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Mark Driscoll's Critique Gets Mixed Response

Posted Oct 2, 06:06 AM | 18 comments | by Steve Knight | Link

Much of the buzz in the emerging church blogosphere this past week surrounded Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It started with a (mostly) positive profile of him in Christianity Today’s September 2007 issue which was posted online. There was also the near clubbing of a baby seal incident. But the majority of the chatter came in response to a talk he gave at an emerging church conference in North Carolina entitled “Convergent,” which also featured Southern Baptist missiologist Ed Stetzer. During this talk (listen to audio), Driscoll made some of his most public denouncements of Emergent Village and specifically Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell (pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan).

Driscoll modified Stetzer’s proposed categories for the emerging church, eliminating Stetzer’s “reconstructionist” category altogether and suggesting that there are actually three main streams: “relevant,” “relevant-reformed”* (e.g., Driscoll and others), and “revisionist” (e.g., Emergent Village and others).

Was this history in the making? Convergent attendee Tony Marr writes, “There have been a few moments in church history that have defined or exposed a movement. I think that the 800 or so of us sitting in the chapel on the campus of SEBTS tonight were witness to such an event. ... After Mark was done, John and I went to have a drink with a few of the guys from Acts 29. There was this feeling in the air as if we had just been a part of something that will be talked about years from now.”

Triad cohort organizer Tripp Fuller also attended the Convergent conference as well as an Acts 29 “bootcamp” for church planters which preceded it, and he responded strongly to the overall experience with Driscoll, saying, “The Acts 29 response to our new postmodern situation is to grip a thoroughly modern Reformed theology in the Dude’s right hand really tight and then think he is better than a fundamentalist because he has a beer in his left hand. This isn’t emergent, it is demergent. This is the disgruntled indie rocker’s version of the Reformation.

“There is much to learn and keep from the Reformation, a movement that was thoroughly modern, but there is reason to give pause to returning to it with a clinched fist. Right now I think the last thing the Church needs are white dudes with clinched fists, especially when what they are clenching is ‘God’s Truth.’ Throughout modernity white Dudes have had God’s truth in their hands too much, and behind them are ditches filled with God’s and/or their enemies. (This confusion is easy when you have truth tightly gripped in a fist.) ... I am confident that, as the Church finds its bearing in a new world, we don’t need any more clinched fists, for it is God’s world and God’s truth after all.”

Rather than a “clenched fist,” Doug Pagitt responded to Driscoll’s criticism with a retread of something he originally posted in 2005: “As it turns out I was 2 years ahead. 2007 has turned into the year of deep critique. ... There is a suggestion that we are just dangerous — either out of incompetency or ill-will. ... Most of this is coming from the Radical Reformers** (their title not mine), who see the reclaiming of Christian faith as the call of the church (and that means to the biblical/reformed faith) and not the remaking of it. I have tried to make contact with a number of these people to create a friendship so we can disagree agreeably and in friendship, but to no avail. ... Face to face friendship does not seem to be in the cards in the near future. So, it is time to take up battle positions. I suggest these Battle Positions:
A Smile
A Wink
A Prayer
A friendly Email
Offers of hospitality
Invitation to Friendships”

This prompted a (mostly) friendly “Wink Revolution.”

Here are some other highlights from around the Web:

The Baptist Press published an excellent summary of the entire conference, including quotes from Driscoll’s talk.

Emerging Grace posted an excellent summary of Driscoll’s criticisms of McLaren/Pagitt/Bell and initiated an open discussion of Driscoll’s talk which resulted in some excellent interaction in the comments.

Bob Hyatt found a lot to agree with Driscoll on: “Overall … Mark is on target, particularly at the end as regards the ineffectiveness of some in the emerging church to do anything other than attract the disgruntled children of evangelicalism.”

Julie Clawson (in the comments on Emerging Grace’s blog) asked, “Who gave Driscoll the right to determine what is heresy? Whose theology gets to be assumed to be orthodox?”

Anthony Smith asked a similar question: “Driscoll is closer to getting God right than McLaren? I’m tired of choosing between white Christian males in my arbitration of truth. Some things just don’t end. 500 years of presumptive white male theologizing is just too deeply wedded to Western Christianity.”

Andy Moore also decried Driscoll’s heresy accusation: “There is such a thing as Heresy. You can’t read the New Testament and not understand that some beliefs cross the line into what becomes un-Christian. But what constitutes Heresy is things like the denial of Jesus as Christ, it’s promoting another saviour, not whether or not someone uses rabbinical sources to help them understand the Bible!”

Brother Maynard spent 3,464 words saying essentially: “I’m particularly down on the improper use of the word ‘heretic’ and the emerging notion of the emergents vs. the reformed.” (His own words, BTW)

Mike Clawson told “A Tale of Two Movements”: “I’ve long held out hope that we could find common ground between these two movements [emerging and new Reformed]. However, it seems that some on the other side are more interested in fighting.”

Phil Johnson of “Team Pyro” cynically (gloatingly?) writes, “It seems the ‘Emerging Conversation’ is coming apart at the seams. ... However you look at it, this has been a seriously hard week for the Emerging/Emergent conversation. I’m thinking of trying to trademark the name ‘Post-Emergent,’ because I think it’s going to be really, really useful very soon now.” (All those people logging 247 comments, can’t be wrong, right?)

Finally, expressing some of the sadness in all of this, Fernando Gros joined some “post-winkers” and shared his heart: “I’m a weary guy — tired of the namecalling, tired of the bullies, tired of felling compelled to choose sides in debates that are tangential to the everyday reality of my mission and spirituality. ... I’ve always been at the extreme edge of the emerging/emergent/missional ‘conversation.’ I’m not much of a joiner, networker, or conference-goer. I’m not that guy. But, I’ve been attracted because of the warmth of some of the people I’ve met, both online and in person. I’ve also been attracted by the honesty and non-combativeness. I stay connected because of the desire to talk about everyday faith, everyday spirituality, everyday mission. The sad realisation is that there seems to be no way to avoid the name-calling and intellectual violence.”

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This summary of reaction to Mark Driscoll’s talk is obviously not definitive and it is certainly not the end of this or any other discussion about the church that is emerging. Hopefully, though, it’s a helpful snapshot of some of the thought that is out there at the minute.

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UPDATE: After being shamed by Driscoll at the Convergent conference, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina “dis-invited” Doug Pagitt from speaking at an upcoming Wired2Grow church conference. Doug told Tony Cartledge of Baptists Today, “I have no sour grapes about it. My feelings aren’t hurt. I don’t blame them for making the decision if they believe their constituency would not be happy with my appearance.”

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UPDATE 10/2/2007: Because he’s the “National Coordinator” of Emergent Village and because he’s a friend and, well, I like what he says, I’ll add just one more update to this already-too-long blog post just to let you know that Tony Jones has now posted his response to “the Driscoll fiasco.” He writes, “Criticizing folks for who they read, who they footnote, and who they endorse is not particularly persuasive, methinks. I’d much rather have Driscoll and Piper say, ‘We’re promoting a very different version of the faith than the emergent folks. Let’s look at the big picture of what they’re saying versus the big picture of what we’re saying.’ ... I do, indeed, think that [their overall version of Christianity] is very different from the version that I’m espousing. And I sure do appreciate the folks who keep inviting me to come and talk about it. They may not like it, they may not agree with it, but they should at least have the opportunity to hear about it.”

 

*Note: It’s good to see that Driscoll has modified his earlier attempt to co-opt the term “missional” by properly placing the “new reformed” stream of the emerging church in the “relevant” category. However, despite the obvious momentum behind the “new reformed” camp, I still fail to see why Reformed “relevants” should be distinguished from “relevants” of other theological convictions. In any case, for those seeking categories to understand the emerging church movement, Scot McKnight’s “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” remains a much stronger assessment than what Stetzer and Driscoll have put forward, in my opinion.

**Mark Van Steenwyk and others have pointed out that “Radical Reformation” is a term coined in the 16th century and usually affiliated with the Anabaptists.

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