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I read On the Old Testament earlier, and that was my intro to Mark Driscoll’s new series of Re:Lit “Books you’ll actually read.” Like the OT book, On Church Leadership runs about a hundred pages and can be read in about an hour.

A quick look at LibraryThing statistics revealed that, as I suspected, the Leadership book, which deals with the biblical perspective on “elders,” “deacons,” and “pastors,” as well as women leading in the church, is the most widely-owned book in the imprint to date. Makes perfect sense, since this is one of the most widely-debated issues in the church today.

I’ll come right out and say I’m a fan of the Complementarian Driscoll champions, which has strong biblical warrant. Aside from helpful clarity on the women in ministry question—”This chapter should include a wick because it is connected to a powder keg of controversial theological debates”—Driscoll also deals with stuff like elder qualifications, the roles of elders vs. deacons, leadership teams, and something you don’t see in most books on leadership: the essential role of church members as leaders in their spheres.

On Church Leadership features Mark Driscoll’s trademark directness dosed with more stand-up moments than I found in On the Old Testament. (”When the Bible tells us not to kill innocent people it does not mean that God wants us to kill innocent people, even if a “scholar” has more degrees than Fahrenheit, know Greek, and published a book explaining it based upon drawings on the wall of a cave in upper Mesopotamia.”)

I’m not someone who feels ripped off if I smile while reading a theology book, so I enjoyed this one thoroughly and definitely recommend it.

In a different way than you think. Read this letter from Mark Driscoll in response to a critical review of his book, Vintage Jesus. Wow. (I also wrote a review of Vintage Jesus.)

HT: Jason Allen.

Some of you might want to read my review of Mark Driscoll’s On the Old Testament.

First things first: You should really see this movie. Second, check out this post–originally written for freelance copywriters like me, but easily adapted to something as entrepreneurial as church planting. With apologies to original author John Hewitt, I suggest that we can gain…

6 Church Planting Lessons from Tony Stark, aka Iron Man

Just insert appropriate words or phrases where necessary. Example:

Challenge Yourself

“Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.” - Tony Stark

Don’t be afraid to take on goals and projects that challenge you. Taking on big tasks, even “impossible” ones, gets your blood flowing and forces you to be innovative and learn new things. People are always telling you what you can’t do when it comes to [church planting]. You can’t [plant a church in an urban center] if don’t [have a bajillion dollars in funding]. You can’t land a major [planting partner] because they only deal with [guys who know the SBC in and out]. You can’t sell a [church planting vision] without an [Apple laptop]. You can’t get an interview with [Mark Driscoll]. The truth is, even if you don’t pull any of these things off, chances are you’re going to learn something in the attempt. If you do pull it off you’ll have proof that impossible only means hard, and that will help you do the next impossible thing.

Read the whole thing.

________See also Intro, Part 2 & Part 3_________

North America is the home of “big-launch” church plants, celebrity pastors, multi-site campuses, video venues, and a bigger-is-better approach to ministry in general. However, pioneered by church planters and missiologists like Alan Hirsch and Neil Cole, the overlapping categories of small groups, cell groups, and house churches have also gained a degree of acceptability and allure.

The purpose of this series is to explore the mechanics of planting a church via a small group strategy–but with the caveat that there is no hypothetical growth cap or “preferred size” for the growing church. For our purposes, a “small group” will be understood as a missional community of eight to twelve people who meet weekly to pray, study the Bible, grow in Christian fellowship, and work on ministry tasks.

A third category of church plants exist: those that “launch small,” adopting a small group dynamic to get off the ground, while maintaining the expectation of sustained growth-growth that, if it culminated in sprawling mega church services, would provoke no feelings of regret.

Frequently, when large services and small groups are pursued within the church planting context, they represent a demarcation between contrasting ministry philosophies and cultural streams. Planters who build large churches are comfortable working within a church bureaucracy and expect to wield considerable authority. Meanwhile, practitioners who prefer a decentralized, postmodern ethos readily embrace a ministry approach that aims small and stays small (sometimes even microscopic).[1] However, a third category of church plants exist: those that “launch small,” adopting a small group dynamic to get off the ground, while maintaining the expectation of sustained growth-growth that, if it culminated in sprawling mega church services, would provoke no feelings of regret.

Frequently, the governing assumption in church planting is that if a church planter intends to build a large church, he should start large, and there is statistical warrant for this, since only 20 percent of churches that begin with 1-25 adults grow rapidly, exceeding statistical norms.[2] The difficulties faced by churches stay small are well documented. [3]

However, many healthy churches trace their origins back to a small group of people who were inspired by a unifying vision. Today, church plants continue to grow and become established, even when they begin with the odds dramatically stacked against them: “About ten to twenty people a week were showing up for our Sunday service, which had outgrown the living room of my rental home and was now being held in one of those epically awful youth room, complete with the golden shag carpet on the floor and the Christian rock posters on the wall…”[4] The question is, how can a church plant be positioned in such a way that “starting small” and “growing big” are both feasible? We will attempt to briefly identify seven “best practices” that can contribute to building a healthy church plant via small groups.

________See also Intro, Part 2 & Part 3_________

[1] Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger document a “church” in England that is composed of 12 members and does not intend to grow further.

[2] Stephen Gray, Planting Fast-Growing Churches (LifeWay.com, 2007). 3 May 2008, available from [2] Stephen Gray, Planting Fast-Growing Churches (LifeWay.com, 2007). 3 May 2008, available from LifeWay.

[3] Ed Stetzer, Small Church Research (LifeWay.com.com, 2008). 3 May 2008, available from [3] Ed Stetzer, Small Church Research (LifeWay.com.com, 2008). 3 May 2008, available from Ed Stetzer’s Blog.

[4] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 38.