the New York Times Magazine has written a long article on Mark Driscoll. Who he is, where he came from, his ministry, his doctrine, Mars Hill Church, calvinism….the whole shootin’ match. here are four brief excerpts from a four page article. go read it all. very interesting stuff.
Mark Driscoll is American evangelicalism’s bête noire. In little more than a decade, his ministry has grown from a living-room Bible study to a megachurch that draws about 7,600 visitors to seven campuses around Seattle each Sunday, and his books, blogs and podcasts have made him one of the most admired — and reviled — figures among evangelicals nationwide. Conservatives call Driscoll “the cussing pastor” and wish that he’d trade in his fashionably distressed jeans and taste for indie rock for a suit and tie and placid choral arrangements. Liberals wince at his hellfire theology and insistence that women submit to their husbands. But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.
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On that Sunday, Driscoll preached for an hour and 10 minutes — nearly three times longer than most pastors. As hip as he looks, his message brooks no compromise with Seattle’s permissive culture. New members can keep their taste in music, their retro T-shirts and their intimidating facial hair, but they had better abandon their feminism, premarital sex and any “modern” interpretations of the Bible. Driscoll is adamantly not the “weepy worship dude” he associates with liberal and mainstream evangelical churches, “singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”
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New Calvinists are still relatively few in number, but that doesn’t bother them: being a persecuted minority proves you are among the elect. They are not “the next big thing” but a protest movement, defying an evangelical mainstream that, they believe, has gone soft on sin and has watered down the Gospel into a glorified self-help program. In part, Calvinism appeals because — like Mars Hill’s music and Driscoll’s frank sermons — the message is raw and disconcerting: seeker insensitive.
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Yet while some initially come for mundane reasons — their friends attend; they like the music — the Calvinist theology is often the glue that keeps them in their seats. They call the preaching “authentic” and “true to life.” Traditional evangelical theology falls apart in the face of real tragedy, says the 20-year-old Brett Harris, who runs an evangelical teen blog with his twin brother, Alex. Reducing God to a projection of our own wishes trivializes divine sovereignty and fails to explain how both good and evil have a place in the divine plan. “There are plenty of comfortable people who can say, ‘God’s on my side,’ ” Harris says. “But they couldn’t turn around and say, ‘God gave me cancer.’ ”
hat tip to Jonathan Dodson at the Creation Project.
I actually find this rather troubling. Is he serious, “they’re sinning by questioning?” So in other words, we shouldn’t think for ourselves? I’m also troubled by the comment about persecution making you a true believer. Fred Phelps’ followers believe that. And according to scripture, God doesn’t give people the spirit of infirmity (ref. to cancer).
very interesting article….not sure what to think about it. part of it affirms my appreciation for what he is doing, but a couple of things are concerning. need to investigate a bit….maybe the slant of the author.
I think there is a collision of two things going on here.
Number 1 and probably most importantly, it is a New York Times reporter writing the article. I don’t know anything about Molly Worthen except that she wrote this story. I appreciate her work on it and I appreciate that she recognizes that there is something unique going on at Mars Hill. However, I think her baseline secularism shows up in the last page when she talks about complementarianism and the Mars Hill church discipline process. the last sentence of the article seems to give away the bias: “Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.” This is a charge that Calvinists have always had made against them by people who refuse (for whatever reason) to engage with the Biblical substance of the doctrines of grace.
Number 2, there is a basic misunderstanding of the important responsibility of church membership in this country. In the U.S. we are so deeply ingrained in a culture of individualism, that we don’t really comprehend the passages in the Bible addressing the serious ramifications of joining a body of believers. In Hebrews 13:7 and 17 the writer makes it clear that placing yourself under the authority of elders is very serious. You have to find elders whose faith you can imitate and you have to obey them because they will give an account for you to God. Wow! Think about the awesome amount of responsibility that places on someone like Mark Driscoll who is responsible for and will give an account for more than 7600 persons. James 3:1 is also very serious for Mark, as is I Peter 5:1-6.
We are so used to our cultural congregational easy to join, easy to leave democratic church governance model that seeing a church trying to do it biblically seems extremely foreign. when such a foreign alien thing is run through a bias filter that is basically secular, then you get the kind of reporting that shows up on the last page of the article.
I am willing to give Driscoll and his fellow elders the benefit of the doubt on this incident and believe there is another side to the story that is not being told.
Melody, thanks for the comment. I have some questions for you to really ponder a while.
if God did give somebody cancer, would it be a good gift? why or why not? Who gets to decide what is good? Doesn’t God get that choice? Isn’t anything He does, by definition, righteous holy just? Why not?
Who are we to question God’s freedom in making these choices? aren’t we but dust that is here today and blown away tomorrow? aren’t we vessels (tools) for God to use to bring honor and glory to himself? isn’t that a glorious thing? Isn’t he worthy of such honor and glory?
Spend some time really studying Romans 9 and then tell me what you think. wrestle with these questions and their implications.
Keith,
I would argue the bias runs through the whole article. Eg: Wives submitting to their husbands. . . the horror! Neanderthals!
This is typical NYT journalism, examine the subject in its curio from your safe ivory tour, highlight the detractors without naming sources or participants, and marvel in how curious it all is!
Though most of the assertions and practices attributed to Driscoll are biblically based, the article leads you to believe they are his ideas.
Anyway, it is exactly what I expected to read.
exactly, Frank. Sure miss seeing you.
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Maybe. I mean, of course, it could be used to his glory, especially if he heals you from it. But I wouldn’t say, “Thank you God for giving me this potentially fatal disease.” Perhaps they were using that quote to be ironic, but I have a hard time believing that we don’t have ANY choices. Of course we do. we have the choice of whether or not to pray for healing, and more important, whether or not to accept his invitation to eternal life.
I understand what you are saying. Of course we have choices and the responsibility that comes with making them. At the same time, God is sovereign. Like Charles Spurgeon says, we have to be able to see two lines at once. http://bkingr.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/two-lines-at-once/
now I am going to propose a radical sounding thought to you. God does expect you to be grateful to him for cancer, job loss, the death of a child or whatever other storm comes into your life. Paul said that we need to give thanks in all circumstances because that is God’s will. I Thess. 5:18. Do you think that Paul meant that we should only give thanks for the circumstances we like?
Anybody can be grateful to receive things that they like and enjoy. Only a person who is supernaturally enabled by the Holy Spirit can be grateful to God for things that we don’t like or enjoy.
That is why John Piper says that God is most glorified in us when we are the most satisfied in him even in the midst of loss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s
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