Recommendation and Review: Evangelicals and Tradition by D.H. Williams

williams.jpgMy list of must-read books for post-evangelicals is short. Newly added at the top of the list: Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church by Baylor University professor of patristics and Baptist minister D. H. Williams (Ph.d, University of Toronto.).

Reviews of D.H. Williams’ work on the need for evangelicals and free churchers to recover the catholic tradition are everywhere on the web. (By both Roman Catholics and by leading Evangelicals.) Williams’ previous book, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants, is universally acclaimed and I would predict similar accolades for his more recent work on the formative influence of the early church.

I have simply devoured Williams’ book. Seldom have I underlined and noted so much in one book. As a post-evangelical in spirit, I still have much to learn about the early church and the role of tradition. My own seminary training included absolutely zero specific courses on the first five centuries of Christian history, and no discussion at all of the place of tradition in regard to my own denominational heritage. So Williams has been both a revelation and a feast.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: Evangelicals and Tradition by D.H. Williams”

Recommendation and Review: What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever

deverbook.jpgSome of you need to buy this book: What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever. You need to buy it and start some trouble with it.

Here’s the deal. Your pastor is caught up in whole church-growth, seeker-sensitive movement, and he’s reading church growth books and rehashing the content into most of his sermons. You can hear- even smell- the Rick Warren approach everywhere. You’re concerned and you want to do something. You know there are lots of books your pastor ought to be reading, but you also know he’ll probably never read any book you might recommend. He’s not into those serious theological books. What can you do?

What to do is get Mark Dever’s just released What is a Healthy Church? where the content of books like The Deliberate Church and Nine Marks of a Healthy Church are compressed into just over 100 pages in the popular “little book” format that’s proven readable with people who won’t read “real” books.Continue reading “Recommendation and Review: What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever”

I like the Prayer List

24hourprayer.jpgWhen I returned to worshiping at the SBC church down the street, one of the things I wasn’t looking forward to was the “open prayer request” time I’d experienced there in the past. My previous experiences left me with memories of too much information, too much detail, too much time….just too much.

Things haven’t been quite as bad as anticipated. In fact, I’ve been rethinking the place of these kinds of congregational “prayers of the people” in worship, and I’ve decided it’s more important to me than I realized.

I actually have become quite fond of the large prayer list that sets opposite our weekly order of worship. When I say large, I mean probably a hundred names/requests, printed in a large paragraph, to which we add new names (and occasionally remove a few) every week.

The prayer list dominates our “order of service.” It’s the most noticeable thing about our church’s printed presentation of itself. And it makes a statement that I believe is very important.

Evangelicals and more liturgical Christians have both found the idea of “prayer requests” to be awkward. Some people talk too much. Some are too gossipy. Others obsess over embarrassing and needless details, like the names of diseases and details of doctor visits. “Sister Smith had a bad weekend. Her stitches came out…” TMI.Continue reading “I like the Prayer List”

“You Need To Smile More.”

frudel.jpegEvery day this summer school term, around 9:30 in the morning, I drive two blocks to the post office during a ten minute break from class. I get my mail, which often involves retrieving a package from the postal employee at the window. I know the postmaster well, but on days he’s off, he has an assistant. The new one just arrived and I don’t know her yet.

And today, the conversation went something like this.

“Hello. Spencer. Box 313.”

The young woman, maybe 30 years old, gets my mail and packages.

“Are you a preacher?”

You have to be a preacher to know what that question does to you.

“Yes, among other things. I preach, teach Bible and English up at the school.”

“You need to smile more.”Continue reading ““You Need To Smile More.””

Interview with Peter Matthews, Pastor of Saint Patrick’s Anglican Church, Lexington, Kentucky

guitarpriest.jpgPeter Matthews was raised Methodist, ministered as a Baptist pastor for ten years and now pastors a vibrant growing Anglican Mission in America congregation in Lexington, Kentucky. When it comes to evangelicalism and liturgical church, Peter is the man. He blogs at Guitar Priest, but you need to visit his church or catch his preaching on the web.

Peter’s insights into some of the questions I’m dealing with in recent blog posts will be appreciated by IM readers.

1. You were once a Baptist, now you’re an AMiA Anglican, but you aren’t a Roman Catholic. Can you tell us a little about that trajectory, particularly what moved you out of being a Baptist, but what specifically kept you from becoming Roman Catholic?

I was a Southern Baptist pastor for 10 years. However, I grew up Methodist. So some of the liturgical and sacramental piety of Methodism still hovered in my soul during my SBC years. There was always a longing to get back in touch with the church calendar, liturgy and a greater use and appreciation of sacraments than I was experiencing in an SBC context. Therefore, while still a Baptist pastor I explored the liturgical traditions by reading more than I should have — especially the early church fathers. I found what I was looking for in Anglicanism. Here was a tradition that was overtly liturgical and sacramental but retained the key insights of the Protestant Reformation. I spent a lot of time looking at the Roman Catholic Church and I found much to commend it. Nevertheless, at the end of the day Anglicanism is where I found my home.Continue reading “Interview with Peter Matthews, Pastor of Saint Patrick’s Anglican Church, Lexington, Kentucky”

The Baptist Way: Discerning the Fullness of Christ in the Lord’s Supper (3)

0d600.jpgExodus 12:13 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

Ex. 12:14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Exodus 12:24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.

Most of the discussion regarding the meaning of the Lord’s Supper goes on around the intention of Jesus in the words of institution in the Gospels, Paul’s pastoral teaching in Corinthians, and references to eating flesh and drinking blood in John 6. While the discussion is in no way restricted to these passages, there is no doubt that the majority of disagreement occurs around what Jesus intended in words like “This is my body.”

Baptist Old Testament scholar Peter Gentry suggests, however, that the meaning of Jesus’ words may not lie in the words themselves as much as in the context of the meal itself: A Jewish passover meal that Jesus and his disciples were very familiar with, and a meal with considerable scripture devoted to its meaning and description in Exodus.Continue reading “The Baptist Way: Discerning the Fullness of Christ in the Lord’s Supper (3)”

Sanctification and the Only Child

brat.jpegYesterday my wife told me that she wanted to make a suggestion on how I could be a better person. That’s a bit like shooting at a target the size of North Dakota, but she had a helpful, truthful criticism combined with some encouragement about a behavior I often overlook.

Of course, my feelings were hurt and I acted like it for a while. I would say I pouted, but grown men don’t pout.

***crickets***

Why is it so hard for me to take constructive criticism from someone who loves me and wants the best for me? Or be told “No”? Or take simple steps of repentance so that….well, because it’s the right thing to do, whether anything goes better or not.

I’m a generic sinner and a specific one as well. I can’t decode the whole mystery, but one of the reasons is that I’m an only child. You know, one kid to older parents. The whole universe revolves around me. I always got my way. Never learned to share. All that? I’m 50 years old and finally starting to understand what all those years without siblings meant.

Some of you live with one, or you’ve raised one. Some of you are one. Onlies are more common than they used to be as families get smaller. We probably deserve our reputation as being a bit difficult, though I hope most of us are avoiding prison.Continue reading “Sanctification and the Only Child”

The Baptist Way: Confessional Resources for Renewing the Lord’s Supper (2)

eucharist.jpgMy first post on the Baptist View of the Lord’s Supper is here.

Last week, I apparently shook up the world of people whose stereotype of me precluded any agreement with my Baptist tradition. In a post surveying some immediate resources for a Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper, I raised the ire of all sorts of people in all sorts of places by saying what I’ve said for 7 years: post-evangelical, emerging or whatever, I would still hand you the New Hampshire Confession of Faith if you asked me what I believe.

So when I wrote on the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper, I immediately noticed that I fell into two ditches. The first is what others have deduced about the Baptist view of the supper from what non-Baptists have said about it (“bare symbolism,” no presence of Christ, etc.) and what others have deduced about the supper from what Baptists have said about it (“bare symbolism, no presence of Christ) and done with it (“let’s not do it more than 4 times a year, etc.”).

I’ve long ago assimilated the fact that what people deduce about you from the internet generally has a lot to do with their need to feel that you agree with them and you are their ally. (I learned that from my own blog reading.) It’s safe to say that few people who read my site are hungering for the paltry views and practice of the Lord’s Supper that prevail among Baptists. In fact, for many post-evangelicals, it was a journey toward a more reformed, even Catholic, view of the sacraments that brought them to embrace infant baptism and to say they believe in some kind real presence of Jesus in the sacrament of the bread and wine.Continue reading “The Baptist Way: Confessional Resources for Renewing the Lord’s Supper (2)”