When I think about the goals of the Great Commission Resurgence I get excited about our mission dollars starting new churches. It made me mad when the NCWMU split from the BSCNC, and I never want my members to know details about compensation packages and company cars that came out of money they thought was saving kids in Africa. Money that goes into the plate comes out of the pockets of widows and shut-ins, not out of some general fund in outer space, and if the GCR means more church starts and souls saved, I’m for it.

I guess what concerns me about the new direction is identity. I really don’t mind cowboy churches and people at the beach wearing Hawiian shirts to worship; I don’t see it and it isn’t contrary to scripture as far as I can tell, but when I stood up to preach the 10 points of the GCR, I got stuck on the part where I was going to tell my people that they were wrong, that wearing our best to worship was antiquated.

Now, don’t get me wrong, fifteen years ago, when I was a young and passionate zealot, I would have gone white with rage and yelled “TRADITION!” and gone into a rant about how fundamentalist churches exclude lost people by embarassing them with an elitist dress code, but things have changed. I’m not just referring to my waistline or hairline, but to the culture and the convention as a whole. In a lot of churches I have seen two responses to the modern world: unreasoning lock-down or desperate accomodation. I’ve been part of both and have come to realize that what has been asked of traditional churches is a complex question: Can we be missional and not lose the distinctive conclusions we’ve come to when we read scripture?

What I’m saying is there is a danger in losing something precious when we say to the culture: “You don’t have to change anything, we love your unique distinctiveness,” but say to traditionalists that they must meld into the melting pot and discard the things that bring meaning and substance and expression to their unique cultural tradition. Many critics point out that fundamentalists confuse biblical identity with cultural identity. For years reformers have looked at the monolithic old church as a cash cow to be corrected, inherently wrong in all her assertions. Like teenagers who insist “The Man” is the source of all evil, we may be in danger of underestimating the value of the staid conservative practice simply in favor of that which is novel for novelty’s sake.

For example, it’s OK for Muslims to go ballistic when offended in any way, but good old Christianity will understand if we kick her in any way and tell her to quit singing hymns and being so embarassingly backward. Honestly, doesn’t the society we live in need a higher standard to live up to rather than an accomodation to blend into?

Your whole comment beginning with “Driscoll is Gospel without the fundamentalism” is so on target it’s not even funny.

Check related blogpost on Talitha, Koum! and Et Elle.

I’ve heard about ten years worth of Driscoll’s preaching and that is literally the only statement he has ever made that I could clearly identify as cussing. In terms of its theological accuracy I am not sure any Christian could, strictly speaking, disagree with it. I haven’t read Miller’s book but it sounds as though he may not have provided the context for that “cussing” statement.

I’m pretty sure that “if” that was what Miller heard that Driscoll wouldn’t have realized that might inspire him to be labeled “the cussing pastor”. still, since it seems that label sticks and people haven’t managed to verify anything I thought I’d mention that the “cussing” in question had to have happened at least eight years ago and provide the context for it.

To make a point that he was different he actually said during his warm-up part of the sermon that some people dont like it when you san “Crap!” from the pulpit. He was basically saying if you give me call make sure you know what your calling– a very intentional ply of his to make sure as a Church we knew what we were getting.

He has never used a bad word on the pulpit (although I dont consider crap a bad word myself). The pastor is a pastors kid and traditionalist with a cultural twist. He is passionate on accomplishing what God wants him to accomplish.

When we voted for him one guy stepped up and said he would not vote for a guy that used a word that he would not allow his kids to use. We voted him in anyways.

We had a Church split a year later…. but being on the Pastoral search committee was the best thing I ever did for my community.

http://www.savagepacer.com/news/church-news/lifeprint-church-looks-merge-two-worlds-9880

Hmmmmmm. Maybe. Where is Mohler’s rebuke of Driscoll and call for repentance? Akin is simply playing both sides and covering his bases.

The truth is that seminary presidents are faced with a problem. Many of their students ADORE Driscoll. They have to be very careful.

Actually, many at the SBC convention had no idea who the Driscoll character is mentioned during teh motion. You should have seen the confusion on the faces of the masses when his name was mentioned in the motion. I had about 40 people in my section alone ask me to write down his name so they could look him up.

Akin, Mohler and others are walking a fine line here. When more of the masses wake up to Driscoll’s vulgarity and bizarre patriarchy, they are going to have some ‘xplainin’ to do which is why you see this weak response from Akin. He can point back to this and say, see? I was concerned but he repented. It has worked for Piper.

From the very beginning until now, we never fail to spend 100X the energy on arguing amongst ourselves about each other than we do on the great commission.

If God wrote the Bible, it being His Word and all, why didn’t He make it clearer? Why did He write it so that two scholars can study their entire lives and still come up with diametrically opposing views?

Why did he write it so that Christians would spend more time composing lawyerly briefs to each other than on anything remotely related to the teachings of Jesus?

When criticising other leaders we need to be aware that we are not Jesus, we are never, ever, ever, ever 100% right (as I believe the mighty Tom Wright says – at least some of what I say is wrong, I just don’t know what part!).

The church seems to so often swing between two extremes, either

(a) beating people with a sledgehammer when actually only a quiet word is enough (e.g. Driscoll); or -
(b) Ignoring blatantly destructive behaviour and/or teachings (e.g. Osteen, Bentley, etc)

We need to get somewhere closer to the middle ground I think, though not sure how that works out…