity, getting along with the press and carrying yourself with the awareness that the program is basketball royalty.Continue reading “Billy Gillispie and Your Pastor: What do they have in common? (Part 1 of 2)”

Internet Monk Radio Podcast #132

podcast_logo.gifThis week: Is evangelism healthy? What are we defending in the Bible? Putting the leavers and quitters back on evangelical radar.

SBC Voices Blog Madness: I need your vote next week.

Valerie Tarico’s book on evangelicalism.

New Reformation Press. New products available now. New music and DVDs.

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

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The Liturgical Gangstas 9: Church Planting

UPDATE: Alan Creech has joined us.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
Rev. Peter Vance Matthews is an Anglican priest and founding pastor of an AMIA congregation.
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction. (Alan’s not a priest. If he is, his wife and kids need to know.)
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What is the status of church planting in your tradition/denomination? What’s your view of the place of church planting in Christianity as a whole and the future of your own tradition/denomination?Continue reading “The Liturgical Gangstas 9: Church Planting”

Looking For An Exit From The Journey With Jesus

John 6:60 Many of his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?”

61 Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what will you think if you see the Son of Man ascend to heaven again? 63 The Spirit alone egives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But some of you do not believe me.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning which ones didn’t believe, and he knew who would betray him.) 65 Then he said, “That is why I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father gives them to me.”

66 At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him. 67 Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?” 68 Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. 69 We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”

Have you ever come to a place where you wanted to say, “Let me off. I’m done?”

Maybe you were in a car with an 88 year old driver who shouldn’t have been driving anywhere, much less down an interstate.

Maybe you were about to get on an amusement park ride that you really didn’t want to ride.Continue reading “Looking For An Exit From The Journey With Jesus”

Recommendation: Singing the Faith

I enjoy doing recommendations and reviews most of the time. If the product I’m recommending is absolutely amazing, and I know the IM audience is going to enjoy it, then it’s a real pleasure.

It’s an absolute, unqualified pleasure to recommend to you the Good Shepherd Institute’s 4 session course and 80 minute DVD, Singing the Faith: Living the Lutheran Musical Heritage. (Available for $29.99 from IM’s sponsor, New Reformation Press.)

If you love hymns, reformation theology, great music, great singing and performance, great organ accompaniment and performance….if the classic tradition of Lutheran hymns from the Reformation until today is something you appreciate, this is a must have product.Continue reading “Recommendation: Singing the Faith”

What’s Growing In The Shadow of Anger?

Sometimes someone else’s sins become the light of seeing our own.

Several years ago I was working with a particularly difficult young church staff member. His pattern was to do everything his way, and when negative consequences arrived, to be completely defensive. Insight into his own character wasn’t much of an interest. Finding others guilty was. His personal drama usually involved anger and outrage, always featuring his own innocence as the main character.

Keeping this young man placated became a full-time job. As his own ministry deteriorated, his skills at blaming others never lost steam. He was a master at claiming to be persecuted when, in fact, he simply was not doing his job.Continue reading “What’s Growing In The Shadow of Anger?”

A Great Commission Resurgence: Is It A Possible SBC Future? (Part 2 of Thoughts On My Denomination Today)

The previous post was “Avoiding Death By Nostalgia.“

I have a job, a home and a paycheck every month because the Southern Baptist Convention (actually the Kentucky Baptist Convention) believes in cooperative evangelism.

I was evangelized and won to Christ by a Southern Baptist Church.

I’ve spent my life- since I was a teenager- evangelizing and discipling young people in SBC churches across Kentucky.

Most of you don’t know me and never will, but if you came to where I live and work, you’d hear me preach…and what you would hear would be evangelistic. I preach the Gospel, Southern Baptist style. I preach with zeal and emotion. I preach for conversion. I appeal and persuade. I present the Gospel explicitly and call for the response of faith and following in 90% of my messages. I’ve done that here where I serve for almost 17 years, and I do it because this ministry holds evangelism as a priority. It is a priority for me. That’s part of the SBC/KBC heritage of the ministry where I serve and has been for 110 years. I’m happy to be part of it.Continue reading “A Great Commission Resurgence: Is It A Possible SBC Future? (Part 2 of Thoughts On My Denomination Today)”

Avoiding Death by Nostalgia: My Denomination (The SBC) Today

The following post is completely and only my personal opinion. It is the first of two posts about my denomination. The second will examine the idea of A Great Commission Resurgence: Is It A Possible SBC Future?

Nostalgia- a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. -Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Talking with a pastor friend this afternoon, it occurred to me that my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, finds itself in the perfect storm.

In 1979, conservatives in the SBC announced a plan to wrest control of the denomination from the moderate-liberals who had brought the denomination through the turbulent 1960’s and into a new and optimistic age of Southern Baptist dominance of Baptist evangelicalism. (I’m aware that many SBC leaders on both sides of the fence deny that they are evangelicals. I was taught by the Landmark fundamentalists that we weren’t Protestants. Given the symmetrical chaos, I’ll continue using both terms.)Continue reading “Avoiding Death by Nostalgia: My Denomination (The SBC) Today”

Preference, Problem or Person?

I told my son-in-law (who teaches/preaches with me at the ministry where we serve) that I believe we are dealing with more atheistic students this year than ever before. What’s encouraging to me is that I am hearing from them, and some are asking questions.

Several Christian students have been part of these dialogues and it has led to one of the most basic and inevitable questions you will ever get when you do student ministry.

Today, after I finished preaching, a girl came to me with this question. I’ll try to preserve her diction:

“Mr. Spencer, you know there are atheists, people who believe in Mary and Muslims. Many different beliefs. And there are people who believe the world is going to come to an end. If the world were to end, would all of these people who are not Christians go to heaven or hell?”Continue reading “Preference, Problem or Person?”

The Evangelical Untouchables 1: What is the Gospel?

untouchThe Evangelical Untouchables are seven diverse evangelicals who will give us a window into what’s happening in evangelicalism today.

Who are the Evangelical Untouchables?

Michael Patton is the director of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries and is one of the teachers on The Theology Program.
Tony Kummer is on staff at a Southern Baptist Church in the midwest and blogs at SBC Voices.
Ryan Couch is a Calvary Chapel pastor in Oregon, and blogs at Small Town Preacher.
Kirk Cowell pastors a Church of Christ in North Carolina.
Lindsey Williams is planting a PCA Church in North Carolina, and blogs at From Acorns to Oaks.
Matt Edwards is a small groups pastor in a Non-denominational/Bible church in Washington, and blogs at Awaiting Redemption.
Darrell Young pastors a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church near Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Our first question: “If you had only two paragraphs to express the Gospel to an audience of secular twenty-somethings who don’t go to church, what would you say? Then tell us how you are promoting it in your church.

(Beware “TRs:” Ryan is clearly a disciple of Mark Driscoll!)Continue reading “The Evangelical Untouchables 1: What is the Gospel?”