Friday video

Mars Hill church, unfortunately, just opened a branch campus about 8 blocks from my house. So now this guy's hour plus long sermons are being beamed in every Sunday morning in a vicinity way too close for my personal comfort. Alas. Warning: this may cause naseaua.

Confidentiality

Another quote from Mark Driscoll which speaks, once again, to the fact that I am completely mystified as to why 5000 people are willing to sit through hour long sermons by him every week (this is from the sermon at Mars Hill on 3/18/07)

Some people, they believe in this thing called confidentiality. I’ll just say
this as an excursus. We don't believe in confidentiality at Mars Hill. Like I’ve
had people come to meet with me and say “I’m cheating’ on my spouse and I think
I’ve got AIDS” I’m like well I’m gonna tell them." They’re like “Well, I thought
we had confidentiality.” No, we have heaven and hell. We don’t have
confidentiality. We don’t. “Well I thought you were supposed to keep it secret.”
No I’m not gonna keep it secret. If you’re molesting your kid, if you’re
cheating on your spouse, if you’re ripping off your employer, I’m pulling the
fire alarm. That’s how we do it. We walk in the light as he is in the light. We
tell the truth. I had one guy “I think I got AIDS. Don’t tell my wife.” You know
what? I need to tell your wife. You’re gonna go home and sleep with her. You’re
gonna maybe give her AIDS then she’s gonna call me and say “I’ve got AIDS”. Then
I’m gonna go visit her in the hospital and preach her funeral and get up and say
“Well hey I kept a good secret for Jesus.”

Didn’t ya’ll wear a bike helmet as a kid? Of course that’s not how we do it. We tell the truth, and we encourage people to repent. And sometimes if they fail to or refuse to, they just get furious. It’s like water on a cat man—they’re just freaking out. That’s cool though (pause…laughter)--water on a cat.

This makes a certain sense from the perspective of Mars Hill. I mean it makes sense to me that if someone is harming someone else who is clearly under their power, like an adult harming a child or a developmentaly delayed person, then it is totally right for another adult who learns of that to ... go to the appopriate authorities and see that the harm stops. And Mars Hill, as far as I can tell, does definitely see women as being in this position with regards to men. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding.

But ... isn't this ... taking away the opportunity for the offender to face the challenge of being an adult, of realizing and facing up to and trying to make amends for their own wrongs? It feels much more like a parent dealing with two children here, protecting one from the other. God doesn't do that with us! He lets us hurt each other, if we must, and then he lets us realize the extent to which we have hurt each other, and experience reconciliation in ... his time, not the pastor's.

I remember Amy Carmichael writing about doing this even with children. Challenging them to do the right thing, and then allowing them to make their own choice, even if that meant another child was being hurt.

This Mars Hill method feels a lot more like the method used in the sect I grew up in. What I have seen looking back at my experience in that sect, and looking at the lives of those I know who are still part of that sect, is that it nearly completely shuts down forward progress for the members. I and they were/are treated as children, and thus progress toward adulthood is never made until one gets out of that system. This was enormously damaging to me as I've had to make up for years of very little growth in maturity.

what do you think?

what is emergent--a peeve

So Mark Driscoll announced on his blog this week the publcation of a new book by zondervan "Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches" edited by Dr. Robert Webber. It is a "counterpoint book", in which 5 so called emerging church pastors write on the issues of the trinity, the atonement, and the scripture, and then respond to each others' writing. The writers are Doug Pagitt, Karen Ward, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and Mark Driscoll.

So here's my peeve: what [the hell] is emergent about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill? I mean I know a little about Karen Ward and Doug Pagitt, and they are both definitely emerging. I mean their churches are .. emerging *out of* the boring, painful, etc. mainstream church. It doesn't look to me like Mars Hill is emerging from anything. They are totally typical. In fact they are ... quintessentially typical of the 'church' which I find so painful and can no longer bear. Not that I have anything against them personally. I'm sure they are somewhere in the range upon which typical churches fall--not really *that* far off in toward one extreme or the other. So how come they keep getting called emerging? I mean really, is that like a marketing campaign they did early on, and it stuck, or what? I really don't get it. Is it because they have such a youngish demographic? Is it because they are numerically successful in Seattle? Do people who call them emergent or emerging just mean something very very different from what I mean when I use those terms? If so, what is the meaning that these others are assigning to the term? don't get it don't get it don't get it. It's concerning because I ... sort of think of myself as emergent, or emergent, or at least ... I think of myself as feeling good around and understanding/connecting with emerging/emergent people. But *not* with Mars Hillish places. I feel totally and completely out of place and creeped out at Mars Hill services. So if we are going to wrest the word like that, or push the meaning to be so enormously broad, then perhaps I have to stop using it, or else explain every time, or something.

On the other hand, I think the book should be fascinating because of the authors in it that I do like.

A whole WEEK!?!

Wow--been a whole week since I posted. This week I learned about: sarcomeres, probability, Taylor series, actin, myosin, Na/K pumps. This week it snowed, and stuck, and all the side roads are still slick and icy in Seattle, and it's *very* cold. This week I *almost* completed a big secret project. Yay! This week I read part of Stephen King's Insomnia. This week I made 4 contacts about getting into the psych honors program at UW.

Can I also say that I strenuously disagree with Mark Driscoll's recent article on Bible Translation? Not that it really matters, since I mostly can't read the Bible anymore anyway. But "word-for-word translation" is very near (equal to, if you take the limit as n goes to infinity) a, well, (hehe), an oxymoron. Can't be done with any grace/beauty/joy ... most of all, can't be done with any trace of postmodernism/emergent churchishness. It's just a very bad idea all 'round. Translation isn't so much chemistry (in the post-enlightenment sense)--it's more alchemy, and this can't be done from an annoying modernistic point of view. Translation can't be done with pure science. It's got to involve a rather largish proportion of art, or it just sucks, like the mother of all vacuums. Furthermore, I think pastors should be barred from writing papers or speaching sermons on bible translation until they have become at least little "f" fluent in some living language besides their first language. And if it's Hebrew, it has to be more than just using the language to interact with texts. It has to include using the language to interact with people. BICBW.

Here's the Friday Video, Silent Star Wars, stolen from Siamang at eBay Atheist. If you've never been to see a silent movie in a theatre with live organ music, you should see if you can find a chance to sometime. It's fun.

Mark Driscoll apologizes, Protest called off

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, met with protest organizer Paul Chapman and other concerned leaders on Thursday night. He has said he is sorry about the hurt his words have caused and realizes he needs to stop using such inflammatory language, he has been removed as religion columnist for the Seattle Times, and the protest Sunday has been called off.
Read Mark's blog entry
Read protest organizer Paul Chapman's blog entry

Guest blogger--why I am joining the protest of Mars Hill in Seattle Dec 3

Shari Macdonald Strong expressed so perfectly the reasons I am joining the protest of Mars Hill in Seattle on Dec 3, I thought I'd just repost her letter here.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Why On Earth Would I Want to Picket a Church? More on the Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill Seattle Action

To: Mark Driscoll
Mars Hill Elders and Deacons
Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Seattle Times

As a Christian woman who is planning to participate in the planned December 3 protest at Mars Hill, I wanted to write to explain my reasons for wanting to do so and to share my concerns about some of Mr. Driscoll's recent teachings and writings.

Let me start by saying, I appreciate Mr. Driscoll's recent blog post, in which he amends his previous blog entry about the Ted Haggard affair and about the dangers of pastor's wives "letting themselves go." In particular, I am grateful for the gentle tone of the post. I believe that if this were the tone that he was known for, there would not be this current firestorm of emotion around his teachings.

It was the Ted Haggard post that brought Mr. Driscoll's teachings most recently to my attention. However, I live on the West coast and have heard of him before. I know both that Mark Driscoll is a very powerful man and that many, many people – a large percentage of which are women – have left Mars Hill Church and sometimes the larger church as a result of Mr. Driscoll's teachings. I also have heard that many people have sought therapy after leaving Mars Hill, as a result of the damage done by his teachings. That last statement, of course, is based on hearsay, so I went online to read some of Mr. Driscoll's writings and to listen to some sermons. In addition to the comments about women "letting themselves go," here is some of what I encountered (in random order):

• Derogatory comments made regularly and consistently about people who disagree with Mr. Driscoll's theology, labeling them not only wrong or liberal, but "wussified," "#######," "chickified," and "effeminate" (e.g., "if the Christ you serve is just a really nice guy – I hate to tell you, but you serve a weak, effeminate, ####### Christ").

• Mocking and undermining another denomination of the Christian church:
“The One God has kindly told us who He is—Father, Son, and Spirit. But some chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists and minors in 'womyn’s studies' are not happy because two persons of the Trinity have a dude-ish ring. So, in an effort to copy-edit God, some folks at the Presbyterian Church (USA) who have free time because no one is going to their church have decided to consider new names for God.”

• Comparing women in leadership to "fluffy baby bunnies":
“All of this [the Episcopal church appointing female and homosexual leaders] has led this blogger to speculate that if Christian males do not man up soon, the Episcopalians may vote a fluffy baby bunny rabbit as their next bishop to lead God’s men. When asked for their perspective, some bunny rabbits simply said that they have been discriminated against long enough and that people need to “Get over it.”

• Stating/implying that men are the only demographic that matters:
The question is: “If you want to be innovative, how do you get young men?” All this nonsense about how to grow the church – one issue: young men. That’s it – that’s the whole thing. They’re going to get married, make money, make babies, build companies, buy real estate; they’re going to make the culture of the future. If you get the young men you win the war – you get everything; you get the families, the women, the children, the money the business: you get everything. If you don’t get the young men you get nothing.

• Calling strong women who disagree with his interpretation of Scripture "godless" and saying the Bible has "a low opinion" of them:
If it’s a godly woman who has a godly agenda who has something godly to say, then she can speak. If she’s an ungodly woman with a godless feminist agenda that she borrowed from the serpent, like her mother Eve in Genesis 3, and she’s on some tirade mission to represent all women, which is what sometimes happens, women nominate themselves to represent all women… – I love it when the national organization for women, for example, comes out and says, ‘…and representing women…” What women? Did they take a vote? Did all the Christian women vote? Did the mothers vote? Did the wives vote? No. You don’t represent all women. You represent a liberal feminist constituency. Period. Not all women. Not all women. But there are women who will rise up like that, saying “I speak for all women. I champion women’s rights. I champion women’s causes” (sarcastically). We say, that’s not a problem if it’s in accordance with the rights and liberties and dignities that are afforded to a woman in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t have a low view of women. It just has a low view of some women."

• Making fun of strong women and mocking feminists:
"The question is not: Will someone be offended? The question is, who will it be? Will we offend God, saying, you know what? This is an old book, you’re kind of an idiot. I have some other opinions. I went to community college. I have a degree in women’s studies. I have a pushup bra and clear heels and opinions! [Congregation laughs.] The question is, who will be offended: God or us? And if we are offended do we really believe that God doesn’t know what he’s talking about or that this really isn’t God speaking to us? Those are the issues on the table. 'As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches.' He’s speaking here about godless feminist women who are on an agenda, beatin’ a drum, plantin’ a flag in the ground, “We’re for women! We’re for women! We’re for women!” He says, 'You know what? We’re for Jesus.' Wrong mission. Women are great, as long as they’re for Jesus."

• More making fun of women and feminists:
"They [feminists] will say, “You need to treat me like a man!” None of you women want that. No woman wants a man to treat her like another man. Because if we do…you cry. That’s true. [laughter and applause in congregation] Also: " The problem with women, though, who want to be treated like men, is as soon as you do, they say, "You know what, you hurt my feelings. I'm a girl."

• Mr. Driscoll implies that Brian McLaren has sex with goats because he accepts gay people into his church.

• “…women who don’t respect godly authority are demonic.”

• Rather than Mr. Driscoll simply saying that he disagrees with the lifestyles of young men who work in coffee shops and suggesting an alternative or challenging them, he makes fun of them. He uses shame to get men to do what he wants, calling them "chickified," "limp-wristed," "#####," "#######."

• More mocking of women who disagree with him, painting women who have opinions as "hot-headed" and "emotional," and more implications that God doesn't like these women:
"some women think they can do everything on their own" and that if men sit by idly like cowards because they don't want to get into with with their hot-headed, emotional, wives, eventually the women will take over the church, and then the church will go to hell."

• Undermining women's efforts to hold him accountable for his words, implying that the raising of theological questions by a woman is the same thing as them calling the Bible "ridiculous," and calling the squelching of a woman's intellect and voice "sexy":"Does it say, "Ladies, don't have any questions"? Does it say that? No. Does it say, "Ladies, don't disagree." No. Does it say, "Ladies, don't think for yourself." When you disagree, when you're super-theological, when you're all fired up, the first thing you don't do is start yellin' at the pastor and yellin' at the church, firin' nasty e-mails, and declarin' war and puttin' together a, a, little group of, you know, feminist women with guns who are gonna make a difference."
If you're married, you go talk to who? Your husband. You say, "Sweetheart, I was readin' The Bible, I think it's ridiculous." And he would say, "We should probably talk." "Honey I was readin' the Bible, I don't understand." He should say, "Let's, let's study that together. Let's take some time, and study -- together. Now some of you will protest and say, "THAT is SEXIST!" As a married man, I will tell you, it is sexy. That's what it is. There is nothin' hotter than a wife with a great new testament, commentaries, concordances, and questions. That is theological foreplay. It's awesome. Because now you're connecting at the level of then heart and the soul and god is honoring of that."

• Mocking homosexuals:
"I am myself a devoted heterosexual male ####### who has been in a monogamous marriage with my high school sweetheart since I was 21 and personally know the pain of being a marginalized sexual minority as a male #######."


There is more, but I believe I've more than made my point. Frankly, I am upset, I am concerned, I am angry, and I am embarrassed to belong to the same religion as Mark Driscoll. I am deeply offended – not by God, but by Mark Driscoll. If I believed that Mr. Driscoll's words and attitude were reflective of the God of Christianity, I would walk away from Christianity altogether. I read at least one report of a former Mars Hill member who has. Unfortunately, as the Christian religion writer for the Seattle Times, in addition to his other roles, Mark does for many represent the face of Christianity. As that representative, he is showing the world a religion that is mean-spirited and unkind, one that depends upon mockery and shame, ######### and disrespect, smugness and name-calling to make its points.

I am sure that Mr. Driscoll has many fine points and I am not calling into question his love of God or Jesus or the Bible. I am, however, pointing out that his demonization of everyone who deviates from his absolutist claims is causing vast damage to individuals, to the community, and to the church. Perhaps he is trying to be hip and funny and provocative. But the price of this approach is far too high.

Again, I appreciate Mr. Driscoll's clarifying blog post about the Haggard situation, although I wish he had said "I'm sorry, I was wrong" instead of simply saying he'd been "misconstrued." Mr. Driscoll should apologize publicly for all the things referenced above, for the mean, flippant attitude with which he is attempting to deliver the gospel.

In the original, offending blog post, Mr. Driscoll wrote: "At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness…" If he realized that the post would make him "more despised," then why say something he already has recognized as being despicable? Mr. Driscoll has had to apologize publicly for his abuse before; on March 27, 2006, he apologized for comments made on the CT Leadership blog, in which he (among other abuses) implied that Brian McLaren had sex with goats because he accepted gay people in his church. John Piper also has censured him for being "clever."

Yet Mark Driscoll continues to deliver messages filled with meanness and sarcasm and mockery of those who have different opinions or theological positions, and the congregation laughs whenever he does this. Who is holding him accountable? Who, among the Acts 29 community and/or Mars Hill, is talking with him about this, saying: "Mark, you can't be this mean. This has to stop"?

I realize that I am exactly the type of strong-willed, opinionated woman that Mark Driscoll believes to be "an ungodly woman with a godless feminist agenda that she borrowed from the serpent, like her mother Eve in Genesis 3." I do have an opinion about this matter (though I don't have that pushup bra he accused all feminists of having), and I feel it is my responsibility to stand up and say something. Mr. Driscoll will likely see this letter as fitting his example of those "super-theological," "fired up" "feminist women with guns who are gonna make a difference." I admit, I do hope to make some difference in this situation (no gun, though); unfortunately, I don't really expect this letter to change his heart.

I am, however, appealing to those surrounding him: Please listen. Please understand that Mark Driscoll's teachings and his harsh, unkind, mocking words are hurting women and hurting the church. Please set up some form of accountability (or, if one exists, a stronger form of accountability). Ask him to get some therapy. Until he can control his words and his tone, please ask him to step down as the religion columnist representing Christianity for the Seattle Times. Listen to his sermons with a discerning ear and hold him accountable for what he's teaching; if the tone of the above comments continues, remove him from leadership. Ask him to apologize, publicly. Most importantly of all, please set up some kind of information-seeking group within the church to hear the stories of people who have been hurt by Mr. Driscoll and his teachings – and be willing to act upon what you learn.

You have the power to do something about this. All I have is the power to write this letter. And to stand outside the church, holding a sign. Which is why I still plan to attend the protest on December 3. This isn't an attempt to be divisive and it isn't an attempt to persecute anyone, as some Mars Hill members have claimed. It's simply an attempt to say: "Somebody please do something. Please stop this." The question is: Are you listening?

Sincerely,

Shari MacDonald Strong

Who's your favorite speaker?

Stephanie said in a recent comment on this blog:

ben, i like hearing your thoughts on this. i have listened to mark driscoll sermons in hope of finding some redemptive value but instead end up frustrated. so i empathize with you.

So here's my question. Who's your favorite speaker or speakers--the ones where you do find redemptive value--the one's who manage to plant lovely story seeds inside you which bear delightful fruit? If you can, also share links to talks from these speakers.

To start us off--one of my favorites is Dan Allender, who always manages to surprise me and (lovingly) shove me right out of my completely whacked comfort zone.

my thoughts on sex and power in the context of the recent Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill thing

From here:

I think I have a *great* gut feeling for a powerful abusive system when I see it. Call it whatever you want. There’s something inside that recognizes it immediately becuase I lived in something very similar for years, and it was hella hard to get out of, and to get healed from. Driscoll and Mars Hill Church set that feeling off big time, and the more I read about and interact with them, the more conscious evidence there is for my head of what my gut is telling me. It seems to me that perhaps the major problem over there is a misunderstanding of power. I really think that the leadership doesn’t understand the level of the power they have, and the damage their uncareful use of that power is doing. I think there are two possible paths for them. Either they will just continue to be the way they are–this happens to some people–they never really change, no matter how much pain they cause others and themselves. My hope is that it will go the other way for them–that they will come to understand and feel in their heads and in their guts the pain that their misuse of power is causing, and repent, and start to repair. That would be awesome. the sense I get from Mark, and from Lief, is that they have not yet experienced the depths of brokenness that they need to experience in order to *really* understand their desperate need for love, and for jesus. Mark gives very flippant lip service to being a sinner. It’s scary to see unbroken people wielding power.

and from here:

I think that what a man in a position of power like Mark Driscoll (that is, a man who knows that other people look up to him, listen to his teaching, and intend to implement it) should be emphasizing overwhelmingly to married guys about sex is this: We (guys) live in a culture where the overwhelming message is that women are objects, women are worthless unless they are young, thin, and beautiful, women are sexually assaulted, women are beaten–all in all, women have a pretty shitty time overall, and it’s mostly the fault of guys who are saying and doing all these abusive things to women. So in light of the fact that we are swimming in this pool, and breathing this freaking air, our first priority with our wives should be to give the lie to all this crap, and tell our wives both in words and deeds that they are beautiful, period, and that that they are worthy of respect and love, period. Our number one goal in regards to sex with our wives should be to be romantic, and kind, and gracious, and focused on what *they* want. Etc. Etc. Etc. etc. etc.
And if someone in a position of power, like mark, is focusing on anything else when teaching married men about sex, then by default, that is, by not swimming against the cultural tide, he is swimming with it, and reinforcing it.
That’s what I think.

Response from Mars Hill on blog comments

In all fairness, I would encourage those following this whole thing to read this response from Mars Hill Church on Comment 102 at the CatE Post (referenced below) (I guess it's a little late to add that this whole discussion is *not* g-rated)

Can I just say this looks to me like a big powerful abusive system (Mars Hill Church) trying to further squash their victims while maintaining their own apperance of holiness and propriety. But hey, that's just me.

update and change in date of Mark Driscoll protest

So the Mark Driscoll protest (mentioned in the post directly below this one) is now going to be on December 3. Please make a note of it.

Feel free to read about my visit to Mars Hill Church this morning here

And here's today's astonomy photo of the day--the cat's eye nebula

Protest Mark Driscoll's misogyny Dec. 3 (NEW DATE!) in Ballard

I want to encourage any seattlelites reading here to click here to join in the protest of the misogyny of Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, one of Seattle's biggest churches. Mark recently suggested on his blog that perhaps if Gayle Haggard had taken steps to be a little hotter, then Ted Haggard would have found it easier to resist temptation. Can you believe that? (For more evidence of Mark's warped misogynist viewpoint, just follow this post at converation at the edge. See especially comments 102 and 109) So endfundamentalism.org is protesting mark's words, and his general misogyny, at the 11Am service at Mars Hill on December 3 (NEW DATE!). I called Mars Hill and asked whether there was any chance of speaking to Mark about this, but was told he is booked up for two years! I left them my phone number and they said they would have another pastor get back to me. So I will keep you posted.

And may I encourage you to check out the 4 minute preview of Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3, and perhaps buy the dvd? Jean clearly and concisely shows just how prevalent and how enormously damaging our whole society's underlying "women are only worthwhile if they are young and beatiful" message really is. Just click on the name Killing Us Softly above, and about halfway down the left side of that page click on "Play Video"