The Importance of Not Caring About Mark Driscoll

Stop caring so much about “evangelicalism” and the celebrities who define it as a sociological phenomenon.

Jake Meador presents much to consider in this article.

@KyleEssary I’m fairly certain his history of evangelicalism (and fuzziness over fundamentalism) is an oversimplification (and potentially wrong). I also find Mark Driscoll as the face of “the purity wing” to be a strange choice as he was (and is) deliberately being provocative (it’s cool to curse) to reach more people and most complaints about him from the missional wing would be over his abuse and lack of character not focus on “purity”. I think Doug Wilson is a better “purity wing” face (Andy Stanley seems a fine choice for the missional wing but I think Rick Warren could stand in too).

I do, however, like the prescription.

@KyleEssary great article. Thanks for sharing

@KyleEssary I too have precious little knowledge about Driscoll post-Mars Hill. Another thought I had reflecting more is that in both cases, there’s a real lack of trust in God. If God is God (and will ultimately win), then even if people are wrong (too “missional”/“purity”), it’s not ultimately up to us to solve that. I’ve come across a few of these “discernment bloggers” — and even an author — and it strikes me as both an effective way to build a profile as you can hijack someone’s name in search/social media, but a terrible thing overall. It wouldn’t surprise me if they also help raise the profile of people but ultimately I’d rather focus on faithful living. (I’d say someone like Mike Winger probably strikes the best balance as he tends to “play the ball not the man” and focus on the issues.)

@KyleEssary MarsHill Driscoll fits, it think. CREC/Wilson is a different, adjacent beast (I taught at a CREC school years back).

@KyleEssary Thank you for inciting me to go back and read the article. The introduction didn’t grab me the first time I looked at it, so I didn’t read it all the way through. When I did, I liked it well enough to blog some fairly long excerpts and recommend it to any evangelicals who follow my big blog 

@mineinmono

A word of caution: many converts to Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism do have a tendency to idolize Orthodox celebrities. I, for instance (although I'm two decades of Calvinism plus 2.7 decades of Orthodoxy from frank Evangelicalism), look forward, maybe too much, to the latest from Martin Shaw or Paul Kingsnorth. Even as an Evangelical, I knew better, having read the scriptures against giving authority to novices and watching the rise and fall of celebrity converts. Our celebrity Orthodox converts are in my daily prayers because of their spiritual peril from this sort of idolization.

Change of subject: I had a co-laborer on the Board of a Christian radio station who became Catholic shortly after I became Orthodox, not unlike your PCA friend.