A few readers have been patiently waiting for my thoughts on Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission. This is his earlier book – I haven't as yet been able to obtain a copy of Confessions of a Reformission Rev.
i) Driscoll's basic premise is a good one: we must love our Lord, our brothers, and our neighbours. This means being passionate about the gospel, church, and the redemption of our culture, respectively. Driscoll comes up with a neat set of equations (page 20):
Driscoll does not talk much about church in this book, however, and concentrates on the necessity to understand both the gospel and the culture.
ii) There are a couple of mistakes in this book, like this one: Even if there was no life after death, the joys of belonging to Jesus during this life would, by themselves, make it worthwhile to be a Christian (page 58). No they wouldn't – Paul expressly says in 1 Corinthians 15:19 that if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
iii) I have to say that all the talk I hear about culture is starting to wear a bit thin. Driscoll asks (page 61), If you were to write a gospel for the people in your culture, where would you start? No doubt this a good question to ask, but who are the people in my culture? Australians? Melbournians? First generation Dutch immigrants? Presbyterians? Theological students? Bloggers? All of these people need to hear the gospel in terms they can understand. But people in all those categories can differ vastly in assumptions and experiences. We must not denigrate the communication of the gospel to people as people. When speaking to an individual, I mustn't be too quick to pigeon-hole him or her into a cultural group, but we must get to know the person as an individual. And when speaking to a large group of people, I can be sure that they have great deal in common merely by being human.
iv) We are all on a mission with Jesus every day, and we are either good missionaries or bad (page 66). This is spot on. As followers of Jesus we have an inescapable responsibility. He doesn't say that we should be the light of the world, he says we are the light of the world – the question is, are we going to let our light shine, or cover it up and leave the world in darkness?
v) Driscoll notes that one of the leaders in his church dresses in gothic fashion (page 97). This raises the question, were do we draw the line regarding the types of cultures to which a Christian can belong? Obviously, if people are converted as homosexuals, we would call them to renounce their culture – do we say the same things to goths? And does it matter if we dress like goths, even if we aren't really part of that culture? Does it really matter what clothes we wear?
vi) I loved the conclusion to this book. Driscoll goes through some aspects of kingdom culture particularly encouraged in his church. We might raise our eyebrows at some of these – we encourage our people to but their own homes with hospitality and ministry in mind (page 186); we laugh a great deal and embrace irony and sarcasm as gifts from our hilarious God (page 187) – but it is hard not to admire Driscoll's passion for building an outpost of God's kingdom in order to redeem the surrounding culture. There is, however, an inherent danger to this – whenever we are engaged in building God's kingdom we must be constantly on our guard to make sure we have not started to construct our own kingdom.
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