All posts tagged Mark Driscoll

Listening to Sermons

by Hugh on August 25, 2008 in Faith, Talks with 2 Comments

In the summer edition of The Briefing, Nathan Walter gives some tips on listening to sermons (back page)… he starts off with a gentle rebuke to people who say “Mark Driscoll says…”, I don’t know anyone like that, hmm… but that is always a danger isn’t it, that we hold too high an opinion of the words of [insert your favourite preacher here] diminishing both our own pastors and our personal time with God in His word. Here are his tips:

  • Vary your diet of preachers, and, sometimes, why not simply listen to an audio Bible?
  • Be wary of comparing the online preacher (publicly or privately) to your own God-given pastors.
  • Don’t forget your responsibilities as a listener. Test everything. Never listen without your Bible open. Chase up the passages and write notes.
  • Keep audio sermons in their place: like good Christian books, they can help us grow enormously, but we mustn’t let them loom too large. Nothing beats the godly discipline of reading your Bible.
  • As with all preaching and teaching, don’t just listen to store up knowledge; listen to sermons in order to put the Word into practise. Listen to an iSermon on your iPod, but make sure you also have an iHarvest of righteousness.

Some good advice. The only one I would question is point 3 – while I agree in principle and certainly would do this when listening to a talk while at home, a lot of the time if I’m listening to a sermon on my iPod I’m doing something else; walking around town, travelling, at the gym (rarely but has been known)… it’s on my iPod because I’m not in the position to sit with open Bible and make notes.

The Four Horseman of Evangelicalism

by Hugh on August 22, 2008 in Faith, Random with No comments

I love when Driscoll gives those little quips – he describes Billy Graham, John Stott, J.I. Packer and Francis Schaeffer as “The Four Horseman of Evangelicalism”. He says this in a 20 minute interview with Sydney Anglicans (Peter Jensen possibly). There’s also loads of great video content based around GAFCON.

Reformission UK

by Hugh on August 21, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Here is a very short review of the Mark Driscoll’s book, Radical Reformission from when I read it last year. One of my general ‘criticisms’ of the book was that its very American, very Seattle – which is understandable, that’s Driscoll’s situation, that’s where he does Reformission. So my thoughts were drifting to the question of how to apply the insightful observations and helpful practical applications of Matthew 28 that Driscoll makes in our post-Christian culture. What are the traits of our society in say Brighton, or more generally in the UK, and how can we apply Driscoll’s Reformission principles to our situation?

First, for those of you who didn’t get it (the play on words), we’re talking about mission and the reforming of that. Reformission is about changing our views, preconceptions, attitudes, style, and methods in the area of mission.

  1. Mission isn’t just something that happens overseas, but primarily happens in our street, our Uni, our workplace…
  2. We can, indeed we must continually refresh the styles we use and the methods we adopt when presenting the gospel in order to show the gospel to be relevant and to engage with our culture (1 Cor 9:22) – “it would be a sin to change the message, it would be a sin not to change the method” MD

So we know from reading ‘RR’ that Driscoll is pretty clued up about the culture of Seattle and how to engage with it and communicate the gospel to it. But what about here in the UK, what is our culture like, to what extent should we engage with it and be immersed by it, and how can we best relate the gospel to it? Most recently whilst in London and Brighton Driscoll explained preaching the gospel to a culture really well, he said that we need to show our culture(s) that the gospel is relevant, not make it relevant – a really helpful clarification to those who think Driscoll is selling out!

Hopefully, soon, I’m going to continue these thoughts by trying to apply Reformission principles into situations that I, and many of us know. Watch this space…

Mark Driscoll on Good Book Company

by Hugh on August 19, 2008 in Books, Faith with No comments

Good news. Not only are the Good Book Company selling Mark Driscoll books, but they are cheaper than Amazon!! The little ‘Book you’ll actually read’ books are selling for just £5!! And I expect there’ll be a little discount on top of that if you have a UCCF student card. On Amazon they’ll cost you £6.29… you fools who bought from Amazon, get them cheap from GBC!!

News to come soonish about some books for men (grrr) and bible reading notes for adults and young people available from the Good Book Company.

Ps. Tom, if you’re reading, I hope you will complete the collection… Radical Reformission and Confessions?? Don’t forget also Death by Love and Vintage Church coming soon. You saw how popular they were at Dwell!!

Pps. Emily, if you’re reading, got the books and study notes (thank you), will review soon! Holiday reading :-)

Death by Love

by Hugh on August 12, 2008 in Books, Faith with No comments

Mark Driscoll’s new book comes out at the end of September and is a book form of the ‘Christ on the Cross’ sermon series. Here’s the promo video…

Conference Summary

by Hugh on July 23, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Adrian Warnock interviews Mark Driscoll – videos here

Mark Driscoll reflects on his time in the UK here and here

My posts on Together on a Mission 2008

My posts on the Dwell London conference

Mark Driscoll’s pastors training track (audio) – Be Radical Plant Radical Churches

Together on a Mission 2008 (audio) – Main Sessions

Off to CYFA camp in Colwyn Bay (sunny North Wales tomorrow) – 10 days of fun, hard work and learning lots about Jesus from John’s Gospel.

Driscoll: Dwell

by Hugh on July 20, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Mark Driscoll concluded the Dwell London conference on the subject of Preaching Jesus, and then finished with a short Q&A session. He gave 6 points about preparing to preach:

  • What does the Scripture say?
  • Theological – What does it mean?
  • How can I make it memorable? – a hook to hang the sermon on – connect with doctrines, big words, emotion, images, people, characters
  • Apologetic – How do people resist the message? – Answer the objections
  • Missional – Why does this matter to our community?
  • Christological – How is Jesus the hero?

On the 6th point Driscoll went on to talk a lot about how we can preach Christ from the Old Testament by using; prophecies, Christophonies, types (Adam, Priests, Prophets, Kings), services (tested in a garden, tested in wilderness etc.), events (Passover, Day of Atonement etc.), titles of God.

Mark simply concluded by saying:

“It’s all about Jesus”, “Love Jesus”, “Talk about Jesus lots”

He said, “If it’s about Jesus, it works… and it makes up for a lot!”

He then addressed a Q&A session mainly answering questions about the role of a wife and family life in church planting ministry. He also had time for a quick jab at us Brits, he said two of our biggest weaknesses were our “fake niceness” and our “cowardice” particularly in addressing big questions – like sex. All in all great conference, watch this space for more stuff from the Acts29 and Porterbrook Network partnership…

Dwell London – Mark Driscoll (1)

by Hugh on July 19, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Mark DriscollMark Driscoll kicked off the Dwell London conference by explaining the gospel – highlighting the difference between the Gospel of Grace, and the Religion of Works.

Mark began by quoting Martin Luther from his lecture on Galatians 2:14 -

“The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine…. Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.”

Driscoll then went to 1 Corinthians 15, asking – What is the Gospel?

  • It’s continual (now I would remind you)
  • Proclamation and Explanation
  • Pastoral and Personal
  • Essential (don’t assume too much, preach the priorities)
  • Relevant (don’t make it, show it)
  • Christological – it’s all about Jesus
  • Penal Substitutionary
  • Biblical (it was prophesied)
  • Eschatological (it has a future)

Under the PS point, Mark alluded to his knowledge of the NWA foundation, and told the story of how his church grew by 800 people on the week he preached PSA! He said that he wants to be a ‘truth teller’ – “I’d rather be hated than ignored – that’s my ministry!” Mark then moved on to look at the two enemies of the Gospel – Idolatry and Religion.

Idolatry

Driscoll quoted Luther who said that idolatry was “the sin”, and that it all came down to the first two Commandments – if we disobey the first two we have an idol, and will break the other commandments.

An idol is that which takes pre-eminence, which receives our worship. We’re all spiritual people because we all have our own definitions of heaven and hell, and the a ‘Functional Saviour’ (our idol) to take us from hell to heaven. He then goes on to reference Tim Keller who has a set of questions to expose our idols:

What are you afraid of? What do you long for? Where do you get comfort? How do you introduce yourself? Whose approval do you seek? What makes you happy/sad?

Religion

Mark started off by showing the clear differences between the Gospel of Grace and the Religion of Works:

If I obey God loves me  vs.  God loves me, his Spirit enables me to obey

Good and Bad People  vs.  Repentant and Unrepentant Sinners

What you do  vs.  What Jesus has done

He then explained the result of religion, it either leads to pride and self-righteousness (these people stay in the church), or despair at not being good enough (these people walk away from church). Rather, the Gospel ends in joy, those who receive grace are humble and happy.

Acts 17 – God commands ALL men to repent (religious and idolatrous)

Romans 1:16 – Mark reminded us not to be ashamed of the Gospel we preach, and again to notice that it goes to the Jews (the religious people) and to the Greeks (the idolatrous people)

Driscoll: Radical Church Planting

by Hugh on July 11, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Mark DriscollOver the week at New Frontiers I’ve been going along to a series of 3 morning seminars led by Mark Driscoll entitled “Be Radical, Plant Radical Churches”. The structure of these have been for Mark to speak for around 15 minutes, drawing out a few issues, then that was followed by around 45 minutes of Q&A. Obviously because of the structure of the sessions I didn’t take extensive notes, but here’s a few little bits:

Session 1 – Mark spoke about family life, wives, elders and deacons

Session 2 – Mark spoke about the practicalities of church growth, starting new services, campuses and plants

Session 3 – Mark spoke again about elders, leadership and everything else

Here’s something I did write down, ‘a week in the life of Mark Driscoll’. Now it wasn’t always like this, there was a time when he did everything; finance, admin, visiting etc. But now, as Preaching Pastor he has a much more focused role:

Sunday – Preaching (live) 4 times a day, up at 6am, bed at 3am

Monday – Half day, time to exercise, a few meetings, time to plan week with Grace (his wife)

Tuesday – Breakfast with kids, Meetings all day

Wednesday – Goes off to a Christian retreat centre for silence, solitude, prayer and fasting

Thursday – Writing

Friday – Emails, Sermon preparation, Date night with Grace

Saturday – ‘Jammy day’ time to spend together as a family

Driscoll: Movements are Messy

by Hugh on July 10, 2008 in Faith with 3 Comments

Mark DriscollIn Mark Driscoll’s final main address at the Together on a Mission conference he spoke about ‘Movements’ (or networks of churches, like New Frontiers). In introduction he took us to Acts 1:1-11 to the beginning of the movement, with Jesus as the head and the Spirit at work. He spoke about Paul’s church planting strategy of establishing churches in cities and commented on the strategic significance of cities – they have more people, and culture flows from a city.

Driscoll talked a little about some historic movements and described them by 6 marks of movements:

  1. Young people, young leaders
  2. Conversions
  3. Church Planting
  4. Unaware of extending influence
  5. Supporting organisations (production of resources)
  6. New Technology

Mark then went on to discuss the rather depressing cycle of a movement:

  1. Simple Organisation
  2. Growth (becomes a movement)
  3. Institution – founders and friends are the leaders (young leaders leave), guarding previous innovation, stop listening to outsiders (need humility and discernment)
  4. Museum

Driscoll then went on to talk about ‘going off course’, 7 ways that movements can turn into institutions, he credited these points to Larry Osbourne:

  1. Theologically off course – either too tight (fundamentalist) or too loose (liberal – used Vineyard as an example)
  2. Relationships become too close to accommodate new leaders and members
  3. Organisationally not adjusted for growth
  4. Pride – “not invented here syndrome”, a willingness to listen to others with humility and discernment is needed
  5. Pursuing potential over calling – prayerfully consider what to do
  6. Lack Resourcing
  7. Honouring the founder and the future

Points 2, 3, 5 and 7 were specifically aimed at the New Frontiers movement, point 7 in particular. Driscoll basically said that soon Terry Virgo will have to hand over New Frontiers to a new leader (he is quite old after all!) and that new leaders need to respect Terry and the founding vision, but also respect the future and new opporunities that open. I understand that people in New Frontiers love and respect Terry, while Driscoll saw this as a great thing I think he also saw it as a danger for growth, changing structure and a clear vision for the future. Mark was very gracious to what is clearly a delicate and emotional subject.

In conclusion, Mark gave 6 phases of renewal (from Rick Warrren):

  1. Personal – Spirit enabled passion for Jesus
  2. Relational – love and compassion
  3. Missional – overflow of relational love into sharing faith and church planting
  4. Cultural – church culture infects the city
  5. Structural – more systems, more policies, more churches
  6. Institutional – breathe life into dead churches

Afterwards Mark received a standing ovation for his time with us, his honesty and his ability to clearly speak into the New Frontiers situation. Terry Virgo came up briefly afterwards to speak about momentous times at the Brighton Conference (this being one), and to give an emotional thanks to Mark. Exciting times for New Frontiers, for a vision of 1000 churches.

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