exercises in compound storytelling

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

why I link to Scott Williams

Within modern evangelical Christianity there are three broad classes of people: ordinary sinners, professional Christians, and celebrity Christians. The last two categories typically overlap with each other, but rarely do you find someone who is in the first and also in either of the others.

Scott Williams may be one of those people. I'm not entirely sure, since I think he considers himself post-evangelical. Regardless, his month-old posts train wrecks (about his drug use) and grind (about his days as a church planter) certainly secure his position in the first category with hints of the second.

I'm grateful for his example, not as a former church planter, nor as a former drug user, but as somebody who has the humility and the honesty to own up to being both. One of the cliches of contemporary Christianity is to pat ones self on the back, saying "yes but I'm not one of those Christians (I'm one of the good/safe/reasonable ones)." People like Scott, who apparently have emerged from a terrible life experience broken but not ruined make it more difficult to resort to that cliche; so I'm doubly grateful.

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