General Joyce Conquers The World! (Impressions from my bookstore visit.)

Joyce.jpgUPDATE: Tim Challies has just posted an amazing bit on the inner-workings of church marketing. If there are doubters out there about how we are perceived by the Publishing interests, this will sober you up. Required reading.

Some of my long time readers may remember that in a long-forgotten fit of exuberance, I swore off visiting Christian bookstores. I’ll have to confess that I’ve mostly kept that vow, but I’ve strayed enough to keep the economy stimulated. I don’t want those Lifeway employees to be laid off on account of me.

Actually, I live 2 hours from the nearest “real” Christian bookstore, (not counting local operations that I avoid completely) so it doesn’t take a great effort on my part to abstain. I spend my book money at Amazon. My employer lets me spend a little money at Lifeway, so I stopped in today, while I was in Lexington to see my daughter, and took a quick look around. I came out with some music. No books or other trinkets. I thought I would pen a few impressions for those of you who don’t get out much.
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Questions about the journey: If you started at a different place, would you still be here?

In all of my recent “conversations” with my reformed friends and detractors, I’ve had one question that I’ve really wanted to ask. It occured to me as we were talking about my acceptance of my Roman Catholic friends as fellow Christians, but it really goes to a certain kind of perspective on your own journey.

I could ask it different ways, but let’s do this:

Assume for a moment you were once a professed Roman Catholic. How many of you believe you would have, by your own study of the Bible, come to believe what you currently believe, and/or would have come to the convictions you now hold? Or do you believe you would have likely remained in the Catholic Church?

I am particularly curious if my Calvinist friends believe that, if they had been born Catholic, they would today, be Calvinists and would have left Catholicism?

Not trying to start a fuss. Just curious.

The Spiral of Despair in Christian Hedonism: Steve Brown's Take on John Piper

brown.jpgOne of my unmet goals on the internet has been to start a blog devoted to a critical discussion of the theology of John Piper. I love Piper and his work has a huge place in my journey, but I am ever more convinced that his “Christian Hedonism” would greatly benefit from rigorous assessment. There are great strengths, and some fairly serious problems, especially in the area of Christian experience.

So I was surprised to find Christian Hedonism critically assessed by Steve Brown of Key Life Network. Steve Brown has to be one of my favorite “reformed” teachers, if for no other reason than he has a great sense of humor and an unending appetite for the gospel of grace. His current on-line article at Key Life’s website won’t be there long, so I want to excerpt his assessment of the possibilities for the spiral of despair in John Piper’s theology of Christian Hedonism. I’ll excerpt from the mention of Piper to the end.
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A Question For The Scholars In The Room

paulpics.jpgIn my study of the New Testament, I’ve collected a few questions that have stayed with me. One of them fascinates me endlessly, and I have never read an answer that seemed sufficient. Perhaps the readers of Internet Monk would like to take a swing at this pitch, or direct me to a source that addresses the question.

Here you go: Why does the Apostle Paul not refer to the stories, miracles and teaching from the ministry of Jesus in his letters to churches?

Edumacate me. This one has me stumped.

Baseball and Rabid Dogs of Evangelism

I’m serving as interim baseball coach for OBI’s team this week, and will be tied up for at least another week. Blogging will be rare, and possibly nill. Thanks for the patience. I will post some iMonk 101 reruns if one strikes me as appropriate.

Hat tip to the Reformissionary for the best example of “Wretched Urgency” I’ve read in a while. SEBTS President Daniel Akin- a generally thoughtful scholar- urges Southern Baptists to become “rabid dogs” for evangelism. Metaphor alert, Dr. Akin. Being perceived as “rabid dogs” is a good bit of the problem. Was Jesus a “rabid dog?” Reread “Wretched Urgency” if you need to know what I think of this sort of crusade-stryle rhetoric. Works great with the SBC faithful, and scares everyone else to death.

The Questions Belong To All Of Us

question.jpgIt’s not often that I use IM as a place to point my readers to other blogs, but I will make a much-deserved exception for Jordan Cooper’s deft and on-target analysis called “The Threat That Is The Emerging Church.” You must read the post and consider his major points because he is starting to make some connections that I believe are immensely helpful. Jordan’s post stimulated a bunch of thoughts for me as well.
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Apologized and Revised: Looking For the Elusive, Mysterious "Reformed, Calvinistic" Tent

tent.jpgJust before I left for work this morning, I made a several discoveries:

First, I discovered that “c.t.” in the current essay’s comment thread is a person who has been feeding off my web-sites for several weeks now.

Second, I discovered that this same person was the source of the original “Reformed/Calvinistic Tent” quote that I used as the launching point for my post. (I had noticed earlier that the quote was removed from the site where I found it, which doesn’t surprise me at all.)

While this doesn’t change a single word of the views I present in the essay, it did possibly violate a personal standard I have of not dialoging with or responding to certain kinds of people who are, either by their own choice or through no fault of their own, unable to participate in civilized conversation without resorting to death threats and racism. So I took it down, but will now post an edited version of it in the extended comments. The quote is gone, and the essay doesn’t feel right without it, but we can all just live with it. My apologies for the whole matter. Five years doing this and I’ve finally managed to have my own troll. I’m so special.
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The Prodigal Project

prod.jpgFor the last three months, I’ve been leading a study of the story of the prodigal son in a men’s Bible study here at OBI. We met twice a week, and I simply took the study whatever direction was interesting to me. It’s been a lot of fun, and I have a lot of material that I would like to discuss here or write elsewhere.

The story of the prodigal son is often judged as the most effective of Jesus’ parables. Certainly it is the most emotionally powerful, as it touches close to circumstances that are timeless. One of my personal treasures in a copy of Rembrandt’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” which was the subject of Henri Nouwen’s excellent book on the parable and the painting.

I’ve always been fascinated by the original setting of this story. What was the audience and setting that first heard Jesus tell this story? In the movie “Jesus of Nazareth,” Jesus tells the story to the “sinners and tax collectors” at Matthew’s dinner party (Mark 2:15-17), while the disciples- especially Peter- play the role of the older brother standing outside the party, looking in the door. At the conclusion of the story, Peter comes into Matthew’s house, apologizes to Jesus and accepts Matthew as a brother.

Despite the Hollywood spin on that particularly setting, it is entirely believable to me that the story of the prodigal son was told with the intention to create a particular kind of community, and not just to invite individuals to respond to God’s offer of forgiveness.
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Retire the Chimps! Help the Media Find the "Real" Evangelicals!

doblk.jpgDear Media types. Main Stream. Television. Christian. Internet. Whatever. This post is for you.

It has come to my attention that, in the past decade, you have paid increasing amounts of attention to conservative Christianity in America. In particular, recently, since Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and the 2004 “Values Voter” presidential election, you seem almost obsessed with evangelical conservative Christians. You can’t get enough of us.

But we’ve had enough of your coverage. Trust me on that one. We aren’t impressed.
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