Mark Driscoll explains his current beliefs and concerns with the "emerging church"

[Josh]

Sunday, Mark Driscoll reluctantly preached this sermon, after being asked about the emerging church:

http://www.marshillchurch.org/sermonseries/religionsaves/week_08.aspx

He speaks of his past ties. He defines groups of people, ranging from groups who he has some disagreements with, to a group who he has serious problems with and believes has "gotten off the highway" and is "at worst, cultish" such as Brian McLaren, Doug Paggit, and Rob Bell. Unfortunately the only way to really gather his current theological position is to listen to the full sermon. Alarm bells that might go off earlier may get clarified later.

I'm going read/listen-only in this thread, so I will just be reading what you have to say (I had stopped posting here, but this sermon turned out to be so relevant to the "emerging church" that I just wanted to share this one link). That is, if you are even interested enough in the topic to decide to post in this thread! :)

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this sermon specifically (which is the latest of his that I know of, as he preached it yesterday). I understand plenty of links have been posted/pasted about him in the past, and I won't be defending him here. He has plenty of flaws (a fine example is his choice of T-shirt in the above sermon, which I disagree with but don't judge him for too harshly). I am just wondering if this changes his association with the emerging church? Or is it viewed as just the same old stuff? How should he be judged, based on this latest info? Is his analysis of the emerging types sound?

While I won't be responding, I value and look forward to reading your input.

[petras]

thanks for the post. im still eating my popcorn from the last time:popcornbag

[Violet]

:popcorn
I'll share

[Sing4Him]

http://www.acts29network.org/resources/recommended-books/emerging-church/


Acts 29 is a network of like-minded, yet diverse churches that have banded together to plant emerging churches that are missional minded and culturally engaged (our goal is 1,000 churches in the next 20 years). The vision began with two unlikely partners when Mark Driscoll (Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington) and David Nicholas (Pastor of Spanish River Presbyterian Church in Boca Raton, Florida) co-founded Acts 29 in 2000 to help facilitate young church planters with their dreams of planting churches and proclaiming the gospel to an emerging generation.
We believe that planting churches is an effective method that can adequately bridge cultural and generational gaps and proclaim the gospel to all people. Many churches and denominations have cycles of effectiveness and have sacrificed growth at the expense of tradition. Acts 29 is helping churches, and church planters, move beyond tradition, style, and methodology, and embrace a philosophy that is free to reach our culture for Christ.
Although the Acts 29 churches sign a basic philosophy of ministry and doctrinal statements, each church is autonomous and usually quite diverse in form and style. The organization is interdenominational and only require that each local church be approved through the Acts 29 network, and tithes
10% of their budget back into planting churches that they have raised up. By grace, God is significantly using our network to influence and shape the church planting culture through both rock-solid theology and contextualizing
the gospel. We seek to stay true to these commitments. We espouse strong, orthodox theology and gospel integration in our communities to glorify God. We are planting churches that are missionaries in their respective communities sent by Christ with the gospel (John 20:21).

--------5. The Missional Question: Why does this matter?
We need to connect all that we have said to a missional purpose for our lives, families, church, and ultimately God’s glory. Something may be true but if people do not find it to
also be important, they tend not to act on it. On this point I like to connect Scripture to the character of God, nature of the gospel, our mission in our city, and the quality of our lives
both individually and collectively as a city of God within our city.
6. The Christological Question: How is Jesus the hero/savior?
The Bible is one story in which Jesus is the hero. Therefore, to properly teach/preach the Bible we have to continually lift Him up as the hero. Any sermon in which the focus is not on
the person and work of Jesus will lack spiritual authority and power because the Holy Spirit will not bless the teaching of any hero other than Jesus.------------------


Driscoll quotes this:
“Biblical theology enables us to make good gospel use of every part of the Bible; it has the potential to produce good and rich gospel spirituality, which reflects every facet and every stage of the biblical revelation. Christian spirituality needs biblical theology so that its use of the Bible is coherent, Christian, responsible, and reflects the full literary width and theological depth of the Scriptures. In particular, biblical theology enables the Old Testament to be used for true spirituality, that is spirituality that expresses the gospel of Christ.” – Peter Adam, Hearing God’s Word: Exploring
Biblical Spirituality

link connection with:
http://www.whm.org/faith_statement-- check this.. is there true repentace represented or it is obscure?
Kingdom centered prayer
Our desire is that prayerful dependence uniquely characterizes our mission work, in a way that involves staff, missionaries and ministry partners.
and this:
http://www.whm.org/go/vision-trips
http://www.whm.org/go/vision-trips/dublin "Prayer walks"

here we go:

One recommended site on Driscoll's is this:http://www.missiology.org/
Spiritual Formation in Church Planting (MMR #39)
Charles Kiser describes the Marvelous Light retreat at Christ Journey: The power of the retreat is located in three venues: teaching, testimony, and triad. Teaching segments lay a scriptural foundation and help to create a biblical worldview about the reality of sin and grace. Testimony serves to give a concrete picture of the life of someone who has left the darkness for life in God’s light. One woman offered a testimony about her journey to forgiving her parents for years of physical and sexual abuse. One man testified to the darkness he experienced as the high priest of a witch coven and the path he took out of the occult and into the light of God’s kingdom....
Heidi Chappotin of Christ Journey testifies, “We had a retreat at Christ Journey called Marvelous Light...and, man, was it ever marvelous....I have told many people that I had the most amazing encounter with God this weekend that I have ever had in my entire life...


and this:

Contextualization and Syncretism (MMR #38)

and this!:
Christian Prayer and Eastern Meditation (MMR #29)
The East and West are Ever-Meeting:
In our religiously pluralistic environment Westerners have become highly receptive to Eastern forms of religion, especially meditation. Harold Netland in Encountering Religious Pluralism writes: "The cumulative influences of the disestablishment of Christianity in Western societies, the increased marginalization of traditional religion in modern life, a deepening skepticism about the claims of orthodox Christianity, and the existential awareness of cultural and religious diversity engendered by globalization work together to erode confidence in the truth of Christian faith in favor of more pluralistic alternatives" (2001, 15).......Romantics, especially in Germany, looked to the monistic motifs of Vedanta Hinduism of India, believing that "ultimately all reality is one unified whole and that this reality is fundamentally spiritual in nature, with the material world being in some respect illusory" (Netland 2001, 102). The impact of Buddhism has been even more pervasive. In the nineteenth century battle between Christianity and secularism, the agnostic yet meditative character of Buddhism appealed to those seeking an alternative to Christianity. The counter-cultural movements of the 1950s and 1960s "drew heavily ...How then should Christians perceive meditation and other practices of the new spiritualities?
First of all, the practice of meditation affirms the reciprocal relationship between mind and body. In North America physicians treat the physical causes of illness, theologians and philosophers struggle with the reasons for evil, and psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists treat the trauma resulting from stress and anxiety. However, increasingly it is accepted that health is not merely a physical phenomenon that can be treated impersonally and superficially but must be treated as a spiritual phenomenon with physical causations. Christian physicians, therefore, must become ministers of "the God of all comfort" who empathetically and prayerfully minister as God's spokespersons. They must mimic the Great Physician who ministered both spiritually and physically. ....
Throughout this informal study I do not ridicule the practices of the searcher or object to pagan customs but speak of and illustrate relationship meditation with creator God.


We are not eschatological Theonomists or
Classic Dispensationalists (e.g. Scofield) and
believe that divisive and dogmatic certainty
surrounding particular details of Jesus Second
Coming are unprofitable speculation,
because the timing and exact details of His
return are unclear to us.http://www.acts29network.org/mediafiles/chicago-2008-boot-camp-manual.pdf

We believe that our local churches must be faithful to the continually changing context of the culture(s) in which they minister (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).
We are not fundamentalists who retreat from cultural involvement and transformation, but rather missionaries faithful both to the content of Scripture and context of ministry.
We are not isolationists and seek to partner with like-minded Christians from various churches, denominations and organizations in planting church-planting churches
The Practice of the Presence of God
Brother Lawrence
As a humble cook, Brother Lawrence (c. 1605–1691) learned an important lesson through each daily chore: The time he spent in communion with the Lord should be the same, whether he was bustling around in the kitchen…or on his knees in prayer.
http://www.marshillchurch.org/content/worship


and another site:

The Deeper Teaching Community Trend. Some churches are asking: “why do people think that spiritual formation is a non-Sunday thing?” With this question in hand, some more experimental churches have centered their Sunday teaching on a longer and more exegetical search through scriptures. Best popularized by Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church in Seattle, Washington, these churches have tapped into a more educated group of people that simply want to learn more about the Bible before they do anything else. Popular with College students in a learning mindset and unchurched skeptics looking for deep apologetics instead of simple steps, these churches view the “teaching” as the key spiritual formation moment of the week. The rest of the week is devoted to individually working out what they heard on Sunday. You might claim that all evangelical churches are rooted in their Sunday teaching, but with this trend it’s going to a whole other level. See The Church of Irresistible Influence by Robert Lewis along with Re-Imaging Spiritual Formation and Preaching Re-Imagined both by Doug Pagitt for a variation of this trend revolving more around what he calls “progressional dialogue” where the message is co-created in community and looks more like a facilitated discussion on Sundays. http://www.drurywriting.com/david/05-spiritualformationtrends.htm
LEADERSHIP NETWORK:==Driscoll and his friend Stetzer of Lifeway ( http://www.successtosignificance.com/) see both links:
http://www.leadnet.org/search_results.asp

http://www.leadnet.org/about_AlliancePartners.asp


Still advocates Team Leadership Network.

This is ALL Contemplative Spirituality! Spiritual Formation.

That is completely UNSCRIPTURAL.


The affiliations have come directly from both his websites, Mars Hill AND his Acts 29 Network.

so.. he has pulled away from extreme Emergents. He STILL has half his body sunk in the above.

Run folks.. run!

[Sing4Him]

and yes, I listened to this and it is almost exactly the same talk he gave to the NC SB Convention this past fall.

[Sing4Him]

Justification of a Man? Justification that lies solely in God's Word?

[Sing4Him]

Here is another reason to Question Driscoll:

From his newer book, "Vintage Jesus"quote:

Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their own oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus’ mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted a crazy story to cover the “fact” she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of a car at the prom. Jesus was adopted by a simple carpenter named Joseph and spent the first thirty years of his life in obscurity, swinging a hammer with his dad.


Personally, I can't deal with this kind of talk about my Savior.