Jesus Has Left The Room: Pharisees, Zealots and Culture Warrior Youth Ministry

ist2_1091982_christ.jpgUPDATE: Frank Turk hits it into the upper deck on this story. I’d welcome other links as well. Areopagitica had the first post I saw on it.

UPDATE II: Six months ago, Restless Reformer and BHT fellow Travis Prinzi was on this story. Jeff Sharlet says he will post the whole story at his site soon.

UPDATE III: A video promo of one of Luce’s youth camps. It speaks for itself.

Reading the summary of Rolling Stone magazine’s coverage of the Battle Cry Youth Event (and watching the linked videos of last year’s events), I find myself feeling strangely torn and uncomfortable.

Part of me- the part that has worked with teenagers for three decades- knows and feels the kind of brokenness and moral chaos that the event speaks to. I continue to work with many students who have found themselves in drug abuse, abusive relationships, crime, sexual promiscuity and all the consequences of those behaviors. I’m on the front lines of the failure of families, public schools and the community to come to terms with the destruction of young people by a corrosive culture. I see, firsthand, the degradation of the human mind, body and spirit that our consumeristic, voyeuristic, technologically mad society has produced.

It makes me mad, and I’m not ashamed of my anger. It’s part of what keeps me going (though not the center or all by any means.) I can put names and faces with the stories that I’ve seen in my ministry. I’ve lost good student friends to the vices and appetites our society promotes in its endless and insatiable appeal to youth culture. We are truly a culture willing to sacrifice our children for economic survival, and we shamelessly blame the young people lost in this maze for being what they are.Continue reading “Jesus Has Left The Room: Pharisees, Zealots and Culture Warrior Youth Ministry”

Recommendation: Mother Kirk by Douglas Wilson

mother-kirk.jpgI was going to attempt a response to Frank Turk’s statements on liturgy– it’s not even in the Psalms!- but instead I’ll just recommend the best book in print on how to do church: Douglas Wilson’s fantastic look at all things ecclesiastical, Mother Kirk.

On a five-star scale this book gets eight. It’s simply unsurpassed as a guide for pastors and laypersons who want to do reformation flavored church right from the ground up. It’s comprehensive, Biblical, engaging, humorous, humble, creative, inquisitive, irenic….I could go on. Acquire the book.Continue reading “Recommendation: Mother Kirk by Douglas Wilson”

Stupid Evangelical Tricks: Two Ways to Do Church

stupid_grey.gifI’ve been opining about worship music for a long time. One of my favorite IM essays on the subject is “Looney Tunes: The Goofy Theology of Some Worship Leaders.”

But you don’t have to go to the extreme to find some fairly weird assertions about music and Christians. Take Rick Warren’s famous assertion that worship music is the #1 element in building a growing church. C’mon Rick. Have you tried handing out fifty dollar bills? Giving away a car every week? Projecting major sporting events on the big screen? (Oh….really? I didn’t know.)Continue reading “Stupid Evangelical Tricks: Two Ways to Do Church”

Stupid Evangelical Tricks: Five

stupidtricks.jpgIt’s been a while since I did an old-school “iMonk-rants-about-evangelicals” post, but all of them are still there in the essays department. Someone could assume- wrongly, I assure you- that those criticisms all came from the days when I was a Calvinist, and now that I’ve jumped off that bus, I have no problems with anything going on anywhere. Not true at all, to say the least. I’m more aware of the problems in evangelicalism than ever, and more grieved by many of them.

In my seven years of blogging on Internet Monk, I’ve covered a lot of ground in evaluating evangelicals. Unlike whack job critics who see Dallas Willard as the antiChrist, and eastern mysticism under every rock or like bunkered fundamentalist critics committed to their own version of exclusive infallible papism, I want to make my criticisms from a broadly “catholic” and post-evangelical point of view. (Yes, “post-evangelicalism” wants to keep a lot of evangelicalism intact. In fact, you will soon be reading several posts aimed at potential converts to the Roman Catholic Church, jumping up and down shouting, “Don’t do it!”)

So let’s check in with what the iMonk feels are some of the most egregious and foolish of current evangelical blunders. Here’s your raw meat (in no particular order, btw), people. Get your forks and find a good fire.Continue reading “Stupid Evangelical Tricks: Five”

In The Study: My Good Friday Meditation

gf.jpegIn my work setting, I’ve done a Holy Week meditation each day this week. This is today’s Good Friday meditation.

My mother had an unusual experience as a teenage girl. She was present at the last public hanging in the United States.

She recalled that day in the mid-1930’s very clearly. It was, she said, like a carnival. Popcorn was being sold by vendors. People were milling about and visiting. The executed man, a young African-American named Rainey Bathea, had been convicted of raping and killing an elderly woman. Of course, the crowd was entertained by the spectacle of public justice.

It would be very strange indeed, if we visited my hometown today and found people wearing the gallows around their necks. It would be bizarre to see buildings with nooses hanging from steeples. It would puzzling to go into a gathering held on the anniversary of that execution and hear people singing songs about the death of Raney Bathea.Continue reading “In The Study: My Good Friday Meditation”

A Second Look at the Ordinary Pastor

pastoroffice.jpgLynn (fictional) wrote me a letter with complaints about her pastor.

Lynn,

It was good to hear from you. It sounds as if your new home and John’s new job are just right for your family. We all miss you, but this will be a good chapter in your life together. Hopefully, we’ll see you at homecoming this year.

It was sad to read your comments about your pastor. Finding the right church isn’t peripheral to this move. I know your family wants church to be a big part of your new life.Continue reading “A Second Look at the Ordinary Pastor”

Gospel Relevance=Gospel Application

foodpantry.jpgStudying Acts with my students, it’s freshly clear to me that the immediate struggle of the early Christians was not only, or even particularly, theological, but practical.

How do we live out, in the church, family, community and world, the significance of Jesus NOW?
What kind of behavior, actions and community appear in “”the Kingdom of God” as Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit create it on earth (and as the church is a “demonstration plot” of the Kingdom?) That is what we’re praying for…right?
What are the relevant issues where the application of the way of Jesus will make an immediate difference?

I heard Mike Goheen say something like this: faithfulness to the gospel and the relevance of the gospel to culture are the same thing. This is deeply true, and pulling them apart damages everything that the church is left on the earth to do. The assumption that “culturally relevat” means skateboard services is ridiculously shallow.Continue reading “Gospel Relevance=Gospel Application”

Roxburgh Journal Interview with Mike Goheen + Resources

michael_goheen.jpgIn my continuing attempt to help others understand the missional church conversation, I’m finding some great resources on Allelon’s web site.

This Roxburgh journal interview with Missiologist and church planter Mike Goheen is full of rich insights and lots of helpful ways to see how the missional church and the traditional church can become the same church.

Goheen is a fine teacher with an ability to communicate right at the point of so many questions.

What I like about this is that Goheen understands how difficult and painful some of the changes that go along with becoming missionally empowered can be for many churches. The contrast with some of the criticisms of the missional church movement is, frankly, very sad.

Goheen has some great observations: Suburban churches have the smell of success with transfer growth, but missional churches know what real church growth looks and feels like, because it isn’t “easy”. So very true!

Goheen’s entire book on Leslie Newbigin’s missional theology is online as a pdf.

You can read more of Roxburgh’s thoughts on Goheen’s missionalism at the netcast page.

Here’s some of Goheen’s work on worldview.

Review: The Truth War by John MacArthur

tw.jpgUPDATE: Lifeway was kind enough to send me this link to an “Author Interview” with Dr. MacArthur regarding this book.

UPDATE II: Macarthur’s takedown of John Armstrong is critiqued by Andrew Sandlin.

I would like to thank Phenix and Phenix Literary Publicists for providing a review copy of this book.

There are two ways I could write this review.

One would be to try and write something lengthy, attempt to be really interesting, with lots of good prose, plenty of positivity, and a bit of humor. Goal: Impress the audience and gain some credibility and light applause.

The other would be to be straight-forward, to the point and honest without wasting the reader’s time. Goal: Tell the truth.

Well….this is the truth war.Continue reading “Review: The Truth War by John MacArthur”