Phoenix Preacher

I’m reading John Stott’s last book…last as in final, not most recent.

The beloved Anglican wrote this from the nursing home he now lives in and it’s contents include his instructions for the disposition of his library when he dies.

These are Stott’s last thoughts that he wanted to share with the church he has served so well.

It’s called “The Radical Disciple” and that is a perfect description of Stott’s pilgrimage.

It’s a great little book, full of wisdom and love written with the winsomeness that is part of all Stott has done.

The book is intended to help us live likewise.

Unfortunately, I’m not John Stott.

I’m not a radical disciple…sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m a disciple at all.

I despair of ever being Stott-like, let alone Christ like.

The downside of reading a lot of books about great men of God is that they are constant reminders that you are not one of them.

If I wrote a final book it would be called “The Guy Who Barely Made It and Got In Smelling Like Smoke”.

Not really…even though it would be true from my perspective.

From God’s perspective the same blood covers me and brother John and he has given me the same robes of righteousness that Stott will soon be clothed in.

That, my friends, is stunning truth.

The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

That… is the Gospel.

No one preached it better than Stott, nobody needs to hear it more than me.

It’s truth…it’s true for you as well…even if your walk looks more like mine than Johns.

Matthew Paul Turner’s book Hear No Evil brought back memories of numerous things I’ve seen and experienced during my several-year foray into the evangelical Christian cultural bubble.

Hear No Evil is his recollections of a series of personal episodes from childhood through the present day that will resonate for many who grew up in the Christian subculture, or for those like me who were immersed in it after becoming Christians.

Here’s a sampler of what Turner, and I, experienced:

• being told that contemporary Christian music is of the devil
• accountability groups
• encountering Christians who were convinced that the Holy Spirit told them everything to say and everything to do – including bizarre, nonsensical things (Turner’s example involved a man who stopped his sermon to squat down and waddle and cluck like a duck. Thankfully, neither the Holy Spirit nor the impressions I mistook for the Spirit ever told me to do this).
• meeting some rather peculiar people (like Turner did when he managed a Christian coffeehouse).

Now I can’t relate to his love of Amy Grant, and my experience with the Christian music industry never went beyond helping set up for a Carman concert years ago here in town (as well as attending concerts, and buying hundreds of cassettes and CDs). But I think I share somewhat with Turner a love for good Christian music, and I enjoyed reading CCM Magazine (including when he was its editor several years back).

The most important chapter, in my mind, was an episode during Turner’s editorship of CCM. Turner was told by his publisher that Turner must go to Amy Grant and demand she apologize for her divorce three years earlier from Gary Chapman (that chapter was excerpted on Patrol Magazine’s website). The publisher is portrayed as quite arrogant and convinced of his utter correctness on what to him was a black and white issue, and rather willing to twist the facts to fit his agenda.

Turner of course asks the question in a more humble (and apologetic) way, but the article he submits with her answer turns out not to be the one that runs in the magazine.

It shows a snippet of the dark side of the Christian music industry and indeed of the church, of men who would rather twist the truth to accomplish moralistic aims than to address complex life situations in truth and with a lot of grace for people in the process of becoming like their Savior.

Thankfully, such outrageous behavior is rare in Hear No Evil, as Turner’s experiences with the various idiosyncracies of the Christian world are more likely to make one laugh, either at his experiences or how they compare to the readers’ own recollections.

Turner may be not quite as conservative as some would like, but he’s rooted in the Christian world, and sometimes it does a soul good to laugh at the quirkiness of it.

Hear No Evil is available through Amazon (paper and Kindle), Barnes & Noble (paper and Nook) and christianbook.com.

N.T. Wright retires as a bishop to return to academia.

Daniel Fusco interviews Bryan Stupar.

Lee Grady: The Holy Spirit is God, not an “it”.

Todd Rhoades asks how your church might respond to a young lady in Mississippi who was barred from her school’s prom because she is a lesbian.

Dan Edelen: “...in a bookstore in Rhode Island, a man realized a $6.95 used book may not have been in the condition he described, so he refunded the purchaser $2.95. In contrast, on Wall Street we have morally bereft con men who knowingly sold worthless securities because they could get rich, even if their jackpot ruined other people.“

Audio links for the recent 2010 Mockingbird conference, featuring Rod Rosenbladt.

Michael Patton defines evangelicalism in a (long) nutshell.

Don Miller believes doctrine is only half the message.

Todd Rhoades on Ed Young’s latest “attack” by the media.

Eric Metaxas speaks on his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (fast forward 12 minutes or so to hear the talk).

Darryl Dash: We need gospel movements not just better churches.

Jordan Green from Burnside Writers Collective on the Arizona immigration controversy.

Jon Acuff on the 759th thing Christians like: Fearing we’ll outsin grace.

Chris Elrod’s lessons from an older pastor.

Deborah Finnamore of Ligonier interviews Sinclair Ferguson.

Over the weekend I read a stunning book that described the plight of Mexicans living in Juarez.

The loss of jobs due to NAFTA combined with the drug wars have created a killing field that has sent hundreds of thousands of Mexicans across the border in search of life.

Better said, they come to escape death.

As of Sunday evening, there have been more than 760 murders this year,raising to 4,992 homicides in the Juárez area since 2008 when a drug cartel war erupted, according to a tally kept by the El Paso Times.

The war between the Sinaloa and Juárez drug cartels that began in January 2008 sparked an unprecedented wave of murder, including daytime street shootings, mutilations and massacres.

By comparison, the number of deaths in Juárez surpasses the 4393 members of the U.S. military who have died in the Iraq war since 2003.

In Arizona, they just passed a new law enabling authorities to rigorously enforce federal immigration laws because the state can’t handle all the illegal immigrants.

Without legal papers an immigrant now faces jail time, fines, and possible deportation.

California and other states face bankruptcy as they try to cope with the human flood.

“He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
(Deuteronomy 10:18–19 ESV)

“¶ “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
(Exodus 22:21 ESV)

“You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the LORD your God.””
(Leviticus 24:22 ESV)

“Thus says the LORD: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.”
(Jeremiah 22:3 ESV)

All over the internet the usual representatives of the religious right are applauding the new Arizona law…should we?

How should the church respond to the flood of immigrants coming across our borders?

How do we deal with the sojourner among us?