http://www.mbird.com/2012/02/batman-the-agony-of-loss-and-the-madess-of-desire-pt-4b/
Part 4b of "The Wounds of Discovery" just went up over at Mockingbird. This week's feature is the villain Jervis Tetch, aka the Mad Hatter. This is the segment where I'm able to demonstrate most clearly why I've titled the entire project of writing about Batman: the animated series as I have. I've left you, to wit, some clues as to which villains I'll be discussing in future installments.
As you can see I've been a restrained blogger this week. I've limited myself to breaking the news that I have had my first composition published and the publication of my latest essay on Batman: the animated series this week. This just seemed like a good week to post few posts and have them be about some happy events in my life as a composer and author. I hope you enjoy the latest essay and there are four more pieces to come in this series within a series about the DCAU.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Guitar Sonata in F minor published
http://www.periferiamusic.com/en/shop/detail/product/742-guitar-sonata-in-f-minor
My Guitar Sonata in F minor is now published. This is my first published composition. Don't let the tempo scare you. Think of it as a guideline. If you get in the zone of 152 beats per minute that's fine by me. If you can actually go faster than the ideal of 160 bpm don't go faster than 168 bpm. I wrote this piece 12 years ago and back then 160 beats per minute was easier for me than it is now.
My Guitar Sonata in F minor is now published. This is my first published composition. Don't let the tempo scare you. Think of it as a guideline. If you get in the zone of 152 beats per minute that's fine by me. If you can actually go faster than the ideal of 160 bpm don't go faster than 168 bpm. I wrote this piece 12 years ago and back then 160 beats per minute was easier for me than it is now.
"The Wounds of Discovery" is wrapped up
I just wrapped up the sixth and final part of "Wounds" today. I would suggest that if you haven't read "Heart of Ice, Heart of Wrath" at Mockingbird to look that up first. There is a complex double structure I've been using for "Wounds of Discovery" that depends at a small level on a reader remembering what I wrote about Mr. Freeze. The two levels of structure work as follows: I examine Batman villains on the spectrum of loss and desire and thread that through a particular aspect of brokenness that defines the motivation and/or gimmick of particular Batman villains. I'm not going to give away the villains but I WILL share with you this, that I run with a tryptich of the heart, mind, and body.
Unsettled Christianity by way Scotteriology: Gay angels are a sign of the Apocalypse
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/gay-angels-are-a-sign-of-the-apocalypse/
http://unsettledchristianity.com/2012/01/gay-angels-are-a-sign-of-the-apocalypse/
Don't watch the video clip from the Fantastic Four cartoon clip. Just don't. Do, however, read both blog posts.
http://unsettledchristianity.com/2012/01/gay-angels-are-a-sign-of-the-apocalypse/
Don't watch the video clip from the Fantastic Four cartoon clip. Just don't. Do, however, read both blog posts.
I dreamt of a X-Files/A-Team crossover show ...
I had a dream that I was watching part of a movie my brother rented because everyone was snowed in during the holidays and no one could go anywhere and I was at my brother's place. And for some reason the movie was this thing were Mulder and Scully from The X-Files were about to get killed by some black ops assasin , who had boasted he was so good a shot he could kill both of them with a single bullet, who was stopped by members of The A-Team. Not Liam Neeson, no, Peppard and the old school crew.
I mean, yeah, I was a kid during the Reagan years and I saw footage of the Berlin Wall coming down on TV but this dream personally has to go on my list as a weird mash-up dream. It's as weird as the mash-up dream I had where Mike Nelson and the bots did a treatment of what was going to be Star Trek movie using Next Generation characters. I still remember Tom Servo's line in my dream about Jonathan Frakes' character, "Watch me hold my shirt down so my chest looks big."
Sometimes a person just has weird dreams that reflect the pop culture they grew up with.
I mean, yeah, I was a kid during the Reagan years and I saw footage of the Berlin Wall coming down on TV but this dream personally has to go on my list as a weird mash-up dream. It's as weird as the mash-up dream I had where Mike Nelson and the bots did a treatment of what was going to be Star Trek movie using Next Generation characters. I still remember Tom Servo's line in my dream about Jonathan Frakes' character, "Watch me hold my shirt down so my chest looks big."
Sometimes a person just has weird dreams that reflect the pop culture they grew up with.
"The Wounds of Discovery" is coming along nicely
What I originally planned to be a mere three parts has grown into six parts, the sixth part to be done shortly. I feel pretty good about how it has been turning out. I think I may have outdone myself with this new segment. You really can't go wrong writing about the classic Batman villains and it's equally hard to go wrong writing about classic villains depicted by Batman: the animated series. Well, Hugo Strange could have been better and, let's face it, Bane was not really a classic Batman villain twenty years ago. But, with those vital historical caveats aside, BTAS gave us some of the most compelling versions of the Dark Knight's foes of the last two decades.
And, as Bat-fans know, when you have a hero defined by his villains as strongly as Batman is it's important how you develop them and what they are about. When you've done that there is then the challenge of making sure that after getting to the heart of the villains you don't forget the important stuff about the hero who stops them. It is this, more than any other set of considerations, that has made BTAS the classic television show it has become.
So now that "The Wounds of Discovery" has grown into six parts it feels more natural and effective. My hope is you'll enjoy it. If I've done my work well you can appreciate the ideas I'm working through even if you've never watched an episode of Batman: the animated series in your life. My hope, of course, is that if somehow this is the case you'll go and watch at least one or two episodes. If you come to these essays appreciating BTAS and the rest of the DCAU I hope you'll find it enjoyable and thought-provoking. This week Part 4b of "Wounds" should probably be going up and I begin to get into the heart of why I've called this series Batman: the Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire. I can't think of a better title for a series of essays about this wonderful show.
I do have other bits of news to share here this blog a bit later. I'll have links for new Mockingbird essays as they pop up and this year I'll have some news about musical stuff.
And, as Bat-fans know, when you have a hero defined by his villains as strongly as Batman is it's important how you develop them and what they are about. When you've done that there is then the challenge of making sure that after getting to the heart of the villains you don't forget the important stuff about the hero who stops them. It is this, more than any other set of considerations, that has made BTAS the classic television show it has become.
So now that "The Wounds of Discovery" has grown into six parts it feels more natural and effective. My hope is you'll enjoy it. If I've done my work well you can appreciate the ideas I'm working through even if you've never watched an episode of Batman: the animated series in your life. My hope, of course, is that if somehow this is the case you'll go and watch at least one or two episodes. If you come to these essays appreciating BTAS and the rest of the DCAU I hope you'll find it enjoyable and thought-provoking. This week Part 4b of "Wounds" should probably be going up and I begin to get into the heart of why I've called this series Batman: the Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire. I can't think of a better title for a series of essays about this wonderful show.
I do have other bits of news to share here this blog a bit later. I'll have links for new Mockingbird essays as they pop up and this year I'll have some news about musical stuff.
HT Kinnon: comment from Scot McKnight on NeoCalvinism and NeoPuritanism and ...
http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/the-mark-driscoll-fiasco-what-the-latest-flap-teaches-us-about-the-neo-reformed-movement/comment-page-1/#comment-373700
2. On Driscoll representing the NeoPuritan group. We probably need to distinguish the movement/group from its leaders, and see the ordinary participants — say, in TGC or T4G — as diverse and more pastorally and local church in orientation. Driscoll represents the theology of its leaders but his brash and crude edges clash dramatically with the sanity, care, caution and focus of the Puritans. So, to me, he is an outlier who, because of his charisma and strength of influence, can’t be ignored by the NeoPuritan leaders but who surely vexes them with his over-the-top sexual angst and desire to talk in crude and strong ways about it.
Yeah, Mark Driscoll is not the kind of guy who would have ever come up with a book like Puritan Richard Sibbes' The Bruised Reed. In fact if anything Driscoll's anti-typological anti-allegorical take on Song of Songs just suggests that he's only Reformed or an admirer of Puritans to the extent that if he name-drops them often enough (and shares that old saw about Puritans setting up church discipline on a guy who didn't want to have sex with his wife as much she wanted sex (and by now we know why he'd find that story compelling thanks to confessions in Real Marriage)) people will think he's in the same team. After about ten years of this it's going to be tougher to insist against all evidence that he's a Puritan or Reformed so much as a Baptist TULIP. But if this is seen for what it is then suddenly Mars Hill will come off not like an up and coming church that isn't an institution, it will come off more like Calvinist Baptists 52.5
Maybe someday there will be an article about the guy that resembles the article I read in Slate years ago about Howard Stern, "The Shock Jock in Winter". For now it's becoming more evident that Mark Driscoll is no longer young, will probably always be restless, and is not even especially Reformed.
2. On Driscoll representing the NeoPuritan group. We probably need to distinguish the movement/group from its leaders, and see the ordinary participants — say, in TGC or T4G — as diverse and more pastorally and local church in orientation. Driscoll represents the theology of its leaders but his brash and crude edges clash dramatically with the sanity, care, caution and focus of the Puritans. So, to me, he is an outlier who, because of his charisma and strength of influence, can’t be ignored by the NeoPuritan leaders but who surely vexes them with his over-the-top sexual angst and desire to talk in crude and strong ways about it.
Yeah, Mark Driscoll is not the kind of guy who would have ever come up with a book like Puritan Richard Sibbes' The Bruised Reed. In fact if anything Driscoll's anti-typological anti-allegorical take on Song of Songs just suggests that he's only Reformed or an admirer of Puritans to the extent that if he name-drops them often enough (and shares that old saw about Puritans setting up church discipline on a guy who didn't want to have sex with his wife as much she wanted sex (and by now we know why he'd find that story compelling thanks to confessions in Real Marriage)) people will think he's in the same team. After about ten years of this it's going to be tougher to insist against all evidence that he's a Puritan or Reformed so much as a Baptist TULIP. But if this is seen for what it is then suddenly Mars Hill will come off not like an up and coming church that isn't an institution, it will come off more like Calvinist Baptists 52.5
Maybe someday there will be an article about the guy that resembles the article I read in Slate years ago about Howard Stern, "The Shock Jock in Winter". For now it's becoming more evident that Mark Driscoll is no longer young, will probably always be restless, and is not even especially Reformed.
reblog: "I see things", cessationists, prophets, and recovered memories
I spent months researching different ways of understanding Deuteronomy as a foundational text for guiding a discussion of cessationism/continuationism on the subject of Driscoll's 2008 claim to "I see things". The more I began to study the matter the more I began to realize the charismatic/cessationist debates ultimately has nothing to do with gifts the apostle Paul did not bother to define. Paul cared more to have love be the guide through which gifts not only operated but emerged. Notice that Paul spent a a good bit of space talking about spiritual fruit and bracketed spiritual gifts as a manifestation of spiritual activity.
More to the point, the cessationist/charismatic debates in the last century are not really about what Paul seemed to be talking about but about the foundation for institutional authority in contemporary ecclesiology. Do we build a church as an institution upon a confessional tradition or out of the power of a charismatic personality? It is entirely possible for even a person who is formally a cessationist to essentially be a charismatic personality whose sayings and writings and activity completely shape the church.
Thus, paradoxically, a pastor who is formally a cessationist in doctrine can still lead and organize his church around the force of his personality and his partisans in a way that demonstrates that the foundation of his church is, in a beautifully ironic way, charismatic. In case Christians forgot this obvious point, "charismatic" does not always default to a theological position regarding pneumatology!
But that's enough for now. I'm still just re-linking to some writing and thinking I did last year, after all. And here you go:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21320258&postID=6333630757729422683
More to the point, the cessationist/charismatic debates in the last century are not really about what Paul seemed to be talking about but about the foundation for institutional authority in contemporary ecclesiology. Do we build a church as an institution upon a confessional tradition or out of the power of a charismatic personality? It is entirely possible for even a person who is formally a cessationist to essentially be a charismatic personality whose sayings and writings and activity completely shape the church.
Thus, paradoxically, a pastor who is formally a cessationist in doctrine can still lead and organize his church around the force of his personality and his partisans in a way that demonstrates that the foundation of his church is, in a beautifully ironic way, charismatic. In case Christians forgot this obvious point, "charismatic" does not always default to a theological position regarding pneumatology!
But that's enough for now. I'm still just re-linking to some writing and thinking I did last year, after all. And here you go:
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21320258&postID=6333630757729422683
Monday, January 30, 2012
Because it's worth posting again, from The Book of Common Prayer
Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices; Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
SotteVoce at a comment on Internet Monk discusses MH community groups.
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/thoughts-on-church-discipline-and-relational-wisdom#comments
Check out comment from SotteVoce January 27, 2012 at 3:36pm
Here is the excerpt that has stuck with me:
I think the problem that we see here is that the church, in taking over the formation of small groups, is trying to force community and intimacy among its people, which is impossible. Intimacy and trust simply cannot be coerced. I would not say that deep “confessions” were actively sought out by the groups that I have attended, but there is a kind of unspoken pressure in that environment to unburden yourself of anything and everything, because sharing secrets can foster intimacy in the right environment (not to mention it gets you attention). Unfortunately, in the wrong environment, it can lead to power trips, emotional blackmailing, and escalated incidents ... .
... it’s pretty easy to convince young people looking for something “authentic” and “real” that they need to be honest to the point of oversharing in order to have real spiritual fellowship. (I believe it is a natural outgrowth of the blatant emotional manipulation that is frequently employed in youth groups to get young people to open up and act spiritual.) “We’re your friends and your mentors, you should let us help you.” Except that in these situations, your “friendship” was systematically manufactured for you by a bureaucracy and all but forced upon you instead of developing through shared experience and fellowship.
There have been some awkward confessions I have heard in Mars Hill community groups, which I will not repeat. Sad and troubling confessions, confessions where people went out on a huge limb and shared things that were very real, very full of hurt, and very risky to share. Unfortunately these were done in settings where absolutely no one had the competence to speak into those situations.
One of the things a friend and I discussed about Mars Hill community group--no, various friends and i have discussed this--is that you can't manufacture intimacy and affection. In my time at Mars Hill there was basically only one community group where I simultaneously felt welcome and liked. I was in some groups where I didn't feel welcome and was not liked. I have been in some groups where I was liked be a few folks but didn't quite feel welcome.
I was in some settings where I felt welcome and liked and yet there was this weird, inexplicably awkward pall over everything. It was as though just when people were becoming truly at ease and getting to know each other the group leader would steer everything toward yakking about the Driscoll sermon. Or a group leader might share this and that about community and friendship and the air in a room would just die when someone admitted they not only voted for Obama but liked his policies. Then someone would mutter something about socialism. I didn't vote for Obama, mind you, but I don't have to spell this out, do I?
I've been in settings where someone shared a testimony that touched me a great deal. I realize, looking back, that the person shared a testimony a few weeks after in a group discussion a few folks at the group talked about how family can help you get through rough times and be there for you. I said something that nearly killed the mood of the room and said, "That's true, but family can do more to destroy and discourage you than anyone else, too." Everyone except one person looked awkward. That other person looked me in the eye as if to say, "You and I are the only two people in this room who know what that means." Later that person shared a testimony.
If my saying that thing that made the room feel awkward made that ONE person feel safe sharing a hard testimony then I believe that was the right and honorable thing to do. Fortunately in the setting this did not fall into dead air because there was real friendship and community. But it was part of another group in which we had all grown to love each other. I can't really describe that kind of connection except to say that though most of us see each other at most one or two times a year there is a strong affection and bond as though the months or even years had not really changed anything.
Now obviously that is the kind of friendship and mutual affection a church WANTS a community gruop to develop but in many cases a community group falls short of successfully manufacturing the semblance of that. In a setting like Mars Hill I think the most common cause for the failure to attain this affection is simple--too many people want the group to be where things get heavy, deep and real. There's no eagerness to kill an entire evening on things that are light, shallow and fun. I felt connected to people talking about the Bible or about sermon talking points, yes. But I also felt stronger connections watching Scrubs episodes or discussing Gene Kelly movies with the women in a CG while some of the guys either pretended they didn't know what was going on or really didn't know what was going on. I liked these people enough that I put up with Family Guy. Now if you know me and know how much I hate Family Guy that can tell you how much I like these people!
You can't manufacture that no matter how many coaches you set up or groups you put together. It happens or it doesn't. Part of how it happens is that people who work together have often learned how to play together. Think of it this way, in our society people date, do tons of fun things together and as that moves along they begin to work together, build lives together, get married. Think about how children play and learn to exercise their minds and relational tools to grow into becoming functioning, working adults. There is a life cycle to a friendship and to a fellowship. In many cases it has seemed that a community group has been erected so as to jump straight into adulthood when there has been no childhood period of play. The child, if you will, can be put into a cotton mill to work the machines for production.
I look back with some sadness realizing that some of the most heartbreaking stories shared in community groups were ones where people badly needed to be able to share what had been done to them and I and the rest of the group were completely inadequate to say anything. I didn't feel I could speak up because if I shared something it would be the wrong thing or the wrong kind of encouragement. I also felt that if I shared something about why my heart went out to someone it would compromise the trust of someone else whose trust I did not want to compromise. In other cases I just realized I could not understand where that person was coming from so I said nothing and just prayed.
There's a difference between sharing something very hard to share because you've had enough fun with friends you can share the serious stuff and sharing something very hard because you've heard the talk about how "things are real here" or "things won't leave this group" and feeling a need to share because you've been primed to believe that confessing the heavy, deep and real stuff is okay because everyone says they want to do that. They don't usually do it, though, at least in my experience. When they do the blank expressions and awkward looks leave a person feeling as though it was better to have not said anything.
The sad thing is that should you happen upon a small group where real affection and trust has developed and you end up in other groups you begin to realize how far short other groups fall. They're not falling short because other people aren't obtaining friendship and intimacy necessarily it could be because you are like a child who has to learn how to play before you can go to work. Of course, sometimes it's that the group trying so hard to be heavy, deep and real doesn't realize that because they aren't taking time to be light, shallow and fun they end up just being awkward, perfunctory and fake. Awkward and heavy are not the same and fake isn't just about not being honest it's about the moment where honesty is met with an emotional vacuum that reveals that these people weren't really ready to grasp what you shared from your heart.
Not that I'm necessarily against community groups. I could try to say something pious and trite about being the change you want to be or being that kind of person but the race is not always to the swift, nor victory to the strong, nor wealth to the wise but time and chance happen to them all. To the extent that Christians try to manufacture intimacy and fellowship in a way where it won't matter who is in the group it will be the degree to which it shows.
Check out comment from SotteVoce January 27, 2012 at 3:36pm
Here is the excerpt that has stuck with me:
I think the problem that we see here is that the church, in taking over the formation of small groups, is trying to force community and intimacy among its people, which is impossible. Intimacy and trust simply cannot be coerced. I would not say that deep “confessions” were actively sought out by the groups that I have attended, but there is a kind of unspoken pressure in that environment to unburden yourself of anything and everything, because sharing secrets can foster intimacy in the right environment (not to mention it gets you attention). Unfortunately, in the wrong environment, it can lead to power trips, emotional blackmailing, and escalated incidents ... .
... it’s pretty easy to convince young people looking for something “authentic” and “real” that they need to be honest to the point of oversharing in order to have real spiritual fellowship. (I believe it is a natural outgrowth of the blatant emotional manipulation that is frequently employed in youth groups to get young people to open up and act spiritual.) “We’re your friends and your mentors, you should let us help you.” Except that in these situations, your “friendship” was systematically manufactured for you by a bureaucracy and all but forced upon you instead of developing through shared experience and fellowship.
There have been some awkward confessions I have heard in Mars Hill community groups, which I will not repeat. Sad and troubling confessions, confessions where people went out on a huge limb and shared things that were very real, very full of hurt, and very risky to share. Unfortunately these were done in settings where absolutely no one had the competence to speak into those situations.
One of the things a friend and I discussed about Mars Hill community group--no, various friends and i have discussed this--is that you can't manufacture intimacy and affection. In my time at Mars Hill there was basically only one community group where I simultaneously felt welcome and liked. I was in some groups where I didn't feel welcome and was not liked. I have been in some groups where I was liked be a few folks but didn't quite feel welcome.
I was in some settings where I felt welcome and liked and yet there was this weird, inexplicably awkward pall over everything. It was as though just when people were becoming truly at ease and getting to know each other the group leader would steer everything toward yakking about the Driscoll sermon. Or a group leader might share this and that about community and friendship and the air in a room would just die when someone admitted they not only voted for Obama but liked his policies. Then someone would mutter something about socialism. I didn't vote for Obama, mind you, but I don't have to spell this out, do I?
I've been in settings where someone shared a testimony that touched me a great deal. I realize, looking back, that the person shared a testimony a few weeks after in a group discussion a few folks at the group talked about how family can help you get through rough times and be there for you. I said something that nearly killed the mood of the room and said, "That's true, but family can do more to destroy and discourage you than anyone else, too." Everyone except one person looked awkward. That other person looked me in the eye as if to say, "You and I are the only two people in this room who know what that means." Later that person shared a testimony.
If my saying that thing that made the room feel awkward made that ONE person feel safe sharing a hard testimony then I believe that was the right and honorable thing to do. Fortunately in the setting this did not fall into dead air because there was real friendship and community. But it was part of another group in which we had all grown to love each other. I can't really describe that kind of connection except to say that though most of us see each other at most one or two times a year there is a strong affection and bond as though the months or even years had not really changed anything.
Now obviously that is the kind of friendship and mutual affection a church WANTS a community gruop to develop but in many cases a community group falls short of successfully manufacturing the semblance of that. In a setting like Mars Hill I think the most common cause for the failure to attain this affection is simple--too many people want the group to be where things get heavy, deep and real. There's no eagerness to kill an entire evening on things that are light, shallow and fun. I felt connected to people talking about the Bible or about sermon talking points, yes. But I also felt stronger connections watching Scrubs episodes or discussing Gene Kelly movies with the women in a CG while some of the guys either pretended they didn't know what was going on or really didn't know what was going on. I liked these people enough that I put up with Family Guy. Now if you know me and know how much I hate Family Guy that can tell you how much I like these people!
You can't manufacture that no matter how many coaches you set up or groups you put together. It happens or it doesn't. Part of how it happens is that people who work together have often learned how to play together. Think of it this way, in our society people date, do tons of fun things together and as that moves along they begin to work together, build lives together, get married. Think about how children play and learn to exercise their minds and relational tools to grow into becoming functioning, working adults. There is a life cycle to a friendship and to a fellowship. In many cases it has seemed that a community group has been erected so as to jump straight into adulthood when there has been no childhood period of play. The child, if you will, can be put into a cotton mill to work the machines for production.
I look back with some sadness realizing that some of the most heartbreaking stories shared in community groups were ones where people badly needed to be able to share what had been done to them and I and the rest of the group were completely inadequate to say anything. I didn't feel I could speak up because if I shared something it would be the wrong thing or the wrong kind of encouragement. I also felt that if I shared something about why my heart went out to someone it would compromise the trust of someone else whose trust I did not want to compromise. In other cases I just realized I could not understand where that person was coming from so I said nothing and just prayed.
There's a difference between sharing something very hard to share because you've had enough fun with friends you can share the serious stuff and sharing something very hard because you've heard the talk about how "things are real here" or "things won't leave this group" and feeling a need to share because you've been primed to believe that confessing the heavy, deep and real stuff is okay because everyone says they want to do that. They don't usually do it, though, at least in my experience. When they do the blank expressions and awkward looks leave a person feeling as though it was better to have not said anything.
The sad thing is that should you happen upon a small group where real affection and trust has developed and you end up in other groups you begin to realize how far short other groups fall. They're not falling short because other people aren't obtaining friendship and intimacy necessarily it could be because you are like a child who has to learn how to play before you can go to work. Of course, sometimes it's that the group trying so hard to be heavy, deep and real doesn't realize that because they aren't taking time to be light, shallow and fun they end up just being awkward, perfunctory and fake. Awkward and heavy are not the same and fake isn't just about not being honest it's about the moment where honesty is met with an emotional vacuum that reveals that these people weren't really ready to grasp what you shared from your heart.
Not that I'm necessarily against community groups. I could try to say something pious and trite about being the change you want to be or being that kind of person but the race is not always to the swift, nor victory to the strong, nor wealth to the wise but time and chance happen to them all. To the extent that Christians try to manufacture intimacy and fellowship in a way where it won't matter who is in the group it will be the degree to which it shows.
HT Phoenix Preacher: Mark Driscoll & Church Discipline
http://phillyflash.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/mark-driscoll-and-church-discipline-is-it-biblical-or-abusive/
Normally I have no keen interest in podcasts and don't listen to podcasts. I make exceptions however, such as for this podcast. I hadn't planned on blogging about this (as I blogged earlier) but I have been following enough other blogging on the subject and reading enough comments that I do feel somebody should say the stuff I'm about to say. I'm going to discuss what concerns about Mars Hill discipline "should" be getting discussed in light of Andrew's story. I am also going to discuss why I have not blogged about some of this stuff and why I have not made comments of the sort other people have. There are folks who have commented here in the past whose comments display an approach I avoid for reasons I'm going to explain at some length.
As I blogged at some length at various points here, Mark Driscoll's Christian porn take on Song of Songs will be the sort of thing to help unmarried Christians become aware of techniques, positions, and ideas they will have not have heard of before. Driscoll's defense of "If I don't talk about it all your kids are gonna learn about it from porno anyway" is not a particularly viable defense. It certainly didn't make sense ten years ago when he said it in a sermon you probably won't even be able to find; it makes less sense now if Mars Hill is as gung-ho on home-schooling and web-filtering as I imagine they might be. It will mean that a generation of Martian kids are more likely to find out about anal sex being possible from a Driscoll book or a sermon than from official porn. Note I used the word "official" there.
I agree with the sentiment that if a guy like Mark Driscoll spent months extolling the wonders of wifely stripteases and holy blowjobs as the literal and only viable reading of Song of Songs; and then is incensed that impressionable and horny 20 somethings end up trying these things out because they lack self control; that a man like that is either a complete idiot or is not being honest about inevitable implications his teaching will have in a church that has reached into ten thousands.
When marriage is touted as the proof of true adulthood by a man who is capable of putting singles in a double bind by saying they're idolizing marriage if they feel lonely without someone and yet that they're idolizing independence if they don't to marry because they have other things to do this is the kind of blatant double bind that, should people end up having sex, is not a huge shocker. As I've blogged various times here, in Martian martial theology the only person who isn't in this double bind forever is whomever happens to already BE married. The rest can often end up being what my blogging friend Mara Reid has called the "sucks to be you" gender gospel.
I'm following the stuff related to Andrew and have not done much to blog about that. I have, however, made some comments here and there. The controversy surrounding Andrew's discipline contract is an occasion for people outside Mars Hill to ask whether or not, if the things Andrew shared are true, that discipline at the Ballard campus has not at some point been tainted by any one or all four of the following miscarriages of discipline in Andrew's case:
1) nepotism
Andrew was engaged to a pastor's daughter. When he admitted to cheating on her I don't see how nepotism wouldn't kick in. In fact if Andrew had not been engaged to a pastor's daughter it's hard to know that any of this would have gone down the way it did.
2) conflict of interest
Andrew was disciplined by campus pastors who would be in a conflict of interest if the pastor whose daughter Andrew was engaged to and had cheated on had any say in the disciplinary proceedings
3) double standard
Any word in the shunning document about the pastor's daughter? The public notice about Andrew scrupulously avoided mention that "a member" with whom Andrew was involved in "unrepentent sexual sin" was a pastor's daughter
4) simple retaliation
I don't think I have to explain this one.
These are all risks that anyone who read what Andrew shared with Matthew Paul Turner would legitimately be concerned about given what Andrew related about the disciplinary proceedings he was told he had to be part of.
Seeing as spouse and offspring information about campus pastors has been pretty well scrubbed off of Mars Hill websites when folks used to trumpet that information in prominent campus pastor profiles it does at least suggest the possibility that Mars Hill leaders somewhere have put together that members of the press or bloggers could put these things together and wonder if Andrew ended up being railroaded despite having done everything right by confessing his sins.
Newsflash to some folks, not saying you did something is not the same as deliberately lying about it. A dad angry about his daughter being betrayed by a fiance with whom his daughter was sexually involved is going to make that dad apt to assume the worst if he wasn't aware of what was going on--this could be the case if the fiance admitted to sexual activity the pastor's daughter never mentioned. IF that's what happened (and I'm not saying this is what actually went down) it wouldn't even be the first time a dad at Mars Hill retroactively made every effort to slam an emergency brake on a relationship his daughter was in with a man where he hadn't pieced everything together yet. This is my way of saying that the odds of a pastor avoiding a conflict of interest, the temptation to retaliate, or to exercise a nepotistic double standard in church discipline in the kind of case Andrew describes is not possible unless the dad in question defers to others. Andrew not saying earlier he was sexually active with a pastor's daughter during his engagement to her is not necessarily active deceit and even if it was that would only be possible to sustain if the daughter went along.
I've already written at some length about what I observed at Mars Hill that led me to believe disciplinary procedures were, let me put this discreetly, ad hoc and frequently done without any regard to the significance of procedural precedent. Don't shun the unrepentant adulteress who pulls the "I've never been a Christian card" do shun the fired pastor who objected to the by-laws.
Now I know people in the past have come here and shared (almost always anonymously) conspiracy theories and the "true" explanations about what happened to this or that person. Well, I have not been a fan of those. Anyone can post an anonymous comment. My educational background is in journalism. You'll notice that even though I have a pen name (because it sounds cool to me) I have made no secret of who I actually am here. Back in the unmoderated Midrash I was the only person who used my actual name. Full actual name, not a shorthand like PastorMark. I may say stupid stuff but I am willing to admit I said stupid stuff on record.
Something that happened in 2007 after the firing controversy was that somebody leaked stuff to the press. That somebody created a press release. A whole bunch of Martians assumed that somebody ELSE had to be responsible. That somebody was (and is) a friend of mine. The reason I take the tone and approach I do to blogging about Mars Hill is I was trained to approach things as a journalist. I was taught that there are times when the real story is not what everybody is writing about but what nobody is writing about. I was also told that you should not assume that anonymous sources or people who only want to speak off the record can be trusted.
If the story is real, if the story is legit, and if the story needs to be told do not take shortcuts by way of anonymous tippers who in all likelihood have their own agendas. Be willing to slog through obscenely large amounts of publicly accessible information to put the story together. Use an anonymous source as an absolute last resort and only if you are sure that the story of the anonymous source fits information you are able to obtain through other means.
A little backtrack into the history of the press and the Nixon administration. For decades the press had a self-congratulatory love affair with itself for having taken down the Nixon administration. That's not exactly what happened. Disgruntled people within the Nixon administration took down the Nixon administration and made use of the press to do so. There was a synergy at work. The Nixon administration fell apart through the momentum of its own graft. In fact people who suggest that there are Watergate like elements to this situation are right. Someone inside Mars Hill cared enough about Andrew to keep him in the loop. Andrew THEN went to Matthew Paul Turner. All the same, that things have been off can be observed through just about any rant Driscoll makes.
If Mars Hill is on a course for disaster we don't have to keep looking for the secret or "real" story built off of people who won't speak on record. The story of the things going wrong in Mars Hill theology or procedure is, in its way, staring us all in the face and within publicly accessible documents and statements. "I break their nose" for instance. "If I weren't going to end up on CNN" for instance. We can see it even in the curious case of shredding William Young while urging us to wait and see with Jakes.
That the case of Andrew was leaked does not surprise me any more than that the firings of Paul and Bent were leaked. However, as a blogger I am not the kind of person who will just blog out everything I have learned. I've seen first hand how a friend's life became more unhappy than it already was because Mars Hill members assumed the worst about him and would not listen to me when I pleaded with them (and non-members) to NOT view my friend this way.
In other words I've seen people act like complete assholes in anger and outrage about Mars Hill and not realize that how they reacted was perpetuating wrong-doing against people already harmed by disciplinary processes at Mars Hill. This is not abstract for me, one of my friends got screwed over not just by a disciplinary procedure at Mars Hill but even by the blowback that came from people assuming he had to have leaked things to the press when he didn't. Your words, both their content and their tone, will have consequences in the lives of people you probably aren't thinking about.
If some people think I have been overly cautious it may be because I really am overly cautious, but I take my approach because I have seen just a few too many people hurt by amateurs who don't understand the significance of what it means to violate the privacy of already hurt people by going to the press. Let me put it as scandalously as possible so that this can be more clearly articulated--if a person has been raped how much good do you think it may do the victim to go out and announce the person has been raped to the press if we're in a cultural context in which victims get blamed?
There's a lot I haven't blogged and probably never will blog because I know what "on the record" means. Now if you're someone who wants to blog or comment about something to do with Mars Hill and disciplinary abuse and you use a pseudonym, okay. I honestly do get that. But if you want to claim to have inside knowledge while simultaneously refusing to go on record or say anything concrete you're a coward. Period. There's no qualifying that. I'm not saying there's no legitimate reason to be afraid for your reputation, mind you.
If you're only willing to take the posture of someone who knows the real deal but won't use your real name or go on record as you insist people believe your anonymous comments on blogs, well, I've already seen my friends' privacy violated by assholes like you. You'll have to do better than that. Bent Meyer has just shown you what "better than that" looks like over at The Wartburg Watch if you need an example.
You don't know, watchblogger or anonymous commenter, whether or not your desire to vent your anger won't inadvertantly hurt the cause and life of someone who has already been hurt by this institution. Using already hurt people as props to win your crusade can still be secondary abuse. Don't be so quick to vent your spleen that you inadvertantly sacrifice those people on the altar of your crusade. I've already seen this done to one of my friends and I don't want to see it happen again.
And this is why, crazy as this may sound, Andrew's case is encouraging to me. Someone who is a MH member cared enough to share with Andrew that he was being declared an unrepentent sinner by a campus machine. Andrew then had the freedom to break his story to Matthew Paul Turner. Someone cared enough about Andrew to have more real regard for his privacy than an entire campus system. Now people can understandably believe that a church willing to treat Andrew that way may "deserve" to have something leaked (amen) but it should be (and was) Andrew's decision to share the story. Compared to what went down in 2007 this is still terrible but in one crucial respect it's a step up and a step in a better direction.
Normally I have no keen interest in podcasts and don't listen to podcasts. I make exceptions however, such as for this podcast. I hadn't planned on blogging about this (as I blogged earlier) but I have been following enough other blogging on the subject and reading enough comments that I do feel somebody should say the stuff I'm about to say. I'm going to discuss what concerns about Mars Hill discipline "should" be getting discussed in light of Andrew's story. I am also going to discuss why I have not blogged about some of this stuff and why I have not made comments of the sort other people have. There are folks who have commented here in the past whose comments display an approach I avoid for reasons I'm going to explain at some length.
As I blogged at some length at various points here, Mark Driscoll's Christian porn take on Song of Songs will be the sort of thing to help unmarried Christians become aware of techniques, positions, and ideas they will have not have heard of before. Driscoll's defense of "If I don't talk about it all your kids are gonna learn about it from porno anyway" is not a particularly viable defense. It certainly didn't make sense ten years ago when he said it in a sermon you probably won't even be able to find; it makes less sense now if Mars Hill is as gung-ho on home-schooling and web-filtering as I imagine they might be. It will mean that a generation of Martian kids are more likely to find out about anal sex being possible from a Driscoll book or a sermon than from official porn. Note I used the word "official" there.
I agree with the sentiment that if a guy like Mark Driscoll spent months extolling the wonders of wifely stripteases and holy blowjobs as the literal and only viable reading of Song of Songs; and then is incensed that impressionable and horny 20 somethings end up trying these things out because they lack self control; that a man like that is either a complete idiot or is not being honest about inevitable implications his teaching will have in a church that has reached into ten thousands.
When marriage is touted as the proof of true adulthood by a man who is capable of putting singles in a double bind by saying they're idolizing marriage if they feel lonely without someone and yet that they're idolizing independence if they don't to marry because they have other things to do this is the kind of blatant double bind that, should people end up having sex, is not a huge shocker. As I've blogged various times here, in Martian martial theology the only person who isn't in this double bind forever is whomever happens to already BE married. The rest can often end up being what my blogging friend Mara Reid has called the "sucks to be you" gender gospel.
I'm following the stuff related to Andrew and have not done much to blog about that. I have, however, made some comments here and there. The controversy surrounding Andrew's discipline contract is an occasion for people outside Mars Hill to ask whether or not, if the things Andrew shared are true, that discipline at the Ballard campus has not at some point been tainted by any one or all four of the following miscarriages of discipline in Andrew's case:
1) nepotism
Andrew was engaged to a pastor's daughter. When he admitted to cheating on her I don't see how nepotism wouldn't kick in. In fact if Andrew had not been engaged to a pastor's daughter it's hard to know that any of this would have gone down the way it did.
2) conflict of interest
Andrew was disciplined by campus pastors who would be in a conflict of interest if the pastor whose daughter Andrew was engaged to and had cheated on had any say in the disciplinary proceedings
3) double standard
Any word in the shunning document about the pastor's daughter? The public notice about Andrew scrupulously avoided mention that "a member" with whom Andrew was involved in "unrepentent sexual sin" was a pastor's daughter
4) simple retaliation
I don't think I have to explain this one.
These are all risks that anyone who read what Andrew shared with Matthew Paul Turner would legitimately be concerned about given what Andrew related about the disciplinary proceedings he was told he had to be part of.
Seeing as spouse and offspring information about campus pastors has been pretty well scrubbed off of Mars Hill websites when folks used to trumpet that information in prominent campus pastor profiles it does at least suggest the possibility that Mars Hill leaders somewhere have put together that members of the press or bloggers could put these things together and wonder if Andrew ended up being railroaded despite having done everything right by confessing his sins.
Newsflash to some folks, not saying you did something is not the same as deliberately lying about it. A dad angry about his daughter being betrayed by a fiance with whom his daughter was sexually involved is going to make that dad apt to assume the worst if he wasn't aware of what was going on--this could be the case if the fiance admitted to sexual activity the pastor's daughter never mentioned. IF that's what happened (and I'm not saying this is what actually went down) it wouldn't even be the first time a dad at Mars Hill retroactively made every effort to slam an emergency brake on a relationship his daughter was in with a man where he hadn't pieced everything together yet. This is my way of saying that the odds of a pastor avoiding a conflict of interest, the temptation to retaliate, or to exercise a nepotistic double standard in church discipline in the kind of case Andrew describes is not possible unless the dad in question defers to others. Andrew not saying earlier he was sexually active with a pastor's daughter during his engagement to her is not necessarily active deceit and even if it was that would only be possible to sustain if the daughter went along.
I've already written at some length about what I observed at Mars Hill that led me to believe disciplinary procedures were, let me put this discreetly, ad hoc and frequently done without any regard to the significance of procedural precedent. Don't shun the unrepentant adulteress who pulls the "I've never been a Christian card" do shun the fired pastor who objected to the by-laws.
Now I know people in the past have come here and shared (almost always anonymously) conspiracy theories and the "true" explanations about what happened to this or that person. Well, I have not been a fan of those. Anyone can post an anonymous comment. My educational background is in journalism. You'll notice that even though I have a pen name (because it sounds cool to me) I have made no secret of who I actually am here. Back in the unmoderated Midrash I was the only person who used my actual name. Full actual name, not a shorthand like PastorMark. I may say stupid stuff but I am willing to admit I said stupid stuff on record.
Something that happened in 2007 after the firing controversy was that somebody leaked stuff to the press. That somebody created a press release. A whole bunch of Martians assumed that somebody ELSE had to be responsible. That somebody was (and is) a friend of mine. The reason I take the tone and approach I do to blogging about Mars Hill is I was trained to approach things as a journalist. I was taught that there are times when the real story is not what everybody is writing about but what nobody is writing about. I was also told that you should not assume that anonymous sources or people who only want to speak off the record can be trusted.
If the story is real, if the story is legit, and if the story needs to be told do not take shortcuts by way of anonymous tippers who in all likelihood have their own agendas. Be willing to slog through obscenely large amounts of publicly accessible information to put the story together. Use an anonymous source as an absolute last resort and only if you are sure that the story of the anonymous source fits information you are able to obtain through other means.
A little backtrack into the history of the press and the Nixon administration. For decades the press had a self-congratulatory love affair with itself for having taken down the Nixon administration. That's not exactly what happened. Disgruntled people within the Nixon administration took down the Nixon administration and made use of the press to do so. There was a synergy at work. The Nixon administration fell apart through the momentum of its own graft. In fact people who suggest that there are Watergate like elements to this situation are right. Someone inside Mars Hill cared enough about Andrew to keep him in the loop. Andrew THEN went to Matthew Paul Turner. All the same, that things have been off can be observed through just about any rant Driscoll makes.
If Mars Hill is on a course for disaster we don't have to keep looking for the secret or "real" story built off of people who won't speak on record. The story of the things going wrong in Mars Hill theology or procedure is, in its way, staring us all in the face and within publicly accessible documents and statements. "I break their nose" for instance. "If I weren't going to end up on CNN" for instance. We can see it even in the curious case of shredding William Young while urging us to wait and see with Jakes.
That the case of Andrew was leaked does not surprise me any more than that the firings of Paul and Bent were leaked. However, as a blogger I am not the kind of person who will just blog out everything I have learned. I've seen first hand how a friend's life became more unhappy than it already was because Mars Hill members assumed the worst about him and would not listen to me when I pleaded with them (and non-members) to NOT view my friend this way.
In other words I've seen people act like complete assholes in anger and outrage about Mars Hill and not realize that how they reacted was perpetuating wrong-doing against people already harmed by disciplinary processes at Mars Hill. This is not abstract for me, one of my friends got screwed over not just by a disciplinary procedure at Mars Hill but even by the blowback that came from people assuming he had to have leaked things to the press when he didn't. Your words, both their content and their tone, will have consequences in the lives of people you probably aren't thinking about.
If some people think I have been overly cautious it may be because I really am overly cautious, but I take my approach because I have seen just a few too many people hurt by amateurs who don't understand the significance of what it means to violate the privacy of already hurt people by going to the press. Let me put it as scandalously as possible so that this can be more clearly articulated--if a person has been raped how much good do you think it may do the victim to go out and announce the person has been raped to the press if we're in a cultural context in which victims get blamed?
There's a lot I haven't blogged and probably never will blog because I know what "on the record" means. Now if you're someone who wants to blog or comment about something to do with Mars Hill and disciplinary abuse and you use a pseudonym, okay. I honestly do get that. But if you want to claim to have inside knowledge while simultaneously refusing to go on record or say anything concrete you're a coward. Period. There's no qualifying that. I'm not saying there's no legitimate reason to be afraid for your reputation, mind you.
If you're only willing to take the posture of someone who knows the real deal but won't use your real name or go on record as you insist people believe your anonymous comments on blogs, well, I've already seen my friends' privacy violated by assholes like you. You'll have to do better than that. Bent Meyer has just shown you what "better than that" looks like over at The Wartburg Watch if you need an example.
You don't know, watchblogger or anonymous commenter, whether or not your desire to vent your anger won't inadvertantly hurt the cause and life of someone who has already been hurt by this institution. Using already hurt people as props to win your crusade can still be secondary abuse. Don't be so quick to vent your spleen that you inadvertantly sacrifice those people on the altar of your crusade. I've already seen this done to one of my friends and I don't want to see it happen again.
And this is why, crazy as this may sound, Andrew's case is encouraging to me. Someone who is a MH member cared enough to share with Andrew that he was being declared an unrepentent sinner by a campus machine. Andrew then had the freedom to break his story to Matthew Paul Turner. Someone cared enough about Andrew to have more real regard for his privacy than an entire campus system. Now people can understandably believe that a church willing to treat Andrew that way may "deserve" to have something leaked (amen) but it should be (and was) Andrew's decision to share the story. Compared to what went down in 2007 this is still terrible but in one crucial respect it's a step up and a step in a better direction.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Bent Meyer posts on The Wartburg Watch about being fired from MH in 2007
Before you read the news peg link read this first:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=445277
THEN read this, not before:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2012/01/27/mars-hill-and-mark-driscoll-under-scrutiny-while-another-painful-story-emerges/#comment-35184
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=445277
THEN read this, not before:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2012/01/27/mars-hill-and-mark-driscoll-under-scrutiny-while-another-painful-story-emerges/#comment-35184
Bent Meyer 
on Sun, Jan 29 2012 at 06:06 pm
on Sun, Jan 29 2012 at 06:06 pm I am one of the men fired the day of Mark’s rant about two elders he felt needed to broken noses. Someone asked what has happened since that day.
I am happy to say, the next Sunday my wife and I attended another Church with far better expository teaching and a community that authentically and generously helps the marginalized.
I also finished my master program and have a private mental health practice serving the Seattle and Eastside area. This was a very good and satisfying result.
Regarding, whether I spoke up or not. I have not been silenced by any direct or implied threats of retaliation. It is clear that the one who possess the air waves controls the content and spin of a story, so there was not much to be done.
I thought a lot about how I would response and just what my motives would be. I chose not to be lured into a public argument through the Seattle Times asking me for a blow by blow description of the events I have documented. I have a tendency to keep material for years and years.
I did prepare my narrative, including supporting documents for members only to read who came to me for explanation. They had to agree, never to disclose any of it to the media. These people have been honorable. As best I know, none have. By doing this I opened up myself to their scrutiny and possible rebuke. I have received nothing but kindness and support.
As to my motives, I want Mark’s best. In my opinion he is a very troubled man. He is caught in his own hell. The consequence, of course, is the influence he has on others, which is mixed.
He, Lief Moi, and Mike Gunn, together the founders of Mars Hill Church, sent out to focus on those that were young, upwardly mobile and future leaders. They wanted to position themselves to influence their faith decisions and their life choices. This is a lessen for many church leaders to learn from and choose for themselves.
The downside is Mark’s pathology shows up in ways that are impulsive, aggressive, irascible, shut off from effective relational influence, and most apparent not respectful and submissive to no one, though he claims otherwise.
I have hoped and still hope for something short of him destroying himself would bring about substantial change for this every increasing population of worshiper. Some have fretted there will be a great loss of Christian’s with the demise of Mark and/or the Church. I don’t think so. The church the comprises all of us will survive. The chaff will be blown away, but the church will remain.
I would speak a caution to all of us. There is much to be learn for the Mars Hill phenomena. Don’t dismiss the hunger and openness to be influenced represented in those ages 18 through 30. Invent content that is useful and distribute it freely on the web. Always incorporate creatively some explanation of the gospel at the end of every teaching session with an invitation to do business with Jesus.
Even though Mark’s portrayal of masculinity is more like a comic book superhero and women as needing to be protected and rescued his focus on young men coming into manhood richly is important. Absent fathers is epidemic. Think about what it is that has caused them not to attach to their families. Mark comes at it from the standpoint of duty and responsibility, which is mechanical, missing other primary questions, Why do some many men not attach to their families? Why do they abandon family so easily? Mark uses shame and intimidation as the means of gaining compliance, which has the appearance of working, but is not transformative in the long run, or creates other issues of abusive relationships related to power and control. In many men, the tendency is understood in the short saying, “Monkey see monkey do.” Don’t over react, young men need to mature.
I feel like I need to give attention the needs of women with equal if not more space, since women are marginalized and silenced in so many ways. But, I will leave that for another time.
I hope this will satisfy the primary curiosity of those who wonder what has happened to me. I will say, the other elder fired at the same times is a good friend and doing well.
***
This is the very real Bent Meyer. Beyond that words are pretty much failing me so I'll post and link. I'm going to need a few hours or maybe even a few days on this one.
But for now I can manage to write out this much: to the best of my knowledge this is the first time any man who was fired from being a pastor at Mars Hill has made a public statement on the record about having been fired from Mars Hill.
I am happy to say, the next Sunday my wife and I attended another Church with far better expository teaching and a community that authentically and generously helps the marginalized.
I also finished my master program and have a private mental health practice serving the Seattle and Eastside area. This was a very good and satisfying result.
Regarding, whether I spoke up or not. I have not been silenced by any direct or implied threats of retaliation. It is clear that the one who possess the air waves controls the content and spin of a story, so there was not much to be done.
I thought a lot about how I would response and just what my motives would be. I chose not to be lured into a public argument through the Seattle Times asking me for a blow by blow description of the events I have documented. I have a tendency to keep material for years and years.
I did prepare my narrative, including supporting documents for members only to read who came to me for explanation. They had to agree, never to disclose any of it to the media. These people have been honorable. As best I know, none have. By doing this I opened up myself to their scrutiny and possible rebuke. I have received nothing but kindness and support.
As to my motives, I want Mark’s best. In my opinion he is a very troubled man. He is caught in his own hell. The consequence, of course, is the influence he has on others, which is mixed.
He, Lief Moi, and Mike Gunn, together the founders of Mars Hill Church, sent out to focus on those that were young, upwardly mobile and future leaders. They wanted to position themselves to influence their faith decisions and their life choices. This is a lessen for many church leaders to learn from and choose for themselves.
The downside is Mark’s pathology shows up in ways that are impulsive, aggressive, irascible, shut off from effective relational influence, and most apparent not respectful and submissive to no one, though he claims otherwise.
I have hoped and still hope for something short of him destroying himself would bring about substantial change for this every increasing population of worshiper. Some have fretted there will be a great loss of Christian’s with the demise of Mark and/or the Church. I don’t think so. The church the comprises all of us will survive. The chaff will be blown away, but the church will remain.
I would speak a caution to all of us. There is much to be learn for the Mars Hill phenomena. Don’t dismiss the hunger and openness to be influenced represented in those ages 18 through 30. Invent content that is useful and distribute it freely on the web. Always incorporate creatively some explanation of the gospel at the end of every teaching session with an invitation to do business with Jesus.
Even though Mark’s portrayal of masculinity is more like a comic book superhero and women as needing to be protected and rescued his focus on young men coming into manhood richly is important. Absent fathers is epidemic. Think about what it is that has caused them not to attach to their families. Mark comes at it from the standpoint of duty and responsibility, which is mechanical, missing other primary questions, Why do some many men not attach to their families? Why do they abandon family so easily? Mark uses shame and intimidation as the means of gaining compliance, which has the appearance of working, but is not transformative in the long run, or creates other issues of abusive relationships related to power and control. In many men, the tendency is understood in the short saying, “Monkey see monkey do.” Don’t over react, young men need to mature.
I feel like I need to give attention the needs of women with equal if not more space, since women are marginalized and silenced in so many ways. But, I will leave that for another time.
I hope this will satisfy the primary curiosity of those who wonder what has happened to me. I will say, the other elder fired at the same times is a good friend and doing well.
***
This is the very real Bent Meyer. Beyond that words are pretty much failing me so I'll post and link. I'm going to need a few hours or maybe even a few days on this one.
But for now I can manage to write out this much: to the best of my knowledge this is the first time any man who was fired from being a pastor at Mars Hill has made a public statement on the record about having been fired from Mars Hill.
iMonk: Hard Talk II--Defending Dissent
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/imonk-classic-talk-hard-ii#more-28114
After all, since this is something Michael Spenser wrote at Internet Monk and I've been reading Internet Monk since, I dunno, ten years ago, I'm linking to it. I have a feeling we may be sharing similar thoughts about the necessity within evangelicalism to give room for dissent. It'd be an irony that evangelicals whose roots emerge from what was considered historic and necesary dissent of the abuse of church power would now themselves represent the same kind of self-preserving and self-justifying misuse of power in the very churches where leaders would decry Papists as holding wrong doctrines. Well, when Israel became the divided kingdom which of the two groups faithfully and always served the Lord? Yeah, that's right, neither of them.
Now my own assessment of the prophetic role is going to come off as substantially less exalted than what others may have suggested. This is not because I consider prophets unimportant but because I have begun to appreciate the significance of Deuteronomy 16-18 that many people using "prophets" as a basis for defending their own authority tend to skip over; the prophet was a role provided within the Torah as an ad hoc committee role to adjudicate issues that the Torah did not cover in case law. In other words the understanding much of the time was that the majority of life within Israel did not require a prophet to be consulted all the time.
It is true that prophets often played a critical role but that is because we have written documents from prophets whose work got canonized. This is not the same as looking to Deuteronomy 16-18 to get some idea of what was considered a normative role for a prophet. Some of the most important prophets (Elijah, Nathan and Huldah) in the history of Israel and Judea did not write anything down. They were also not necessarily critics. They could, however, be construed as policy advisors.
The prophetic job was to advise a king whether to go to war because a military situation came up that the Torah didn't address. The prophetic role as to assist in adjudication of an unusual case that was not adequately adressed by case law in the Torah. The prophetic role was also to challenge Israel to be obedient to what was revealed and to not digress into the worship of other gods on the one hand nor to the neglect of obedience and faithfulness while professing a nominal faith on the other. The role of the prophet prescribed in Deuteronomy 18 was not to "write books of the Bible". Eschatological prophecy is not even on the table there, despite the fact that many, many Christians assume it must be.
There's a difference between a later Christian gloss on a passage in the Torah and what the passage was originally actually talking about. We can get to the Christian appreciation of Jesus as the ultimate prophet when we read Deuteronomy 18 but before we skip straight to the big old meaning with the indefinite article we need to properly come to terms with the definite article that doesn't have a capital letter in it, and with indefinite articles. Any old preacher can claim to be a prophet because he preaches but that does not make him a prophet, it makes him more like a priest. If the preacher fields theological and ethical issues that are not directly dealt with by the Bible then, sure, he's started to play a prophetic role.
When Paul urges people to seek the higher gifts he doesn't write this as though there was some one and done litany of Spirit-given super-powers you get for life. His corretion to the Corinthians assumes that they knew who had the gift of tongues and who had the gift of interpreting tongues. He also assumed that there was an ability to acquire the better gifts. When we consider that the fruit of the spirit is pretty prosaic it might also suggest that the gifts of the spirit may be roles we grow into and take for occasions rather than lifetimes; roles that can be informed by those things that out of love we do for the church/Church.
Paul's instruction about the spiritual gifts has often been misused by cessationists and charismatics who are bickering about whether these gifts are really available now and what that is supposed to say about which of the two teams can make the greatest claim to legitimate institutional power. Paul skips past that and doesn't bother to define the spiritual gifts contemporary Christians debate about. He provides a few general guidelines and, famously, says "And now I will show you a still better way."
When Paul says to earnestly seek the better gifts he does not describe the gift very clearly, what he does describe clearly is the role the gift of service plays in a community. In other words, cultivate the fruit of the Spirit and love your fellow believers and this will in itself constitute seeking to embody such gifts as Paul enumerates. Pursue love of Christ and of neighbor and the spiritual gifts you actually need will take care of themselves for two reasons: 1) the fruit of the Spirit that grows in your life will prepare you for service and 2) the role you are able to play by the cultivation of that fruit in seeking to love the Lord and your neighbor will be something the Spirit takes care of without you having to constantly fret about it.
You don't need to really ask yourself "Is what I am doing prophetic?" or "Is what I'm doing the gift of healing?" or "Is what I'm saying a sign of the gift of exhortation?" The gift of healing may not be something as flashy as laying hands on someone and healing their illness. A gift of healing may be something such as a providential giving that allows someone who is going blind to see. A person who plays a prophetic role does not have to always be speaking in oracles with King James English like, "Thus sayeth the Lord", a person who plays a prophetic role does not need to know he or she is doing so. But a person who considers, as the prophet Jeremiah did, that the lying pen of scribes has transformed the Scriptures themselves into a lie can perform a prophetic role without having to display some kind of superpower. Yes, we're told about floating ax handles and parting seas and all that but we all know that the real Christian life is far more prosaic and we can forget that there was a more mundane concern in ensuring a floating ax handle was rescued.
At the end of days I would rather be in a position to wonder when I did anything like speaking in a prophetic way or bringing the gift of healing to someone when the Lord speaks than to boast in the things I was sure I did in Jesus' name only to discover He says "I never knew you." The world has been full of self-appointed prophets but what the Church may need are more accidental prophets, prophets who speak not because they want to or can't think of better things to do with their time, but who through providence and eagerness to love and serve the body of Christ bear the fruit of the Spirit and live the role when needed rather than thinking of it as some permanent vocation.
Do you think Amos was a full-time prophet? No, he tended sheep and dressed trees, right? Prophets did do ordinary things, too. There were some people who played the role of prophets as formal cabinet advisors to a king or priest in Israel but there were, we know this from Amos alone, some prophets had day jobs and only spoke when it was necesarry, when seeing the corruption of leaders and self-appointed spiritual authorities grew too be too much and they spoke against corruption and wickedness.
How could there be corruption and wickedness in the Christian community, you ask? We all know the answer of course, but the need for a prophetic activity is that all too often we assume we're the ones who get to play that prophetic role for that other sinner rather than consider that God may have appointed that other sinner (of all people!) to speak in a prophetic way to us. Schlatter was right to observe we do not lessen our share in evil by condemning evil in others yet the history of prophets has often been that though they, like Isaiah, recognize they are sinful folks with unclean lips, God sends them to speak up anyway. Tricky thing is that we may not recognize them when they speak to us because we're so sure they can't be legit. Unsurprisingly, there were religious leaders and advocates who said the same thing about the greatest prophet, weren't there?
After all, since this is something Michael Spenser wrote at Internet Monk and I've been reading Internet Monk since, I dunno, ten years ago, I'm linking to it. I have a feeling we may be sharing similar thoughts about the necessity within evangelicalism to give room for dissent. It'd be an irony that evangelicals whose roots emerge from what was considered historic and necesary dissent of the abuse of church power would now themselves represent the same kind of self-preserving and self-justifying misuse of power in the very churches where leaders would decry Papists as holding wrong doctrines. Well, when Israel became the divided kingdom which of the two groups faithfully and always served the Lord? Yeah, that's right, neither of them.
Now my own assessment of the prophetic role is going to come off as substantially less exalted than what others may have suggested. This is not because I consider prophets unimportant but because I have begun to appreciate the significance of Deuteronomy 16-18 that many people using "prophets" as a basis for defending their own authority tend to skip over; the prophet was a role provided within the Torah as an ad hoc committee role to adjudicate issues that the Torah did not cover in case law. In other words the understanding much of the time was that the majority of life within Israel did not require a prophet to be consulted all the time.
It is true that prophets often played a critical role but that is because we have written documents from prophets whose work got canonized. This is not the same as looking to Deuteronomy 16-18 to get some idea of what was considered a normative role for a prophet. Some of the most important prophets (Elijah, Nathan and Huldah) in the history of Israel and Judea did not write anything down. They were also not necessarily critics. They could, however, be construed as policy advisors.
The prophetic job was to advise a king whether to go to war because a military situation came up that the Torah didn't address. The prophetic role as to assist in adjudication of an unusual case that was not adequately adressed by case law in the Torah. The prophetic role was also to challenge Israel to be obedient to what was revealed and to not digress into the worship of other gods on the one hand nor to the neglect of obedience and faithfulness while professing a nominal faith on the other. The role of the prophet prescribed in Deuteronomy 18 was not to "write books of the Bible". Eschatological prophecy is not even on the table there, despite the fact that many, many Christians assume it must be.
There's a difference between a later Christian gloss on a passage in the Torah and what the passage was originally actually talking about. We can get to the Christian appreciation of Jesus as the ultimate prophet when we read Deuteronomy 18 but before we skip straight to the big old meaning with the indefinite article we need to properly come to terms with the definite article that doesn't have a capital letter in it, and with indefinite articles. Any old preacher can claim to be a prophet because he preaches but that does not make him a prophet, it makes him more like a priest. If the preacher fields theological and ethical issues that are not directly dealt with by the Bible then, sure, he's started to play a prophetic role.
When Paul urges people to seek the higher gifts he doesn't write this as though there was some one and done litany of Spirit-given super-powers you get for life. His corretion to the Corinthians assumes that they knew who had the gift of tongues and who had the gift of interpreting tongues. He also assumed that there was an ability to acquire the better gifts. When we consider that the fruit of the spirit is pretty prosaic it might also suggest that the gifts of the spirit may be roles we grow into and take for occasions rather than lifetimes; roles that can be informed by those things that out of love we do for the church/Church.
Paul's instruction about the spiritual gifts has often been misused by cessationists and charismatics who are bickering about whether these gifts are really available now and what that is supposed to say about which of the two teams can make the greatest claim to legitimate institutional power. Paul skips past that and doesn't bother to define the spiritual gifts contemporary Christians debate about. He provides a few general guidelines and, famously, says "And now I will show you a still better way."
When Paul says to earnestly seek the better gifts he does not describe the gift very clearly, what he does describe clearly is the role the gift of service plays in a community. In other words, cultivate the fruit of the Spirit and love your fellow believers and this will in itself constitute seeking to embody such gifts as Paul enumerates. Pursue love of Christ and of neighbor and the spiritual gifts you actually need will take care of themselves for two reasons: 1) the fruit of the Spirit that grows in your life will prepare you for service and 2) the role you are able to play by the cultivation of that fruit in seeking to love the Lord and your neighbor will be something the Spirit takes care of without you having to constantly fret about it.
You don't need to really ask yourself "Is what I am doing prophetic?" or "Is what I'm doing the gift of healing?" or "Is what I'm saying a sign of the gift of exhortation?" The gift of healing may not be something as flashy as laying hands on someone and healing their illness. A gift of healing may be something such as a providential giving that allows someone who is going blind to see. A person who plays a prophetic role does not have to always be speaking in oracles with King James English like, "Thus sayeth the Lord", a person who plays a prophetic role does not need to know he or she is doing so. But a person who considers, as the prophet Jeremiah did, that the lying pen of scribes has transformed the Scriptures themselves into a lie can perform a prophetic role without having to display some kind of superpower. Yes, we're told about floating ax handles and parting seas and all that but we all know that the real Christian life is far more prosaic and we can forget that there was a more mundane concern in ensuring a floating ax handle was rescued.
At the end of days I would rather be in a position to wonder when I did anything like speaking in a prophetic way or bringing the gift of healing to someone when the Lord speaks than to boast in the things I was sure I did in Jesus' name only to discover He says "I never knew you." The world has been full of self-appointed prophets but what the Church may need are more accidental prophets, prophets who speak not because they want to or can't think of better things to do with their time, but who through providence and eagerness to love and serve the body of Christ bear the fruit of the Spirit and live the role when needed rather than thinking of it as some permanent vocation.
Do you think Amos was a full-time prophet? No, he tended sheep and dressed trees, right? Prophets did do ordinary things, too. There were some people who played the role of prophets as formal cabinet advisors to a king or priest in Israel but there were, we know this from Amos alone, some prophets had day jobs and only spoke when it was necesarry, when seeing the corruption of leaders and self-appointed spiritual authorities grew too be too much and they spoke against corruption and wickedness.
How could there be corruption and wickedness in the Christian community, you ask? We all know the answer of course, but the need for a prophetic activity is that all too often we assume we're the ones who get to play that prophetic role for that other sinner rather than consider that God may have appointed that other sinner (of all people!) to speak in a prophetic way to us. Schlatter was right to observe we do not lessen our share in evil by condemning evil in others yet the history of prophets has often been that though they, like Isaiah, recognize they are sinful folks with unclean lips, God sends them to speak up anyway. Tricky thing is that we may not recognize them when they speak to us because we're so sure they can't be legit. Unsurprisingly, there were religious leaders and advocates who said the same thing about the greatest prophet, weren't there?
Saturday, January 28, 2012
An observation from Adolf Schlatter
"A gap between faith and obedience occurs only when the message of God is replaced with a doctrine about God."
Romans: The Righteousness of God, p 11
Romans: The Righteousness of God, p 11
renting and ownership
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?"
There are some people who assume that if you own something you will care for it more than a rental. There are some people who assume that if you invest a dollar in a private or public firm that it will be more carefully spent than it would be at a non-profit or a government office because the recipient of the investment knows that dollar does not belong to him or her. The assumption is that mere renters are not as responsible. The assumption is that borrow money can't be spent as shrewdly. The assumption is that people will only do their best work if they are doing it just to please themselves.
Yet the parable of the wicked steward exists. How could that be possible? Why is the punchline of Jesus' most challenging parable to say this, "If you have not been trustwory with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" If the axiom that owners are more responsible than renters why did Jesus tell a parable in which things are reversed and He says that if you can't be trusted with something lent that you aren't responsible enough to own?
There are some people who assume that if you own something you will care for it more than a rental. There are some people who assume that if you invest a dollar in a private or public firm that it will be more carefully spent than it would be at a non-profit or a government office because the recipient of the investment knows that dollar does not belong to him or her. The assumption is that mere renters are not as responsible. The assumption is that borrow money can't be spent as shrewdly. The assumption is that people will only do their best work if they are doing it just to please themselves.
Yet the parable of the wicked steward exists. How could that be possible? Why is the punchline of Jesus' most challenging parable to say this, "If you have not been trustwory with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?" If the axiom that owners are more responsible than renters why did Jesus tell a parable in which things are reversed and He says that if you can't be trusted with something lent that you aren't responsible enough to own?
HT Dan at City of God: Ian Hugh Clary--"Shoot an Elephant"
http://ianhughclary.com/2012/01/25/shooting-an-elephant/
I have to link to this simply because anyone who can simultaneously refer to Driscoll and Jakes and The Elephant Room 2, and do so by way of a justifiably famous George Orwell piece is a blogging genius. These are the sorts of puns and literary allusions that make blogging and reading blogs fun and downright literary. I may not be writing as much here as I'm writing off-line but a blogger can still link.
Kudos to Dan at City of God for bringing it up where I could spot it. May all the City of God folks have a good weekend, too, while I'm at it.
I have to link to this simply because anyone who can simultaneously refer to Driscoll and Jakes and The Elephant Room 2, and do so by way of a justifiably famous George Orwell piece is a blogging genius. These are the sorts of puns and literary allusions that make blogging and reading blogs fun and downright literary. I may not be writing as much here as I'm writing off-line but a blogger can still link.
Kudos to Dan at City of God for bringing it up where I could spot it. May all the City of God folks have a good weekend, too, while I'm at it.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Mockingbird touches on the Law of Indie Cred
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7490324/chuck-klosterman-tune-yards
http://www.mbird.com/2012/01/another-week-ends-indie-law-the-new-marriage-killer-futurizing-fear-apatheism-damsels-in-distress-george-lucas-and-downton-abbey/#comments
This happens all the time. It now seems super-funny that so many people once believed Arrested Development was among the most important bands of the early 1990s. The idea of anyone advocating the merits of Fischerspooner now seems totally ridiculous. It somehow seems crazy that Cornershop was previously viewed as luminous, even though their songs still sound good to me. It’s just an impossible problem: We always want to reward art for being innovative, but most artistic innovations are not designed to hold up over time. They exist as temporary reactions to other things happening within the culture. And that means they will seem goofy and dated when the culture changes again. [emphasis mine]
The Klosterman article is a funny read because the excerpt quoted above is a footnote. Specifically footnote number 2 but, more generally, that there are footnoes in a piece that barely breaks 1,000 words. Leave it to a music critic writing about indie music to throw just two footnotes that contain enough words to equal a quarter of the length of the body of the article itself!
Of course depending on the musical idiom there's an emphasis on tradition rather than innovation; or it may be that the fact that pop band after pop band pretty much all blur together the way Vivaldi's concerti kinda sound the same because he was composing by way of the Baroque equivalent of the Xerox machine .Perhaps the funniest way to put this is that in classical music or art music we all know J. S. Bach is arguably the pinnacle of Western art music and yet how many real formal or stylistic innovations did he actually introduce?
Yeah ... see, it appears that a person can go down in history as the greatest music genius of the last five hundred years and have not introduced, at any practical level, a single innovation in the form and content of music like pioneering sonata allegro form or stuff like that. Of course Bach knew he was working within a tradition and came from an intergenerational dynasty of professional musicians. Haydn pioneered some great innovations in musical form but who is more popular for developing and running with Haydn's innovations? Mozart and Beethoven, that's who.
What indie rockers don't discover because they don't necessarily immerse themselves in the history of pop music is that it actually doesn't pay to introduce the big innovations that get remembered by a name or a code. Why? Well for the classical nerds reading along let me throw out phrases like clausula vera or Alberti bass. Yep, those are practically the classical equivalents of "power chords" or "twelve bar". Musical innovations that can be remembered by name and stick around end up being, you guessed it, forms and cliches.
Most artistic innovations are finding ways to repackage and rebranding old hat stuff in a way that's clever enough that you don't necessarily spot how old hat it is. Now if you're a jerk about things like Boulez often was you can say Schoenberg was dead and that he expanded harmony without making any corresponding innovations in rhythm or other things. And if you like Boulez' compositions even more than his conducting then, well, whatever. Who am I to tell you how to spend your disposable income?
http://www.mbird.com/2012/01/another-week-ends-indie-law-the-new-marriage-killer-futurizing-fear-apatheism-damsels-in-distress-george-lucas-and-downton-abbey/#comments
This happens all the time. It now seems super-funny that so many people once believed Arrested Development was among the most important bands of the early 1990s. The idea of anyone advocating the merits of Fischerspooner now seems totally ridiculous. It somehow seems crazy that Cornershop was previously viewed as luminous, even though their songs still sound good to me. It’s just an impossible problem: We always want to reward art for being innovative, but most artistic innovations are not designed to hold up over time. They exist as temporary reactions to other things happening within the culture. And that means they will seem goofy and dated when the culture changes again. [emphasis mine]
The Klosterman article is a funny read because the excerpt quoted above is a footnote. Specifically footnote number 2 but, more generally, that there are footnoes in a piece that barely breaks 1,000 words. Leave it to a music critic writing about indie music to throw just two footnotes that contain enough words to equal a quarter of the length of the body of the article itself!
Of course depending on the musical idiom there's an emphasis on tradition rather than innovation; or it may be that the fact that pop band after pop band pretty much all blur together the way Vivaldi's concerti kinda sound the same because he was composing by way of the Baroque equivalent of the Xerox machine .Perhaps the funniest way to put this is that in classical music or art music we all know J. S. Bach is arguably the pinnacle of Western art music and yet how many real formal or stylistic innovations did he actually introduce?
Yeah ... see, it appears that a person can go down in history as the greatest music genius of the last five hundred years and have not introduced, at any practical level, a single innovation in the form and content of music like pioneering sonata allegro form or stuff like that. Of course Bach knew he was working within a tradition and came from an intergenerational dynasty of professional musicians. Haydn pioneered some great innovations in musical form but who is more popular for developing and running with Haydn's innovations? Mozart and Beethoven, that's who.
What indie rockers don't discover because they don't necessarily immerse themselves in the history of pop music is that it actually doesn't pay to introduce the big innovations that get remembered by a name or a code. Why? Well for the classical nerds reading along let me throw out phrases like clausula vera or Alberti bass. Yep, those are practically the classical equivalents of "power chords" or "twelve bar". Musical innovations that can be remembered by name and stick around end up being, you guessed it, forms and cliches.
Most artistic innovations are finding ways to repackage and rebranding old hat stuff in a way that's clever enough that you don't necessarily spot how old hat it is. Now if you're a jerk about things like Boulez often was you can say Schoenberg was dead and that he expanded harmony without making any corresponding innovations in rhythm or other things. And if you like Boulez' compositions even more than his conducting then, well, whatever. Who am I to tell you how to spend your disposable income?
yeah, I know of it
If you've wondered if I've heard about the formal response I know it exists but boilerplate non-informative press release stuff I recognize when I read it. I didn't read the chapter as it wasn't anything I didn't already know.
Now I know some blogs have exploded with moral indignation and outrage about this boilerplate and I submit it is because of the Driscoll chapter attached more than anything H-lc-mb wrote and published. What H-lc-mb wrote and published is, frankly, pitiable boilerplate press release tofu. I can't read it as an indictment of deceit or stupidity on Mr. H-lc-mb's part. It's just non-informative boilerplate. If anything I pity the man for being in a position to have to put his name in a by-line under that. Wouldn't the impersonal collectivist writing style of The Economist that I just read have no need for a by-line? Why does some hapless pastor have to have his by-line tied to that?
I "might" write something but I don't feel any particular need to write about that stuff right now. Perhaps I should explain.
I'm scheduled to get new lenses for my glasses for the first time since cataract removal surgery. For newbies to my blog I had a cataract in one of my eyes (the one that didn't have a macular detachment). Being able to see clearly out of both eyes is important, after all. Thanks to snow in the previous week I haven't exactly been out and about when my best option is public transit.
I am juggling two writing projects that are, how do I put this, of more earthly good to me than blogging about other things. One you may have already seen some links to this week. Those essays on Batman: the animated series are not writing themselves! The second I'm keeping more under wraps because it's still early in the production and revision process. In any case I trust you'll get what I mean.
I'm still hunting for a regular day job and scoping out job leads.
I have been ironing out more details and jots and tittles toward publishing one of my compositions. I have not blogged about that because I don't see a reason to. During this time I have not stopped composing or networking with musicians.
So while I do appreciate that folks are concerned about "you know what" there is a time to for everything and wisdom consists, in part, of knowing when to write and not write about something. For me there are just more pressing things to write and pursue. Ergo my earlier posting of a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. With all due respect and prayers and concerns for the various parties involved I've got a few things going on.
Now I know some blogs have exploded with moral indignation and outrage about this boilerplate and I submit it is because of the Driscoll chapter attached more than anything H-lc-mb wrote and published. What H-lc-mb wrote and published is, frankly, pitiable boilerplate press release tofu. I can't read it as an indictment of deceit or stupidity on Mr. H-lc-mb's part. It's just non-informative boilerplate. If anything I pity the man for being in a position to have to put his name in a by-line under that. Wouldn't the impersonal collectivist writing style of The Economist that I just read have no need for a by-line? Why does some hapless pastor have to have his by-line tied to that?
I "might" write something but I don't feel any particular need to write about that stuff right now. Perhaps I should explain.
I'm scheduled to get new lenses for my glasses for the first time since cataract removal surgery. For newbies to my blog I had a cataract in one of my eyes (the one that didn't have a macular detachment). Being able to see clearly out of both eyes is important, after all. Thanks to snow in the previous week I haven't exactly been out and about when my best option is public transit.
I am juggling two writing projects that are, how do I put this, of more earthly good to me than blogging about other things. One you may have already seen some links to this week. Those essays on Batman: the animated series are not writing themselves! The second I'm keeping more under wraps because it's still early in the production and revision process. In any case I trust you'll get what I mean.
I'm still hunting for a regular day job and scoping out job leads.
I have been ironing out more details and jots and tittles toward publishing one of my compositions. I have not blogged about that because I don't see a reason to. During this time I have not stopped composing or networking with musicians.
So while I do appreciate that folks are concerned about "you know what" there is a time to for everything and wisdom consists, in part, of knowing when to write and not write about something. For me there are just more pressing things to write and pursue. Ergo my earlier posting of a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. With all due respect and prayers and concerns for the various parties involved I've got a few things going on.
Here's something from the Book of Common Prayer for bloggers
Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices; Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Batman: The Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire, part 4a just went up
http://www.mbird.com/2012/01/batman-the-agony-of-loss-and-the-madness-of-desire-pt-4a/
So "The Wounds of Discovery" (i.e. part 4a) just went up on Mockingbird. This is good news for two reasons, it shows I've finished some new stuff and that Mockingbird is back up and running. This is exciting for me as this year is the 20th anniversary of one of the finest and most important cartoons in American childrens' entertainment in the last, well, twenty years.
This is even more fun for me than when I collected my thoughts for the tenth anniversary of The Powerpuff Girls. I know I might be getting most of my traffic by blogging about "that" place and "those" subjects so I feel like I should mention that if you come here you may find some massive rambles on cartoons you may have never heard of (like my ramble on Eureka Seven as an anime exploring child abuse from earlier this month. Or you might end up seeing me write a bunch of stuff that covers music by Ferdinand Rebay (you've been warned that's coming); or I might finally get to my career overview of the d'Amore Duo and discuss what I think of the duo's role in the admittedly rarified realm of chamber music for oboe and guitar. And, of course, I'll blog about "that" church and related topics just as I'll link to Mockingbird or Orthocuban or the Boar's Head Tavern.
Oh, yeah, I kinda forgot to mention I'm a fellow at the Boar's Head Tavern now. Much thanks to Fearsome Tycoon and J. S. Bangs for suggesting I be a fellow at the Tavern but particularly to Fearsome because he's been the strongest proponent of that. Now might be a good time to note that just because I use a pen name doesn't mean I'm trying to be anonymous. And, uh, it also does not mean I came from Wenatchee. I'm originally from Oregon with a background in the Assemblies of God and went to a little school by a canal. That means I have three things in common with Gordon Fee. Isn't that awesome?
Ahem, anyway, "The Wounds of Discovery" are going up on Mockingbird and I hope you enjoy the essays.
So "The Wounds of Discovery" (i.e. part 4a) just went up on Mockingbird. This is good news for two reasons, it shows I've finished some new stuff and that Mockingbird is back up and running. This is exciting for me as this year is the 20th anniversary of one of the finest and most important cartoons in American childrens' entertainment in the last, well, twenty years.
This is even more fun for me than when I collected my thoughts for the tenth anniversary of The Powerpuff Girls. I know I might be getting most of my traffic by blogging about "that" place and "those" subjects so I feel like I should mention that if you come here you may find some massive rambles on cartoons you may have never heard of (like my ramble on Eureka Seven as an anime exploring child abuse from earlier this month. Or you might end up seeing me write a bunch of stuff that covers music by Ferdinand Rebay (you've been warned that's coming); or I might finally get to my career overview of the d'Amore Duo and discuss what I think of the duo's role in the admittedly rarified realm of chamber music for oboe and guitar. And, of course, I'll blog about "that" church and related topics just as I'll link to Mockingbird or Orthocuban or the Boar's Head Tavern.
Oh, yeah, I kinda forgot to mention I'm a fellow at the Boar's Head Tavern now. Much thanks to Fearsome Tycoon and J. S. Bangs for suggesting I be a fellow at the Tavern but particularly to Fearsome because he's been the strongest proponent of that. Now might be a good time to note that just because I use a pen name doesn't mean I'm trying to be anonymous. And, uh, it also does not mean I came from Wenatchee. I'm originally from Oregon with a background in the Assemblies of God and went to a little school by a canal. That means I have three things in common with Gordon Fee. Isn't that awesome?
Ahem, anyway, "The Wounds of Discovery" are going up on Mockingbird and I hope you enjoy the essays.
HT Phoenix Preacher: Rachel Held Evans on "Evangelical Celebrity"
http://rachelheldevans.com/reflections-evangelical-celebrity?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RachelHeldEvans+%28Rachel+Held+Evans+-+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
... Praying whatever is in my heart and head is good in small doses, but structured prayer is the only way to truly transcend my selfish ego. There is nothing like greeting the morning with a prayer intended to remind you of your own mortality—“Teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom”—to put that deadline or that interview into perspective.
Structured prayer, particularly the offices, reminds me that God is bigger than my cause, bigger than my ministry, bigger than my “tribe,” bigger than me. It reminds me that, today, there are sparrows falling from trees and planets coursing through space, that a great cloud of witnesses has come before me and will come after me, that I have sinned by what I have done and what I have left undone, that all I really need is my daily bread, that, with or without me, the glory of God persists, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” ...
***
I'd add a comment if I thought I had any comments to add.
... Praying whatever is in my heart and head is good in small doses, but structured prayer is the only way to truly transcend my selfish ego. There is nothing like greeting the morning with a prayer intended to remind you of your own mortality—“Teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom”—to put that deadline or that interview into perspective.
Structured prayer, particularly the offices, reminds me that God is bigger than my cause, bigger than my ministry, bigger than my “tribe,” bigger than me. It reminds me that, today, there are sparrows falling from trees and planets coursing through space, that a great cloud of witnesses has come before me and will come after me, that I have sinned by what I have done and what I have left undone, that all I really need is my daily bread, that, with or without me, the glory of God persists, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” ...
***
I'd add a comment if I thought I had any comments to add.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
BHT: Are we seeing pride going before destruction?
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2012/01/24/are-we-seeing-pride-going-before-destruction/
http://matthewpaulturner.net/jesus-needs-new-pr/mark-driscolls-church-discipline-contract-looking-for-true-repentance-at-mars-hill-church-sign-on-the-dotted-line/
http://matthewpaulturner.net/jesus-needs-new-pr/mark-driscolls-gospel-shame-the-truth-about-discipline-excommunication-and-cult-like-control-at-mars-hill/
That someone from Mars Hill has gone public about a discipline contract does not surprise me. It disappoints me but does not surprise me. I am not in a position to be sure that this person named Andrew is telling the whole story. I'm not sure there's any thing that can certainly be discussed beyond some rudimentary points. One is that someone finally felt that Mars Hill disciplinary procedure is problematic enough to decide to go public. This may not mean the person who did this has good motives but if we account for divine providence it may not be necessary to be certain of every detail. This does not necessarily give us an assurance the anti-Driscolls are right more than the pro-Driscolls.
On the other hand, now might be a time to share that a discipline contract, whatever its merits in a specific case, does not seem like a huge surprise to me. The reason I think it is important to finally say something in public about this controversy, whether Andrew was "truly repentant" or not is because when I left Mars Hill one of the things I shared was that I was concerned that if things didn't change in the way Mars Hill approached church discipline and pastoral counseling a disaster could be down the road. I wasn't sure what form the disaster would take if it happened but I felt that it was going to come from two things: 1) a case in which discipline was unusually stern and 2) a case in which the sternness of the discipline was part of a sequence of events in which disciplinary precedent made the stern action seem arbitrary or out of proportion to the offense. Well ... it's too early to tell for sure but it's "possible" that moment may have arrived. I sincerely hope not but as I just said it's a bit early to tell.
Now shunning errant members whose errors were real or simiply imagined began earlier than 2011 or 2012. By now the 2007 firings of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer are not that hard to look up. The coverage initially done by Seattle alternative paper The Stranger was actually pretty fair. I don't say this because I like reading The Stranger. I only read The Stranger for about as long as Chris DeLaurenti was writing a column about the local classical music scene. But I can truthfully say that the coverage was, particularly coming from them, fair minded and fairly accurate in my opinion. The material was also leaked to the Seattle Times (if memory serves). So the coverage of the firings goes back for years.
And it was during that time that folks at Mars Hill were urged to shun the fired pastors and only speak to them if we were going to urge them to repentence. One of these men was my neighbor and I consider him a valuable friend. I've met his kids and like his kids. I was not going to then nor would now stop associating with a brother in Christ and a friend. Yet a friend of my friend once asked me to pray for him years ago because he was being considered as a candidate for church discipline for having been seen with this man who was supposed to be shunned ... even though the person who reported this to a pastor at Mars Hill was at the same social event! I began to put together that if I wanted to spend time with my friend and not get flak from Mars Hill leaders simply not renewing was a good way to do this. After all, if I wasn't a member how could I get flak for hanging out with people I'd been told by Mars Hill leadership to shun? There was no case against me.
And by letting my contract get cancelled out by elder fiat and not renewing I was convinced of another thing. After renewing my membership contract for years and then not renewing it after it was voided by elders I came to this conclusion, if the "covenant" was ended it was not by me. A covenant you have to renew every few years isn't a covenent unless we're talking short-term marriages in some place like Sweden. This means that if the covenant was nullified it was not by me but by the elders. I.e. in the plainest possible language I was not the covenant breaker, they were, and that gave me no incentive to renew what was really a contractual relationship in which I was obliged to give money to them and had no voting rights in the church and no practical appeal should a church disciplinary issue come up. I'd read the by-laws, I'd worked out the unlikelihood of any significant changes in the doctrinal statement. And I had seen how the culture of the church had decided to ostracize a fellow believer on grounds that I had not found adequately convincing.
I am not against church discipline, in case anyone might wonder that. There is a time and a place for confession of sin and for repentence. There are times and place for confession of sin that are not just individual but corporate.
Let me put it another way, when I didn't renew I didn't renew out of concern for the lack of accountability for what appeared to be arbitrary applications of church discipline. I was asked to shun two men I respected who did not seem to have done anything close to being as bad as a serial adulteress whom I was asked to NOT shun because she said she wasn't even a Christian and since the pastors agreed with her the whole membership thing and discipline didn't apply. Trouble was we heard after about a year which church she was attending. If she was claiming to have never been a Christian to avoid disicplinary sanction a number of Mars Hill members told me they'd seen her a few times and knew people at the other church she was attending. If someone was really never a Christian what was up with continuing to attend other churches? Don't true heathens in the Emerald City have better things to do on Sunday than go to church?
And why, then, was I asked to shun a man who was my neighbor and who had befriended my family when there was no clear explanation that what he did was even close to being as bad as what the adulteress did? Surely I was not the only person to point out that this presented a huge problem of consistent disciplinary precedent. When I made this point to elders I got zip. One elder trotted out the old saw "When dad and mom are having an argument the kids don't need to know what's going on." So when dad and mom live off the tithe checks given by the children they don't have to explain why dad decides to fire mom? But I blogged about this in the past.
What ended up happening during that time was I ended up in a place where friends who I saw spending time together every week were no longer speaking to each other. They'd speak to me but not to each other and this went on for years. When any of these two groups had any overlap in a social activity there'd be awkward silence (and in several ways that still happens). I was stressed out at work and stressed out because of family conflicts that Mars Hill people had made much worse rather than better and I was seeing my Mars Hill circle of friends circle wagons in what looked like a disaster.
I was going to use a compouned word starting with "cluster" but in deference to some PG language for this post I'm refraining. All my friends in and outside Mars Hill know by now that this is how I've fielded both sides and I stand by it. The 2007 controversies were a shameful fiasco that nobody in the church or out of it can entirely live down. At a practical level my entire social life was integrated into that church so seeing all that stuff happen was so bad it was sort of like watching family members going through a divorce. I began to believe the smart money bailed out before the firings happened. If you're reading this you know who you are already.
After I'd decided to not renew my membership I kept attending for several months because most of my best friends were there and a lot of them still are. Of course with a lot of them being married or being parents I hardly got to see them anyway. I even kept giving to the campus I attended for a time. But a friend of mine preached some sermons on Jonah in later 2008 and the sermons were convicting. They were convicting because of a simple question, is there something you sense God wants you to do that you don't want to do because it feels too risky or inconvenient or scary? I began to think it through and realized that, yeah, that was actually where I was at. It's one of those strange ironies for me that I believe God used my friend's sermons to convict me that it really was finally time to move on to a new church home.
Friends of mine have told me that my peaceful, amiable transition out of Mars Hill without bad blood and with mutual respect and affection was pretty much a miracle, particularly given what I actually shared on my way out. Well, if so, God is very good and I am fortunate. I have made some trenchent criticisms of Mars Hill but I have not done so with an eye to demonize them even if they have demonized others. They are fellow believers and I want the best for them.
To put it in old school Pentecostal/spiritual warfare terms, I love the people at Mars Hill who share life with me and I pray for them regularly. I do, however, hope that what might be called Mars Hill the principality will be broken. For as long as the top brass don't want to admit that what they're gunning for is becoming, in essence, a Calvinist Baptist complementarian denomination I will be comfortable saying they need to stop hiding from themselves. If by twenty years there are more than a dozen churches and tens of thousands of members with a goal to have an intergenerational impact what do these people think they're doing? "Not" making an institution?
But though I was blessed to leave on the best possible terms and have remained friends with my Mars Hill friends and love spending time with them when I can; I have been disappointed to hear that a lot of people had much worse experiences. Sometimes I have wondered if the new blood may be bad blood and bring bad blood with it. I'm not sure, but I did begin to hear about redemption groups and about how if there was any sin in your life it was a "worship problem" and how the idea was that everything comes down to idolatry. If you worshipped yourself into a mess you were going to worship yourself out of it.
Well, the confessions of the Driscolls in Real Marriage were sobering and in some ways they have some bearing on a controversy about church discipline and accountability. This will take some time so bear with me if you're even still reading this. It turns out all this time Driscoll was extolling wifely stripteases and holy blow jobs he was unhappy with his wife, not realizing that she felt uncomfortable about sex due to a history of sexual abuse and (probably) because of her husband's way of approaching sex. Now I have read excerpts in which Mark Driscoll said that in the end the thing that cured his moodiness was frankly more frequent sex and that's what he needed. Do I need a larger context for that? Is there really a larger context for understanding the flat declaration that more orgasms for Mark Driscoll equaled a stabilized mood?
If a guy who is part of a redemption group, accountability group, or community group at Mars Hill sat down one night and said to the people in his group, "You know, I've got these struggles with moods and the only thing that makes them go away is having sex more often." how do you think guys in that group might react to this man? Might the man be told sex was his idol; that he was using sex as a drug to stabilize his moods; and that he needed to repent of his sin of making sex a god and using his wife to make himself feel better? The people I've met at Mars Hill over the years would seem to be the sort to actually say that. He would probably be told that using orgasms as a kind of mood-stabilizing drug suggests a problem, wouldn't he?
But if Mark Driscoll states plainly in Real Marriage that the only cure for his moodiness was more frequent sex this goes with no remark other than to defend him?
It gives a curious spin to this ...
http://pastormark.tv/2012/01/04/9-reasons-real-marriage-is-for-singles
Nine reasons Real Marriage is for singles, huh? The Driscolls say to not copy them. Heh, that probably goes double for singles, right? If an unmarried person struggles with depression or moodiness then Mark Driscoll's self-diagnosis that the moodiness goes away with more orgasms might not be the best practical methodology for single people who aren't married! There are a few Christians I've met where if they heard someone say they need orgasms to stabilize their mood that this sounds like the symptom of a straight up sex addict. No ifs, ands or buts.
Now what if Driscoll ends up in a situation comparable to what Mars Hill pastor Bill Clem went through, with a wife who was slowly dying of cancer? The chemo treatment was severe, so severe sex was not an option for a long, long time (as in she eventually died and sex wasn't on the table). Clem gave a sermon years ago in which he said guys who think self-control and self-denial about sex are only for single people will be in for a huge shock if they get married (and stay married). I had a chance to work with Bill a little in a ministry and, honestly, I like the guy. I appreciated his openness and his humility. If Mark Driscoll needs more frequent sex to stabilize his moods God help the Driscoll clan if Grace ends up with an illness that makes sex impossible because at that point Mark Driscoll could become impossible.
For people who never got any counseling at a church like Mars Hill you may not be aware that there are things you may be asked to sign called waivers. The things that get waived are stuff like:
1. That this is actually professional medical, psychological or legal advice
2. That this is actually confidential (it's not, they reserve the right to inform law enforcement if what you share turns out to be a matter of breaking a law)
What this means, in essence, is that if you're a regularly giving church member you're obliged to give financial or warrant a talking to but you have no voting rights as a member about things like the appointment of deacons or other matters of church polity at a local level. You have also been given a situation in which to get a counseling session with a pastor you will likely be asked to sign waivers that indemnify them against legal liability for whatever advice they may give you. They are not required to certify competence in mental health, medical knowledge, or the law and in a non-denominational setting there is not even any need for academic credentialing in theology or the study of biblical literature.
You have basically tithed for what is considered binding in terms of spiritual discipline within the church but that at a purely legal level might as well be entertainment. Should it happen that a pastor decides what you have shared should become public knowledge throughout the church, well, we've just been notified of that, haven't we? If you were asked to confess to some sin that you regularly struggle with as a part of the membership application process you may come to the conclusion, as a friend of mine did, that what this amounts to is leadership having ammunition for a database so that if at some point you dissent from leadership there's something to hold over your head. If the tables are turned and you were to ask the people in authority over you if they have any recurring sins would you get an answer?
And if after all this you go to a pastor for counsel in a church setting like what I saw at Mars Hill what you may get is someone who might be listed as a "biblical living" pastor so there's no misunderstanding about competency. As Steve Hays put it over at Triablogue years ago the tricky thing about "biblical counseling" is that it will only be as good as the exegesis brought to a situation by the nouthetic counselor. It is not always clear that those nouthetic counselors are competent exegetes. Some of them are but in the case of a church like Mars Hill what you could get is someone who was appointed to be a "biblical living" pastor whose formal education may have stopped at high school, or an undergraduate degree in business, and who pleads the Holy Spirit and maybe the approval of Mark Driscoll. I think a thinking man or woman will be forgiven by both God and men for deciding those qualifications just aren't good enough.
When I left Mars Hill one of the very sincere cautions I passed on was that I was concerned about both the competence and good will of "pastoral counseling" as it had been practiced at Mars Hill. It wasn't all terrible counsel. In fact some of the best personal counsel I've gotten in my life were from Mars Hill pastors. But I have to add this huge, huge caveat, the two pastors who gave me the best advice gave me that advice having known my family for years and having known me fairly well over the years. In other words they "led" out of love for me that was personal as well as pastoral and for the people in my life they knew I was having trouble relating to at the time. And they were not guys who were officially listed as "counseling" or "biblical living" pastors. They frankly didn't need to be. Years of that thing called actual fellowship gave them the tools and mutual love gave them a basis from which to give actually wise counsel. As an axiom goes many people who pay for therapy wouldn't have to if they had good friends.
But it seems that for a lot of people they weren't even close to this fortunate. They didn't get counsel from pastors who actually gave a crap about them. They didn't get counsel from pastors with any competency in mental health or biblical literature that was demonstrated beyond fitting the preferences of a leadership panel. Particularly in the wake of the 2007 firings the default mode a lot of campus pastors took was to assume that if anyone had any trust issues with elders of any kind that was a sin issue that sprung from pride. I have written enough about my concerns about the truncated hamartiology I saw at Mars Hill I won't bore you with the details. Search the blog for a term as arcane as hamartiology or distaff spellings and you'll find that.
Now the question Jason Blair asked over at the Boar's Head Tavern was this, "Are we seeing pride going before destruction?" In light of all the "I stand by what I said" and "I'm a Bible teacher" Driscoll has been doing the answer that question could be "yes". How bad will that fall be? It depends on how unwilling some people at Mars Hill are to concede that maybe how they've handled things at almost any critical juncturewas bad. Not just concede that how they handled things was bad but to make restitution. Make restitution would mean publicly admitting to error and having hurt people. It would mean establishing a basis for internal and external accountability.
It might mean doing something besides spinning the failure of a capital campaign as far back as 2005 into a claim about good stewardship when the situation was they hadn't adequately researched zoning requirements before purchasing what was supposed to be Ballard campus #2, that one Driscoll mentions in Reformission Rev. It's very easy to go easy on folks who admit to mistakes but if you don't admit a 1.5 million purchase was not the shrewdest move, well, it becomes tougher to show some leniency, especially if along the way you start doling out "discipline contracts".
For every Driscoll drone who talks about Mahaney or Piper mentoring Mark Driscoll please stop taking that idea seriously. Mahaney's on the other side of the country and last I heard isn't even necessarily attending his own church. People say Driscoll is "teachable" because he's got the kinds of pastors whose names sound cool when you name-drop them to show some enthusiasm for him. This is not the same as actually being mentored. A mere stamp of approval isn't enough, a mere few words about not adequately expressing Christ's love for the church only gets him to change his tone for about three sermons. When someone outside Mars Hill tries to point out where Driscoll is going off the rails we see the way things went with John MacArthur. I have made my lack of agreement with MacArthur on all sorts of things plain but I respect that he said something. But the trouble is that when serious criticism of Driscoll as a biblical scholar and exegete comes from a conservative like John MacArthur or liberals like Soott Bailey or Robert Cargill the Driscoll fan base circles the wagons and sheer charismatic authority is cited.
By now it is impossible for Driscoll's fanbase to say that critics are just liberals in favor of a hippie queer Jesus or fundamentalists who are upset that Jesus told knock knock jokes to hookers. No, what both liberals and conservatives have started articulating is that Mark Driscoll puts himself and his interpretation of certain texts above scripture while claiming to "just preach what's in the Bible". When confronted about this he just doubles down and says "I'm a Bible teacher and if you disagree with me I'd be glad to discuss this with you."
Want to schedule an appointment with Robert Cargill or John MacArthur, Mark? It seems that by MacArthur's account of things Driscoll has not been that eager to have that discussion. To go by what Driscoll told Thor Tolo years ago if any pastoral folks are uptight about his take on Song of Songs that's because they're looking at porn. I doubt MacArthur would appreciate being told that if he's objecting to Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs it must be because he's looking at porn. Team Pyro has already spent some time suggesting that if anyone's seeing porn it's Driscoll in his visions.
IF there's a crash it could be a disastrous crash but it may not be the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing could be no crash for years and years. King Saul had success at every turn for quite a few years and then the downward spiral into paranoia, madness, and cruelty began all while people still referred to him as the annointed, God's chosen leader for the time. Just because God tells you to specifically do something doesn't prove in itself you know Him. Even Judas was on the same team as Jesus, to pick a New Testament example. We cannot be certain that success proves Driscoll's legit anymore than it proves Benny Hinn or Todd Bentley or Paula White or T. D. Jakes or Rick Warren or John MacArthur is automatically legit.
While gays in Seattle have waited for Mark to be caught at a gay bar and others assume a sex scandal is in the works I would cautiously propose that the real scandal has already been slowly taking shape, the lack of competence and good will displayed by the counseling pastoral arm of the denomination. I don't say that lightly and I don't speak as someone who had no experience. I have felt for years that if there were a disaster brewing at Mars Hill it would be about exactly this topic, church discipline and how the top down approach often lacks mercy and can seem arbitrary.
That someone has finally come forward about church disciplinary procedures that seem abusing and controlling does not surprise me. Honestly, right now that I'm blogging about it I'm surprised it took this long. I would have thought something would have shown up earlier. I would have thought anyone who'd simply read some of the waivers they'd have to sign to even get counseling from Mars Hill might have started putting together that what it amounts to is a tithe-based form of entertainment without an assurance the pastor who counsels you is necessarily up to the task.
You may find yourself in a position where a counseling pastor assumes the worst about you and your associates; gives advice that fractures relationship; and then when asked to simply explain the basis for his counsel stonewalls you. You might discover that some vital piece of information that could have ameliorated a longstanding conflict was not brought to your attention because some pastors decided you just didn't need to know something that made all the difference in the world toward a reconciled relationship because it happened to come from some people who decided to leave the church. If they left the church that meant they were only after control.
Then you might have to decide if you had to take the risk of going against that counsel and finding someone else to step in and help seek some reconciliation after a pastor or two have decided that's not on the table. And if you do that, God willing, you'll find some of those folks have a change of heart and are sorry about the earlier advice and glad that reconciliation happened. If you haven't figured out that I wasn't speaking hypothetically I might as well say I was not speaking hypothetically in this paragraph and the one before it.
So, no, I'm not the least bit surprised that someone finally felt a need to go public about Mars Hill church discipline or pastoral counseling. I got some terrible as well as terrific counsel from Mars Hill pastors in my time there. In consideration of the love I have for my pastoral friends who gave the wonderful counsel in the past I did not wish to blog much of the terrible counsel. And even in one case where some counsel I got wasn't so good that got patched up very nicely! I, too, was an asshole so if someone gives me well-meant advice that doesn't work out, that's still on me and finally not them. Love covers a multitude of sins, a godly man can overlook an offense. If someone gets something grievously wrong but I know I love them and they love me I can roll with that. If there is a lack of clear competency good will sure helps.
But in other cases there were situations in which there was neither a demonstration of competency nor good will and that did make things messy for me. Naming names is not important, sharing that this news that is shocking to other people is not to me is what I've been sharing. I don't know if I should have shared this earlier but I feel like I should share this now. I don't want Mars Hill to head for a disastrous fall but if disaster is unavoidable I would rather one or two guys have to eat the whole flock of crows than for the whole people to be forced to eat crow because a man or two persists in unentreatibility.
I do really love the people at Mars Hill and still pray for them but that doesn't mean the institution can always outrun the full consequences of ill advised policies and decisions. I don't know what the future holds, I've been meditating on Ecclesiastes enough to know that. When times are good be happy and when times are bad know that God has made one as well as the other so that no one can find out what the future may be. If Mars Hill is getting flack for its disciplinary sternness I'm sorry to see this both for those harmed and for those who perpetuate the harm. I can't speculate about the future.
I can, however, in good faith and in all honesty say this, that when I finally felt I needed to leave Mars Hill back in 2008 I warned at least some of them about this very issue that's become a talking point now. I warned that if there wasn't some circumspection and introspection about the basis and practice of church discipline, going right down to one's practical theology of sin, that a disaster was on the horizon. Whether or not anyone considered my advice is now completely moot.
http://matthewpaulturner.net/jesus-needs-new-pr/mark-driscolls-church-discipline-contract-looking-for-true-repentance-at-mars-hill-church-sign-on-the-dotted-line/
http://matthewpaulturner.net/jesus-needs-new-pr/mark-driscolls-gospel-shame-the-truth-about-discipline-excommunication-and-cult-like-control-at-mars-hill/
That someone from Mars Hill has gone public about a discipline contract does not surprise me. It disappoints me but does not surprise me. I am not in a position to be sure that this person named Andrew is telling the whole story. I'm not sure there's any thing that can certainly be discussed beyond some rudimentary points. One is that someone finally felt that Mars Hill disciplinary procedure is problematic enough to decide to go public. This may not mean the person who did this has good motives but if we account for divine providence it may not be necessary to be certain of every detail. This does not necessarily give us an assurance the anti-Driscolls are right more than the pro-Driscolls.
On the other hand, now might be a time to share that a discipline contract, whatever its merits in a specific case, does not seem like a huge surprise to me. The reason I think it is important to finally say something in public about this controversy, whether Andrew was "truly repentant" or not is because when I left Mars Hill one of the things I shared was that I was concerned that if things didn't change in the way Mars Hill approached church discipline and pastoral counseling a disaster could be down the road. I wasn't sure what form the disaster would take if it happened but I felt that it was going to come from two things: 1) a case in which discipline was unusually stern and 2) a case in which the sternness of the discipline was part of a sequence of events in which disciplinary precedent made the stern action seem arbitrary or out of proportion to the offense. Well ... it's too early to tell for sure but it's "possible" that moment may have arrived. I sincerely hope not but as I just said it's a bit early to tell.
Now shunning errant members whose errors were real or simiply imagined began earlier than 2011 or 2012. By now the 2007 firings of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer are not that hard to look up. The coverage initially done by Seattle alternative paper The Stranger was actually pretty fair. I don't say this because I like reading The Stranger. I only read The Stranger for about as long as Chris DeLaurenti was writing a column about the local classical music scene. But I can truthfully say that the coverage was, particularly coming from them, fair minded and fairly accurate in my opinion. The material was also leaked to the Seattle Times (if memory serves). So the coverage of the firings goes back for years.
And it was during that time that folks at Mars Hill were urged to shun the fired pastors and only speak to them if we were going to urge them to repentence. One of these men was my neighbor and I consider him a valuable friend. I've met his kids and like his kids. I was not going to then nor would now stop associating with a brother in Christ and a friend. Yet a friend of my friend once asked me to pray for him years ago because he was being considered as a candidate for church discipline for having been seen with this man who was supposed to be shunned ... even though the person who reported this to a pastor at Mars Hill was at the same social event! I began to put together that if I wanted to spend time with my friend and not get flak from Mars Hill leaders simply not renewing was a good way to do this. After all, if I wasn't a member how could I get flak for hanging out with people I'd been told by Mars Hill leadership to shun? There was no case against me.
And by letting my contract get cancelled out by elder fiat and not renewing I was convinced of another thing. After renewing my membership contract for years and then not renewing it after it was voided by elders I came to this conclusion, if the "covenant" was ended it was not by me. A covenant you have to renew every few years isn't a covenent unless we're talking short-term marriages in some place like Sweden. This means that if the covenant was nullified it was not by me but by the elders. I.e. in the plainest possible language I was not the covenant breaker, they were, and that gave me no incentive to renew what was really a contractual relationship in which I was obliged to give money to them and had no voting rights in the church and no practical appeal should a church disciplinary issue come up. I'd read the by-laws, I'd worked out the unlikelihood of any significant changes in the doctrinal statement. And I had seen how the culture of the church had decided to ostracize a fellow believer on grounds that I had not found adequately convincing.
I am not against church discipline, in case anyone might wonder that. There is a time and a place for confession of sin and for repentence. There are times and place for confession of sin that are not just individual but corporate.
Let me put it another way, when I didn't renew I didn't renew out of concern for the lack of accountability for what appeared to be arbitrary applications of church discipline. I was asked to shun two men I respected who did not seem to have done anything close to being as bad as a serial adulteress whom I was asked to NOT shun because she said she wasn't even a Christian and since the pastors agreed with her the whole membership thing and discipline didn't apply. Trouble was we heard after about a year which church she was attending. If she was claiming to have never been a Christian to avoid disicplinary sanction a number of Mars Hill members told me they'd seen her a few times and knew people at the other church she was attending. If someone was really never a Christian what was up with continuing to attend other churches? Don't true heathens in the Emerald City have better things to do on Sunday than go to church?
And why, then, was I asked to shun a man who was my neighbor and who had befriended my family when there was no clear explanation that what he did was even close to being as bad as what the adulteress did? Surely I was not the only person to point out that this presented a huge problem of consistent disciplinary precedent. When I made this point to elders I got zip. One elder trotted out the old saw "When dad and mom are having an argument the kids don't need to know what's going on." So when dad and mom live off the tithe checks given by the children they don't have to explain why dad decides to fire mom? But I blogged about this in the past.
What ended up happening during that time was I ended up in a place where friends who I saw spending time together every week were no longer speaking to each other. They'd speak to me but not to each other and this went on for years. When any of these two groups had any overlap in a social activity there'd be awkward silence (and in several ways that still happens). I was stressed out at work and stressed out because of family conflicts that Mars Hill people had made much worse rather than better and I was seeing my Mars Hill circle of friends circle wagons in what looked like a disaster.
I was going to use a compouned word starting with "cluster" but in deference to some PG language for this post I'm refraining. All my friends in and outside Mars Hill know by now that this is how I've fielded both sides and I stand by it. The 2007 controversies were a shameful fiasco that nobody in the church or out of it can entirely live down. At a practical level my entire social life was integrated into that church so seeing all that stuff happen was so bad it was sort of like watching family members going through a divorce. I began to believe the smart money bailed out before the firings happened. If you're reading this you know who you are already.
After I'd decided to not renew my membership I kept attending for several months because most of my best friends were there and a lot of them still are. Of course with a lot of them being married or being parents I hardly got to see them anyway. I even kept giving to the campus I attended for a time. But a friend of mine preached some sermons on Jonah in later 2008 and the sermons were convicting. They were convicting because of a simple question, is there something you sense God wants you to do that you don't want to do because it feels too risky or inconvenient or scary? I began to think it through and realized that, yeah, that was actually where I was at. It's one of those strange ironies for me that I believe God used my friend's sermons to convict me that it really was finally time to move on to a new church home.
Friends of mine have told me that my peaceful, amiable transition out of Mars Hill without bad blood and with mutual respect and affection was pretty much a miracle, particularly given what I actually shared on my way out. Well, if so, God is very good and I am fortunate. I have made some trenchent criticisms of Mars Hill but I have not done so with an eye to demonize them even if they have demonized others. They are fellow believers and I want the best for them.
To put it in old school Pentecostal/spiritual warfare terms, I love the people at Mars Hill who share life with me and I pray for them regularly. I do, however, hope that what might be called Mars Hill the principality will be broken. For as long as the top brass don't want to admit that what they're gunning for is becoming, in essence, a Calvinist Baptist complementarian denomination I will be comfortable saying they need to stop hiding from themselves. If by twenty years there are more than a dozen churches and tens of thousands of members with a goal to have an intergenerational impact what do these people think they're doing? "Not" making an institution?
But though I was blessed to leave on the best possible terms and have remained friends with my Mars Hill friends and love spending time with them when I can; I have been disappointed to hear that a lot of people had much worse experiences. Sometimes I have wondered if the new blood may be bad blood and bring bad blood with it. I'm not sure, but I did begin to hear about redemption groups and about how if there was any sin in your life it was a "worship problem" and how the idea was that everything comes down to idolatry. If you worshipped yourself into a mess you were going to worship yourself out of it.
Well, the confessions of the Driscolls in Real Marriage were sobering and in some ways they have some bearing on a controversy about church discipline and accountability. This will take some time so bear with me if you're even still reading this. It turns out all this time Driscoll was extolling wifely stripteases and holy blow jobs he was unhappy with his wife, not realizing that she felt uncomfortable about sex due to a history of sexual abuse and (probably) because of her husband's way of approaching sex. Now I have read excerpts in which Mark Driscoll said that in the end the thing that cured his moodiness was frankly more frequent sex and that's what he needed. Do I need a larger context for that? Is there really a larger context for understanding the flat declaration that more orgasms for Mark Driscoll equaled a stabilized mood?
If a guy who is part of a redemption group, accountability group, or community group at Mars Hill sat down one night and said to the people in his group, "You know, I've got these struggles with moods and the only thing that makes them go away is having sex more often." how do you think guys in that group might react to this man? Might the man be told sex was his idol; that he was using sex as a drug to stabilize his moods; and that he needed to repent of his sin of making sex a god and using his wife to make himself feel better? The people I've met at Mars Hill over the years would seem to be the sort to actually say that. He would probably be told that using orgasms as a kind of mood-stabilizing drug suggests a problem, wouldn't he?
But if Mark Driscoll states plainly in Real Marriage that the only cure for his moodiness was more frequent sex this goes with no remark other than to defend him?
It gives a curious spin to this ...
http://pastormark.tv/2012/01/04/9-reasons-real-marriage-is-for-singles
Nine reasons Real Marriage is for singles, huh? The Driscolls say to not copy them. Heh, that probably goes double for singles, right? If an unmarried person struggles with depression or moodiness then Mark Driscoll's self-diagnosis that the moodiness goes away with more orgasms might not be the best practical methodology for single people who aren't married! There are a few Christians I've met where if they heard someone say they need orgasms to stabilize their mood that this sounds like the symptom of a straight up sex addict. No ifs, ands or buts.
Now what if Driscoll ends up in a situation comparable to what Mars Hill pastor Bill Clem went through, with a wife who was slowly dying of cancer? The chemo treatment was severe, so severe sex was not an option for a long, long time (as in she eventually died and sex wasn't on the table). Clem gave a sermon years ago in which he said guys who think self-control and self-denial about sex are only for single people will be in for a huge shock if they get married (and stay married). I had a chance to work with Bill a little in a ministry and, honestly, I like the guy. I appreciated his openness and his humility. If Mark Driscoll needs more frequent sex to stabilize his moods God help the Driscoll clan if Grace ends up with an illness that makes sex impossible because at that point Mark Driscoll could become impossible.
For people who never got any counseling at a church like Mars Hill you may not be aware that there are things you may be asked to sign called waivers. The things that get waived are stuff like:
1. That this is actually professional medical, psychological or legal advice
2. That this is actually confidential (it's not, they reserve the right to inform law enforcement if what you share turns out to be a matter of breaking a law)
What this means, in essence, is that if you're a regularly giving church member you're obliged to give financial or warrant a talking to but you have no voting rights as a member about things like the appointment of deacons or other matters of church polity at a local level. You have also been given a situation in which to get a counseling session with a pastor you will likely be asked to sign waivers that indemnify them against legal liability for whatever advice they may give you. They are not required to certify competence in mental health, medical knowledge, or the law and in a non-denominational setting there is not even any need for academic credentialing in theology or the study of biblical literature.
You have basically tithed for what is considered binding in terms of spiritual discipline within the church but that at a purely legal level might as well be entertainment. Should it happen that a pastor decides what you have shared should become public knowledge throughout the church, well, we've just been notified of that, haven't we? If you were asked to confess to some sin that you regularly struggle with as a part of the membership application process you may come to the conclusion, as a friend of mine did, that what this amounts to is leadership having ammunition for a database so that if at some point you dissent from leadership there's something to hold over your head. If the tables are turned and you were to ask the people in authority over you if they have any recurring sins would you get an answer?
And if after all this you go to a pastor for counsel in a church setting like what I saw at Mars Hill what you may get is someone who might be listed as a "biblical living" pastor so there's no misunderstanding about competency. As Steve Hays put it over at Triablogue years ago the tricky thing about "biblical counseling" is that it will only be as good as the exegesis brought to a situation by the nouthetic counselor. It is not always clear that those nouthetic counselors are competent exegetes. Some of them are but in the case of a church like Mars Hill what you could get is someone who was appointed to be a "biblical living" pastor whose formal education may have stopped at high school, or an undergraduate degree in business, and who pleads the Holy Spirit and maybe the approval of Mark Driscoll. I think a thinking man or woman will be forgiven by both God and men for deciding those qualifications just aren't good enough.
When I left Mars Hill one of the very sincere cautions I passed on was that I was concerned about both the competence and good will of "pastoral counseling" as it had been practiced at Mars Hill. It wasn't all terrible counsel. In fact some of the best personal counsel I've gotten in my life were from Mars Hill pastors. But I have to add this huge, huge caveat, the two pastors who gave me the best advice gave me that advice having known my family for years and having known me fairly well over the years. In other words they "led" out of love for me that was personal as well as pastoral and for the people in my life they knew I was having trouble relating to at the time. And they were not guys who were officially listed as "counseling" or "biblical living" pastors. They frankly didn't need to be. Years of that thing called actual fellowship gave them the tools and mutual love gave them a basis from which to give actually wise counsel. As an axiom goes many people who pay for therapy wouldn't have to if they had good friends.
But it seems that for a lot of people they weren't even close to this fortunate. They didn't get counsel from pastors who actually gave a crap about them. They didn't get counsel from pastors with any competency in mental health or biblical literature that was demonstrated beyond fitting the preferences of a leadership panel. Particularly in the wake of the 2007 firings the default mode a lot of campus pastors took was to assume that if anyone had any trust issues with elders of any kind that was a sin issue that sprung from pride. I have written enough about my concerns about the truncated hamartiology I saw at Mars Hill I won't bore you with the details. Search the blog for a term as arcane as hamartiology or distaff spellings and you'll find that.
Now the question Jason Blair asked over at the Boar's Head Tavern was this, "Are we seeing pride going before destruction?" In light of all the "I stand by what I said" and "I'm a Bible teacher" Driscoll has been doing the answer that question could be "yes". How bad will that fall be? It depends on how unwilling some people at Mars Hill are to concede that maybe how they've handled things at almost any critical juncturewas bad. Not just concede that how they handled things was bad but to make restitution. Make restitution would mean publicly admitting to error and having hurt people. It would mean establishing a basis for internal and external accountability.
It might mean doing something besides spinning the failure of a capital campaign as far back as 2005 into a claim about good stewardship when the situation was they hadn't adequately researched zoning requirements before purchasing what was supposed to be Ballard campus #2, that one Driscoll mentions in Reformission Rev. It's very easy to go easy on folks who admit to mistakes but if you don't admit a 1.5 million purchase was not the shrewdest move, well, it becomes tougher to show some leniency, especially if along the way you start doling out "discipline contracts".
For every Driscoll drone who talks about Mahaney or Piper mentoring Mark Driscoll please stop taking that idea seriously. Mahaney's on the other side of the country and last I heard isn't even necessarily attending his own church. People say Driscoll is "teachable" because he's got the kinds of pastors whose names sound cool when you name-drop them to show some enthusiasm for him. This is not the same as actually being mentored. A mere stamp of approval isn't enough, a mere few words about not adequately expressing Christ's love for the church only gets him to change his tone for about three sermons. When someone outside Mars Hill tries to point out where Driscoll is going off the rails we see the way things went with John MacArthur. I have made my lack of agreement with MacArthur on all sorts of things plain but I respect that he said something. But the trouble is that when serious criticism of Driscoll as a biblical scholar and exegete comes from a conservative like John MacArthur or liberals like Soott Bailey or Robert Cargill the Driscoll fan base circles the wagons and sheer charismatic authority is cited.
By now it is impossible for Driscoll's fanbase to say that critics are just liberals in favor of a hippie queer Jesus or fundamentalists who are upset that Jesus told knock knock jokes to hookers. No, what both liberals and conservatives have started articulating is that Mark Driscoll puts himself and his interpretation of certain texts above scripture while claiming to "just preach what's in the Bible". When confronted about this he just doubles down and says "I'm a Bible teacher and if you disagree with me I'd be glad to discuss this with you."
Want to schedule an appointment with Robert Cargill or John MacArthur, Mark? It seems that by MacArthur's account of things Driscoll has not been that eager to have that discussion. To go by what Driscoll told Thor Tolo years ago if any pastoral folks are uptight about his take on Song of Songs that's because they're looking at porn. I doubt MacArthur would appreciate being told that if he's objecting to Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs it must be because he's looking at porn. Team Pyro has already spent some time suggesting that if anyone's seeing porn it's Driscoll in his visions.
IF there's a crash it could be a disastrous crash but it may not be the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing could be no crash for years and years. King Saul had success at every turn for quite a few years and then the downward spiral into paranoia, madness, and cruelty began all while people still referred to him as the annointed, God's chosen leader for the time. Just because God tells you to specifically do something doesn't prove in itself you know Him. Even Judas was on the same team as Jesus, to pick a New Testament example. We cannot be certain that success proves Driscoll's legit anymore than it proves Benny Hinn or Todd Bentley or Paula White or T. D. Jakes or Rick Warren or John MacArthur is automatically legit.
While gays in Seattle have waited for Mark to be caught at a gay bar and others assume a sex scandal is in the works I would cautiously propose that the real scandal has already been slowly taking shape, the lack of competence and good will displayed by the counseling pastoral arm of the denomination. I don't say that lightly and I don't speak as someone who had no experience. I have felt for years that if there were a disaster brewing at Mars Hill it would be about exactly this topic, church discipline and how the top down approach often lacks mercy and can seem arbitrary.
That someone has finally come forward about church disciplinary procedures that seem abusing and controlling does not surprise me. Honestly, right now that I'm blogging about it I'm surprised it took this long. I would have thought something would have shown up earlier. I would have thought anyone who'd simply read some of the waivers they'd have to sign to even get counseling from Mars Hill might have started putting together that what it amounts to is a tithe-based form of entertainment without an assurance the pastor who counsels you is necessarily up to the task.
You may find yourself in a position where a counseling pastor assumes the worst about you and your associates; gives advice that fractures relationship; and then when asked to simply explain the basis for his counsel stonewalls you. You might discover that some vital piece of information that could have ameliorated a longstanding conflict was not brought to your attention because some pastors decided you just didn't need to know something that made all the difference in the world toward a reconciled relationship because it happened to come from some people who decided to leave the church. If they left the church that meant they were only after control.
Then you might have to decide if you had to take the risk of going against that counsel and finding someone else to step in and help seek some reconciliation after a pastor or two have decided that's not on the table. And if you do that, God willing, you'll find some of those folks have a change of heart and are sorry about the earlier advice and glad that reconciliation happened. If you haven't figured out that I wasn't speaking hypothetically I might as well say I was not speaking hypothetically in this paragraph and the one before it.
So, no, I'm not the least bit surprised that someone finally felt a need to go public about Mars Hill church discipline or pastoral counseling. I got some terrible as well as terrific counsel from Mars Hill pastors in my time there. In consideration of the love I have for my pastoral friends who gave the wonderful counsel in the past I did not wish to blog much of the terrible counsel. And even in one case where some counsel I got wasn't so good that got patched up very nicely! I, too, was an asshole so if someone gives me well-meant advice that doesn't work out, that's still on me and finally not them. Love covers a multitude of sins, a godly man can overlook an offense. If someone gets something grievously wrong but I know I love them and they love me I can roll with that. If there is a lack of clear competency good will sure helps.
But in other cases there were situations in which there was neither a demonstration of competency nor good will and that did make things messy for me. Naming names is not important, sharing that this news that is shocking to other people is not to me is what I've been sharing. I don't know if I should have shared this earlier but I feel like I should share this now. I don't want Mars Hill to head for a disastrous fall but if disaster is unavoidable I would rather one or two guys have to eat the whole flock of crows than for the whole people to be forced to eat crow because a man or two persists in unentreatibility.
I do really love the people at Mars Hill and still pray for them but that doesn't mean the institution can always outrun the full consequences of ill advised policies and decisions. I don't know what the future holds, I've been meditating on Ecclesiastes enough to know that. When times are good be happy and when times are bad know that God has made one as well as the other so that no one can find out what the future may be. If Mars Hill is getting flack for its disciplinary sternness I'm sorry to see this both for those harmed and for those who perpetuate the harm. I can't speculate about the future.
I can, however, in good faith and in all honesty say this, that when I finally felt I needed to leave Mars Hill back in 2008 I warned at least some of them about this very issue that's become a talking point now. I warned that if there wasn't some circumspection and introspection about the basis and practice of church discipline, going right down to one's practical theology of sin, that a disaster was on the horizon. Whether or not anyone considered my advice is now completely moot.
D. G. Hart offers a suggestion on why neo-Calvinists make terrible CCM
http://oldlife.org/2012/01/contemporary-cosmic-christology-and-contemporary-christian-music/
... For neo-Calvinists distinctions between creational and redemptive spheres when considering aesthetics is a form of dualism and a sign of infidelity because it denies Christ’s lordship over all things.
The frustrating aspect of those who are so eager to blur distinctions between the religious and the secular, between the eternal and the temporal, is that they are long on inspiration and short on qualification. What I mean is that someone could plausibly read Kuyper on the effort to integrate the church and all other walks of life as an endorsement of contemporary Christian music.
If I may provide a musician's perspective on this perhaps the way to illustrate this point is to put things this way: in "classical" church music and worship there is no prohibition against learning new styles, assimilating them into a liturgical setting where they are useful, and measuring the appeal of the style over against its practicality in a liturgical setting. If no one ever did this in any churches we would not have gained the Bach cantatas, Luther's hymns, anthems by Tallis, and so on.
There was not necessarily in any of those epochs a need to go out and deliberately court the contemporary because each epoch of Church music was contemporary in its own way in the Western Church. There were debates about whether Bach's Matthew Passion was acceptable since it borrowed heavily from the forms and idioms of opera but the piece still got performed and it's still a masterpiece of sacred choral literature in the Western tradition. At one point, however, it was "new" and contemporary. Other musicians and musicologists have already spent time explaining how the "high" and "low" distinction we have seen in popular and concert music was not as great in the 19th century or earlier periods as it has become since then; the 20th century saw an almost complete break between academic and popular styles. About that I will have plenty to write later.
What I'm trying to get across is that the whole idea of even bothering to keep up with popular styles at all is a uniquely 20th century business cycle procedure rather than one in which culture necessarily springs forth in an organic way. Step back and look at popular music not at the surface level of production values or compression or audio engineering; look at it beyond the perspective of regional popularity and instead look at it in terms of the nexus of musical form and text setting and you'll begin to discover that there have been no significant innovations in popular music at all in the last sixty years.
A lot of the core ideas for forms and setting approaches emerged within folk music and the Tin Pan Alley tradition. And while in the minds of partisans who conflate aesthetic and cultural norms rock music is not playing for the Man, it is, probably more so than even chamber music would be these days if you consider the millions or billions at stake. As Frank Zappa put it, if you were a rock musician and you sold 20,000 copies of an album they'd sniff at you and consider you a failure whereas if you sold 20,000 copies of classical music you'd be a hero. Marketers have a strong need to sell different styles as different based on demographic appeals but musicologists have been noticing that the barriers between, say, white and black popular music have been more fluid than marketers have at times been interested in dealing with. In a similar way, a composer like Haydn could appeal to a broader audience in his life than he likely will now. He did play in street ensembles after all.
But in contemporary Christian music there may not often be a whole lot of bringing the past into the present and adapting the present options back into what is musically useful. We may see, instead, in the neo-Calvinist scene particularly, a case where a bunch of ambitious guys want to be a "Christian" version of Radiohead or whatever band is current. Musicians in churches of this sort are urged to find out what is going on in contemporary music and name-dropping is important to establish street cred. That was what I noticed at a church I used to be part of. In the church I'm part of now the question is thankfully more prosaic and important, "Can you play this?" Yes, yes I can and I'd be happy to. The need to know new bands isn't important if you're playing the old standards, even if you're playing them in new ways. I look forward to the possibility of playing some more, actually, but first I'll need to get my glasses fixed up.
... For neo-Calvinists distinctions between creational and redemptive spheres when considering aesthetics is a form of dualism and a sign of infidelity because it denies Christ’s lordship over all things.
The frustrating aspect of those who are so eager to blur distinctions between the religious and the secular, between the eternal and the temporal, is that they are long on inspiration and short on qualification. What I mean is that someone could plausibly read Kuyper on the effort to integrate the church and all other walks of life as an endorsement of contemporary Christian music.
If I may provide a musician's perspective on this perhaps the way to illustrate this point is to put things this way: in "classical" church music and worship there is no prohibition against learning new styles, assimilating them into a liturgical setting where they are useful, and measuring the appeal of the style over against its practicality in a liturgical setting. If no one ever did this in any churches we would not have gained the Bach cantatas, Luther's hymns, anthems by Tallis, and so on.
There was not necessarily in any of those epochs a need to go out and deliberately court the contemporary because each epoch of Church music was contemporary in its own way in the Western Church. There were debates about whether Bach's Matthew Passion was acceptable since it borrowed heavily from the forms and idioms of opera but the piece still got performed and it's still a masterpiece of sacred choral literature in the Western tradition. At one point, however, it was "new" and contemporary. Other musicians and musicologists have already spent time explaining how the "high" and "low" distinction we have seen in popular and concert music was not as great in the 19th century or earlier periods as it has become since then; the 20th century saw an almost complete break between academic and popular styles. About that I will have plenty to write later.
What I'm trying to get across is that the whole idea of even bothering to keep up with popular styles at all is a uniquely 20th century business cycle procedure rather than one in which culture necessarily springs forth in an organic way. Step back and look at popular music not at the surface level of production values or compression or audio engineering; look at it beyond the perspective of regional popularity and instead look at it in terms of the nexus of musical form and text setting and you'll begin to discover that there have been no significant innovations in popular music at all in the last sixty years.
A lot of the core ideas for forms and setting approaches emerged within folk music and the Tin Pan Alley tradition. And while in the minds of partisans who conflate aesthetic and cultural norms rock music is not playing for the Man, it is, probably more so than even chamber music would be these days if you consider the millions or billions at stake. As Frank Zappa put it, if you were a rock musician and you sold 20,000 copies of an album they'd sniff at you and consider you a failure whereas if you sold 20,000 copies of classical music you'd be a hero. Marketers have a strong need to sell different styles as different based on demographic appeals but musicologists have been noticing that the barriers between, say, white and black popular music have been more fluid than marketers have at times been interested in dealing with. In a similar way, a composer like Haydn could appeal to a broader audience in his life than he likely will now. He did play in street ensembles after all.
But in contemporary Christian music there may not often be a whole lot of bringing the past into the present and adapting the present options back into what is musically useful. We may see, instead, in the neo-Calvinist scene particularly, a case where a bunch of ambitious guys want to be a "Christian" version of Radiohead or whatever band is current. Musicians in churches of this sort are urged to find out what is going on in contemporary music and name-dropping is important to establish street cred. That was what I noticed at a church I used to be part of. In the church I'm part of now the question is thankfully more prosaic and important, "Can you play this?" Yes, yes I can and I'd be happy to. The need to know new bands isn't important if you're playing the old standards, even if you're playing them in new ways. I look forward to the possibility of playing some more, actually, but first I'll need to get my glasses fixed up.
Scott is in fine form over at Scotteriology with "God Loves Australia"
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/god-loves-australia/#comments
Australia is in no rush to let Todd Bentley bring his "fresh fire" into the country. They don't all come from the US of A now, do they?
Australia is in no rush to let Todd Bentley bring his "fresh fire" into the country. They don't all come from the US of A now, do they?
well parts 1 through 3 of "The Wounds of Discovery" are done
After months of delays due to holidays and eye surgery the next installment of Batman: the Agony of Loss and the Madness of Desire over at Mockingbird should be going up. At least parts 1 through 3. "The Wounds of Discovery" should start going up some time this month.
Every time I think the next part in this project writing about Batman: the animated series should be easier than the last I keep being wrong! I don't want to spoil things in advance but I've been excited to have even parts 1 through 3 done. Parts 4 and 5 (with a possible 6, depending on how 5 turns out) are still in the works. If you read the introduction you may remember I opened with a passage from Ecclesiastes that says, "Better what the eye sees than the wandering of desire." Well, dear readers, you can anticipate a few more passages from Ecclesiastes and maybe a proverb or two to show up for Part 4.
I know for some people who don't look at cartoons as a serious art forum considering the human condition it won't make sense to tie passages of Hebrew wisdom literature to a superhero cartoon. Well, so it goes, I can't help that. But I hope that if you read my essay on a certain Batman villain you'll appreciate why I open with the proverb that says, "Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him" and if you know your Batman lore you will probably have figured out which Batman villain best fits that description! I'm looking forward to "The Wounds of Discovery" getting done and to the new parts going up on Mockingbird. M-bird is temporarily down, though, so it may take a little time for the essays to go up. Meanwhile I can assure you that at long last I've got some more writing done.
It's only fitting that this year, the 20th anniversary year of the show, I'm able to write about what makes the show great. It truly is a classic show that changed childrens' entertainment in ways I hope to show in future essays. If it seems staid and slow-moving now I hope that what I wrote in Cartoon Nostalgia, Cartoon Revolutions laid a foundation from the perspective of a child of the 1980s on how revolutionary Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's creation was in the land of kids' shows. In fact when I get to writing about Two-Face I'll have a chance to explain that even more. But for now, tune in this month for "The Wounds of Discovery" over at Mockingbird.
End of advertisement for the day. :)
Every time I think the next part in this project writing about Batman: the animated series should be easier than the last I keep being wrong! I don't want to spoil things in advance but I've been excited to have even parts 1 through 3 done. Parts 4 and 5 (with a possible 6, depending on how 5 turns out) are still in the works. If you read the introduction you may remember I opened with a passage from Ecclesiastes that says, "Better what the eye sees than the wandering of desire." Well, dear readers, you can anticipate a few more passages from Ecclesiastes and maybe a proverb or two to show up for Part 4.
I know for some people who don't look at cartoons as a serious art forum considering the human condition it won't make sense to tie passages of Hebrew wisdom literature to a superhero cartoon. Well, so it goes, I can't help that. But I hope that if you read my essay on a certain Batman villain you'll appreciate why I open with the proverb that says, "Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him" and if you know your Batman lore you will probably have figured out which Batman villain best fits that description! I'm looking forward to "The Wounds of Discovery" getting done and to the new parts going up on Mockingbird. M-bird is temporarily down, though, so it may take a little time for the essays to go up. Meanwhile I can assure you that at long last I've got some more writing done.
It's only fitting that this year, the 20th anniversary year of the show, I'm able to write about what makes the show great. It truly is a classic show that changed childrens' entertainment in ways I hope to show in future essays. If it seems staid and slow-moving now I hope that what I wrote in Cartoon Nostalgia, Cartoon Revolutions laid a foundation from the perspective of a child of the 1980s on how revolutionary Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's creation was in the land of kids' shows. In fact when I get to writing about Two-Face I'll have a chance to explain that even more. But for now, tune in this month for "The Wounds of Discovery" over at Mockingbird.
End of advertisement for the day. :)
Monday, January 23, 2012
legacy is always mixed
This is a simple, essential observation shared over at Phoenix Preacher since you know who passed recently (and if you don't know who don't sweat it). What this means in that more famous case is that a late-in-his-life revelation reveals a legacy to be tained in a terrible way. Does this mean the overall legacy is only evil? Well ... consider what your own legacy is, or in a more blunt way, if you have one. How do you know? As I have written a few times at this blog God could by some providence kill all your children, destroy your belongings, and leave you with a spouse who sincerely believes the kindest thting to tell you is to "bless" God and accept death. And that's before your friends dogpile you and say it had to have been your sinful ways that caused all the trouble. The recently deceased was not Job so far as I know but if we take seriously the ways in which we err it would be tough to say he was Stalin, too.
We don't even know what our legacies will truly be in the end. Ecclesiastes warns that our legacy in the end is to be forgotten, all our greatest feats, however modest they might be, swallowed up by the passing of time. If that is how it is what is a legacy? Well, a lot of people choose to have a very literally living legacy in the form of children. Then again that's always a mixed legacy, isn't it? Children grow up and then don't always become exactly the person you hoped they'd become. They might change religions (to no religion, for instance).
Or they may not change religions in any official sense but they may change political parties or change in some way that you wouldn't have anticipated or approved of. Maybe a child comes out of the closet in the commonly understood sense. Maybe the kid becomes a Calvinist or the wrong kind of Republican, the kind that concedes that sometimes Democrats are actually not evil incarnate even if you don't agree with them. Sometimes your kid bewilders you by getting into stuff you don't get.
Some kids bewildered parents by getting into rock and roll they didn't like. I put off my parents a bit by getting into jazz and of an old sort they didn't quite appreciate. One of the things I recall about my maternal grandmother from my 20s was that I started getting into the music of Duke Ellington. My parents didn't get the fascination and found it odd. My grandmother smiled when she heard I was getting into Duke's work. She said, "You're starting to like the music I liked to listen to when I was your age." I made a point of trying to relate to people older than me and get some idea where they were coming from. I like to think that liking the music my grandma liked was in its way more subversive and non-conformist than other people in my generation who for reasons I still don't understand, liked Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is pretty much Boston's "More Than a Feeling" in a minor key.
Even within a single family a legacy will be perceived differently from one person to another. Were it not for my maternal grandmother I simply would not have become a guitarist. I have occasionally pondered whether in many ways I have taken after my grandmother more than my mother on a few things. It's hard to know how to explain that in a blog entry that I'm improvising. Certainily I am the cumulative result of the parenting methods of my parents and yet during my teen years I got used to extended family scenarios and the most long-standing such scenario was living in a house with my siblings, my mom and stepdad, and grandma.
While it seems the majority of family do not necessarily look back on that period as a very positive one it has been one of the favorite periods of my life. It had it's stresses and troubles but I liked my grandmother. I loved my grandmother would be more accurate, if conventional. She died almost a decade ago and there are times when I miss her, times when I consider she had an ability to get a whole bunch of us who descended from her to have an easier time hanging out with each other. One relative of mine confided to me that with grandma dead it was going to be that much harder to get through some family events because, honestly, grandma was the person in the family he liked most. It's not that I don't love my family members but I could sorta understand how grandma played a vital role in keeping some people in the family on more than the most perfunctory speaking terms.
Years ago when I got one of those patriotic spams about the Greatest Generation it dawned on me that if I had the option of emulating a generation it wouldn't be the Baby Boomers if I could help it. If I were to choose to be like my parents' generation or my grandparents' generation I realized I wanted to be more like my grandparents' generation if that were possible. Not just the bit about fighting the Nazis, either, living with the reality that a bunch of people made stupid fiscal and other policy decisions that all came home to roost. I guess put that way, if the economy tanks as badly as some people fear it may then looking to a generation that weathered the Depression seems smarter than looking to the generation that dropped acid, protested Vietnam, and then became yuppies in the Reagan years. While the Baby Boomer generation would like to accept credit for "changing the world" which generation still had a lot of people in political and social and economic power guiding policy? Hmm ... . Legacies, as the axiom goes, are mixed.
Drew G. I. Hart remarked in the wake of the Rob Bell fracas that the battle between the Piper fanboys and the Bell fanboys was essentially about who would get the 20-35 white boys who will go on to become tomorrow's establishment. I think this was an accurate assessment. I realize it may be terribly cynical to say that but that's what I think, I think D. G. I. Hart is right about that. I also think D.G. Hart is right to point out that in the post Cold War America we have the Reagan coalition has long since fallen apart. Thus we get various Republican sympathizers debating whether or not Ron Paul makes sense of Gringrich makes sense and all that stuff.
But there's something else D. G. I. Hart wrote that intrigued me. He mentioned that despite the rhetoric of emergent generation church leaders there aren't even as many token blacks and other non-white theologians around as from Billy Graham's generation. That's a fair point to raise. In fact it might be a point that Keller made reference to about John Stott's passing. If the Stotts and Grahams did more than the Bells or Driscolls to actually reach out to non-white theologians and thinkers then the "new" generation of evangelicals congratulating themselves on getting things right may be getting some things right at the expense of other things. Neo-Calvinists like to think they're a formidable movement but they are still not growing as fast as Pentecostals, are they?
To make a merely polemical point for folks to think about, what if the older evangelicals had their problems but in their way did not pick the path of least resistence? For instance, maybe Francis Schaeffer was really odd and weird. Yet he seems to have had an influence that goes beyond even just Frank Schaeffer marketing himself as I'm-not-my-dad during election run-ups. Schaeffer's legacy has not been all good but it has not necessarily been all bad and yet the temptation for partisans is to go one way or the other. Just look at his son Frank, who has at various points in the last forty years been a partisan trying to benefit from alternately praising and damning his father's interest in political concerns after shoving him into a sphere he was reluctant to enter.
But what is clear now, decades after Francis Schaeffer's passing, is that he has had an influence. In many cases that influence can be observed in obsessive talk about a "Christian worldview". I've grown tired of that even though I was a huge fan of such talk in my teens and earlier twenties. I left that behind not because I have found it to be of no value but because it is in the end nothing more than a starting point. Unfortunately many Christians use that starting point not as a foundation for actually going out and doing something so much as critique of what others do. It is the treacherous path of the fuzzy line between "engaging culture" and consumerism; between "engaging culture" and a kind of criticism that is either a mercenary attempt to evangelize (which, I suppose, will have its place since Paul did it, too) or a blanket dismissal of something that may shine a light on what is going on with people.
A lot of people in their twenties may not fully realize how much they're copying people in their 40s just as people in their forties may not realize how much they are copying people in their 60s. If we only think of legacy as linear or reactionary or cotninuationist we miss out. There's no reason I can't look to things my grandparents' generation said or did and favor that over things my parents' geenration did. But at this point I'm just rambling and running out of steam.
We don't even know what our legacies will truly be in the end. Ecclesiastes warns that our legacy in the end is to be forgotten, all our greatest feats, however modest they might be, swallowed up by the passing of time. If that is how it is what is a legacy? Well, a lot of people choose to have a very literally living legacy in the form of children. Then again that's always a mixed legacy, isn't it? Children grow up and then don't always become exactly the person you hoped they'd become. They might change religions (to no religion, for instance).
Or they may not change religions in any official sense but they may change political parties or change in some way that you wouldn't have anticipated or approved of. Maybe a child comes out of the closet in the commonly understood sense. Maybe the kid becomes a Calvinist or the wrong kind of Republican, the kind that concedes that sometimes Democrats are actually not evil incarnate even if you don't agree with them. Sometimes your kid bewilders you by getting into stuff you don't get.
Some kids bewildered parents by getting into rock and roll they didn't like. I put off my parents a bit by getting into jazz and of an old sort they didn't quite appreciate. One of the things I recall about my maternal grandmother from my 20s was that I started getting into the music of Duke Ellington. My parents didn't get the fascination and found it odd. My grandmother smiled when she heard I was getting into Duke's work. She said, "You're starting to like the music I liked to listen to when I was your age." I made a point of trying to relate to people older than me and get some idea where they were coming from. I like to think that liking the music my grandma liked was in its way more subversive and non-conformist than other people in my generation who for reasons I still don't understand, liked Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is pretty much Boston's "More Than a Feeling" in a minor key.
Even within a single family a legacy will be perceived differently from one person to another. Were it not for my maternal grandmother I simply would not have become a guitarist. I have occasionally pondered whether in many ways I have taken after my grandmother more than my mother on a few things. It's hard to know how to explain that in a blog entry that I'm improvising. Certainily I am the cumulative result of the parenting methods of my parents and yet during my teen years I got used to extended family scenarios and the most long-standing such scenario was living in a house with my siblings, my mom and stepdad, and grandma.
While it seems the majority of family do not necessarily look back on that period as a very positive one it has been one of the favorite periods of my life. It had it's stresses and troubles but I liked my grandmother. I loved my grandmother would be more accurate, if conventional. She died almost a decade ago and there are times when I miss her, times when I consider she had an ability to get a whole bunch of us who descended from her to have an easier time hanging out with each other. One relative of mine confided to me that with grandma dead it was going to be that much harder to get through some family events because, honestly, grandma was the person in the family he liked most. It's not that I don't love my family members but I could sorta understand how grandma played a vital role in keeping some people in the family on more than the most perfunctory speaking terms.
Years ago when I got one of those patriotic spams about the Greatest Generation it dawned on me that if I had the option of emulating a generation it wouldn't be the Baby Boomers if I could help it. If I were to choose to be like my parents' generation or my grandparents' generation I realized I wanted to be more like my grandparents' generation if that were possible. Not just the bit about fighting the Nazis, either, living with the reality that a bunch of people made stupid fiscal and other policy decisions that all came home to roost. I guess put that way, if the economy tanks as badly as some people fear it may then looking to a generation that weathered the Depression seems smarter than looking to the generation that dropped acid, protested Vietnam, and then became yuppies in the Reagan years. While the Baby Boomer generation would like to accept credit for "changing the world" which generation still had a lot of people in political and social and economic power guiding policy? Hmm ... . Legacies, as the axiom goes, are mixed.
Drew G. I. Hart remarked in the wake of the Rob Bell fracas that the battle between the Piper fanboys and the Bell fanboys was essentially about who would get the 20-35 white boys who will go on to become tomorrow's establishment. I think this was an accurate assessment. I realize it may be terribly cynical to say that but that's what I think, I think D. G. I. Hart is right about that. I also think D.G. Hart is right to point out that in the post Cold War America we have the Reagan coalition has long since fallen apart. Thus we get various Republican sympathizers debating whether or not Ron Paul makes sense of Gringrich makes sense and all that stuff.
But there's something else D. G. I. Hart wrote that intrigued me. He mentioned that despite the rhetoric of emergent generation church leaders there aren't even as many token blacks and other non-white theologians around as from Billy Graham's generation. That's a fair point to raise. In fact it might be a point that Keller made reference to about John Stott's passing. If the Stotts and Grahams did more than the Bells or Driscolls to actually reach out to non-white theologians and thinkers then the "new" generation of evangelicals congratulating themselves on getting things right may be getting some things right at the expense of other things. Neo-Calvinists like to think they're a formidable movement but they are still not growing as fast as Pentecostals, are they?
To make a merely polemical point for folks to think about, what if the older evangelicals had their problems but in their way did not pick the path of least resistence? For instance, maybe Francis Schaeffer was really odd and weird. Yet he seems to have had an influence that goes beyond even just Frank Schaeffer marketing himself as I'm-not-my-dad during election run-ups. Schaeffer's legacy has not been all good but it has not necessarily been all bad and yet the temptation for partisans is to go one way or the other. Just look at his son Frank, who has at various points in the last forty years been a partisan trying to benefit from alternately praising and damning his father's interest in political concerns after shoving him into a sphere he was reluctant to enter.
But what is clear now, decades after Francis Schaeffer's passing, is that he has had an influence. In many cases that influence can be observed in obsessive talk about a "Christian worldview". I've grown tired of that even though I was a huge fan of such talk in my teens and earlier twenties. I left that behind not because I have found it to be of no value but because it is in the end nothing more than a starting point. Unfortunately many Christians use that starting point not as a foundation for actually going out and doing something so much as critique of what others do. It is the treacherous path of the fuzzy line between "engaging culture" and consumerism; between "engaging culture" and a kind of criticism that is either a mercenary attempt to evangelize (which, I suppose, will have its place since Paul did it, too) or a blanket dismissal of something that may shine a light on what is going on with people.
A lot of people in their twenties may not fully realize how much they're copying people in their 40s just as people in their forties may not realize how much they are copying people in their 60s. If we only think of legacy as linear or reactionary or cotninuationist we miss out. There's no reason I can't look to things my grandparents' generation said or did and favor that over things my parents' geenration did. But at this point I'm just rambling and running out of steam.
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