The Radical Reformission

To prepare for a Cornerstone leadership conference and this upcoming semester, I read a challenging book earlier this summer by Mark Driscoll entitled The Radical Reformission. I'm going to partially review the book and share my thoughts about it in this post by quickly answering some questions provided by Miles.


1) How does Driscoll define 'Reformission'? How did it evolve for him?

Early on, he defines 'reformission' as "a radical call to reform the church's traditonally flawed view of missions as something carried out only in foreign lands and to focus instead on the urgent need in our own neighborhoods, which are filled with diverse cultures of Americans who desperately need the gospel of Jesus and life in his church." Eventually, he distinguishes three important components of reformission: the gospel, the culture, and the church.

2) What were your thoughts about Chapter 3: Shotgun Weddings to Jesus? What did you agree and disagree with?

I really enjoyed this chapter of the book and agreed with most of what Driscoll discussed. He begins by critiquing "routine presentation" evangelism such as going door to door in a neighborhood or handing out tracts in a park. He says, "while these routine patterns of evangelism have proven fruitful in the past - and remain fruitful in some cultural contexts - their effectiveness is waning in the emerging American culture." I could not agree more with this statement. I've never really felt comfortable handing out gospel tracts to random people because I know how I feel when I'm approached by a total stranger who starts preaching to me. I would rather someone I know preach to me with their lives. That's what the reformission calls Christians to do.

3) What did you learn about culture?

Americans are more likely worship themselves than God. Here are some appalling facts about our selfish culture:

In ninety nations, people spend less each than we in the United States spend on our garbage bags.

We have twice as many malls as high schools.

Our supermarkets have 250 percent more items than they did twenty years ago.

Parents spend six hours shopping each week, and forty minutes playing with their children

Seventy percent of Americans visit a mall each week; that's more than visit houses of worship.


Overall, I think Driscoll hits the nail on the head. I think the Church in America could use some revitalization from a reformission. We need to make healthy distinguisments between the gospel, the culture, and the Church. Focusing on just one of these components causes us to ignore the others and produces either the parachurch, liberalism, or fundamentalism. The reformission calls for us to fall in deep love with Jesus Christ who will call us to embrace the gospel, the culture, and the church. Though I think Driscoll covers this issue well, I wish he did not use some of language he chooses to describe Our wonderful Lord and Savior. With that said, I really enjoyed the biblical freshness of his book.

I pray that we would all come to a point of repentance and reformission in our lives to bring honor and glory to the name of Jesus Christ.

In Him,

Mark