All posts tagged Mark Driscoll

Driscoll: Missional Church

by Hugh on July 9, 2008 in Faith with 1 Comment

me-and-mark-driscoll 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…

Driscoll: Spirit led Missions

by Hugh on July 8, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Mark Driscoll There are admittedly very few preachers who would have made me come to the New Frontiers conference – perhaps Piper or Mahaney might, but Driscoll certainly sold it for me.

Driscoll opened up with his customary auto-biographical sketch along with some of the background to Mars Hill. The Catholic jokes were particularly good in speaking of his conception (‘Papal Roulette’) and his mother’s experience of Charismatic Catholicism – praying in tongues to Mary!

He went on to praise the work of the New Frontiers movement saying that he had lots to learn, but also to say that he wanted to serve by where necessary correcting. So he began by giving 5 traps which those who hold to Charismatic theology can fall into – he thought New Froniters may be falling into the 5th trap (not the others though):

Too heavy a focus on the person of the Spirit rather than on the One to whom He points, the person of Jesus
Pentecost becomes the main event at the expense of the Cross and the Resurrection
Health and Wealth become focuses
Leaders are held up as examples of being Spirit-filled and led as opposed to Jesus the best example
Mission is not viewed correctly (can’t remember his exact explanation)

So from there Driscoll went on to talk about what Spirit-filled mission is all about. He took us through loads of verses in the first few chapters of Luke’s gospel about the Spirit (1:15, 1:35, 1:41, 1:67, 2:11, 2:25, 3:16, 3:22… and more). He then talked about Jesus’ Baptism, why he had to be annointed by the Holy Spirit, he got into a big theological tangent explaining the Trinity, the 1 Person and 2 Natures of Jesus, the Hypostatic Union…

He came back to the question – How did Jesus live his life? – answer, By the Power of the Holy Spirit. He described Jesus as a missionary, leaving the ‘culture’ of Heaven to come to a sinful world… so the Spirit empowers missionaries. He spoke of two empowering ministries of the Holy Spirit – an active one for service, and a contemplative one for solitude, study and prayer – the active service is preceeded by time for contemplation.

By this point we’d moved from Luke to Acts, picking up on Pentecost and the Spirit empowering the Church as with Christ. He highlighted repentence as the first mark of the Spirit-filled believer (Acts 2:38) and then picked out 3 points of what the Spirit-filled life looks like from Acts 2:42-47:

Devotion to apostles’ teaching
Love for one another
Awe at the Gospel

Driscoll then concluded with his definition of what a church is, stressing that it was important for movements like New Frontiers to keep these definitions to stay on mission. There were 8 points, he only made it to the first:

Regeneration - he stated that often we fight too much to defend the doctrine of Justification at the neglect of the place of regeneration in the believer and in the church community

I presume he will pick up the next 7 points tomorrow – maybe. As well as this I will be reporting from a Mark Driscoll seminar on Planting Radical Churches and on a main session talk by David Stroud.

New Books

by Hugh on July 6, 2008 in Books, Faith with No comments

Tim Keller has a new book coming out in October called ‘The Prodigal God‘, it’s an exposition of the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Sons’ and I get the impression that like ‘Reason for God’ it will be accessible for both Christians and non-Christians alike. It’s released on the 30th and you can currently pre-order from Amazon for around �9, I’m hoping that the Good Book Company might have it in stock at a similar price nearer the time, I’ll let you know.

Here’s a short interview with Keller about the book, and a response from Keller about the use of the word ‘Prodigal’ in relation to God.

Also, Mark Driscoll has lots of books coming out this year which has prompted the launch of Resurgence Literature publishing (ReLit). The first book was Vintage Jesus, I’ve finally got round to reading that so I’ll review it soon.

The latest books out (released last week) are a series of 4 books – ‘A Book You’ll Actually Read‘ – they’re less than 100 pages on ‘The Old Testament’, ‘The New Testament’, ‘Church Leadership’ and ‘Who is God?’. These are the square shaped ones (left). At the end of July there’s a book called ‘Practical Theology for Women’ coming out by Wendy Alsup, a deacon at Mars Hill. ‘Death by Love‘ (right) is coming out at the end of September, from what I gather it is based on Driscoll’s ‘Christ on the Cross’ series and then put in to a letter format. Finally in January 2009 ‘Vintage Church‘ (middle) is being released, subtitled ‘Timeless Truths and Timely Methods’ – it’s in the style of the Vintage Jesus book and I’m guessing will be similar to the Radical Reformission, probably with more of a focus on some of his sermon series (1 Corinthians, Nehemiah) and some practical suggestions. One more thing, they’re also publishing other non-Mars-Hill books, so far just Total Church by Timmis and Chester.

$A Book You\'ll Actually Read$ Vintage Church Death by Love

Last week I picked up some books for myself at EMA – Total Church (Timmis and Chester), Why we’re not Emergent (some American guys), and The Gospel and Personal Evangelism (Dever)… will give some thoughts when I get round to reading.

Semi-Live Blogging on Mark Driscoll

by Hugh on July 6, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

Next week I’m going to be semi-live blogging from the New Frontiers conference in Brighton and the Dwell Conference in London on the Saturday. I say semi-live-blogging, I’ll be at the main events but will be there to soak everything up and will file a report blog at the end of the day… the main talks will be by Mark Driscoll, I suspect something from Terry Virgo too, and then on the Saturday Driscoll will be joined by Scott Thomas of Acts 29, and Steve Timmis.

So if you’re not going to be at Brighton and you want to know what’s going on then I’ll be providing an ‘outsiders’ perspective of a New Frontiers conference, in fact I’d go further and say a skeptics view of New Frontiers (but that’s another story), but I’m a self confessed ‘Driscoll geek’ so there’s no skeptical view there I’m afraid, well depends what he says!

I’m sure the likes of Adrian Warnock, Bish, and other New Frontiers bloggers will be there and sharing their thoughts, I shall be trying to fit in for a week, pretending to be a New-Frontierser!

Dwell London

by Hugh on June 17, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

There’s only 150 tickets left for the Dwell Conference happening on Saturday 12th July in Central London. It’s for anyone interested in church planting in whatever form that takes. Speakers are Mark Driscoll, Scott Thomas and Steve Timmis, and it will cost you the bargain price of �21. To hear what kind of things go on you can listen to talks from Dwell New York conference from the Acts29 Network. Sign up for your tickets now from the Good Book Company!

Conference Audio

by Hugh on June 3, 2008 in Faith with No comments

A few conferences have been happening recently, check out the audio…

Dwell New York -�� Driscoll, Keller, Mahaney, Stetzer

New Attitude 2008 – Harris, Piper, Dever, Mohler, Mahaney

Basics 2008 -�� Begg, Bridges, Getty, Bauchman, Challies

Together 4 the Gospel -�� Piper, Duncan, MacArthur, Dever, Mohler, Anyabwile, Sproul, Mahaney

…and next week is Resolved 2008 with Piper, MacArthur, Mahaney and others!

Mark Driscoll in the UK

by Hugh on May 21, 2008 in Faith with 5 Comments

Exciting news about Mark Driscoll’s visit to England in July…

Originally I thought he was just going to be at the New Frontiers conference in Brighton, ‘Together on a Mission’ – this is happening 8-11th July… anyway I’m booked in for that, good times.

But there’s some more stuff happening too…

On the 11th July, at 8pm there’s going to be an evening session with Mark Driscoll at St. James’ Clerkenwell, entitled “Driscoll Unleashed in the UK” a nice title!

The next day, Saturday 12th July, he’ll be speaking at the ‘Dwell London – Grace for the City‘… this is a day conference on church planting, and he’ll be speaking alongside Steve Timmis from Crowded House and Scott Thomas from Acts 29 Network. It’s 9.30am – 4.45pm at St. Pauls, Robert Adam street, near to All Souls Langham Place. Tickets are �20 and are available from the Good Book Company. Here’s the programme for the day event:

Session 1: Gospel of grace vs Religion of works – Driscoll
Session 2: Preaching Jesus – Timmis
Session 3: The church planter as a minister of grace – Thomas
Session 4: Planting communities of grace – Timmis
Session 5: Am I a church planter? – Driscoll

On the Sunday, 13th July, Driscoll will be preaching at Jubilee Church, Enfield in the morning and at Church of Christ the King, Brighton in the evening.

I don’t know if he’s got any more bookings, but that seems a fair amount to me!

Also… the Good Book Company are now selling copies of Vintage Jesus, �13 – that’s �9.75 if you’ve got a UCCF card!

EN: Cussing Pastor

by Hugh on May 2, 2008 in Current Affairs, Faith with No comments

In the April 2008 edition of Evangelicals Now, Josh Moody writes a critique of Mark Driscoll, I responded:

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

NWA 2009 Wishlist

by Hugh on April 23, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

Good news that there will be a New Word Alive in 2009, at sunny Prestatyn… but what will it be like? Well, in light of this, this, and this, I thought I would share my wishlist for Word Alive 2009…

Morning Bible Readings – Alec Motyer on Isaiah… loved him last year at Keswick on Exodus, heard he has a fine commentary on Isaiah, would love to find out what that’s all about…

Leadership seminar – Mark Dever… you could call it 9 Marks of a Healthy Church or something…

Apologetics seminar – Tim Keller… It would be cool to hear him give some practical ways to engage with culture, friends, family, colleagues in light of ‘Reason for God’

Evening Celebrations 1 & 2 – Mark Driscoll on Radical Reformission… would love to hear what he has to say about students and young people being missionaries in their culture in the UK

Evening Celebrations 3 & 4 – CJ Mahaney on Humble Orthodoxy… hadn’t really listened or read anything by CJ up until a few months ago… love it now

…and presumably Adrian Warnock will lead the Band of Bloggers seminar…?

Oh, and Team Strike Force leading the music!!

This is all a little optimistic, but just getting one of these guys would be a scoop! Look forward to hearing the details when they happen…

Q&A with Piper, Chandler and Driscoll

by Hugh on April 12, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Here’s what I’ve been waiting for… the Q&A sessions from The Resurgence ‘Text and Context’ conference are now online. There’s two hour sessions, one with Matt Chandler and John Piper, and the other just with Mark Driscoll, well worth listening to.

I was a bit disappointed they didn’t put on something similar with Carson and Piper at New Word Alive, but alas…