So I realize that I have had a few posts on Mark Driscoll, but it seems this man is taking over the church scene in Seattle. His verbose, often critical opinions are everywhere. The Stranger recently published an atricle about Christianity in Seattle. In it, they interviewsed three pastors, two ‘conservative’ and one ‘liberal.’ It is a pretty decent article, but the author misues some language (primarily calling Mars Hill Church an Emergent church). As I read the article I couldn’t help but notice how many times Driscoll said something that practically begs for people to get offended. So I thought I would paste those below as a way to start a conversation.
Driscoll, for his part, has an apocalyptic, us-versus-them view of his church’s role in society, arguing in a recent sermon that true rebellion means being “heterosexual and pump[ing] out some kids,
There is no occasion where women led a society and were its heads and the men complied and followed.
If you claim to be a Christian and you continue to sin, you get the boot… If you don’t want to obey God, then you should be banished out of the church, because the church is a community of God.
If you would like to post a letter to the editor to broaden the scope of this article please do. We all know this article is only a subset of a subset of Christianity in Seattle. The email address for the editor at the stranger is appropriately editor@thestranger.com
peace
joel
Joel,I read the article and for the most part thought it did Mars Hill justice. Some of the editorializing bothered me… For example in your first quote, Driscoll did say that rebellion is being hetersexual and having kids, but the assertion that that is “apocalypic” and “us vs. them” is off-base, I don’t think Mark would take it that far.
Realize that Mark’s making emphatic points, but ultimately I don’t Mark is wrong on any of the points he is making. Some people just think it’s extreme…
I have a friend who is a member at Mars Hill and works at a VERY liberal PR firm downtown… This article pissed a lot of her co-workers off. Of course it did, what do you expect, they have unregenerate hearts? Our culture isn’t going to get Christianity, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right. Christian’s still have a responsibility to tell the truth to the culture, even though they don’t want to hear it…
Incidently, I think that Lang (from Trinity) is right in the last paragraph… If the author of the article is as accurate about Trinity as she is about Mars Hill… Trinity IS dying… if not already dead.
jon -
thanks for the thoughtful response.
It was a surprise for me to see Christianity take up space in the stranger. The major fault I see in the article was that it was ill-informed. I wish that journalists were held to a higher standard so that we could trust the info they give us. I also wish, that for once, someone besides Mark Driscoll would publicaly speak positives about the church. All the news sources rip him apart every time they publish something by on him.
joel