Pastor Chris Anderson has written a good post on Mark Driscoll that is worth your time to read if you are wondering what to make of him and his ministry. If you don’t know who Mark Driscoll is, then don’t bother finding out. Here are two more quick thoughts on this matter. First, we continue to make the same old mistake of judging a man and his ministry by visible results. While we should be thankful for every good thing that God accomplishes through any of us, we must not make the mistake of thinking that positive results are necessarily an endorsement of any particular minister or ministry. I think that Jonathan Edwards is dead on with this comment:
Another error, arising from an erroneous principle, is a wrong notion that they have an attestation of Divine Providence to persons, or things. We go too far, when we look upon the success that God gives to some persons, in making them instruments of doing much good, as a testimony of God’s approbation of those persons and all the courses they take…But there are innumerable ways by which persons may be misled, in forming a judgment of the mind and will of God, from the events of providence. If a person’s success be a reward of something in him that God approves, yet it is no argument that he approves of everything in him (Jonathan Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols. [Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974], 1:408–409).
He says more on this subject that is helpful. Bottom line is that God is free to use whomever or whatever He wants to accomplish His purposes and that fact that He does so does not mean that the instrument becomes uniquely qualified as an expert or should be held up as a model for others. Completely eliminate anybody from your direct consideration right now and remember this: God may honor His Word even when it is spoken by those who are disobedient to it. The standard for evaluation is the Word, not visible results.
Second, Chris mentioned my making a connection between Driscoll and Finney, so let me clarify a little. The context was a point I was making about Driscoll’s apparent understanding of contextualization being pretty lame. Specifically, I said that Driscoll is to contextualization what Bill Hybels is to Donald McGavran’s homogenous unit principle. Hybel’s dime store version of that principle produces “Unchurched Harry” and Driscoll’s dime store version of contextualization means imitating Chris Rock. Both of them, I think, are borrowing missiological terms with established meanings and using them in a very shallow way. And it is at that point that I see a real similarity between what Hybels does and what Driscoll does, and the root of that is Finney’s embrace of methodological pragmatism. Every time I hear Driscoll tell people to hold their theology tightly in their right hand and their methodology loosely in their left hand, I cringe. This is an incredibly naïve and potentially dangerous false dichotomy. It warrants far more than I can say right now, but it needs to be challenged. (BTW, I was very thankful that Ligon Duncan challenged the idea that we can separate theology and methodology in his message at the Gospel Coalition conference. That is a hopeful sign.)
