One really good idea that the folks at Mars Hill Church have implemented is a question and answer session after various sermons.

The way it works is that listeners can text questions during the sermon, and someone backstage collects and filters the questions, and then delivers them to the pastor at the end of the sermon to answer on-the-fly.

Of course this is risky, because it leaves the possibility for the pastor to get totally blind-sided by strange or uncomfortable questions. But it is also a very useful idea, because it gives people the opportunity to ask real questions that the sermon brings to mind, and for everyone to benefit by hearing the answer.

A couple of months ago, during a sermon series on the Song of Salomon — during which pastor Mark taught a lot about relationships and biblical manhood and womanhood — the following question was asked:

My boyfriend went to Vegas for a bachelor party. He went to a strip club. Do I have a right to be mad?

I think pastor Mark’s answer is really, really helpful.

So many guys I know struggle with temptations toward lust and pornography, and our culture makes that feel so normal and acceptable. It feels like such a victimless crime — like an innocent vice.

Take five minutes and watch the video of pastor Mark’s response, and let him push back hard against those lies.

(I couldn’t figure out how to embed the video, so you’ll have to watch it at the Mars Hill blog — just use the link!)

As I mentioned in the introduction, Religion Saves + And Nine Other Misconceptions addresses the top nine questions submitted and voted on by people around the country.

Each chapter is dedicated to a question and pastor Mark’s answer, and they go in backwards order.

So, chapter one addresses the ninth most popular question:

There’s no doubt the Bible says children are a blessing, but the Bible doesn’t seem to address the specific topic of birth control. Is this a black-and-white topic, or does it fall under liberties?

Last week, I asked you all to share your thoughts on this comment, and boy did you come through!

I had a great time reading up on your thoughts and opinions, and I was looking forward this weekend to writing a lengthy exposition on the topic and how pastor Mark handles it in the book.

Unfortunately, things have not gone according to plan! Our internet at home was down for most of the weekend, work has been kicked up two notches, I had 2 computers dropped off that needed urgent attention, and we’ve been scrambling to get everything lined up so that we can leave for our first vacation in a while tomorrow!

And on top of all that, I actually got up extra early Monday morning and sat down and wrote most of the post anyways, and the infallible Firefox failed on me and I lost it!

So, rather than let this post dangle any longer, I want to point you at some great resources that you can check out for yourself, and maybe I’ll get a chance to come back to this at some point this weekend!

• First of all, I’m glad to announce that the official website for the book was launched on Monday! I love how creative those Re:Lit guys are!
• Secondly, you can download the video and/or audio of the sermon upon which this chapter is based here (and yes it’s free!)
• Here’s an interview with Mark Driscoll about the book that I came across today. Notably, he says that this was the hardest chapter to write because it’s such a weighty topic.
• Randy Alcorn’s writings on the topic of birth control are heavily noted in the chapter, and you can get your hands on all of those for free here (I think this article is the most succinct)
• Desiring God has a great article (Does the Bible Permit Birth Control) and sermon (Is It Wrong To Use Birth Control) on the topic

Finally, if you have any specific questions or opinions that you’d like to bounce off me, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment, or if you’d rather keep it private, you can email me at zack_at_therieslands.com

Look what came in the mail yesterday!

The awesome folks at Crossway and RE:LIT were kind enough to select our dinky little blog here for a free copy of Mark Driscoll’s newest book, Religion Saves – And Nine Other Misconceptions.

One condition: I have to review it here and tell you what I think.

This is a lot like telling a kid that he can have a piece of candy, but only if he promises to eat it, so I’m quite happy to oblige.

The first thing you notice when you pick up the book is the excellent design. It’s a sturdy hard-copy with a knurled texture containing an intriguing graphic of a family walking out of a typical-looking church building… and they appear to be on fire. Part of the flame is the provacative title of the book: Religion Saves. This, of course, is the exact opposite of the message of the book.

The book is based on a really neat idea: pastor Mark explains in the introduction that upon reading through the book of 1 Corinthians, he noticed that a significant purpose of the letter is to address questions from the church in Corinth. And the more he thought about it, the more intrigued he was by the idea of preaching a series of sermons that are answers to questions from people today — questions specific to our time and culture. So, last year, Mars Hill opened up a portion of their website for a forum called ‘Ask Anything‘. Over a series of voting cycles, people all over the world were allowed to post questions: any questions. These were then widdled down to the 9 most popular questions through a voting process. In the end, 893 questions were asked, 5,524 comments were made, and 343,203 votes were cast.

The result was nine questions, and pastor Mark preached a sermon on each one in a series by the same name as this book. You can download the video and/or audio of each of these for free here. This book is basically another form of responding to those questions, with a chapter devoted to each one.

I plan to write a short post about each chapter as I go through the book, but let me end this first post with pastor Mark’s explanation of the title (from the introduction of the book):

Before we proceed, the title “Religion Saves” merits a bit of explanation. The one thread that weaves this book together is religion; many of the questions that made the top nine are highly religius in nature. Religious people are prone to go beyond the teaching of the Bible to argue for positions that are not clearly taught in Scripture. They are further prone to go beyond the biblical principles on these issues and seek to impose their method on others, as if they alone are truly biblical. Reigious people tend to have very strong and vocal opinions about the issues we will examine. In fact, religious people were often the most devoted voters for the questions that comprised the “Religion Saves” sermon series and this book.

…

Religious people mistakenly think that they are saving people from such things as a fruitless life, sinful sex, bad relationships, unholy humor, wayward churches, evil birth control, and what they call “strange fire.” However, religion never saved anyone, and religious answers to complex questions are simply misconceptions, which is why I have titled this book, “Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions.”

So as you can see, the purpose of this book — and of these chapter reviews — is not directed so much at non-believers as at the most religious of believers. This book isn’t so much an apologetic or a call to holier living as it is a call to repentance.

And with that in mind, I hope you’ll tune in, invite your friends, and let me know what you think as we go through this together!

]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2009/06/23/religion-saves-and-nine-other-misconceptions-mark-driscoll-review-intro/feed/ 3 http://www.therieslands.com/2009/01/05/mark-driscoll-on-evangelism/ http://www.therieslands.com/2009/01/05/mark-driscoll-on-evangelism/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:19:52 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=2852 Mark Driscoll has a new blog post today called ‘Evangelism’.

…very interesting thoughts from someone I admire very much, but who doesn’t often say much on the topic.

Here’s a particularly interesting and insightful snippet:

Lastly, the fact that Jesus remains to this day an active evangelist is of great encouragement to me personally. It means that children who are aborted in the womb, those mentally incapable of understanding the gospel, and those people who have lived in times and places that missionaries did not visit are not necessarily beyond the hope of salvation. Indeed, Jesus could visit and save anyone anywhere because He remains The Evangelist.

You can read the whole thing here.

Any thoughts?

Check out this great interview between Mark Driscoll and John Piper.

This is not  your typical interview where one pastor is giving another pastor a chance to brag or promote something. Mark just asks a ton of open-ended questions about John’s life for the benefit of everyone. And John is very humbly honest. I learned a lot about him that really helps me put my own life experiences in better perspective.

Things like:

• That Piper just laid down his whole vision of his ‘retirement’ years to adopt a daughter at age 62 out of love for his wife
• That Piper went through a mid-life crisis that involved years of marital counseling

Give it a listen. It’s about an hour…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRg7lpozNzU

How can you not like these guys?

At about 1:50 you’ll hear:

I think Noel’s gonna like that. I think it’s gonna work out good for you tonight.

(video embedded — ht: The Resurgence)

Yesterday, at work, I downloaded the newest sermon from Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church. I got really excited when I read the title: “Trinity: God Is”. It turns out that they started a series on ‘Doctrine’! I love it!

But my work has been so intense that I haven’t been able to focus enough to listen to a sermon on the trinity and work simultaneously… so I dragged the mp3 file over to my new phone (thanks mom and dad!).

This morning, I listened to the sermon on the way to work, and I got here with my heart filled with worship.

I love technology.

I love Mark Driscoll.

I love my parents.

All of the above were God’s idea :0)

<end geekish rant>

According to NPR, at the preview of the movie recently, people began to yell when that line was spoken in the movie, and there were protesters outside. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of talk about the issue while the movie is popular.

I’m actually really excited about that. When I got married, Steph made me study up on birth control, and the differences in how they work. I learned that planned parenthood actually changed their definition of conception several years ago to make their agenda work. It was discovered that many forms of birth control affect the lining of the uterus and make it difficult for a fetus to attach to it and grow, so they changed the definition of conception to be the moment when a fetus attaches to the uterus, rather than the moment when an egg is fertilized to be come a fetus.  So Horton’s line, “A person’s a person, no matter how small” is pretty powerful.

I’m excited. This should make for some interesting dialog!

As a sidenote: I’ve had several conversations about this topic with friends at work recently, and it seems like many people are interested in this topic and are afraid to ask about it/talk about it. If you fall into that group, there’s a fantastic teaching about birth control by Mark Driscoll that you can download for free from iTunes here. You can also watch the video for free at MarsHillChurch.org. Click on the link for “Religion Saves, and 9 other misconceptions.”

I went to respond to some wall posts on facebook this morning, and this is what I saw in my little news feed thingy: “Mark Driscoll became a fan of Mark Driscoll.”

I actually listened to a very short podcast yesterday where he explained that facebook capped him at 5,000 friends, so now if you want to be associated with him on facebook, you have to ‘become a fan’.

I know how frustrating this is, because it happened to me one time.

Oh wait, no it didn’t…

And Stephen, what’s up with the whole Braves Fan thing? Ugh…..

(PS – To all the folks who are only going to see this because you search for ‘mark driscoll’ on wordpress or through your RSS feeds, I’m not knocking Mr. Driscoll at all. Feel free to poke around and you’ll see that he’s held in high esteem here :0)

Purgatorio has some great stuff, and this has me chuckling. Read the comments!

This is a REALLY good candidate.

Check it out: Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

(and even if you don’t want to spend the cash for the book,  at least download the free sermon series that prompted the book)

That’s what Mark Driscoll and the crew at Mars Hill are calling the new sermon series.

These are the responses to the top ten questions from the ‘Ask Anything’ survey (I asked these two questions), where everybody in the world had three months to ask and vote on questions that they would like Driscoll to preach on.

Part one is provocatively titled “Is Birth Control a Sin?” (audio here) (video here)

This is an exciting question for me, because Steph and I have spent a lot of time talking through this.

I’m about to give it a listen!