As I was traveling over the weekend I listened to a few sermons from a wide variety of pastors: Charles Stanley, Jon Weece (Southland Christian Church) and Mark Driscoll.
Driscoll had an excellent sermon on the Cross from his doctrine series – if you don’t mind the fact that he used the phrase “I don’t give a damn” in the sermon 🙂
When I got home, I took a look at Driscoll’s blog and ended up linking to a whole train of posts in response to a speech about “manly” preachers that Driscoll gave at a conference (probably more than one) some time ago. Depending on what you think about the legitimacy of the blogs, Driscoll was trying to be funny OR was way over the top.
No matter. If you are reading this blog to find a critique of Mark Driscoll, Mark Batterson or any other megachurch pastor, you’ll have to go elsewhere. I’ve long sinced learned that the “most read” blogs that I write will always be those that mention the name of a megachurch or its pastor!
Driscoll, Batterson, Perry Noble, Ed Young and others are all gifted leaders. God has used them to accomplish some awesome things and – like ALL of us – they remain imperfect and sometimes over-the-top. My grandmother, if she were alive and listened to some of their sermons, would note that they are also occasionally full of themselves which she also sometimes said about me!
This post is intended to encourage us to consider whether or not God has called us to be who we are in Jesus Christ or whether or not God has called us to be who Mark Driscoll, Batterson, Noble or Young are in Jesus Christ.
God smacked me in the face with this thought in the car on the way home Saturday. I began to feel the pressure to do things in the same way that these guys do them so that I can be successful, so that I can be a good leader, so that, so that, so that . . .
But I am not them. I am Jason and God wants me to be me – in Jesus! I can’t be who these other guys are in Jesus.
Jesus works in me to give me gifts, to give me leadership and to call me to obedience in my life, my family, my church and my community. The one thing that we all have in common with these mega-church guys (or at least should have in common) is a passion for Jesus Christ and the expansion of his Kingdom!
But in that passionate pursuit of Jesus and his kingdom, we will discover that Jesus does not call us to be Driscoll, Batterson, Noble or Young, but intead he calls us to be us – in him! And there is no one more or less that I can be than the me I am in Jesus. And the me that I am in Jesus is the best person I can be for my family, my church, my community and the Kingdom of God.