PART ONE: MARK DRISCOLL’S ACCOUNTS OF
HIS CONVERSION PROCESS AND CALLING
A
sixteen minute podcast episode that is called “Questioning the Origin Myth” may
do too much and too little and this particular mini-episode has gnawed at my
thoughts since it was released. It
attempts to do too much by overtly questioning the alleged origin myths
surrounding the founding of Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll’s accounts of
his conversion to Christianity and his calling to ministry. Yet it simultaneously does too little in that
a podcast, let alone such a short podcast episode, cannot possibly cover the
sheer mass of written and preached material Mark Driscoll has published
recounting his conversion process, his calling to ministry, and founding of
Mars Hill Church stories. That there is
a core set of founding myths is easily established but Cosper didn’t really
successfully make a case that Driscoll or others significantly changed the
stories that became the founding myths of the former Mars Hill Church.
If
anything, a review of a variety of published materials, chiefly from Mark
Driscoll’s writings spanning from the early 1990s through to the present
suggests that Mark Driscoll’s overall set of origin stories has stayed robustly
on message. If there are cracks in some
proverbial façade they show up in what kind of man Mark Driscoll claimed he was
planning to be before he had his conversion process.
Notice
I keep referring to his “conversion process”. Cumulatively I do not think he
had what could be called an evangelical moment-of-crisis conversion experience,
nor do I think he really needed one but within the context of evangelicalism
and its literary and homiletic conventions Mark Driscoll probably thought and
maybe even more strongly felt that
he needed to have a narrative of some time with a robust contrast between the
before and after of his process of conversion to what he thinks of as
evangelical Christianity.
Rather
than assume, as could be done, that Mark Driscoll’s accounts of his conversion
and c calling experiences were changed, we should go through the accounts and
consider them as literary and homiletic works.
Driscoll has demonstrated that he has always been acutely sensitive to
questions of status and perception. He is also, if you appreciate this figure
of speech, always closing a sale. Generally Mark Driscoll has not published a
story about how he came to faith or felt called to plant a church without that
story explicitly serving as a self-authenticating witness of Mark Driscoll’s
self-perceived fitness for ministry.
Cosper
has some reason to wonder about the degree to which Driscoll changed key
elements in the story of conversion and calling that shaped the foundation
narratives associated with mars Hill. On
the other hand, that Mark Driscoll kept changing his accounts of conversion and
calling does not in itself suggest that Driscoll necessarily made drastic
changes. Mike Cosper was himself a
pastor, right? Don’t pastors tailor stories to fit into the over-arching point
of a sermon? This seems to be, pretty
clearly I believe, what Driscoll has habitually done with his biography. There are
reasons to wonder whether strategic changes or omissions occurred.
But
before we ask whether or not it seems that Mark Driscoll changed his story we
should never forget that because he’s
always pitching his idea of the gospel or making a homiletic point that the
given point will suggest possible reasons for the inclusion or omission of
biographical details. Too much of the journalism and social media commentary
and blogging I have seen that discusses Mark Driscoll rushes to assess whether
he’s really a Calvinist or a charismatic or how he fits into a taxonomy of
doctrinal or political categories rather than do the more laborious work of
trawling through the primary source statements Mark Driscoll has poured out on
the page and in sermons.
So
let’s start with the earliest published account of Mark Driscoll’s conversion
process that seems to be available, an op ed he wrote for The Daily Evergreen
when he was attending Washington State University.
