Several weeks ago, Shane Hipps spoke at Mars Hill Bible Church on the Spirituality of the Cellphone (link good for about 7 more weeks) a look at how human culture is, and has been, shaped by its media and the underlying technology for thousands of years. His message was so compelling, dovetailing with a professional project I’m working on, that I ordered his new book which greatly expands on the subject: The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture.

As a one-time ad-man for Porche, who left the world of marketing to become a pastor, Hipps does a remarkable job at examining how the media we use and choose, in and of itself, conveys certain messages, things what we need to be cognizant of as Christians in our culture. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you are interested in how to communicate Christ in an increasingly postmodern society.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ingrid’s got the book of life. And while she doesn’t reveal who’s in it, she does reveal who’s out:

The term evangelical now can mean anything from a homosexual and his lover at an Evangelicals Concerned support group in New York City, Jim Wallis waving around Karl Marx’s Das Kapital , Shirley Dobson and her Reform Jewish universalist Rabbi, Greg Boyd and his hand-wringing semi-God, Brian McLaren and his hell-free, atonement-free, New Age Shift crusade, Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven madness, Rob Bell and his “human-product” Bible, Mark Driscoll and his toilet mouth pastorate, Doug Pagitt and his Desperate Housewives theology, and so forth and so on.

So to recap the following groups are just plain Jesus hatin’, hell bound miscreants:
Democratic/politically liberal Christians in the vein of Jim Wallis
Traditional, baby boomer Christians in the vein of Focus on the Family (Sorry dad)
Younger evangelicals in the vein of Greg Boyd.
Emerging/Emergents in the vein of Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt.
Younger Reformed Christians in the vein of Mark Driscoll
1st Century wannabe Christians in the vein of Rob Bell.

Which pretty much just leaves Ingrid and her blogroll. Well maybe, after all she finished the sentence of condemnation with “and so on and so forth”. It kind of reminds me of the old joke:

A man arrives at the gates of heaven. St. Peter asks, “Denomination?” The man says, “emerging.” St. Peter looks down his list, and says, “Go to room 24, but be very quiet as you pass room 8.”

Another man arrives at the gates of heaven. “Denomination?” “Non-denominational.” “Go to room 18, but be very quiet as you pass room 8.”The man says, “I can understand there being different rooms for different religions, but why must I be quiet when I pass room 8?” St. Peter tells him, “Well, the ODMs are in room 8, and they think they’re the only ones here.”

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus could get into heaven if Ingrid was the gatekeeper.

Tags: Ingrid, ODMs

Israel has begun celebrating her 60th anniversary, which of course, is great cause for celebration for Israelis and Jews around the world. This also extends to many American Evangelicals – particularly those of the dispensational camp.

Although not all in Israel are celebrating. Pictured here is Palestinian Ahmed Elaian, 86 at the time, showing the keys of his home in Israel, on the 57th anniversary of Al Naqba, or day of catastrophe, in the Kalandia refugee camp near the West Bank town of Ramallah, Saturday May 14, 2005. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

With the recent movie “Expelled” getting some press I assumed that it wouldn’t be long before the Ben Stein “Christmas Tree” email started floating around again. Well I was right!

As of this morning I had 3 messages in my email about Ben Stein and his declaration on “Christmas Trees”. Only problem is the email isn’t true. Of course it has some truth but much of the “commentary” has been fabricated. And some of the items in the letter are outright lies attributed to Ben Stein. You can read the whole situation at Snopes.com

In this age of information you would think that Christians, of all people, would do due diligence if/when launching an email, blogging, or internet slander campaign.

According to the logic and theology of MacArthur & Friends we must banish another Christian author/preacher/teacher to the realm of the apostate.

Warren W. Wiersbe in his book Real Worship -

“Once we understand the subjective and objective aspects of worship, we are better prepared to deal with some of the problems that worship seems to create. For one thing, we can better understand why different Christian communions express their worship in different ways. After all, if there is one God and one Bible, why should we not all worship in the same way? The answer is simply that we are all different and live in different cultural contexts.” (p. 25)

I watched a Christian comedy show the other night. It was a bunch of different African-American comedians telling mostly clean jokes, often about church. I didn’t get a lot of the jokes. Sure, I got some of them, but most of the jokes required me to have some kind of prior experience with a particular type of church in a particular tradition. I turned it off before it was over and I’m pretty sure I tuned out long before that. Grrrr… context strikes again.

As has been pointed out before, the problem with contextualization is not when you contextualize something, but when you contextualize it and think that everybody should do it your way.

Tags: Context, contextualization, contextualize, macarthur, Wiersbe, Worship

I’ve been catching up on my podcasts today and was listening to the Rob Bell sermon titled Exalted in My Body.

Here’s a sample:

Our world tells you and I that we are loved, valued and accepted by how good we are, how right we are, how well lined up we are. Our world tells us that God loves winners, that God loves achievers. Our world tells us that we’re loved valued and accepted by what we do. And the upside down nature of the wisdom of Christ is that God loves us simply because we are God’s children. The essence of the gospel is that we aren’t saved in our life in all of our goodness but that we are saved in our death. You can only understand the wisdom and saving love of Christ when you give up the game that God loves us for how good we are. God loves us period and Christ’s gospel is that you’re ok and you’re saved not in how good you are but in giving up that whole game in the first place. Its upside down logic. I’m rescued from my condition not when I continue to try to rescue myself but when I give it up and let God rescue me in Christ.

After reading that, consider everything the ODMs have said about Rob Bell. Sort of makes you wonder what they think orthodoxy is.

Tags: christ, owosso church of christ, rob bell, tim reed

[UPDATE: Please see the notes at the bottom of this post, as Ingrid has removed the referenced article and apologized for her actions.]

Ingrid pulls out her amazing voo-doo magic / discernment once again in the Cast of the Baffling Beauty. Cornerstone Church in Chandler, AZ is having a Mother’s Day service that celebrates the image of God in our mothers. Here is a clip from their advertisement

In our culture, image is everything. This Mother’s Day at Cornerstone, we’re celebrating a different image though. We’re celebrating the image of God that has been placed in our moms and women. We’ll discover the fullness of the image of God and how we can carry that image to a world that needs it! Women and men alike, come ready for the best Mother’s Day you’ve had!

So, they are obviously not glorifying the physical beauty of mothers and women. They are attempting to celebrate the heart and image of God within the female soul. As a guest speaker, they will be having Hilary Griffith Peele, the former Miss Arizona and 2007 contestant in the Miss America pageant, speak for their special day. Well, this obviously has Ingrid’s spidey-sense tingling. She writes the following

So the mother who is bombarded with the world’s expectations of beauty must now come to church on Sunday and be, well, bombarded by the world’s expectation of beauty. Rather than find an elderly saint who has walked with God for 50 or more years to speak to women about what really matters before God, they get a 22-year-old beauty pageant contestant so women of every age and circumstance will be sent the message that real beauty lessons should come from a woman who is willing to parade across a stage in a bikini in front of men to be judged like a piece of meat.

I love how Ingrid absolutely loves to look solely at the externals. There is nothing in the way of what she will be speaking on, her theology, her credentials, etc. It’s all about her body and how she has flaunted herself like a piece of meat. Ingrid has probably never heard Ms. Peele speak, and probably not done the research to find out what she stands for. She just assumes that a 50 year-old woman is more qualified than a younger women, just becasue of a hobby that they younger has (she also seems to imply that a less-attractive 50 year-old woman is best).

I find it interesting that Ingrid doesn’t put this up in her article, found on the same website from the first quote

She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State University in December 2007 with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She is currently an on-air personality at KGCB Radio Shine 90.9 FM, where she hosts a Christian music program weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon. Hilary lives in Glendale with her husband, Justin, whom she married in February 2008.

So, we aren’t talking about some blonde twit with nothing to say. This is an educated woman, serving in a Christian media outlet. Maybe Ingrid is just upset because Peele’s show gets higher ratings?

______________

UPDATE: Ms. Peele has graciously replied to Ingrid and our article (please see her comment below from 2008/05/11 at 12:47 AM). With even more context provided, it will be interesting to see if Ingrid retracts her diatribe. -Chris L
______________

UPDATE: Ingrid has removed her original post regarding Ms. Peele’s appearance at Cornerstone Church, and has issued an apology. While it is not our policy to delete articles as if they had never happened, I am updating the article (both here and in the body) to recognize Ingrid’s apology and repentance in this matter. Thank you, Ingrid. -Chris L

It is sometimes breathtaking the lengths discernmentalists will go to fabricate a story. If you didn’t know they were serious, you’d think most of their articles were rejects from The Onion. Today’s example comes to us via the Boar’s Head Tavern:

No one can squeeze as much out of a single book in a seminary class booklist as free-range pope wannabe Ken Silva.

To what is Michael Spencer referring? It seems that Pastor/Teacher/President/(insert-your-favorite-important-sounding-title-here) Ken Silva has decided that the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is paving the road to hell.

Why?

It seems the NOBTS has included a book by Richard Foster in one of its classes. Oh N03Z! Contemplative Mysticism is coming to get us all, and make us all into (gasp) Catholics!

[In reality, much of "Contemplative Mysticism" is a half-baked 'conspiracy' of supposed New Age-ishness and Catholicism concocted by the discernmentalist crowd, in an attempt to codify the Regulative Principal into daily practice. Is the New Age movement dangerous? Certainly. Unfortunately, Mr. Silva and his ilk do more to blur the lines between what is acceptable for personal meditation and what is pagan practice, fomenting slander and division within the church. In reality, it is little more than overwrought Catholiphobia writ large.]

It’s hard to even make it through the first paragraph without vomiting at the pompous slavishness, as “Pastor” Silva writes:

Apprising Ministries further alerting the Body of Christ to growing apostasy within the Southern Baptist Convention through the proliferation of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism. You’ll see that New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is also promulgating The Cult of Guru Richard Foster as this SBC seminary uses the Quaker Swami’s Celebration of Discipline in one of their own courses on so-called “spiritual formation” as does Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. The question is: Why does the “Protestant” SBC need to turn to a Quaker mystic for spiritual formation which is in direct counterpoint to the Reformation?

Aside from the unnecessary name-calling, Silva basically creates an army of straw men and GBA characterizations (aside from a complete lack of understanding of what gnosticism and mysticism are), that it’s sad that any Christians are drawn in by his utter hatred and foolishness toward the Body of Christ.

It seems that someone at the NOBTS has started peeling back the rock and examining the critters crawling around at Apprising ‘Ministries’, and Ken doesn’t like it:

Perhaps the idea was to brand me some kind of kook with the use of the rather hyperbolic descriptor “New Age” in front of mysticism. Maybe in this way the average reader might now likely be predisposed to just ignore anything I might say in the pieces linked within the SaNO post.

Maybe no branding is needed, but it is obvious to the reader that ‘kook’ is an adequate assessment, as one commenter on the NOBTS blogger’s site notes:

For the record, when Ken talks about “doing his homework”, a good chunk of that is simply linking to articles he himself has written. In just the article he posted in his comments, links to his own material outnumber links to other sites two to one. Don’t believe me? Go look for yourself.

But probably the best assessment of the pile of garbage that is Apprising ‘Ministries’ (two lies for the price of one!) is Michael Spencer’s:

I can’t believe that we still have people who link this constant slander. Silva is everything wrong with blogging, and the bloggers who link him are the rest of what’s wrong.

Well said, Michael!

HT: BHT

This is a bit of different topic than we usually talk about here, but I found this article by Charlie Peacock in CCM quite insightful about the current and future state of the Christian music industry.  Charlie Peacock is one of the Christian artists who doesn’t get enough recognition in my opinion, but his overall influence on the industry is hard to overstate.   He has worked with a diverse bunch of musicians including Al Green, CeCe Winans, and Switchfoot to name a few.  So, as the saying goes, when he talks, we should listen.

There are a lot of good quotes in the article, but here’s a few I really find hard-hitting:

The music business, Christian and otherwise, has been a wealth-creation mechanism for a small, elite group of executives, songwriters, producers and artists. Those days are over. Still, the old guard won’t go peaceably. They’ll fight for control to the end. When they finally exit, the new music business will be underway.

Christian music as a genre has always been a music you move on from. Young Christian baby-boomers and Gen-X once in love with the music abandoned it in adulthood and have not returned. As a result, legacy artist catalogs (ranging from Larry Norman to Amy Grant to dcTalk and beyond) do not and will not have the staying power of their mainstream counterparts such as The Beatles, The Eagles, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Celine Dion, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and U2. All these artists, and a hundred others, remain popular and economically viable today. Sadly, the pattern does not hold true for what was contemporary Christian music.

I can especially speak for the validity of the second paragraph.  I think I had close to 300 albums when I left for college, and the vast majority of them were “Christian”.  I look back on some of those groups like Audio Adrenaline, dc Talk, and the Newsboys with fond memories, but honestly I find a lot of it written for the 12-18 year-old demographic.

Working with college students, I find that many of them do not have the same type of devotion to Christian bands that students had even less than 10 years ago.  They have access to practically any song from an artist in any genre at any moment.  They no longer have to go to the shady record stores to get their music.  The ones that into more mainstream music no longer listen to the church-lady warnings about personal holiness.  I’m not saying whether this is good or bad, I’m stating what I see.  I think that in the future is going to get harder and harder for Christian publishing companies to survive.  Like Peacock says, the mainstream CCM industry will probably get distilled down to one big company.

Anyway, I found the article interesting, and I hope to hear people’s thoughts.  I think parallels can be drawn between the CCM industry and the church as a whole.  People are less willing to invest themselves in top-down, power-driven institutions, and I think the time is coming when these institutions will need to make some big changes to survive.

HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi

Ingrid criticizes Doug Pagitt for using a clip from a popular TV show to illustrate a point about church.

I guess its only ok when she does it.