Radical Reformission Quote #15

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

Reformission is ultimately about being like Jesus, through his empowering grace. One of the underlying keys to reformission is knowing that neither the freedom of Christ nor our freedom in Christ is intended to permit us to dance as close to sin as possible without crossing the line. But both are intended to permit us to dance as close to sinner as possible by crossing the lines that unnecessarily separate the people God has found from those he is still seeking. [...]

I am advocating not sin but freedom. That freedom is denied by many traditions and theological systems because they fear that some people will use their freedom to sin against Christ. But rules, regulations, and the pursuit of outward morality are ultimately incapable of preventing sin. They can only, at best, rearrange the flesh and get people to stop drinking, smoking, and having sex, only to start being proud of their morality. Jesus' love for us and our love for him are, frankly, the only tethers that will keep us from abusing our freedom, yet they will enable us to venture as far into the culture and into relationships with lost people as Jesus did, because we go with him.

Radical Reformission Quote #14

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

[Talking of Jesus's conversation with the woman at the well] Lest we overlook the magnitude of this moment, notice that this is the only place in John's gospel that Jesus declares that he is the promised Old Testament Messiah. And he reserved this great revelation not for the seminary professors or megachurch senior pastors but for the woman he had come to earth to spiritually court at a lonely well in the heat of the noontime sun. And Jesus revealed her sin, putting his finger on the dirtiest and most scarred portion of her soul, which smelled like death, hell, and sin. He cleaned it, healed it, forgave it, and replaced it with grace and the Holy Spirit, as only he can.

Born again, the woman decided to start her life over, which is the essence of repentance. She sprinted back to Sychar with good news to tell. She told anyone who would listen that she had been a sick and wicked woman governed by her loneliness and perversion but that things had changed once she met Jesus. We can only imagine the looks on people's faces, including the many men who likely had seen her unclothed but who had never seen her clothed in righteousness.

Radical Reformission Quote #13

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus. See the previous three quotes for background.

As I left the bar, God convicted me of my proud addiction to morality and my attempt to look like a decent guy so that others will like me. I was so insecure that I feared not only that my Christian friends would see me walking out of a gay bar with queer cowboys but also that the queer cowboys would reject me for being a Bible thumper who, deep down, believed they were running to hell in their cowboy boots. I cared more about how I appeared to people than about whether I shared the passion of Jesus for those who are lost.

That night, I learned that 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 not penetrate the heart and transform lives. In the end, I learned that God's mission is not to create a team of moral and decent people but rather to create a movement of holy loving missionaries who are comfortable and truthful around lost sinners and who, in this way, look more like Jesus than most of his pastors do.

Radical Reformission Quote #12

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

[Mark goes to a gay rodeo committee meeting upstairs from the bar. See the previous two quotes for background.] The meeting started with introductions, everyone giving their names and vocations. [...]

When it came to my turn, I tried to avoid the inevitable conflict and lied to them by saying I was a spiritual something-or-other, hoping the queer cowboys would smile, nod, and ignore me. But one of the cowboys asked what my religion was. So I came out of my closet and told him I was a Bible-thumping, old-school Christian preacher, causing some of the guys to laugh, thinking I was kidding. [...]

[After the meeting] One of the guys asked if I was actually a real pastor and began explaining how his lover and many of his friends had died of AIDS. Actually, he began discipling me, articulating with great pain the loneliness and death that filled his community and explaining why he feared death. [...] I sought to relate the gospel to his life: sin causes death, but Jesus is God who became a man and died -- when he was about the same age as this man -- in order to rise from death, forgive sin, and give eternal life to those who repent of sin and trust in him.

Radical Reformission Quote #11

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

My friend took me to the bar and introduced me to a number of his gay buddies, who were drinking -- of course -- light beer. Feeling like I was wearing someone else's underwear, I stood there and tried to be inconspicuous, praying that no one would recognize me. Then someone I had graduated from high school with approached me with a surprised look. She asked, "What are you doing here?" And I quickly blurted, "I'm married to a woman and here with a friend, but I'm not a gay guy, so please don't tell anyone I'm a queer." She laughed and we chatted for a few minutes until a song she obviously liked came on, and she then shuffled off to the dance floor with her girlfriend.

Then a guy introduced me to himself and hit on me. Stunned, I did not immediately respond but instead stared at the poor guy, trying to figure out why he looked so familiar, how he could mistake me for a gay guy, and if I was really good looking. It then hit me and I asked him, "Are you my mailman?" He replied, "Yes, I am a mailman." Suddenly, I wanted to kill myself and never get mail again.

Radical Reformission Quote #10

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

I got a phone call from an old college friend whom God had used to bring me to faith. [...]

Over lunch, he informed me that he had been a closet homosexual throughout college, had joined the military after graduation, and had recently been discharged for having sex with fellow soldiers. He was presently frequenting public bathrooms throughout the city and having anonymous sex with various men. He shared that he was wrestling through whether he believed that he was a sinner and whether he still believed in God. When I invited him to attend church with me, he declined, saying it was unfair for me to expect him to come into my Christian subculture since I was unwilling to go with him into his homosexual subculture.

And he was right. So, feeling convicted to be like Jesus, I told him I would be happy to go into his world if he would come into mine. Seeing an evil dervish grin emerge on his face, I knew I was in trouble. He invited me to a gay country and western bar he frequented.

Radical Reformission Quote #9

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

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 wood and survives on a steady diet of bugs, sugar, and repentance. [...]

The constipated religious leaders of his day accuse him of being a drunkard, a glutton, and a crooked guy who always hangs out with the wrong people: easy girls like Mary, crooked mafia types like Matthew, and the kids in high school who always wear black concert T-shirts, sport greasy male ponytails, and smoke cigarettes just off school property during lunch (Matt. 11:19).

Radical Reformission Quote #8

From chapter 1, eat drink and be a merry missionary: imitating the reformission of Jesus.

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.

Radical Reformission Quote #7

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement. (See the previous quote for context.)

[...] the parachurch, which includes evangelistic ministries such as Young Life and Campus Crusade for Christ. [...] The failure of such ministries is that they are often disconnected from the local church, connecting unchurched people to Jesus without connecting them to the rest of Jesus' people. This can lead to theological immaturity. [...]

This is classic liberal Christianity, and it exists largely in the dying mainline churches. [...] Their failure is that they bring to the culture a false gospel of accommodation, rather than confrontation, by seeking to bless people as they are rather than calling them to a repentant faith that transforms them. [...]

Though they know the gospel theologically, they rarely take it out of their church. This is classic fundamentalist Christianity, which flourishes most widely in more independent-minded Bible-believing churches. [...] Pastors at these churches are prone to speak about the needs of the church, focusing on building up its people and keeping them from sinning.

Radical Reformission Quote #6

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement.

Reformission is a radical call for Christians and Christian churches to recommit to living and speaking the gospel, and to do so regardless of the pressures to compromise the truth of the gospel or to conceal its power within the safety of the church. [...]

Reformission therefore begins with a simple return to Jesus, who by grace saves us and sends us into mission. Jesus has called us to (1) the gospel (loving our Lord), (2) the culture (loving our neighbor) and (3) the church (loving our brother). But one of the causes of our failure to fulfill our mission in the American church is that the various Christian traditions are faithful on only one or two of these counts.

Gospel + Culture - Church = Parachurch
Culture + Church - Gospel = Liberalism
Church + Gospel - Culture = Fundamentalism

Update

If you're just joining us, welcome! I'll be posting quotes from Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission this quarter. Feel free to do whatever you want with this blog.

I've decided to go back to the quarter system and post quotes from Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission on every day when Caltech has class this fall term. There were several reasons for this: I fell behind, the post office lost a shipment of most of my Christian books to me, and most of the blog's followers that I know of are still at Caltech. In any case, I have a new copy from Amazon, and plan to continue posting these quotes after all. Spread the word!

Radical Reformission Quote #5

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement. (Note: There are a lot of funny one-liners throughout the book that give the flavor to Mark's personality. I'll post a bunch like this some Fridays.)

• I wasn't much of a theologian at the time, but killing Jesus did seem like a bad move.
• To me, sins were terrible things that very bad people do, such as rape, murder, drug dealing, and what my construction-worker dad called being antiunion.
• I had a class in women's studies in which I learned that men are a plague ruining the world and that I needed to get in touch with my feminine side, which made about as much sense as telling a dog to get in touch with its feline side.
• To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats -- which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.

Radical Reformission Quote #4

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement.

Shortly thereafter, I found a good church that met my criteria. First, the pastor was a man who had been in the military and knew how to kill people in self-defense. Second, he taught the Bible verse by verse, so that I could learn to trust the Scriptures and love Jesus without feeling like we had a thinly veiled homosexual relationship. [...]

After graduation, Grace and I moved back to Seattle and began visiting churches. We finally settled into a large suburban church where I felt at home because it met my criteria. First, the pastor (who looked like Mr. T) had been an NFL linebacker and knew how to kill people in self-defense. Second, he taught me the Bible verse by verse in a real way, one that enabled me to have a relationship with Jesus that did not feel like he was my lifelong prom date.

Radical Reformission Quote #3

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement.

That week, I started teaching my first Bible study. At the time, The Simpsons on television was all the rage among drunken college guys. My dorm room had cable television, also known as evangelistic bait. So I gathered the guys from my dorm floor together and told them they could watch the show if they also attended my Bible study beforehand. Much to my surprise, about ten guys showed up.

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. So I told the guys they could ask me any question about the Bible and I would take the following week to research the answer, since I didn't have any answers yet. This was my first ministry, and it inspired me to begin buying commentaries, reference materials, theology texts, apologetics books, and the like, which were more interesting by far than most of my classes.

Radical Reformission Quote #2

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement.

In my first college philosophy class, I read Augustine, who said that sin naturally flows from our polluted hearts like sewage out of a culvert. He explained that the root of sin is pride and that the worst sins include things like false morality and autonomy from God. This was, I believe, God's extending to me the right foot of fellowship.

I then read the entire New Testament over the course of the next few weeks. God opened my eyes to the fact that I was a Pharisee and that the worst sinners are often the most moral and spiritual people who, like I was doing, pursue righteousness apart from Jesus.

Radical Reformission Quote #1

From the introduction: my personal reformission and the growing reformission movement.

Growing up, I thought that as long as I believed in a nebulous Sky Fairy named God and was a decent, moral person outperforming those below me on the ethical food chain, I would end my life hearing the old theme song to The Jeffersons television show and be "movin' on up" to heaven with all the other good guys. So I worked through high school and graduated Most Likely to Succeed and student body president. I was very proud to have never drunk alcohol, smoked a cigarette, tried a drug, or voted Republican. [...]

[In college] Without a car and majoring in boredom, I began reading a nice Bible my high school girlfriend had given me as a graduation present. She was a pastor's daughter who, in retrospect, should not have been dating me. Nonetheless, she has turned out to be an amazing wife who is the embodiment of her name, Grace. To this day, I preach each Sunday from the Bible she gave me, even on the Sundays when, as a good professional hypocrite, I tell the unmarried people never to date non-Christians.