Welcome to the Reformission
As I prepare to enter the world of church planting, I’m spending my time reading just about everything of use I can get my hands on. After tackling Ed Stetzer and J.D. Payne at the end of last year, I’ve moved on to Mark Driscoll for the beginning of 2010. Last week, I finished his book The Radical Reformission, with Confessions of a Reformission Rev. now on the slate. If the latter is as good as the former, it’ll be a worthwhile read.
In The Radical Reformission, Driscoll seeks to lay out exactly what kind of challenge awaits the modern church. The culture has moved on without us, seeing the church as an archaic dinosaur from decades gone by with little to no relevance for today’s world. Much of that, Driscoll argues, is due to the standoffish way we’ve approached our culture over the years. The temptation, then, is to plunge headfirst into cultural accommodation to try to win back the people we’ve alienated. Driscoll, however, suggests that will be an empty pursuit, only resulting in winning people back to a worthless and powerless religion. He argues that we must take the timeless gospel message and change the way we relate it to the world around us. We must understand the culture in which we live – whether Seattle, Savannah, or Salt Lake City – and contextualize the message with our words and actions so that it can be best communicated to broken people where they’re at. In his classic raw, witty style, Driscoll offers a way forward to help Christians do exactly that.
From a prospective church planter’s perspective, this was a fantastic “big picture” book. Driscoll does a great job of spelling out with clarity and precision the cultural picture that we all have to deal with. He clearly understands modern-day America and he’s got a heart for the people that inhabit it. Viewing the book through that lens as a “Diagnosing and Reaching Culture 101” text, Driscoll could hardly have done much better. Older, more tradition-bound Christians should read it as a wake-up call to the realities waiting just outside their church’s door, and younger, boundary-pushing Christians should read it as a strong reminder that the answer to our cultural disconnect isn’t hip ideas and catchy campaigns but rather the timeless message of the Gospel. The book’s only real weakness stems from the fact that it’s now six years old. While the culture hasn’t changed that much, Driscoll has, and there were moments in the book where I think 2010 Mark Driscoll might have said things a bit more carefully than 2004 Mark Driscoll. Nothing glaring, but I can imagine some spots where perhaps someone unfamiliar with the topics could take things the wrong way, seeing Driscoll as more culturally (rather than theologically) driven than he actually is. All-in-all, though, this is a fantastic read for church planters, pastors, and people who know other people who need Jesus. Give it a shot.
Confessions of a Reformission Rev. was WAY BETTER than Radical Reformision. I can’t tell you how many times I about fell over laughing so hard at some of the stuff in there. Awesome read.