A Call To Resurgance By Mark Driscoll

I have benefited from the ministry of Mark Driscoll in many ways in the past including his writing. I especially have appreciated the humour and robust theology of his Vintage Church and Vintage Jesus. I stopped listening awhile ago because I found that he (like most of us preachers) was repetitive and more concerning I was finding his claims to a prophetic ministry out of step with my understanding of the gifts and his claims to 'pornographic clairvoyance' as someone called it off putting . Nevertheless a good friend of mine from church loved A Call to Resurgence and was suggesting that everybody read it so I thought I would give Driscoll another shot.  

The general thesis of this book is that for Christianity to have a future it needs to stop with the infighting,  seeing what is essential and what is non-essential. Being ready to fight with wolves and heretics who deny essentials but work together putting aside our secondary issues.  Some of these secondary issues are the Calvinist/Arminian debate, the role of the gifts today, the role of women etc. In many respects I agree with the general thesis, if we agree about the Gospel then we can and should be able to recognise each other and work together for the sake of the Gospel. Whilst recognising and even endorsing this general thesis I was concerned of some of the "tribes" that Driscoll wants us to recognise including, Joel Osteen, Joyce Myer and T.D.Jakes. I was surprised at this as Driscoll has been a big mouthpiece for rightly pointing out the errors of the prosperity gospel and these are three of its leading proponents. Jakes isn't even a Trinitarian being part of the Oneness Pentecostal movement.

Driscoll also says that Martin Luther caused one of the biggest tribes to come into being when he moved from Rome. Its unclear what Driscoll meant be this but in the opening chapter he identifies his Latin Mass loving Roman Catholic grandmother as a Christian alongside his R.C Charismatic experience orientated mother.

While arguing for a bigger more generous Christianity he then proceeds to take his own strand as the definitive form and belittles those who disagree with him on these secondary issues. He does also rightly champion orthodox Christianity as opposed to the liberalism of Rob Bell, he takes a stand against Bell and names him as someone who has moved out of the Christian camp. If only he had done that with Osteen and co too.

Driscoll places himself within the Reformed camp but his theology is more Amyraldian four point Calvinist, (he calls his understanding limited-unlimited atonement) that's not a problem for me so was J.C. Ryle and his writings are excellent.

Driscoll has been accused of plagiarism in this book I am not sure if that's true but he certainly has used most of this material before in his other bigger works.  

The book doesn't read very well and is a bit of a smorgasbord of stuff that he has said elsewhere. No wonder he was trying to give it away for free at the Strange Fire Conference. He may have been better off attending the conference than high jacking it for publicity purposes he clearly believes that experience validates experience.  I was greatly disappointed with this book and with the direction that Mark seems to be drifting.