So, I noticed here in our very own blog feed here that Mark Driscoll has a new book out: Vintage Church. The blurb at Amazon says:
Defines a biblical church as one that properly balances the eternal truths of Scripture with timely, relevant methods designed to engage the culture.
The book in the popular Re:Lit series picks up where Vintage Jesus leaves off, beginning with a focus on the person and work of Jesus and then exploring the confessional, experiential, and missional aspects of his church. This study grows out of the vintage concept of taking timeless truths from Scripture—truths about church leadership, preaching, baptism, communion, and more—and blending them with aspects of contemporary culture, such as multi-campus churches and the latest forms of technology, to reach people with the gospel.
While Vintage Church is helpful for pastors and church leaders, it is the kind of book you could hand to someone who has questions about ecclesiology but finds the very term ecclesiology intimidating. The authors put forth twelve practical questions about church doctrine and answer them in clear, biblical language that lay people and new believers can understand.
I’ve never read any of Driscoll’s books. Was Vintage Jesus any good? Are you thinking of picking this up, and do you think it will have much impact around the traps in the way church is done?
The insights on the use of technology should be interesting - is anyone doing multi-campus stuff in Sydney (or Australia), for instance?
[ Edited: 12 February 2009 05:13 PM by Luke Stevens]
Have had a flick through it, seems OK, I wouldn’t have minded sitting down in the bookstore to skim it from cover to cover - but then I’m not really in a position to be thinking of how to apply the principles!
Heard that Mark Driscoll’s books in general were quite accessible and easy to read.
I presume they’re available in your regular bookstores right? Though I wish there was a Christian store in the city, *pumps fist at Word not operating in the city anymore*. Live down south so the closest one is now in Sutherland (Rockdale Christian Books generally does older / 2nd hand books only)!
I wish there was a Christian store in the city, *pumps fist at Word not operating in the city anymore*.
If you work in the city on weekdays, in your lunch hour you could try the Bible Society bookshop on York St (a block or so away from the QVB). Alternatively the Cathedral Bookshop at the edge of Sydney Square (across from Sydney Town Hall) is now open on weekdays, too. I know for certain that the latter stocks some Driscoll texts.
If you work in the city on weekdays, in your lunch hour you could try the Bible Society bookshop on York St (a block or so away from the QVB). Alternatively the Cathedral Bookshop at the edge of Sydney Square (across from Sydney Town Hall) is now open on weekdays, too. I know for certain that the latter stocks some Driscoll texts.
The Bible Society only have a limited and defined range of books :
Bible Society Bookshop
213 Clarence Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: (02) 9267 6112 Email: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Cathedral bookshop details :
St Andrew’s Cathedral’s bookshop is open after the 10:30am meeting on Sundays, and also during the week between 9:30am and 4pm. ( Cathedral phone : (02) 9265 1661 )
Or you could take a short bus trip to Newtown :
MOORE BOOKS
Come and see us at 21 King Street, Newtown, 2042.
(For parking try Bennett Street, Forbes Street, or Forbes Lane)
We are open 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays).
Tel: (02) 9577 9966
Email us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Also, I just checked on Koorong’s site and the indications are that this NEW book may not be available here for at least 4 weeks due to shipping from the US.
[ Edited: 04 February 2009 03:54 AM by Kevin Goddard]
Checked Cathedral bookshop last week. The Vintage Church book is definitely there! (And if it’s gone by the time one tries to buy it, I’ll wager another copy could be ordered in for whoever wanted it!)
Rather than start another thread called “Mark Driscoll”, I thought I would post this article here. ( Perhaps Luke could change the title of this thread to a more general one ? )
It seems like Mark Driscoll does have definite plans for Sydney.
I Need Nine Hundred Men: Calling All Potential Church Planters and Multi-Site Campus Pastors Mark Driscoll
On March 9–10, 2009, we will be gathering in Seattle for a boot camp with the Acts 29 Church Planting Network and the World Church Planting Summit. Anyone interested in being an Acts 29 church planter and/or Mars Hill campus pastor needs to join us.
The Acts 29 Church Planting Network now has over two hundred churches in the U.S. and many more overseas. Our goal is to be at five hundred churches in less than three years and over one thousand church plants in less than ten years, running a total of 250,000 people.
Additionally, Mars Hill Church is currently running eight thousand people in twenty services spread across seven campuses. We are pregnant with our eighth campus, and are exploring options to start two more in 2009. Now our goal in ten years is roughly one hundred campuses running fifty thousand people.
Opening a Training Center
We recently hired Rick Melson from Bethlehem Baptist Church (with Pastor John Piper) to architect the growth of our Mars Hill campuses along with Scott Thomas, who directs Acts 29. This will include launching a training center that will offer a master’s degree in missional leadership. You will hear much more about that in the coming year.
Mars Hill and Acts 29 are going global.
We are deadly serious about the great commission and loading all guns to storm hell with the gospel of grace. And we need more men. Nine hundred men. Not boys—men. Real men. Men who care less about padding their resume and getting their vacation days than about seeing lives transformed and legacies altered for generations. We need men who love their wives, pastor their children, submit to Scripture, bleed the gospel, and have steel in their spine, love in their hearts, and the lost in their sights.
Most of the guys reading this likely do not have the calling, courage, conviction, compassion, compulsion, or character to qualify as a church planter or campus pastor. But if you think you have the stuff, by God’s grace, to plant a church for Acts 29 or launch a campus for Mars Hill, we invite you to join us in Seattle on March 9–10. I don’t care if you are sixteen or sixty-one years of age. If you have gas in your tank and a calling in your life, show up for training, networking, and possibly even assessing, if you qualify.
Hundreds of our Best Men
Furthermore, if you attend Mars Hill Church and your Campus Pastor says you can come, you get in for free. We’d love to see hundreds of our best men, especially our best young men, sign up, show up, and step up.
If you attend, you will receive some great teaching on church and campus planting. Some dear friends, such as Matt Chandler, South African P.J. Smyth, Acts 29 Planter Dave Bruskas, and Acts 29 Director Scott Thomas, will join me in teaching at the boot camp. Joining us will be leaders of established and emerging church planting movements in Quebec, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Cape Town, London, India, Albania, Uganda, Thailand, and others. Most of these movement leaders are younger men. Together they represent literally thousands and thousands of churches from around the world with literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. We are pulling these young high-level leaders together for a World Church Planting Summit to learn and network, and you get to network with them and learn from them. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…........
Wow. So much has evolved over just 10 years! I remember Steve during last century’s EU activities, and being in high school youth group with his wife Naomi back in the early 90s. We’ve all passed a lot of water since then. And now they’ve been handpicked by Driscoll. I shall watch their progress with detached interest.
Checked Cathedral bookshop last week. The Vintage Church book is definitely there!
When I checked today after the St Andrews Cathedral organ concert, it was gorn! Though I did see some new quality books, including a book from Chappo on struggles in the Christian life. Was a bit short on dosh but I’ll buy that next time.
Jim Wackett - 13 February 2009 09:10 AM
It may very well be Steve Chong from Kogarah Presbyterian Church.
Aka Darth Vader ... taking over the whole universe ... I jest hehe. It may very well be :=).
I think I will just have to wait to get my copy of Vintage Church when I head to Chicago for the Gospel Coalition Conference in April. There should be resources of Mark, but also from the other pastors featured in this 3 day meeting.
Confirmed from the horse’s mouth (Steve Chong’s facebook that is):
“Thanks to everyone who has been so encouraging with the well wishes for our upcoming trip (next week!) to Seattle to attend the Acts 29 bootcamp and world leaders summit. (you can find out about it here…”
I have never heard of Mark Driscoll until I read a recent article that mentioned his criticsms of the Anglican Church here in Sydney.
Phillip Jensen and the other men like him helped to raise Christian men and women to misniter to us in the Churhces we enjoy today. So many University students went into some kind of Ministery because of the work of these men and many Churches especially those that have reached out to various ethnic groups came through the hard work of these men.
The Anglican Church would be dying a slow death today if it wasn’t for the many who came to Christ through the Univeristy ministries and those who went out into our suburbs and began Churches out there or revived dying churches with young families.
No book was written on how to plant Churches, these men had a heart to reach many with the Gospel message and Churches sprung up as a result of their faithful service to the Lord. It is plain and simple. It is in the Bible, read Acts. People who come to Christ need Churches.
We need people with a good understanding of God’s Word and the ability to take it to those who need to hear it. Why do people need to read a “How to Manual” written by some body else? God already gave us the instructions in His Word.
Feel free to buy the book and read it. Times are tough I haven’t got spare money to spend on books I don’t need, so glad I got myself a few good Bibles in different versions and with a concordance when I had the money to do so.
Maybe ‘cause I was at UNSW when Uni Church first began I guess I’ve seen it happen. I was also part of Greek Bible Fellowship and at the same time as we started up you had the Korean students Fellowship start up as well. Out West Ray Galea started his multicultural Church. Next thing you know we grew into big Churches that had to go off Campus. Most exciting times it was.
I know that TAFE ministry doesn’t work as good as the uni work. However, I do believe that we have created a sterotype that the gospel is only understood by those who go to uni and read books
I know that TAFE ministry doesn’t work as good as the uni work. However, I do believe that we have created a sterotype that the gospel is only understood by those who go to uni and read books
It certainly isn’t the way people think in Churches that have not got their roots in Uni Church. I’m glad I moved out to the suburbs and ahve had a look at how the other half live (so to speak).
As I have been in Suburban Church setting now for 16 years I can tell you the gospel can be received by non-Uni grads. We have people of all walks of life at our Church and all ages. It comes in handy to have guys who are electricians, plumbers and carpenters, we get lots of things done around the Church that way. Then we have our engineers, accountants and computer professionals (they come in handy as well). Not to mention we also have a professional audio technician and some semi-professional musicians. So we have our bases covered and it is so neat we have all these skills and talent available.
As I said before I belonged to Greek Bible Fellowship (now CBC Church) and while we were started by a Uni Student holding Bible Studies with Uni Students as we grew that didn’t remain the case for long. We brought along brothers, sisters, cousins, other family and friends. Many of these were not Uni students. Yes we even had Blue Collar workers. So it is possible to reach out to the non-academic.
I think we forget that God does the work to open the hearts and minds of those we are trying to evangelise. We are only His messangers.
I go back to the Bible again. Who did Jesus attract? Certainly not many intellectuals or religious types. Those who were spiritually hungry and spiritually sick. Even Jesus had many who rejected Him.
I wouldn’t get disheartened by the lack of response at TAFE. I would go and pray, then try agian. Who knows maybe you are only planting the seeds?
Just noticed that “Vintage Church” is readily available at Koorong for $29.95 :
This book from the popular Re: Lit series picks up where Vintage Jesus leaves off, beginning with a focus on the person and work of Jesus and then exploring the confessional, experiential, and missional aspects of his church. It defines a biblical church as one that properly balances the eternal truths of Scripture - church leadership, preaching, baptism, communion, and more - with timely, relevant methods designed to engage the culture, such as multi-campus churches and the latest forms of technology, to reach people with the gospel. While Vintage Church is helpful for pastors and church leaders, it is the kind of book you could hand to someone who has questions about ecclesiology but finds the very term ecclesiology intimidating. The authors put forth twelve practical questions about church doctrine and answer them in clear, biblical terms.
Why Is Preaching Important ? - ( “Vintage Church” by Mark Driscoll )
In the fourth chapter of Vintage Church we answer the question, “Why Is Preaching Important?” In a day when preaching has been junked by some and reduced to a fifteen-minute Dr. Phil karaoke, the centrality, authority, and necessity of preaching must be stressed with great force.
The following excerpt on preaching is from Vintage Church pages 90 and 104:
Jesus’ ministry included feeding the hungry, healing the sick, loving the outcast, and befriending the sinner. But we must never forget that Jesus’ ministry began with preaching. Thus, preaching is the first priority of ministry that leads God’s mission, which is accompanied by various other ministries that support, supplement, and sustain the preaching of God’s Word in truth with passion….
There is an ongoing debate as to the purpose of the sermon and whether it should focus on converting the lost or maturing the saved. The apparent conflict between preaching for seekers and preaching for believers is resolved simply by noting that both need to repent of sin and trust in Jesus to live a new life empowered by the Spirit. Therefore, a sermon can and should effectively communicate to both audiences, and it will if the preacher is able to go after the root of sin and explain Christian jargon in order to speak the “tongue” of the hearer. This includes saying the name of Jesus and making him known.
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