Tag Archives: mark driscoll

Saturday Remainders

A few thought-provoking pieces from around the web:

1.  From Forbes via Kenda Creasy Dean, the sad report of an unfortunate trend where teen girls post videos of themselves on Youtube and ask the world to tell them if they are ugly, fat, etc.  In the words of the author, “Absolutely nothing good can come of this.”

2.  Mark Driscoll has gotten into trouble once again, this time over church discipline.  Is the article a legitimate critique of growing cult-like tendencies within Driscoll’s church, or a secular attack on an historic Christian prerogative?

3.  Your election piece of the week:  have the Republicans effectively destroyed their chances at winning the election this fall?
Feel free to share your thoughts!

Mark Driscoll’s Wife Is His Pastor

As promised, I’ll be taking a look this week at Mark Driscoll’s new book, co-authored with his wife Grace: Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together.  Based on their years of experience ministering to young adults in the Seattle area, biblical and theological perspectives, cultural studies, and personal history, the book is a fascinating–and at times unexpected–look at marriage.

As I’ve referenced on this blog, Driscoll is rather controversial.  In many camps he is perceived to be a close-minded, misogynistic, bull-headed antagonist who tends to practice a macho scorched-earth pastoral policy with any who dare oppose him.  Just Google his name, and you’ll find more than you’ll ever want to know about him.

I’ll be honest; I don’t prefer Driscoll’s pastoral style…and there are few important issues on which disagree, more notably his perspective on women in ministry.  Considering how much flak he’s been getting for Real Marriage, I wondered if his book would enrage me. Somewhat surprising, then, that it didn’t.

As a book on marriage , its broad contours are rather solid.  I suspect that a majority of it would be acceptable to and helpful for all Americans, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.  About 75% of the book would be accepted with little problem by all Christians, and a full 90% of the book is within the broad stream of evangelicalism.  The other 10%?  Well, that’s where Driscoll gets too complementarian and macho on me.

For the most, part, then: I’m impressed.  So impressed that (with selective editing) I’d be happy to use this book as required reading in pre-marital counseling.

A look at two early sections:

In the first chapter, Mark & Grace share their stories, both as singles and a married couple.  It makes for interesting reading.  Their lives are anything but “plain Jane,” and they confess to significant marital issues even as Mark was beginning his meteoric rise as Mars Hill pastor in the 1990s.  To be sure, there is plenty of fodder for the Driscoll haters here, but in some ways it all depends on how you interpret what he’s saying.  When he writes about his dislike for his wife’s “short, mommish haircut” that “put a mom’s need for convenience before being a wife,” our hackles are naturally raised.  So too there are questions about Mark’s reaction to his wife’s (much later) confession of unfaithfulness during the early stages of their dating: in short, he would never had married her if he had known about it at the time.  Heady stuff.

If one takes this all as a sign of his continued perspective, I have some major issues.  If, however, all of this is meant to be an honest confession of sin and being generally “messed up” in the past, then I understand.  After all, the chapter does include the following thoughts:

“Through it all, we’ve learned a lot.  On a scale of 1 to 10, we’d say our marriage is somewhere around an 8+ or 9, when in years past is was a 3 or 4.  Writing this book has been an absolutely unifying and trust-building project by God’s grace.  We have a lot of fun as friends, and we get a lot done in life an ministry.”

Equally interesting is the second chapter, where Driscoll offers extended discussion of the essential idea that “marriage is about friendship.”  By focusing especially upon the story of Martin Luther and his wife, he paints a picture of marriage that is as helpful as it is needed.  I would submit that this chapter is worth the price of admission all by itself.  Most revealing is his statement about the intimate side of their marriage:

“Some years ago, I sat Grace down and told her that I really needed her to be my intimate friend and ‘functional pastor’…while we do not believe a women should be a pastor according to the Bible, I asked Grace to be my functional pastor.  As a pastor myself, I’ve never had a pastor since I left college.  So I invited Grace to be the one who checked in on my heart, prayed for me, gave me wise counsel, and knew the most intimate parts of my past and present as well as my longings and fears about the future.”

That, my friends, is certainly a different side to Driscoll than we often see.  There’s more to the book, and we’ll be taking a look at that in coming days.  But for now, I invite you to reconsider “just how bad” Mark Driscoll really is, and what insights into marriage he can truly offer.

Tomorrow, we’re back to politics.  But on Wednesday, a look at Mark Driscoll’s views on men & women in Real Marriage.

Mark Driscoll: A Prolegomena

If you know anything about him, the mere mention of Mark Driscoll‘s name will cause a reaction.  For some, the response will be positive.  For others, viscerally negative.  He’s become a lightning rod in Christian culture–similar to yet different from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell before him.

Driscoll is the pastor of Mars Hill Church here in Seattle.  He started the new congregation during the mid-1990s and has made it his mission to minister to the emerging culture here in the hip, hip Pacific Northwest.  Driscoll’s gone on record proclaiming that his mission is to proclaim the gospel in a way that is “theologically conservative yet culturally liberal.”  It is as good a description as any for exactly what he’s been trying to do these past fifteen years.

When I first became aware of Mars Hill and Driscoll back in the 1990s, I was excited.  He and his church were on the leading edge of how things were changing in the Church in ways cultural, musical, and (I thought) theological.  After a flurry of personal excitement I sort of lost track of Driscoll and his church, only to rediscover them more fully about five years ago.  Since Driscoll is a gifted preacher,  I used to listen to some of his sermons while jogging.

And then?  Well, then Driscoll became a big star–and the lightning rod he is today.  There are things I never really knew about him that have come into sharp focus in the past year or so.  The fact, for instance, that he does not support women in ministry (as a matter of fact he is pretty vehemently opposed).  The fact that he seems to relish theological combat.  The fact that he seems to be resurrecting a form of “muscular Christianity” the likes of which we haven’t seen for nearly a century.  Driscoll can have a real “in your face” approach, and this doesn’t sit well with a lot of people–myself included.

Controversy has gone up a notch in the past few weeks.  First, he’s released his new book Real Marriage, co-authored with his wife Grace.  It is getting a lot of flak for its frank discussion of sex and purportedly sexist or misogynistic take on marriage.  I’m currently reading it with an eye towards these issues and its potential use in a pastoral setting.  More on that to come soon.  Second, he was recently interviewed by a British Christian and, if the summation on this blog is to be believed (I have yet to listen to the entirely of the audio), he said some pretty mean and crassly fundamentalist things.  The crux of a lot of what he was saying comes down to the following quotation.  Though in itself a fairly orthodox point of argument, the way in which Driscoll uses this manly father image to justify and exemplify the entirety of his ministry and theological outlook is a bit disconcerting:

It does. It depends on your view of God. Is God like a mom who just embraces everyone? Or is he like a father who also protects, and defends, and disciplines? If you won’t answer the question, I think I know the answer.

Since I’m now a Seattlite (and an academically trained historian, ministry professor, and ordained minister), I feel that I ought to be addressing such matters more directly.  I will be–on this blog and, perhaps, elsewhere.  On one matter I’d like to be clear, though: Mark Driscoll is not the devil.  He is a follower of Christ, and we are certainly brothers in Christ even though we may disagree on various issues.  There is a lot I have to learn about Pastor Mark and, no doubt, a lot of areas in which we would find great comaraderie.  But in other vital areas…disagree we do.

"In one corner..."

Some Books For A Snowy Day

On this auspicious day of anti-SOPA protests, joshuaziefle.net is also blacking itself out.  Not so much because I’m protesting, but because I’ve got a lot of work to do on this snowy day in western Washington.  In my absence, I present: the “2012 Christianity Today Book Awards.”  Note the presence of a recent major release in the field of youth ministry and new Mark Noll book!

Tomorrow the first thoughts on Mark Driscoll in light of his continued controversy and new book on sex and marriage.