Was this Mark Driscoll's Problem?

Published on by D. G. Hart

His board had as much trouble understanding him as some bishops have with Pope Francis?

As many as half of the bishops are those who simply do not understand what Pope Francis is trying to achieve. Whether you like the pope or fear the pope, this pontificate is something of a roller-coaster ride, and very few bishops could be characterized as “thrill-seekers.” They are conservative by nature and training, and in the past 30 years, they have seen issue after issue go from the “debated” category to the “decided” category. They value the security of knowing contentious matters are settled and are not sure why Pope Francis seems hell-bent on unsettling those matters. You see some of this sensibility on display in Cardinal Francis George’s comments in yesterday’s New York Times:

“He says wonderful things,” Cardinal George said about Francis in an interview on Sunday, “but he doesn’t put them together all the time, so you’re left at times puzzling over what his intention is. What he says is clear enough, but what does he want us to do?”

36 thoughts on “Was this Mark Driscoll's Problem?”

  1. Sounds like Francis needs to regain control of his (hashtag) brand.

    Maybe he can hire a PR firm like Driscoll.

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  2. Reminded me of The Crisis of Faith by Bultmann:

    The Christian command of love keeps directing me to my particular moment, so that I as one who loves can hear the claim of the “You” who confronts me, and can discover, as one who loves, what I have to do. If one still wants a rule, it can be very simply given by reference to the Ten Commandments. For everything they say is, according to the word of Paul (Rom. 13:9), summed up in the one word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And whoever expects something more or greater may be reminded of that dialogue between father and son in Dostoyevsky’s A Raw Youth. In the face of frightening prospect of a world catastrophe, the son asks:

    “Yes, but then what is one to do?”

    “Oh, God, don’t be in such a hurry; it won’t all happen so soon. But, generally, nothing is to be done, that’s the best. At elast one then has an easy conscience and can tell oneself he hasn’t gotten involved.”

    “Enough! Stick to the subject. I want to know what I really should do, and how I should live.”

    “What you should do, my dear boy? Be honest, don’t tell lies, don’t covey your neighbor’s house, in a word, read the Ten Commandments – it’s all written down there once and for all.”

    “Cut it out, cut it out! That’s all so old, and besides, it’s mere words.” What’s needed here is some action!”

    “Well, if boredom’s too much for you, then try to win the love of somebody or something, or, simply put your heart into something.”

    “You’re making fun of me! Besides, how can I start with just the Ten Commandments alone?”

    “Merely carry them out, in spite of all your questions and doubts, and you will be a great man.”

    Only one who tries to live by the simple Ten Commandments, who takes the command to love seriously, will understand the Christian faith, its crisis, and the overcoming of that crisis.

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  3. “What he says is clear enough, but what does he want us to do?”

    Seems similar to a haggard first-time mother watching her newborn baby squall and wail – it’s not the diaper, it isn’t hungry, no bees in its bonnet… The baby is clear that it’s unhappy, but what the devil does it want me to do? I have no reference point beyond these musty old baby-books, but this infant seems to be off the reservation!

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  4. Perhaps a better question would be what wasn’t a problem with Driscoll, as well as how did so many miss it for so long? The impact of his influence was far reaching and in many cases devastating. It wasn’t just TGC – it was literally every paraministry with a conference who had him on their circuits and listened to his CEO style church leadership model. His influence was integrated throughout seminaries like RTS, SBCS, Southeastern, and many others, not to mention Biblical counseling training/colleges.

    his model of ministry was promoted by guys like John Frame at RTS and Ed Stetzer at Lifeway. The list goes on and on pretty extensively. The bulk of the evangelical church in America got bamboozled. Not enough lessons can be learned from the many, many errors and problems associated with Mark Driscoll over the last 15 or more years.

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  6. Quoting Michael Sean Winters on things Catholic is like quoting Rob Bell on things Protestant. What the bishops don’t like is the Pope constantly trying to play the free-talking and fun-loving family uncle who essentially tells everyone just to take the stick out of their butts. Gee, I wonder why that phases them? Maybe it’s not that the bishops are all that conservative, but, thank heaven, simply Catholic. The pope seems much more to just be Argentinian.

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  7. What was the CtC line about people being a better conduit(perspicuity) of the message than the text(holy writ)!

    Yep, this is what happens when you weren’t there for the catechizing. Vat II is a thang.

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  9. Joe M
    Posted November 17, 2014 at 7:50 pm | Permalink
    Quoting Michael Sean Winters on things Catholic is like quoting Rob Bell on things Protestant. What the bishops don’t like is the Pope constantly trying to play the free-talking and fun-loving family uncle who essentially tells everyone just to take the stick out of their butts. Gee, I wonder why that phases them? Maybe it’s not that the bishops are all that conservative, but, thank heaven, simply Catholic. The pope seems much more to just be Argentinian.

    The National Catholic Register is the MSNBC of American catholicism. As long as it remains Darryl’s main source and talking point generator, there’s not much to be learned from these posts.

    _______

    D. G. Hart
    Posted November 17, 2014 at 8:00 pm | Permalink
    Joe M, then to whom should we listen? Your infallible pontiff?

    Uncle Screwtape is still at it and getting better all the time. Every word is a lie including “and” and “the.”

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  11. @JR

    as well as how did so many miss [the problem with Driscoll] for so long?

    1) Because the emerging church was fundamentally right in their critique of how evangelical Christianity was failing to attract the next generation. At the same time the emerging church’s solution often looked like liberalism. Driscoll managed to combine missional Christianity with orthodoxy.

    2) Because Driscoll was right that the problem was particularly pronounced with respect to unmarried men. Driscoll’s style of ministry did (and still does) appeal to men. Getting your men butts in the seats is still a major challenge.

    3) Because Driscoll is an enormously talented speaker and those are rare. You don’t toss them away lightly.

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  12. Washington D.C. and Chicago sources are reporting that the homily of newly appointed Bishop Blase Cupich, scheduled to be delivered at his installation mass in Chicago on Tuesday, has been written by Leftist National Catholic Reporter writer Michael Sean Winters. Reports claim that the homily begins with a 5-minute condemnation of Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput without mentioning him by name.

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  15. “Sources also claim that Winters is positioning himself to become the shadow writer for the new Archbishop in Chicago. The left-wing Winters has been a prominent defender of the Obama administration, including the Obamacare healthcare law.”

    Sounds pretty establishment for Chicago. Father Pfleger is available if he wants to go farther left.

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  16. abs- Here are some authors that get to the heart of Romanism:
    Thomas Merton
    Tielhard de Chardin
    Karl Rahner
    Walter Burghardt
    Hans Kung
    Henri Nouwen
    David Steindl-Rast

    These are some of the leading lights that have greased the removal of the devotional stick theology that was rampant in Romanism prior to Vat II. Those who still like their stick are being herded to the sideline.

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  21. ignatz, none of them are remotely useful to confessional Christians who get almost all of their spiritual guidance from the Epistles and Gospels of the NT.

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  25. CD-Host,
    Appreciate the response much. However, I think that the 3 ideas that mentioned actually only uncover even more prevailing troubles that the evangelical church needs to learn their lessons on.

    You wrote: “1) Because the emerging church was fundamentally right in their critique of how evangelical Christianity was failing to attract the next generation”
    Right there we have a problem with definitions, ie, assuming the seeker-friendly, attractional model of doing church. Not biblical. Reaching them (as in outreach), maybe if properly instituted, but “Attracting” non-believers by our ministry model is the wrong approach.

    Next: “2) Because Driscoll was right that the problem was particularly pronounced with respect to unmarried men. Driscoll’s style of ministry did (and still does) appeal to men. Getting your men butts in the seats is still a major challenge.”
    Again, defining the problem as what we must do in order to attract people is a faulty assumption. Plus, the scriptures do not make such distinctions with respect to persons. More could be said here about his hyper-masculinity teaching, but I will move on…

    you wrote “3) Because Driscoll is an enormously talented speaker and those are rare. You don’t toss them away lightly.”
    Sure you do. You definitely toss them away in any manner necessary if they are unfit for office, which Driscoll always was.

    Again, this is another fatal flaw in the whole Church Growth movement/Pastor as CEO model of church. It boggles the mind how so many continue to follow this false pattern of ecclessiology, even after WillowCreek and others have came out in over the past 8 years or so, saying that their model DIDN”T WORK. But people keep going after guys like this. Crazy.

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  26. GG:

    Yes, I am with you there. I see — and feel — the problem pretty acutely. Hard to want to be Catholic when the Pope seems some busy trying not to be. And suddenly the Bishops, as a while also so found of entertaining mushiness, are confused. That’s all the more confusing.

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  27. JR,

    Need an explanation? I have a visual aid for you:

    Next time it rains, go outside and walk on the sidewalk. Make sure it’s a flat sidewalk.

    O.K., now see the little puddle on the sidewalk? Notice how shallow it is?

    That’s the depth of the average evangelical mind.

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  28. the mainliner was a fan of nouwen as well, with open hands, and i even bought it, it’s at home. my brilliant op pastor at the time rightfully steered me away. good comment, mr. kent.

    see you all in 2015, yo.

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  29. The next “biggie” to fall is likely to be James MacDonald of the Chicagoland Harvest Bible consortium, given the fact that he’s already had to publicly apologize for bullying his elders. What is yet to surface publicly, though, are all of the allegations mentioned here: http://theelephantsdebt.com

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  30. @JR —

    You were asking how people missed the problems I mentioned the issues in terms of his ability to attract an audience. You are then critiquing whether attracting an audience is the right thing. That from a model standpoint doesn’t matter very much. The things that are popular are those that attract an audience by definition. So something remaining popular is a function of it attracting and retaining an audience not a function of it being right or good or biblical or anything else. Driscoll being popular and influential means he was attracting a wide audience nothing more nothing less.

    Again, this is another fatal flaw in the whole Church Growth movement/Pastor as CEO model of church. It boggles the mind how so many continue to follow this false pattern of ecclessiology, even after WillowCreek and others have came out in over the past 8 years or so, saying that their model DIDN”T WORK.

    And there are lots of people who says it does work. And frankly the proof is in the relative numbers. Pentecostalism is about a generation off from overtaking Roman Catholicism as the largest denomination. That was the center of the church growth movement. Evangelical Christianity overtook mainline Christianity because of church growth. It has a long proven track record of working in terms of both bringing in bodies and bringing in revenue. It doesn’t work well in terms of things like increasing biblical knowledge…

    If you want to look at groups with high levels of biblical knowledge: Atheism comes in first, Judaism second, and Mormonism comes in third. Protestantism of any major type is only slightly better than total disinterest. That is religions that critique the bible far outperform those who believe in it as an inerrant guide to faith and works. I’d suspect the OPC would do well but if you compare them with similar small groups like Orthodox Jews who went to Jewish day school I strongly suspect OPC members still get crushed.

    Church growth is different than Driscoll’s ministry. Willow and Acts 23 weren’t doing quite the same thing though they were using similar techniques to grow.

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  31. @George

    Yep. I agree that sounds like trouble. The authoritarianism sounds like an attempt to cover stuff up. I don’t see any reason that pastors should be involved in the financial aspects of the church. I think it is everyone’s interest that the pastor is from a legal standpoint simply an employee of a 503c corporation. The financial stuff is kept secular. Intermixing the two and pulling this “God has ordered you not to ask questions about the church’s debt levels” is going to be trouble.

    The internet is simply making it too difficult for larger churches to run around in secret. It allows the dissenters the ability to communicate to the flock.

    That being said MacDonald might win this fight. Its entirely possible the elders fully bought into the debt issue. Many years ago Mahaney had a similar fight with elders won and established an authoritarian church to keep their voices out. And so when the problem came with abusing members (using demotivational management http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2008/04/sovereign-grace-ministries-use-of.html ) he was a little shocked it wouldn’t play out the same way. Elders mostly don’t like breaking ranks entirely and talking openly in public about church business even when they are being smeared. They are probably selected for being “company men”. Members are less reserved.

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  32. PS

    Igs and Kent

    An even more brilliant OP pastor sent me this, speaks to the value of reading outside of one’s own comfort zone. As I said, I’m out, yo.

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  33. abs- good stuff. Despair of eternity and fear of the Other theological societies leads to the insular and polemical reactions. Censorship, even in the face of proclaimed openness, happens every day.

    The crowd is untruth-sk

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  36. kent- Did i miss the memo on the hegelianesque Reformed methodology regarding apologetics and confessionalism?

    So much for christian liberty. sheesh.

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