Religion Saves by Mark Driscoll

Way back when, Mark Driscoll decided that he was going to base a sermon series on the questions put forth by thousands of internet denizens. He called the series, Religion Saves: and 9 other Myths. I mentioned it in my Ask Anything Post. He claimed that much of Paul's Epistles were done in the same vein - answering questions that the Church was struggling with - like, "If I sleep with my stepmom, is that bad?" (I Corinthians)





It was during this preaching series that Driscoll began taking questions from the audience during the sermon (Oral Sex Virgins, Masturbation, and Pregnant Rape Victims) . They would text in their question and he would respond to some of them after the conclusion of the sermon. He has since continued this practice.





In the book, Driscoll devotes a chapter to each of the questions that were highlighted in the series.

1.Birth Control

2. Humor


3. Predestination


4. Grace


5. Sexual Sin


6. Faith and Works


7. Dating


8. The Emerging Church


9. The Regulative Principle

I'm not a huge fan of reading a book that is based on a sermon series I've already heard, but the truth is, I'd rather read a rehash books of Driscoll's than most of the other books out there.

Fieldy: 2nd Korn member to be Born Again

Fieldy, the bassist for Korn, is now the second member of the band to become a Christ Follower. His book, Got the Life, came out this month - describing his conversion.

Fieldy is the reason that I took up playing the bass guitar. And I would be remiss if I didn't say that Korn was probably the most important band in my musical upbringing. Its weird that two of the five of them are now Christians. Now, if only Kid Rock could give up the strippers and find Jesus, I'd be set.

Here is an excerpt of an article about Fieldy's conversion:

When one his oldest friends, Korn guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, quit the band after finding religion, Fieldy scoffed.
He didn't listen when his father became terminally ill, and urged his boy one last time to give the Bible a shot.
But the night of the funeral, as his entourage kicked off its usual party, for once Fieldy didn't feel like throwing back beer after beer. Instead he found himself praying, asking for what he thought his father would have wanted: for Jesus to help him end the endless party.
The next morning, he flushed his pot down the toilet and says he never looked back, skipping rehab for religion in a single move.
"I didn't grow up with any of that, with prayer," he says of his first steps into Christianity. "I just opened my heart and said, 'I need help doing this.'"
He started to read the Bible. But, like many others, he also found his way to "The Purpose-Driven Life," the book that helped make Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, a national religious figure.
It was just a start. Though he had ideas to live a certain way, Fieldy – unlike his former bandmate Head – was seeking faith while still playing bass and otherwise performing with one of the biggest hard-rock acts in the world, Korn.
"When I made my change, I was thrown back into the pit of hell, on tour," he says. "There are dark things out there. And just because my band isn't partying" – Korn's core members all are sober now, he says – "doesn't mean it's not around you."
On tour, he says, he traded night for day. For the first time in years, he got up during the day on tour to sightsee in cities where he'd previously seen only the insides of arenas, hotels and strip clubs.
When temptations came near – and in that world temptation is a 24-hour business – Fieldy says he walked away.
The fridge outside his studio stocks Smartwater and Rockstar energy drinks, not wall-to-wall Coors Light as it once did.
On this day, Fieldy's 2-year-old son, Israel, plays upstairs, in the family room. Dena – who agreed to marry him even after he confessed all his sins against her – hangs out in the kitchen. Fieldy is just back from work; Korn is spending time in a Los Angeles studio, working on new songs, and Fieldy is able to stay at home. Every other weekend, Fieldy's daughters from an earlier marriage, Olivia, 10, and Sarina, 11, stay with him.
It's a common Orange County life – Dad at work, a blended family, financial comfort. But, Fieldy says, it takes him some extra work to stay right with God, and keep all this goodness around him. The Bible, he says, has replaced his bong as a way to start each day.
"It's like my morning workout. Start the day with something good, something uplifting.
"I'm in the book of Samuel right now, and it's so crazy!" Fieldy says, the rocker seeing a bit of heavy metal in the old epic tales. "People don't realize how dark and gory it is, but the whole story behind it is love. It's a trip how twisted up it is."
He hopes his own book, which he named after one of Korn's biggest hits, will reach people who might not otherwise be open to hearing about faith.
"I'd really like to reach people who look like myself," Fieldy says as he poses for a photographer with Israel in his heavily inked arms. "You never know, but the majority of the people (who read it), I hope they take the route I took.
"Maybe this can be that little bit of a seed I can plant out there."

Lights will guide you home, and I will try to fix you....

(ht: TJ)

Song: Fix You
Artist: Coldplay
Film: Passion of the Christ

Gospel - Jesus Died for my Sins or Something else entirely?

Only we could confuse something so simple. Only we could read the story of Genesis and the Exodus and not understand the part that Jesus plays in that story. Only we could make it about us, rather than about God. Only we could downplay it, twist it, distort it, forget it, and otherwise negate it altogether - The Gospel.


Here goes: Jesus died as payment for our sins. Placing our faith and trust in Jesus and His act of substitutionary atonement alone makes us right with God. What actions may follow are exactly that: actions that follow. What additions we may choose to make to that simple equation are simply that: additions.


Any other way you'd like to confuse something that is so simple a child is supposed to understand it?


I'm sure there is. Too bad. The Gospel really isn't that hard to grasp. Or accept for that matter.



This will be the last of my posts on the topic of Beliefs and Practices. If you missed any, simply click on the link to the left that reads: Beliefs and Practices.

The Gospel Defined

It took awhile, but I finally got the response I was waiting for: someone wants me to define the Gospel in my own words. (Up to this point, I've been using a video link to Mark Driscoll delivering the Gospel in less than five minutes. I listen to Driscoll every week, and I've heard him consistently drop the Gospel into his sermons, often in less than two minutes.)

Here are their requests:

1. What exactly do you mean by "the Gospel"?

2. If the gospel in the narrower sense is your meaning, what good does it do to have that gospel preached to the believers each week in church?

3. You distinguish between content and cultural relevance, but this seems to me to be academic. If we don't communicate in relevant terms (as Jesus did via parables, and Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 9:22), then is that really preaching good news to people, or just empty words (to them, if not to us)?

I couldn't have posed these questions any better myself. These are excellent questions, so let's begin.

In my own words:

My answer to Question #1:

The Gospel is the story of man's fall, (Adam bringing sin into our relationship with God), God's Law - making clear to us what is and isn't sin, God's sacrificial plan for redeeming us from the penalty of having broken that Law (which we all have, countless times, over and over), and Jesus' place as our substitutional sacrifice in that plan of redemption.

In other words, Jesus died as a payment for the penalty of our sins, if we place our trust and belief in Jesus, repent from our sins, and commit our life to living for Him, we become God's children, inheriting all of the blessings that He promises to his obedient children, not the least of which would be eternal life and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, yes, I mean it in the narrower sense: I want to hear, however briefly, about Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection and it's implication on my own life. I realize that there are other aspects and implications included in Jesus' life, but I'd at least like to hear the bare minimum.


My answer to Question #2:

I would hope that a church service isn't "full of believers", because I'd like to think that those same believers would have invited some of their non-believing family, neighbors, co-workers, and friends along with them to the service. Also, Jesus spoke in Matthew 13:24-30 about the presence of non-believers among the believers as a given, something to be expected. Not to mention the fact that many believers simply need to hear the Gospel again and again, because they are just as forgetful as the Israelites of the Old Testament were, forgetting their first love, and why they became a Christ-follower in the first place.


My non-answer to Question #3:

Your third question is a tough one. Which is worse (or better, I suppose): the preacher who preaches in relevant language, but fails to mention the Gospel, or the preacher who nails the Gospel, but fails to do so in a culturally relevant format. First of all, I'd almost like to leave this question up for debate without actually weighing in on it. Second, having only attended each of these churches once, I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt to these preachers that they aren't as one-sided as they may seem at first glance.

Here is another appropriate question that someone recently asked me concerning this matter: Which would be easier? To teach the Gospel-driven preacher how to be culturally relevant; or teach the culturally relevant preacher to be Gospel-driven? I'm assuming that all of these preachers know the Gospel, what I'm questioning is the priority that they've given it or denied it in the place of a church worship service.

To all of you out there lurking, this is your chance to "weigh in", and answer these three questions....

The Gospel