Tim Suffield.com

I’ve been listening to a fair bit of Mark Driscoll again lately. This has probably been brought on by the news that he is the main speaker at Together on a Mission this summer.

Anyway, a few thoughts on the dude - none of them original.

He says offensive and shocking things. That’s his style. I find it funny. Sometimes I shouldn’t. Let’s be honest though, a lot of what he gets stick for is the fact that people think what he is saying would be inappropriate in their churches.

They’re right. It would be. His entire point is that he is presenting the gospel in the context of the culture of Seattle. In other words much of what he says that sounds odd to our ears is appropriate in his context.

That’s not the point I wanted to make though - this isn’t a thought-through interaction with how we should adapt the way we present the old-old truths to be appropriate to our audience.

I don’t agree with everything Mark says. That isn’t really a problem - I don’t see why I should expect to. What I do admire about him is not simply that he presents the gospel faithfully while remaining contextual, what I admire is the guts with which he presents the gospel.

He calls a spade a spade. He talks about wrath and judgment and hell. How many of us do that unashamedly? I’m not saying that you should be able to talk about hell without feeling like your insides are being ripped out, but how many of us actually do it anyway? He presents the gospel with guts. His gospel has a big strong Jesus. His gospel has a Jesus who hates sinners. His gospel has a Revelation 19 Jesus covered in blood and carrying a sword on his way to make war.

How often have we lost this emphasis? I know that all too often I reduce God’s holiness in my mind and I place an over-emphasis on his friendliness towards me. Yes I have friendship with God, but I think we forget who this God is and where we’ve come from.

Mark is right to proclaim that Jesus is not a woss in a dress and to openly say that ‘he couldn’t worship a God he could beat up.’ The implication of course is that he couldn’t beat Jesus up. Because Jesus is hard. And has a big sword. And tattoos. And is generally badass.

If we proclaim a reformed gospel, that Jesus rescues us, it is amazing that we can forget that that means that Jesus kicked down the door, shot the bad guys stone dead and carried the hostages out on his shoulders. (Don’t over stretch the analogy).

We need to remember who Jesus is. We need to grow some backbone.

Apologies that this isn’t as structured as it could be, or as clear as it should be, but hear this:

When we proclaim Jesus in truth and with boldness, when we present Jesus as he really is - that is when lives are changed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Church & Culture, Together On A Mission, Mark Driscoll, Newfrontiers. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.