Archive for June, 2010
Book Review: Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears
Slowly
Our church staff has been slowing, and I mean slowly, working its way through Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears. Time elapsed so far is probably nearing a year. Initially we were reading at a reasonable pace, but then everything got busier in “the ol’ church world” as they say, and we’ve all but postponed finishing the book for the time being. But, we will finish. In the mean time, and since I was nearly finished with the book anyway, I thought I’d read the last few chapters.
It’s good. I mean really good. It’s been good all the way through, but it got really good at the end. Driscoll and Breshears start out simple, and move to more complex subject matter. Perhaps complex is actually a bad way to say it, let’s say they move on to more timely subject matter towards the end of the book. All of it’s good reading though. Even the opening chapters, the ones I’ve now labeled as “simple,” are relevant and essential reading. One of the most under-taught areas of theology is probably ecclesiology (i.e. the theology of the church). And because church should not just be this service that we attend in a building once a week, we need to understand what a church is, and why it does the things it does, and even if it should be doing them at all. Vintage Church forces readers to interact with these questions.
My favorite chapters are definitely the last several. They include chapters such as:
Chapter 9) What is a missional church?
Chapter 10) What is a multi-campus church?
Chapter 11) How can a church utilize technology?
Chapter 12) How could the church help transform the world?
The chapters on preaching (chapter 4) and church discipline (chapter 7) also stand out in my mind as highly helpful and extremely insightful.
#12
The most important chapter may be chapter twelve, which as stated above, deals with the question, “How could the church help transform the world?” In this chapter Driscoll and Breshears interact with the collision of church and culture. How should the church influence, transform, and help create and cultivate the larger culture that is around it? I’ve heard Driscoll teach about this subject matter before, but I feel the treatment in Vintage Jesus is the most fully-orbed that I’ve heard so far. So, I want to touch on this specific subject matter for the rest of this review.
Driscoll starts out by defining four commonly held visions for how to transform culture, and then decries each of them as short sided. These visions are:
1) The Evangelistic Vision – if everyone gets saved, the world will change
2) The Political Vision – if we elect the right leaders, the world will change
3) The Fundamentalist Vision – we should flee the sinful, secular culture, which will be destroyed by God soon anyway
4) The Liberal Vision – if we just love people, even if we don’t share the gospel, everything will be ok
Driscoll then proposes a new, 5th vision for how to transform culture, one that has been largely developed by James Davison Hunter, a Christian and professor of sociology at the university of Virginia. Hunter concludes that Christians must abandon the short-sidedness of the previous visions for how to transform culture. They are all based on the false premises that culture will change because of great ideas, or a great man, or the purity of the hearts of individuals. Conversely, Hunter asserts that culture changes because of connectedness to a powerful network of cultural shaping individuals and institutions. He offers the following five ideas:
1) Culture is a resource and, as such, a form of power.
2) Culture is produced.
3) Culture production is stratified (i.e. arranged and sent out) from center to periphery.
4) Culture changes from the top down and rarely from the bottom up.
5) The impetus, energy, and direction for changing the world are most intense where cultural, economic, and even political resources overlap.
Driscoll seems to agree with these ideas and offers the following plan. Churches should be planted primarily in urban areas where they can interact with the culture-makers and become the culture-makers in society. In these large urban areas, the church should exist as a city within a city. It should demonstrate how life should be lived within its own small city (the church), and send its people out to interact with larger city where it is planted. The people of the church are transformed and trained to interact with the culture at large in loving and truth-filled ways. This God-centered culture will then flow downstream to smaller cities and more rural areas and effect them as well. This is a strategic method to reach the largest amount of people and effect the largest swath of culture.
I think the most eye-opening part of this chapter for me was that “the evangelistic vision,” and the “city within a city vision,” are not the same vision. Personally, I had been propagating both and assuming they were the same. But they are not. As Christians we must preach the gospel, and people must be saved. But, we also must create and effect the cultural systems at large by constantly interacting with the culture-shapers in our city. It’s not enough to simply teach our people to witness, they must witness yes, but they must also create and effect the culture in every area of their lives. This is being true to the entire message of the gospel, which is more than “pray this prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, and then be moral.”
This Keeps Making More and More Sense
I still have a lot to learn about what all this entails, and the following synopsis is incomplete, but I think I agree. Personally, I have no intentions of diminishing the priority of evangelism. But I think evangelism is just part of the solution, and actually becomes a more effective tool in the hands of a Christian who is constantly cultivating the culture around him as he shares the good news.
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No commentsExcited: I Love Underoath
It will be interesting to see what the album sounds like with Aaron Gillespie not involved, but Underoath is the best hardcore / heavy / emo / screamo / whateverthehecktheyare band around in my opinion.
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No commentsBook Review: Religion Saves + Nine Other Misconceptions by Mark Driscoll
The Book
My beautiful wife gave me this book for Christmas, and ever since I’ve been slowly picking my way through it’s pages. It’s that type of book. You can read a chapter one night, put the book down, pick it up again a month later, and read another chapter. The chapters stand on their own.
Religion Saves was a sermon series at Mars Hill Church before it became a book. Driscoll gave his church members (and really anyone who visited the church website) the chance to vote on his sermon topics. The nine most popular questions, as determined by the online voting, were developed into the Religion Saves sermon series. The book came about after the fact.
The questions preached / written upon were:
9. Birth Control: There’s no doubt the Bible says children are a blessing, but the Bible doesn’t seem to address the specific topic of birth control. Is this a black-and-white topic, or does if all under liberties?
8. Humor: Why do you make jokes in sermons about Mormon missionaries, homosexuals, trench coat wearers, single men, vegans, and emo kids, and then expect these groups to come to know God through those sermons?
7. Predestination: Why does an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-sovereign God will into creation people he foreknows will suffer eternal condemnation – and the Romans 9:20 answer seems like a cop-out!
6. Grace: Of all the things you teach, what parts of Christianity do you still wrestle with? What’s hardest for you to believe?
5. Sexual Sin: How should Christian men and women go about breaking free form the bondage of sexual sin?
4. Faith and Works: If salvation is by faith alone, then why are so many verses that say or imply the opposite – that salvation is by works?
3. Dating: How does a Christian date righteously, and what are the physical, emotional, and mentally connecting boundaries a Christian must set while developing an intimate relationship prior to marriage?
2. The Emerging Church: What can traditional or established churches learn from “emerging” churches?
1. The Regulative Principle: Do you believe that the Scripture not only regulates our theology but also our methodology? In other words, do you believe in the regulative principle? If so, to what degree? If not, why not?
My Opinion
As you can see, some of this is pretty heady and some of it is pretty practical, but most all of it is interesting. One of my favorite things about Driscoll’s writing style is how well-stated and organized his books are. He manages again and again to state an unbelievable amount of information in a concise, understandable, well-organized, digestable-for-nearly-anyone format. Even if you are a pastor, and think you already know your answer / opinion on all of these questions, this is a useful resource. Because let’s face it, unless you’re D.A. Carson or John Piper, Driscoll probably answers these questions better than you would.
My favorite chapters are: Birth Control, Predestination, Sexual Sin, Dating, and The Emerging Church. I would argue that each of these chapters warrant the purchase of the book alone.
Really good read!
p.s. – you can watch all the sermons online rather than read here:
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/religionsaves?direction=asc&order_by=date
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No commentsHave you read 9mark’s review of the Nooma Video Series?
http://www.9marks.org/books/scoopa-nooma-part-1
Here’s an excerpt:
“The gospel as Bell communicates it in NOOMA runs something like this: All of us are broken, sinful, selfish, and prideful people. We carry around the baggage of our hurts, our resentments, and our jealousies. As a result we are just a shell of the kind of people God intends us to be. But our God is a loving God who accepts us and loves us just as we are. He can comfort us, heal us, and make us whole, real, authentic, living, laughing people. Not only that, but Jesus came to show us how to live revolutionary lives of love, compassion, and acceptance. By learning from his teachings and following him, we can live the full and complete lives that God intended.
And that’s about it. That’s not just the introduction that leads to an explanation of the cross, atonement, the resurrection and salvation, either. So far, at least, that’s what NOOMA holds out as “The Gospel.” Full stop”
My Opinion
I admire Bell’s creativity , his desire to help people, and his desire to point them towards God, it just doesn’t seem like he’s pointing people towards the God of the Bible.
Also helpful on this topic is Mark Driscoll’s chapter on the Emerging Church in his book Religion Saves (Religion Saves is also a sermon series by Driscoll that mirrors the book, see the link to the video below).
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/religionsaves/emerging-church
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2 commentsSermon: A Story of Sin & Restoration
This is my latest sermon, another from Hosea (the book our church is currently studying through).
A Story of Sin & Restoration – Hosea 2 – 6/13/10
(right click to download):
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No commentsBrief Book Review: Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
Dan Brown’s Writing
I like Dan Brown. He writes entertaining, conspiracy-theory laden novels about religion, history, government, science, and technology. Digital Fortress is his earliest novel, published in 1998. It’s a good book, but as might be suspected, it’s not as good as some of his later work. In my mind both Digital Fortress and Deception Point (Brown’s third novel) pale a bit in comparison to his more popular novels: Angels & Demons (his second novel) and The Da Vinci Code (his fourth novel). This may be because his writing has gotten better, or it may be because the subject matter is more intriguing in Angels & Demons and Da Vinci.
Uber-Brief Synopsis
Digital Fortress is a book that follows the inner-workings of the NSA (National Security Administration) and code breaker Susan Fletcher. David Becker, Susan’s fiance, plays an equally large role within the book, and finds himself in Seville Spain trying to track down an item that he has been told is vital to national security. The larger issue in the novel is about balancing national safety with the right of each individual’s personal privacy. In other words, “How much about our personal lives does the government need to know to truly keep us safe?” This topic seems like old hat in a post-911, post-George W. Bush presidency era, but Brown wrote Digital Fortress before these events had taken place, so kudos to him for having insight into an important debate ahead of time.
The Good & the Bad
I liked this book, but some of the terms and technology referred to are a bit dated now. I also think that Brown’s writing becomes somewhat predictable as the story builds. To be honest, I’m not a person who usually tries to figure out how a novel or a movie is going to end. I’m more interested in experiencing the emotion that the story brings to life in the moment (novels in this sense are an escape for me because so many other types of books that I read require constant mental awareness), but even as someone uninterested in figuring the story out, I could foresee how some of the situations in Digital Fortress were going to end. I think some of this predictability is also present in Deception Point, but happily not in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code.
One more thing to Brown’s credit: some of the characters in this book are spot on. The NSA’s lead sys-sec, Jabba, is perfectly believably and at times annoyingly so. Midge, an internal security analyst, is a perfect rendition of that snarky, intelligent, domineering woman whom you love to hate, but truthfully need. There were times within the book where these two characters, especially Jabba, were so believable, that I was getting irritated just listening to them speak.
Verdict
If you like Dan Brown’s writing, Digital Fortress is worth the read. But, read Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol (his newest book, which follows The Da Vinci Code, and which I assume is great) first.
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No commentsBook Review: The Magician’s Nephew – Book 1 of The Chronicles of Narnia
As a Boy
I was given a set of The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, but failed to really enjoy them. I began the series with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and read a few of the books that followed it, but never finished. I think my stopping point was about halfway through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Honestly, I don’t remember enjoying the books that much, and that’s probably why I didn’t finish them.
Now, about 20 years later, a few things have changed. For one, I’ve become more appreciative of the writings of C.S. Lewis as a whole. Secondly, I’ve developed more of a taste for all-things-geek (e.g. fantasy stories such as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, comic books, etc.). And thirdly, I’m now very interested in the theological ramifications of Lewis’ writings. I think Lewis was a genius, but I also know that his theology is seriously flawed in certain areas, and I guess you could say that I’m investigating. So, I’ve begun reading and re-reading these books, mainly for entertainment, but also with a careful eye towards the content.
First Things First, or perhaps the reason I didn’t Like These Books As a Child
As beloved as The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is, it really should not be read as the first book in the series (as it often is). Lewis intended for The Magician’s Nephew to be read first, and having now read both books, I agree that The Magician’s Nephew better sets up The Chronicles of Narnia as a whole. I think it’s disappointing to begin The Chronicles of Narnia series with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe because The Horse and His Boy, the book that follows, has such a drastic change in characters. This change really puts a bad taste in the reader’s mouth, a reader who has developed somewhat of an attachment to the characters in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. As a boy, I longed for more connection between the characters in the two books, and because of a perceived lack of cohesiveness, I think I lost interest in the series as a whole. I would argue that reading The Magician’s Nephew as the first book in the series (as Lewis intended), prepares the reader for the drastic character changes that occur throughout the series, and in this way it leaves the reader anticipating rather than disappointed.
A Few Highlights
I’m preparing to write a review the entire Chronicles of Narnia series once I’ve completed all the books, so I’m not going to jump into too much detail here, but I do want to touch on one or two highlights in the book:
1) Lewis’ description of the creation of Narnia (and its obvious parallels to the Biblical account) is really quite breath-taking. This is probably my favorite part of the book because it so brings to life the power and beauty of God. Aslan (the Jesus figure in the series) walks too and fro over a darkened, formless earth, and sings the creation to life. His song creates life and bursts forth with wonder and beauty. This conception of the creation account really aids me in praising God and is probably closer to the actual truth than the sometimes sterile picture I create in my mind if I’m not careful.
2) Lewis’ perfectly captures the truth about spiritual blindness in this book. The protagonist in The Magician’s Nephew is Digory, a young boy who visits other worlds through the magical powers of a set of rings. Digory and his Uncle Andrew (along with a few others) witness the founding and creation of Narnia. To Digory this is a wonderful experience, but to Digory’s uncle, it is a dreadful experience. And Lewis, as narrator in the book, comments that “What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are” (148). This quote perfectly captures the truth of spiritual sight and spiritual blindness that we see in the Bible. Those who have their eyes opened to the truth of God see evidences of His existence, and beauty, and goodness wherever they look; but those who don’t know God often see the exact opposite. They see no evidence that He exists, or at best see evidence that He is in fact mean, selfish, and puny at best. The difference between these two types of people is spiritual blindness. Lewis perfectly captures this truth in The Magician’s Nephew as he compares Digory to Uncle Andrew.
One more quote
“They were terribly afraid it (Aslan) would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished it would” (128).
More Chronicles of Narnia to come…
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No commentsSermon Transcript: Our Unfaithfulness, God’s Faithfulness – Hosea 1
I got the honor preaching this sermon from Hosea 1 this past Sunday at 24church. One of the things I’m trying to do is fully manuscript my sermons. I’m doing this for a few reasons: 1) It forces me to really think through what I’m planning on saying, 2) It gives me an archive of messages that are useful because I know my full thoughts and not just snippets of my thoughts, and 3) I think it helps me to be a better preacher.
Anyway, I thought I’d post the pdf on here if anyone is interested. Enjoy!
Our Unfaithfulness, God’s Faithfulness – 6/06/10
(right click to download):
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No commentsSteve Jobs
It’s amazing to watch Steve Jobs speak candidly about his company and the tech industry as a whole. He is such a brilliant guy. Check out all this footage from the D8 Conference this year.
http://d8.allthingsd.com/speakers/steve-jobs/
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No commentsThe Beard’s Portfolio
Hey everyone. I just updated my portfolio here on Biggzipp.com to make it easier to navigate and to showcase a few recent designs. Let me know what you think!
Click here to check it out!
