Product Description

Reformation is the continual reforming of the mission of the church to enhance God’s command to reach out to others in a way that acknowledges the unique times and locations of daily life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9131 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From the Back Cover
Reformation is the continual reforming of the mission of the church to enhance God’s command to reach out to others in a way that acknowledges the unique times and locations of daily life. This engaging book blends the integrity of respected theoreticians with the witty and practical insights of a pastor. It calls for a movement of missionaries to seek the lost across the street as well as across the globe.

This basic primer on the interface between gospel and culture highlights the contrast between presentation evangelism and participation evangelism. It helps Christians navigate between the twin pitfalls of syncretism (being so culturally irrelevant that you lose your message) and sectarianism (being so culturally irrelevant that you lose your mission). Included are interviews with those who have crossed cultural barriers, such as a television producer, exotic dancer, tattoo studio owner, and band manager. The appendix represents eight portals into the future: population, family, health/medicine, creating, learning, sexuality, and religion.

Mark Driscoll was recently featured on the ABC special The Changing of Worship.

About the Author
Mark Driscoll is one of the 50 most influential pastors in America, and the founder of Mars Hill Church in Seattle (www.marshillchurch.org), the Paradox Theater, and the Acts 29 Network which has planted scores of churches. Mark is the author of The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out. He speaks extensively around the country, has lectured at a number of seminaries, and has had wide media exposure ranging from NPR’s All Things Considered to the 700 Club, and from Leadership journal to Mother Jones magazine. He’s a staff religion writer for the Seattle Times. Along with his wife and children, Mark lives in Seattle.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Radical ReformissionCopyright © 2004 by Mars Hill Church
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Driscoll, Mark, 1970– The radical reformission : reaching out without selling out / Mark Driscoll.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-310-25659-3 1. Evangelistic work—United States. 2. Christianity and culture—United States. I. Title. BV3793.D752004269'.2—dc22 2004010004
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design by Tracey Moran
Printed in the United States of America
0405060708/v DC/10987654321
@2TOC_TTL = contents
acknowledgments 9

introduction: 11
my personal reformission and the emerging reformission movement
part 1: loving your Lord through the gospel
1. eat, drink, and be a merry missionary: 27
imitating the reformission of Jesus
reformission interview with David Bruce: Hollywood Jesus
2. and now, the news: 45
shaping a reformission gospel
reformission interview with Ichabod Caine: Christians and country music
3. shotgun weddings to Jesus: 65
reformission evangelism
reformission interview with Stef Hjertager: from dancer to deacon
part 2: loving your neighbor in the culture
4. Elvis in Eden: 91
a reformission understanding of culture
reformission interview with Crash: what would Jesus tattoo?
5. going to seminary at the grocery store: 117
connecting with culture in reformission
reformission interview with Tim Ottley: rocking for the Lamb
6. the sin of light beer: 139
how syncretism and sectarianismundermine reformission
reformission interview with Mike Hale: Protestant pubs
7. postmodern pandemonium: 159
defeating the new demons
reformission interview with Jenny Schneider: glued to the tube
conclusion: 181
from demons to dreams: building a kingdom culture

postscript 191

appendix: 193
peering through portals into tomorrow

notes 201

@1CHAP_NUM = Chapter 1
eat, drink, and be a merry missionary
imitating the reformission of Jesus
Jesus. The first word of this book must be Jesus, because everything, reformission included, begins and ends with him. But the longer someone is a Christian, the greater their propensity to diminish the Jesus of the Bible until he becomes a predictable little God who ceases to surprise them. Therefore, it is imperative that all Christians continually search the Scriptures in order to see Jesus clearly. And as we read of Jesus’ involvement in culture, we see a free and radical God whose life is so shocking that it is self-evident that the story is true, because no one in their right mind could make it up. Therefore, to prepare you for reformission, I first want to remind you of the beautifully scandalous life and grace of Jesus Christ.
remembering:
what God’s story reveals
The story begins with God making all things, then creating a man named Adam. Though Adam is technically perfect, it is still not good for him to be alone. The Bible never tells us why, exactly. Perhaps he would have forgotten to pick up the trash around the Garden of Eden, and the place eventually would have looked like an eternal fraternity without a hint of an annual spring cleaning.
Whatever the case, God creates a perfect woman who is beautiful, sinless, and naked—the same kind of woman every guy ever since has been searching for. Adam meets her and, recognizing that his life has just taken a turn for the better, he sings her a song, after which their marriage is consummated. The Bible could end right there, after only two chapters, with the man and woman naked, eating fruit, and trying to fill the earth all by their happy, horny, holy selves.
But ever since the dreadful day of the Thud in Eden, we have all been walking around scratching our thick skulls, trying to figure out how to get back to that glorious time. Why? Because our happy, naked first parents sinned against God and brought a curse upon themselves and all of creation. They sinned because they believed the lies of a talking serpent who had been an angel until he got kicked out of heaven for his pride.
After they are exiled from Eden, our first parents have two boys, and before long, one boy kills the other. From there, carnage and death ensue, and people grow so wicked that God floods the earth, killing nearly everyone. But he starts over with another decent guy named Noah, who nevertheless ends up having a bad day, gets drunk, and passes out naked in his tent like some redneck on vacation.
As time rolls along, God also works through a cowardly old man named Abraham, who is happy to whore out his loving and beautiful antique of a wife to avoid conflict. God also chooses to work through a guy named Jacob, even though he’s a trickster and a con man. Later, God raises up a stuttering murderer named Moses to lead his people. Years later, a king named David comes onto the leadership stage, but he becomes an adulterer, a murderer, and an odd type pointing ahead to the promised Christ. David’s son Solomon redefines addiction, with more wine, women, and money than any guy could possibly know what to do with, though he gave it a good Hefneresque run. This brief list doesn’t even include the prophets, like Ezekiel, whom God tells to cook a meal over his own feces; Hosea, who marries a prostitute; Jeremiah, who cries like a newly crowned beauty queen all the time; or any of the freaks on cable television right now talking about Jee-zus along with their wives, who by God’s grace alone are not naked like their mother Eve.
And to top it all off, God comes to earth. He has a mom whom everyone thinks is a slut, a dad whom they think has the brilliance of a five-watt bulb for believing the “virgin birth” line, and brothers who likely pummel him frequently, because even God would have to get at least one wedgie from his brothers if he were to be fully human. The God-Man goes through puberty and likely goes through that weird vocal transition in which, in the course of one syllable, a young man can seamlessly go from sounding like Barry White to sounding like Cindy Brady. God comes hiding in human flesh and, according to Isaiah the prophet, he’s a regular-looking guy. In sum, nobody knows exactly who this guy is.
Doesn’t the story sound like the plot of a trashy, daytime television talk show? The God-Man is born to a teenage virgin in an animal stall, grows up with a blue-collar dad in a dumpy rural town, and has a weird cousin named John, who lives in the woods and survives on a steady diet of bugs, sugar, and repentance.
Somehow John becomes the leader of a religious movement with a small posse of guys you’d have to think probably looked like clones of the kid on the porch in the movie Deliverance. Then Jesus takes a few of John’s posse as his own. At this point in the story, God is thirty years of age and a classic underachiever with no wife, kids, stable career, or even much of a home.

Customer Reviews

Provides great insight
Driscoll really provides the reader with a good view of the Gospel and its effect on very different people

The Radical Reformission Is Radical!
This book is really helping our small groups rethink how we evangelize and speak to people. Its been a great tool and we are thoroughly enjoying it.

Wow
I really, really liked this book. So much so that I not only ordered my own copy, but I didn't give back the one I borrowed, I gave it to someone else to read first.

Radical reformission is about a transformation of the church. Mark shares his philosophy regarding the church, and what it means for a church to be missional. This book combines powerful teaching with storytelling, and the typical driscoll humor.

I love the story of how he started in ministry. Mark accepted Christ, and then immediately decided to start a bible study (the same week!). He summarizes it like this "It then dawned on me that I had been a Christian for only a few days, had never been in a Bible study, and did not really know anything in the Bible other than the fact that I sucked and that Jesus is God." Mark offered to let anyone ask any question, as long as they would give him a week to try to figure it out.

Mark is very transparent in this book, sharing both success and failures. After one very entertaining story about going to a gay cowboy bar (gotta read the book!) in which he was afraid to tell people he was a pastor, he said "I cared more about how I appeared to people than about whether I shared the passion of Jesus for those who are lost"

But the chapter on reformissional evangelism really hit home with me. I struggle with the idea that we expect people to jump through hoops to be part of the church, and Mark writes an incredible analogy on this point:

"In reformission evangelism, people are called to come and see the transformed lives of God's people before they are called to repent of sin and trust in God. Taking a cue from dating is helpful on this point. If we desire people to be happily married to Jesus as his loving bride, it makes sense to let them go out on a few dates with him instead of just putting a shotgun to their heads and asking them to hurry up, put on a white dress, and try to look happy for the photos."

Mark then explains "In our church in Seattle, as lost people become friends with Christians, they often get connected to various ministries (for example, helping to run concerts, helping to guide a rock-climbing expedition, taking a class on biblical marriage, helping to develop a website, joining a Bible study, serving the needy) and participate in them before they possess saving faith."

This is a key difference between the emerging church and the traditional church. Traditionally churches require people to be members before they do things, which requires that they are already Christians. The emerging church is about exposing people to a life in Christ and using that to draw them in.

Mark challenges readers to engage culture rather than withdraw from it, but is careful to caution that engaging culture does not include sinning (e.g. things like fornication and drunkenness are not engaging culture, they are sin).

In a chapter entitled "the sin of light beer" Mark talks about the dangers of syncretism and sectarianism, and specifically utilizes the Christian church's demonization of something God created for the joy of His people, alcohol, to make his point. I really love Mark's conclusion in this chapter:

"Here's what I'd like you to remember from this chapter: reformission is not about abstention; it is about redemption. We must throw ourselves into the culture so that all that God made good is taken back and used in a way that glorifies him. Our goal is not to avoid drinking, singing, working, playing, eating, love-making, and the like. Instead, our goal must be to redeem those things through the power of the gospel so that they are used rightly according to Scripture, bringing God glory and his people a satisfied joy."

The conclusion of the book is profound in its own very post-modern way. Rather than wrap everything up into a neat little conclusion, Mark concludes the book by sharing his hopes and dreams for the city of Seattle and the ministry of Mars Hill. In essence, Mark shares what he prays will be the end result of putting into practice the things that he has been writing about through this book. That the world would be transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long, long time.

Joel