Reaching out without selling out

A young American pastor named Mark Driscoll is gaining a reputation for reaching the lost in new ways without compromising the old message in the process.

He is the 36-year-old pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, a home group that has grown to a 4000-strong church in one of the hippest and least-churched cities in the USA. In addition, he directs the Acts 29 churchplanting network, and is considered one of the 50 most influential pastors in America. Described by turns as emerging, missional, reformed and vulgar, Mark Driscoll has been immortalized in Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz as ‘Mark the Cussing Pastor’. With a reputation that now has him sharing platforms with the doyens of reformed theology like Piper, Keller and Carson, his first two books demonstrate what the fuss is all about.

In The Radical Reformission, Driscoll challenges readers to join him in what he calls ‘Reformission’—the task of changing our view of mission from what happens across the globe to what happens across the street. He calls for a new missionary movement from America to America that is ‘glocal’ (global and local); unleashing the power of the gospel so that churches will engage and transform their surrounding culture. His concern is that many churches have lost their evangelistic edge. They are either so ‘pure’ that they have become disengaged with the surrounding culture, or else so hip that they have divested the gospel of Jesus of its power. He is insightful in showing the relationship between gospel, church and culture, and argues for a church that is reformed in its theology whilst engaged with the surrounding culture—a church, in other words, that is culturally ‘liberal’ yet theologically conservative: “Reformission is about the old gospel answering without blushing the new questions that emerge from new cultures” (Radical, p. 49). This is what he sees as the essence of ‘reaching out without selling out’.

In Confessions of a Reformission Rev., Driscoll basically paints the colourful history of Mars Hill Church. He confesses his failures, and outlines the lessons learnt along the way of taking a church from zero to 4,000 in 10 years. The subtitle of the book comes pretty close in describing the book’s content: ‘Hard lessons from an emerging missional church’. He says his main purpose in writing was the hope that it would “help to serve others who are undertaking similar missions and inspire the planting and renewing of many churches to reach emerging cultures” (Confessions, p. 12).

The book begins with a chapter that defines various important themes and concepts introduced in his first book, and then arranges the next seven chapters into the stages of numerical growth of Mars Hill. I loved the title of chapter 5: ‘Jesus, Why Am I Getting Fatter and Meaner? (350-1000 People)’; it gives something of an insight into Driscoll’s bold, earthy and at times slightly irreverent style.

Emergent or Emerging?

Driscoll is quite comfortable in identifying himself as part of the ‘emerging church’, but he is careful to define what he means by it. He uses the description ‘emerging’ churches to describe a broad, unofficial movement of churches seeking to contextualize the gospel of grace within the (mainly American) culture they are trying to reach.

Within this broad movement or trend, there is enormous variety. Driscoll, for example, distances himself from leaders like Brian McLaren, whom he identifies as the leader of the liberal wing of the movement and who is one of the leaders of a particular grouping called ‘emergent’ (or ‘the Emergent Village’). So not all ‘emerging’ churches are ‘emergent’, if you follow me.

Driscoll sees himself as straddling the two hot camps within American evangelicalism at the moment, as he seeks to apply his essentially Calvinist theology within the emerging postmodern culture of America. One of the key issues for him is the challenge of contending for the faith once delivered whilst seeking to appropriately contextualize. Driscoll believes that many of the ‘emergents’ are woeful at the contending side of things, and tend to compromise core theological commitments. He is deeply concerned that more and more young pastors have drunk from the emergent toilet bowl which he sees as the new ‘sky fairy religion’ for postmoderns, just as liberalism is for modernists: “[T]he emergent church is the latest version of liberalism. The only difference is that old liberalism accommodated modernity and the new liberalism accommodates post modernity”. As for Driscoll and Mars Hill, they “swim in the theologically conservative stream of the emerging church” (Confessions, pp. 21, 22). This is a clear call from a punk pastor to his contemporaries to repent of faddish, innovative and ‘relevant’ heterodoxy.

Reformed?

Whilst Driscoll is concerned about ‘emergent’ theology, he is equally concerned about churches with good theology but poor missiology. He sees many conservatives within the reformed camp as being far better at contending then they have been at contextualizing. He warns of an irrelevant orthodoxy that fails to engage with the culture. Driscoll longs to see a church stacked with cool Calvinists who really meet the culture around them as they preach, teach truth, fight heretics and plant churches.

His theology for the most part is straight Calvinism, and as a theologically conservative, cultural liberal he tends not to read theologians who are still living whilst having a ferocious appetite for studying and consuming popular culture. In his own terms, he likes to be seen as a ‘Calvinist in boxers not briefs’:

I was wrestling through some theological issues, such as election, predestination, and other matters generally known as reformed theology. So I taught through the book of Romans on Sunday nights, which helped to clarify our doctrinal convictions as a church and cemented us as a church with a reformed view of God and salvation. If you don’t know what that means, the gist is that people suck and God saves us from ourselves. For more details, you can read the book I’ll write on it in the future or just accept a plain, literal reading of Romans, particular Romans 9-11. (Confessions, p. 85)

Driscoll communicates with bucket loads of humour and candour in a refreshing and insightful way. From his soteriology, Christology and high view of Scripture, through to his complementarian view of male and female roles, he seems to be keen to let the Bible dictate to Mars Hill Church. This can be seen in his approach to eldership:

As I studied the Bible, I found more warrant for a church led by unicorns than by majority vote. Practically, it seemed obvious that a congregationally governed church would not be led but would instead make decisions by compromise to appease all of the various interests in the church. (Confessions, p. 103)

Driscoll’s elder ecclesiology will challenge ‘unicornians’ and those with other positions.

He is not without his surprises though. His dreams, visions, demon battles and non-cessationist views of charismatic gifts at times jar with what is otherwise reformed theology.

I had been basically a theological cessationist and a fan of fundamentalist straw-man attacks on charismatic Christians. It wasn’t until some years later, however, that I came to see the cessationists’ interpretation of 1 Corinthians 12-14 as the second worst exegesis I have ever read, next to that of a Canadian nudist arsonist cult I once did some research on. (Confessions, p. 121)

He seems to be able to handle these tensions with a degree of non-partisan conviction and wit as expressed in the title of chapter 4: ‘Jesus, Could You Please Rapture the Charismaniac Lady Who Brings Her Tambourine to Church? (150-350 People)’.

Transparent and thoughtprovoking

The man himself is everywhere on show in both books. His frank accounts of successes and failings take transparency to a new level, as he confesses immaturity and a lack of preparation for the task of leadership. It seems that in many ways the church grew from trial, error and a raw passion to reach punk rock’s children. Clearly leadership and planting ain’t easy, nor for the faint-hearted, and Driscoll’s openness to his own personal battles will draw you in. It’s a rough and rocky narrative of brutal honesty. You will laugh and cry at his struggles with ‘nut jobs’, pastoral blow ups, spiritual battles, and sexual temptation.

Scrambling for ideas, I agreed to cancel a Sunday church service to let some of our long-haired public-radio types take us outside to do a large joint art project they had proposed. They gave each of us a large chunk of paper on which to paint something that symbolized our personality, which they would then string together as a large mural highlighting the different personalities of our church. As a truck-driving jock who watches a lot of Ultimate Fighting, I can honestly say it was the gayest thing I have ever been a part of. I feared ending up with a church of chickified arty dudes drinking herbal tea and standing around talking about their feelings, as illustrated by their finger painting. To this day, I twitch like a Vietnam vet just thinking about the mural. (Confessions, p. 71)

There’s plenty to provoke thought in both books. For example, Driscoll passionately opposes legalism, and sees legalistic church culture as being an obstacle to reaching lost sinners in a postmodern world. He suggests that it is very possible (and indeed necessary) to mix with sinners, and participate in their culture, while avoiding sin ourselves by sticking close to Jesus.

At the same time, Driscoll just as passionately opposes licentiousness in the name of ‘authenticity’. He is aware that the grace pendulum can easily swing back too far the other way, and is keen to bring people to the obedience of faith in the risen Jesus. He calls sin for what it is, and unflinchingly places the need for genuine, heartfelt repentance before his readers in relentless application of the Scriptures.

His preaching methodology is at the same time familiar and strange. He clearly places an enormous emphasis on the Word of God doing the work of God. “My answer to everything is pretty much the same: open the Bible and preach about the person of Jesus and his mission for our church” (Confessions, p. 86). Yet few could imitate his ability to preach such powerful and effective sermons seemingly without notes or much structure. He describes his basic preaching approach: “I study the Bible all week, pray to the Lord, and then I speak from my heart. It’s all about brutal honesty.”1

It’s also interesting to reflect on how Driscoll seeks to mobilize the members of his church. Mars Hill is a thoroughly missional church where every member is encouraged to be out engaging their community; there is a huge emphasis placed on hospitality evangelism. In many ways, it is a decentralized model of church, which empowers a plurality of elders and deacons. At the same time, there remains the central driving influence of Driscoll, whose personality seems to dominate everything, potentially to the detriment of his message.

It disappointed me that the books seem to have an obsession with numerical growth—even the structure of Confessions was based around size and with that the presumption that bigger was healthier. I couldn’t work out why someone who was so keen to work out church leadership from a careful study of the Scriptures did not apply the same type of rigour to working through the issue of church size and health. And while I agreed with his maxim of churches having few guiding principles yet many methods, I failed to see how he distinguished principles from pragmatic methods at times.

The books are full of ‘Driscollisms’. His larger-than-life personality is there on every page as he describes daily encounters and observations with wit, sarcasm and humour. It is no wonder that he has developed somewhat of a cult following among young punk pastors, of which the Acts 29 network is testimony.

The ‘Driscollisms’ can be colourful and funny, but also distracting and at times insensitive, such as when he describes a church drummer, who “beat the kit as if it were Rodney King” (Confessions, p. 69). He recounts being woken by a church member early one morning struggling with masturbation and porn. With a good dose of insensitivity and bluntness, he responded: “A naked lady is good to look at, so get a job, get a wife, ask her to get naked, and look at her instead” (Confessions, p. 60). These Chris-Rock-style one-liners tend to detract from the good stuff, and can begin to wear thin on the discerning reader who wants to take Ephesians 5:4 seriously. It is questionable whether edification concerns have always been placed before entertainment value, yet it remains a fun and stretching read.

I really liked Tim because he is one of the few manly men whom I have ever seen leading worship. I am not supposed to say this, but most of the worship dudes I have heard are not very dudely. They seem to be very in touch with their feelings and exceedingly chickified from playing too much acoustic guitar and singing prom songs to Jesus while channeling Michael Bolton and flipping their hair. Tim was a guy who brewed his own beer, smoked a pipe, rock climbed, mountain biked, river rafted, carried a knife in his belt, and talked about what he thought more than what he felt. We clicked because I drive a 1978 Chevy truck that gets single digits to the gallon and has a bacon air freshener and no functioning speedometer and because I fashion myself as the selfappointed leader of a heterosexual male backlash in our overly chickified city filled with guys drinking herbal tea and rocking out to Mariah Carey in their lemon yellow Volkswagen Cabriolets while wearing fuchsia sweater vests that perfectly match their open-toed shoes. (pp. 146-7)

Though Radical Reformission and Confessions are most likely to particularly benefit those who are planting and pastoring churches, they are a good read for anyone who wants to work through the tension of how we reach out without selling out. Particularly at a time where there are many turning to the new liberalism and faddish theology of the emergent church, Driscoll is a faithful voice who needs to be heard in this important conversation. He will force you to think through your understanding of Jesus and his gospel, what it means to be a God-glorifying church that delves richly into his Word, and how you might faithfully and effectively engage in the difficult task of mission.

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1 Janet Tu, ‘Pastor Mark packs ‘em in’, 30 November 2003, Pacific NorthWest: The Seattle Times Magazine, viewed 2 February 2007, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2003/1130/cover.html.

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