Three Roads Converged in a Wood
And three forward-thinking authors agree, take the one most traveled.
Reviews of books by Mark Driscoll, Peter Wagner, and more.
January 1, 2005
Like a familiar tune rendered in three different musical styles, three new books offer unique perspectives but a unified challenge on the relationship between church and culture. In poetic terms, it's not the road less traveled that leads to the future, it's the road most traveled.
Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Fellowship in Seattle and the Acts 29 church planting network, believes that our culture provides a tremendous opportunity for the gospel, a "reformission" in which Christians serve as missionaries in their own neighborhoods.
In Radical Reformission, Driscoll urges a commitment to return to Jesus' original threefold call: to the gospel (loving our Lord), to the culture (loving our neighbor), and to the church (loving our brother).
"Reformission requires that every Christian and church realize that missions is not about something they do but something they are," he explains. "We are all on a mission with Jesus every day, and we are either good missionaries or bad."
Driscoll's thoughtful, down-to-earth style reflects a calm but passionate confidence in his calling, a thorough knowledge of Scripture and church history, and a love for the church as God's agent.
In chapters with such intriguing, lowercase titles as "going to seminary at the grocery store" and "the sin of light beer," Driscoll calls church leaders to identify and redeem a changing culture with the unchanging gospel. "Innovation, when not tethered to the truth of the gospel, leads to heresy," Driscoll warns.
At the same time, Driscoll makes a noteworthy distinction between culture and worldliness. The latter, he says, is the sinfulness that pollutes God's good creation. Culture, on the other hand, may contain worldly elements, but is not inherently ...
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