Mark Driscoll, pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has hit the emerging church blogosphere this week, with a video clip he provided for the National New Church Conference Church Planting conference in Miami last week. Mark wasn’t able to get to the conference and so sent a videotape of him speaking.
Mark focuses on 2 Timothy 2, the passage in which church planter Timothy is encouraged to be focused, hardworking and able to endure hardship.
“You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs�he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.”
Mark delivers his rant from a military cemetery, with a video closeup to the firm-wristed gun-toting soldier statue. He paints the church planting scene in terms of battleground and body count. He believes that selecting the ‘right man’ is critical to the success of a church plant. He suggests that the core mission is to find men to serve, put them through boot camp, instruct them, and through God’s grace force them to be people who will live as God’s people. “If you want to win a war you have to get the men.” The message, Driscoll says, is Jesus the warrior, king and hero who has fulfilled his mission: leaving his throne in heaven to live a life without sin, dying for our sin, rising from the dead triumphant over Satan, sin and death, and ascending into heaven. The message, Driscoll says, is not about some marginalised Gallilean peasant hippie in a dress rocking out to the Spice Girls in a cabriolet hoping to meet nice people to do aromatherapy with while drinking herbal tea. The snapshot from John in Revelation is of Jesus in his glory returned home as a triumphant warrior and victor.
Interestingly Mark’s video was just before Bill Hybels presented the closing address for the conference. Hybels simply suggested that church planting needed women in leadership before proceeding on to his talk.
Clearly the soldier image does it for some men. And some women. However the writer of 2 Timothy goes on to use the image of athlete and farmer as well. The early church would have had a healthy percentage of pacifists for whom the military connotations would have been repugnant.
I don’t agree with Mark’s commitment to use only men in church leadership roles. But I can sympathise with his efforts to develop a concept of church that will equip and inspire people with the Y chromosome. So are there models and metaphors that provide the sense of challenge and focus needed by men today?
Denny Weaver, in his book, Nonviolent Atonement, works with the Christus Victor concept in a way that clearly portrays Jesus as an alternative to the stereotypes of ‘macho marine’ and ‘gay hippie’. I’ve written a brief review of his Nonviolent Atonement at GodPost this week.
If we want to talk about being focused, hard working and enduring hardship we can learn from sportswear companies like Adidas. I’m aware of the questionable work practices of these companies, but we can learn from their advertising agencies!
Adidas, in its latest ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign, invites sports and adventure role models to talk about the toughest times of their lives, using art, animation and gritty honesty. They’ve interviewed women and men, young and old, and enabled each to cross the artificial boundary between creativity and gutsiness. Adidas doesn’t need to ignore women to attract male customers.
I mentioned in my review of the Forge Conference that Wolfgang Simson was a hyperbolic metaphoric passionate speaker. Well what do you know, he’s also a very approachable correspondent. I’ve had some very useful email conversation with Wolfgang in response, exploring the context and meaning of my remarks and his.
The ‘hyperbolic’ is tied up with the large number of house churches planted by the people Wolfgang met in India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. I got the impression he was being given numbers by church planters that couldn’t be corroborated. No doubt there had been a large number of groups started throughout these countries. But to give the numbers (was it 20,000?) was, I inferred, an example of hyperbole. Not lies. Maybe exaggeration. We got the point - that developing a reproducing theme at the heart of a church planting movement is so important.
Wolfgang responded by explaining that he had came from a background of healthy cynicism in which he set out to test claims of church growth, first in Europe and later in Asia. He provides some background to the people working and researching in India, Egypt, Indonesia and Bangladesh. It was good to hear Wolfgang’s life context and story.
When someone mentioned to me during the conference that they were having difficulty coping with the incredible stories of rapid church multiplication, I shared a story from my life in NZ. It was September 15, 2001. I was at a ministers gathering in Tokoroa, New Zealand, hearing from the AOG pastor who had just returned from India. He told us about incredible responses to the gospel from crowds of people there. He did acknowledge that a response at a revival meeting was not the same as a life-long response of world-changing action. He shared about the miracles, including people being brought back to life. We talked about the different environments, wondering if the Indian people were more open to anything happening.
When I returned home I discovered an ambulance at the front and a crowd gathered around. My wife was standing by the pavement distraught. On the road was my 18 month old daughter who had been hit by a car. She’d died on impact. A neighbour was administering CPR but it wasn’t working. I prayed to God with every bit of earnestness possible. I rushed into the house and rang the church where there was a worship service about to start, to ask for the prayers of the congregation. But Kristen didn’t come back to life. She would have turned 16 yesterday.
So how did I feel about those stories of resuscitation from India? How did the AOG pastor feel about this tragedy? We didn’t have much to say to one another. Neither event made the other impossible. As you can imagine, my wife and I felt dampened in our faith. We already knew that prayer is not magic. We knew that God suffers with us in difficulty. But mustering up the courage and grace to pray for God to intervene was hard for a while. We winced when we heard the story of a young man being revived through prayer at a crash scene not far away. Why didn’t God intervene at our crash scene? But it wasn’t long before we found ourselves plunged into God’s merciful intervention in the world again. It was the faith of our three year old daughter that led to praying for the healing of a friend’s broken arm, with amazing results.
The stories of amazing effectiveness go together with the stories of incredible struggle. And visa versa.
Forge Mission Training Network held its second national Australian summit this last weekend.
I flew in to Melbourne from Brisbane on Friday night, so only got into The Factory (Mitcham Baptist) in time to hear Sons of Korah performing. I missed Alan Hirsch introducing the conference and Mike Frost’s keynote address on dirt and soil. Alan and Deb are off to the western coast of the United States for a few years, sponsored by CRM to resource the missional church scene there.
More on Mike’s book, Exiles, and Alan’s book, The Forgotten Ways, in later posts…
Brian McLaren provided an inspiring and gracious challenge to the churches of the 21st Century, helping us recognise the key narratives found in humanity, such as domination, victim, shame, economic bargaining and withdrawal. Each of these approaches, Brian explained, can be found in the setting in which Jesus operated. So what does the alternative look like? Brian gave us the beautiful story of an outdoor jazz concert in Sydney in which a young boy is joined by others as they celebrate life in music.
I was able to attend sessions led by Wolfgang Simson (hyperbolic metaphoric storyteller enthusiastic about small and effective missional communities), and Geoff Westlake (community developer in WA focusing on the concept of ‘ecclesia’ as community development council).
I enjoyed the session on theological issues for the ‘emerging church’ led by Stephen Said and Randy Edwards.
Stephen Said provided a challenging analysis of the theological strengths and flaws found in the renewal of missional church in Australia. Key themes (strengths) coming through are the connection of Missio Dei (the other-focused nature of God) with the local context, bridging the secular and sacred, recovery of kingdom ecclesiology, and the reminder that mission is integral to Christian community. Holes identified by Steven were in some ways about the same themes. We can too easily separate missional and incarnational. With our ‘can-do’ focus on method we’re still missing out on the Spirit’s role in mission. The Holy Spirit’s work was rediscovered by many churches during the charismatic renewal days but for many there’s not much awareness of the Holy Spirit working outside the worship service. We’re still separating evangelism from social justice. In Australia we tend to have a suspicion of philosophy. We’re too easily caught up in the prevailing consumerist metanarrative of our time - addiction to the collection of experiences.
Another helpful observation in the theology elective, made by Randy Edwards I think, was that we have been over-valuing leadership. It’s almost as if everyone must be in a leadership position of some sort. “You’re not fulfilling your potential unless you’re influencing someone else.”
Here’s another quote from Randy Edwards that stuck with me…. “Protestants don’t know how to give. They only know how to invest”. This was in response to the observation that experimental groups are jettisoned when it appears as though they are not producing high numbers of church members. Permission to achieve is not the same as permission to try and fail.
I attended an all-too-brief interactive panel focusing on consumerism and faith. We could have spent the whole weekend unpacking this subject. Unfortunately we had less than an hour. I was reminded by Dave Andrews (earthy radical discipleship sage) that bold claims to be bucking the trend are revealed as posturing when we compare our incomes and lifestyles with those living in the seventy percent of the world’s population.
Darryl Gardiner, fellow Kiwi bald guy from Wellington, lightened up the atmosphere with his humorous but gritty introduction of the “Dirty Christ”, the one who was born in an earthy stable. Darryl’s carrying on the tradition of Barry Crump, NZ author, with his exploration of “bastards I have met”.
Saturday evening finished with the delightful comedic and insightful poetry of Cameron Semmens, the author of 26 Tales from the Testaments - alliterated Bible passages in every letter of the alphabet.
I must admit I spent most of Sunday in conversation with various people, missing many of the sessions and workshops. I did get to Brian McLaren’s reflections on what we can learn from Emerging Church movement in the United States. This wasn’t one of those “it’s all happening in America” workshops. It was helpful to hear about what other people are learning through trial and error, bitter criticism and collaboration across denominations.
It’s always interesting to hear the the Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian and United Church of Christ described as the ‘liberal’ denominations. I heard one of the presenters at Forge introduce himself as the pastor of an “Evangelical Uniting” church. Clearly for some it is really important to be known and regarded as “Evangelical”. It helps people know what you believe, I guess. The problem is that people who see things differently just become “liberal”. I think we need to upskill in our capacity to relate to Christians who come from different places.
I must say it was refreshing to be part of, and on the edge of, a movement that is morphing. Social justice, concern for the environment, and an honest re-exploration of the Christian gospel, were all included in an agenda in which there was room for ranters, story tellers, poets, evangelists, coffee-makers, conversationalists, multi-media artists and musicians. Forge, like the rest of the Australian church, continues to struggle with the gender balance of its speakers and facilitators. Speaking of facilitators, we could have done with less content and more time to process in small groups.
As with the first Forge Dangerous Stories summit, we didn’t start each session with a time of ‘praise and worship’. I wasn’t sorry about that, though I do enjoy the occasional bit of God-focused “Christian karaoke”. I’d like to see the re-emergence of corporate singing in this kind of environment, modelling some of the broad missional themes being explored by Forge. Another time, another place…
I flew in to Melbourne from Brisbane on Friday night, so only got into The Factory (
