I don’t know how many people out there are like me, but I suspect there are many around my age range (late thirties, early forties). People like me grew up surrounded by the computer revolution, starting with TV and quickly moving to video games and a flood of gorgeous movies – which also were suddenly available at home with the advent of the VHS tape.

It was the beginning of a constant barrage of visual and audible media. But it was only a contributing factor to my lack of desire in reading and in books. There were a lot of other parts which summed up to the total struggle I had in gaining any desire to read.

But every once in a while something in the new techologies which are now part of our daily lives rises above the din to make it possible for people like me to play catch up a little bit and hopefully make it a bit easier to fall in love with something as I never did.

I’m sure many of you have heard of, or use regularly, iTunes U, made available through Apple. I’ve been delving in to it over time to see what gems might be lying around in there. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a resource of growing and inestimable value. It is a place where you can find educational resources – typically audio ones – which you can use to study in your off time. And best of all… FOR FREE!

And what do I mean by “off time”? How many hours to you spend commuting to and from work? How many hours do you spend doing other things like working out or doing chores around the house or running errands? How many things do you do during the day where you’ve found that you have time to turn on your MP3 listening device and use it to fill the time?

This is where iTunes U really shines. In particular, I ran across a resource that I now understand many others know about, but I’m pretty certain many others don’t. It is simply a glorious example of what is available in the iTunes U catalog.

The University of South Florida (USF) has made available a program called “Lit2Go”. What is it? Classic literature made available directly online to read in your browser, but also in PDF (for printing) and MP3 format. Have you ever wanted to read (for the first time, or second, or whatever Nth time it may be for you) stories like:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or Tom Sawyer)
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Alice in Wonderland
• Treasure Island
• Wuthering Heights
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Peter Pan
• Oliver Twist
• The Last of the Mohicans
• Hamlet
• Dracula
• David Copperfield

…and many more. Unbelievable! Because you can simply download the MP3s for free and listen to them in your off time. Just put them on your iPod or MP3 listening device and you’re off and running. Or you can drop them into iTunes and burn audio CDs for your car.

Anyway, this is a free resource, and we gain nothing by sharing it. But you could gain much. Don’t miss out on this. You have no reason not to. You certainly can’t beat the price.

You can visit Lit2Go directly at the USF website, or visit it through iTunes (search for Lit2Go in iTunes and go to the University of South Florida link to find the Lit2Go link).

There’s much more to be had at iTunes U. If you find any other worthy resources there, be sure to post them in the comments here for others.

My favorite martial art is Aikido. It is very subtle yet powerful. The art consists of a series of joint locks and throwing techniques that rely on proper balance and movement in conjunction with precise timing. It takes a very long time to become proficient at it. Years longer than other martial arts. Practice consists of repeating the basic movements over and over, until they become second nature, then putting the various movements together in sequence and trying to time it just right. It is a painstaking process that takes years. The end result is breathtaking when you see it performed by a master. They will often defeat multiple opponents attacking all at once and can effortlessly subdue much larger attackers. Not many people attain such proficiency though. The repetitive and mundane nature of the practice discourages the less committed.

In various quarters of the internet and occasionally on blogs I frequent, I will hear a particular criticism of the historic liturgy proffered as a serious argument against its use in the church. It is the charge that the liturgy is vain repetition, and that people are bored with it or “just don’t get anything out of it.”

Instead of engaging on several different blogs and forums, this post will be my public response, much like my previous post on infant baptism.

So, is the liturgy vain repetition? The short answer is no.

My previous pastor was confronted with this question one time and in turn asked the person how they ever learned anything deeply without repetition. Most important things in life are learned through repetition, and the more we do it the better we get. This is the entire premise of Malcom Gladwell’s book, ‘Outliers.’ (Gladwell’s research show that it takes ten thousand hours to hone your skill or talent to be world class.)

Underneath the accusation of vain repetition lies the assumption that as soon as someone is born again they are naturally and automatically able to worship and don’t really need any more than a few cursory pointers and any systematic approach to learning how to worship God may be dispensed with. Given the depth of our sin and the general ignorance in the church concerning the scriptures, this is neither a wise nor safe assumption to make.

A second underlying assumption is that when we have heard something once, or even just a couple times, that we totally understand it and grasp all it’s implications, and therefore have no need of hearing it again, at least any time soon. This is easily proven false by asking average Christians to recite and explain the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, or the Apostle’s Creed. Be honest, do you remember your Pastor’s sermon from two weeks ago? This kind of attitude makes us consumers of ideas, collectors of bits and pieces of the scriptures, not disciples longing to fully grasp Jesus’ teaching.

How are we to pass on the faith and inculcate it deeply into our children when what we do every week changes based on the whims of the pastor?

Several pastors I know have been at the bedsides of dying parishioners who were totally unresponsive to family members and doctors. When the pastors sang or recited the liturgy they noticed the parishioners mouthing the words to the Lord’s prayer or other parts of the liturgy. This kind of thing comes from deep learning and years of recitation, not glossing over different musical choruses every week.

I have been a Lutheran for twenty years, and finally got to the point a few years ago where I could worship on Sunday morning and not need to look at the hymnal. Once I got to that point, worship was almost a whole new experience for me. I could sing and recite God’s word back to Him in unison with the whole congregation, and not have to hold a hymnal (except for some hymns) or a bulletin.

Another problem with the accusation of vain repetition is that the liturgy is almost entirely taken from Scripture. In worship, how do you vainly repeat Scripture? Is it vain repetition when we read various passages of Scripture or even the entire Bible over and over again? No. God’s word is rich and deep and the Holy Spirit applies the word anew every day. You will never entirely grasp the meaning of a passage of Scripture and exhaust its future value. How many of us have participated in systematic memorization of the Bible?

Given the sad state of biblical literacy in the church, you would think more churches would be considering some kind regular and repeated recitation of various passages of scripture.

As to the charge of being boring and ‘not getting anything out of it’ these problems lie with the hearer, not the liturgy. Basically they are saying they are bored with the Scriptures, and/or are not getting the emotional lift they had hoped for. These are the bleatings of a generation raised on TV and the internet, trained by these mediums to have an attention span measured in seconds.

Much of ‘contemporary worship’ follows a liturgy of sorts. I can walk into a Vineyard Church, or a Calvary Chapel and tell you exactly where in the worship service they are without looking at a bulletin. Although the form may be the same week to week in these churches, the content is different every week and precludes deep learning on the part of the members unless they are very self motivated. Contemporary evangelical worship often mimics one of our culture’s premier entertainment venues: the rock concert. It is something to ponder. When our worship mimics entertainment, it can only lead to disaster.

A side note to my Lutheran brothers and sisters. Contrary to the assertions of some Lutherans, it is not possible to pour Lutheran content into these other forms of worship. Chaplain Mike over at Internetmonk.com recently reviewed Cole Smith’s new book,‘A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church.’ and wrote this:

Rejecting the long understood fact that “the medium is the message”, evangelicalism has adopted the philosophy that any means is OK as long as one is communicating the right message. However, as Smith observes, “When you change the medium, you change the message, whether you intend to or not and though the words remain exactly the same. It is a lesson the evangelical church has not yet learned.”

Many Lutherans will learn this the hard way. The evangelicals are learning it now. When you reject the historic forms of worship that are based on the Scriptures and hammered out by the church over centuries, not only are you destined to ‘reinvent the wheel’, so to speak, but you risk compromising the essence of Christian worship.

Every day I receive unsolicited apologies from customers because they have failed to bring in their eco-friendly reusable bags to bag up the items they purchase from the company I work for.  Some of them will even punish themselves by refusing the offer of a bag (we have far more than enough for every customer) and carry all their items to their cars in their arms.  Others will digress into a confession about their failure to recycle at home.  I hear this sometimes six or eight times a day if I happen to be working the registers on a given day.

For my part, I never ask anyone if they have brought their own bags, I never deliberately engage them on the subject of recycling or in any way reference their own perceived crime. They just start talking and this stuff comes out. Mostly it is women who engage in this self flagellation, but I hear it from a fair percentage of men also.

It has become so tiresome that my standard reply is, “Don’t have ‘bag guilt.’ Paper is a renewable resource.”

I hear whispers of other kinds of politically-correct guilt in conversations among my customers and co-workers.  Owning or driving a big car or truck is high on the list of things people are ashamed of.

Maybe it is because I live in California that I am exposed to so much of this stuff.

I find it ironic that the secular culture often imitates the worst guilt inducing ‘motivational techniques’ of the evangelical church and some of its more colorful evangelists.  If you don’t believe me, listen to a pledge drive for a PBS radio or TV station.  They have taken a page out of the old tent revival playbook.

The list of sins is relatively new.  The guilt is the same old stuff though.  It is amazing to me that people so easily and willingly take on this kind of guilt and feel the need to confess it to a total stranger.  Our news and entertainment media groom people to accept this guilt and then use it as a handle for their advertisers or to affect political change.

Next time you are out in public, listen closely to the bits and pieces of conversations that you overhear, and pay attention to your interactions with strangers, and see if you can pick up the same thing.  I would be interested to hear your comments.

Mere Michael Spencer A personal review of Mere Churchianity, by Michael Spencer (Waterbrook Press, 2010)

“For many of you, leaving the church may have been the most spiritually healthy thing you ever did.”

Michael Spencerʼs new book, Mere Churchianity, is all about me. That claim may well appear presumptuous since I never met Mr. Spencer, but Iʼm certain I wonʼt be alone in that perspective. I call this a “personal review” of Mere Churchianity because the book is such an authentic recounting of my personal experience that I canʼt help but see myself on nearly every page, and Iʼm convinced that a large number of American Christians who read it will, each and every one of them, be convinced the book was modeled on their personal experience. For those readers who are perfectly happy in their church home, this book may be a revelation to you. For those who have been awakened to the flight of Christians from the church, this book is the single best perspective from both inside and outside the church available. This is such a disturbingly accurate portrayal of what is happening to people who canʼt find Jesus in church that it invites a host of corroborating evidence as well as signaling a new focus for traditional, orthodox and confessional churches that have not succumbed to the Church Growth Movementʼs glossy borchures. Ordinarily, were this book to receive the reading it deserves, we should be expecting an equally insightful follow-up from Mr. Spencer in a few years. However, the God from whom all blessings flow will allow that book, if it ever comes, to be written by someone else, for Michael Spencer died of cancer before this painfully truthful challenge to American Christianity reached bookstores. We have his keenly insightful and plain spoken assessment of the church in America today to take to heart and use as a rallying point for a church of rediscovered mission and renewed vigor, and for that we are truly blessed by Mr. Spencerʼs wit, humility, restless mind, and boundless joy in living in Christ.

Mere Churchianity lines up very neatly with a number of topics that are in the air at the moment, topics that I associate with a renewed interest in Reformation theology and the confessional church. In fact, Spencerʼs book is so on-target for those of us “broken by the church,” as Dr. Rod Rosenbladt defined the experience years ago, that it canʼt help but reach a wide audience among Christians who have observed with dread the growing shadow of “churchianity,” or the natural outcome of Church Growth Movement strategies and the unthinking emphasis on the felt needs of the seeker, that has decimated a number of main-line Protestant denominations. Dr. Rosenbladtʼs address, “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church,” works as a perfect prologue to Spencerʼs book, introducing us to the phenomenon of the “alumni of the church.” The sad alumni first “came to believe that the cross of Christ was their salvation. For free. And forever.” And then a transformation in the understanding of the Gospel began to take place which put these sad alumni on the path to walking away from the church, namely a misapplication of what Reformation Churches refer to as the “third use of the law.” Dr. Rosenbladt tells us that, when handled properly, the third use of the law provides us with plenty to consider as we contemplate how God would have us live our daily lives. When mishandled, the third use of the law can eventually destroy faith by fanning a growing disheartenment at the unattainable perfection of Christian living.

The “mad alumni” join the flight from the church from a different experience. For the mad ones, Christianity was supposed to make their lives better, more fulfilling, while their marriage and family relations would be more joyful, their careers would experience new growth, financial security would be at hand, and their lives would be overflowing with blessings. Or something like that. And, they bought into it. But, when these benefits didnʼt begin to flow into their lives, their marriages, their careers, and their bank accounts, the misapplication of the third use of the law told them that they simply werenʼt doing Christianity right. They needed to pray more, read the Bible more, attend church services more, and be more active in church ministries. The mad ones come to realize that they are so deeply invested in church that there isnʼt anything of the Gospel left and there simply isnʼt any hope of ever getting Christianity right. Unlike the despondent sad alumni, the mad alumni will reject the church and the Gospel, as well as any and all other religions, completely and resolutely.

Mere Churchianity picks up Dr. Rosenbladtʼs warning here to chronicle the paths taken by those who eventually become “leavers” or “quitters” in Spencerʼs terminology. Whereas Dr. Rosenbladtʼs address is a cautionary one that presents a compelling and heartrending picture of the reverse flow of “broken Christians” leaving the church, Spencerʼs task is to, by personal example, draw each one of us into committing to finding ways to un-do the devastation done to church-broken Christians. These are not academic musings or intellectual baubles from either of these two men, although both would be well-equipped for such a task. But, rather, both speak from personal experience, Dr. Rosenbladt from a pietistic Lutheran background and Spencer from a life of hacking away at the extraneous distractions that cloak historic, orthodox Christianity from the American seeker. Both present to us men so moved by what they see that they donʼt simply weep over the broken Bride of Christ but actively flag down all passersby to assist in lifting the church back up. Further, both zoom in on the misapplication of the third use of the law as a major contributor, despite the wildly disproportionate growth of a few mega-churches, to the current exodus of American Christians from the church.

There is another reference that must be made here to Michael Spencerʼs book, one that is clearly signaled by its title, Mere Churchianity. Although Spencer makes no self- conscious reference to C.S. Lewisʼ towering Mere Christianity, by the bookʼs very name it claims the legacy of the earlier work. I can see some critics stumbling over this claim to Lewisʼ legacy and that would prevent them from assessing Spencerʼs book in an even-handed manner. And yet, there it is. In fact, one would be hard pressed to identify any other common English word that would so readily draw an association with a great work in the Christian idiom quite as forcefully as the word “mere.” I suggest that the use of the word is warranted, not as a direct correlation of Spencer to Lewis but, rather, as a signal of how Spencerʼs book intends to address the American church and Christians as he finds them in his day as a deliberate counterpart to how Lewisʼ book addressed the English church and the Christians he found in his.

I left the church for the first time at my earliest opportunity, which was upon leaving home for college. Only a few years later, I was intellectually exhausted from the adrenaline rush of discovering one venerable and wholly new religious tradition, spiritual discipline, or life-affirming worldview after another, from East to West and from mysticism to fundamentalism. Certainly, my experience the first time I read C.S. Lewisʼs Mere Christianity thirty-five years ago was very personal as I then would certainly have identified myself among the half-persuaded that Lewis is speaking to in such good- natured tones and with such unflinching reason.

I consider Mere Christianity and Mere Churchianity to be like mirror images of each other. They share the same desire to affirm the historic, orthodox essence of our faith. Both present their case in a manner that is straight-forward, and never takes an officious or scolding tone. Both appeal to the native common sense of their audience, Lewis originally in a collection of radio addresses to a nation at war, and Spencer in an equally inclusive but distinctly 21st Century American style perfected from years in youth ministry, Christian classroom teaching, and blogging to the great, wide world of all comers. Lewis abandons all the brilliant rhetoric of the Oxford don, his accustomed setting, in order to speak directly and simply as though over a pint at the local pub, while Spencer abandons the church-speak of the clergyman or teacher to wrap his insightful message in the plain-spoken wit and wry world-weariness of, say, Will Rogers. Being a native Oklahoman myself, it is not a comparison I make lightly.

As much as Lewis has done to get people into the church over the last couple of generations Spencer is trying to accomplish in providing a church that will bring Christians back, and this is where the mirror-backward dissimilarities of the two books come to the forefront. Lewis witnessed the attacks on the Church that became the intellectual environment in Europe following World War I, he understood the underpinnings of these movements, and knew where they were weakest and where they posed the greatest threat. The radio addresses that formed the nucleus for Mere Christianity were broadcast during the dark days of World War II, when the Nazi Luftwaffe bombed London nightly and the hope of the English people was placed on the shoulders of a greatly outnumbered and out-gunned Royal Air Force. In the intellectual whirl-wind of war and the hardscrabble years of post-war recovery, Lewis called the English people back to the well-spring of faith in the God of all Creation and in the miracle of the substitutionary death of his Son on the Cross for all the sins of the world. He defended his English church against all intellectual counterfeits of Truth and labored to present the essentials of the historic, orthodox Christian faith in a way that would prevent his apologetic from being derailed by what he might consider the minority voice of dogma or denominational differences.

Spencer witnessed all the attacks on the church during his day, many from the zeitgeist of the post-modern world, but the most alarming from within the church itself. Spencer describes a Bride of Christ that has willingly submitted itself to an extreme makeover and the result is not the liberation of the churchʼs eternal mission but, instead, the trivialization of the Gospel under layers and layers of seeker sensitive narcissism and emerging church ambiguity. Spencer is not calling more people to this impostor of the Bride of Christ but is calling all of us to figure out what to do with all the “leavers,” all the sad and mad alumni of the church, to turn us back to the cross. However, Spencer is not a revolutionary. I think he believed that the contemporary Protestant church in America was collapsing under its own weight and needs no help from us. But the leavers do need our help.

But, Iʼm not writing to church members who are happy where theyʼre at or to Christians who are heavily invested in the success and propagation of the church as an organization. Iʼm writing instead to those who may still be associated with the church but no longer buy into much of what the church says. Not because they doubt the reality of God, but because they doubt that the church is really representing Jesus.

This quote from Mere Churchianity underscores what is perhaps the biggest single difference between Lewis and Spencer, and in fact the greatest single difference between the church of C.S. Lewis and the church of Michael Spencer. Lewis would argue, in mid-20th century England, that the church was precisely the place where anyone grappling with the questions of human life should be, that it was exactly within the church that we would find the forum where we can hear the words of eternal life and we can come to trust Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life.” Spencer declares that such a church no longer exists or, if it does, it exists in small, isolated pockets or in churches who managed to stay on the sidelines during the Church Growth craze. His is not the cautionary warning of some calamity that may occur if we continue on our heedless path. No, Spencer tells us that the Evangelical church of post-World War II America has come and has gone. The church in Spencerʼs book no longer represents Jesus to American culture. Heʼs not urging us to fix it. Itʼs too late for that. What we should be about, however, is learning to walk alongside the mad/sad leavers of the church so that a renewed evangelicalism, a revitalized faith, and a reborn church can begin to thrive right beside the old, dead one.

Spencer uses, to good effect, some recurring themes, such as “Jesus-shaped spirituality,” the “lie” of Christian adjectives (“good Christian,” “successful Christian life,” “dynamic Christian living,” etc.), the promotion of a kind of “unscripted life,” the “free- range believer,” and a kind of “self-induced feelgoodism” that characterizes churchianity. At the center of Spencerʼs discontent with the Church is a deep yearning to know Jesus, along with a grave spiritual disquiet resulting from going to church to find Jesus only to discover that Jesus isnʼt there. “Here is the truth,” writes Spencer, “Far from being Jesus-shaped Christians, we were church shaped. In fact, we were deniers of Jesus. We were frighteningly close to being Judas.”

Lewisʼ greatest asset in Mere Christianity was his ability to soften the shadow cast by his towering intellect to become “one of us” that we might hear the direct, plain-spoken truth of Godʼs plan for restoring the broken relationship between the Creator and his creation, and so we might sense the great depth of Lewisʼ personal trust in what he so keenly wanted us to know about God. Spencer doesnʼt have the baggage of Oxford and the reputation of the brilliant scholar of Renaissance and Medieval literature to overcome, and is quick to establish his full association with and membership in good standing in the human race of the early 21st century American variety, and from this leads us candidly and unabashedly into a life lived humbly before God. Yet, Spencerʼs book is no less orderly or carefully constructed as that of the great scholar, but the architecture of his thought is less apparent than Lewisʼ and often concealed behind the easy presentation of a natural conversationalist. It is this natural conveyance of penetrating questions buoyed effortlessly along by the ebb and flow of conversation that engages the reader and holds oneʼs mind and heart captive as Spencer makes relentless assault on his key themes. Where Lewis is an affable uncle you enjoyed badgering with questions at family gatherings, Spencer is the cousin who got you in trouble with some fireworks at church camp and then talked excitedly with you all night after lights-out about 1 Peter 1:24-25. This is but a sample of the rigor of thought and highly accessible language that characterizes this book:

If you have left the church or are headed for the door, there is a strong possibility that you have to leave in order to hold on to your integrity. You realized you can no longer play the religion game. You may be playing other games — Iʼm not letting any of us off the hook. But you found you could no longer be party to the endless act that says you are living the victorious Christian life.

Mere Churchianity is an important book. I would encourage any Christian, regardless of current church circumstances or prior experience, to read it. Read it, give copies away to people at church, or other Christians you know, and find other people who have read it, or who have tuned into some of these same ideas that are currently in the air, and take its message to heart. More than that, do something. Subvert the vernacular of church-speak within your fellowship with some challenges to discover Jesus-shaped spirituality. As you read Mere Churchianity, I am confident that you will arrive at some of the same observations that I did about the book, about the bookʼs key themes, and about Michael Spencer.

First, you will discover that Spencer is not above being provocative. Not the cheap, controversial book-jacket claims that weʼre used to seeing emblazoned across books targeted at Christians. No, I mean the kind of provocation that comes from somebody who knows you as well as you do, refuses to see you get spiritually flabby and self- contented, is willing to shock you back into consciousness, and loves you like a brother through it all. In short, Michael Spencer will say anything. Hereʼs a sampling:

“The exhausting effort to be a good Christian denies Christ. If you insist on securing your own holiness and acceptability, you disqualify yourself from seeing anything from Jesus. He came to earth to save sinners, not good Christians.”

“I realize that my using the expression Jesus-shaped spirituality as a way to recalibrate the Christian message runs the risk of sliding into the Christian-terminology sinkhole and never coming out. As with most things in the alternate world of Christian culture, my personal sympathies are firmly planted on both sides of this divide. You have to be careful where you point that spirituality thing, because it has the potential to grant legitimacy to all kinds of people who have nothing more interesting to say than ʻworship yourself.ʼ On the other hand, if the pursuit of spirituality gets away from the problems so many people have with the church and allows us to talk about our experience of God and where it comes from, Iʼm all for it.”

“I understand that Christians need — desperately — to hear experiential testimonies of the power of the gospel. I understand as well that itʼs not pleasant to hear that we are broken and are going to stay that way. I know there will be little enthusiasm for saying sanctification consists, in large measure, in seeing our sin and acknowledging how deeply and extensively it has marred us. No triumphalist will agree that the fight of faith is not a victory party but a bloody war on a battlefield that resembles Omaha Beach. But, thatʼs the way it is. Iʼm right on this one.”

You will find yourself both outraged and gladdened. For example, “Evangelicalism has become the sworn enemy of biblical Christianity. Instead, itʼs more like a fraternal lodge with its own language, rules, requirements, rituals, and secret handshake.” I read this and thought, “Atta boy, Mike!” But, I also read a defense of William Youngʼs The Shack on the grounds that we need to be more attuned to seeing God as a “loving, tender, attentive, gracious Father,” and I couldnʼt help but respond, “Oh, please, Mr. Spencer! The Shack? Seriously?” As superb conversationalist, Spencer is a fisher of men. In conversation, he might cast a hook using some outrageous statement as bait. Once the bait is taken he can easily back-fill your outrage with a different approach, another perspective, a second analogy. The provocation is forgotten and, unaware of the process, you find yourself lying helplessly in Spencerʼs boat. In his world, and regardless of the personal tone of much his appeal, Spencer is not the center. Jesus is. Provocation can help focus the mind on that center quite nicely when used as masterfully as Spencer does.

Secondly, you will discover a fresh voice to add to the list of “most quotable authors” in the popular Christian idiom. I think G.K. Chesterton must top the list as the most maddeningly quotable of all Christian writers. One of my favorite Chesterton quotes is from The Ball and The Cross, “The police have their faults, but thank God, theyʼre inefficient.” And, of course, Tolkien lovers can recite whole pages of quote-worthy prose from The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Lewis has sprinkled epigrams and life-lessons throughout his fiction, essays, and autobiographical works. Dorothy L. Sayers places many gems on the lips of her aristocratic detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. But, Michael Spencerʼs quotable lines are of more serious purpose. He wishes to say things in a way that may convey a familiar idea but he says it in a way to shock us into paying attention. Here is a sampling of “Spencerisms” from Mere Churchianity:

“Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of ʻwe.ʼ”

“[Religion] claims to have something astonishing: God on call and spirituality in the warehouse.”

“My project to clean out my God closet and start over with the essentials leads me to Jesus Christ, Godʼs ultimate and amazing self-description.”

“North American Christianity may have the distinction of having promised more of God and delivered less of God than any single act on the stage of church history.”

And there are many, many more, practically one on every page. This embarrassment of riches makes the book both a joy to discover and an enduring source of timeless Christian expression.

The third thing you are likely to discover about Michael Spencer is how very much you miss him. Not in a maudlin way, for we do not despair of death. Michaelʼs faith, our Christian faith, prepares us for death, this most unnatural and personal assault of the darkness that came with a fallen creation. No, it is the kind of emptiness we all feel when weʼve shared a portion of our life with someone whose force of personality made us look at ourselves and our relationship to others and to our Creator in a very different and boldly invigorating way, never to be repeated. If you have this experience, donʼt keep it to yourself. I think that Michael Spencer would want us to be up and about, filled with a Jesus-shaped spirituality, not paralyzed with remorse for the past, but out in the world, vibrantly aware Whose we are and what He has done for us. “For free. And forever.”

I wanted to mention this because I was prompted by someone recently to send a link to our Imagekind account so they could get one of these pieces, only to discover that for some reason our account didn’t work. Well, I went back and forth with Imagekind, and they got the problem cleared up.

So, I don’t know how long this has been going on or how many of you it affected, but I wanted to highlight these art pieces again now that all is running smoothly. (The art pieces I’m talking about are highlighted in the right side column of this blog, and we’ve had that link up for months.)

Just to give you an idea of the history behind how we acquired these woodcuts, they were gifts from a friend. A friend of ours was studying for his doctorate out in Oxford, England, and had a habit of getting himself in situations where he could pick up old art like these woodcuts. These two were a couple of them and they were created in the late 19th century and printed at around the turn of the 20th century.

As we were working to get NRP up and running on the platform we’re now using for our store, our friend was kind enough to let us scan these prints and make them available to our customers. So we found some folks who were able to scan them at full size at a high resolution. The size and detail of the originals is astounding and we wanted to offer them for sale only if we could maintain the quality of the originals. (I am posting a couple images here in this post from the “Geneva” piece to give you an idea of the level of detail contained in each woodcut.)

The first piece is called “Geneva” for the depicted location. It is a fictional gathering featuring a who’s who from the theological and philosophical circles of the Reformation which began in the 16th century with Martin Luther. We’ve tried to make clear to people that the original we scanned to make this available is big! It measures almost three and a half feet wide. But one of the benefits of Imagekind is that you can now get a smaller version of it as well.

Secondly, we have the “Diet of Spires” piece. This piece depicts the German nobles gathered at Spires in order to protest the edict under which they had been placed prohibiting the dissemination of the rediscovered Gospel of justification in St. Paul. Featured in the piece you will find both Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon.

We’re looking forward to making more artwork available, both old treasures as we find them, as well as some of our own new photography. We will update you when we add more to our Imagekind account.

In the mean time, please visit the pages for these two fine art works where you will find more historical information for each one than I’ve mentioned here. I hope you like them. We can’t say enough good things about them and we know you’ll be pleased when you have one on your desk or wall.

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”
–Martin Luther

We are releasing today’s bible study first, then the sermon from today a little later. Again, this is from First Lutheran Church in Lake Elsinore, California. Today’s study is on Isaiah 49.

Enjoy!

Now, think about that for a moment. Which one would you choose if you were asked such a thing?

The answer he was looking for was ‘antinomianism.’ Why? Because if someone gave that answer, they probably ‘got’ the Gospel.

Now that Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” is now available for free, we’re beginning to get the expected concerns regarding antinomianism. Dr. Rosenbladt is simply being ‘too free’ with the grace, isn’t he?

But think about this for a moment: In our daily lives—at the office, with our spouses, with our children and friends and extended family, with acquaintances or business contacts, even people we meet as we do daily mundane things like running errands, and sadly, even in church—how often do we receive, or expect to receive, any level of grace whatsoever?

In this world, we are simply immersed in law—of all kinds, God’s law as well as civic. And we’re used to it. A little too used to it. We’re used to being fenced in. But on those (tragically rare) occasions when someone finally preaches the Gospel in all its sweetness—”200-proof” as Dr. Rosenbladt calls it—those fences are taken away. The law was completely fulfilled in Christ.

And pouring with a liberal wrist like that typically causes one of two reactions. One kind of person—in our experience, modern-day Pharisees—quickly reacts to this kind of talk with comments like, “Well, you can’t tell people that they’re that free, because they’ll run afoul of it as St. Paul puts in the mouths of his accusers in Romans 6, sinning more in order that grace may abound more! They have to be reined in somehow! You have to bring those fences in a bit to corral the freedom so that their sin doesn’t run amok, even more than before.”

The other kind of person comes from a completely different point of view, that of the “bruised reed” and “smoldering wick”. These are the people with whom we engage regularly. And I will tell you right now that the modern-day Pharisees of whom I just spoke almost never comprehend these bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. The bruised reeds and smoldering wicks have been deeply hurt, spiritually and emotionally, and they’re running very low on hope, on the edge of rejecting Jesus entirely because they just can’t measure up to the requirements set before them. There are more people out there like this than people can imagine. They’re suffering greatly under errant and false teachings. And it is primarily for these people that Dr. Rosenbladt wrote and presented “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church.”

Here’s an interesting question: To those who are worried that teachers like Dr. Rosenbladt may be offering the grace of the Gospel too freely I would ask when was the last time you got up out of your chair and actually spoke to the average guy or gal on the street? When was the last time you had a discussion with someone who was struggling with their lack of “good works” and self-focused (and false) teachings they’ve been receiving and which are driving them to despair? What would your counsel to them be, exactly?

I’ll tell you what I usually hear from these Pharisees. Their response often starts well—that Jesus Christ died for their sins on the cross and was raised from the dead in order that they, too, may have eternal life with Him. But then there’s a follow-through. They can’t leave it there. Their next step is making sure that the hearer knows that from his or her faith that he or she must/should/will produce good works.

The problem lies here not in the statement itself, but in how it is being taught to be applied by the listener. For the correct answer to this, I would simply ask, “Who gets the credit for one’s faith in Christ, according to Scripture?” (“…and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” 1 Cor 12:3) The One who bears the burden of bringing a person to faith is the same One who bears the burden of following through with the good works borne of that faith.

And to those who will say that I am arguing that antinomianism doesn’t exist, or that Christians aren’t bound by God’s law and can willfully sin even more in their faith to receive more grace, or that we don’t need to hear the law preached to us, I say now that the law is good and must be taught and preached, and you do not understand to whom or about what I’m writing. Refer back to my comment about getting out there and talking to people on the street. As Dr. Rosenbladt says, the people who particularly need to hear this message “…need more law like they need a hole in the head.” Heaping more law on top of the mountain of law they’ve already received may very well break the camel’s back and drive him or her out of the faith entirely.

The broken yet faithful believers in Christ find themselves in the same position as St. Paul himself: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Rom 7:19 – ESV) St. Paul understood that this struggle was the very nature of what it is to be a Christian.

But the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks are not being taught that the Gospel is exactly what should be their comfort in their affliction. They are instead told to “work harder”, “pray harder”, “have more faith” or any other number of hideous teachings, driven by the terrible fear that their faith and eternal salvation is “on the line.” They aren’t hearing that, even in their Christian faith, Christ died for them and their sins. And not just the sins which they committed before they were Christians, but all of them, even the ones which occur in their faith—even the ones they committed on purpose, knowing they were sinning the whole time!

This Gospel of which I speak is what is too often missing in most churches today. But the Gospel is the good news.

Are you torn asunder by the fact that you continue to sin while still believing in Jesus Christ? Did you know that you are lumped in with the saints in that struggle? That struggle between your fallen flesh and your faith in Jesus is the nature of being a Christian! But who is saying that these days? Very few.

So Dr. Rosenbladt puts this presentation out there to those who are not hearing the good news that Christ died on the cross even for sinful Christians like them. Controversial? You bet. But it is the truth. If you aren’t hearing this message anywhere else, please make sure you download Dr. Rosenbladt’s presentation for free. Listen to it or read it over and over. Let it sink in slowly. Like sitting in a nice jacuzzi, let it seep into your pores. Enjoy the comfort of the Gospel in all its sweetness. You’ve been fed nothing but law, law, law for so long and your despair and fear are great. You need to marinate in the Gospel for a long time now. Enjoy it like the finest wine. Breathe it in like the best incense. Let it permeate your muscles, down to your bones.

To you bruised reeds and smoldering wicks (and all those Dr. Rosenbladt calls “those broken by the church”) I say this is most certainly true: Christ died for you. And the Spirit will continue the good work He started in blessing you with faith in Jesus. Good works will be and are borne of your faith—whether you are conscious of them at the time or not. (And I suspect that most often, we are not aware of our good works when they happen—“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ Matt 25:37-39) Christ died for sinners. If you are a sinner, you qualify—regardless of whether you’re already a Christian believer or not. Even while you sin in your faith, Christ died for you, and through faith His perfect works are imputed to you as 100% gift.

But don’t take it from me. Dr. Rosenbladt is the maestro to whom I always defer. Let him speak these words of comfort and assurance to you himself. Download “The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” for free right now.

We missed last weeks’ audio, so we’re doubling up this week. All the audio features Pastor Kevin Kolander from First Lutheran Church in Lake Elsinore, California. Enjoy!