Who is the Neo-Reformed Zealot?

Reading the NYT’s recent article on Mark Driscoll and Scot McKnight’s blurb on NT Wright’s new book I thought I’d compile two lists of where I think the ‘neo-reformed’ are at and why in many ways we present something of a weird paradox to the rest of the Christian landscape as they try to figure us out:

Neo-Reformed (Things people don’t like):

1. We believe in the supremacy of God and his glory in all things.

2. We believe in the 5 solas.

3. We still believe in the inerrancy, authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

4. We are Calvinists – duh!

5. We still believe that people who die without Christ go to eternal conscious punishment.

6. We believe that the gospel is a word – i.e. you can’t ‘preach’ the gospel with actions – you can only proclaim it and live consistently with it.

7. We’re still complementarians.

8. We think that it is possible to develop a truthful systematic theology.

9. We will not budge on the importance of penal substitutionary atonement.

10. Yes, we think it is still possible to be a heretic and yes, there are quite a few those around in the church today.

Neo-Reformed (Things people like):

1. We have a largely open-handed approach to culture.

2. We’re always keen to re-think current practices.

3. Mission is a top priority for us.

4. In light of #3, we have a passion for church planting.

5. We’re more accepting of outsiders than previous conservative groups.

6. We’re into social justice and mercy ministry in a big way.

7. We’re greener than previous conservative groups.

8. #1, #6 and #7 are based on the fact that alongside our doctrine of Total Depravity and the brokenness of our world we’ve attempted to recapture the beauty of humanity and the creation through our understanding of the Image of God and Common Grace respectively.

9. Our Gospel includes the restoration of all things (See Tim Keller’s ‘The Gospel in All its Forms‘)

10. And horror of horrors – a lot of us still think NT Wright is a pretty good author and theologian even if we don’t always see eye to eye.

Top 8 for 2008: Everything

Who was I kidding? There’s no way I’m going to find the time to write a series of ‘top 8 for 2008′ posts between now and the end of the year so instead I’ll simply cram them all into one post. So here you have it, my top 8 for 2008 of everything!

Top 8 things I did or experienced in 2008:

1. Got married! (October)
2. Got engaged! (March)
3. Started planning and implementing a church plant (All year – but especially last three months)
4. Heard Piper, Driscoll, Chandler and Mahaney at the Resurgence Conference at Mars Hill in Seattle, spent time at the Journey Church in St Louis and met a whole lot of great peeps from Acts 29, and others, in the States (February)
5. Was taught Deuteronomy by Gary Millar – the best Old Testament teacher I’ve been taught by to date (September)
6. Road up Sani Pass – my first real 4×4 experience behind the wheel (October)
7. Decided to stay in Cape Town long term – gotta love this city (March)
8. Had my thinking about the gospel deepened and enriched ten times over by Tim Keller through numerous mp3s, articles and the odd blog comment (throughout the year)

Top 8 Blogs I followed in 2008 (See my 2007 list here):

1. Church Planting Novice – Jonathan Dodson. A newcomer to the list, this blog has been perfect for where I’m at in my thinking at the moment. So much wisdom and insight from a guy on the ground.
2. Between Two Worlds – Justin Taylor. Last year’s number 1 drops down one place – but still a great blog.
3. Tim Chester. Up from last year’s number 7 spot. Tim’s writing never stops enlightening, challenging and encouraging all at the same time.
4. John Scheepers. Give it up for the Saffa bloggers! John is a friend of mine who writes a great blog and brings a welcome voice to the South African Christian blogsphere.
5. Drew Goodmanson. Down from #2 – sorry Drew. Drew doesn’t post very often, but when he does its almost always worthwhile.
6. Justin Moffat. Another newcomer to the list. Justin writes an informative and challenging blog with an Anglican slant – I’ve enjoyed it a lot this year.
7. Michael Jensen. Michael drops down from last years 3rd but still turns out great post after great post. Plus he sent me a copy of his new book which I’ll be reviewing here shortly.
8. Jason Allen. Jason was one of the first people I became ‘blog friends’ with when I started blogging. I’ve always enjoyed his blog and the sanity he brings to some current trends that rage through the church blogging world.

Top 8 Books for 2008 (books I read this year – most of them are older than 2008 – please note that the books are a little one-sided topically because most of my reading this year revolved around my dissertation):

1. Total Church – Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. Ok so I first read it in 2007 but I’ve read it several times this year because of my dissertation and I still think its the most important book I’ve ever read on ecclesiology.
2. The Reason for God – Tim Keller. The first apologetics book that I feel comfortable giving to my friends.
3. Planting Missional Churches – Ed Stetzer. Great book with practical insight. Really helpful for where I’m at.
4. The Forgotten Ways – Alan Hirsch. Really good yet at times frustrating. I’m on the same page as Hirsch with a number of things – I guess I’m just a bit more conservative on one or two others.
5. Breaking the Missional Code – Ed Stetzer and David Putman. Another great help on all things missional.
6. On the Incarnation – Athanasius. I delved into a bit of church history this year and thoroughly enjoyed this one.
7. The King of God’s Kingdom – David Seccombe. Dr Seccombe (Doc) was my New Testament lecturer this year and so I got a chance to have a crack at his book. It’s a great overview of Christ in the gospels.
8. Jesus and the Victory of God – NT Wright. Vintage Wright – I don’t agree with him at every point but this is an important book.

Top 8 places I visited in 2008

1. Seattle, Washington, USA
2. St Louis, Missouri, USA
3. Castleburn, Drakensburg, KZN
4. Sani Pass, Lesotho
5. Lost City, Sun City, North West Province
6. Franschoek, Western Cape
7. Betty’s Bay, Western Cape
8. Durban, KZN (my old stomping ground)

That’s my year in a nutshell. It’s been the year with the biggest changes in my life to date. Not only did I get married but we decided to stay in Cape Town and plant churches here rather than in Durban. Things have come a long way in the last 12 months – here’s to an equally exciting 2009.

Merry Christmas all – have a great one!

Mark Driscoll in South Africa 2010

Apparently the Soccer World Cup is not the only thing coming to South Africa in 2010 – it seems that Mark Driscoll has tentatively penned in March 2010 for a visit to our shores. Out of interest: does anyone know who is bringing him out here?

Positive Reactions to Driscoll

Ben Pfahlert, over at the Sola Panel blog, has some fairly positive comments to make about Mark Driscoll’s criticisms of Sydney. Make sure you read the comments too as they also, with the odd qualification, seem fairly positive in their take on Driscoll.

What Mark Driscoll Could Learn from Sydney

Since the spirit of spreading ‘friendly-fire’ is upon us I thought I’d chip in with a thought or two of my own. Driscoll’s ‘skewering’ of Sydney got me thinking about his ministry and similar ministries from other missional-minded reformed peeps coming out of the States.

But first some disclaimers: First off, although I never heard Driscoll’s talk itself Gordon’s notes gave me a fair idea of where he went and what his criticisms were. As I’ve already stated I resonated with many of them as one who understands something of the Sydney paradigm of ministry. I also thought one or two of his points were probably wide of the mark or perhaps failed to understand the Sydney Anglican context well enough. All and all I greatly value his critique and hope that people will give it some serious thought.

What I was left wondering however, was what has Driscoll learned from ministry in Sydney? I hope he posts some reflections on his time there and what he has learned – but I thought that, until he does, I’ll mention something that I think he (and others like him) could benefit from in the Sydney paradigm of ministry.

I’ve been listening to his podcasts and podcasts from other Acts29 church planters for two or three years now. I’ve listened to some of their Sunday preaching and I’ve listened to their conference talks. I’ve been greatly encouraged and built up in the gospel through these talks and I’m going to keep on downloading them and enjoying them. What I have found a little concerning is the quality of bible handling on occasion. I’ve often struggled with the way narrative passages tend to get a bit spiritualized and moralized where it looks like hard work hasn’t been done on the text. Its clear that hard work has been done on the whole sermon but I sometimes wonder about the work on the text.

In this light I think Sydney ought to be applauded. Their commitment to hard work on the text, to text driven and directed preaching, is of the first order. Preachers like Phillip Jensen, John Woodhouse, John Chapman, Simon Manchester and others have provided me with great models of exposition in the past. Yes, I think Driscoll is right when he says that their (Sydney peeps in general) preaching is sometimes weak on application – I feel that too – but I don’t want to have to be in a situation where I pick one or the other, I want both. I think God calls us to both. So to Mark and the reformed missional crew I think you could learn something from Sydney here that would only make your ministries even stronger and more faithful.

Driscoll’s Hard Words for Sydney – and maybe us?

Well Mark Driscoll has a reputation for being controversial and he kept that intact down-under with two talks he presented to the Sydney crowd at a training day. His second talk – from the notes I’ve read – seems to be something of quite a brave critique of operations in Sydney. I think it’ll generate quite a few blog responses in the not to distant future. For the low down you can check out Michael Jensen’s brief thoughts here, Mike Jolly’s summary of Driscoll’s points here and Gordon Cheng’s notes from the two talks here. With my own denomination, the Church of England in South Africa (CESA), borrowing a ton from Sydney I wonder if Driscoll would have pretty much the same critique for us? I’d have to listen to the talk myself before passing judgment, but from a surface point of view I resonate with a lot of his points from my own experience here. That said, a few of his points don’t quite make sense to me and I fear he might be missing the boat a bit on some – but they’re all worth looking at and thinking through (In reading remember that, as Mike points out, this is friendly-fire).

Driscoll in Sydney

Mark Driscoll is in Sydney preparing to do a series of talks. I think it will be interesting to see how the Sydney Anglicans relate to him. So far they seem fairly positive:

Apostle to Generation Wired

Mark Driscoll’s Extreme Sydney

Death by Love Preview

Check out the preview video for Driscoll’s new book.

Re:Lit on the Web

The literature arm of the Resurgence, in partnership with Crossway Books, have their own website now where you can see published and up and coming titles.

Death by Love

Mark Driscoll’s next literary offering is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Dwell Conference Audio

Some of the friends that I made when in the States recently attended the Dwell Conference in New York City. There they got to listen to the likes of Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, Darrin Patrick and others on missional church planting and related subjects. All the audio from the conference is now available at the Acts29 website.

Cross Media

The guys at Mars Hill Church know how to use media to communicate. This was their build up to Easter Friday:

On a Journey – Part VIII

I’ve missed two days and so much has happened. The Resurgence Conference has kicked off and is full steam ahead already. But let me start with Sunday. On Sunday morning I went down for breakfast in the hotel and hooked up with a couple of guys from Bethlehem Baptist (John’s Piper’s church) who were also attending the conference. We were all really keen to attend a Mars Hill service that morning so we went along to the 11am service at the Ballard campus. And so after listening to all the podcasts, watching all the vodcasts, reading the books and reading the blogs I finally arrived in the flesh at Mars Hill Church. It was kind of a surreal experience in many ways to be thousands of kilometers across the ocean at the place you’ve read and heard so much about. And it definitely wasn’t a let down. The church is fairly massive but its nothing like any other mega church you’ll come across. Its got a very industrial look, being a converted warehouse. The lighting inside is all done up to create kind of grunge rock concert feel. Technology and multimedia is all over the place. And then the band got up to play – and it was nothing like any contemporary worship music. Instead the music had kind of an indie-rock feel to it with a lot of the songs being old hymns rearranged. It was a pretty awesome worship experience. And then Mark Driscoll took to the stage to preach. He was in the middle of a series of answering questions that the congregation had asked him. On this occasion he tackled the issue of the emerging church – but you can’t really just preach a sermon on the emerging church so before long he turned to Acts 17 and gave us a run down of how Paul engages culture with the gospel of Christ. At one stage he passionately declared what the foundational beliefs of Mars Hill Church are which he centered completely on the cross. At the end of that passionate little proclamation the congregation just broke into applause and cheering. It was unlike any kind of cheering or applause I’ve ever heard in a church – these guys were applauding the gospel! The entire experience was amazing.

After lunch the pre-conference tracks began and so I sat in a session of Q & A with the various campus pastors who explained how they’re figuring out the workings of multi-campus church. Mars Hill currently has 6 campuses. Mark Driscoll only preaches at Ballard (6 times on a Sunday) but the live video feed is sent to the other 5 campuses. Each campus has its own pastor (who only preaches when Mark is away), music team, community groups and is basically a church plant. It was interesting to hear how an operation the size of Mars Hill operates.

That evening I went out of supper with the guys from Bethlehem Baptist and then got to bed early for the next day of full sessions.

We started the morning with a session with Tim Smith, the worship pastor at Mars Hill, entitled ‘Building Missional Bands’. I was I quite surprised to see the Tim and Mars Hill were big into David Peterson’s ‘Engaging God’ – in fact Tim spoke quite passionately about avoiding the use of music as a spiritual mediator between you and God. It was so refreshing to hear guys that have a great theology of worship but still perform really high quality music in their church.

After that we had the main opening session of the conference with Mark Driscoll speaking on ‘Putting Pastors in their Place’. Mark came out all guns firing highlighting the centrality of preaching in church today – he was extremely passionate and extremely hard hitting – as only Driscoll can be. After his session we had a session with CJ Mahaney who preached on ‘Pastoral Character and Loving People’. CJ Mahaney is one of those guys who just oozes godliness and humility. He gave a challenging talk reminding pastors to have a heavenly perspective on the Christians that they serve. The final evening session was by John Piper entitled, ‘Why I trust the Scriptures’. It was an amazing privilege to finally hear Dr. Piper in the flesh. In fact Mark Driscoll was visibly moved as he introduced the great man of God. Unfortunately my brain was beginning to shut down by that time of the evening and so I’m glad all these talks will be available online shortly.

In between the last two sessions I got to have supper with Mike Gunn who is the international director of Acts29. He was super keen to hear about the potential for church planting in South Africa and so today I’m having lunch with a few other guys who are interested in planting internationally.

Its going to be another long day.

BTW check out Justin Buzzard’s blog – he’s live blogging the conference as the talks happen. Remember that you can also stream the talks live from the Resurgence site.

Resurgence Streaming

So some of you back in South Africa are a little jealous that I get to be in Seattle next week listening to John Piper, CJ Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and others. Well the guys at Resurgence don’t want you to be completely left out the loop so they’ll be streaming all the Q & A sessions live from their website. So find someone with adsl and a seriously big cap limit and have a watch. Maybe if they pan through the crowd you’ll catch a glimpse of me!

Church Planting Audio

The talks from the recent Acts29 Boot Camp are available at their website. They include talks by Mark Dever, Ed Stetzer, Darrin Patrick and Mark Driscoll. Definitely worth checking out!

(HT – Justin Taylor)

This is so exciting…

Resurgence Conference 2008: I’ll be There!

I’ve been a bit quiet about this on my blog until all the details were sorted out but I thought it was time to come clean: Yes, I’m going to be at the Resurgence Conference: Text and Context, February 2008 at Mars Hill Church, Seattle! An amazingly gracious sponsor has helped me to get over to the States and attend this conference. I’m going to also have the opportunity of meeting with a number of different people involved in church planting – some of them connected to the Acts 29 Network – which is probably my main aim in this trip. I’m quite excited about possibly linking up with A29 for future church plants here in South Africa.

I’m looking forward to also attending two churches in the States that we, here in South Africa, don’t really have anything similar to. I’m spending one Sunday in St. Louis at the Journey Church pastored by Darrin Patrick and then spending the following Sunday at Mars Hill Church in Seattle pastored by Mark Driscoll.

What I’d like from the peeps out there is to make contact with as many people I can who read this blog and will also be attending the Resurgence Conference. I’d love to catch up with you guys – especially those of you who write blogs. I thought that rather than emailing each of you individually I’d just stick this notice up as a post instead. Please let me know if you’ll be there so I can look out for you.

See some of you soon…

The Big Boys…According to Facebook

Who are the biggest ‘influencers’ in western Christianity today? Who are the real movers and shakers in the Christian public sphere? There’s only one guaranteed place to turn to for real answers when it comes to social influence: Facebook!

So here’s the top 10 Christian icons according to Facebook groups (…well the top 10 I could find, or chose to find anyway).

1. Rob Bell – Rob is the undisputed heavyweight of Christian Facebook leaders. His Nooma/Rob Bell group weighs in with 2775 members.

2. John Piper – The Pope of the Reformed tradition runs with a 1423 member group.

3. Donald Miller – Christian author of the moment Donald Miller weighs in with a group of 1203 members.

4. Mark Driscoll – The future Pope of the Reformed tradition ‘resurges’ into 4th spot with a group of 1059 members.

5. John MacArthur – Spreading Grace to You MacArthur rolls in at 5th with a group of 647 members.

6. Brian McLaren – Everyone is going to hell with Brian McLaren in this group of 624 members.

7. CJ Mahaney – If you’re Reformed and Charismatic then he’s your man! CJ whips out a group of 425 members.

8. Tim Keller – The missional maestro from New York racks up a group of 360 members.

9. Matt Chandler – The local ‘Village’ pastor steps up to the big league with a group of 264 members.

10. Benny Hinn – Through an absolute miracle Benny wiggles his way into the top 10 with a group of 215 members (although I couldn’t quite figure out if the group was an appreciation group or something he shouldn’t show to his family).

And there you have it – on the flawless authority of Facebook. (PS – let me about any other interesting ‘Christian Icon’ groups).

Noah According to the Stoned

Mark Driscoll discusses theology with the weed community…

Convergent Audio

Denny Burke has all the audio from the recent Convergent Conference at South Eastern Baptist Seminary. It includes a very thought-provoking talk by Mark Driscoll about his relationship to and views on certain key figures in the emerging church conversation.