mardi 1 mai 2007

Collateral damage unexamined

Collateral damage unexamined

Well, one of my comments seems to have been moderated off the above blogpost, so I decided it was time to air them elsewhere.

The video shows church leader Mark Driscoll explaining what a tough job church planting is, how senior leaders need to mentor every detail of church planting leaders' lives, and how a "high body count" is to be expected in church planting.

Others have expressed their objections to the 'men-only' approach to church leadership and others again to the insensitive use of a military cemetery as a backdrop to the extended 'soldier' metaphor, so I'm not going to repeat those here.

My comments focused on the apparent lack of self-examination in Driscoll's approach. If his church planters blow up or burn out, it seems it's because they were insufficiently trained or mentored or just not sanctified enough. There doesn't seem to be any place in his thinking for wondering if his approach might be flawed in any way.

In the ensuing debate, I ended up being moderated off. The only explanation I can see for this is that some of my criticisms were perceived as applying to the movement Adrian Warnock is part of (once somebody else had named it).

Adrian is obviously free to run his blog as he sees fit, but what saddens me about this type of moderation is that it reflects a similar mindset to the one I was criticising in the Driscoll video. "If it shouldn't exist, it can't exist". Rather than the interactive forum which it might appear to be, the blog is apparently more of a propaganda tool - and anything which might spur self-examination is rejected. Through the filter of being convinced they have the inside track on the "right", "biblical" way of doing things, these guys can only perceive the causes of setbacks as lying outside their own remit - we know we're right, ergo it must be the other person who's got it wrong, debate over. That wouldn't be so bad if the "body count" (to borrow Driscoll's expression) wasn't so high.

1 commentaire:

Peter Kirk a dit…

Thank you, David. I'm glad you were bold enough to go public against Adrian's comment policy, as I have done before. I have done in the past. I'm glad Henry picked up your initial post.