Wednesday Link List

“For what we are about to receive…”  The human and the dog seem sincere but cats are always overly dramatic. (And why does the cat have a marking that looks like another cat’s tail? Photoshop? No way!)

Time for another link list. Try to have your suggestions in by 6:00 PM Eastern on Mondays. More during the week at Twitter.

• Hey! We finally made the Church Relevance list of the Top 200 Ministry Blogs, at number 143. Now what will I complain about? A giant shout-out to Kent Shaffer at Church Relevance.
• From the weekend: Best Mother’s Day graphic.
• Michael Patton notes that while Calvinists uphold ‘perseverance of the saints,’ he often encounters some among that group that lack assurance of salvation.
  
• At Red Letter Christians: The Six Worst Things About American Christianity. Wait, there’s only six?
  
• I once heard that Billy Graham once said his calling to ministry was simply that he was trying to do what Charles Templeton started but never finished. That, and the fact my father once served in ministry with Templeton draws me to articles like this one whenever they appear.
• Do-Not-Do-This Department: BibleDude offers six ways to ruin a mission trip.
• Does Greg Boyd think that, despite their different beliefs about Jesus, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are saved? Check out this five minute video.
  
• Diane Lindstrom offers a six-part series on The Sneaky Sins. (The link is to the intro, then click the banner and scroll through malice, deceit, hyprocisy, envy and slander.)
  
• Recurring theme: This time in Northern Ireland, another printer is threatened with court action over refusing to print material that goes against his beliefs.
• This week at Rachel Held Evans, we were introduced to a young Assemblies of God pastor Jonathan Martin (that’s two links to RHE.) And here’s a short preaching sample.
  
• Dannah Gresh does a TED Talk at Penn State University on the subject of virginity.
  
• A blogger calls into question the youth ministry concept, in light of areas where he feels it has failed us.
  
• A former pastor and church planter now finds himself roaming among various churches and offers ten observations now that he’s not an insider.
• “I know who made the environment,” Mark Driscoll reportedly said. “He’s coming back, and he’s going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.”  More in a Religion New Service piece comparing Driscoll to Pat Robertson.
  
• Music video link # 1: Two years ago we did a story here on a Nepalese worship band, Aradhna. I was going to run a link to something more recent, but opted instead for one of their earlier videos which includes English translation.
• Music video link #2: If this hadn’t existed I would have added it to my own YouTube channel. Classic Maranatha! Music worship as Erick Nelson sings Fairest Lord Jesus.  This was posted a few months ago and has only seen a handful of views. Let’s change that.
• Music video link #3: Classic British TV footage of Cliff Richard covering Randy Stonehill’s First Prayer. Whether or not you believe in “praying the prayer;” this is a type of song that models Christian behavior; a type of song we just don’t hear anymore.
• Music video link #4: From our own channel, the 1988 kids album with no kids, Prism Red rocks out Amazing Grace. Heck, let’s add it below.
• From @philvischer ‘s Twitter: “Got a Groupon ad for a 3-pack of ‘Jezebel Panties.’ Yes, the most evil woman in the Bible now has her own line of underwear.”
  
• New blogs added to my 700+ bookmarks this week: The Nuance with Zach J. Hoag and a multi-author blog, Christian Blessings.
• Looking for more links? Ed Cyzewski offers five posts from Christian blogs you’ve never seen.
  

Songs with substance: Classic worship

If you check the right hand margin over at Christianity 201, you’ll see that all of the various music resources that have appeared there are listed and linked alphabetically. Take a moment to discover — or re-discover — some worship songs and modern hymns from different genres.

Wednesday Link List

Happy 12-12-12

• Ketzel The Cat Menorah can be ordered here and was discovered, with lots of other Hanukkah kitsch here. If you don’t know the story behind this symbol, read this.
• Speaking of kitsch, I never thought the introduction this fall of Theologian Trading Cards — yes this really happened — would lead to people wanting to collect cards that have been autographed.
• He seems a bit young, but someone has already written a Rob Bell biography.  Here’s another review of Rob Bell and a New American Christianity.
• Mark Driscoll’s home state, Washington, recently legalized small-quantity possession of marijuana. He reflects on this, noting, “people tend to stop maturing when they start self-medicating.”
• Di Jameikan Nyuu Testiment (the Jamaican New Testament) represents four years research work and US$350,000; funded by was the American Bible Society, Wycliffe Group of Companies, British and Foreign Bible Society, and Spring Harvest through the Bible Society of The West Indies. Read more about the Jiizas Buk here and here.
• Jen Wilkin writes a must-read for parents on guarding Sabbath-rest for your children.
• Maybe it’s just me, but the idea of someone buried in a glass-sided coffin especially here in North America just creeps me out; even if the guy was/is a saint.
• Here’s a skillfully-written list by Rachel Held Evans of five things you don’t have to walk away from if you leave conservative fundamentalism.
• If you show up on Wednesdays looking for pictures to use on your blog, you might want to get to know Catholic Memes (Facebook page) or Catholic Memes (website).
• “In an irony of history, the time of spiritual preparation and silent waiting has become the busiest, most frenetic season of the year.” Read more from Philip Clayton.
• Here’s an article I wrote a year ago about what was then the top news story for at least month, concerning a popular college football coach and his inappropriate relationships with kids too young to attend the college in question. It’s interesting to read this now that we know how the story ended.
• And from exactly a year ago, Steven Furtick bats it out of the park at a Liberty Convocation. I am really enjoying this series.
• A Jewish music preservation group sets out to make the definitive Hanukkah compilation and ends up with an album dripping with Christmas cheer.
• And speaking of music, I don’t know who wrote this song, or who is singing, but it gets my award for most costume changes in a four-minute praise video. This had ‘zero views’ when I discovered it.

 

Wednesday Link List

A different approach to links this week.

• Some happy music to start, here’s a lyrics video for Shooting Star by Owl City.  Wish we could get the song lyrics to look like this on Sunday mornings.
  
• Does anyone besides me have to look twice at a sentence that uses the phrase, “multi-sensory worship experiences.”? I mean, I know what they’re talking about, but…
  
• Kevin DeYoung unravels the approach we use and the words we choose when speaking to (or about) gay Christians:

If we are speaking to cultural elites who despise us and our beliefs, we want to be bold and courageous.
If we are speaking to strugglers who fight against same sex attraction, we want to be patient and sympathetic.
If we are speaking to sufferers who have been mistreated by the church, we want to be apologetic and humble.
If we are speaking to shaky Christians who seem ready to compromise the faith for society’s approval, we want to be persuasive and persistent.
If we are speaking to liberal [or gay] Christians who have deviated from the truth once delivered for the saints, we want to be serious and hortatory.
If we are speaking to gays and lesbians who live as the Scriptures would not have them live, we want to be winsome and straightforward.
If we are speaking to beligerent Christians who hate or fear homosexuals, we want to be upset and disappointed.

• Here’s a link all the way back to May, where N. T. Wright offers a different view of heaven. The heaven we understand he says would sound foreign to people in Jesus’ time. He also proposes we think more of heaven as overlapping or intersecting with the here and now.
  
• Perry Noble joins the ranks of megachurch pastors with books released through major publishers. Unleash is, from what I can tell, largely the story of New Spring Church and about God helping you unleash your vision. Here’s a sample chapter.
• Another Mars Hill (Seattle) horror story. This one describes an exorcism. There’s no happy ending:

Why do you think Mark [Driscoll] claimed that your “demons” were “sexual”?

It’s always his go-to topic. Ironically, my husband had more “demons” than one could imagine. But his demons were of no consequence and unimportant to the church. It was somehow my fault because “maybe I wasn’t the godly, providing wife” I was supposed to be.

That said, Mark was also aware that my husband and I had sexual troubles from day one. And regarding our sex life–because I was essentially grinning and bearing it most of the time–Mark concluded that I was a terrible wife to my husband. Even when my husband looked at porn, Mark blamed me because I wasn’t doing my “wifely duty”. I felt violated when sex was expected of me. I was intensely miserable and neglected throughout my marriage, but Mark deemed that irrelevant because I was the wife and my duty was to serve my husband sexually.

• A church choir made up of seniors answers the question we’ve always wanted to ask: How hot is it under those choir robes?
  
• Craig Keener guests at Huffington Post Religion and suggests that young earth creationism, in an attempt to defend the truth of the Bible, does more harm than good.
  
• James MacDonald addressed the Southern Baptist Convention last week on the subject of active faith versus inactive faith, and they got to hear this poem:

One night I had a wondrous dream,
 One set of footprints there was seen,
 The footprints of my precious Lord,
 But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
 And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”
 Those prints are large and round and neat,
 ”But Lord they are too big for feet.”

“My child,” He said in somber tones,
 ”For miles I carried you alone.
 I challenged you to walk in faith,
 But you refused and made me wait.”

“You disobeyed, you would not grow,
 The walk of faith, you would not know.
 So I got tired, I got fed up,
 and there I dropped you on your butt.”

“Because in life, there comes a time,
 when one must fight, and one must climb.
 When one must rise and take a stand,
 or leave their butt prints in the sand.”

• Daniel Jepsen goes to the movies: “I saw the SF movie Prometheus last week.  I won’t review it or summarize it here except to note that it featured a creature far rarer than aliens in Hollywood’s universe: a practicing Christian.  She is even portrayed in a positive light, and is, in fact, something of the heroine of the story.”
• Darrell Dash notes that material benefits, combined with intangible benefits, added to future rewards equals the situation that pastors are well compensated, thank you.
  
• Timothy Kurek has rewritten the playbook on incarnational, choosing to identify as gay even though he says he isn’t in order to understand their persecution.  His adventure could fill a book:

Facebook: Timothy Kurek is an aspiring writer, proficient drinker, laudable instigator, and recovering Pharisee. 

YouTube video description: From bigotry to empathy, this is the true story of a conservative Christian attempting to find the answers. And it all begins with two words. “I’m Gay.” (Jesus in Drag, The Book Trailer; linked above.)

MSNBC Interview: “I was pretty immersed in that experience.”

• Author Karen Spears Zacharias debriefs the Jerry Sandusky trial: “When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is hurt denied. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is responsibility deafened. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is shame misplaced. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is evil granted access.”
  
• It’s 431 .pdf pages, but Bible aficionados — or perhaps people who have never read an interlinear Bible — might enjoy the Mechanical Translation of Genesis.
  
• As CNN’s Belief Blog put it, “She went from atheist to Catholic in just over 1,000 words.” Leah Libresco announces her conversion on her blog:

Libresco says one of the most common questions she has received is how she’ll deal with atheists now.

“The great thing about a lot of the atheist and skeptic community is that people talk more critically about ideas and want to see proof provided,” Libresco said. “That kind of analytical thinking is completely useful and the Catholic Church doesn’t need to and should not be afraid of because if you’ve got the facts on your side, you hope they win.” 

• When Benny Hinn remarries his former wife Suzanne, Jack Hayford will perform the re-nuptials. Hinn said, “We never broke the covenant. Our marriage has been restored. We just want to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
  
• Pete Wilson confesses that there are three things he learned early on in ministry — about problems, conflict and giving up — that he later had to unlearn.
• Not a Christian site/blog link, but you have to feel for these two kids who got sunburned when the school refused to apply sunscreen on field day.
  

Wednesday Link List

The timely graphic above has been making the rounds on Facebook.

• Who was where, and when?  This Bible Gateway timeline of Holy Week is worth studying.  Click to see the post, then click again to see the image, and click a third time to enlarge it. You’ve never seen the Good Friday & Easter story in such detail.
  
• And if you’re looking for a meaningful Easter song, go back a year on this blog and revisit this one.  Or this one.
  
• A Christian group prayed over a section of highway leading into their town and anointed it with oil.  An atheist group decided to wash off the blessing. My favorite quote from this article: “What is inexplicable to me is how atheists or secularists could possibly be affected or  ‘offended’ by prayers when they don’t view them as having any real value?”
  
• A Delta Airlines passengers refuses to shut off his iPad showing a child-centered pornographic film. The flight attendant refused to intervene.
  
• Teens can see the Bully movie in Canada, but can’t in the U.S. In the meantime, the movie is drawing out discussion to a level that gives the issue some profile.
  
• Mark Driscoll has stepped down from chairing the Acts 29 church planting network, turning responsibility over to Matt Chandler, which in turn relocates the ministry to Dallas from Seattle.  But he’s also stepping down from the council of The Gospel Coalition. 2-in-1 story at Wartburg Watch.
  
• The blog Church and Synagogue Security News, now has a section devoted to security issues arising on mission trips.
  
• CNN’s Religion blog gets inside the spiritual heritage of Oikos University, the Christian college in California where Monday’s shooting took place. Excerpt: “Korean-American Christianity probably represents the fastest-growing part of the Asian American religious landscape…”
  
• If you enjoyed yesterday’s post by Alicia Yost from America’s Next Top Mommy, here’s another of her well-written adventures in parenting.
  
• If October Baby isn’t playing at a theater near you, here’s the official trailer.  And here’s a review: Jeff and his wife really liked it.
  
• Check out a couple of (very) modern worship songs from Harvest Bible Chapel in Oakville, Ontario.
  
• Seductive faith: If it feels good, you’ve done it right. But consider the source of that kind of thinking.
  
• Meet Jason Meyer, touted as the successor to John Piper at Bethlehem Church in Minneapolis. Elsewhere, Piper says, “The reason we are moving forward with the succession plan now has to do with a strong conviction that good pastoring is more than preaching.”
• Financing a Christian college education ain’t easy. But a “miracle” can happen if you’re willing to work for it!  This Canadian story mentions a few principles that may apply more widely.
• Nobody puts their hand up anymore in school, or elsewhere.  It’s all done with clickers.  Even the kids at the Bible Quiz at Southgate Church of Christ got mentioned in this New York Times technology story. They’re using 150 of them to record answers to 180 multiple choice questions.
• Want more links? There’s always Lisa Buffaloe’s Links to Blog Blessings. Or check out The Read and Share File at Master’s Table.
  
• Note to regular readers:  The link to the Christian Blog Topsites that usually appears in the sidebar has been removed as the site was apparently hacked. My computer did not entirely avoid some consequences, but is at least functional. Citing health concerns, proprietor Mark Strohm has decided to take the site down. We thank Mark for his years of service to this blog, introducing us to new blogs and introducing new readers to ours.

Mark Driscoll Can Be Blunt, Rachel Held Evans Can’t

Warning: Today’s post uses a word that is that a heart of this week’s major Evangelical controversy.

So anyway, there’s my wife, sitting in church a couple of weeks ago, and the speaker is doing a two-week series on Song of Solomon and he explains that a particular phrase is referring to “her lady bits.”

I was attending another church, where the pastor was pursuing a much safer study of Matthew 5, a particular teaching of Jesus which doesn’t contain any need to use the phrase, “her lady bits;” nor the V-word which my wife informs me showed up in the sermon also.

“I’m so glad I was not there for that;” I told my wife.

“Are you kidding;” she replied; “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world!”

I guess you had to be there. Or maybe not.

The V-word, which, we might as well be clear, is ‘vagina,’ also comes up in the manuscript for Rachel Held Evans new book, My Year of Biblical Womanhood; to be published, in theory anyway, by Thomas Nelson.

It actually appears twice in the text, and I’ve read both occurrences from a fringe website that claimed to be authoritative on this matter.

The publisher, Thomas Nelson, still intoxicated by the success of recent hits like Jesus Calling and Heaven is For Real, is now enjoying some additional press from this, and is hedging on the direction that Rachel should go. She can leave the words in, but have that adversely affect sales, or she can take out the offending (but not exactly slang) terms.

Earlier in the month she wrote:

They won’t let me use the word “vagina” in my book because we have to sell it to Christian bookstores, which apparently have a thing against vaginas. I make a big scene about it and say that if Christian bookstores stuck to their own ridiculous standards, they wouldn’t be able carry the freaking Bible. I tell everyone that I’m going to fight it out of principle, but I cave within a few days because I want Christian bookstores to carry the sanitized version of my book because I want to make a lot of money, because we’ve needed a new roof on our house for four years now, and because I really want a Mac so I can fit in at the mega-churches. I feel like such a fraud.

Then, last week, this:

I want to make it clear that it is not my editors at Thomas Nelson who are insisting that I take out the word “vagina.” I can stick to my guns, keep “vagina” in, and I suspect Thomas Nelson will still publish the book. The problem, as I understand it, is that Christian bookstores probably won’t carry it, and Thomas Nelson sells a lot of books to Christian bookstores.

So, as sad as it is, we have a business decision to make. Do we risk losing a bunch of potential sales in order to keep the word “vagina” in this context? Or do we decide to choose our battles and let it go?  And do I risk alienating myself from the Thomas Nelson team—which has been great so far—because I refuse to cooperate with Christian retailing, their area of expertise?

Blogger Tony Jones weighed in:

The problems with this are too numerous to enumerate. Among them:

1. Many Christian (read, conservative evangelical) bookstores won’t stock her book anyway, because they’ll consider it “feminist.”
2. Even if they do, they won’t sell many copies.
3. Wait, there are still Christian bookstores?
4. Wait, there are still bookstores?

Ha ha! Tony! Funny guy! But I agree with point #1, RHE is probably already too edgy for the conservative stores at issue.

But as I wrote at Christian Book Shop Talk, I’m not sure that its right for Thomas Nelson or Rachel or anyone else to presume on what bookstores are or are not going to carry.

…[I]t’s nice to think that the brick-and-mortar retail side of Christian book distribution still carries some weight. Guess we’re not dead yet.

But I also think they’ve been extremely presumptuous as to how prudish we really are.

Because the truth of the matter, is that this isn’t about you and me, the owners of independent bookstores and small chains; this is about LifeWay, because it’s LifeWay — or perhaps even more accurately, Baptists — who are going to raise the roof over this word.

Again, I’m not sure that this is about “Christian bookstores” as opposed to “a Christian bookstore chain.”

And as Rachel herself pointed out, this isn’t the first time:

In Ian Cron’s fantastic book, Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me, which was also published by Thomas Nelson, he writes this: “Did I mention that it’s cold? You have no idea how far a man’s testicles can recede into his body until you have jumped into the Dorset Qarry…My testicles were very, very angry.”

And in To Own a Dragon, the ever-talented Donald Miller writes, “I felt as though all the men in the world secretly met in some warehouse late at night to talk about man things, to have secret handshakes, to discuss how great it was to have a penis and what an easy thing it was to operate…”

Which brings us to Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk, who really puts this in perspective reminding us of that other rather blunt book which came out just a few weeks ago, Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll.

Why is this an issue, especially with all the triumphalistic chest-thumping lately in the Christian industrial complex about how courageous Mark and Grace Driscoll were to answer questions about various sexual practices with graphic detail in their book?

Oh sorry, I forgot. Mark is a man’s man, and the LEADER™ of a megachurch. He and his church are controversial. He swears for effect because he’s CUTTING EDGE™ and trying to reach hard core unbelievers. Driscoll is ANOINTED™. He’s MISSIONAL™ and he’s got satellite campuses and he goes on shows like The View and stands up for THE FAITH™ by saying that homosexuals need to REPENT™ and that sex is only for married heterosexuals and that wives should SUBMIT™ to their husband’s leadership in the bedroom and every other area of life.

Mark Driscoll is the Christian bookseller’s dream… There’s not an ounce of thoughtfulness, nuance, or mystery about him. It’s either blackest black or whitest white, expressed in monosyllabic, in your face, turn or burn PREACHIN’™. He can say vagina or penis or oral sex or anal sex or any word or phrase he likes because he is a Reformission Rev in pagan freakin’ Seattle and he is REACHING THE LOST™.

But Rachel, well, she has a vagina and it would be shameful for her to talk about it or even use the word in public. She’s not a pastor or LEADER™ (God forbid!).

140 people have signed a petition at Am*zon to have the word put back into the manuscript.  

Karen Spears Zacharias writes:

I suppose when they signed contract with Rachel it never occurred to the publisher that she would have the balls to talk about her vagina in a book about womanhood, heh? But then I suppose Thomas Nelson wouldn’t use the word balls either, heh?…

…And theologians argue over why people today don’t find the Church relevant to their lives. Perhaps the answer to that question could be found in the books Christians refuse to print, sell, buy and read.

Sometimes it seems that all Christians publishers really want us “good Christian” women to write about are Amish Vampires.

Suzannah at the blog So Much Shouting writes:

Yes, this is a ridiculous conversation to be having in 2012.  But I believe that it is symptomatic of a fear within the church of bodies and sexuality–especially female sexuality.

Are we not a people who worship an Incarnate God and believe that our own bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made?

Blogger Allison Buzard writes:

The big question I’m getting at is this: Church, are we willing to redeem our culture’s view on sex and sexuality?

It’s possible, but we have to get over our own awkwardness.  And it’s critical that we do because here’s the reality: There are lots of folks sitting in our church pews every week who are having sex.  Some of them attend your junior high youth group.  Some of them are in your college ministry.  Some of them are in your senior ministry.  Some of them are married.  Some of them are single.  But trust you me, sex is happening amongst your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and we out to be talking about it.

And then — if you haven’t had your fill of this already — there’s the Nazarene discussion forum, Naznet, which, if you really want to consider this further, has a number of comments which reflect the variety of views on this subject.  (Note to self: Visit this site again sometime soon.) 

Conclusion:

We live in a time when battle lines are being drawn between conservative Christians and progressive Christians.  I usually find myself standing somewhere in between, trying to build a bridge between both groups; trying to maintain doctrinal orthodoxy while at the same time recognizing that this ain’t 1949 or 1953 or 1961. It’s 2012 already.The world changed in-between; the world changed last year; the world changed last week.

We need to be mindful of the duality as we interact with the broader culture; as we live between two worlds; as we exist as aliens and strangers, having citizenship in another country; but having to live, eat, breathe, work and play in a world that’s not our permanent home. (See graphic below.)

To that end, we need authors and publishers who will translate our message into the vernacular of the day, or even the hour. We need books and book distribution networks that will illustrate Christian worldview in a way that people can understand. 

In the end, the books we create should, at times, make us uncomfortable.

UPDATE: MAY 10, 2012:

Another author, Karen Spears Zacharias faced similar resistance to explicit content and released her true story highlighting the impact of child abuse, A Silence of Mockingbirds through MacAdam Cage Publishing — in hardcover at US$ 25 — your local store can order it through Ingram using 9781596923751

Microblogging Friday

Heard a couple of interesting quotes from The Elephant Room II at James MacDonald’s blog; here’s the first one:

T. D. Jakes on the need for the church to be more integrated:

“When you write the books you read, your truth will always be distorted.”

Second quote from ER II

I think it was Crawford Lorrits on the need for us to stop obsessing on the finer points of doctrine when we’re supposed to be evangelizing:

“When someone is drowning, don’t describe the features of the rescue boat.”

from David Platt quotations at GoodReads.com

“We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”
― Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

More microblogging this week at this entry at C201 blog

Seattle Local News Covers Mars Hill Church Discipline

At a book industry blog I write, I always tell retailers and publishers if you really want to get to know an author, find out what their hometown newspaper is saying about their book.

Well, if you really want a further look inside what’s going on with Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church in Seattle, you can’t do better than the city’s top station for local news. That station is KOMO, but the story has elements of KULT.

Tony Jones has the news clip.

Story transcript.

Want to delve deeper into the issue of church discipline and spiritual accountability of members?  This article at The Wartburg Watch goes into greater detail and also links you to a series of CT articles on the subject. 

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• Suffering from Link List withdrawal? Does the mere site of a bullet-point bullet here make you wish it was Wednesday again? Rachel Held Heavens will keep you going with her Sunday Superlatives. Here’s last week’s.
  

Mark Driscoll to UK Church: You Suck

His offensiveness knows no borders. I wrestled with the headline (post title) for this one, but there’s no polite way to encapsulate the partial transcript of this radio interview with Seattle’s Mark Driscoll and Surrey, England’s Justin Brierley host of the radio show Unbelievable, whose wife happens to pastor a local congregation across the pond…

This is just a sample, click the link at the end to continue reading –if you dare! — or just click over now. (The link in the first paragraph takes you directly to the full podcast.)  Commentary is by Chris Massey.

Justin Brierley, the unfailingly polite host of the British radio program, Unbelievable, recently podcast the entirety of his hour-long interview with Mark Driscoll.

Things did not go well.

There are many moments in this interview that could provide fodder for discussion. For example, Christians in the UK may be rather non-plussed by Driscoll impugning their entire country for not having, well, Mark Driscoll:

Driscoll: I go too far sometimes. Almost every other pastor I know doesn’t go far enough and that’s okay ’cause the church tends to be led by people who are timid and fearful of going too far. I mean, let’s just say this. … Right now, name for me the one young good Bible teacher that’s known across Great Britain.

Brierley: Hmm …

Driscoll: You don’t have one. That is a problem. There’s a bunch of cowards who aren’t telling the truth.

Brierley: So you think that the Bible teaches …

Driscoll: You don’t have one. You don’t have one young guy who can preach the Bible that anybody’s listening to on the whole earth.

I’ll leave it to the Brits to decide whether their churches suffer from a glut of cowards and a want of controversial celebrity preachers.

Much of the interview revolved around Driscoll’s views on women and their role in marriage and the church. When Brierley confessed that his own wife is, in fact, the pastor of his church, things got incredibly awkward:

Driscoll: I’m not shocked by the answer, by the questions you ask. I love you, but you’re annoying. ‘Cause you’re picking on all the same issues that those who are classically evangelical, kind of liberal, kind of feminist do.

Brierley: I think it’s because those are the issues here that people are thinking about. … [Brierley says he's impressed by much of what Mars Hill Church is doing].

Driscoll: ‘Kay, let me ask you a few hard questions.

Brierley: Go ahead, go ahead.

Driscoll: So, in the church that your wife pastors, how many young men have come to Christ in the last year?

[It's clear from the tone of Driscoll's question that this is not a bona fide inquiry about the souls in Brierley's church. It's a veiled criticism. Driscoll is going to prove that women pastors can't get the job done (i.e. attracting men to the church) and he's going to belittle Brierley's wife & church to do it.]

Brierley: Well we’re not a huge church, unlike yours, but I’d say there’s two or three probably in the last year who certainly, yah, I’d say have come to Christ in a pretty meaningful way.

Driscoll: Okay and in the church, what percentage is young men, single men?

Brierley: It’s difficult to say off the top of my head, but I’ll freely say it’s certainly not a big percentage, no.

Driscoll: Kay, and are you okay with that? Do you think that’s the best way to go?

Brierley: No, but can it be so easily put down to the fact that the church is being run by a woman? I mean, is that …

Driscoll: Yup. Yup. You look at your results, you look at my results, and you look at the variable that’s most obvious.

[Yes, he did just say that. His results are better than hers. And it's because he's a man and she's a woman.]

…continue reading Mark Driscoll’s efforts at international diplomacy…

My Letter to Andrew

Andrew is the central character in a story about church discipline at Mars Hill Seattle which has blown up in the Christian blogosphere since Matthew Paul Turner posted part one on January 23rd.  (Covered on this blog, here.)

Or at least he was the central character. More of the recent conversation concerns ecclesiology, and church discipline in general and opportunity for ad hominum remarks concerning Mark Driscoll.

So I’m wondering if anyone is really reaching out to Andrew in all this…

Dear Andrew,

It’s never a good idea to offer advice where it wasn’t asked for, nor is it a good practice to listen to unsolicited advice from people you don’t know.  I’m admittedly half a continent away, and equally separated by age; and there are those close to you who more suited to speak into your life.

I just wanted you to know that besides re-blogging what Matthew Paul Turner wrote, I also prayed for you. James 3:2 says, “We all stumble in many ways…” Welcome to the community of the broken.

In hindsight, you probably weren’t ready to get married. You know that now, and I know there is much remorse attached to your story. You are no doubt much wiser today than you were just a few months ago. Of all the fruit of the Spirit, self-control is the most needed when facing temptation that is being constantly fed by a 21st century worldview of sexuality.

One of the things about your story struck me very early on in MPT’s version of it: “Andrew was born and raised Independent Fundamental Baptist, so not only was Andrew accustomed to Mark’s anger-laced fiery style of sermon, he had a deep appreciation for it.”  It never really occurred to me that people could be attracted by an authoritarian leadership style, but if that’s what you grew up with, I can see that it might have been a comfortable fit, once you got past a few of the doctrinal differences.

But then — and at this point someone would normally write, ‘through no fault of your own,’ except that it was, after all through a fault of your own’ — you saw the other side of how this authority plays out when someone apparently crosses the line from “in” to “out.”  To be labeled a “wolf,” or called a “predator.”  That’s strong language. There are some who would say you had suffered enough at this point; you were repentant, remorseful and humbled (if not humiliated) and that it was time for restoration; time to move on to the next phase, of living and walking in the fullness of all God created you for, because if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We can know the feeling of being ‘washed clean’ of our sin and get back up on our feet standing in the righteousness of Christ.

Galatians 6:1 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently…

I don’t get the spirit of that verse playing out in the email you received when you felt changing churches was the option you wanted to pursue, and I certainly don’t get it from the letter that was sent to the membership.

But you know what?  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter what men do or even what church leaders do.  Your ultimate judge is God himself.  He is the one you answer to. Yes, under his sovereignty pastors and leaders are appointed, and we’re told to honor that office and pray for them, but they are fallible.

In the meantime, Andrew; hang on to God.  Keep praying.  Continue to read and study your Bible.  Find a place where you can engage in corporate worship with other believers who don’t know you or know this story.  Maybe find a Christian counselor or mentor who can continue to help you work all this out over time.  But don’t allow discouragement or disillusionment to take over your life.

And pray for the people at Mars Hill.  Not a prayer that comes from a smugness nor from bitterness, but simply pray that God will lead them to be both forthright in their application of the gospel, but agents of grace in how they allow that to play out. Pray for them to get better at it, to improve in their understanding of the mystery of grace.

Pray because there are going to be other Andrews.  There’s going to be a ‘next time’ involving someone else, and the next Andrew may not be able to handle it in the manner that you did.

And don’t write that church off, either.  Church congregations are like small cities, with as many stories taking place as there are people.  There are, to be sure, countless people there who are doing good, growing in faith, and deepening their understanding of the ways of God; because of the leadership there, and sometimes in spite of the leadership there. 

Nor should you be in distress when someone you meet follows the instructions given to them in the membership letter and shuns you.  It’s far easier for humans to believe something bad about someone, and people subject to authoritarian church leadership will, after all, do what they are told. 

In the meantime, church history is filled with people who experienced rejection for a variety of reasons, including rejection from the religious establishment so you’re actually in good company.

As you choose a permanent place of worship, and enter into future relationships, I know you’ll do both with a wisdom you have gained from this process.

Your brother in Christ,

Paul Wilkinson.

One Less Elephant in the Room

Just desserts in my opinion.

A certain discernment ministry dude who has a certain discernment radio ministry thing apparently paid his $99 registration fee to attend The Elephant Room at the mother ship in Rolling Meadows, IL only to arrive and find out his registration had been revoked.

He blogs the experience, but I really, really don’t want to include the link to this guy — first time I’ve ever done this — so I’m copying and pasting without it:

Today, I traveled to Rowling Meadows, Illinois to attend James MacDonald’s Elephant Room 2 conversations. Upon entering the event venue I was met by a security guard and Jim Rowan, an elder at Harvest Bible Chapel and was promptly told that my entrance to the Elephant Room had been revoked and that I had to immediately leave the premises or I would be arrested for trespassing.

This is truly ODD, because the Purpose Statement of the Elephant Room states:

The Elephant Room is more than an event. It is the outgrowth of an idea. The idea that the best way forward for the followers of Jesus lies not in crouching behind walls of disagreement but in conversation among all kinds of leaders about what the scriptures actually teach. We must insist on the biblical Gospel, right doctrine and practice but not isolate ourselves from relationship even with those who believe much differently.

So, I ask the very logical question how is threatening to arrest me if I didn’t leave the premises of the Elephant Room an example of NOT “crouching behind walls of disagreement”?

Seems to me that the Elephant in the Room is the fact that the ONLY voices that James MacDonald and company are willing to hear are those that agree with them.

…First of all let me say that I do not automatically endorse everything that James MacD. does.  I love the forthright style of ministry he projects on the radio and I’ve visited his church in two locations in northwest Chicago, but I’m equally convinced that back in his elementary school days, he was the schoolyard bully. Sorry. That’s just my opinion, and last I checked, I’m entitled to it. Maybe this little bit of conference theater is just what happens when two bull-headed personalities clash.

However, I’m going to side with Harvest Bible Chapel and The Elephant Room on this one.  The particular Discernment Dude in question is trouble with a capital T.  A ticking time bomb in an event like MacDonald’s one-day live broadcast conference.  A person whose spirit runs counter to the spirit of the event.

You may not agree with J. MacD. on countless issues, but the motivation for this event is simple enough that even a child can understand it, and James MacDonald paid a fairly high price to forge ahead with it against criticism from various sides. I’m sure all the pastors and leaders in the audience had varying opinions on things, but I’m betting they were more aligned with the day’s central purpose than the one — and only one as far as we know — who was refused admission.

The MacDonald/Driscoll event was complex enough as it was.  There simply didn’t need to be one more elephant in the room.

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HT: FBC Jax Watchdog, a blog we link to at this one, but one which, as far as The Elephant Room is concerned, disagrees with its presenters, disagrees with the denominational heads who permitted their pastors conference to link with the event; but seem to think nothing of siding with Discernment Dude on this one. The politics of hatred can get really complicated at times.  I think everyone involved in reporting this conference sidebar — absolutely everyone — missed the whole point of The Elephant Room.