my corner of the room

Here are some of my notes and ensuing thoughts on the first message given by Mark Driscoll at the Advance Conference in Durham, NC.

What is the church?  Ask random individuals on the street and you’ll most likely get as many different responses.  Ask the typical church-goer, and I presume the results would not be far different.  How do we answer this question?  Is it a question that can be answered without providing some foundation for the word’s origins, or even taking into account the ways in which the word has been hijacked by groups either claiming or denying the name of Christ?  That last question brings up a good point.  It was Jesus Christ who established the church in this world, so must we not ask “Who is Jesus?”  Mark Driscoll points out in his message, “In order to understand what the church is, we must first ask ‘Who is Jesus?”  This is very, very important.  The church has it’s origins in Christ.  It was the church for which Jesus gave himself, demonstrating his love “that he might sanctify her … so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”  Ephesians 5:25

We can look at a cross-section of American Christianity and see a mix of consumerism and communalism and many things in between.  That consumerism has infiltrated the local church would be an understatement, and churches must at all times fight against the mentality that suggests they are providing some sort of commodity to their members and visitors.  Too often we see individuals and families hopping from church to church, looking for just the right mix of entertainment-driven worship services and homiletic teaching, asking the consumerist question, “What can I get out of this?”  And too often churches are willing to give it to them because it brings people through the doors and surely numbers are important, right?

Falling into the trap of the other extreme, communalism, some churches focus all of their attention inward and care nothing for the world outside, abandoning Christ’s call to preach the good news to all nations and separating themselves from most or all interaction with things secular and investing nothing in the command to love.  This is perhaps the extreme at which the world looks and confidently surmises the church’s lack of relevance, and I would argue they are partly correct in their assessment.  In fact, it would be easy to, as Driscoll did, poke fun at these churches consisting of families each with fifteen children and a school bus for a family vehicle and whose women and daughters adhere strictly to the “bonnets and dresses” dress code and are fluent in Elizabethan English.  But does this reality not also move you to sadness seeing that the body can be so unnecessarily divided because communities (or churches) like this elevate secondary and tertiary things to the level of first importance?

So, what’s the right answer?  What does the local church look like?  What are it’s characteristics without which would make it a speckled, blemished social gathering whose lampstand might need to be removed save for true repentence?  Lastly, how is the church to distinguish between the “biblical principle and the cultural method”?  (Yes, that is a distinction that many people fail to realize.)

Driscoll read a definition of the local church from his book Vintage Church and I think it’s worthy of our close attention:

The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to scripture, they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism & communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, scattered to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission as missionaries to the world for God’s glory and their joy.

Here are Driscoll’s eight marks as gleaned from this statement:

1. Regenerated membership
2. Qualified leadership (elders and deacons)
3. Gathering for preaching and worship
4. Sacraments rightly administered
5. Unified by the spirit
6. Discipline for holiness
7. Obey the great commandment to love
8. Obey the great commission

I have some notes on each of these items, but I think I’ll leave that portion open for discussion.  What do you think?  Is Driscoll correct in his definition?  Is it complete?  Does it go too far?  Do you think any of them need clarification?

Lastly, here are some questions for us all to consider and I’m interested in hearing your answers.

1. Who is the missionary at the church?  The pastor or the people?  Why?
2. There is a lot of talk right now about relevance.  What responsibilities, if any, does the local church have in pursuing relevance in the context of its culture?  What do you think about the distinction between the biblical principle and the cultural method?

advance, communalism, consumerism