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.

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
5. Adjourning (he added this one at the end)

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 principle to be ‘above reproach’ (in all things)
• Leaders should model real-life, practical holiness
• A love for strangers – “Grace with clothes on”

The means of stand-out godliness (v.16)

• ‘The Mystery’ – godliness revealed in Jesus
• Through relationships, lived out in real life
• Grace – to be loved and lived
• Chief of Sinners + a lover of grace and people

Where it comes together (v.15)

• In the church!

Steve then brought up two final thoughts:

• “litter the world with communities of grace”
• (point 5) Adjourning – keep going, keep replication, keep planting communities of grace

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

• The Foremost of Sinners (v.15)
• A conviction not a comparison
• Paul’s past convicts him (v.13)
• Grace more than abundant (v.14-15)

Ministry

• Background – Ephesian heresy, Grace being turned into Law
• v.3-5, Paul confronts, instructs and teaches
• Encourages Timothy – to fight, contend, to pray indiscriminately (2:1)

Relationship between Identity and Ministry
Model Grace:

• You are an undeserving recipient of Prodigious Grace
• You don’t base ministry on performance (that’s legalism)
• You display humility in conflict and opposition
• Love the unlovely and unlovable
• Be kind an patient (2 Tim 2:24-26)
• Handle success and failure with grace
• We are trophies of grace – for HIS glory

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…’

• 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…

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.

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;

1. Be ravished by Christ
2. Preach, teach and gossip Christ
3. Extend your boundaries of application beyond “read Bible, pray more, tell someone about Jesus”
4. Plant churches among unreached people groups around you
5. Get your church involved in another part of the world
6. Work from a realistic, achievable activity to a transforming one
7. Work from realistic giving, to sacrificial giving
8. Give away your best
9. Recognise mutual benefit
10. Keep it about God’s Kingdom, not yours

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.

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!

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!!