The discussion surrounding Driscoll’s new book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. have been so heated, I decided to crack open a Sam Adams Black Lager before getting started with my review.
I really hated this book, mostly because it’s the kind of book I really need to read. I’ll focus on ecclesiology, ’cause that’s the primary focus of the book. There are two words, in my observations, that summarize many emerging churches: Mission and Community. I’ll hit those two, and then whine about being a moderate cessationist, and then recommend the book to anyone who can read.
Mission
The significant value of this book is Driscoll’s constant reminder that the church is in the world on a mission. How we forgot this and got so caught up in splitting over the most insignificant details is beyond me: “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” And it’s not just “witnessing” and “getting people saved” like you learned in your fundamentalist church growing up. It’s incarnational ministry. Jesus didn’t thunder His message from the throne; He became like us. Paul seemed to think this was a good example to follow.
It’s ironic that as traditional Reformation churches are arguing about the propriety of weekly communion and stumbling all over it, “emerging” churches like Driscoll’s are just practicing it. The older, established churches may have the better ecclesiology and sacramentology, but God’s doing a big work through the punk kid church full of prodigals. Some of the criticisms of Driscoll’s work sound a lot like a certain older brother we know from a certain story Jesus told about a certain prodigal punk who came home crying.
Community
I was a little disappointed here and there. One of the frustrating things about the emerging view of community is that, while they’re encouraging Christians to live together, to not do it alone, and to support one another, I’d like to see them tap into a covenant understanding of the church. Combine the concept of a covenantal community with the missional heart of emerging folks, and you’ve got a church that I’d love to belong to. At one point in the book, Driscoll dismisses infant baptism out of hand, as almost a hyper-Calvinist nit-picky theological point. In my own journey, it’s the covenantal nature of baptism, placing the child of the believer through grace into that community, that draws me to the doctrine.
But these are minor gripes, really, and a bit off the point of the book anyway. I think the conservative emerging churches are heading in the right direction, even if they’re not there yet. (I was glad to see Driscoll distance himself significantly, but charitably, from McLlaren and others who are simply embracing radical postmodernism as if that’s what Jesus really meant all along and traditional Christian orthodoxy were entirely off base).
Charismatic Stuff
I mentioned that I hated the book because I needed to read it. Driscoll’s anecdotes about prophetic dreams and words of knowledge were the most challenging to me, a moderate cessationist. Driscoll is no looney charismatic. But there is a significant difference between the way he talks about the experiences and how crazy charismatics talk about the “gifts.”
What’s really impressive about Driscoll’s book when it comes to the “prophetic†dreams he has is that he just says they happen. There’s no attempt at a “God still talks to people†theology (though he’s clear he’s not a cessationist), and there’s no, “You can hear God talk, too, if you’d just follow these steps.â€
I’ve always been very wary of the “God talked to me,†subjective experience way of living the Christian life. But Driscoll’s “charismatic†stuff is more challenging than the typical nonsense we hear. I’ve always said that IF God is still “talking†today, we wouldn’t be going around saying, “Is this God or is this just me? I can’t tell.†God was never that confusing when He spoke in Scripture. He made quite sure that the person he was talking to knew it was him and not the burrito they had earlier.
Recommendation
If you can read, buy this book and read it. Not perfect, but excellent nonetheless. Would that more pastors and Christians leaders were as plain about the victories and defeats, strengths and weakenesses, as Driscoll.
Other Reviews
Challies
iMonk
Steve McCoy
Jollyblogger takes on the complainers - excellent stuff about the controversies surrounding the book.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
T M Gagnon 05.23.06 at 8:06 pm
I’d be curious to hear some exposition from you on the concept of covenantal community as you understand it and as you understand its application to emerging churches. Specifically, how do you define a “covenant understanding of the church?” Also, in what way would you envision an emerging/postmodern congregation live that out?
T M Gagnon 05.23.06 at 8:07 pm
Please forgive the grammar of my previous comment. I’m posting during a class break which is ending pretty much now.
Travis Prinzi 05.25.06 at 7:28 am
No problem about the grammar. I wasn’t thinking of anything exceedingly profound, but here’s my best shot at answering your question.
It seems to me that emerging churches are doing well at understanding our need to not be lone ranger Christians. Donald Miller, Driscoll, and others have emphasized this. I think their emphasis on this could be enhanced by an focus on the nature of God’s covenant with His people, including how we are knit together at the table (in smaller churches, communion should really be taken corporately and not individualized, for example).
Eh…my thoughts are still too fuzzy on it, or I haven’t had enough coffee. Let me get back to you.
Travis Prinzi 05.25.06 at 8:43 am
Alright, I’m on my third cup of coffee, and I’ll give this another shot. (Love your blog, by the way).
We’ll have to back up a bit to stuff I’m sure you already know. In many ways, at its core, postmodernism is hyper-modernism. It’s the “liberal”/modernist elevation of the autonomous human, only we’ve put the idea on steroids and it’s grown way too big. Hyper-individualism is the name of the game now, and missional churches need to be aware of this potential pitfall of incarnational ministry.
What I think emerging churches need to do is counter the radical individualism with a community not based just on the idea that “you can’t be a loner Christian” but on the actual nature of God’s covenant with his people. We’re so programmed by our own historical context to think individualistically that we’ve lost the ability to think corporately or to see how God developed his covenant with “nations,” a theme much more prominent in Scripture than the idea of his forming “relationships with individuals.”
He does both, of course, but covenantal thinking sees Jesus’ command to baptize the “nations” not simply to mean “Baptize individuals from nations” but literally to teach and disciple the corporate entities. Hence, we have things in the NT like household baptisms.
I’ve still got a lot of thinking to do about what this looks like practically, but hopefully that’s at least a little clearer.
T M Gagnon 05.29.06 at 4:10 pm
I think I’m understanding where you’re coming from. In the early church, it appears to have been culturally recognized that the family as a whole is baptized with the head of that family. Certainly difficulties arose if another in the family, such as the wife, became a Christian. Nevertheless, St. Paul seems to believe that any family member becoming a Christian is for the purpose of seeing the entire family converted. I will start with an issue of community to lead into the issue of covenant.
That said, what do we do now, where most families are dysfunctional, split, or broken? No longer do we have the opportunity to baptize families as families. Simply, no family would have it. The question becomes, initially, whether or not that communal conversion is translatable into our culture. I would tend to believe that it can be translated or else it can be reinitiated. The question then becomes in what ways that purpose can be acheived.
Certainly some people become tribalized and identify themselves not with family but with a particular social group, be it suburbanites, gangs, environmentalists, churches, etc. Is the issue of covenantal living now one of social cliques?
Also, can a covenantal community, which I will call a second family, be formed from church members? Given the broken nature of our families, perhaps adoption into a second family communicates healing most effectively.
That said, ought we understand God’s covenant in Christ as one with the second family we are brought into? And further, should we understand our local family (that is, the covenantal community) as part of a larger family? Similarly, as the early Christians, should we understand that nationality (common in our age) is, on coversion, not an expression of legal documentation or geographic location, but of willing participation in the activities of the new nation and race which is the Church throughout the world throughout the ages? In short, is becoming a Christian becoming a member of an entirely other nation, one with which God has made an unbreakable covenant through Jesus?
If all this is true, how do we live in accordance with that broader understanding of God’s covenant? I would suggest that meals together, initiated or culminated with the Lord’s Supper are a good beginning. I can think of few other methods for the administration of Communion which express in the way they are practiced the communal nature of God’s covenant. Secondly, how should baptism, the second sacramental practice recognized by Protestants, be administered? Or is it simple enough to recognize that baptism is initiation into a community and that that community functions as such?
I certainly don’t expect you to answer all the questions I’ve just written. I mean only to incite thought on the matter by expressing my own questions. If I have misrepresented your views on covenantal community, please point out places where I’ve diverged so that we can all come to a better understanding of things.
hub@x-arn.org 04.03.07 at 3:35 am
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