Toilet Mouth Driscoll is at it Again

Most know I have made no pretence of my dislike for Mark Driscoll. His efforts to appear "manly" (putting down women, swearing in pulpits, wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt) really do less than impress me. However - I have tried to see the good in his ministry. Terry Virgo - a man I hugely respect - has had some interaction with him and I've tried to appreciate that.

But Driscoll just won't shut up and go away. Not only has he know produced a "soft-core porn" sounding book on marriage and intimacy - which I fully admit I haven't read (and don't intend to - Tim Challies fair review was enough) but apparently he has also written off most of the United Kingdom evangelical preachers!

Here;

“Let’s just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don’t have one – that’s the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren't telling the truth.”

It doesn't bother me personally. I'm not "young" or a "Bible teacher". But I wonder how the many fans that Driscoll has over here in the United Kingdom will feel about being assessed as "cowards who aren't telling the truth". I wonder about Joel Virgo at CCK who I think is a fan, or Adrian Warnock or the many other Newfrontiers preachers who got excited about Driscoll's visit to the Newfrontiers Brighton conference recently? I wonder about the SGM young excellent preachers in both Bristol and Newport who would surely fit closely theologically with him as Calvinist and Reformed? Or as Krish Kandiah (who reviewed Driscoll's comments) also notes;

"It doesn’t sound like Driscoll is rejoicing the ministry of Mike Pilavaci, Andy Croft, Jo Saxton and the impact these preachers are having on tens of thousands of young people each summer at Soul Survivor. Doesn’t sound like he’s particularly appreciative of Rico Tice coming from the other end of the theological spectrum whose course is being used by hundreds of churches. We can’t call Nicky Gumbel young anymore but I haven’t heard a lot of love coming from Mars Hill for Alpha either. Apparently he hasn’t got anything good to say about Karl Martin in Edinburgh nor Pete Greig at HTB or Ness Wilson in Loughborough".

Oh Driscoll has begun to try and retract his words already apparently (as he does quite frequently when he mouths off and then realises he has put his big size 10's in it). I was more interested in the fact that he and his wife have a degree in communications rather than his "words of context" - that accuse the Christianity Today reporter of seeking to "inflame" his more controversial aspects to his ministry.

This hasn't really helped my attempts to see the good in Mark Driscoll's ministry. I don't think we even bother wondering whether John Piper and C J Mahaney (who has far too many of his own troubles to be reigning in Driscoll) help "father" and "pastor" him anymore. I am sad to say that all I see is an arrogant chauvinist who is working the media well (through his degree in communications) to stay famous, sell books and create newspaper headlines. Maybe he's a potential candidate for next year's "Celebrity Big Brother".

However I will try not to huff off - offended for my country - but end with a fair review assessment;

"There is lots to commend about Pastor Mark’s ministry – there is an evangelistic fervour, a cultural connectedness to their praise and worship that i have not seen anywhere else and passion for church planting which I can rejoice in. But please Mr Driscoll its time not just to “Man up” but “Grace up” your brothers and sisters in the UK need less judgmentalism and more encouragement".

Blessed Be Your Name!

I was going to write a blog tonight on the on-going SGM saga and my thoughts about the dear people within and the effects on them. But while I was running on the treadmill at the gym, Matt Redman's wonderful; "Blessed be Your Name" came on my iPod. It made me cry (always humiliating when surrounded by people working out!).

But this thoughts came to my mind.

One of the hardest things I have been struggling with recently has been the absence of the manifest Presence of God. When you love and enjoy ministries such as Terry Virgo or Rob Rufus especially who share such faith-building stories, it can grate at times when one's personal experience cannot match up to the accounts of servants of God such as these. It strikes me in this situation that there are two options;

1. Adjust your theology to match your experience (as per heroes of mine such as Dr Stanley Jebb and C J Mahaney have done). Speaking of which, Andrew Haslam (Greg Haslam's son) tweeted an excellent quote;

"The great irony of cessationism is that, in an effort to defend the Bible, one is actually teaching an unbiblical idea".

2. You carry on walking in faith hoping for more!

I must confess I have allowed the absence of God's wonderful manifest Presence (aside from touches such as at "Together on a Mission 2011" in Brighton) to first spur me, then hurt me, then wound me, and gradually make me almost wonder if we are in an Ezekiel 8:12 position. It would be easier to adjust theology to meet my (desired) lack of experience - I could join the ranks of "restless reformed Calvinists" conference hopping.

But Matt's song does not allow such a change of theology;

"Blessed be Your name

On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name".

Ironically here's the Brownsville Revival singing it;

So I asked myself (while sweating and in pain on the treadmill) - does the absence of His manifest Presence get included here? It's got to hasn't it. "My heart will CHOOSE to say". I would rather keep on believing in the God I read of in the Bible. The God who it is said of; "the more glorious covenant". Reading the Bible speaks volumes of an interventionist God who loves to encounter His people! Some of my favourite quotes on this;

"The essence of the Christian position is experience - experience of God! It is not a mere intellectual awareness or apprehension of truth. That can be of the devil ... If the experience is not an experience of the living God through His Son who has come to live and to die again in order to give it; if it is not through the Holy Spirit, it is not a true Christian experience" - Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

"Yet the great need of the hour is for thousands of men and women in this generation to encounter God in the way that Isaiah did and be overwhelmed with God's glory as a result. Only this will result in the kind of Church we all long to see and only this will produce the kind of joy, lasting happiness and peace that the world so craves but is never able to manufacture. Real joy - the God kind - doesn't come in a bottle, can't be swallowed in pill form, can't be injected and won't be found in any thrill-seeking endeavor anywhere in the world. Pure joy is only found in the Presence of God". Greg Haslam.

However ...

My concern is that we must not use the sovereignty of God and His right to manifest Himself when He so pleases to excuse our pleading and "knocking on Heaven's door" (or banging on heaven's door in some cases). It was interesting the next song on my iPod was this;

"Off-the-Peg Theology" - by Dr Stanley Jebb

Dr Stanley Jebb has written an excellent blog article today called; "Off-the-Peg Theology" which demonstrates his amazing academic insight. He critiques the assumption that so often we accept without question theological statements;

"The trouble is many young men go to theological college and accept without question the ready-made theology that is handed down to them. That is what I call “off-the-peg theology”. Rather I use the term to highlight the fact that so often statements of theology are accepted without question as long as they come from within out own circle".

Rather than;

"Unlike the Bereans, we do not search the Scriptures to see whether those things are so (Acts 17:11)".

Dr Jebb calls this theology an alternative phrase;

"Perhaps “hand-me-down theology” would be a better description. It is only too easy to accept, and even vigorously defend, a theology which we have never carefully compared with Scripture".

Stanley Jebb is correct - many theological phrases have become popular and indeed trendy in these days. Particularly phrases like; "Reformed" or "Evangelical" and sometimes "Charismatic" (although Dr Jebb didn't include the last!). But what do they really mean?

"In these days we have become rather careless in our use of such terms as ‘Reformed’ and ‘Calvinistic’. The word ‘Reformed’ is bandied about almost as though it were a synonym of ‘orthodox’, or a shorthand term for “really, really sound.”

Do we really know what John Calvin wrote in his massive Institutes? Or have we merely read John Piper or Mark Driscoll's popularized If we do not, then why are we so eager to adopt the label for ourselves? The message is excellent and clear - SCRIPTURE is our final authority and we should make every effort to search it Berean-like and see "if these things are so". If aspects of our cultural heritage do not tie up with Scripture then we should be asking why are we holding to them?

A Warning to the New Reformed Movement

The "New Reformed Movement" is an exciting development in church life and in theology. Servants of God such as John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Don Carson, Wayne Grudem and others have helped stir a passion for reformed theology - and that can't be a bad thing! I've been pondering for a while now however the "hero" syndrome especially among these individuals and how in discussion you often hear phrases like; "Well Piper said ..." and a rebuttal; "Yere but Carson demolished that and said ....". Or even; "Did Driscoll really say ... ?". Theological questions are often answered with "So and so said". Is that right? Can any Ephesians 4 Ministry truly "stand in the very stead of God"?

So I was really interested and encouraged to see the following pastoral caution; "What cautions do you have for the New Reformed Movement?" - from John Piper on my Twitter feed today. Piper was asked whether he had any warnings or cautions for the New Reformed Movement and he replied;

"I will give you one that is from a prophetic word given to me yesterday—take it or leave it".

That makes me sit up and take notice for starters - I love the fact that an intellect like John Piper doesn't have a problem hearing and accepting prophetic words - the prophetic and the mind are NOT enemies! Piper goes on;

"My caution concerns making theology God instead of God God. Loving doing theology rather than loving God ... We should be intellectually and emotionally more engaged with the person of Christ, the person of God—the Trinity—than we are with thinking about him. Thinking about God and engaging with him are inextricably woven together".

And then he goes on to make it explicit - emotions/intellect - they're all part of us and all belong together in our worship of God Himself;

"Intellectualism is a species of pride, because we begin to prize our abilities to interpret the Bible over the God of the Bible or the Bible itself" ... BUT ... "The danger on the other side is to say, "All that intellectual stuff, no, no, no. Doctrine, no. Intellect, no. Study, no. Experience, yes!" People who do this wind up worshipping a God of their own imagination".

I seize onto this warning because I've been in danger of this intellectual pride constantly myself since I began reading theology at university. I've sneered and looked down on church pastors who don't have as big a library as myself. I've judged sermons for their lack of quotes. And it is an UGLY, vile pride. Because why on earth does the God-given ability to read make me a better person than the humble, saintly dyslexic cleaner down the road?

By the way - that doesn't mean I'm giving up my books! But it is an apt reminder not to become so focused on theology that we miss WHO the theology is about - the Person - Jesus Christ.

Charismatic Calvinists ... Beware!!

I am incredibly interested in following the thoughts and writings of Jesse Phillips - author of "Prophetically Speaking". He is vocalising much of what I have thought, feared and wondered for some time now - quite obviously benefiting from being at the SGM Pastors College. Many cessationists point to our forefathers such as the Reformers and some of the Puritans such as Jonathan Edwards and claim since they believed the gifts of the Holy Spirit had ceased, therefore so should we if we are to be logical reformed Calvinists. So Jesse's question; "Is reformed theology inherently cessationist?" is an excellent one worthy of serious consideration. He concludes:

"Although there is nothing inherently cessationist about reformed theology, given its emphasis on God's sovereignty it's easier for charismatic apathy and functional cessationism to set in ... it is easier for functional cessationism to co-exist with reformed theology than with others (i.e. Armenian)".

I said on his site that I like the term "Functional Cessationism". When I was growing up, my home church moved resolutely away from it's charismatic heritage and became in essence cessationist. In other words, the gifts of the Holy Spirit were not welcome in corporate gatherings. However there was no sermon or published booklet outlining the Scriptural rationale for this revised position on the charismatic gifts. If anyone was to ask the leaders, "Are you cessationist", they would be told "No - God is sovereign and He can do what He wants". But the gifts were not modelled, taught or welcome. Therefore we were "Functional Cessationists".

Jesse goes on to say;

"We can become complacent though certain gifts cease, assuming that if God wanted certain gifts to be given he would provide some sort of sovereign jump-start apart from any human initiative ... but it is certainly easier for this sort of charismatic fatalism to creep in where sovereignty is emphasized. Reformed charismatics must fight for faith so that we do not become apathetic and too quickly credit the absence of certain gifts strictly to God's sovereignty".

I liked and noted two phrases there which are extremely important. "Sovereign jump-start". Very often in theology I hear until I am weary the phrase, "God is sovereign". Indeed He is! But is His sovereignty an excuse not to pray for revival as I have been told? Is His sovereignty an excuse not to step out into a new area of gifting - such as Terry Virgo has been doing with healing? Is His sovereignty an excuse to become functional cessationists because one is not hearing the type of prophetic utterance that was expressed in the Bible? I do think our danger as charismatic calvinists is to wait for this "sovereign jump-start" - which may not actually be coming! God has poured out His Holy Spirit and has given His gifts. There is nothing more coming from heaven to help us complete the mission we are on!

The second phrase I liked but I found chilled me was "charismatic fatalism". I have seen this attitude happen again and again as I have grown up. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw exactly the same thing as Jesse has pointed out - he called it "Fear of excess". As a church we heard warnings against all types of charismatic "excess" - a list can probably be found in John MacArthur's "Charismatic Chaos". The illogical thought process was reached that if God was sovereign, surely He would not allow these excessive and shameful things to happen therefore maybe He hasn't given the gifts at all. Surely an honest reading of the New Testament shows that is ridiculous. Paul COMMENDS the Corinthians for the fact that they "came behind in no gift"! I wonder what church today can be commended in that same way? Yet of course he went on to "not command no use instead of abuse but right use" (as Professor Gordon Fee put it).

He closed by quoting from a lecture on the danger of the Third Wave position:

"Given the significance of Acts in recording the first 30 years of the church, if you read it as though it has no application for us today, you end up becoming a functional cessationist and dispensationalists. You may believe that the gifts are available in theory, but that everything supernatural in Acts is unique and has no relevance to us."

To all charismatic calvinists - let us beware! There is no need to downgrade the strength of doctrinal beliefs or the awesome heritage of our forefathers. But surely the call to the Church is to wake up and read the Word of God as it should be read! Or as Brent Detweiler put it:

“This is what we need and this is what we can experience in our day. God, may we see the book of Acts rewritten at the end of the age!”