Category — iRecommend

Last summer, I was furiously writing a paper for the Evangelical Homiletics Society annual meeting. If you care to read the paper, it is here.

I had already received an extension on the deadline for this paper and I was coming up against a drop dead due date, meaning that if I didn’t submit the finished paper soon, it wouldn’t be posted on the website and I wouldn’t be able to do my session at the EHS meeting.

Then the hard drive on my Mac mini completely croaked. I lost everything—all the pictures of my kids, every sermon I’ve written, a ton of research, every bit of school work I’ve done since 1998 (including my Th.M. and D.Min. theses), and all my music in iTunes (about 15 GBs worth).

SuperDuper saved my bacon.

I had an external firewire hard drive attached to my mini and SuperDuper backed it up every week. And, since SuperDuper makes the backup drive bootable, I was able to plug in my ancient PowerBook, boot up using the external drive, and keep on working. I did lose a couple of days worth of changes on the EHS paper I was writing, but nothing catastrophic. I made the deadline and was able to give my presentation to the EHS crowd. Of course, my children’s photos, my music, schoolwork, sermons, etc. were all safe and sound as well.

If you use a Mac, get yourself an external hard drive that is the same size as the one on your Mac. Then buy a copy of SuperDuper and set it up to automatically back up your files.

Every.
Single.
Day.

Don’t do it weekly like I did. Even a week’s worth of lost work can be a killer. Today I back up my main Mac daily during lunch.

Yes, I’m aware that Leopard will have Time Machine built in. That does look intriguing. But, um, when is Apple going to ship Leopard again? It was supposed to be this month. It is starting to smell like Vista. What if your hard drive crashes between now and Leopard? Whatta you gonna do then?

Huh?

It’s gonna ship next Friday, October 26th. Here’s a huge list of all the new stuff in it. I apologize, Apple, for comparing OS X 10.5 to Vista. Will you forgive me?

Let’s say that you just started a new blog using Wordpress.

[If you really must, you can substitute Movable Type, Blogger, LiveJournal pMachine, Drupal, and several others for Wordpress. But you do this at your own risk. I've used all of the above and others, but iRecommend Wordpress only.]

Let’s also say that you use a Mac.

Let’s say furthermore that you’re doing your blog writing in Microsoft Word and then pasting it into your blog’s post page online.

Blogger, we have a problem here.

If you blog and use a Mac, then you should cut Word out of your bloglife. Instead, you should download, buy, and use MarsEdit.

What is MarsEdit? It is a blogging application that runs on your Mac. Like Microsoft Word, you type words into it, but unlike Microsoft Word, your words are formatted for your blog, not for paper. When you’re ready for the world to read your writing, MarsEdit posts them to your blog for you, perfectly formatted. It also keeps track of your posts and lets you save drafts, edit published and unpublished posts, add photos effortlessly, include hyperlinks easily, put your stuff in categories with a single click, see a preview while you’re writing, and so on. It’s a word processor for Wordpress; an immovable force for Movable Type.I do all my blogging with MarsEdit and have for years. iRecommend it. Highly.

Incidentally, my friend Dr. McCabe inspired this post as he fits most of the if/then conditions above. Go check out his new site: http://oldtestamentstudies.org. The blog section of his site is here.

And, speaking of Macs, take a look at this photo and this one.)Friends, these photos fill my heart with childlike joy.

If you are a preacher, I highly recommend that you subscribe to Preaching Points, the free weekly podcast from the preaching faculty at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. iTunes link here, RSS link here, website archive link here.

In these brief (less than 10 minute) audio files, you can find helpful, encouraging thoughts about preaching from Haddon Robinson, Jeff Arthurs, and Scott Gibson.

Furthermore, this is a brand new podcast; only two episodes have dropped at this writing. So you can get in now and have the satisfaction of being an early adopter, not the 5 millionth person to find it. Like that time you discovered Chocolate Rain, or the Numa Numa dude, or Paul Potts singing opera.

This is a review of Burger King’s attempt to do iced mocha.

The good: It tastes great! Much better than McDonald’s iced mocha which, by the way is free on Wednesday.

The bad: According to the dude in the drive thru, Mocha BK Joe iced coffee is made with chocolate shake mix; therefore, it is loaded with fat and calories.

Conclusion: A great occasional treat; not an everyday drink.

In 2001 I was pastoring a new little church that was struggling to get off the ground. I spent some time searching the Internet to see what other churches were doing with their websites and one church in particular caught my eye: Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA.

Mars Hill was founded and pastored by Mark Driscoll. This church got my attention for several reasons. First, it was an urban church with multiple locations. Second, it was a church of young adults pastored by a guy in his early 30’s (in other words, roughly the same age as I was). Third, Driscoll was a Bible expositor, meaning he preached a series of paragraph by paragraph messages through an entire book of the Bible. Although his messages were long and lightly-structured (he seems to be of the “running commentary” style of exposition), they were very, very interesting because he knows how to use interesting images and because he has a very direct, “in your face” style of preaching. I found this to be very refreshing. For these reasons, I’ve kept an eye on Mars Hill over the years.

This book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev, is Mark Driscoll’s account of how he started and built Mars Hill Church in Seattle which, as he tells you, is “one of the nation’s least churched cities” (p. 9). This is Driscoll’s second book; it was released just a few weeks ago. In the interest of full-disclosure, I bought this book with my own money and chose to read and review it becasue I liked it. (I say this because lots of new books are given to people who promise to read and review them. I have no problem with that, as long as the reviewer lets you know about the deal.)

In terms of length, this book runs 190 pages of text and photos. That length fits the topic like a standard upright piano fits the living room of a beginning piano teacher. It is just the right length to do the job.

Driscoll states his purpose for writing this book on page 12 when he writes, “My hope is that our hardships and lessons will help to serve others who are undertaking similar missions and inspire the planting and renewing of many churches to reach emerging cultures.” Put simply, this book is intended to inform you about what Driscoll has learned from starting and leading Mars Hill and to persuade you to have a missional focus in your church or church plant. Although there is not much in this book that is different from what you read in other books on church planting, I do think this book is a road that leads you somewhere good. The main lesson that Confessions explicitly teaches is that Christians and their churches must realize that we live in a secular culture; therefore we must think and act like a missionary to a foreign culture would. This is not exactly groundbreaking, though it does need to be emphasized and Driscoll does a good job spelling out what you have to do be an effective missionary to America on pages 15-16.

The implicit message of this book—and the one I found most encouraging—is that you can and should reach your culture through expository preaching that is biblically faithful and hits hard at everyday life. Most church growth “experts” (including many pastors) say that you cannot build a large church and be a book-by-book Bible expositor. Also, most Bible expositors seem to feel that this culture will not sit still for a lengthy exposition of the Scriptures. Driscoll demonstrates that both of these premises are as false as your grandmother’s dentures. This culture needs God’s Word; what it doesn’t need is a boring lecture. Expository preaching, when done right, is more hard hitting and life-changing than all the topical, feel good sermonettes that one finds in too many churches. The only problem with expository preaching is that most practitioners of it don’t know how to do it right.

Furthermore, in a liberal, secular city like Seattle, you might expect a large church to step lightly around the issues of women in church leadership, homosexuality, biblical authority, the exclusivity of Jesus, and other theological land mines. Church growth experts are constantly telling us to avoid these at all costs, if you want your church to grow. Driscoll, by contrast, seeks out these land mines and deliberately jumps up and down on them, demonstrating that God’s power is greater than the tips and techniques we’re told are necessary for building a big church in this culture.

You’ve probably already guessed that the audience for this book is not the average automatic transmission, Camry-driving Christian. You have guessed correctly; this book is intended for those who drive the bus that is the church. It is for elders, pastors, church planters, and church plant team members. If that is you, then reading this book might teach you some things to avoid; it might teach you some truths you didn’t already know. Then again, it might not teach you anything since most of its lessons appear in other books of this type. But this book will fire you up and stir up your longing to see God work in your culture like he’s working in Seattle.

Although this book is intended for church leaders, it is very readable. Any Christian could easily read this book and profit from it. Especially when you get past the first chapter (which is confusingly called chapter zero) you will find yourself racing along through page after page like Picabo Street on a bunny hill. There are two things that make this book very readable. First, chapters one through seven tell us a story, the story of Mars Hill church at every life stage. For instance, chapter one covers Mars Hill from 0-45 in worship attendance. Chapter two tells us what happened when Mars Hill had 45-75 people. Each chapter continues the story from stage to stage until you reach the current stage (4,000-10,000 attenders) in chapter 7. The story of Mars Hill is interesting and instructive on its own merits, so the narrative itself makes for compelling reading.

The second thing that makes this book so readable is Driscoll’s writing style. Like his preaching, he shoots straight with no warning shots. He also has a sarcastic sense of humor that sprinkles each page like acid rain on a Seattle picnic. For instance, in the preceding paragraph, I told you that each chapter from one to seven covers a life-stage of Mars Hill (0-45, and so on). Each of these chapters has a tantalizingly witty title. Chapter one is titled, “Jesus, Our Offering was $137 and I Want to Use It to Buy Bullets.” Chapter four is titled, “Jesus, Could You Please Rapture the Charismaniac Lady Who Brings Her Tambourine to Church?” Driscoll’s sense of humor makes the already engaging story that much more enjoyable.

What about the theological accuracy of this book? Your mileage may vary here. Driscoll has concocted his own blend of theology and church practice. Although his theology is orthodox, just about everyone I can think of will find something distasteful in at least one sip of his homebrew. Driscoll describes himself as an “intense biblical literalist” (p. 66) and he believes and practices preaching paragraph by paragraph, book by book through the Bible (p. 95). He is very strong and biblically straight on the priority of the family in Christianity (pp. 66-67). These are all good things. I also know that he is a Calvinist in his doctrine, though I think I learned this more from listening to his preaching than reading this book. He also distances himself from the false doctrine of the “emergent” church (pp. 21-23), which is theological liberalism remixed for a postmodern age. On these points, and on his insistence that we be missional, I think Driscoll hits the bulls-eye.

That said, there are things that will make many cringe, and may cause others to stumble. Driscoll openly admits to using profanity (p. 47), though he may have repented of that recently. He writes about receiving direct, extra-biblical revelation from God (pp. 74-75). Nevertheless, he calls these experiences “weird” (p. 39) so both cessationists and continuationists will scratch their heads at various points in the book.

Dispensationalists will also wonder if they’ve been dissed (pp. 49-50) and fundamentalists will know that they have been (pp. 15-16, 49, 121, and others). Seminary training seems to be downplayed early in the book (pp. 17-18), though later Driscoll admits that he is currently finishing a seminary degree (p. 178). If your understanding of church government is non-elder led, a challenging section awaits you (pp.103-110). And if you think that the music in the church should be limited to your tastes, don’t even bother picking this book up.

My knocks against the book are minor and somewhat technical. The first has to do with “Chapter Zero: Ten Curious Questions.” The information in this chapter is good, but it gives the point of the book away. I think this chapter could be eliminated completely; or if it did appear in the book, it would be better off at the end of the book. Here’s why: When you sit down to read the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus doesn’t tell you right off the bat what the story is going to teach you. He lets the story unfold so that at the end, he can ask you a question, then tell you to “go and do likewise.” This is the classic inductive form—hold off from giving away the point or points of your teaching until the end. But Driscoll tells you in one chapter, right at the beginning, everything he wants you to learn from the story that unfolds in the chapters that follow. And this chapter zero is not nearly as interesting as the story chapters that follow. So, it is my belief that folding the information in chapter zero into the narrative of chapters one through seven or just moving chapter zero to the end would make for a stronger book.

Furthermore, chapter zero contains at least one significant contradiction. On page 24 Driscoll writes that contemporary, seeker-oriented church “preaches a gospel of fulfillment…. In this framework, I do not exist for God but rather God exists for me…. The therapeutic gospel is a false gospel and an enemy of mission for many reasons.” I agree. But two pages later he writes that any antagonism between contemporary, seeker-oriented churches and “missional churches” like his “is in large part unnecessary, because they are working for the same goal–the reaching of lost people for Jesus–but simply using different methods, methods that are complimentary, not contradictory” (p. 26). This is a contradiction; the “false gospel” of the contemporary church is not just a “different method.” I agree that many contemporary church leaders are sometimes too harshly criticized, but that doesn’t mean that the criticisms of them are not valid. On his blog, Driscoll has good things to say about Robert Schuller, who is clearly a false teacher if our standard is the Bible.

These are important issues, but they are not central to this book. The central message of this book is one that many pastors, church planters and other church leaders will find encouraging and helpful. I recommend it to discerning readers.