(This was posted as a comment on another blog by fiber_tech. I thought it was perfect for Java Jesus.)
In his book Confessions of a Reformission Rev, Mark Driscoll does a good job of making the a case that both the institutional mega-church and the organic simple-church playing a vital part in a comprehensive approach to being Christlike in ministry.
"Jesus' incarnation itself is in itself, missional. God the Father sent God the Son into culture on a mission to redeem the elect by the power of God the Ghost. After his resurrection, Jesus also sent HIs disciples into culture, on a mission to proclaim the success of His mission, and commissioned all Christians to likewise be missionaries to the cultures of the world (e.g., Matt. 28:18-20; John20:21; Acts 1:7-8). Emerging and missional Christians have wonderfully rediscovered the significance of Jesus' incarnational example of being a missionary immersed in a culture."
"But sadly, they are also prone to overlook the attractional nature of Jesus' earthly ministry. In addition to immersing himself in a culture for a mission, Jesus' ministry was also marked by the large crowds that were drawn to him because of his preaching and miracles."
"One important example of the attractional elements of Jesus' ministry is found in the sixth chapter of John's gospel. A very large crowd, numbering thousands of people, came to see Jesus perform miracles and to hear him preach. Jesus appears to be modeling attractional church growth strategies of doing what was needed to gather many people to hear the preaching of the gospel. Jesus then fed the entire crowd by miraculously multiplying a little boy's lunch, which would only have increased the crowds that thronged to see him."
"But Jesus then preached that he was the bread of life, which drove many people away from him in confusion and disagreement. We see that Jesus not only gathers a crowd, but also intentionally drove many people away because they were not among the elect chosen for salvation (John 6:37). Some disciples, however, remained with Jesus and continued to be trained as missionaries by Jesus. They were later sent out to follow his pattern of incarnating in a culture, attracting crowds, preaching hard words that harden some hearts and soften others, and then training those who believe to be missionaries who follow Jesus' principles of attractional and missional ministry."
"Missions once solely meant sending American Christians into foreign lands and cultures to live among the people there and to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to them in a relevant way. But reformission also seeks to determine how Christians and their churches can most effectively be missionaries to their own local cultures."
"Reformission, therefore, begins with a special return to Jesus, who, by grace saves us and sends us into reformission. Jesus has called us to (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbor), and (3) the church (loving our Christian brothers and sisters). One of the causes for the lack of reformission in the American church is that various Christian traditions are prone to faithfulness on only one or two of these counts. Consequently, when we fail to love the Lord, our culture, and our church simultaneously, reformation ceases, leaving one of three holes: the parachurch, liberalism, and fundamentalism."
Gospel + Culture - Church = Parachurch
"First, some people become so frustrated with the church that they bring the gospel into culture without it. This is referred to as the parachurch and includes evangelistic ministries such as Young Life, and Campus Crusade for Christ. The parachurch has a propensity to love its neighbors but not to love the church."
Culture + Church - Gospel = Liberalism
"Second, some churches are so concerned with being culturally relevant that, though they are deeply involved in the culture, they neglect the gospel. This is classic liberal Christianity. Liberal Christians run the risk of loving their neighbors and their Christian brothers and sisters at the expense of loving their Lord and His gospel."
Church + Gospel - Culture = Fundamentalism
"Third, some churches are more into their church and its traditions, buildings, and politics than they are the gospel. Though they know the gospel theologically, they rarely take it out of their church. This is classic fundamental Christianity, which flourishes most widely in more independent-minded, Bible-believing churches. Fundamental Christians are prone to love their Lord, and their brothers and sisters, but not their neighbors."
"The only way out of these holes is repentance, which enables reformission. Through repentance, Christians and churches are empowered by the Holy Spirit to simultaneously love the Lord, love their neighbors, and love their Christian brothers and sisters."
Gospel + Culture + Church = Reformission
"Reformission combines the best aspects of each of these types of Christianity: living in the tension of being culturally liberal yet theologically conservative Christians and churches who are absolutely driven by the gospel of grace to love their Lord, their neighbors, and their fellow Christians."
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6 comments:
Yay! Mark Driscoll!
Driscoll is sold to The Man. Oh wait, he IS The Man.
I have never had any disagreement with Mark Driscoll. Until now.
First, Driscoll's error; Second, why he is making it.
These three categories (liberal, fundamentalist, parachurch) are like "apple, apple, orange." His gripe with liberal and fundamentalist is about the gospel itself, the Mission of Church. But his gripe with "parachurch" is completely different. It is about the Mode of Church. Let me thunder this point and pound the table: It is completely ridiculous to say that Young Life or Intervarsity (etc) have a "propensity not to love the church." That's like saying that the Navy Seals have a propensity not to like boats because their missions require them to risk their lives swimming ashore.
Which leads me to why such a wise man is making such a foolish argument. It is pure defensiveness about how he "does church." His operational definition of "the church" is the particular Mode of Church that he has pursued with such great success. He is not using a biblical definition of the church, not in any way. And he is trying with all his considerable might to squeeze an institutional church out of the NT. And it simply doesn't exist in the NT.
His beef with the parachurch people is that they believe that the mission of Jesus is to go into the culture and make disciples. Driscoll's Mode of Church has become attractional, wooing people to leave the culture and join the subculture of his megachurch. It is very telling, in my view, that his church's growth model revolves around satellite campuses where all the people can gather on Sunday morning to watch Mark D on a big-screen simulcast. Are we surprised that he says you can't build a church based on community? He has crept into a mode where they are building a church on the gravitational pull of his own fame. And they are big, so they...must...be...right.
So it's time for the parachurch folks to sit down and shut up and stop saying things he'd rather not hear. Their job, after all, is really just to bring more people to see his face on the jumbo-tron, whence God's Church-Growth-Power flows.
Is Joe B overreacting?
Look, I'm thrilled that his church is big and I truly hope they prosper. But dudes, when you start skewing the scripture to prop up your way of doing things (the way that just happens to be making you famous, and as-rich-as-you-wanna-be) you are in great peril of soul.
On this final point I am not speaking of money, but of ambition in general. "Those who want to get rich fall into all sorts of temptation." Heed God's warning, flee the Sirens' song.
The Friars of St Francis were persecuted for one simple assertion they refused to recant: that is, that Jesus Christ was poor. That modest claim threatened the legitimacy of the Roman Church, whose authority was based on its aggregated power (which OBviously was given to them by God. Success = God's endorsement, thenand now.) The Franciscans never recanted. But the problem took care of itself when they themselves became rich. And irrelevant.
Scathing as that comment was, I liked reading it very much.
Although now I'm kind of hoping Soebs will come back around to possibly issue a rebuttal... :-)
he wouldn't dare... ;-)
So I'm an old parachurch guy and I take this stuff seriously. I could tell war stories about the encounters I had with pastors and leaders of our own denomination, but everyone would say I sound bitter, just for telling it! While thir churches were shrinking and failing at -5%, Our pathetic little parachurch university outposts were wildly successful, consistently seeing pure annual conversion growth of over 50%. In an average year we commissioned more people into ministry than they had converts! And we were derided by them. Because the one thing we did not do was accumulate crowds and property. We were ALL poor, therefore we were all cursed.
Isa 5:8 says "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!"
Yeah, but who cares what the prophet says. It's just about those bad old jews, right?
he wouldn't dare... ;-)
So I'm an old parachurch guy and I take this stuff seriously. I could tell war stories about the encounters I had with pastors and leaders of our own denomination, but everyone would say I sound bitter, just for telling it! While thir churches were shrinking and failing at -5%, Our pathetic little parachurch university outposts were wildly successful, consistently seeing pure annual conversion growth of over 50%. In an average year we commissioned more people into ministry than they had converts! And we were derided by them. Because the one thing we did not do was accumulate crowds and property. We were ALL poor, therefore we were all cursed.
Isa 5:8 says "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!"
Yeah, but who cares what the prophet says. It's just about those bad old jews, right?
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