Mark Driscoll resigns from Mars Hill
“On Tuesday, October 14, Pastor Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as an elder and lead pastor of Mars Hill Church.
The Board of Overseers has accepted that resignation and is moving forward with planning for pastoral transition, recognizing the challenge of such a task in a church that has only known one pastor since its founding. We ask for prayer for the journey ahead…”
– from a statement posted on the Mars Hill website.
Sadness as Mark Driscoll steps aside for a period
Mark Driscoll made this statement (video) at Mars Hill in Seattle yesterday.
Please especially uphold in prayer Mark and his family and the Mars Hill church in this time. (1 Corinthians 12:26.)
Mark Driscoll at the Crystal Cathedral
Mark Driscoll is the guest speaker at the Crystal Cathedral on this week’s Hour of Power ‘television church’ and he gently introduces a topic not normally addressed there: sin. The video is available here. h/t Justin Taylor.
Related: So much for Possibility Thinking.
Mark Driscoll in Sydney
SydneyAnglicans.net have posted a 23 minute video interview with Mark Driscoll – conducted by Russell Powell.
Jensen on responding to Driscoll
Recently Sydney has had the pleasure of hearing an American preacher, Pastor Mark Driscoll. In a two-week period he spoke in many venues, including the Cathedral.
In the Cathedral he twice addressed a packed gathering of Christian workers. His second address was a challenge to our evangelistic ministry of the gospel in this city. He lovingly told us of eighteen problems that he saw we had. It was an address that has caused some considerable discussion amongst Sydney’s evangelical community.
Since that address I have been approached by many people wanting my opinion on Mark Driscoll and in particular on his critique of Sydney’s evangelism.…
– Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, writes in the Cathedral newsletter.
(Image: Anglican Media Sydney.)
Big changes for Mars Hill
“Marking its own Reformation Day of sorts, Mars Hill Church will dissolve Mark Driscoll’s multisite network and let each of its remaining 13 churches go their own way.
Founded in 1996, the Seattle-based megachurch planted 15 satellite sites across five states, its passion for creating new churches further evidenced by Driscoll founding the Acts 29 network. By New Year’s Day, the multisite organization and the Mars Hill name will be no more…”
– from Christianity Today.
See also this statement on the Mars Hill website –
“Following much prayer and lengthy discussion with Mars Hill’s leadership, the board of Mars Hill has concluded that rather than remaining a centralized multi-site church with video-led teaching distributed to multiple locations, the best future for each of our existing local churches is for them to become autonomous self-governed entities. This means that each of our locations has an opportunity to become a new church, rooted in the best of what Mars Hill has been in the past, and independently led and run by its own local elder teams. …”
Desiring God Conference files online
The 2008 Desiring God Conference was held in Minneapolis over the weekend. Sinclair Ferguson, Bob Kauflin, Mark Driscoll and John Piper and others spoke.
Following their normal practice, the people at Desiring God have generously made the transcripts, audio and video files of the conference available.
John Piper’s talk on Is There Christian Eloquence? Clear Words and the Wonder of the Cross is particularly helpful –
“There is a way to speak the gospel—a way of eloquence or cleverness or human wisdom—that nullifies the cross. I dread nullifying the cross, and therefore it is urgent that I know what this eloquence-cleverness-wisdom of words is, so I can avoid it.”
See all the files at Desiring God. (Note that each video file is approx. 200MB.)
David Wells on The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World
Dr. David Wells, Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, spoke at the 2006 Desiring God Conference.
The theme of the conference was a response to his book, “Above All Earthly Powers”.
Audio and video of all the talks (by David Wells, Don Carson, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Voddie Baucham, and John Piper) is available at Desiring God.
The video of Dr Wells’ very helpful address is available via this link and could be used for Bible Study groups or downloaded to a video iPod to watch anywhere. (Note: it’s a 148MB mp4 file.)
On a related note, Dr Wells was interviewed for The A-Team Blog last month – part 1, part 2.
(Photo: Desiring God.)
How should we teach artificial intelligence morality?
From The Pastor’s Heart:
“A new massive ethical question has risen up with the advent of artificial intelligence.
How will people decide what kind of morality to give to their artificial intelligence creations?
There will need to be a morality. But what should it be?
The market is already making different choices.
Elon Musk has said he wants the AI behind X (formerly Twitter) to be morally flexible. He wants his AI to appeal to all people: left and right, authoritarian and democratic, kind and brutal …
Stephen Driscoll is the author of ‘Made in our Image – God, artificial intelligence and you’.”
Tim Challies reviews ‘Real Marriage’
After earlier making observations (1, 2) about Mark & Grace Driscoll’s new book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life Together, Tim Challies has now published a review. From his conclusions –
“Having read the book through two times, I’ve found myself wondering how to best measure or evaluate it, but perhaps these criteria are useful: Would I want to read it with my wife or would I encourage her to read it on her own? Would I recommend it to the people in my church? In both cases the answer is no.”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…