The Banned Church Planting Video

Based on reading Mark Driscoll's book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. (I blogged about that book My Lord and My Blog: Good book . . . so far.), reading his blog (Welcome to TheResurgence.com TheResurgence), and now watching a highly unpopular video that he produced, I've decided that he's the kind of guy I'd like to go fishing with.

Last year I attended the opening day of the National New Church Conference in Orlando. It was excellent . . . and crowded.

This year's conference (2008 National New Church Conference) was last week in Orlando and I couldn't attend, so I was interested to read about what happened.

Based on what I've read in two of my favorite blogs, a video by Mark Driscoll and Bill Hybel's response to the video have created quite a buzz.

Here's a portion from Todd Rhoades' blog MondayMorningInsight.com:

Hybels vs. Driscoll

Speaking of Mark Driscoll, there’s a lot being blogged today about Bill Hybel’s ‘rebuke’ of Mark Driscoll at the National New Church Conference last week. I’d be kind of out of the loop if I didn’t mention it somewhere here. Tall Skinny Kiwi has a little about it here. I find myself in a somewhat awkward position. Of course, I work for Leadership Network, and we were a sponsor for this year’s National New Church Conference (which was great, by the way). I’m also working with Mars Hill on a project; and we’ve worked closely with Willow as well. I also worked closely with the promoters of the conference this year. It’s always difficult when different worlds collide.

Mark Driscoll gives his perspective on his blog The Banned Church Planting Video TheResurgence:

Last year I spoke at a large church planting event along with a number of other church planters and church planting movement leaders. The event was held in Florida, went well, and did a very encouraging job of bringing together a number of denominations, networks, and organizations that otherwise would not have benefited from such a partnership.

This year I was invited back but declined because the few-day round trip from Seattle to Florida to give a very short message (last year it was less than twenty minutes) seemed like too much in light of other responsibilities. So, the sponsors of the event asked me to instead put together an eight-minute video on church planting that could be shown at the event and then handed out to each of the 1,500 attendees. So, in an effort to be helpful, the video crew from Mars Hill Church and I spent half a day in freezing weather at a military cemetery shooting scenes that were then edited for the video. Apparently the video was shown at the event, was well received by the attendees, and then criticized by Bill Hybels from the stage because it did not speak of women church planters. And, not wanting a bigger fuss, the organization hosting the event then made a decision not to hand out the video as they had promised, leaving the guys from our Acts 29 Church Planting Network who had hauled suitcases of the videos to Florida with thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of wasted effort. The leaders of the event are good guys whom I still consider friends, and I've never met Bill Hybels so I won't speak about him personally.

After Mark’s video aired, Bill Hybels was the next on stage and he said this:
“After that video I would like to acknowledge that there are women in this room and they have spiritual gifts.”

Apparently, the room erupted in applause after Bill's comment.

Mark's video was not passed out as planned.

I wasn't at the conference, so I'll keep my opinion limited to the video. As I watch the video I hear Mark--not speaking against women--but speaking against men and their tendancy to be weak and to present Jesus as less of the man than he actually was. His call to men to be "good soldiers" is not--in my opinion--a statement against women. He seems to have come to the video shoot with an agenda and that agenda was to call male church planters out and to challenge them to be the kind of men God desires for them to be for their sake and the sake of the churches they are planting. I can't imagine his agenda on this--or any other occasion--was to degrade the women involved in church planting. I hope not.

Watch the video and let me know what you think.

Invisibility vs. Visibility

Should preachers be invisible? I've been thinking about this question for the past week.

When I preach I want people to think about, hear, feel, and see Christ. I don't want them to think, "Wow. That preacher wasn't as boring as I thought he'd be." I want them to think, "Wow. That Jesus is even more amazing that I thought he'd be." But preaching puts a man in an awkward position where he has to capture people's attention only to redirect their attention to someone else.

It's a complicated process . . . "Look at me and listen to me, but . . . don't look at me, look at Jesus, but please keep listening to me, because in listening to me you're listening to the words of Jesus mixed up with my words, but my words don't really matter unless they're from Jesus, so do your best to listen carefully so you can discern which of the words I'm saying are God's Truth and which are just words that I'm using to point you to God's Truth. Got it!"

Preachers are kind of like defense attorneys standing next to, defending, and speaking for a person who needs help representing themselves to a jury, but--in the case of preachers and Christ--he is not a sinful human desperate to prove his innocence; he's Almighty God desperate for us to know that he is the only way to Heaven and eternal life and he doesn't really need our help, but then . . . in a very real way . . . he does.

I speak for him because he commanded me to (indirectly) when he said,

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Mt. 28:19,20)

So, I preach Jesus and try to blend in, but then I hear Paul saying (or should I say "I read Paul writing"?), "Therefore I urge you to imitate me" (I Cor. 4:16) and the writer of Hebrews saying, "Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith" (Heb. 13:7), and Paul urging a young preacher to not "let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity" (I Tim 4:12), and I'm really confused because I wonder, "How can you imitate someone who is invisible?"

But then I think about something else Paul wrote and it all seems to make sense: "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ" (I Cor. 11:1).

So, I'm convinced that when I preach I must be invisible, but not void. There's a difference. If I'm just a void--a large (or skinny) invisible empty space on stage then people who look at me, or in my general direction, will see nothing. Think of it more as transparency. I'm supposed to be--what one of my friends calls--a "transparent vessel." When people look at me they are not to see nothing; they should see something, or should I say, someone. When I preach people should look my general direction, see through me, and see Christ.

So, with John the baptizer, I must constantly pray, "He must become greater; I must become less"(John 3:30).

When it comes to worship . . . 18-30 Year Olds are definitely misunderestimated

Easter was an amazing night at The Well.

It was also a surprising night. The service was essentially one big communion service. Our worship leader at The Well, Matt Estrin, put together a set of songs that was meaningful and powerful.

We worshipped in the round and the energy was tangible. The young adults were singing passionately. It was such a blessing to hear them proclaiming their love for God and praising his name.

What was surprising was that the set included 3 hymns. And it was surprising, not because we have a mandate against hymns--which we definitely don't--but, it was surprising to me because the worship set is planned completely by our 25-year-old worship leader and his team. The worship set we sang included Jesus Paid it All, I Stand Amazed in the Presence, and It is Well With My Soul. The singing during these songs was overwhelming as the young adults belted out these "traditional" songs with passion. What?!? Don't young people hate hymns?

No! They don't. In my opinion what they dislike is passion-less and pointless singing. What they dislike is a song service that seems perfunctory. What they dislike is when the music which accompanies hymns is played like a funeral dirge and not like it matters. What they dislike is being in a roomful of "worshippers" who seem more concerned about comfort, appearances, and getting to the steakhouse before the Baptists than they do about praising God and thanking him--sufficiently--for all he's done and is doing.

I think we're making a huge mistake when we throw out traditional hymns with the bath water in an attempt to make our worship services more "relevant" to young adults. To do this misunderestimates (btw--If the President uses it then it counts as a word!) the power of meaningful lyrics and the character of a generation.

"Free speech enhanced by civility"--I promise you this is the last time I'll bring this up . . .

but I just find it so interesting.

On Monday the NY Times ran an article entitled, "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs - New York Times" which opened with the question, "Is it too late to bring civility to the web?"

In light of my post from last week (My Lord and My Blog: On Blogging and Drive-By Comments)--and the comments it generated, both posted and not, I was interested to read a secular perspective on the issue of anonymous "drive-by" comments.

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.
Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.
Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

“If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said. The code of conduct already has some early supporters, including David Weinberger, a well-known blogger (hyperorg.com/blogger) and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway,” he said.

But as with every other electrically charged topic on the Web, finding common ground will be a serious challenge. Some online writers wonder how anyone could persuade even a fraction of the millions of bloggers to embrace one set of standards. Others say that the code smacks of restrictions on free speech . . . Menacing behavior is certainly not unique to the Internet. But since the Web offers the option of anonymity with no accountability, online conversations are often more prone to decay into ugliness than those in other media . . . But the same factors that make those unfiltered conversations so compelling, and impossible to replicate in the offline world, also allow them to spin out of control . . . Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”

Prayer Request for Jonah Bratton and Christians in India

Our Senior Minister's grandson, Jonah Bratton, is very sick. At Christ's Church we've been praying for Jonah and his family since he got sick over a week ago.

Dennis has been sending updates on a regular basis. His update today included a reminder of the fact that Christians are still being persecuted in our world today.

Please pray for Jonah and our brothers and sisters in Christ in India.

Here's an excerpt from Dennis' update for this morning:

Vivek Lall, our mission partner in India, just called to tell me some disturbing news. Their church in Jabulpur, where Brenda and I have been, was praying for Jonah during their Sunday evening service when about 20 armed Hindu extremist broke in with knives and clubs and beat up men, women and children. Several of the Christians are hospitalized and in critical condition. In a related incident yesterday, the same extremists threw rocks at one of the mission’s preachers, hitting his wife who died as a result. Please keep these brothers and sisters in Christ in your thoughts and prayers.

On Blogging and Drive-By Comments

I've been blogging for over two years and--in those two years--I've seen both the benefits and drawbacks of blogging.

In my opinion the biggest drawback and benefit of blogging are one and the same: comments.

I love positive interaction with the readers of my blog. I love when I get comments (both positive and negative) and can't wait to post them on my blog. I want people to respond to me and interact with each other. This is what makes blogging fun for me. I find the exchange of ideas to be stimulating and encouraging on so many levels, but the worst part of blogging is the random anonymous negative comment or email.

I get a lot of emails each day and not all of them are positive, which is fine and a part of the ministry to which I've been called. And, although I don't enjoy--or thrive on--criticism, I do my best to respond to every critical email from a known source.

The most disturbing result of blogging--and one for which I was not prepared--has been what I call "drive-by comments." On a regular basis I will get an anonymous email or comment that is not just critical (which I have no problem with), but personal--attacking my character on a more personal and direct level. These drive-by comments are almost always unfair, uninformed, mean, and are always made by an anonymous critic who appears out of nowhere and disappears into the anonymous darkness of the world-wide web. I'm pretty sure that these anonymous "shooters" view themselves as heroes and their confrontational and critical words as testimony to their courage, but I think just the opposite is true. I think that "drive-by" negative comments made by an anonymous person are cowardly.

I delete all anonymous hate-mail from my inbox, but--I hate to admit it, lest I encourage the very thing that does so much harm--I have found it much more difficult to delete these hateful comments from my mind.

I'm reading an interesting book called, The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey. I was eager to read this book because I'm doing a workshop on blogging as a tool for ministry at the North American Christian Convention in Kansas City this summer.

Almost every chapter in this book includes 5 questions with a well-known blogger.

At the end of chapter 2 the author asks Mark Driscoll (Lead Pastor of the Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington) why his blog doesn't include comments. Here's his answer:

The cyber world, when combined with the postmodern myth of equality and a disrespect for authority, leads to lots of trouble on blog comment boards. The last thing I want is to spend hours every day with some wing nut in the middle of nowhere who has decided to be a rock in my shoe. My blog is the beginning of a very large missional theology cooperative online at TheResurgence.com, and when the site is completed there will be a place for people to comment after they register their true identity, thereby forcing them to not hide like cowards to throw rocks anonymously.

I think the benefits of comments well outweigh the negatives, so I will continue to allow and encourage comments from both known and unknown sources on all of my blogs and I'll continue to hope that the random "drive-by" anonymous comments will become more the exception than the norm, because--as I said--one of the things I love about blogging is the opportunity to interact with people . . . not with shadows driving-by in the darkness.