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A Weekend Emergent Village Experience

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:22:59-05:00July 23rd, 2007|Categories: Emergent Church|

This weekend’s Midwest Emergent Gathering, held July 20-21 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, was an event that I enjoyed participating in immensely. I was invited, by my friend Mike Clawson of up/rooted (Chicago), to answer several questions in a plenary session. I was billed as a friendly “outsider.” We laughed about this designation since many of my critics now assume that I am a “heretical insider” to Emergent. The truth is that neither is totally true. I am not so much a part of this movement, at least not in any recognizable or formal way, as I am a real friend of all things missional that sincerely address the basic questions that I feel very strongly must be faced by Christians within Western culture.

It is a basic fact that the church regularly reduces the gospel, to something less or other than than the gospel, in its various attempts to translate the good news into a faithful witness within any culture. This is true in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well. (Witness the cover story of the current Christianity Today on […]

Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome: My Struggle with a Strange Illness

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 19th, 2007|Categories: Personal|

Some readers of this blog, and my closest friends, are well aware that I have struggled for nine years with a mysterious ailment that is often misdiagnosed and routinely misunderstood by the wider public. Almost everyone I know feels tired, sometimes extremely tired. It is the nature of living in the modern world, or so it seems. If you lead a busy life and you are over fifty you sometimes feel very tired. But being tired and having Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) are simply not the same thing. There are times that I wish we had a different (better) name for this illness since so few people understand me when I try to explain the life I try to live in coping daily with CFIDS. Yesterday’s edition of The New York Times had a wonderful article on CFIDS. I share the link to that article so that all who pray for me can understand better what you are praying for as you remember me before God’s throne of mercy. I also share this because many of you who read this either have […]

Reflections on the Real Reason the Fans Do Not Like Barry Bonds

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 18th, 2007|Categories: Baseball|

Barry Bonds is in Chicago this week. His batting numbers are down, his legs are clearly hurting and he shows his age, 43, with every swing. But, unless something very strange happens he will break Hank Aaron’s record for all-time home runs sometime this summer. He only needs four more homers to tie the record of 755 and thus five to break it. For those of us who grew up watching Henry Aaron, Willie Mays and Stan Musial play the great game Barry is a huge disappointment. This is not a case of old people not liking to see a sacred record broken by a new player. As the saying goes, "All records are made to be broken." Generally, such feats are celebrated even by those who previously held the record. But Bonds is different.

Yes, there is the steroid controversy. Did he or didn’t he? I am willing to say that he has not been convicted, not yet at least. Accusations have never been proven, though circumstantial evidence abounds. In one sense, I don’t care if he did drugs or not since […]

Presidential Optimism is Not Called for at the Moment

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 17th, 2007|Categories: Politics|

Presidential optimism is generally a good quality. Leaders need to project hope and a positive outlook. It is best, I think, that our commander-in-chief believes that what he is doing in the world militarily is both good and necessary, even though evil is often done while pursuing the good. Confusion, doubt and pessimism do not breed success. President Bush seems to be the most optimistic leader that we have had in my lifetime, at least from all we can see in public. He seems to never have a serious doubt regarding his plans and how things will end up if we follow his leadership. Some of this seems to be rooted in his love for our country and sense of personal peace. Some is obviously a part of his unique personality. The rest I will leave to others, and finally to God, to decide. He “stands or falls to his own master” just as you and I do. The difference is that we are a republic of the people and we must make judgments that do have an impact upon how we view our […]

Happy Blogiversary

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 16th, 2007|Categories: Personal|

The advent of the bog turned ten this week! The Wall Street Journal headlined the event with the caption: Happy Blogiversary! The Journal invited various commentators to weigh in on this new medium for writing. Most liked it. A few were strongly opposed, even derisive, such as the infamous social critic Tom Wolfe. My mind is not made up entirely, though I confess there are several things that I have found to be true about blogging that both thrill me and trouble me. I have been blogging for a little over two years now and at times I love it and at other times I just endure it or even hate it.

The first blogger was apparently Jorn Barger who began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy with comments of his own added. On his site he wrote, in December of 1997, “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis.” The Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the root meaning of blogging, thus the […]

How Appropriate is Aggressive Confrontation for Jesus?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 13th, 2007|Categories: Religion|

A friend sent me a 68 second video clip from CNN that I invite you to view. I found it stunning for several reasons that I will later explain. I would love to provoke a "serious" dialog about this video clip and see if some of you can help us all find better ways to reach our culture with the gospel of Christ. Without further comment from me watch the clip.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/07/12/vo.senate.prayer.arrests.cnn

Now, my questions. Are these three Christians in the Senate chamber acting courageously? Are they right in what they actually pray? Should they have been there taking these actions in this place? What do their actions say about who we all are as Christians today. How should we appropriately respond to the presence of numerous non-Christian religions that now share the public religious platform with us in modern America? What should a genuinely missional Christian do in the face of modern pluralism and the various false teachings that confront the one true faith as it is revealed in Jesus Christ alone?

I find […]

Terrorism Will Likely Trump the Hot Issues List Politically

By John Armstrong|2007-07-12T22:18:23-05:00July 12th, 2007|Categories: Politics|

There are dozens of issues that energize American voters in every election. We can hear several of them in the present long build-up to the 2008 elections. 70% of America thinks “we are on the wrong track” right now. I have a great deal of sympathy with some of this feeling. Yet at the same time we have strong to moderate economic growth, a low 4% unemployment rate and a stock market that has been going upward for about three years.

Polling of voters who are not firmly committed Republicans or Democrats, i.e., those voters who will decide the next election, tell us that these voters have “deep concerns” about virtually everything on the political radar screen. When “extremely important” and “very important” are combined in the total poll numbers then well above 50% of these independent voters say issues like health care, the economy, terrorism, immigration, taxes, corruption and, quite obviously, “the situation in Iraq,” are all major issues.

Daniel Henninger called this “the worry wart vote” in his July 5 Wall Street Journal editorial. New York Mayor Michael […]

The Good German

By John Armstrong|2007-07-11T23:07:54-05:00July 11th, 2007|Categories: Film|

American journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) returns to postwar Berlin, prior to the famous Potsdam Conference—with Churchill, Truman and Stalin putting together the postwar plan—to find that things have changed much more than he could have imagined. Would he find peace? Or maybe a particular story angle for his American magazine? What he did not expect to find was his former lover Lena (Cate Blanchett), a Jewish lady who has used some very unusual methods to avoid her own detection living inside of Germany during the last years of the war.

Geismer is thereby led to a murder case that he tries desperately to solve. In the process he is led to uncover a plot that involves Americans who are seeking to secure the freedom and services of a German bomb expert who they now want to help them in the postwar era, foreseeing a struggle with Russia. There is one problem—the desired expert was guilty of serious atrocities that led to the death of thousands of Jews and other minorities during the war. Lena is connected to it all because her […]

How Prayer is Fed By A Right Perspective on the Last Day

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:23:00-05:00July 8th, 2007|Categories: Biblical Theology|

I preached this morning at First Reformed Church in South Holland, Illinois. My text was Philippians 1:1-11. I tried to show how Paul’s expression of prayer and thanks for the church at Philippi was deeply grounded in his theology of hope, which itself is profoundly connected to how he understands the day of Christ. I argued that American evangelicalism has little or no perspective on this because: (1) We have a theology about the day of Christ that focuses on issues like the the rapture question, the millennium, and the "last days" as in guessing how close we really are to the end and, (2) Our arguments about various explanations regarding the "end times" has little or nothing to do with true Christian living and vital prayer, much less with really giving thanks.

Paul frames his whole prayer for the church in Philippi around his hope about the end. He is, as I argued this morning, a "biblical optimist." This is not some kind of emotional optimism here, rooted in human personality. No this is rather an optimism rooted in the nature […]

The Half-Way Point in the Season

By John Armstrong|2007-07-07T20:31:23-05:00July 7th, 2007|Categories: Baseball|

Baseball enthusiasts all know that July 4 is the half-way point in the season. The All-Star game, often called the mid-summer classic, takes place next Tuesday, July 10, in San Francisco. This is the time of the year teams take stock and decide to become buyers or sellers in terms of the talent they need for the second half of this season or for their future talent if they think they can’t win this year.

I saw the White Sox last evening. It was my eighth game of the season. I am now 4-4, thus not a total jinx. But my record is going backward lately. The Sox are done I believe. I hate to see them trade a few stars but they need to go younger sooner than later. They have next to no chance at the post-season this year. It is amazing but they went from World Series Champions two years ago to a major disappointment in one and a half years. Their pitching has failed, their bats are cold, and the team looks terrible right now. No fire in […]