http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/demythologizing-radical-christianity-2#more-19305
Now having at one point been "plugged in" to Mars Hill where one of Mark's first books was called Radical Reformission I admit I am burned out on the use of "radical" in Christian talk. I think I know what is hoped for, aspired to, and intended by the use of the term but I am no longer comfortable with the implicit judgment made on brands of Christian faith and practice that are not "radical". I have seen people who used to be at Mars Hill go another path that was not really less "radical" so much as less high profile. Some people went to the Episcopal church, others to Eastern Orthodoxy, others to Baptist churches, others to non-denominational congregations, still others (like me) to Presbyterianism.
What one former Mars Hill member shared with me once was that he and his wife were pretty content at their PCA church because the church did some things to help people in the community and he didn't get the impression that one of the main ways to serve in the church was chiefly to give money. Of course this is a simplified account of a single perspective from a former member but Mars Hill is nothing if not an embodiment of attempts to recover a "radical" and "real" Christian faith. The more church history and theology I studied the more I began to realize that as well-intentioned as a lot of stuff at Mars Hill has been they're essentially Reformed Baptist without the denominational label. You don't have to be a Calvinist to be a member of Mars Hill but you'd better be one if you plan on participating in any leadership role.
Unofficially, if you don't consider plugging into a ministry in some capacity that can be construed as a potential consumerism. Now I've already written elsewhere about how serving in ministry can, paradoxically, be a kind of consumerism. You can get sold out to participating in a movement you believe will change the Christian faith in a region. I know, I'm one of those people who bought into that in the early days of Mars Hill. The neo-Reformed evangelical world can imagine it has somehow recovered a sense of vocation but at least in my neck of the woods I am not sure that there is a realistic sense of how mundane that vocation will be in daily life.
A title like "Radical Reformission" is the sort of thing a guy in his twenties imagining God will use him to shake up American Christianity from its conformity and dead traditions would write. I was that kind of young man myself once only I didn't plant one of the fastest growing churches so perhaps I became disillusioned with my potential for changing the world for Jesus a little faster than I hope Mark has. Mars Hill is not going to revolutionize anything. I don't say that as condemnation, I say it because if they preserve what is best about the Christian faith then they can't revolutionize anything. The most they can (or should) aspire to is going to amount to merely reinventing the wheel. I think it is far more dangerous that we in the new Calvinist camp buy our own hype than we get criticized for anything by outsiders, whether believers who are not Calvinists, or not megachurch people, or even unbelievers.
When Mike Gunn said in a sermon he preached this year that looking back on his days with Mars Hill he realizes that they had a lot of good intentions but a lot of naivete and arrogance I'm inclined to say, "Amen!" In fact I'd venture to say that for those of us who were there we couldn't even BEGIN to fathom the level of our arrogance. I have a dim guess of it now and it is profoundly sobering for me! I have not gone the route of just bailing on everything connected to it. I am, after all, still at a Reformed church, but I came to realize over a decade that all the "distinctinctives" of Mars Hill were, in the grand scheme of church history, not only not special, but that we as a whole and I in particular were guilty of a massive case of believing our own hype about ourselves as a spiritual community. Even people who were there at one point who left and went to this, that, or the other still display aspects of that superiority complex.
Rather than damn them as being smug know-it-alls who think they're better than other people I have to recognize that there are various sinful forms of exceptionalism and I have been at least as guilty, if not more, of these things than other people. So when Mike Gunn talked about his arrogance and Mark's arrogance and Lief's arrogance I don't just say "Amen" because I entirely agree with him but also because I realize I have been part of the same weakness myself.
You might think that having spent about a decade connected to one of the fastest growing churches in America with one of the rock star pastors of the new Calvinism that I'd either be awestruck at being able to be part of something so special (I was) or entirely cynical about it all (sometimes I am). But what I am passionate about is that the account of Mars Hill is not a hagiography. I don't want to skate over the bad parts (which can be, honestly, pretty bad) or ignore good parts. Obviously if I had no problems whatever with Mars Hill I would still be there but I spent a third of my life there at one point so the place and the people will stick with me.
I have grown accustomed to the idea that immersive ambivalence is basically the way life is. I have not attempted, as so many people I know have, to decide firmly in one direction or another. I am skeptical about "radical" Christianity and about "legacy" for many reasons but the most important reason is that when times are good, be thankful to the Lord, and when times are bad consider, for the Lord has made one as well as the other so that a man may not know what comes after him.
Too many people who have advocated "radical" Christianity of any stripe, whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or other, have done so because they already have a vision in mind of where this "radical" Christian practice will lead. They know what "should" happen if a great revival of whatever it is they want to revive happens. The Second Great Awakening brought forth great passions about what christians ought to do and within a decade or two the American Civil War happened. Even though I consider the claim that wars have been fought in the name of religion to be deliberately ignorant in light of the real reasons wars get fought, for which religion is often the excuse (i.e. religion becomes the motive for claiming resources that could, were,and will be fought for on other grounds). Let us not deceive ourselves as to the worldly legacies for which we frequently endorse a "radical" and "real" Christianity.
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