![]() I could no longer square away his “prize-fighter” version of Jesus with the Lamb of God. In other words: The ends justified the means.Īs my theological horizons began to expand, I started to see Driscoll’s sermons in a new light. However, his fervency always seemed to arise out of a passionate adherence to the gospel and, therefore, we felt his outbursts and vitriolic language were simply expressions of his fervency for truth and righteousness. Friends would send me clips of his sermons, and we would gawk at his audacity to scream at his congregation and curse while preaching. I was discerning a call to ministry at the time, and Driscoll’s concrete certainty was appealing at a time in my life when I felt out at sea riding the waves of doubt and confusion.įor the next couple of years, I followed Driscoll’s ministry as it began to explode on YouTube. “I was discerning a call to ministry at the time, and Driscoll’s concrete certainty was appealing at a time in my life when I felt out at sea riding the waves of doubt and confusion.” In it, Driscoll lays out his personal sense of mission and calling for churches to be places of deep doctrinal truth and also edgy experiences of cultural engagement. The book was The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll. Our small congregation was part of a quasi-denominational body of churches called the Acts 29 Network, a group of theologically Reformed church planters.Īs part of the internship, the other intern and I were given a book to read written by one of the main leaders of the Acts 29 Network. We worshiped in a movie theater, and we hosted nightly events where we washed the feet of and provided free haircuts for the unhoused on the streets of Portland. My internship was to work with a ministry to the unhoused based out of a small church start. I was so captured by his frank and honest reflections on faith that I jumped at the opportunity after my freshman year of college to do an internship in Portland with a fledgling ministry organization. Donald Miller, who lived in Portland, Ore., wrote his book Blue Like Jazz. It seemed that much of the kinetic energy behind this Emergent movement was coming out of the Pacific Northwest. When I was in college in the mid-2000s, I devoured books by pastors and writers who were labeled “Emergent.” Coming out of my Southern Baptist upbringing, I was drawn to expressions of Christianity that seemed to engage culture not as an enemy, but as an opportunity for greater contextualization of the gospel.
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