Church Quitting in Evangelicalism.
Why I Walked Out of Church. Outstanding and on target. Julie Neidlinger is iMonk 2.0. You can post here whenever you want, Julie. My audience is yours. Seriously. Drop me an email because I would love to do a brief blog interview.
Check out my other blog at Jesus Shaped Spirituality.
Our sponsor, New Reformation Press.
Music by Rhodes, Sun Like Blood and Randy Stonehill.
Well here we are again, talking about The Shack. (Original Review. Follow Up. Driscoll. Witherington.) I’m going to start and finish this post with the same encouragement: TELL YOUR STORY. WRITE YOUR STORIES. TELL THEM YOUR WAY. IN YOUR WORDS. Don’t be afraid or intimidated. The story matters. Some will NEVER see it, but it’s no less true. Keep putting your journey into a story. Keep writing. Be an artist. Be a creator. Mess up some lines. Mix up some colors. Offend some know it alls. Don’t stop until your story is out there.
I just finished doing another interview about my writing on The Shack. My posts on The Shack have attracted a lot of readers, which is good, because if nothing else, The Shack is a phenomenon that needs to be discussed and better understood.
It seems that a willingness to denounce The Shack has become the latest indicator of orthodoxy among those evangelicals who are keeping an eye on the rest of us. It’s a lot less trouble than checking out someone’s views on limited atonement, that’s for sure.
Hear me loud and clear: it’s every pastor and Christian’s duty to speak up if they feel The Shack is spirtually harmful. I’d only add one point: it’s equally the right of those who find The Shack helpful to say so.Continue reading “Difficult Concept Workshop: Repeat After Me…”The Shack Is A Story””
I mean, besides read their Bibles.
Southern Baptists can’t really do anything about this kind of thing because, as any real Southern Baptist knows, the denomination isn’t a church and actually the “Southern Baptist Convention” only exists a few hours a year. When it gets together to elect officers, debate a few non-binding resolutions and approve the work of its various entities and agencies for the coming year, there’s little on the agenda beyond missions and evangelism. Say what you want about the SBC- and I have- its largest meeting of the year rarely gets very distracted.
(Now the meetings of the trustees of its various agencies….that’s a different story. Keep praying about that. They keep finding ways to box out Charismatics, fire female Hebrew professors and make the news with ideas never before occurring to the mind of man or angel.)Continue reading “What Could Southern Baptists (and other evangelicals) do to promote Spiritual Formation?”
I’ve never been particularly interested in those books that line up the advocates of different views on a selected subject, give one each an essay and everyone a response. It sounds like a very good idea, but I’m the kind of person who thinks through an issue more clearly with an all out advocate or a fully committed critic. I guess I want to be the one sorting through these sort of things for myself.
I’m also fairly pessimistic that anyone ever changes their views in any kind of debate or forum. And my experience tells me that the representative chosen to present a view may, in fact, not actually represent the view, but may be somewhere else on the ranch.
So while I was grateful to be given the opportunity to read and review Gordon Smith’s compilation volume on The Lord’s Supper: Five Views, I was prepared for the book to be a mixed bag.Continue reading “Review: The Lord’s Supper: Five Views edited by Gordon Smith”
I looked back in the archives and found this post from April of 2007: Who And What Are Forming You? It’s an earlier examination of the issues an evangelical like myself (and like many IM readers) face when seeking to grow in Christlikeness.
This has proven to be a very volatile topic, which doesn’t surprise me considering that many evangelicals are threatened by interaction with other spiritual traditions with deeper, better resources in the spiritual disciplines.
This essay also features some thoughts on how Thomas Merton has affected my own experience of spiritual formation and growth. (I have to bring Merton into this discussion just to see the response.)
In eight years, I’ve seldom launched a post off of a comment. No disrespect to commenters. They are fine folk, for the most part. But I almost never comment on another blog myself. The sort of person who chases down some phrase like “contemplative prayer” and then goes to battle in the comment threads of all guilty blogs seems to me like someone with issues. I’m sure the parties involved see it as a form of evangelizing the apostate community, so I’m glad to occasionally provide a brief but fleeting target.
The previous post has been a truly great discussion- one of the best ever- on spiritual formation and where evangelicals in certain corners of the wilderness might find some deepening resources for liturgical prayer, reading scripture, spiritual direction, a more ordered, practical devotional life and so on.
With such a juicy target, how could we escape the inevitable.Continue reading “Why Evangelicalism Drives Us Crazy, and Why We Need Each Other”
UPDATE: My apologies for tolerating the troll.
So….imagine that a Baptist (or other evangelical)- like my dear wife used to be, for example- were to decide that he or she wanted to deepen their spiritual life; to grow spiritually and in spiritual disciplines; to seek out spiritual direction and pursue spiritual formation.
Where would they go within their own evangelical, Protestant tradition to find resources, guidance or direction?
OK. I can hear the Catholics and Orthodox giggling already. Cut it out.Continue reading “Open Thread: So Where Does A Baptist Go For Spiritual Formation?”
Depression and Spiritual Depression.
Check out my other blog at Jesus Shaped Spirituality.
Our sponsor, New Reformation Press.
Music by Rhodes, Sun Like Blood and Randy Stonehill.
Podcast 46 Thoughts on how it feels to be evangelized.
Bumper Music by Greenroom, “Spy Beats.”
The podcast web site is Coffee Cup Apologetics.
In the November 2007 Issue of Touchstone Magazine, there’s a fascinating forum/symposium on “Evangelicalism Today.” It’s available in its entirety on the Touchstone website, and it is well worth your time. Such diverse voices as Russell Moore, Daryl Hart, John Franke and Michael Horton discuss a variety of topics of interest to the IM audience.
Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore had some very provocative words to say about his own definition and experience of evangelicalism. I’m particularly interested in the last two paragraphs.Continue reading “Congregationalism First, Evangelicalism Later”
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