The Other Side of the Booth

A review of:

Confessions of A Reformission Rev.;
Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church
by Mark Driscoll.

Who: Mark Driscoll, his family, associates and Mars Hill Church.

What: An autobiography of Mark in as much as it relates to the main subject; the history of the inception and growth of Mars Hill Church. As an Emerging Reformissional Church.

When: 1996 – 2003

Why: To assist church leaders in growing a reformissional church.

Who should read this book: Anyone who is interested in the growth of one of the most amazing centres of growth in God’s Kingdom in the last couple of decades, anyone who loves a ripping good yarn, anyone who is interested in the future of Uinichurch, and specifically in how we can become more missionally radical

Who should not read this book: Anyone with an attention span shorter than mine (perhaps if you failed to complete The Kids Menu at McDonalds), Anyone who is a new Christian or does not have much knowledge of theological or ecclesiological jargon (if you understood that you should be fine).

Vibe

Firstly, this book is entertaining. Speaking as a man who has begun but failed to complete Knowing God, Desiring God, How Long, O Lord, The Oxford English Dictionary and The Hungry Caterpillar, let me tell you, this book is a page turner, I bought it on Sunday afternoon and had finished it by Tuesday night. I even missed watching beautiful Canadian countryside roll by my panoramic cabin to immerse myself in it. Driscoll writes in a way that is engaging, entertaining, frank, honest, funny, simple, not using big words (I’m sure there’s a big word for that….) and concise. The book is short, without being a pamphlet, ringing in at 207 pages with a few pages of notes, it represents only a few hours of reading time.

Subject & Target

The subject of the book is the inception and growth of Mars Hill Church (Seattle, Washington, USA) and Mark Driscoll’s reflections as its senior pastor for all the years of its existence. It is clearly intended for those who are seeking to think seriously about the church they are in, and specifically probably for those who have some leadership capacity within a church. Each chapter is concluded with a series of questions for the reader to consider in relation to their own life and church, based on topics that have been covered in the preceding chapter.

Gist

Driscoll’s main point in writing the book seems to be to inform, encourage, inspire, and equip other people to follow his lead in creating a reformissional church, with a reformissional pastor, reformissional leaders and a reformissional congregation. By reformissional, Driscoll means that the Christian outlook on mission needs to be reformed, specifically that our outlook on mission needs to include our own backyard, and that we need to have churches that are theologically conservative and culturally liberal.

Confessions and Unichurch

In the last sentence alone you may have recognised a unichurch motto; theologically conservative, missionally radical. Recent Unichurch methodology has borrowed heavily from the Mark Driscoll/ Mars Hill paradigm of church, and I believe, benefited greatly from it. Unichurch is on a similar path, methodologically and theologically at least (although also perhaps somewhat demographically and even maybe numerically) as Mars Hill was some time ago, and so there are lessons to be learned from Mars Hill’s trials and successes as we undergo similar stages.

- Brian John Snell 14/10/08