It had absolutely nothing to do with you…at all. Sorry that your post was in the vicinity. My apologies. I need to look around before I explode.

The great thing about simplistic responses is that they generally indicate that there’s a misunderstanding of some sort. When I say ‘table fellowship’ I don’t mean ‘communion’ I mean ‘hospitality’ which could best be defined as: ‘extending and enjoying relationship around things which we have in common’.

When I connect with those who claim some sort of ‘god-commonality’ with me I spend a lot of time talking about what we hold in common (in order to extend hospitality) without denying our differences (in order to maintain honest boundaries).

Michael, I’m assuming that your post immediately following mine was directed at me. It seemed extreme…help me understand why.

internetmonk.com : Postcards To A Young Theologian 4 I’m up to four of these posts. I think I have one more.

1. Jesus was valedictorian of his class, with a really perfect 4.0.
2. Jesus never mismeasured anything in the carpenter’s shop. Every piece was perfect first time.
3. Jesus won every game he ever played. 300 Bowler. Perfect horseshoes. Killer 3 point shot.
4. Jesus never asked a teacher a question.

These verses need to be footnoted:

Hebrews 5:8-9   8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,

Hebrews 4:15   15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Luke 2:40  40 And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

Since (obviously) all error is sin and Jesus was without sin, we have to conclude that He was without error as well. This would logically cover the typical errors of growth and development. This leads to some fascinating conclusions! – Baby Jesus never cried. He slept through the night perfectly. – Learning to speak involves first spitting out nonsense syllables. That’s obviously error, so we have to conclude that Jesus could talk from birth. – Learning to walk usually involves lots of spills and tumbles. Unacceptable for an inerrant saviour. Jesus could walk from birth. Perfectly. And, since stumbling is error, that means that he never tripped or stumbled while carrying the cross to Golgotha. – Jesus won all of his childhood games, since he executed them flawlessly the first time. Every time. Finding playmates became very difficult. – Potty training was never an issue for Jesus. In fact, his bodily eliminations had no offensive odor! It was literally Holy ___!

AAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
(Personal anquish unrelated to BHT.)

At what level do we share G-d with Judaism and Islam? Members of both faiths would both say that their G-d is the G-d of Abraham…so would we…at some point we narrow our respective definitions of G-d to exclude one another. Is this what Jesus-God intended? Should we have ‘table fellowship’ at some level?

(BTW: This question could also be extended to cover JWs and Brigham Youngites.)

Jesse: I recently listened to an individual similarly persuaded by Mr. Osteen explain to me that you can identify a deeply spiritual Christian by their positive attitude.

QotH: The greatest threat to the Gospel in evangelicalism are “Church Marketing Plans”.

Heights: I did this route in my younger days…and these days the Grand Canyon thing looks pretty cool…cooler yet was the bridge Richard linked…though I’m thinking that it would be a lousy camera platform.

Eric wrote, “I just have to smile and nod while some uber-pluralist heathen tells me that the god I worship is the same as Allah and Jehovah of the Jews. If I were to unleash and give him a piece of my mind, I’d be fired faster than I can say the words “religious discrimination” or even “blasphemy.”“

Here’s an experiment. Next time you are discussing the Pledge of Allegiance with friends, suggest altering the “one nation under God” to “one nation under the Triune God” and see how many object.

Being “under” some nebulous, pantheistic, emasculated God is fine. But let’s not bring the Triune Godhead into this.

Eric, you are a wimp. For seven months my wife was on a different continent. Don’t try to tell me about long-distance relationships :). For that matter, even Josh has you beat with his Spanish lady-friend. Also, screw evening cell phone minutes. Use Skype: it’s free. You both have to have broadband, but that’s not a problem, right?

I really think that Josh is right about evangelicals. I tried to tell my mother that Osteen doesn’t preach the Gospel, and she looked at me strangely and asked, “What do you think that the Gospel is?” The thing is, my mother knows the Gospel, the real one about sin and crucifixion and resurrection, but she thinks that Osteen’s positive-thinking mantras are a perfectly normal part of it.

This is why I’m not an evangelical.

”...just say “no” to comments. Why turn the bar into a buffet? Once that happens, the “no smoking” and “BYOB” signs go up, and the new clientele will spend their time criticizing the selection, sneezing on the food shields, and making too much noise in the corner booth. No thanks.”

Eric, i feel your pain.  My wife and i lived our entire pre-marital relationship 2000 miles apart.  We did the free nights and weekends calling (and dates even!).  We saw each other on average one weekend a month.  But, we married after a year of dating and it’s very nice.  Because of that long distance, we had to learn to communicate with each other…and that makes the marriage that much easier.  We even did most of our pre-marital counseling over the phone.

Grand Canyon Skyway: I am so there! I have a fear of roller-coasters (never been on one. Never will), but I love stuff like this. Or this.

Aw, hell, Michael, I’m not sleeping enough, and I’m 26. My fiancee is 3 hours away, and we can only talk on night/weekend minutes. More often than not, I have to be at work at 4:15 a.m. This doesn’t leave much time for talking at night. So I usually get somewhere around 3 hours each night before I wake up to drug myself awake at work (Starbucks).

I live in a constant state of sleep deprivation. It ain’t just teens. And it ain’t any healthier for me.

Kent: Props on the Toby Keith, bud. I feel the same way.

Re the Grand Canyon: I’d just like to hike and raft it sometime. But the observation deck looks cool too.

Josh: That’s exactly why I hate talking about the Gospel at work. Because I’m never allowed to say enough or put it into the context of another person’s life. I can never say “you” for fear of getting fired. I just have to smile and nod while some uber-pluralist heathen tells me that the god I worship is the same as Allah and Jehovah of the Jews. If I were to unleash and give him a piece of my mind, I’d be fired faster than I can say the words “religious discrimination” or even “blasphemy.”

I think the greatest threat to the Gospel in evangelicalism today is evangelicalism

I remember when the saints used to be equipped to “Go….” Now, they’re equipped to bring their friends for dinner and Alpha.

Grand Canyon Skyway? I’d be out there in a heartbeat!

On comments? I found it hard to follow a thread, because fellows would answer in a new post and then I’d be following the same thread, with all different comments on different posts…my ADHD brain just couldn’t handle it.

For sanity’s sake! Don’t do it!

(Leave your comment at aomin.org.) I love it! Kind of takes the wind out of the public complaints.

The public complaint that comments are not allowed and the continued accusation that it’s fear that drives the “no comments” thing is unfounded, since threads (or portions of threads) are reflected a lot on blogs of fellows – where comments are allowed. I suspect that the public complainers know this well.

For instance, I focused on what was the most “attention getting” for me.

It’s all out there in some place or another. And the public complainers are not too hesitant to start their own threads, so it’s not like they have a voice.

(HT: Challies) Some brave person put a live webcam by an Eagle’s nest on Hornsby Island, British Columbia. I could stare at this lady for hours (well, minutes anyway!). Not much action but that’s a magnificent animal.

I think the verses in 1 Cor. are fine, but they don’t go far enough. Christ died for our sins, but why did He have to die? What does His rising mean? The Gospel can’t be reduced to 3 verses, otherwise all we would have is 3 verses.

This is why so many evangelical / invitational type churches miss the point. “Ask Jesus into your heart” What does that mean? “Accept Christ” What does that mean? Osteen’s little prayer at the end of his sermons is meaningless because he has provided no context for it. That may be good enough for Bob Ross but it isn’t for me.

My favorite definition of the Gospel was articulated by Dr. Tom Ascol, at the Founders’ Conference I attended with Michael, Denise and PWinn. He defined the Gospel as this: “Who Jesus is, what He did, and why it matters.”

I’m hard pressed to put it more simply than that.

I don’t have a well thought out answer to the Gospel’s biggest threats. Every time I’m in Wal-Mart though I see plenty of books for sale in the Osteen-esque vein (What can God do for you today?). I wonder how many seekers are turning this ersatz to slake their thirst for the truth?

Has anyone else read the CJ Mahaney post at T4TG? Or Challies’ thread on it? Or the Kiwi?

The original questions were:
What is the gospel?
What is the most serious threat to the gospel in the evangelical church today?

I agree with the Kiwi that 1Corinthians 15:3-4 sums it up nice. The threat: it isn’t preached enough, and it gets lost in the noise we make about other issues. Forgive the personal link bait, but I had to throw in my own contribution here.

I’m curious how many different answers to this we will come up with.

My only objection to the Grand Canyon Skyway (which was supposed to be open by now, darn it!) is that it costs $25. No way I’m paying that kind of money.

Brandon, I enjoyed your post and wanted to let you know you’re not alone on any of the issues you discussed.

Then I look at Michael’s post about the Grand Canyon Skyway and my body locks up so badly I can hardly click the back button to get away from the article.

On comments, i have tried looking through MovableType’s plugin directory and found that there is no way to moderate comments efficiently.  Personally, i use WordPress and it has plugins that allow comments to be filtered out by default (until moderated).  Moving and changing BHT to get moderated comments is way too much work (Installing new system, importing all MT info, styling new system, finding and playing with plugins to give frontend same “feel” as MT, etc) for something that is working for us patrons.  There is this neat little thing MovableType created called “TrackBack.”  If someone wants to comment, trackback to BHT and write all one wants…  Heck, even if trackbacks are disabled, there is that neat little invention called a “link” which anyone can put on any webpage, including another blog.  Adding a discussion forum will be (for me) too much like the structure of Tim Challies’s site.  And that still leaves the difficulty of responding to comments instead of a bar discussion.
i vote to leave things as they are.  Whiners will always whine.

Well, have you? Answer the question, man! A simple yes or no would do. BTW, when are you going to stop teaching heresy and encouraging our apostasy?

More »« Less Nope. Not interested.

Frankly, the end of the matter of comments comes when you read stuff like this: “In fact, speaking of the BHT, I noticed that Michael Spencer has been speaking derogatorily again of “young” theologians.”

Now, either this person is an unrepentant liar or he doesn’t know the meaning of the word “derogatory.” How are my “Postcards To Young Theologians” derogatory? How are posts meant to help young theologians who have written me asking for advice and encouragement “derogatory?”

This is what we will be dealing with if we open comments. At least one of our critics will type literally anything about me, and every discussion will be a version of “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

I’ve spent about ten minutes perusing well known weblogs to see how many have comments, particularly among opinionated Christians. It is abundantly clear that a significant minority do not have comments.

A forum is a technical possibility. At this point, I cannot moderate it. If there is a serious moderator among long-time BHT fellows, I would be more open to the idea.

I was glad for comments when they were there, because I first came around as a commenter, and became a Fellow not long before they were closed. However, I think going back to comments would be counterproductive. Regarding the point that the BHT is trying to avoid criticism, it’s not like it’s very hard to find criticism of the BHT online. Besides, if you are a BHT blog critic, you’ll probably get at least obliquely name-checked here by someone. Your criticisms will be easy enough to find.

I think a forum would be a good thing, if it’s not a burden technically.

Some folks don’t know how to behave in a tavern, therefore we have bartenders (read: bouncers) who throw the poor mannered sods out the door. They can look in the windows and go over to some other bar to complain…but they need to stay out of our bar. More »« Less

I’ve been against comments from the beginning, and remain so*. I’ve suggest that we add a comments link to every post, though, and when one clicks on it, it should offer choices:

1. Email. Nearly everyone lists their email address over on the sidebar, and the only different between email and a comment is that email doesn’t allow you to show off to the entire world how wise and wonderful you are. Surely if your concern to provide a needed corrective, you’d be just as happy doing so one-on-one, right? If you give permission for the recipient to quote your email, you might even find it on the BHT anyway.
2. Comment at Internetmonk.com, where comments are always open.
3. Ask to join the BHT, and get in on the conversation.
4. Leave your comment at aomin.org.

Surely that’s enough?

P.S. We/Michael had a forum before, and he shut it down. I think I remember why, but I could be wrong, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.

• Yes, that’s pretty much the same as “I told you so!”

I originally supported comments, but I have come to agree that they don’t fit the BHT. We aren’t a forum. The things we post aren’t necessarily teaching items, like the other God-Blogs.

That being said, I am in favor of some mechanism by which we could interact with someone who wishes to comment on the content of the BHT. Let’s face it, if we JUST wanted to converse amongst ourselves, we would not have our conversation visible to the net in general. Obviously we want our discussions visible to non-BHTers, and that carries some responsibility.

Of course, lurkers can always email us, if they want to interact with us individually and privately. But I would be in favor of something else. Two thoughts which I have had:

That we create a guest account and give the keys to a few of our more vocal critics. This supposes they would be willing to post at the BHT, and that we, and they, could set aside old animosities (at least in part) and interact civilly.

and/or

That we have a linkable, but separate BHT-forum where lurkers can begin threads and interact with each other, and us, if we wish. I don’t know the technical hurdles involved with this.

As someone who originally supported comments, I must say that over time I have changed my mind and am against them. They allow us to go off in the corner too much to talk to each other when there’s no need to (as someone pointed out, if you need a sidebar with someone, email them). Also, they open the door for the kind of invasion we had last time.

As someone pointed out, if people have a problem with Michael, he has by no means made himself unreachable, freely supplying his email address for private communiques and having comments open at IM.

I say leave ‘em closed. I’ve liked this place a lot more without them.

So far, Lurker mail is 100% against comments.

That the book of God’s counsels is taken in hand by Christ and that the seven seals are broken by Him (Rev. 5:1-8) requires us to regard everything written in that book as having the character and significance of Christian history. This is not to say that it is the history of Christian people or that it is a history that unfolds in accordance with Christian insights. Rather, it is a history that is Christo-logically determined in every respect and is only comprehensible as such. There is no separation between a “general” and a “special” history, or between a “profane” and a “sacred” history …. Social struggles are therefore bits of church history, for the latter is human history. And church history is not the history of church people; it is the history of God’s church-gathering. And that church-gathering cannot be separated from church-scattering …

That portion about social struggles being bits of church history is what makes the theme of liberation a gospel mandate. I know ‘liberation’ is a four-letter word in a (mostly) conservative theological bar, but aren’t some of our sin-shackles social realities and not just private ones? This aspect is what keeps me a stick in the mud when it comes to “redeeming the time” as if now or “the next thing” is all that mattered. We have a past to redeem, too, and our past needs healing and restoration. And by ‘we’ and ‘our’ I mean any number of our multiple cultural and social identities.

1. Leave the comments off. If people want to comment they can email us. I get 5 or 6 emails a week from people who are great thinkers and really challenge me! Hurrah! Keep it up. Maybe the fellows can post some of the comments that are germane to the present discussion. That would keep the flamers out while allowing each fellow the latitude to either have a private discussion or post the email for group discussion. It’s a little more work, but it could broaden our base.

2. Starting the new job is taking more time and energy then I had expected. I am lurking, but have little energy for discussion. I’ll be back stronger in a few weeks with the power to convert you calvanites into real believers. :) Keep me in your prayers. Thanks!

What Jason said. For me, the BHT works best in its present format. It has the feel of a pub, like Cheers, “where everybody knows your name”. Sure I miss some of the old commenters and I wish those I miss would join. But overall the “evangelical” blogosphere has become too ugly a place to allow just anyone to come in and break things. Sorry. I also enjoy many of the blogs of people whom I would not like commenting here. They are often good writers with excellent content and fresh ideas. Reading them challenges me, blesses me, sometimes annoys me. I go there often. They are good people. But we all know what can happen to them (and to us?) in conversation. Let’s not go there!