Day 44- A little light reading that turned out to be pretty heavy

Total Mileage: 5,230

Song of the Day: Soundgarden . . . just like, all of Soundgarden.  After all, I am in Seattle.

Book of the Day: Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (Mark Driscoll)

I have a confession right up front: Mark Driscoll has rubbed me the wrong way a few times, principally because I wish I could get away with being that openly critical of people too.  I make a point of writing everything as if the person I’m writing about were reading over my shoulder.  If I offer a criticism, my goal is for that person to read it, agree with me, and work on fixing it.  Mark, on the other hand, shoots completely from the hip and doesn’t hesitate to use his words like a wrecking ball.  If Shane Claiborne’s rhetoric has barbs, Mark Driscoll’s has battleaxes.  Again, I’m not completely sure whether I’m saying this as a criticism or out of respect of the sheer amount of ballsiness that such rhetoric requires.  Mark’s line of thinking is that there are a number of heresies plaguing the church, and that, rather than donning the kid gloves to address these issues, we should be donning the boxing gloves instead.  We must be strong and forceful and frank in our discussions of modern-day heresies because the fate of the church is at stake.

I’m in agreement about pretty much all of that, but I also think that you can catch more flies with honey.  I find Mark’s style of preaching and writing entertaining and insightful, but he crosses a lot of lines in his rhetoric that I wouldn’t choose to cross myself.  I will certainly let the sarcasm fly in certain settings, but experience has taught me that the pulpit and published writings are not good places to do so.  I guess what worries me about Mark’s style is that the clips I’ve seen and the writings I’ve read don’t seem like they could have universal appeal.  They seem very much targeted at trendy, sarcastic, and ever-so-slightly-mean-spirited young adults . . . so, pretty much me.  Yep, if I were just a little more theologically conservative, I think I would be Mark Driscoll’s target audience.  Again, this is more an observation than a criticism.  I’m just pointing out that he has a niche, a very specific target audience for which his style seems ideal, but I won’t really get to test this until I can look around Sunday morning and see what sort of crowd is there.

Also, while I agree that the church needs dudes, I think we shouldn’t undercut the amazing contributions of chicks (to borrow Mark's terminology), but that’s a sermon for another day.  Okay, now that I’ve aired these concerns . . .

What Is the Emerging Church?

Mark Driscoll is part of a very nebulous movement known as the emerging church, and honestly, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what this is.  I know that there are books on it.  I have books on it.  I’ve even read those books on it, and I’m still not completely sure.  This is my best guess based on accumulated information though.  At its core, the emerging church seems to be an attempt to answer an ever-present question in Christian culture: “What’s next?”  We had the Ecumenical Councils.  We did the Great Schism.  We rocked the Reformation.  We’ve built contemporary megachurches, so what’s next?  The emerging church’s answer is to critique and assess everything we’ve done so far through frank and honest conversation and then to retool the church with a more missional and evangelical mindset that both complements and critiques the popular culture.  (Note that I’m using the little-e evangelical because I’m talking about evangelism, not the big-E Evangelical like the cultural movement.)  A frequent joke I hear around the div school is that, to start an emerging church, all you really need is a Bible, a candle, and a copy of The Matrix.  I like the emerging church.  The emerging church is cool.  It attempts to speak the language of the culture without being consumed by the culture, and given that I tend to speak in a constant stream of superhero analogies, I like that.  The main criticism leveled against the emerging church is that it often focuses so much on critiquing existing systems that it doesn’t offer up any of its own, but I think Mark Driscoll pretty much lays that criticism to rest with the in-depth explanations he has offered in his own books.  Of course, he still remains hyper-critical of existing structures, but it would be unfair to say that he doesn’t offer alternatives.

Again, this is all still pretty new stuff and still not very well-defined, but it’s been declared the next big thing, and there’s a ton of material out there on it, so I guess it’s a big deal.  Of course, I’ve heard a few people in academic circles already declaring the emerging church to be passé, but frankly, I’m of the opinion that . . . eh, who am I kidding?  I really don’t care what the church calls itself or what theologians call a movement or what the academy wants to label hip and trendy.  I just want us to mobilize more of our membership for outreach.  Call it whatever you want-- emerging, emergent, missional, evangelical, whatever.  I will not lose a minute of sleep over nomenclature.  As I’ve said before, we’re all a little too eager to come up with a name for the next big revolution, and yeah, the emerging church probably received the “next big thing” designation pretty prematurely, but it’s still got some useful things to contribute if we just wouldn’t get so caught up in trying to be a part of the next movement to reshape the whole church.  Sometimes, we as Christians want to be a part of something so badly that we forget that we already are a part of something.  We want to be a part of the movement that changes the direction of the church when, really, we are already a part of the movement that is changing the direction of the whole world.  Look, there’s always going to be a “next big thing” in the church, but so long as we’re pursuing Christ’s call to love our God and love our neighbors, it doesn’t matter what fancy title we give it.  I like the emerging church.  I’m in agreement with most of what the movement stands for.  Still, I don’t like the message that it’s going to be the revolution that somehow answers all the church’s problems.  It’s a good movement, but we need to spend a little less time talking about it and a little more time embodying its principles.

Sorry, that turned into kind of a rant.  I think Mark’s style is rubbing off on me.  Better change the subject.

Questions Every Church Should Ask

Confessions of a Reformission Rev. tells the story of the founding and growth of Mars Hill Church here in Seattle-- how Mark Driscoll, having only become a Christian six years before, accepted a call to minister to young adults (specifically young men) in the Seattle area.  I’m only about a third of the way in, but Mark has already given me a pretty in-depth insight into Mars Hill’s theology and mission through these introductory chapters.  In particular, he asks a series of questions in the opening chapter that are good for any minister to contemplate:

Will your Rev. require reformission?

“Reformission” is Mark’s term for a church that simultaneously loves the Gospel, loves the people within the church, and loves the culture outside the church (without being consumed by it).  Mark explains that a church needs all three of these loves to be fully functional, and when one is lacking, you get a lot of the modern-day heresies.  Reformission is very much about being missionaries right in your own community, and it seems to bear a lot of similarity to the missional church model that I’ve explored previously in this blog (particularly in the context of “missional vs. attractional”).

Will your church be traditional and institutional, contemporary and evangelical, or emerging and missional?

Even though it would be pretty easy for Mark to throw stones in this section and argue that “emerging and missional” is the truest church, he doesn’t do so.  He argues that each of these models has an appropriate setting, and he also explains that they all have radically different views on missions, theology, the role of the pastor, interaction with popular culture, and how the church ought to look in general.  He encourages that church leaders sit down together and figure out which kind of church they are and use that assessment to shape the direction they take their ministry next.

Honestly, this picture cracks me up, so I keep using it.

Will your church be an emergent liberal church or an emerging evangelical church?

While he is himself part of the larger stream of the emerging church, Mark defines the emergent church as being inherently liberal, and this section had some of my favorite inflammatory sound bites.  In particular, Mark mentions his concern about “the questioning of a literal eternal torment in hell, which is a denial that holds up until, in an ironic bummer, you die and find yourself in hell.”  (Note that this was actually written four years before the publication of Love Wins.)  You can see what I mean about his somewhat angry and sarcastic humor.  Another example would be his concern over “the rejection of biblically defined gender roles, thereby contributing to the ‘mantropy’ epidemic among young guys now fretting over the best kind of looffah for their skin type and the number of women in the military dying to save their Bed, Bath, and Beyond from terrorist attacks.”  Again, this sort of language is sometimes a little tough to take seriously.  He also describes Jesus as “flamboyantly heterosexual” and a “misogynist patriarchal meanie.”  Do I even need to comment at this point?  If I talk about his rhetoric too much, I’m eventually going to run out of synonyms for verbal pugilism.  Basically, his argument is that liberalism undercuts the authority of Scripture and compromises a church’s ability to evangelize, so while the previous question had multiple right answers, Mark is clearly arguing in favor of the latter option here.

Will you proclaim a gospel of forgiveness, fulfillment, or freedom?

Mark makes a pretty decisive attack against traditional and contemporary churches in this section, arguing that focusing too much on our own forgiveness causes us to become judgmental, while focusing on fulfillment is really just repackaging pride as “self-esteem.”  Rather, he advocates that we focus on the Gospel as a message of freedom and explains that this is the approach that the emerging church takes.

Will your church be attractional, missional, or both?

Mark highlights that, biblically speaking, our call is more of a “sending out” than a “bringing in,” but we really need both to have a thriving church.  He explains that attractional churches (arguably the dominant model in present-day America) see themselves more as purveyors of goods and services, but that these churches also need to actively send people out as the missional churches do.  Church members ought to see themselves as missionaries, not just consumers.

What size shoe will your church wear?

Mark explains that churches exist in all sizes because different Christians have different preferences, and different-sized churches can implement different strategies to remain relevant and effective in their contexts.  We can’t attach a moral value to size since such a practice inevitably leads to unconstructive criticism of other churches rather than to cooperation with them.  Reading this section, I thought back to the disparaging remarks about megachurches that I’ve heard from worshipers in smaller churches, and, according to Mark, a lot of experts are saying that a return to smaller churches and house churches will be the result of the megachurch’s inevitable fizzling.  Mark argues differently, suggesting that people’s individual preferences will ensure that there is always a range of church sizes, but it could be that we will see more polarization in the future, with the megas getting larger and the smaller churches getting smaller.  I’m not completely sold on either theory really, but I’m still forming my opinion.

Will your church have a mission of community or a community of mission?

Mark argues that a fixation on building a community within the church can sometimes distract us from the call to mission, so he puts forth the axiomatic idea that a community must serve missions, not the other way around.  Given the nature of my research this summer, I’m in agreement so long as he’s talking about the community within the church itself.  In the case of neighborhoods outside the church, I think about New Song and Lawndale and other safe haven churches, and I feel like their community-building focus is very much a mission (and a very crucial one), so Mark’s  point is a good one, but it might need a little clarification.

Will your leaders work for guilt or conviction?

Here, Mark talks about the need for a pastor to be a vision-caster (rather than just a facilities manager who appeases people’s needs), and in the case of young churches, this is absolutely the case.  As churches grow older, the needs of the congregation often require the hiring of additional specialized staff (if the church’s size will accommodate such hiring), or the pastor herself/himself must be retrained in order to deal with these new needs.  Sure, I would love to be an architect like Mark advocates, but I feel like a pastor needs to be fully versed in both vision-casting and management.

Do you have the guts to shoot your dogs?

Look, this was too wild for me to try to paraphrase or summarize, so I’m just going to copy what he said verbatim.  It’s only a paragraph anyway.

“Dogs are idiotic ideas, stinky styles, stupid systems, failed facilities, terrible technologies, loser leaders, and pathetic people.  Most churches know who and what their dogs are but simply lack the courage to pull the trigger and shoot their dogs.  Therefore, it is vital to name with brutal candor the people, programs, structures, and ministry philosophies that are dogs needing to be shot.  Be sure to make it count and shoot them only once so that they don’t come back and bite you.”

Dude, harsh.  I mean, I get it, and I can sympathize, but seriously, harsh.  And why'd you have to go and make me think of Old Yeller?  Excuse me for a minute while I go cry masculine tears into my Spider-Man blanket.  [muffled sobbing]  Okay, where was I?  Oh, right.  The last question:

Can you wield a sword and a trowel?

Using Nehemiah as a reference point, Mark argues that it is not enough to build churches-- we as Christians must be able to defend the institutions we construct against the forces of darkness and Hell.

Inserted this because I just couldn't end this post with Old Yeller.

And those are Mark Driscoll’s ten questions to ask when starting up a new church.  Mark has also put into words a lot of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately (such as how a pastor and a church are sort of one and the same during a church’s infancy), and he’s also articulated a familiar idea in a new way: “I’m scared of God, so I do what he says.”  Honestly, while I definitely laughed at that statement’s play on the concept of fear of God, I also found it a little refreshing.  I’m still figuring out exactly why.

I’m still only about a third of the way through this book, so I’ve got quite a bit left to read, and I know that a pastor’s book certainly will not give me the full picture of a church and its approach to missions (or, at least, I don’t think it should).  Still, this is pretty interesting stuff, and even though I certainly don’t agree with Mark Driscoll on every issue, he’s giving me a lot to think about.

More to come.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom