I was an avid reader of Michael Spencer’s blog (aka Internet Monk) prior to his passing away. I loved how he really didn’t care what people thought of him, he just spoke his mind and tried to process his thoughts in a public way. It was a beautiful and rare thing.
When I got his book, I stared wearily at the subtitle, “Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality”. I thought to myself, “What a liberal hippie…”. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong. This book falls into a slim category of books that are most influential in my life. The common thread among these books is that they deal with one main theme: how awesome and how central Jesus is.
I’ve had enough of church growth and in-depth theology to get the gist of it, but I never get tired of books like Mere Churchianity that simply discuss the importance of putting Christ at the center. He goes through and tells us the basics of Jesus — those things that we can know for certain and take to the bank. He lists about four or five things that should shape Christians, but what stuck out most was the section on discipleship.
Spencer makes the point that Jesus was always in the process of making disciples. So our questions about being a Christian should focus on that… What is the process of discipleship? How does a disciple live? Those are to be life-shaping questions that we spend serious time searching out answers for.
Spencer is NOT some kind of liberal hippie, as I’m sure a lot of Christians will sadly label him, even posthumously. He desperately loves Jesus and wants the church to portray an accurate picture of him…not a an image born of rule-based religion. He is also unafraid of calling out those that lead people astray of the real Jesus. If we could all have an attitude a little more like the Internet Monk’s, we might all be better off.