Paul will be proud, because I’ve just found Mark Driscoll saying something I agree with. My cousin Michael (who is currently working for NCLS) went along to hear Driscoll speak when he was around in Australia last week, and Steve Addison has linked off to an article the Sydney Anglicans have put together about Mark’s main points. And while I’d tend to disagree with Mark Driscoll about a bunch of the things he says from time to time, it seems that there’s a lot in here that I think is really quite insightful in looking at doing mission and evangelism in the Australian context. So some quotes:

“There is a lack of merit-based reward in denominations. I’m not saying your culture is bad and my culture is good. I’m saying your culture is bad and my culture is bad differently. People are rewarded for tenure but not for fruit. Men can’t be demoted or thrown out of ministry for more than stealing money or falling sexually. Just because you’re doing ministry long-term doesn’t mean you should be guaranteed of a job. You all know that some churches are being led by men who are not the best men for the job.”

I’d disagree, but not entirely. I think that there’s a danger in talking about “merit”, when often that gets equated with “counting”. Having said that, I do think there’s a need to be genuinely considering whether the church is being led by the best person for the job. And that it’s OK for the best person for the job to change as situation changes. But then I’m in a church that has just done that re-adjustment really well.

“The fact is, there is not a denomination in the room that I’m qualified to pastor in. I planted a church at 25 – could I do that with you? The answer is ‘no’.  What if there is a young man who wants to be responsible and plant a church… is there a system built to accommodate? The longer you delay responsibility, the longer you delay masculinity.”

Again, there’s a nugget of truth in there, surrounded by a touch of complementarian theology that I’d disagree with. But once you take for granted that you disagree with Driscoll’s need to relate so much back to complementarian principles (and read “maturity” where he says “masculinity” – he’s got a really important truth in here. Unless we’re willing to trust the youth to try things under the guidance of mature leadership, they’ll either fizzle out, or they’ll go do it outside of the guidance of mature leadership.

“Many of you are afraid of the Holy Spirit. You don’t know what to do with it, so the trinity is Father, Son and Holy Bible. You are so reactionary to pentecostalism that you have reacted also to the charismatic. The Holy Spirit calls people into ministry. He also empowers people for ministry. You don’t have to be charismatic but you should be a little charismatic, enough at least to worship God with more than just all of your mind….. Ministry cannot be done apart from the Holy Spirit – I think that is in part leading to the lack of entrepreneurialism and innovation, because if it’s not already done and written down, you’re suspicious of it.”

Absolutely. In a funny way, I think a parallel challenge for Vineyards in particular is that we need to be OK with buying into the charismatic and the work of the Holy Spirit, without necessarily taking the extra cultural and peripheral elements that have historically been packaged in with pentecostalism.

“Statistically I think one of the reasons your church is so small is that your young men don’t get to lead them until they are old” – and they run out of gas before they get there. You say, ‘but the young are irresponsible’ – of course they are! Young men say and do stupid things, but it’s good to get the losses out of the way early.”

It’s reiterating the earlier point, but I just loved the pioneering mindset. Yes, things are going to get stuffed up, but that’s OK. Not making mistakes is worse than making them.

“you need to have humility to learn from other people and discernment to know what not to implement.”

That’s some of the heart of why I’m interested in the whole Emerging church stuff, and how I’d want to do church planting.

So – have a read of the whole article, there’s more in there. I was pretty sceptical before reading this, but I absolutely think that Driscoll has some valuable things to contribute (as long as you can get over disagreeing with him a bunch of the time).