A rift between the males in church?

Circuitously - in other words, via the sustain-if-able kiwi blog - I came across a piece by a blogger I'd never discovered before, but will definitely be keeping an eye on: Richard Beck, on his blog, Experimental Theology.

The piece is entitled: Thoughts on Mark Driscoll...while I'm knitting, and looks at whether educated men in churches tend to dismiss, or lose track of, the guys who are 'blue collar'. There's a video of Driscoll doing his usual in-your-face thing about what the church isn't doing right - and, as Beck says, he's mostly right on this. However Beck has more to say on the subject, and he's right too. Here's a quote from it.

Most church leaders are highly educated. This means that most church leaders are culturally divorced from the average NASCAR [National Association for Stock Car Racing] fan. The very group Driscoll is targeting.

But here is the very important point about all this. A lot of the reaction to Driscoll isn't even about gender. We are actually talking about the little discussed fissure running through many churches: Education.

I see this everyday in my own church. The educated teach, preach, and have the public leadership roles. The uneducated are marginalized. Worse, if you are an uneducated male, you are force-fed those feminine metaphors. Educated males, being chickified, don't mind or even notice the feminine metaphors. But Joe Six Pack notices the metaphors. All this creates a disjoint in the church. Two groups of males who find each other alien and weird. So when Joe Six Pack wants to start a Wild at Heart study the chickified church leader just blinks uncomprehendingly. Or, if you are me, turns back to his knitting...

I've added the word, chickified, both my spellchecker and my personal vocabulary. Read the rest of Beck - and watch out that you don't get distracted by a host of other pieces he's written, such as those on Calvin and Hobbes, or one on 'pants.'

Obstacles/Movements/Internet

One last item from the series of 18 obstacles by Mark Driscoll, in his address to Sydney Anglicans. The obstacles are listed here. While I'm not sure that the generalised statement below is entirely true, it has a point. And what is vital for modern ministers/pastors/leaders to grasp is what Driscoll says about the Internet. If ten million people download Driscoll's sermons in a year, how many might be downloading your sermons - do you know? Are they available for download? Do you advertise the fact?

Often new movements come into existence when there's new technology. For example, the Protestant Reformation happened at the time of the printing press, Billy Graham used the advances in amplification and radio at the time he was preaching. Today, we have the internet. Old systems were based on control, but today, there is no control. "You can sit on your Macbook and even if no leader approves of it, you could communicate to the world. That changes everything." People spend more time looking at a screen than a human being. Mark Driscoll's sermons are downloaded more than 10 million times each year. "That's crazy - we could never have a meeting with 10 million people, we'd call it a country."

More: 18 Obstacles to Evangelism in Australia

Two more of Mark Driscoll's 18 obstacles.

13. There is a lack of missiologists. A missiologist evaluates the culture and uses discernment to find the idols, "so missionaries can be employed and churches can be missional". "Theologians defend the truth of the gospel and missiologists then take it to the streets." When you stack the team with theologians and not missiologists... lots of people still don't know Jesus.

14. There is a proclivity to try to raise ministers before making them husbands and fathers. Many men delay marriage and children so they can enter college and ministry. They need to learn to be good husbands and fathers and shepherd a little flock. If they are not good husbands and fathers, they are not going to be good ministers. "In fact... being a husband and father trains you more for ministry than any college." You should really press young men to take responsibility early, be good husbands and fathers, and then encourage them into ministry. Otherwise their priorities end up being God, ministry, wife, children, rather than God, wife, children, ministry. If you delay marriage for ministry, you are organising a paradigm that is dangerous.

I love this last one. Being a good husband and father is prime for community, whether the ordinary everyday community, or the church community.

Afraid of the Holy Spirit?

Mark Driscoll (looking slightly worn out in the photo) spoke to a bunch of Anglicans in Australia recently. He listed 18 obstacles to evangelism in Australia - as he saw it. One of them stood out to me:

8. Many of you are afraid of the Holy Spirit. You don't know what to do with Him, so the trinity is Father, Son and Holy Bible. You are so reactionary to pentecostalism that you do not have a robust theology of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit calls people into ministry. He also empowers people for ministry. You don't have to be charismatic but you should be a little charismatic, enough at least to worship God with more than just all of your mind. The word charismatic here means prosperity, excessive, bizarre. In London, it means you're not a liberal. Don't get hung up on all the terminology. Do you love the Holy Spirit? Jesus says the Holy Spirit is a ‘He' and not an ‘it'." Ministry cannot be done apart from the Holy Spirit - I think that is in part leading to the lack of entrepreneurialism and innovation, because if it's not already done and written down, you're suspicious of it.

I don't think the Aussie Anglicans are alone in being afraid of the Spirit. Even Pentecostal churches in NZ don't seem to have quite the life they had back in the 70s and 80s, when there seemed to be a real Holy Spirit move.

Emergent, Missional, Effective?

David Fitch responds to the statement below from Mark Driscoll by addressing the nature of mission in a post Christian context.

Driscoll said:

And all the nonsense of emerging, and Emergent, and new monastic communities, and, you know, all of these various kinds of ridiculous conversations--I'll tell you as one on the inside, they don't have converts. The silly little myth, the naked emperor is this: they will tell you it's all about being in culture to reach lost people, and they're not.

I often hear this in places where I speak. It usually goes something like this: "We love missional theology, but does it work? How many converts have you had in your missional church?” Once again, the modernist drive to measure success raises its ugly head. Yet it does not offend me because these are important questions. I believe if we are not seeing people transformed by the gospel then "missional" in the end means very little.

Fitch responds to this on the Out of Ur blog, shows that mission is essential for churches, but is also very difficult both to sustain and to see 'results' from.