Last night I watched a sermon by Mark Driscoll in the Vintage Jesus series at Mars Hill Church Seattle. The title was Did Jesus really rise from the dead?. It was good to watch him preach and see some of the how of his preaching. But the content was gold! Today I’ve been reflecting on how the resurrection of Jesus is of first importance.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 1 Cor 15:3-8
>>Jesus died for our sins
>>He was buried
>>He was raised
>>He appeared
We too often leave the resurrection of Jesus out of our gospel – what a stupid thing to do! Liberals will try to re-interpret the resurrection of Jesus into a spiritual resurrection… but Jesus rose – physically… and we who have our trust in him have a physical resurrection to look forward to because Jesus first rose.
Driscoll said that it ought not just be Easter Sunday that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus – but every Sunday! They also take communion each week at church as they are reminded of Jesus’ death on their behalf.
Our practise at church is to have communion every 6 weeks. It’s more likely to be once every 10 weeks though! I think we ought to do it more often. Is it weird to the outsider??? I don’t think so… it’s a marvellous opportunity to preach the gospel each week!
What do you think? How often does your church do it? How often do you think you ought to do it?
My Church* has communion/Lord’s supper once a month almost without fail.
I don’t think there’s any instruction in the bible as to how often we should share in this particular meal, but possibly a good rule of thumb might be that “familiarity breeds contempt” – but you don’t want it to be a “long time between drinks”!
Daniel
*Sorry if the link is broken. We’ve just moved web-hosts so it could be down for a day or so.
Amen!
We can’t leave the resurrection out of our gospel. The resurrection *is* the gospel!
Think of Acts – the gospel the apostles preached was the gospel of the resurrection!
Think of Romans 1 – the gospel of God, regarding his Son, who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
It all starts and ends with the resurrection!
And as for communion – that’s another hobby horse of mine. I think weekly would be good. And even if it is weird to outsiders, so what. Most of what we do is weird to outsiders. I’ve heard that as a reason for not having the Lord’s Supper and I think its no reason at all. Have it, and have it often! Let’s not let the ritualists have all the fun.
And I agree that communion is a marvellous opportunity to preach the gospel. As some like to say, the visible word!
cracker talk hey Dave.. i have listen to bits of pieces of it too… i particularly liked the interview he did with that dude at Hempfest!
The only worry I have with weekly communion is that it could simply become a “ritual”…almost like just going through the motions.
Having said that, I generally think we do it far too infrequently. Once every month or so would probably be good.
but possibly a good rule of thumb might be that “familiarity breeds contempt” – but you don’t want it to be a “long time between drinks”!
good thought daniel.
hey andrew,
i don’t think the resurrection is THE gospel. although proclaiming the resurrection implies a death… i think it is necessary that both Jesus’ death and resurrection stay together. his death doesn’t work without his resurrection and his resurrection doesn’t work without his death.
hey sam – how funny was the song the dude sang in that interview!! have you been reading/listening/viewing much mars hill and mark driscoll stuff??
matt,
i think your concerns are valid.
that it could become just a ritual would be a concern…
but i think greater freq would be good.
hey daniel – i just answered your question in my introducing God review post.
you haven’t blogged for a while!
just saw the video for unichurch’s 10th bday.
that was last friday night?
how did it go?
(to keep this post on track [not that i mind tangent commenting… it makes this blog look popular!] did you have communion at the event?)
We have it the first sunday of every month, without fail. I think its good to do it this regularly, but as Matt said, if you do it too regularly, it becomes ritualised, rather than being meaningful. But it is still an important part of a service, a good reminder of the sacrifice of Christ.
David, I take your point. I guess I’m just trying to use a corrective extreme. Often our gospel is solely about the cross, and nothing about the empty tomb. I find it interesting that the sermons preached in Acts often skip straight to the resurrection. The summary of the gospel for them was “Jesus has risen from the dead and is therefore Lord.”
Regarding weekly communion becoming a “ritual” – isn’t there the same danger with our other weekly practices – prayer, reading and preaching the word, singing? Aren’t we all guilty of singing the words just because that’s what we do and thus turning singing into a ritual? Or listening to the sermon but not really taking it in? The challenge is to do these all these things and make them meaningful. The risk of ritual alone is not a good reason for not doing things regularly.
In any event, perhaps we’re too scared of “ritual”. If ritual is just something we repeat often, what’s wrong with that? I guess real objection is to *empty ritual* – ritual devoid of meaning or purpose beyond just doing it for its own sake.
great photo by the way! Do you think perhaps Telstra Tower somehow points towards the resurrection?
andy – love what you’ve said about ritual. we have sermons every single week of the year!!!
i’m convinced by your argument. it’s helpful to think about “empty” rituals.
very good.
what do others think of Andy’s comment?
ps – photo – not necessarily – didn’t have time to be creative so went to recent holiday snaps. if you look closely row is frowning… we did some fun frowning photos in front of the tower cos they wouldn’t let us up!! almost everywhere in canberra is free… one exception: telstra tower – and they don’t have an eftpos machine or credit facilities down stairs… how stupid! they should keep calling it telecom tower… there’s living in the 80s man!
Matt,
Paul in other places just preach “Christ crucified.” Can’t pin the gospel down to a formula. The good news is sometimes cast as Jesus is the King with no reference to the death or resurrection. But… make sure we don’t forget the significance of the resurrection. Understanding the significance of the resurrection changed my life!
Dave,
Read his book… Confessions of a Reformission pastor. Like him lots! Think he’s a gun preacher! Bit iffy about his doctrine of church though. Reading his book and seeing how it grew was both encouraging and yet at the same time made me not want to do church like Mark. His blog is tops! http://theresurgence.org
Sam
Dave,
Read his book… Confessions of a Reformission pastor. Like him lots! Think he’s a gun preacher! Bit iffy about his doctrine of church though. Reading his book and seeing how it grew was both encouraging and yet at the same time made me not want to do church like Mark. His blog is tops! http://theresurgence.org
i read the confessions books a couple of months ago… and his other book the radical reformission a month ago. i think there’s some brilliant stuff in there! i’ve subscribed to his blog as well… has some good posts. i think i’ve written a few things on him… you can type “driscoll” into the search thing above to find them.
still thinking through his ecclesiology with ref to knox/robinson view. not yet convinced that i’m super against the way they do church.
what are your thoughts on his doc of church?
Dave,
The dinner was a success – everyone had enough to eat and people were encouraged by hearing about our Church’s (brief) history. However I was running the dinner so I was pretty stressed on the night.
We didn’t have communion on the night, but we did have 2 short sermons. Maybe having “the gospel in action” would have been appropriate, reminding us of the centrality of the gospel to our church.
It’s interesting that we didn’t even normally think about having communion outside of our regular monthly church time.
(PS sorry if the website looked really ugly – we’ve still having trouble after moving the site to its new server.)
it’s got me thinking… it’s not so much his stated ecclesiolgy but i am slightly uncomfortable with his implied ecclesiology that is spoken purely through the way he does church. Gotta read some more of his stuff… minds not made up… but i’m uncomfortable with the way he hires and fires staff (as per the book); i’m uncomfortable with satellite church sites (feel as though he’s blurring the role of pastor-teacher). I haven’t read enough of his stuff or litened to enough of his talks to make up my mind though! Overall i think he’s the bomb and don’t wanna diss the dude!
I’ve just picked up a bit of emerging church stuff and some other books on church that i intend to read over the next year. I think we evangelical aussies need to seriously put time and effort into rethinking church and glean as much good as we can from these american guys and even the emerging dudes (who i am not on side with for the record!)
For the uninitiated, what exactly is Driscoll’s ecclesiology and how does it differ from the Knox/Robinson view?
Hey brother-
I followed the link back here from E. Thoughts. I’ve agreed with most of Phil Johnson’s thoughts over at PYROMANICS regarding Pastor Driscoll’s language in the pulpit. Have you been keeping up with that discussion? http://teampyro.blogspot.com/
My personal blog can be found here http://preacherboy316.blogspot.com/ if you want to see my replies to the issue at hand.
Your blog is well set up! Take care.
CK
Andy said:
For the uninitiated, what exactly is Driscoll’s ecclesiology and how does it differ from the Knox/Robinson view?
Emerging (which is a broad for churches trying to engage with culture – they are varied along the theological spectrum) churches would generally say that:
Church is a means to an end – that is Missio Dei – the Mission of God.
Knox (moore college principal for yonkers – now with the Lord) and Robinson (former archibishop of sy diocese) would say that:
Church is an end in itself. It’s okay to do church for the sake of doing church – being church
I might type a quote from driscoll.
wait a sec.
here it comes…
This is from 109 of Driscoll Confessions of a Reformission Rev.
The emerging and missional ecclesiology has the following elements:
-The Trinitarian God is the source and model of loving community
-The Trinitatian God rules over the church and culture as Lord over all so that ministry extends far beyond the church and into culture
-Jesus mediates between the church on earth and God the Father in heaven
-Jesus is the Senior Pastor to be followed by the power of the Holy Spirit
-The church has two simultaneous missions: going out into culture (missional ministry) and bringing people into God’s kingdom, of which the church is an outpost (attractional ministry)
-A clear gospel thread binds everyone and everything together on Jesus’ mission
-The structure is rooted in biblical theology, not secular organisational theory
-The church exists to welcome and convert lost people
-The church labours to be as culturally accessible to lost people as possible
-The church ahs leaders but is not organised by hierarchy
-Elders are a qualified team of male pastors who are player-coaches both leading the church and training people for ministry
-Deacons are qualified male and female pastoral associates
-Members are church leaders who give their money, service, prayers, and time to the advancement of the gospel and submit to discipline if needed
-The Gospel Class is the filter through which the wrong people are weeded out of the church and the right people are welcomed into the church as members
There’s a diagram that goes with this… but I can’t draw it… you’ll have to look at the book.
newy hilton is in italics:
it’s got me thinking… it’s not so much his stated ecclesiolgy but i am slightly uncomfortable with his implied ecclesiology that is spoken purely through the way he does church. Gotta read some more of his stuff… minds not made up…
not yet convinced that knox/robinson = totally right, and emerging (in at least driscoll’s expression of it) = totally wrong.
i think with DBK/ROBBO – does it lead to laziness with evangelism?
i wonder how PT O’Brien’s Consumed by passion relates to DBK/ROBBO and mission.
under dbk/robbo does church and mission become too different circles? do they overlap? is mission a subset of church? (i’m guessing that emerging would say that church is subset of mission)
but i’m uncomfortable with the way he hires and fires staff (as per the book);
can’t remember the quotes enough. got a page number? just this last week they have had to let 6 people off because of budget cuts… not sure how they went about it… he spoke about it in his 5th talk in vintage Jesus.
i’m uncomfortable with satellite church sites (feel as though he’s blurring the role of pastor-teacher).
i’m not. are you uncomfortable with a congregation that has 1500 people in it? i’d be keen to talk more about this.
I haven’t read enough of his stuff or litened to enough of his talks to make up my mind though! Overall i think he’s the bomb and don’t wanna diss the dude!
reformed evangelicals in the us i think diss him a bit quick! obviously piper hasn’t… but lots of others are throwing the baby out with the bathwater (in this i think driscoll is the baby and the bathwater is the emerging church!)
I’ve just picked up a bit of emerging church stuff and some other books on church that i intend to read over the next year. I think we evangelical aussies need to seriously put time and effort into rethinking church and glean as much good as we can from these american guys and even the emerging dudes (who i am not on side with for the record!)
agree with your sentiments.
i’ve got some youth ministry books that i disagree with – keen to keep reading on to undrstand where they are coming from.
from what i know about EMERGENT – i don’t want to be on their team… liberal city!!!
but there’s some good stuff coming out of EMERGING-culture-engaging churches such as Mars Hill and Redeemer Pressie in New York (Tim Keller is Senior Pastor)
so for the record – depending on how you define emerging and who you are talking about is whether i will take sides or not!!
this is a long comment…
sorry sam!
what do you think about what i’ve said?
peaceout
yeah… too much to chew at the moment. I EMERGENT versus EMERGING… definitions are difficult to nail down but I would be happy to consent to the doctrine that Acts 29Networks lays forth. Not Driscoll’s old liberal mates.
A church of 1500 people. Not theologically opposed to it. I guess my question is why aren’t they hiring preachers who can pastor these sattelite churches??? Like i said I’m just uncomfortable with it, hence the reasons i went and bought at all these books so i can keep reading about ecclesiology.
I guess my question is why aren’t they hiring preachers who can pastor these sattelite churches???
i’ve got a whole bunch of thoughts on this one… too much to write down now.
regarding church staffing – i think the common model in sydney anglican churches is not super efficient or effective and is limited in ability for growth.
have 5 congregations and 5 pastors over those congregations all preparing a Bible talk each week is ineffective. i think it’s better to have 1 or 2 preachers preparing a sermon each week for those 5 congregations.
i like the way that our church does staffing..
i think i might have blogged on this before
just go in the search thing: “church staffing” or “lawn mower”
more thoughts coming…