Carrying on from Mark’s first talk on Spirit-Led Missions he went on to speak about what a Missional church is. Firstly he concluded his 8-point definition of a church:

• Regenerated Church membership
• Qualified Leadership (male eldership)
• Gathers regularly for preaching and worship
• Sacraments ministered correctly (Baptism and Communion)
• Unity in Word and Spirit
• Discipline for holiness
• Loves all people
• Evangelises and makes disciples

He went on expanding on point 8 to talk about all of church being on mission, citing Leslie Newbiggin who spoke of being engaged in mission that understands its culture. Driscoll then gave four examples of churches and how they respond to culture:

• Bombshelter - the fundamentalist church that hides from culture, treating church as a safe haven from it. They preach against the culture in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, they’re not missional.
• Mirror - the liberal church that is simply a reflection of the culture.
• Parasite - the church that takes all the benefits that a culture provides but does not serve, give to, or love that culture.
• City within a City - the church loves Jesus, believes the Bible and lives differently within the culture, it invites others to join in the distinctive living.

Obviously he’s with the fourth church! Driscoll then went through the 12 aspects of a missional church - he got to 4, having spent about half an hour on the 3rd!

• Church is a missional outpost, it exists to grow, to put on more services, set up new campuses and plant new churches.
• Every Christian is a Missionary. The gospel needs to be preached every week (to encourage inviting friends) and members need to be trained in doctrine and apologetics (so they can answer questions).
• Aware of Local Culture. Mark talked through most forms of media (TV, radio, Internet, blogs, social networking) and how he uses them, he spoke of watching TV missionally - seeing the idols displayed in the media, people’s personal heavens. He also chatted about knowing the places where people socialise and speaking to those in the know about what people get up to.
• Contending and Contextualizing the Gospel. Mark spoke first on 1 Corinthians 9:22 - “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some”. He spoke of having ‘timeless truths and timely methods’, of being ’seeker-sensible’. In conclusion he gave one of the most clear explanations of contextualization I have heard him give - he said…

“you do not need to make the gospel relevent, but you do need to show that the gospel is relevent”

Afterwards it was good to see a little party from UCCF present and I was able to chat with Scott Thomas about Acts29, church planting and the partnership with Steve Timmis culminating in an event at St. James Clerkenwell on Friday night and the Dwell conference on Saturday. And being a geek, I went and got a picture with Mark - he has a really large head…

Matt Chandler from the Village Church is currently on sabbatical, but I need to let you know about some recent good sermons. He’s got to about chapter 9 of a big series on Luke (20 sermons so far), it’s awesome stuff!

Back in May, Matt finished a 5-part topical series on the church core-values which is well worth a listen to:

What is Truth?

What is Christian Spirituality? -  really good, what true Spirit-filled churches should be like!

What is Community?

What is Foot-Washing?

What is Missional Living?

These sermons and others will go into my good sermons database page - it’s just a bit of fun for me but hopefully as I keep updating it, it will be a great resource to find good sermons in one place!

Also, Matt Chandler’s church, The Village are doing a building project and have launched a new website for that including some video testimonies from some members - here’s an example…

Today BH hosted the annual Sussex Gospel Partnership conference, entitled “The Mission Minded Church”… the purpose of regional gospel partnerships is to encourage and equip evangelical churches in Sussex to work together; to support training schemes, conferences, evangelism and ultimately church planting.

Today we were joined by guest speaker Steve Timmis from Crowded House, along with 300 Christians from the partnership from all around Sussex. Steve gave two main talks from Philippians about being a gospel shaped church, and encouraged us all as gospel citizens to be gospel ministers. Steve said some great things in explanation of the text and in very practical application. He said some things which I imagined might have been a bit edgy to some there, but it’s always good to be challenged and rebuked by God’s word!

Would highly recommend listening to the talks… there were also 3 seminars; mission to 50-70s, 18-30s and families….

Talks from BH website

On the subject of the BH website, watch this space… the new look will be launched some time after exams… but this is top secret!!

This is one of the pre-Resurgence conference videos - Matt Chandler, Advice for Preachers… Live Preaching, Live the Gospel… burn for the text… possessed by the text…

It’s not often that I get annoyed when reading the EN newspaper (Evangelicals Now), because on the whole it’s pretty good, you know it’s sound, and usually very interesting… unlike the Church of England Newspaper, that gets me annoyed some times. But I got a bit annoyed when reading the most recent edition (April 2008), specifically Josh Moody’s ‘Letter from America’.

This piece is yet another “We like Mark Driscoll’s theology, but we don’t like his style” piece, of which you’ll find plenty across the web. It’s not that I have a problem with people who disagree with MD, it’s just that I find it sad that people insist on criticising a faithful gospel ministry, and for what gain? On top of that, this particular piece is about 2 years behind the times, essentially it is poorly researched.

The Internet Monk has some detailed thoughts about why people don’t like Mark Driscoll, worth reading if you’re a critic. For my part I’ve responded to the editor of EN to perhaps give a different perspective, doubt it will get published, but I have a blog, so here is my response published here…

Dear Sir,

Can I graciously suggest that Josh Moody is out of date, and perhaps out of touch when he writes about Mark Driscoll in the April edition of EN. Driscoll was given the dubious title of ‘The Cussing Pastor’ by Donald Miller in his book ‘Blue Like Jazz’, this was published 5 years ago. I’ve yet to hear Driscoll swear in a sermon, though his language in the past has certainly been more risqué, it is not what we would call swearing - ‘B.S.’ is of course just two letters! Since then Driscoll has I guess become more ‘mature’, he has publicly repented of many failures in his ministry, most recently when teaching on Humility (4th November 2007). As for the call for mentors, Driscoll counts John Piper and CJ Mahaney as his closest ministry mentors (2nd March 2008), not to mention the likes of Bruce Ware, Tim Keller and Wayne Grudem – of course Piper did once say ‘crap’ in a sermon! Moody here seems to be telling us about the Driscoll of several years ago.

There is much that could be said in response to Moody’s criticisms of Driscoll’s missiology of being ‘theologically conservative and culturally liberal’, but it would be unwise to debate the rights and wrongs of different forms of entertainment. The point here is that the proclamation of the gospel needs to be related to the context in to which it is preached. Paul, preaching to the Areopagus in Acts 17 gives a classic example of this gospel-contextualisation, this passage is key to Driscoll’s methodology and the name of his church (Mars Hill) is derived from it. Driscoll is preaching to young, liberal, post-modern, pagan Seattle-ites, people who listen to secular rock music, who watch R-rated films, who gamble, who drink, who get their teaching about sex from porn rather than the Bible - it is in to this culture that Driscoll preaches. While some call for a retreat from this kind of sinful culture, Driscoll and others are calling Christians, to engage with, to be a part of, and to understand the culture so that we can be missionaries within it. Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., writing in a recent book (Preaching the Cross) put it like this, “We cannot simply withdraw. That would be to deny our commission. But we cannot feel at home either. That would be to deny our identity.” Driscoll is equally clear in his teaching that Christians need to be distinctive and above reproach in all matters, his view is that Christians should “go as far into the culture without sinning as they possibly can”, in order to share Christ. I would challenge EN readers to consider reading Driscoll’s first book entitled ‘Radical Reformission’ and make an informed opinion, about Driscoll, and about how we can best preach Christ in our culture.

Yours Sincerely,

Hugh Bourne

Since September 2007, Matt Chandler from The Village Church, in Dallas, Texas, has been preaching through Luke’s Gospel, he’s up to around chapter 6. It’s really good stuff, a nice length to listen to and very challenging. Add it to your podcast feed!

Chandler is mates with Driscoll and doing a similar kind of Reformed Missional church, like Mars Hill. But, in a different place, so it’s interesting listening to a similar style/methodology/missiology, but preaching into a different context/culture. Driscoll is dealing with postmodern, liberal, pagan, Seattle-ites. Chandler on the other hand is largely dealing with Fundamentalist Bible-belters and Osteen-Prosperity types, so has lots to say to those who are religious or brought up in Christian tradition.

Starting to think about how to best do this kind of Reformission in the UK… thoughts to follow over the next few months…

I do like a bit of TK (Tim Keller), as does Povey, who is officially a TK-geek. As it happens, Mark Driscoll is also a TK-geek, stating in one of his sermons that he rips most of his material from TK - in other news Driscoll joined Facebook last week, over 1000 friends already, most of whom, like me have never met him.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed TK at EMA and listen to a bit of his stuff every now and then. Although the one thing that does annoy me is that most of his sermons cost money, not cheap either! But one free one, a good one is available at BeThinking on the subject of exclusivity and other religions and worldviews, he’s great at analysing and deconstructing worldviews.

Exciting news for TK fans, he’s written a book! The book is titled ‘The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism’ , and I’m guessing picks up some of the same of the same themes as the BeThinking talk. You can read a bit more about it on the Redeemer website, he has a little page called ‘Yes, I wrote a book‘. It’s released on the 14th February and will cost £12 on Amazon, although the cover looks pretty bad, looks like it’s been published by Banner!

Another book that caught my attention recently was Lesslie Newbign’s ‘The Gospel in a Pluralist Society’, after it was recommended by both Driscoll and Keller, who I would regard as being two of the key thinkers on what you might call Reformission, so I think I shall try and get myself a copy some time.

Went to a UCCF training day today, subtitled “Sharing the Love on the South coast”. Was really good to meet other CU leaders, praise God, pray together, plan, analyse what a CU is and what our CU is like, hear from God’s word about what our purpose is…

I can’t remember when it was, probably at a UCCF new leaders conference when it was said… “A CU is a mission team”, now it wasn’t actually till I went to Bulgaria as part of a UCCF mission team that I realised how radical that was. ‘A Mission Team’, that just changes the whole raison d’etre (yeh that’s French!), it changes why we meet, it changes the way in which we meet, it changes us from just another society or club to a team with an eternal, life-changing focus.

A mission team; meets to pray, to encourage one another, to share testimony, to plan, to get trained and equipped, to be encouraged by God’s word, to seek God and his ways, to help each other… when Driscoll talks about Reformission, he makes the point that just as you need to prepare for overseas mission, to study the culture we are entering, so we need to do the same for mission at home… CUs need to be prepared for the culture they enter, we need to know what people are into, where the average student places their hopes, what their ambitions are, why they believe what they do… CUs need to engage with the student culture, be part of it, befriend and build relationships, yet be distinctive and holy within that culture… CU isn’t about withdrawing into a ‘holy huddle’, a bubble, a safe place from the rest of campus… nor is CU another compartment in student life - do CU one night, go out and get wasted with my mates the next…

Ultimately CUs belong to Jesus, he’s in charge, they are his tools to win students for Christ through the proclamation of the gospel through many and varied means, but never less than simply speaking who Jesus is and what he did at the cross for us.

Anyway… we looked at Acts 17 this morning… I love this passage for a few reasons…

1) Paul contextualizes (Acts 17:16-28) - Paul goes to the Areopagus, he sees their culture, he speaks into that culture, he takes the things that they know, things that interest them and explains how the true God is actually what they are really seeking

2) God is Sovereign (Acts 17:26-25) - God chose exactly where everyone would live and when they’d be there, and his whole purpose in doing that is to give people an opportunity to hear the gospel

3) Proved by the resurrection (Acts 17:31) - Jesus is coming back to judge the world, we know he is because God raised him from the dead… only man who beat death, must be special

4) People respond (Acts 17:32-34) - when you tell people about Jesus, some sneer, they called Paul a babbler, others wanted to know more, and some believed and followed

Read this book while on the train to Budapest… this book is the story of Mars Hill church in Seattle, along with some insights into various aspects of missiology and ecclesiology from Driscoll along the way.

The Criticisms

The two main criticisms I’ve heard about this book, and Driscoll’s ministry are; 1) the chapters are all based around the size of the church, 2) there’s lots of inappropriate things that Driscoll has done that he refers to.

Having read the book I think these are flawed criticisms - first, the book is about the growth of the church, and a vision for more growth, having targets is healthy for mission and focus, in one of his sermons Driscoll says about his church “Is it all about numbers? Well yeh it is because numbers are people and we want to serve as many people as God gives us.” Second, the book is called Confessions not everything here is presented as the right way to do things and Driscoll often talks about the times he has come to repent of his mistakes in ministry.

Key Points

Mission - Driscoll starts off with some of the themes of ‘Radical Reformission’, in all of the decisions he takes in Mars Hill he always makes sure that the focus is kept on the church mission - to reach Seattle with the gospel. Sometimes he has to “put dogs down” when there are people getting in the way of this mission.

Change - when a church grows from 50-4000 in less than 10 years there’s inevitably going to be some radical changes taking place. It’s interesting to hear about Driscoll’s personal change, distancing himself from the liberal Emergent movement and embracing Reformed theology, and how through preaching through Romans the church established this position. Driscoll makes some controversial, sometimes unpopular decisions, but is always looking to keep the church vision focused and ready to grow.

Management - a lot of what Driscoll does seems very experimental, but is always done under the authority of Scripture and the council of other pastors. Firstly, I like the basis of leadership, where rather than recruiting external leaders, that new leaders are raised up and trained within the church, and the idea of hiring staff slowly and firing quickly. And there’s lots of good thoughts about being a pastor, leading a church, leading an eldership team and managing staff, members, change and growth.

Questions - it’s not really a study guide, but at the end of each chapter Driscoll asks the readers some questions about their churches and their attitudes. Driscoll is on a mission and is constantly questioning why we do things, Driscoll brings us back to the Bible for the answers…

Overall…

You have to remember that this book is the story of a specific church in a specific place. And also that it’s a book of confessions… not everything is said and done is ‘good’. But, Driscoll’s passion for evangelism, for leading and building a church is worth the read alone, his thoughts on how to lead/pastor the church may seem a bit strange sometimes, but I love them, because he always goes back to the gospel mission and what the Bible says as his lead and guide.

As I understand the book is now out of date, the church has grown even more and has started multi-site services, with preaching streamed by satellite. Driscoll ends the book with a vision and strategy to see a church of 20,000, I suspect an updated edition will not be too far away!

As ever, it’s an easy read, full of humour and sarcasm, couldn’t put it down. Other reviews of the book can be found at… Reformissionary, Tim Challies, thebluefish

Gonna read about the ‘Cambridge Seven’ now…

On the Desiring God blog there’s a link to an excerpt from a John Piper sermon that says “we don’t need to contextualize the gospel”. My first thoughts, initially are to say rubbish… look at Paul in Acts 17, read Driscoll’s ‘Radical Reformission’. But Piper has a universal gospel presentation from Romans 5… the context is that we’re human beings, made by God, descendants of Adam. Have a look, I thought it was interesting…