Marketers and business types: I need some advice. I want to get all the mileage I can out of “internet monk” as a “brand,” but I have to let that site go dead in order to survive. How can I take “Internet Monk” and make it the next level- “Jesus Shaped Spirituality”- and keep my audience? The IM URL/site will remain, and I can do no new written content after July, though I can do podcasts. Should I, as Tony Kummer suggests, make the sidebar a widget for “Jesus Shaped Spirituality” and then, as I’m inclined, turn the site into a podcast front page (with the older written material prominently archived on tabs?)

Ideas please! How can “Internet Monk” continue post “internetmonk.com?”

Do you know your creator? Excellent video clip.

Mark: If you understand the context of the comment in regard to Tom Ascol’s work with a resolution in the SBC on the integrity of church membership, it’s actually not that weird. The various kinds of hype actually pertain quite a bit.

Also,

Ultimate Fighting Christian should have reserved some of his spray tan for the armpits…don’t tell him I said that.

Yesterday sucked to the depths of the universe. Today has been outstanding. Tomorrow when graduation is over, you will hear me shout.

(JN)

MOD: Under Google image search for “loser.” But I have a special place in my heart for wrestlers.

“Get off the mat, loser. Real Christians aren’t whiners. None of that Job crap around here. We’ve got the victory or we’re not on the team.” -Ultimate Christian Guy

as a side note, I would like to request prayer from my new BHT brethren [and sisteren (if that is a word, which I doubt)]. nobody in the blogosphere understands the language of lament better than you guys, and I’ve been feeling pretty lamentable. whoever said, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” was obviously not around when Jack had a nervous breakdown. dull, it wasn’t.

it seems like things just pile on when you’re already down. I’m not quite to the point of shattering pots and scraping myself, but I’d be lying if I said the world wasn’t bringing me down.

Of course, a hearty beer might be nice to take the edge off too. If I weren’t so snowed under with work this weekend I’d see about sharing a fine Stella Artois with Father Spike who looks like he’s had a bad week too. They’ve been around since 1366, but only recently have I discovered their robust goodness. I’ll have to settle with water and midnight oil this weekend though.

Here’s some useful blank calendar templates.

To sum up, then, we may say that, according to the general consensus of New Testament teaching, a gospel is not a gospel when—

1. it is detached from the Jesus of history; 2. it gives little or no place to the passion; 3. it exalts human achievement in place of the grace of God; 4. it adds other conditions to the one which God has declared acceptable (even if those additions be things good and desir­able in themselves); 5. it treats righteousness and purity as things which the truly spiritual man has outstripped.

On the other hand, a gospel is a gospel when—

1. it maintains contact with the Jesus of history, affirming that this same Jesus who came in the flesh and died is the vindicated and exalted Lord; 2. it embraces and proclaims “the stumbling-block of the cross”; 3. it extends the grace of God to men for their acceptance by faith; 4. it relies upon the power of the Spirit to make it effective in those who hear it; 5. it issues in a life of righteousness and purity which is sustained and directed by the love of God.

Paul is the most Christlike person I know. I’ve known him for 20 years and in two different jobs, separated by his own 12 years in Africa as a teacher. He’s not perfect, and he’s a human like the rest of us, but he’s simply the most Jesus shaped person I’ve ever known and many other people would agree.

Paul has a Ph.d in music, but is teaching math in a Christian school so his daughter can enjoy a regular school experience (in contrast to her African home-schooled experience.) He’s the person who gives away the most of his resources, shares his time, speaks with amazing tenderness, kindness and compassion, and above all, has a deep personal intimacy with Jesus that’s become part of his own personality.

Being with Paul is a lot like being with Jesus.

So I was sorting through some books when Paul came. The look on his face was sad.

He didn’t waste any time.

“Are you all right?”

I looked up at him and almost said “Yes,” but I didn’t. I just looked.

Paul answered for me.

“No, you’re not.”

A moment.

“I’m sorry. I know it must be hard.”

We talked for about a minute before he had to go elsewhere.

He was the first person to look at me and say “I’m sorry. I know it must be hard.”

The first and the only.

At last Jesus shows up. That’s what it feels like. Instead of a name in a book or a chunk of theology, here’s someone telling “I’m sorry for you and I know it must be hard.” Someone looking at you with compassion and empathy. Someone interested in me, not in what I’ve said or not said or not said. Not talking about Catholics or blogging or “what did you mean when you said you were rethinking…..”

Just someone to be like Jesus for two minutes.

What a gift. Thank you, Jesus, for showing up in my world this morning. It takes about a hundred Christians to get one who reminds me so much of you that I can believe you care about me.

I’ve been to plenty of services in my non-Augsburg evangelical days where not a single element of the service would have existed more than four decades ago. All the songs written post-1970 (with words displayed by Powerpoint and musical accompaniment provided by a “worship group”), any last, lingering vestiges of liturgy dating from the early 80s or later, comfy chairs rather than pews, modern Bible translation, casual clothing (for clergy as well as congregants), and so on.

I’m not saying those are all bad things, but taken together they all contribute to the erasure of memory in evangelical churches, one which leads to anything that pre-dates 1960 (say) having the appearance of ageless antiquity.

Personally, I prefer to construct my understanding of Catholicism from full-on Catholic sources like the actual history, papal decrees, and major writings of scholastic theologians. I find post-Protestant apologists nearly useless because their version of Catholicism generally have more to do with the incoherent fairy-tales and fantasies of John Henry Newman, himself a post-Protestant, than the history and dogma of the Catholic Church.

Just one little example: He’s quite proud of Catholicism not being about all that silly mathematical precision and diagram-drawing. To hear him prattle about mystery and whatnot, scholasticism never happened and certainly didn’t dominate Catholic theology all the way into the 20th century. And to hear him rant about TR lockstep thinking, you’d think that his church didn’t make it necessary for salvation to believe unsubstantiated myths about virgins flying into the sky, declare anathemas on people who don’t agree with some really weird, obscure point of the scholastic doctrine of congruent merit, . That’s the most absurd thing—his church has the most enormous pile of dogmas out of any religion in the history of the universe, and he’s crabbing about TRs not being nice enough to Emergents or Rick Warren or whomever.

He also forgot that patrology was invented by the Reformers and not really practiced by Catholics until at least the end of the 19th century. They’re still trying to figure out how to make Athanasius teach the cult of the saints, but they’ll figure it out. Seriously, if the Catholic Church has been doing it for more than four decades, post-Protestants think it’s been going on continuously for two millennia. Next thing you know, he’s going to say something about weekly communion being an essential part of Catholic life.

If Joseph Ratzinger or some other real Catholic theologian starts blogging, let me know. In the mean time, read Alan Creech. He’s a lifelong Catholic and thus much more interesting than someone trying to shout down his inner Baptist.

I read the rant against TR’s (and others) the Mark Shea wrote. I have a couple of observations:

• In his roundup of the extreme examples of Protestant theological misfires, he mentions Schuller, Warren, and C Peter Wagner… I’ve been hip-deep in the movements that keep Wagner afloat. In the mid 90’s my church became heavily involved in the ‘Renewal’ movement. It was an offshoot of the the Brownsville revival, and was influenced by the Toronto Airport vineyard crew. I’ve probably been to about 5 conferences where Wagner and his ‘apostolic’ network headlined. He visited local churches around mine, I’ve read his books, and I took a course about historic revivals that was mostly about him and Argentinian Sergio Scataglini. Mark Shea is right on the money in saying that Wagner and those around him are not concerned about ‘sound, systematic Biblical exegesis’. However, its not because they are using a warped view of the scriptures to support their Apostolic positions so as to be the arbiters of truth, as Mark infers. They use scripture as talismans. They are Prophetic Warlords, who keep their hold on authority through promises of imparting super-powers-for-Jesus. Its not at all about apostolic authority, succession or anything that Catholics would rightly be concerned with. Its about selling all the snake anointing oil you can.


• The Great Catholic False Dichotomy: If I reject Sola Scriptura than I must embrace the Magisterium.  What the heck?  I have my doubts about the way Scripture has been taught to me, shaped by councils, and survived unaltered by ancient translators,  but that’s a far cry from saying that scripture is unauthoratative.  To go from there to acceptance that the pronouncements of Rome are ultimately, infallibly, and inerrantly authoratative is a jump of Evel Knievel proportions.


• The Hebrews analogy: May I offer a revision to the analogy and say that the Jews in question in Hebrews were kicking around the idea of going back to temple Judaism, not installing the writer, Paul, as the first pope.

From Jimbo in the comments:

This is a real dilemma—especially in situations where not drinking wine could cause a weaker brother to stumble. Also, I have a strong family history of prideful abstinence (could be genetic), so this is an area of caution for me.