Tom’s Big Picture

Recently a minister named Mark Driscoll, of an interesting “emerging” church with uncharacteristically conservative theology, put together a video about church planting making analogies from Scripture about the task and being a soldier. I don’t know much else about him, but he makes good points about the feminization of the church. The video was very man-focused, “edgy” and was shot in a veterans’ cemetary. I find it interesting, and unlike the “masculine Christianity” movement of Eldredge (which has a great premise of men wanting to fight for something instead of being feminized Christian “nice guys” singing love songs to Jesus- but with little practical advice for what or who to fight- honestly the book Wild at Heart seemed rather anticlimactic, with all of its Braveheart rhetoric ending up as advice- as far as I could tell- to spend more time outdoors with other men- I’m sorry, but I don’t think real William Wallace masculinity is satisfied with a fishing trip), Driscoll makes some comments that take guts.

Driscoll prepared the video for a church planting conference attended by Bill Clinton’s spiritual adviser, Bill Hybels. And we know how much both Bills care about women- Clinton for the usual reasons and Hybels’ for his pet “relevant” theology of ordaining women pastors and deacons in direct contradiction of Scriptural instruction on the subject.

After this video was presented at a conference, Bill Hybels, the next speaker, immediately criticizes the video for failing to include or affirm the role of women in church planting. What kind of screwed-up, politically-correct, bizarro-world freak sees that video (whatever else one may think of it) and comes away with some kind of beef against it because it’s unfair to women?!! I stand by my assertion that Hybels is a fruitcake with no business in any church, much less promoted as a leader to be emulated. Link to the controversy and video here.