This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary’s 20/20 Collegiate Conference. As I noted in the previous post, one of the major draws to this conference, both for myself and the 1399 other young adults who attended, was the presence of Pastor Mark Driscoll (Note: this is in no way to discount CJ Mahaney, who delivered probably the best message overall, but his speaking isn’t nearly as controversial as Driscoll’s).
It is well-known that there is no love lost for Driscoll among conservative Christians or specifically people in the SBC. In fact, while at the conference I found myself coming across a nice piece of propaganda entitled “What you should know about Mark Driscoll” which takes upon itself the responsibility of cut-and-pasting Driscoll’s quotes and then passing judgment on him passed on their own subjective, extra-biblical requirements. You can view the full 11-page condemnation of Pastor Mark here. Nevertheless, in light of some peoples opinions to the contrary, I do not believe there to be any more biblically faithful teacher than Driscoll today. In a day where we have the leadership of a major church movement proclaiming biblical justification for committed, homosexual unions, why are we still cannibalizing ourselves over someone’s methods?
Putting his biblical fidelity on full display, Pastor Mark delivered three messages in three days, including one rewritten 4 hours prior to going on with it, all of which energized a collective of hungry young Christians while simultaneously focusing them on the unadulterated teachings of Scripture.
The first message was delivered during chapel at SEBTS on Thursday and dealt with the nine distinctions between the Gospel and religion. To show you how highly Dr. Akin thinks of Driscoll, this was the speaker and message on stage during the Preview Days for the seminary, when prospective students are on campus seeing what it’s all about. Anyways, this was a typical hard-hitting Driscoll message, one of those which probably doesn’t resonate well with traditionalists since it was basically an attack on all of the sacred calves of half-hearted, legalistic, self-aggrandizing American Christianity. In it he spoke of distinctions such as, Religion causes us to be aware of others sins, the Gospel makes us aware of our own sins, and, Religion is about getting stuff from God, the Gospel is just about getting God.
The second message came Friday night to open up the Collegiate conference. This was on 7 views of Culture. This was the message by Driscoll which I think that made the biggest impression on people throughout the weekend, specifically in his explication of the Ecclesiological view of Culture. Speaking on this, he said that there are four ways of viewing culture through the church: Church as a mirror of culture, Church as a parasite on culture, Church as a city within the city of culture, or Church as a bomb shelter from culture. The last one, Church as bomb shelter, took aim squarely upon the home-schooling co-op, end times preaching, music banning church that we all probably know of and some maybe even belong to. He criticized this because, in an attempt to maintain and manufacture innocence, all they really seem to be doing is creating naivety. He also spent considerable time developing the idea of how Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah demonstrate the Biblical view of Culture for us to imitate.
His final message at the conference, which he started at 8:30am, admitting he had written at 5am, was an extended treatment of one view of culture he was unable to get to, that being the Doxological view. This concentrated on how we can live our lives as worship (in the vein of Romans 11.36-12.2) and how we can avoid idolatry (in the vein of Romans 1.24-25). Driscoll was probably his calmest during this message, but what he said was very poignant, particularly as he answered the question, How can we find our idols? Dr. Akin commented afterwards about how rich an exposition of the practice of worship he found this message to be and I would certainly concur. It is well worth listening to, even if you are not necessarily a Driscoll fan.
So, it appears that Driscoll at SEBTS the 2009 version came off without a hitch. I am continually finding myself praising Dr. Akin for his vision and integrity in standing up to the inevitable criticism that must come with bringing Driscoll on campus for events, and am thankful that the SBC has a man like him who can hopefully take the reins as the more traditional “Church as bomb shelter” leadership of the SBC starts to fade away. Listening to Driscoll and Mahaney at this conference was an incredible experience, and I will attest, along with the 1400 other people who were there, that the presence of the Lord was rocking in that chapel over the weekend. The SBC is in dire need of a youth resurgence, and thanks to the foresight of men like Danny Akin in calling the speakers that he did, hopefully this will occur sooner than later.
