The Radical Reformission

So I recently finished “The Radical Reformission” by Mark Driscoll … I have never been good at keeping up with the latest pastors and their books (I am too caught up in a long list of dead theologians), so this was a very different kind of book for me to read. I asked Anson (the youth pastor that I am about to intern with) to tell me the name of one book I should read before coming to work with him … Reformission was it. And, after reading it, I can partially understand why this would be his choice – the book is primarily concerned with understanding what it looks like to minister to our culture.
And there were some things that I appreciated about the book … he writes at great length about the dangers of morality-championing rhetoric, the importance of discipleship in evangelism and finding ways to relate to culture and to people without compromising the integrity of the gospel … all good things.
However, there were a lot of things that frustrated me about the book. Two of those things are fairly biased, but (in my opinion) depreciate the value of the book: (1) his writing style was …ummm, hokey? Is that how you spell that word? At times it was entertaining, and at times it was straightforward enough that I could ignore it, but it was just kind of cheesy. I got the impression that he was trying entirely too hard to keep me engaged … (2) He aggressively defends traditional gender roles, and categorizes feminists with ‘alcoholics, perverts, adulterers and nut jobs.’ He uses the word ‘tragic’ when describing the woman’s suffrage and finds feminine piety regrettable. Ridiculous!
But, independent of my feminist ideals and my love for good writing, I still had a few problems with the book. Perhaps my biggest problem with the book is the way in which he talks out of both sides of his mouth. He says that both fundamentalism and liberalism are unfortunate extremes that hurt the gospel, but seems to only disagree with fundamentalism on one issue: alcohol. He has an entire chapter devoted to defending alcohol (well, actually just dark beer), which not only seemed awkwardly out-of-place, but his one main deviance from fundamentalist theology. He says tattoos and secular music are ok for Christians, but anything that even vaguely resembles liberalism is unallowable. He wants to advocate a middle ground, but really he is just a beer-drinking fundamentalist. Or, for another example, he explicitly says that postmodernism is not something to be opposed or embraced … and then he proceeds with a seven-fold attack on all things postmodern.
To clarify, I think there is validity in condemning facets of liberalism and postmodernism …. but he wholly condemns them while claiming to do something else. It was an incredibly frustrating book to read because I had a hard time understanding where he was going and what he was actually trying to say. And I was also frustrated by his extreme simplification of important thinkers and theologians. At one point, he attempts to sum up the Western thought and the rise of postmodernism in two pages … he states that it is not an academic treatment of the subject, yet he invokes Descartes, Nietzsche, Derrida, Hegel and Kierkegaard as though they are simple thinkers you can just toss into conversation.
Near the end of the book, he attacks the emergent church … previously, this would not have been problematic for me. But after going to a lecture in which Tony Jones (a leader of the emergent church) came to Baylor and explained a lot of what the emergent church, Driscoll’s unforgiving critique seemed harsh. I will say no more here ...
Wow … this is turning out to be quite the biting commentary. As you can tell, it is not necessarily one that I would recommend, but here are a few quotes that I loved (you know, trying to end on a good note):
- “Reformission requires that Christians and their churches move forward on their knees, continually confessing their addictions to morality and the appearance of godliness, which does no penetrate the heart and transform lives”
- “Innovation, when not tethered to the truth of the gospel, leads to heresy”
- “Anytime that Jesus is used as a means to an end, a false gospel has been introduced”