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Wartburg Watch: Driscoll Ditches Calvinism for Charisma


DomWackTroll

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Lmao. Next he'll be slaying people in the spirit. Anything to try to stay relevant and influential.

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@DomWackTroll, you rock!

Every so often, I'm gobsmacked by something I read on fj, like this Markie Mark reinvention. 

But, hey, a guy's gotta go where god leads him the bucks are! 

And where he sees a Forgiveness Challenge, I see an Irony Challenge.  Driscoll looks bloated and dissolute, as though a lifetime of pretending to function from a spiritual center is starting to weigh him down. 

Edited by Howl
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I don't follow the actual belief end of things for Neo Calvinists or others.  Can someone clarify, where do Neo Calvinists and Charismatics part ways?  Are they essentially incompatible or can it be seamless? 

I just read the Beliefs section on the Trinity Church Web site. Trinity is the church founded by Driscoll in Scottsdale, when he torched Mars Hill and fled the burning wreckage.  Anyway, basic stuff, the usual....biblical inerrancy, marriage is one man one woman, sex for marriage only, life begins at conception, etc.  

This part of the FAQ section put me on Code Red alert.  The straightforward question is: Does The Trinity Church have membership? 

Instead of simply answering yes or no and clarifying from there, this is the response: The Growth Track is a series of classes that introduce you to the church and get you plugged into Team Trinity, and they go on to discuss the month-long Growth Track classes, without ever answering this incredibly simple question. 

As noted, considering the history of Driscoll and the church membership and contracts issue, this should be a huge red flag. 

Edited by Howl
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It is really very impressive.  He is unsquashable. Resign in disgrace and four years later make a comeback with a new church, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in (forked) tongues, and with a new book and 5 part series on forgiveness for those that have wronged you.

I watched his book promo video.  Markie went through a very bad season of life but his faith and family pulled together.  They fought demons and are now back spewing more shit.  Except Markie is now unfortunately pussified as well as chickiefied because he has to preach with women, damnit!

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@Howl, neo-neo-cals are cessationist  regarding the "gifts of the Holy Spirit", the most publicized being speaking in tongues. To them, speaking in tongues is fraud at best, demonicaly induced at worst. Some Neo-Cals are controversial as proponents of the "prosperity gospel." (The belief that God gives material possessions and wealth to those who have enough faith.) Charismatics are generally fine with female preachers. Neo-cals, at least John Piper is, are passionately, fervently, rabidly anti-female leadership. No reconciliation that I can see. 

Edited by Pecansforeveryone
Misspelled a name
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Not Christian myself, but I think Matthew 7:15 really does apply here!

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Once a huckster, always a huckster.

"With Pastor Mark Driscoll, it's all about Jesus MONEY!!!"

Fixed that for ya, Mark.

 

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1 hour ago, Lisafer said:

Not Christian myself, but I think Matthew 7:15 really does apply here!

I'm an atheist, and I agree.  Along with Matthew 21:13.

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15 hours ago, DomWackTroll said:

And you know what that means: Mark has to preach with vagina people! :Yes:

http://thewartburgwatch.com/2018/07/05/mark-driscoll-ditches-calvinism-for-charisma/

 

Driscoll was one of the reasons I couldn't do New Calvinism.  However, it doesn't entirely surprise me that he's gone Charismatic.  Charismatics are all over the place and are free to justify just about anything, whether Antinomianism or beyond.

The New Cals, like Bauchams and others, talk about the male pursuit and patriarchy and such, but in the end of it -- in order to be logically and hermeneutically consistent with what the Jesus and Pauline Scriptures say about sex, as well as Calvinism's austere history -- they cannot just say that, since Christ=husband and woman=church, and since Jesus and Paul were against lust and unbridled sexual passion, that Song of Solomon thus indicates Blowjob Central (which is what Driscoll and his followers always contended).  There's too much logical inconsistency there to claim one and then claim the other.

I mean, if we were to take this logic to its utmost conclusion, then Jesus wants a blowjob, and His church needs to give it.  And Jesus and Paul couldn't be further from that in their ascetic view of sexual matters (Jesus saying that men lusting after women in their heart is is adultery, and Paul saying it is better to be single than to be married).

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5 hours ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

@Howl, neo-neo-cals are cessationist  regarding the "gifts of the Holy Spirit", the most publicized being speaking in tongues. To them, speaking in tongues is fraud at best, demonicaly induced at worst. Some Neo-Cals are controversial as proponents of the "prosperity gospel." (The belief that God gives material possessions and wealth to those who have enough faith.) Charismatics are generally fine with female preachers. Neo-cals, at least John Piper is, are passionately, fervently, rabidly anti-female leadership. No reconciliation that I can see. 

Although... Gregg Harris's church (which grew into a mini-denomination, HOFCC) was both Neo-Cal (reverencing the old paths and the Puritans, if I'm remembering right) and charismatic in practice (ETA: and definitely complementation--so much so that Gregg Harris was said to have told elders of one church not to pay any mind to a woman who was raising questions about child molestation in the church*, if I'm remembering right). It felt to me like kind of an odd combination (we went to an occasional service at one HOFCC or another because our kids had friends there), as our family was in bondage to a cessationist Neo-Cal church at the time.

So it's not necessarily a clear distinction.

The most consistent component amongst Neo-Cals is authoritarianism. And yet, worship of authority is not a Neo-Cal distinction, but can be found in many other faith communities.

* Found it: 

 

Edited by refugee
another thought after reading more comments
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  • 4 months later...

Mark Driscoll is a very engaging speaker. He's actually a pretty likable guy as long as he is getting what he wants. He is the classic youngest child that didn't get the attention he wanted, so he makes sure he gets that attention by any means necessary.

Before the church get really big, he had a couple guys around him that kept him check for the most part. Not that his theology was better so much as he wasn't the absolute sole dictator of the church. The guys that came out talking about how bad he was were a large part of the problem. Paul Petry, Rob Smith, and the like came when Driscoll was already in decline; indeed they made that decline steeper by enabling him. When MH and Driscoll left the original core group of elders behind, and got out from under the authority of Antioch Bible Church the beginning of the end was nigh. Although, in retrospect I have to say that an implosion was always on the horizon. 

Would you believe that at the beginning of MH that the idea that everyone need get marry and have a ton-o-kids was not considered the absolute truth? Well it wasn't the official doctrine of the church that everyone should get married and have babies. Kirk and his wife had zero children, and never wanted to have children. She was a metal sculpture artist, and as a couple they were awesome. Kirk taught the "Foundations II" class before one could be a member, and Mike taught "Foundations I". I might actually have the booklets for those courses somewhere around my library just for the comedic nature of the contrast. Mike and Mark actually wanted to incorporate their Catholic upbringing into the services. My husband and I played for the church, and we even set parts of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrystosom to music for the services not just with their permission, with their ENDORSEMENT. 

My brother WtH was involved some years after we were. We joined when they were in Laurelhurst in 97-98ish. We left just before the entire bylaws kerfuffle in 2007 . WtH thought that the problem stemmed from the bylaws change. I've always been of the opinion that leaving the authority of Antioch and getting rid of the other non-full TULIP Calvinists was the beginning of the inevitable end. Since WtH wasn't there, and he can't find supporting documentation for that (pre-Midrash), and he's friends with the Petry's, Smiths, Meyers, and other families that were part of the problem but won't cop to it he has never mentioned it. Quite honestly that pisses me off. I hope and pray that the failings of those men come to light. Mark Driscoll was and is an ass, but he couldn't have had the power he did if those men hadn't enabled him to. They created a monster, and were fine with it until that monster turned on them. They all did plenty of horrific things, but no one talks about it because they focus so hard on Driscoll. Driscoll was an ass to a few people in person because by that point he was only the "preaching" pastor. Those men hurt a ton of people personally because they counseled in a way that was abusive, or knowingly placed people in positions that forced them to continue to be abused. Literally, domestic violence survivors came to me on a regular basis because those men implemented a misongynistic theology that even eclipsed the rhetoric of Driscoll. Mark would have beat the shit out of any man that physically harmed his wife. Those men demanded the wives try to heal the marriage and stay in it, even when criminal charges should have been filed. Driscoll was bad, the men around him were oh-so-much-worse. 

A big problem with Wartburg and the like when it comes to MH is that they may be told about the other awful pastors at MH, but they stay silent on the issue because it distracts from their message that Driscoll was the big-bad-horrible guy. He was absolutely awful, but he wasn't alone in being awful. Many of the men pointing at him and accusing were right there with him being abusive assholes up until he turned his eye upon them.

Edited by TSOWOATNK
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  • 1 year later...

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