Michael Spencer aka Internet Monk With the Lord

Internet Monk…His dispatches from the post-evangelical wilderness sent his readers to either examine their faith, or to run for the door. Over the past several years, as I read IMonk’s blog, I watched him chip away at the icons of our religiosity, inspire us to look beyond the traditional “God-Box” and try to define a Jesus-shaped life. Often that life seemed to fly in the face of everything our Christian culture depends on today. It flew beyond big-box evangelicalism into what was uncharted territory for many of us.

Today the Christian blogosphere has lost a voice crying out to challenge us to re-examine our worship, our understanding of the Gospel of Jesus, our mission as Christ’s Church, our relationship with other believers, our orthodoxy and our orthopraxy. He brought together Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Anglicans, atheists and agnostics in civilized dialog. We may not have agreed, but we found a safe place to talk and to leave our weapons at the door.

But we have lost much more than just a “voice”. He was a preacher, a teacher, an object lesson. IMonk was transparent in his own life. He shared his own struggles with many of the practices and definitions that had governed his ministry, his growth as a Christian, even his relationships with those closest to him. He called us to join him in leaving behind “churchianity”, as he called it, for a Jesus-shaped life.

Now that voice has been silenced. After suffering from cancer’s “thorn in the flesh” for only a few months, Michael Spencer is in the very presence of Jesus tonight. The shaping of his life here on earth is finished.

I encourage you to visit the Internet Monk blog and read the wealth of archived blogs there. You will be challenged and blessed.

Michael leaves behind his wife Denise, his son and daughter, and thousands of readers and fellow-bloggers. Please pray for his family, his co-workers and students. His voice…his presence…will be missed by all of us.

http://www.internetmonk.com/

What's Your Gear?

Even though I haven't been posting for months, that doesn't mean that I don't read and reflect on other blogs. Today Internet Monk posed an interesting question on his blog. What is my "gear"? What things do I use to draw my attention to the Lord, to remind me to pray, to shift my focus from the everyday to the eternal?

Good question.

Although I don't carry aluminum crosses (70's fad) in my pocket, use beads to pray, or even read a daily devotional, I do have a picture in my computer room that qualifies as "gear", I think. It isn't something I bought or was given to me...It's something I created.

Several years ago, I took an intro to drawing class at the local college. A state university, not a "Christian" school, not a "Christian" class, but a place where I was encouraged to share my beliefs through art. What a surprise when our instructor challenged us to draw our concepts of heaven and of hell! It was a thought-provoking challenge for me to work out my theology with charcoal and paper instead of propositional debate. And it was a great opportunity to explain to others why I drew what I did.

The cross, the door, the nail-scarred hand inviting me in to meet the Father...I look at that crude drawing and I reflect, not only on heaven and how to experience a relationship with God, but on the cost. John 14:6 says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

His gift, represented by my gear.

What gear do you use?