Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (The Leadership Network Innovation) [Paperback]

Mark Driscoll (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 18, 2006

This is the story of the birth and growth of Seattle's innovative Mars Hill Church, one of America's fastest growing churches located in one of America's toughest mission fields. It's also the story of the growth of a pastor, the mistakes he's made along the way, and God's grace and work in spite of those mistakes. Mark Driscoll's emerging, missional church took a rocky road from its start in a hot, upstairs youth room with gold shag carpet to its current weekly attendance of thousands. With engaging humor, humility, and candor, Driscoll shares the failures, frustrations, and just plain messiness of trying to build a church that is faithful to the gospel of Christ in a highly post-Christian culture. In the telling, he's not afraid to skewer some sacred cows of traditional, contemporary, and emerging churches. Each chapter discusses not only the hard lessons learned but also the principles and practices that worked and that can inform your church's ministry, no matter its present size. The book includes discussion questions and appendix resources. 'After reading a book like this, you can never go back to being an inwardly focused church without a mission. Even if you disagree with Mark about some of the things he says, you cannot help but be convicted to the inner core about what it means to have a heart for those who don't know Jesus.'---Dan Kimball, author,The Emerging Church '... will make you laugh, cry, and get mad ... school you, shape you, and mold you into the right kind of priorities to lead the church in today's messy world.'---Robert Webber, Northern Seminary

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark Driscoll is one of the 50 most influential pastors in America, and the founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle (www.marshillchurch.org), the Paradox Theater, and the Acts 29 Network which has planted scores of churches. Mark is the author of The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out. He speaks extensively around the country, has lectured at a number of seminaries, and has had wide media exposure ranging from NPR's All Things Considered to the 700 Club, and from Leadership journal to Mother Jones magazine. He's a staff religion writer for the Seattle Times. Along with his wife and children, Mark lives in Seattle.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Confessions of a Reformission Rev. I was not a Christian when I came to the church. Today I am a pastor. God saved me while I was living with my lesbian mom and my dad was in prison for murder. I am a founding pastor. Jesus, Our Offering Was $137 and I Want to Use It to Buy Bullets The upstairs room at the fundamentalist church was so hot that everyone was sweating like Mike Tyson in a spelling bee.1 During one service, a pregnant lady simply passed out and fell off her chair. This would not have been so traumatic if I were trying to plant one of those shake-and-bake, holy-roller churches where I smacked people on the nugget in Jesus' name so they could lie on the floor and twitch like a freshly caught trout on a dock and call it the work of the Holy Ghost. It was the first half of 1996 and I was twenty-five years of age chronologically, six years of age spiritually, and trying to gather enough people to launch Mars Hill Church in the city of Seattle. About ten to twenty people a week were showing up for our Sunday service, which had outgrown the living room of my rental home and was now being held in one of those epically awful youth rooms, complete with golden shag carpet on the floor and Christian rock posters on the wall for the poor kids forced to ride the short bus of Christian culture. Our weekly service would start sometime around 6:00 p.m., whenever the college students and indie rockers would show up, because it was apparently very difficult to get up by the crack of dinner. Fortunately, the room was free, which was nearly more than we could afford. I had spent the previous two years as the college ministry intern plankton at the bottom of the food chain at a multiracial mega0 church and had used the youth room to run a college group in Seattle. College ministry soon started to feel like hanging out with an ex-girlfriend, so I hit the eject button because life-stage ministry was a vocational dead end. What my college students needed was to mentor high school students and hang out with singles who had phased from college into the work world and married couples who had learned what kind of person to be and to marry to make a family work. What they did not need was to hang out with the same immature yahoos they spent all of their time playing 'pull my finger' with anyway and going to a free event that was like day care for twenty-one-year-old hormonally enraged porn addicts and video-game aficionados trying to stretch junior high into the retirement years. So I decided to start a church, for three reasons. First, I hated going to church and wanted one I liked, so I thought I would just start my own. Second, God had spoken to me in one of those weird charismatic moments and told me to start a church. Third, I am scared of God and try to do what he says. My wife, Grace, and I did not yet have any children, were both working jobs to make ends meet, and spent all our free time changing diapers on our baby church in its infancy phase.2 Our church was a dysfunctional small group of Christian college kids and chain-smoking indie rockers who all shared the clueless look of a wide-eyed basset hound that just heard a high-pitched whistle. Infancy is the season of dreaming and envisioning the future, gathering people, raising money, and making plans. The ministry at this stage exists only in the mind of the leader, who seeks to effectively communicate the vision and compel people to help make it a reality. In the infancy phase, the church and the leader are one and the same because the leader is essentially the only person holding the church together and doing most of the work. In retrospect, our church services were, quite frankly, painful. My preaching was like a combination of boring systematic theology and uninspiring motivational talk from a cranky junior high gym teacher. Our rotating cast of worship leader tryouts ranged from screaming punk rockers --- to this day, I have no idea why they were so dramatically depressed --- to the kind of happy-clappy Christian praise musicians that you would expect to find playing on a karaoke machine at a Christian homeschool co-op reunion for kids whose moms made their clothes. Our sound system included speakers from a home stereo that were muddy and faint, except when pumping out feedback, of course, since we could not afford real speakers. We used a moody overhead projector for worship that another church had thrown out because it only worked when it felt like it. If I were Hindu, I would guess that the projector was a junior high kid or a union laborer in a former life. In my imagination, however, I saw an entirely different church, one that did not have a beat-up old couch or a foosball table in the sanctuary. I envisioned a large church that hosted concerts for non- Christian bands and fans on a phat sound system, embraced the arts, trained young men to be godly husbands and fathers, planted other churches, and led people to work with Jesus Christ as missionaries to our city. Sadly, that church only existed in my mind, and the hard part was figuring out how to get my vision into the minds of other people so that together we could build the church God had put in my imagination. I started to wrestle with some very basic questions that, although I had read widely, I had apparently not connected in a practical way for ministry. These questions continue to drive our ministry so that it remains missional, and I believe they are vitally important for every Christian and Christian leader to continually ask because they keep the person and mission of Jesus as the most important factor in the church and Christian life.3 The Missional Ministry Matrix Priority 1: Christology --- Who is Jesus, what has he accomplished, and what has he sent us to do? Since our little church was meeting in the evening, I spent a lot of time visiting other churches in our area on Sunday mornings to see how things were going, why they were succeeding or failing, and what kinds of people were going to various churches. I can honestly say that visiting many churches was worse than being a vegetarian chef employed at a steak house. 4. Ministry How does Jesus want me to help serve his mission in our culture through my church? 1. Christology Who is Jesus, what has he accomplished, and what has he sent us to do? 2. Ecclesiology How does the Bible tell us to structure our church leadership so that our church can most effectively be God's missionary to our culture? 3. Missiology How can we most effectively expand God's kingdom where we are sent?

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan; Revised edition (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310270162
• ISBN-13: 978-0310270164
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pastor Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington and is one of the world's most-downloaded and quoted pastors. His audience--fans and critics alike--spans the theological and cultural left and right. He was also named one of the "25 Most Influential Pastors of the Past 25 Years" by Preaching magazine, and his sermons are consistently #1 on iTunes each week for Religion & Spirituality with over 10 million of downloads each year.

Pastor Mark received a B.A. in Speech Communication from the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University, and he holds a masters degree in Exegetical Theology from Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of fifteen books.

In 1996, at the age of twenty-five, Pastor Mark and his wife, Grace, with the vision to make disciples of Jesus and plant churches, started a small Bible study at their home in Seattle, which at the time was the least churched city in America. Since that time, by God's grace, the church has exploded with upwards of nineteen thousand people meeting across thirteen locations in four states (Washington, Oregon, California, and New Mexico). Mars Hill has been recognized as the 54th largest, 30th fastest-growing, and 2nd most-innovative church in America by Outreach magazine.

Pastor Mark is the co-founder of the Acts 29 Network, which has planted over 400 churches in the US, in addition to thirteen other nations. He founded the Resurgence, which receives close to six million visits annually and services Christian leaders through books, blogs, conferences, and classes. And he is co-founder of Churches Helping Churches with Pastor James MacDonald, which raised over $2.7 million to help rebuild churches in Haiti and empower them minister and provide aide to the Haitian community, and helped deliver $1.7 million in medical supplies to the devastated country.

With a skillful mix of bold presentation, clear biblical teaching, and compassion for those who are hurting the most--in particular, women who are victims of sexual and physical abuse and assault--Driscoll has taken biblical Christianity into cultural corners previously unexplored by evangelicals. In the same year that he spoke at a Gospel Coalition conference with notable contemporary theologians like John Piper and Tim Keller, he also discussed biblical sexuality as a guest on Loveline with Dr. Drew, was featured on Nightline, and preached for Rick Warren at Saddleback Community Church.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#52 in Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality

#85 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#52 in Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality

#85 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Raw, Funny, and real May 28, 2006

By David Phillips

Format:Paperback

Raw.

We clicked because I drive a 1978 Chevy truck that gets single digits to the gallon and has a bacon air freshener and no functioning speedometer and because I fashion myself as the seld-appointed leader of a heterosexual male backlash in our overly chickified city filled with guys drinking herbal teal and rocking out to Mariah Carey in their lemon yellow Volkswagon Cabriolets while wearing fuchsia sweater vests that perfectly match their open-toed shoes. (p. 147)

Funny.

Scrambling for ideas, I agreed to cance a Sunday church service to let some of our long-haired public radio types take us outside to do a joint art project they had proposed....As a truck-driving jock who watches a lot of Ultimate Fighting, I can honestly say it was the gayest thing I have ever been a part of. (p. 71)

Real.

Emotionally, ministry proved to be more exhausting than I could have fathomed. Because I deeply loved my people and carried their burdens, the pains of our people's lives began to take a deep toll on me. Many nights were spent in prayer for people instead of sleeping, and even on what were supposed to be days off, my mind was consumed with the painful hardships and sinful rebellions of our people. (p. 68)

Mark Driscoll's latest book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church, is a fantastic look at life in ministry. I have a great deal of love and respect for Andy Stanley and Rick Warren, but their stories don't match my stories in ministry. Mark's story of the growth of his church is a wonderful and real look at a man on a mission, with strong theological convictions, and who loves Christ's church and the city of Seattle.

It is raw. He is blatanly honest. But if many could get away with it in ministry, we would do the same thing. He is a passionate man who doesn't have time to say things in flowery words. His story is real. It is an honest look at the hard life of ministry, and the pain and anguish we go through as ministers. And all the while, it's a picture of one sold out to Christ and his mission.

He is theologically conservative. He spends time unashamedly distancing himself from a hermeneutic that is liberal and relative. He believes the book, studies theology, and is passionate about teaching that.

Each of the chapters chronicle a period of time in the growth of Mars Hill. It is encouraging to see the struggles and the faith. It is encouraging to face many similar situations and see how others handled it.

I truly think this is a must read for all church planters and for those of us in ministry it should be highly considered. Few pastors are able to be real and transparent enough to let others see their pain and hardache and fears. Mark is a real man. And his story is compelling.

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a needed second way in the Emerging chuch October 14, 2006

By Nicola Gibson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have read a thousand or two pages of "how to do church" books. I pastor at a church of about 900, and so it's par for the course. Most of them bore me these days. This one I read in three sittings.

There will be considerable criticism of this book. Mark didn't say what he was supposed to. He is pretty clear about what he thinks of Brian McLaren, the public pope of the Emergent church; and it isn't complimentary. He recommends both pragmatic evangelicals like Hybels and Warren and yet he affirms the work of their firm critics like Mark Dever and D.A Carson's work in his footnotes (a both-and I both agree with and am impressed with). He thinks masculinity should have content beyond plumbing, and even dares to refer to Grudem and Piper's book on the subject. That alone can get you stripped and beaten in some very loving evangelical circles.

He also says church people can be immature idiots and life sucking dead weight; like the Leech's two daughters that constantly cry, "give, give!" form Proverbs 30.

I was horrified.
I completely agree.

There will no doubt be many coming up with clever little shots at Driscoll and making pithy condescending remarks about the book. Mark has really opened himself up to that. I suspect he could care less, and I really appreciated that about his style.

No doubt many will find his style arrogant. It will be decried by the equally arrogant under the pretense of humility and nuances spiritual maturity. Many will be convinced. But it should be noted that Mark claims to have been arrogant and to be arrogant. He only claims that that doesn't necessarily make him wrong about what he is saying in this book, and about that he is right. Introspective indecisive hand wringing doesn't work as a dominant disposition when you're leading a church of more than a thousand people in the kind of context he is in. I know from experience. Nor does it particularly work in life unless you are interested in simply criticizing the position of others.

In terms of content, Mark has written his own leadership manifesto about making the hard choices, knowing your mission, learning from others, daring to be serious about the Bible's content in preaching and leadership decisions, allowing for messes, and focusing on spiritual growth if you want organizational growth.

Concerning his bits about the Emerging Church, perhaps his greatest bit was in a footnote. In that note that sprawls from pg. 203-205 he overviews looking into postmodernism as an epistemology, cultural phenomenon, the fruit of modern linguistic theory and post-structuralism, etc. He talks about reading in primary and secondary sources and finally concludes he's going to go ahead and stick with most of what Jesus was saying.

If you think that's simplistic, it's likely that either you're not in the subculture, are considerably more arrogant than Mark is, haven't read the literature or you don't have ears to hear (ie. have lost the will to find a culturally potent expression of Christian orthodoxy).

I have been in many social situations with Gen-X pastors or ministry folks who spoke with such arrogance in criticism of people who "just didn't get post modernism". I was sad because many of them knew more about postmodernism than the gospel

The greatest benefit of what this book is adding to is that there are now two clearly different options for those of us looking to the emerging church conversation for new ways to do church in the increasingly post-Christian West. Those of us that do not think Brian can get us where we want to go want another option. This is a much better one.

Mark Driscoll and Dan Kimball are needed to secure that second voice. And this book was needed to give some steam to that conversation. Mark Driscoll has done the church a service.

P.S.- I have no tattoos, I do wear pants, I do not carry a handgun, I am a Christian, and I'm a pastor in a mainline denominational church that is 98 years old. I'm only 29 though.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A friendly kick in the pants September 26, 2006

By Darryl Dash

Format:Paperback

Mark Driscoll is a pastor who finds himself at the center of controversy in Christian and non-Christian circles. His most recent book Confessions is "the story of the birth and growth of Seattle's innovative Mars Hill Church, one of America's toughest mission fields. It is also the story of the growth of a pastor, the mistakes he's made along the way, and God's grace and work in spite of these mistakes."

Why the Controversy? Driscoll doesn't fit in any category neatly. Tim Challies writes, "I am not the only one confused by Driscoll who is varyingly described as emerging, missional, Reformed, sarcastic and vulgar (all of which are true of him)." At times it looks like Driscoll goes out of his way to offend everyone. On the other hand, Driscoll is refreshingly candid and bold. I love it, but it seems to be too much for some.

The story of many "successful" churches have been tidied before going to print. Not here. Driscoll says, "I have made so many mistakes as a pastor that I should be pumping gas for a living instead of preaching the gospel." He begins with "Ten Curious Questions" designed to help clarify the church's identity, gospel, mission, size, and priorities. For instance, he asks which gospel we will proclaim: "a gospel of forgiveness, fulfillment, or freedom?" "Do you have the guts to shoot your dogs?" (He advises: "Dogs are idiotic ideas, stinky styles, stupid systems, failed facilities, terrible technologies, loser leaders, and pathetic people...Be sure to make it count and shoot them only once so that they don't come back and bite you." Now you know why he's controversial.)

For the rest of the book, Driscoll tells the story of Mars Hill from its start to the present and even his hopes for the future.

Takeaways and Memorable Quotes

"Attractional churches need to transform their people from being consumers in the church to being missionaries outside of the church." (p.27)

"The more I read the Bible, the more deeply the Holy Spirit convicted me that I had grievously erred by trying to figure out how to do church successfully by reading a lot of books, visiting a lot of churches, and copying whatever was working. Instead, I needed to first wrestle with Jesus like Jacob wrestled with Jesus and then discover what Jesus' mission was for Seattle and repent of everything else..." (p.44)

Developing biblical leadership to define, direct, and defend the mission is key (p.48). This requires toughness. "Sadly, the weakest men are often drawn to ministry simply because it is an indoor job that does not require heavy lifting." (p.54)

"I had to focus all of my time and energy on growing Mars Hill as a missional church for Seattle. Therefore I had to stop doing all other ministry work that was not accomplishing this objective." (p.52)

"I decided not to back off from a long-winded, old-school Bible preacher that focused on Jesus. My people needed to hear from God's Word and not from each other in collective ignorance like some dumb chat room...There is enough power in the preaching of God's Word alone to build a church from nothing" (pp.77-78)

"I have learned that sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is to create strategic chaos that forces people to pull together and focus on an urgent need, thereby subtly getting rid of all their other missions and complaints in a subversive way." (pp.82-83)

"My answer to everything is pretty much the same: open the Bible and preach about the person of Jesus and his mission for the church." (p.86)

"We were deciding if Mars Hill Church was to be defined by the size of its mission to reach the lost or by the number of people we could gather at one time in one room." (p.94)

In congregational ecclesiology, "The staff and the pastor are essentially seen as employees of the congregation, to be fired if they do not meet the expectations of their employer, the congregation. As I studied the Bible, I found more warrant for a church led by unicorns than by majority vote." (p.103)

"Over the years, I've just accepted that if I do not quickly open the back door when God is trying to run people out of our church, I am working against God by keeping sick people in my church so they can infect others. Indeed, the church is a body, and one of the most important parts is the colon. Like the human body, any church body without a colon is designed for sickness that leads to death." (p.131)

"We learned that unchurched people tend to be the most traditional when it comes to church." (p.132)

"Preaching is like driving a clutch, and the only way to figure it out is to keep grinding the gears and stalling until you figure it out." (p.133)

"Slowly, the church will begin a cycle of decline unless it intentionally reinvents itself missionally to continue to grow by taking risks in an effort to reach lost people for Jesus." (p.141)

"The goal of the management phase is not to get the church organized and under control. Rather, the management phase is needed to eliminate the inefficiencies and barriers that are keeping the church from focusing back on the creative phase and creating a whole new set of problems to manage." (p.142)

Bottom Line - This book isn't for everyone. I enjoyed it, and saw it as a friendly and encouraging kick in the pants. If the above quotes appeal to you, then Confessions is a book that will help you in your ministry.