I’ve made a couple comments on Michael Spencer’s Christian Science Monitor piece, both expressing some of my differences with his argument and mulling how we as Christians ought to respond to it, and I expect I’ll have a few more things to say in relation to his essay; but one unalloyed positive thing to come out of this, which I hadn’t yet noted (and should have), is that this has dramatically expanded his audience beyond the following he’s built online as the Internet Monk and at Jesus-Shaped Spirituality. As he writes,
[T]wo weeks ago, the phone rang and a young man in Boston asked to edit three of my pieces into an opinion piece on the op/ed of the Christian Science Monitor.
A week ago yesterday, he published it in print and on line.
Within 4 hours, it was on Drudge.
In the week since, the column has been everywhere in the media, and I have 12 interviews done or in process, with everyone from CNN to the Moody Network to a local Christian station.
Over 800 people posted comments or sent emails.Two of them were literary agents.One called today.If this day ever came, I had two things I wanted. 1) I wanted to write about Jesus Shaped Spirituality and 2) I wanted someone to see my writing as marketable somewhere outside of the usual Christian market.The first things I heard today were these two things. Both of them. Exactly.
This is wonderful news; it’s the blessing of God, not only for Michael Spencer, but for the whole people of God. From things he’s posted, the iMonk has had a hard couple years; now, he’s in a position to say,
Perhaps the last two years were moving me somewhere; somewhere I couldn’t go otherwise. Maybe this was God’s long road to take me where he wanted me to go.Now I have an opportunity. An opportunity I’ve dreamed of. An opportunity that has come to me completely from the grace of God.What will happen next?I just have to keep writing.
May God richly bless him as he does, for his sake and ours.HT: Bill Roberts