I believe that we are to defend the faith. I believe that we are to contend for the faith. One of my great loves in theology is the discipline of apologetics. But sometimes our zealousness for our faith can have the opposite effect and actually undermine our witness. We can shame God.

For the next two blogs I am going to be talking about how to engage people in theological issues. This will have particular relevance to how we interact online, especially in blogs.

Before the internet, maybe things were a little more tame. I don’t know. Maybe people expressed themselves with more caution, more gentleness, more respect. This is not so today. Not by a long shot. If I was a non-Christian and witnessed how Christians often treat each other in the blogosphere, I would have a natural reaction of disgust.

Today your voice can be heard by an unheard of number of people . . . anyone’s voice can. Set your light on a hill. Not only do we have a bigger hill to let the Gospel shine brightly, but through blogs, forums, emails, and many other forms of quasi-anonymous venues, we also have the chance to let our sinfulness shine brightly.

The other day I drove up to a stop sign. Another car, just to my left, was pulling up as well. It was one of those times where I was not sure who got there first. Since I was to the right of them, I went ahead and turned. As I went past their car to my left, I could plainly see the two young college boys were not too happy with my presumptuous decision. They were shouting and pointing and looking at me as if I had just crossed the line which kept their self-control at bay. I am not a lip reader, but I could tell that they were calling me names that would have given them time-out in Hell. Continue Reading »

It has been fun, interesting, discouraging,encouraging and enlightening to see the various reactions to the posts on the Emerging Church. As you would expect, there have been both positive and negative reactions. I thought that I would take the time to post links to some of these here so that you could get a balanced view of how people are responding, positive and negative.

One of the most common problems with the reactions is that most of these reactions either only post the chart or they only link to one part of what became a six-part series. Because of this, the main thrust of my intentions were sometimes misrepresented, being taken out of context. This is why I am going to follow this with a post that combines all parts into one. Hopefully future links will go to this complete post instead.

Positive:

Christians in Context

The Separation

In Proximity

Traveling Ancient Roads

SoCal Theologica

Joy in the Journey

Micah Fries

Personal Trainer

Ron’s Bloviating

An Accidental Blog

Normal Christian Life

Negative:

Tall Skinny Kiwi

Finitum non carpax infiniti (who has a chart of his own!–nice.)

Mending Shift

Emergent Village

Brad Boydston

Neutral:

Between Two Worlds

Dan Kimball

Submersive Influence

Jesus Under Plastic

Blue Like Elvis

Jesus Creed (Whole lot of comments. I dialogue a bit there)

Faith Maps

Phoenix Preacher (lots of comments)

Stuff out Loud

Continue Reading »

I think that Michael Spencer (imonk) has put together an excellent podcast series called Coffee Cup Apologetics. From what I have listened to on the podcast and read on the blog, Michael seems to be very balanced and thoughtful. I thought that I would point you in this direction if you have not heard him before. His weekly show called Internet Monk Radio is a blogcast (blog in a podcast) and is excellent. I listen to it just about every week. The Coffee Cup Apologetics is focused on apologetic issues of the day.

Today’s podcast is called Five Limitations of Apologetics. It is a good one to get your feet wet with the imonk. The imonk is well worth your time.