A Few Words to Mark Driscoll from an Effeminate Worship Leader

See here's the thing, Mark. I've been to your church. I listened to you preach, and your words were thoughtful, knowledgeable, memorable, and inspiring. They encouraged me to consider new ways to emulate Christ in my life. I have close friends who after a long struggle with organized religion found life, love, truth, and family in your community.

But I live on the East Coast, Mark. And their stories don't make it over here. What makes it over here is stuff (or other words for "stuff") like this:

There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity. Mark Driscoll, Relevant Magazine, 2007

At the risk of being a spiritually self-righteous blogger critic, let me just say, what the hell? I mean I know where you're coming from: Jesus's ministry included fashioning a whip and overturning tables and driving out money-changers. But this was one incident in a thirty year ministry that was defined by non-violence. Its climax, the crucifixion, was in part an act of civil disobedience, in which Jesus was the guy getting beaten up, the one made to bleed, the one pierced by a sword. But that's not even my issue here. My issue is the implication that people who you are able beat to a pulp are not worthy of your respect. Which I imagine would include Ghandi, Einstein, and Mr. Rogers. And let me just say, Mark, I think Mr. Rogers deserves your respect. Which brings me to...

I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake. Mark Driscoll, Resurgence Blog, 2008

But Mark, God is a chick. Or rather, God is a gender-less being who probably doesn't tolerate being referred to using a patronizing word like "chick" as patiently as most women do. What does it say to the women who make up the majority of the Christian community when you deny God's role as both father and mother of creation, the divine being who created gender and thus encompasses and transcends it completely? I've spoken to some of them, and I think it says to them that they're unimportant and ultimately worth less to God than men.

But Mark, this isn't even what really grinds my gut. What makes me so livid I write blog posts like this one (which will probably be taken down or at least heavily edited tomorrow) is when stuff like this finds its way to my inbox, like it did today:

The problem in the church today, it's just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chick-ified, church boys. Sixty percent of Christians are chicks and the forty percent that are dudes are still sorta chicks. It's just sad. When you walk in it's sea-foam green and fuscia and lemon yellow and the whole architecture and the whole aesthetic is real feminine and the preacher's kinda feminine and the music's kinda emotional and feminine and we're looking around going, "How come we're not innovative?" Cause all the innovative dudes are home watching football. Or they're out making money or climbing a mountain or shootin' a gun or working on their truck. [...] They're gonna get married, make money, make babies, build companies, buy real estate; they're gonna make the culture of the future. If you get the young men you win the war. You get everything; you get the families, the women, the children, the money, the business—you get everything. You don't get the young men you get nothing. [...] Churches that don't have those guys, they can't be innovative, because they don't have innovators. They're just not there. Mark Driscoll, Desiring God interview, 2006

So what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you've ever personally witnessed? Mark Driscoll, Facebook, July 2011

Ok ok ok look, I get it. Many, if not most churches are not inviting to men who drive pickup trucks and shoot guns. There is a large swath of blue-collar American men who can't connect with the average American church. Yes, it's an important demographic which you and the folks at Mars Hill have done an exceptional job of reaching.

But let me be frank for a minute, Mark. By your standards I am the most effeminate male worship leader I know. I don't drive a truck, I have no interest guns, I haven't climbed many mountains, sports bore me, and I thought Wild at Heart was just okay.

I play the piano. I enjoy theater. I almost always prefer to create than to compete or conquer. And if there's one God-forsaken lie that offends every part of who I am, it is the claim that these things are inconsistent with masculinity. That real men don't become poets or ballet dancers or violin players. These roles do not neuter masculinity, but the idea that they are not a part of masculinity's strength and substance certainly does. How many great artists and thinkers have been cut short by fathers with brutishly narrow views of what is masculine? The church needs those people too.

Honestly, call me chick-ified, but I don't think sitting at home watching football on a Sunday morning is a mark of an innovative thinker. And I fail to understand how only men get married, make money, make babies, build companies, buy real estate, and innovate. Your words say to me that to be feminine is to be backward, future-less, unimportant, and full of nothingness—which is not just misogyny, it is heresy.

But you know what, Mark? I don't think you really think those things, at least not these days. I think you probably recognize that when you look at the whole of church history, it is women, not men, that have been the oppressed, marginalized, and ignored. I would guess you probably have some choice words for the men who have taken advantage of women in churches over the centuries. I've heard you speaking wise words to the generation of man-boys I find myself in, who prefer to live in a state of perpetual adolescence than to take responsibility for their actions and honor the women in their life. I've read about you admonishing men to care for their families and publicly apologizing for making demeaning comments about women. I've even read that you may regret some of the statements I've posted here.

In fact I think you have a good many wise things to say. I've heard some of them. My dear friends who attend your church have heard many of them. So I'm begging you, Mark, to get some of them across the plains. Instead of loading up my browser and reading pot-shots about your perception of my masculinity, I'd love to read about how your church is innovating ways to serve the poor in Seattle. I know it's controversy that drives the bad out here instead of the good. But the bad comes from somewhere, Mark, and I wish it would stop.

Sources not yet linked: Experimental Theology | Seattle Times
Image: Haags Uitburo
Special thanks to the liberated Carolyn Tapie