oh Brother

Overheard on the wrong side of the tracks:

The White Horse Inn interview with Mark Driscoll is the best presentation of Driscoll’s ministry you will ever hear. Two things strike me: the interviewers were eager to learn. Second, they weren’t chasing stupid rabbits, but on the main theme: Jesus and evangelism.

It’s also clear that Horton understands what missional means: ministry by the members in the world, rather than serving church programs. The utter inability of most of the critics of the missional churches to get this is truly sad. Driscoll’s first book is incredibly clear on this. What’s to miss?

Listen to Driscoll talk about truncated evangelism (I could give you names) vs building a community that includes people who are being evangelized.

Get it and listen to it. Very good.

I listened to this interview last night, and one of the things that struck me about it was that it was completely unoriginal -- which, in some ways, speaks to Driscoll's actual authenticity. He's not reinventing himself every time he's in front of an open mike, so good for him.

But it's as if the person making this gushing review has never heard, for example, Driscoll's hour at DGM:Above all earthly powers this fall.

I enjoyed the interview -- don't get me wrong. It was kinda funny to listen to guys I would otherwise classify as stoggy TR types gush over this young guy who preaches the word in a baptistic context every week and get blown away by things like his church practicing the Lord's Table every week, or his church preaching in an expository method through an inerrant (oops) Scripture and actually growing as they do it. And Driscoll has a good core which is easy to like if you care at all about theology.

But it's funny -- I got the distinct impression that Horton and his cohorts had never heard a Mars Hill sermon. And the only book they had read -- the one the interview was based on -- was Radical Reformission and not the more recent Confessions of a Reformission Rev which has language in it far saltier than Michael Horton could must if he banged this thumb with a hammer.

I say yeah: go listen to that interview. It's archive footage of Driscoll, and it represents him. Will it change your mind about him? I doubt it.