Notes Session 2 – #elephantroom

Culture in the Church vs. Church in the Culture
Mark Driscoll and Perry Noble
Does it matter that culture sees the church as unconnected and out of touch? Are movie clips and secular songs effective in leading people to Christ? Does a pastor really need a “brand?” How and when does style mute the message of the Gospel? What do churches miss when they choose to ignore the lessons of the broader culture in leadership and organizational management? What chance does the “dork” have in reaching people and building his church? When does our emphasis on style become a subtle form of Arminianism? What are some things you’ve seen churches do that go too far to penetrate the culture or not far enough?

• Perry Noble up first
• MacDonald – “I want you to talk about culture and why it’s important to you”
• Perry is very chill but he always brings it
• The church seems like it is answering questions that nobody is asking
• “My daughter just died, does the Bible say anything about that? When I talk about engaging culture, I talk about bringing them to the word.”
• Jesus engages culture – goes to the parties, engaging people where they are in their life and then brings it all back to him
• Engage them where they are and then bring them to the word of God
• Mark and Perry going back and forth on the reformed stuff – this is going to be Mark’s riff all day :)
• “I grew up going to church on Easter, I never heard Highway To Hell.” People are eating this up.
• Telling the story of a guy who came to Christ and told Perry that God used THAT song to lead him to faith
• MacDonald trying to get the conversation led toward “how far is too far?”
• Driscoll
• “Every people live in a culture… Jesus is in a culture in heaven, leaves as a missionary to come cross-culturally to the earth”
• Jesus sent by the Father, Jesus sends disciples – culture is meant to be infiltrated
• Apostles should be culturally-connected and engaged
• Goes to Paul in 1 Cor 9
• “Where do you contextualize, where do you contend?”
• This is really the question, looking forward to this
• Driscoll goes quick to his “reject, receive, redeem” framework that he’s taught through before
• “The lowest IQ on the internet says ‘it’s worldly!’”
• Perry talking about redeeming pop culture songs to get people to think of the gospel
• MacDonald – “I’ll be this guy, I just don’t get this at all.”
• Perry talking about God doing things we don’t get – Paul quoting “rock songs”, astrologers being led to Jesus, Isaiah stripping naked
• MacDonald – “At some point, we’ve got to give some kind of credit to God’s Spirit.”
• Here we go.. didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to the regulative principle
• Do we do only which the Bible allows explicitly? Do we have freedom to include things the Bible says nothing about?
• Driscoll - “guys get hammered for going too far, guys never get hammered for not going far enough.”
• “He’s doing SOMETHING, let’s at least put a gold star on the chore chart!”
• Lots of good talk around churches not having ANY desire to engage people in any way
• “Dead orthodoxy is not an excuse for no desire to reach lost people.”
• Thoughts from the panel
• David Platt
• “We’re not going to do Highway to Hell on Sunday.” Driscoll: “Because the band can’t play it!!” Hilarious.
• The best way to reach people is to exalt the glory of God, He is sufficient when we put His character on display – the more we do that, the more people will be drawn, the more wise we are to trust Him and His Spirit
• Greg Laurie
• He wasn’t raised in the church, he made a clean break from the rock and roll days when he came to Christ
• Churches doing secular songs is just lame
• Play to our strengths – worship, done right,  blows an unbeliever away!
• There’s a place for bridge-building, we have to decide how that happens in our culture
• Steven Furtick
• Thinks Highway to Hell was a great choice – and that NewSpring does a great job of “the worship thing” too
• None of us preaches in a cultural vacuum
• Driscoll defending his use of “movie reviews” as part of his preaching
• “I thought Avatar was a great movie until the Marines started losing.”
• “I want my people to think as missionaries.”
• Sermons are preached on television, sermons are preached in churches, sermons are preached in film
• “My Hurley shirt had a doctrinal statement!” .. the tag said “believe in yourself.”
• MacDonald
• When the people of God are gathered, they’ve already been faced with a deluge of culture
• Add up the totality of how EVERYONE is impacted by cultural engagement
• Perry is defending his band and he is legit doing that – the NewSpring band is incredible
• “Our worship time is very focused, very intentional, we focus on the glory of God, the power of God – we do that!”
• Perry is right on when he says this
• Jesus is a storyteller.. “James, I’m just trying to be more like Jesus.”
• “The purpose is not ‘let’s do this to impress people’, the purpose is ‘let’s do this to get them to Jesus.’ “
• Question – Would the guy in Perry’s church have come to Christ even without “Highway to Hell”?
• Driscoll: I’m a Calvinist, yes. God saves through sending messengers who do a lot of work to reach those people. Would the guy have ultimately got saved? Yes. God chose to use that service, that moment to regenerate that man.
• Perry: People pull the donkey verse on me all the time. “God can use any means to redeem people.” The heart when we get together is not “How can we piss a lot of people off?” If I get it wrong, I had it wrong because I want to reach people for Jesus.
• MacDonald: I don’t think your motives are in question and you shouldn’t let anyone question your motives. If I have judged your heart, I want to say sorry in that.
• BUT.. you can’t let people retreat to motive.. “But I meant to do well!”
• The idea that the pathway for the lost person to come to God is to show them the church understands their culture, that I’m going to be like the world to reach the world, that I understand stuff that “worldly” too, I struggle with that.
• Noble: the most effective missionaries live among the people, learn the culture, use that culture to bring the people in. We do it with missionaries we call it godly, we do it in America we call it compromise
• MacDonald: My struggle is now that I understand the culture I must now execute the culture in front of the church to show that I’ve been succesful
• MacDonald and Noble are really going at it – they are laying it out
• This is legit disagreement over an important issue
• MacDonald: Bringing the content of Highway to Hell in to a church service as a way of putting culture on display is offensive
• Noble: Ultimately, He used that song to bring someone in to the kingdom
• Chandler: “I think they really want you to go to the next question.” MacDonald: “Yeah, I don’t care.”
• MacDonald commending Noble for thinking through strategy, mission and theology of what he’s doing, defending the choices he’s made at NewSpring
• Chandler: We have to be careful that bringing culture as a tool of engagement is not about “giving the finger” as a backlash to where we come from. The overwhelming response comes from the transcendance of God, the holiness of God. There was a guy saved because his mom was killed in a car accident – I don’t want to start that ministry!
• Driscoll: Was Highway to Hell a bad choice or was it sin? MacDonald: I definitely don’t think it was sinful for him to do it. “What he did later was much more powerful.” MacDonald affirming that God was at work in the service when that song was used.
• MacDonald: I’m not surprised but I’m blessed by the sincerity and intentionality with which you (Noble) are doing things. But if it doesn’t adorn the gospel – the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ – the beauty of God’s great Son – it doesn’t advance the gospel. We may see some fruit from it but if it doesn’t adorn the gospel we may draw people with it, we may draw decisions with it, it doesn’t advance the gospel.
• Noble: I completely agree with you. I think it WAS used to adorn and advance the gospel because the song was redeemed.
• MacDonald: “I’ve got to be like them to reach them. I’m just not there yet.”

Wow. This session was incredible. I think we are in for a great day today. The commentary from James was a little much for me but it is very clear that all of these guys have thought through WHY their churches does WHAT they do. James said a couple of times that this was refreshing to him, encouraging to him and I would totally agree. Very encouraging.