Congratulations to Michael Spencer

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