Sticky Teams 2.0, Mark Driscoll

Yesterday I attended the first Day of Sticky Teams 2.0 at North Coast Church in Vista. The highlight of the day, for better or worse, was hearing from Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Washington (not to be confused for Rob Bell's church in Grand Rapids). He was just as flippant and matter-of-fact as I had expected and yet, as also to be expected, I had significant disagreements with what he had to say.

The main substance of his message was that there are three different kinds of leaders; Prophets, Priests, and Kings (no surprises at the gender exclusivity here). Prophets are those who "protect the gates" and are concerned about the message of the Church, specifically its' theology and doctrine (a word that Driscoll uses all too casually). These are the theology nerds among us--the thinkers for the church, those who love books and discussion and, apparently, shooting anyone who disagrees with them. I wanted to put myself in the prophets camp. After all, I love theology and I love theological discussion and I pride myself in being relatively well read therein... for what it's worth, I even have a degree in the subject... but by Driscoll's calculation, I don't like the right theology to be considered a priest. He had a very narrow view on the books and traditions from which we should draw and, frankly, I don't care for Wayne Grudem. And I don't feel the need to attack the people with whom I disagree with. So, I guess I should have picked a different major.

Priests, are the loving types, the ones who care about God's people and the ones who are community and relationship driven. Kings are the administrators of the church, the ones who find effective and practical ways of making the reality of the church--it's work and it's message--effected within the world. Apparently, kings have to love charts and graphs and they're really into building projects.

His message was that we need to know who we are and we need to balance our leadership according to these criteria. We cannot allow one form of leadership to dominate another.

What Driscoll was really getting at were the krygmatic, koinonia, and the liturgical/sacramental elements of the church. Nothing new, of course, except for his explanations of them which I found to be short of the mark, inadequate, and extremely narrow (leaving out Progressive, "emergent" and mainline leaders... which is pretty much most of the Church). But those three elements of the church should be balanced, perhaps especially among the staff of the local church. So there was definitely some posetive takeaway.

It was interesting to finally be in the same room as Mark Driscoll. He certainly lived up to expectation.