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Matthew Paul Turner is a friend of mine from way back in the Satellite Soul days. He used to run one of the really cool coffeehouse venues, Jammin Java, in Maryland. Later he was the editor of CCM Magazine. He’s an author & humorist now (satirist maybe? – just think John Stewart or Colbert for evangelicals), anyway he writes books and is stinking hilarious.
Matthew has been telling a story (a not so funny one), on is blog the past 2 days about Mark Driscoll’s church and the way they’ve handled church discipline with someone Matt knows. This is an unbelievable story. You should go read the two part series here. The story is pretty involved, so my short telling doesn’t carry the impact. It’s seriously eye opening.
The short synopsis is this: Matthew’s friend Andrew was fooling around w/his fiance and also cheated on her with an old girlfriend. He confessed to her & the church found out about it (her dad was an elder). Andrew was disciplined by the church, which as it turns out is an overbearing, controlling, and involved process (welcome to the MegaChurch BTW). He was branded a “wolf,” which is a term they use at Mars Hill to describe male predators. The church’s discipline escalated to a church discipline “contract” Andrew was expected to sign. Andrew felt manipulated, controlled, and dehumanized. He prayed about it, talked to friends, and finally refused to submit to the discipline, leaving the church. Incensed at his rebellion, church leaders wrote a letter which was posted on the church’s online bulletin board, publicly exposing his sexual sin & that of his fiance, branding him with a scarlet letter, and forbidding anyone to associate with him unless it was to rebuke him. This is an excerpt from the letter, instructing them how to treat Andrew:
“Practical Examples… You run into him and ask, ‘Andrew how are things?’ He replies, ‘Not so good. I don’t trust the leadership and they have been heavy handed and hard on me. I feel I’ve prayed about leaving the church.’ You respond, ‘Andrew I’m sorry you feel that way but you’re not seeing things rightly. I agree with the elder’s decision regarding you because I see how they are acting in accordance to the Scripture…”
On pure scriptural exegesis, Mars Hill Leadership is off the mark here. To the Christian, treating someone as a “Gentile” does not mean breaking fellowship & talking with them only in order to expose their sin. Jesus did away with that distinction (there is now no longer Jew nor Greek). To treat someone like a Gentile is to accept them and love them in their brokenness, winning them to the gospel not with harsh rebuke, but with acceptance and the good news of redemption and reconciliation through Christ. God’s idea of perfection is not the destruction of the broken, but the redemption of the broken. Mars Hill Seattle has distorted the scripture and missed the boat completely on this. The worst part is that they proof-texted their way to the distortion.
One of my consistent issues with Driscoll is his logical positivism in regard to scripture. First of all, he’s a sloppy exegete. Second of all, he’s a know it all who uses scripture illegitimately as a weapons and a means of dividing the church. Third, he continually talks about what “the bible says,” and is seemingly blind to the fact that Scripture is a text which is always interpreted. There is no unbiased reading! Without an interpreter of the text, there is no meaning to the text. Thus, what the bible “says” is always a matter of interpretation. What Driscoll means when he says, “What the bible says,” is more properly stated as, “What I say the bible says as the interpreter for this community.” This should be rejected as an illegitimate, highly individualistic, and deceptive use of scripture. It’s not the Jewish way of interpretation – nor is it a Christian way. It is an enlightenment way of reading the bible, and fraught with the kind of positivism that has been causing damage for centuries. Driscoll is the wolf, preying on innocent people, controlling them and using them to build his empire.
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