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.
Steve’s second talk was entitled ‘Planting communities of Grace‘. He opened by reading 1 Timothy 3, and then briefly spoke about groups and the 5 stages of a ‘group’ defined by Dr. Bruce Tuckman:
Steve stressed that the forming stage was the time to build a ‘dynamic of Grace’ into the structure, the DNA of the group. Then in to 1 Timothy 3:
The need for stand-out godliness (v.1-13)
The means of stand-out godliness (v.16)
Where it comes together (v.15)
Steve then brought up two final thoughts:
Steve gave two talks about grace in church planting – ‘Church Planter as a Minister of Grace’ and ‘Planting Communities of Grace’. Steve is involved in lots of different things; Crowded House in Sheffield, Radstock Ministries, and the Porterbrook Network who had partnered with Acts29 to put this day conference on. Here’s the first talk:
Church Planter as a Minister of Grace – 1 Timothy 1
Identity
Ministry
Relationship between Identity and Ministry
Model Grace:
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;An extract from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If…’
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:
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:
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!
“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…
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.
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.
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!
Today I went to the first day of a 3 day conference called the Evangelical Ministry Assembly, it’s run by the Proclamation Trust at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in central London. This is the 25th year of the conference and the theme this year is Preaching – “Him We Proclaim”.
Christopher Ash – Why Preaching?
He gave a defence of preaching, stating that preaching works because it transcends cultural differences – although we can add our own constraints to it. He spoke about the authority of the preacher (a borrowed authority) and the ‘prophetic’ nature of preaching.
Simon Austen – Ephesians
This was an expostion of Ephesians 1 and 2 focusing on the themes of identity and what it means to be Church.
Steve Timmis – ‘Getting in touch with God’s global mission’
This was my choice from the seminar stream, ended up sitting next to the Big Moon Man. Steve started with two underlying principles: Theology – Who is God? and Ecclesiology – What is the Church? He took us to Revelation 4 & 5, revealing that God’s mission is all about his Son. Then to Ephesians, seeing that Christ rules his Church (his body) and that it is called to live as “communities of light”.
He then went through ’10 Top Tips’ answering questions along the way, here are those tips;
John Woodhouse – Colossians
Whoever does the last session has a tough job, it’s pretty stuffy, a lot of people are tired from the day plus travelling to get there… I’ll be gracious and say I was too tired to concentrate.
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!
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:
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!
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….
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!!
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