Have you ever felt a faint twinge of frustration at the state of the Western church?
I doubt it — I suspect your frustration goes deep. I suspect that, somewhere, at some point, you’ve been disturbed, disgusted and appalled by the colossal failings of our churches in our time. It can be gut-wrenching to see churches flail about uselessly while chaos continues to gnaw at the world — are they even aware of the vital light they bear?
Vintage Church is the third book by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears. Mark Driscoll began his ministry career as part of the emerging church conversation, from which he has subsequently distanced himself. It’s interesting to see where his leadership of Mars Hill Seattle has taken his ecclesiology.
The book’s subtitle is ‘timeless truths and timely methods’, and Vintage Church falls roughly into those two halves. Driscoll works through the following topics: the Christian life; church; leadership; preaching; the sacraments; church unity; church discipline; Christian love; being missional; multi-site organisation; technology use; global transformation.
Distinctives
Vintage Church has some clear distinctives — and the important ones are not the hip ideas you might expect.
Firstly, there’s old-school leadership. Churches must have a clearly defined leadership of shepherds (elders and deacons) who directively care for God’s people (63-77). Churches must also develop a membership policy to promote Christian community (77-80).
This is a church where kingdom growth rightly trumps tradition and comfort. As a church grows, it must expect to change. This will lead to conflict, which a church needs to corporately recognise. Its leaders and members must prepare for displacement and loss with humility, rejecting any desire for compensation and gain (147-152). This of course encourages us to find security in the right place: in relationship with God and in community with his people.
Driscoll presents a church that is keenly aware of sin, noting that ‘the question is not whether people will sin against one another, but rather how they will deal with that sin’ (165). And when reconciliation inevitably fails at times, churches must continue to deal with sin through a process of discipline (163-188). It is not surprising that Driscoll’s #2 characteristic of ‘being missional’ is practising and preaching repentance (222).
This is a book for the Western church. Driscoll has set out to understand and decisively deal with Western problems, such as individualism and religious consumerism. He is intentionally anti-niceness and anti-comfort, and resolutely pro-love and pro-mission.
Quibbles
Vintage Church handles each of its topics briefly, which at a couple of points leads to caricatures of other theological positions and a lack of clarity. Driscoll appears to affirm infant baptism(115) but then argues for believer’s baptism. Later, he dismisses the view that communion is pure symbolism but does not take the time to distinguish this view from the Reformed position he lays claim to (125-126). Driscoll is also practical to a fault; for example, his five ‘theological’ reasons for church unity are little more than pragmatic (136).
I can’t make much sense of Driscoll’s emphasis on video preaching (ch 10). The problem is not with preaching via video, but with Driscoll’s idea of the ‘preaching pastor’: a single man who is responsible for preaching across a whole range of congregations (which is only practicable via video). Driscoll theoretically recognises that each Mars Hill campus is in some sense a church in its own right (252), yet at every campus, he personally occupies 40 weeks of the preaching calendar. Regular video preaching is a great idea when a congregation is struggling without gifted leaders, teachers and preachers, yet each Mars Hill campus has its own pastor — so what’s the point of it? Although Driscoll doesn’t explain, the reason seems to be that these campus pastors are only fill-in preachers (253-253). But why shouldn’t the leader of a congregation also be its primary preacher? And if a leader is not gifted to teach in this way, should he really be a campus pastor in the first place?
Conclusions
The church of Vintage Church is an exciting one. Its people commit unreservedly to be loved radically in sacrificial community. Sin is recognised and relational mess is to be expected as Christ works amongst broken people. And in order to hinder sin, things like repentance are not just acknowledged needs but deeply implanted in church structures. I found it thrilling to read about a church where the theology of love has been so intentionally and deeply worked into the way the church is organised. Likewise, the sacrificial mindset on view is one which undoes the Western politeness and laissez-faire thinking that kills off mission.
Driscoll and Breshears show that these distinctives are theologically coherent, not just stylistic quirks. They flow directly from the church’s essential mandate, forming a potent remedy for an ailing Western church. They seem like the right emphases for the right time: they’re anti-liberal, empowering the church to reclaim its Christian distinctiveness, as well as anti-sectarian, modelling how the church can engage fully and fruitfully with the world.
Vintage Church is a refreshing, impassioned call for Christians to radicalise and take up their faith with new power, coupled with a winsome outward focus to bring social renewal. In other words, Vintage Church is not just a church planter’s manual or a pop pocket ecclesiology but a joyful, tangible vision for the wholesale renewal of Western Christianity.
More to follow.
Categories: Written by Arthur
Arthur Davis
Arthur Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.
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