Found this on Andrew Jones blog followed the trail and ended up listening to a talk by a guy called Mark Driscoll can't remember how I got there, I just went back and couldn't find the links.
This guy Driscoll is strong, obviously a hard man, fancies himself, I wouldn't like to get in a fight with him, but I haven't seen him in the flesh so maybe I could take him, especially if I was tooled up, a claw hammer would do it. He's a reformed calvinist aiming to be Biblically faithful and culturally fruitful, he's clever, articulate, self defacing and in love with Jesus. He's got it all going on, a really large church, which of course gives him confidence that his way is working and therefore because of the nature of church culture, where size gives people importance, he is hard to argue with. 15th fasting growing church in America, etc....
He gets totally stuck in to Brian Mclaren and the whole emerging church thing.
One of the things that he says is the "The emergent movement in the US is blending paganism with Christianity"
Mclaren's latest gathering is called deep shift, Driscoll reckons someone accidentally put an F in! You can check out more about the US emergent movement and the deep shift thing at Emergent Village
He also stated "Jesus prayed against the emerging church", basically they have a low diminished view of scripture!
He also has some words for Rob Bell who leads a church with the same name as Marks called Mars Hill and Donald Miller author of Blue like Jazz, plus a few others.
I don't know why his talk disturbed me so much? It was more the tone than anything else.
He got very angry that Mclaren refused to be drawn on the homosexuality issue, I like Mclaren,s response, it reminded me of making every effort to live at peace with all men.
Anyway just fascinating stuff, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water listen to his talk:Covergent talks
10 comments:
Hi Brian, interesting to hear your thoughts on these guys. I read a bit of this stuff a few months ago which led to reading Marks book "confessions of a reformission rev".
On first impression he is just offensive and has far too much testosterone floating about. The book talks through his experience of planing a church in a predominantly unchurch area in america. By the sounds of things he always did have that confidence in his convictions and didn't just get it from having a large church.
I listened to his talk you linked to and its not easy listening to him slate so many people and I don't know if I agree with everything he says, but at the same time he is mostly confronting serious heresy which some of these guys teach. Defending or arguing christian doctrine has never been a favourite past time of mine and I hope it never will, but I have seen friends relationship with Jesus really suffer with the confusion brought from some of these guys teaching and he is one of the first people I heard that has confronted these guys when so many people sing their praises. What Driscoll says is not something we are used to listening to but Paul certainly spent a lot of time with dealing with false teachings in the New Testament.
Also, for most of the people he talks about he still has a personal relationship with so its not like the weirdos on a witchhunt you can get when you google any famous christian author/speaker. He tries to confront there teaching, I don't think he wants to just launch a personal attack on them. Although he has appologised publicly for some of the stupid things he has said - like the argument with Brian McClaren over the homosexuality issue. I guess his words in these areas would have more weight if he didn't fly off the handle and say stupid things, which is sad because what he has to say, I believe is very true.
We are working with the new chaplain at our local prison to set up a prayer room inside. He's a very evangelical Baptist and was in a team meeting with the other chaplains, and it was getting heated with the catholic chaplain about changes in the multi-faith room, when the non church going deputy governor butted in with: "what the people need here is love not religion".
When love walks out the door then so does Jesus, no matter how big the building and how many are in it.
Brain, Good to have you back making us think. By the way we are still despeartely reaching for that something other...
Driscoll Rocks, check out http://www.marshillchurch.org/
You'll find all his messages there free, video and audio etc.
As far as living at peace with all men goes, we should or atleast as much as is in our power, but surely thisidoes not give us excuse to compromise the word of God and say that sin is ok? The New Testament is clear that homosexuality is a sin, as well as drunkenness, lying, gluttony, adultery etc and is to be repented of.
Brian, Check this Mark Driscoll vid out (in case you haven't seen it...):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8aZXeFRSBA
Mark
I had a good listen to the guy, I was worried about many things he said, and why he really felt a need to set himself up to say it, i believe he really took a lot of guys out of context (eg Rob Bell), I had a big problem with his quoting of the influences of the guys he was getting at. I like to quote Gandhi, it does not make me a hindu, or believe what Gandhi believes. This team thing he talks about at the beginning of his talk is dangerous, fragmentary, leads to the church being divided more, I wonder how he stands theologically on that, I' m not even going to start on his women issues. He did say some good stuff though, it was a good listen.
we set people up against each other so much. and come down 1 side or other...
either were reformed or emergent. postmodern or modern.
but for me, i love reading and listening to driscoll's stuff...and get so much from mcclaren, bell and millar.
i'm reminded of how God speaks through so many avenues
Continuing form the last person's comment: yes, why do we need to be so binary? either or? I don't know Driscoll too well, but I did try to find out who he was as came across a church that has links to him. I think the only thing (so far) I am bothered by in Driscoll's thinking is his take on women/women's role. I'm not very comfortable with it! If I understood that one correctly.. But yes, I'm sure he got lots of (other) things right. Or might, as I'm not that familiar with his theology that I could say much more. Do have to say I don't like that "I am publicly giving words to people"-type of atitude.. I didn't listen to that talk yet though!
Might be of interest!
Its the transcipt a confession from Driscoll of the sin of pride a couple of wks ago at his church
"I believe that humility is the great omission and failure in my eleven years of preaching. I believe that this is my greatest oversight both in my example and in my instruction.
I therefore do not claim to be humble. I do not claim to have been humble. I am convicted of my pride, and I am a man who is by God’s grace pursuing humility.
So in many ways this is a sermon that I’m preaching at myself, this is a sermon you are welcomed to listen in on as I preach to myself.
But I truly believe that were there one thing I could do over in the history of Mars Hill it would be in my attitude and in my actions and in my words to not only emphasize sound doctrine, encourage in strength and commitment and conviction but, to add in addition to that, humility as a virtue.
And so I’ll start by asking your forgiveness and sincerely acknowledging that this has been a great failure.
And I believe that it is showing up in our church in the lives of men and women who have sound doctrine but not sound attitude. They may contend for good things but their motives are bad and their methods are bad and their tone is bad and their tactics are bad and their actions are bad because their attitudes are bad even though their objective is sometimes good. I see this in particular with the men. I see this with men young and old, men who have known Jesus for a long time and should know better, and men who are new to Jesus and are learning sometimes the hard way.
I will take some responsibility for this. Luke 6:40 says that when fully trained, disciples are like their teacher, and I am primary teaching pastor of this church and I can’t simply look at the pride in some of our people and say that I am in no way responsible or complicit.
I’m a guy who is pretty busted up over this personally and it really came to my attention last December just in time for Christmas. The critics really brought me a lot of kind gifts of opposition and hatred and animosity. Merry Christmas. And some of those most vocal and nasty critics were Christians – some of them prominent Christians. So I was getting ready to fire back (my usual tactics). They hit you, you hit them twice and then blog about your victory. Which I don’t have any verses for and don’t say it was a good idea. But it had been a pattern in my life until a man named C.J. Mahaney called.
I’d always considered humility to be cowardice and a compromise. In the name of humility you give up biblical conviction and passion and the willingness to contend for the faith (Jude 3) and to fight false teaching. What he was describing was orthodoxy in belief and humility in attitude and that those two together are really what God desires. And so it got me thinking and studying and praying through pride and humility and repenting and learning and growing. So I would start by saying that I thank my dear friend C.J. Mahaney for his ongoing friendship and the kindness he has extended to me and the things I’ve been able to learn through his instruction.
Furthermore, I apologize and repent publicly to you, the church for whom I am responsible, for much pride in the history of my ministry that some of you have poorly imitated and for that I am deeply sorry.
And thirdly, to say that I’m not a humble man but as result of study I’m a man who is acknowledging his pride and pursuing humility by God’s grace. "
-- Mark Driscoll, sermon on Philippians 2:1-11 (November 4, 2007), part 5 in The Rebel's Guide to Joy in Humility (3:16-8:40)
There are people saying that even Mark Driscoll is liberal; I've heard John Piper say something similar.
To say Jesus is praying against the emerging church is very very strong. I don't have much time for these guys..
i had to stop reading driscoll. i feel angry when i read his stuff.
on the other hand, my sister and her family attend "his" church and like it quite a lot.
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