Good morning friends! Do you see the wheels fall off of a normal habit in December? In other months, I grind our coffee beans at night and make a French press every morning for David and me. In December, I pull out the drip coffeemaker and brew Trader Joe’s Wintry Blend, which is a pre-ground coffee with spices sprinkled on it. On top of that, we usually have on hand some bonkers peppermint creamer with an elf on it. This feels like a further departure from reality each and every year. I love it.
The Part Where There’s an Essay:
A Few Thoughts on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
Last week brought us the concluding episode of Mike Cosper’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, which chronicled the beginning to end of the influential Seattle church under the leadership of Pastor Mark Driscoll. I listened to the whole thing, often the day the episodes dropped. I remember well the influence of Driscoll. We owned a few of his books, and I have good friends who relocated to be a part of his ministry. I remember the day on social media that the drama at the Strange Fire conference went down (what a weird moment).
Anyway, here are some thoughts I’ve been left with. As always, these are up for conversation.
Controlling people are usually (but not always) fearful people.
As the controversy around Driscoll’s ministry heated up, you saw an uptick in the control measures around him and his ministry. Stories (“the myth”) were drafted and retold. Anonymous accounts popped up online to help push his culture. Weasely tactics were used to promote his book as a best-seller. He tightened up the circle around him and expected the men surrounding him to defend him. People felt as though they couldn’t talk to him anymore.
Some of this is a result of the focus of the ministry changing from being local to being national (or perhaps global). As more eyes were turned on him, it was more important to control the narrative.
Being reactionary isn’t a solid foundation for ministry.
I said above that we owned some of Mark’s books. The appeal for us, looking back, was reactionary. As Mike Cosper chronicled in the early episodes of the podcast, Mars Hill and the appeal of Mark’s teaching was a reaction to the uber-polished, suburban, “seeker-sensitive” megachurch culture of the decades immediately preceding. This was definitely what made his teaching attractive for us. We were tired of sermons that were too easy and never took a hard stand on anything.
We are never completely free of this reactionary mindset; a humbling thing about being human (and limited) is that we're always a product of our time and place. There’s always a danger of overcorrection. I heard quite a few things in the last episode that seemed to me to be reacting in the other direction once again. People are desiring to never make the same tragic mistakes as happened at Mars Hill, but they’re overcorrecting.
It’s excellent to learn from past mistakes; however, avoidance of error cannot be our entire ministry posture. In the end, being about something (the gospel) is more sustainable, and more powerful, than being against something (past mistakes and sins of gospel believers).
We need to unhitch what’s culture from what’s the gospel.
Perhaps the most insightful thing said in this whole series was from Paul David Tripp in the last episode. He cautioned those of us in the church to be careful about what we're more attached to: the gospel of Jesus Christ or our culture. He wants us to be careful with people who are attempting to unhitch the two things — in a healthy way (allowing, of course, that these efforts can sometimes go too far). And he goes further— to suggest that every Christian should be examining if there are ways we ought to do just that.
I just don't think I can add to that.
(On a related note, PDT made me cry a couple of times. I'm so thankful for his role in all this.)
Grace and patience are needed for those who’ve left.
A few of my friends hated the episode with Joshua Harris. It might have been my favorite one. Why? Because I listened with amazement to the conversation between Josh and Mike. Mike was friendly and thorough.
Think about Joshua’s path for a second. Here is a man who knows the thought processes. He knows the vocabulary and the arguments — he literally wrote books about doctrine. Yet Mike patiently listened, reasoned, and asked probing questions. He talked through the gospel with him.
I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but I saw it as an excellent example of how to talk with someone who's left the faith. Mike was so kind to him.
Finally, a word of caution: your church (probably) isn’t Mars Hill.
I follow someone on Spotify who has a playlist called “Starting Drama in my Healthy Marriage.” The list is comprised of all of those tragic, broken-hearted, vengeful kinds of songs, like Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” and Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” The title of the list is a wink at the fact that this person really has no business feeling vengeful at all. She’s happily married to a faithful husband.
In a similar way, when we listen to a long-form piece like RFMH, it's important to remember the temptation to over-identify. One danger of “failure porn” is a tendency to spot one similar failing in our own church, blow it out of proportion, and assume we are in the next Mars Hill situation. Taken a step further, we might be congratulating ourselves for having spotted it earlier than those people at Mars Hill did (remember the inner ring? Here it is again). I encourage you to read this piece on the potential dangers of podcasts like this one. Let's be careful with the people with whom we actually live in community.
It's important to stay in your moment, in your current context, and ask yourself if it is indeed the same situation. It might be. But more than likely, it's not.
Your current church definitely isn't perfect. Maybe you need to have a hard conversation or two. Maybe you need to do some prayerful digging in your own heart first. Or maybe you need to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and the gift of patience, forgiveness, and kindness. Discernment is healthy and necessary, but let's not assume we're in the next manifestation of a church tragedy when we aren't.
For the Anglophiles
A few years ago, I took up the English tradition of making mince pies at Christmas. Here’s the recipe I use, from Paul Hollywood. Confession: I have already made these once this year because my book club enjoys themed food, and we finished up Great Expectations over the summer.
(A more pressing matter for Americans might be: is there really meat in mincemeat? Here’s a brief history of this dish.)
Reads & Listens of the Week
If I could, I’d force you to read everything Trevin Wax writes. Here’s a recent TGC article of his, called You Can’t Reform a Church You Hate. It serves as a nice follow-up to RFMH. An excerpt:
If you find it hard to believe in the goodness of the church because of so many high-profile scandals, consider instead the beautiful manifestations of holiness you see in the people closest to you—people whose names will never grace the history books but who have been faithful in Bible reading, in praying, in passing on the faith to the next generation. Look not at the prominent, but the plodding pastors, whose names most of us will never know, but who demonstrate faithfulness in a thousand little ways, the ones who never shock the world with surprising scandal, but go unnoticed to their graves having displayed the quiet marks of enduring love and faithfulness. These too make up the church.
If you enjoy the intersection of food and culture, you might enjoy The Sporkful.
The Wade Center podcast just wrapped up a series on The Lord of the Rings.
Last weekend, we were in the car for a while, and my kids played the entirety of J Lind’s catalog for me. If you haven’t heard this guy before, here’s a blog post that might convince you to give him a listen.
Closer to Home
Have you ever read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
The whole life of Christ was a continual Passon; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, (where he was crucified) even in Bethlehem, where he was born; For, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the Manger as uneasy at first, as his Crosse at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. -- John Donne, “On Christmas Day, 1626”