Hybels Disses Emergent Church Planting Video
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.
May 5th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Driscoll is not connected to Rob Bell. Bell is in Michigan and Driscoll is in Seattle. Not all connected to the “emerging church” are liberal. It may even be that a minority are liberal. Emergent is an organization with members and Driscoll is not a member. Driscoll does consider himself in the very diverse “emerging church” (which can be defined a hundred different ways) yet Driscoll is as biblically conservative as anyone which leads some in the emerging church to call him a fundamentalist.
And your post would be more helpful if you lost the rhetoric.
Blessings.
Steve
May 5th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Tom:
Driscoll is from Mars Hill, Seattle and Bell is from Mars Hill, Michigan. They are very much unrelated. Driscoll espouses a more conservative theology than Bell. Bell is more liberal and tending towards Roman Catholic mysticism of the middle ages.
While Bell would be rightly characterized as “emergent” because he agrees with practically everthing from the “emergent village,” Driscoll calls himself “emerging” and distances himself from Bell’s ilk.
May 5th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Wow- what a coincidence- two churches, both “emergent”, same name. The rhetoric was conditional upon the association, so will be edited. That puts my knowledge of Driscoll down to zero, except that Hybels had this issue with him, which is a net positive for me.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
The Emerging Church movement came out of Leadership Network’s Terranova Project of which Driscoll was a key member. That “project” later becomes Emergent Village but the whole movement begins there in 1997. It all comes from the same rotten root.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Unfortunately these types of blogs with their “hate anything new” approach cannot refrain from rhetoric and thus harm the good they can bring to the table. The slam at Hybels for being Clinton’s “spiritual adviser” which came as a request from Clinton, is akin to the Ingrid Schleuter’s constant slap-downs of Rick Warren and everything “Purpose Driven”. Some of the criticism is warranted but it becomes so over the top that none of it carries any bite after a while and it becomes nothing more than “yellow journalism”.
May 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
John, did you even read the entire details of the Hybels/Clinton saga? It goes much deeper than just Clinton requesting counsel- and though a lot more could be said against the man pretty confidently, I only said what could be backed up with mainstream media sources.
I don’t apologize for aggressive rhetoric against these people- it’s a straightforward, honest response to their passive-aggressive efforts to “corporatize” the church into a mish-mash of logos and self-help psychobabble.
May 6th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I was fasinated with Pastor Driscoll’s video. For the most part it is bang on. I have read Driscoll and listened to him and it is clear to me more than ever , he cannot be lumped with Bell or any of the emerging heresy that is out there. He stands for reformed teaching, upholds the word and is even for church discipline .
As to Hybels and his form of pastoring , I have long felt he was and is a compromiser and walks hand and hand with the world . So I’m not shocked he would say a word against the video since he loves the world more than the word of God and therefore , dishonors the Lord Jesus Christ!
May 6th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
That was my first time hearing anything by Driscoll and I liked it quite a bit. If he’d thrown in the word repent or repentance when he talked about the gospel, it would have been spot on as far as what I expect to hear when someone talks about the gospel.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:30 am
You say you don’t know much about Mark Driscoll…? Look into him more. Judging by your post, I think you’ll like him a lot.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:40 am
“I don’t apologize for aggressive rhetoric against these people- it’s a straightforward, honest response to their passive-aggressive efforts to “corporatize” the church into a mish-mash of logos and self-help psychobabble. ”
Well put, I used to be a big fan of Hybels, I thought he was the perfect leader for the church. The reason I thought this was because it allowed me to apply what I like about corporate life to church life. I had a leader that taught that a church should run like a business. Being a business leader I started to have dreams about running a church like Hybels and read all the materials. Then I started reading the scriptures and something didn’t add up, God was second in command in Hybels books, Jesus was a good leader but not king of king, lord of lords.
There is a disconnect between the message in the large corporate churched, they have been forced now to replace the gospel with a watered down message about feeding poor people. They have turned the wonderful gospel into a work based, weak social gospel. They are completely man centered and have lost the holiness of God.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I that Driscoll was part of the emerging church, and he was. But after seeing this video.. I started digging up some things about Driscoll. He apparently left the emerging movement… because he did not agree with what the other leaders were pushing.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
[...] I first learned about this Mark Driscoll video here Since then it has grown and now you can read about it here and here not to mention here and of course here. [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Dabney on women preachers, etc.:
“If any of our preaching women will work a genuine miracle, then, and not until then, will she be entitled to stand on the ground of Deborah or Anna.”
http://www.biblebb.com/files/RD-001WP.htm
May 10th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Today was the first I had heard of the video or the man, but I am a big fan of David Murrow, and I worked for PK for a 5 years. I have also seen my share of Men being shunned in the church for being…men. So I like it and will continue to check him out and may begin a dialogue with him.
We need more men like this preaching the message men will follow.
one funny thing, when I was a young preacher (23) just out of college, I used the term “B.S.” (just the initials) and we had three families leave our VERY SMALL church….I laughed when I heard him use it.