Tommy Mann

In 2011 I wrote a blog about Mark Driscoll . As stated before, the purpose of the post was for the education of those who were seeing quick soundbites of Driscoll, but who did not know about his crudeness, foul language, and what I believed to be disrespect towards our Lord. The blog was Driscoll in his own words, citing him with page numbers from his own books. Since November 29th, 2011, I have received many angry messages from the comment section and through email. Eventually I quit responding to them because they were all the same: telling me how no one is perfect and that Driscoll may have  changed since those books were written. My response was always the same. If he has changed, he will apologize and we will see a changed man. Why did I want him to apologize? Not because I feel I am owed one (I'm certainly not), but because the apology is symbolic of his acknowledgment of the need to change. Well Mark Driscoll has apologized via an open letter on social media. He ...

           I’ve been very critical of the emerging church in some of these blogs, and some have accused me of not actually knowing what that movement is all about. For that reason I decided to write a review of the writings of some of these emergent leaders.      I have previously written about men like  Tony Campolo ,  Rob Bell , and  Mark Driscoll  so they won't be focused on in this post.       I have read, among other texts, Dan Merchant’s Lord Save Us From Your Followers, Dan Kimball’s The Emerging Church, Brad J. Kallenberg’s Live to Tell—Evangelism for a Postmodern Age, Erwin McManus’ The Barbarian Way and Wide Awake, and Donald Miller’s books Blue Like Jazz, To Own a Dragon, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and The Open Table.         My two favorites were books written by multiple authors (a community of them, perhaps). These books are An E...

(Please read Mark Driscoll, Apology Accepted here ) As a young pastor I keep getting told that I need to learn from the leadership training of Mark Driscoll, who is the leader of the Acts 29 Network and pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. He is considered to be a leadership guru for young church leaders, but I believe that his methodology is dangerous. To Driscoll’s credit, he teaches a lot of good theology. Most of Driscoll’s fans seem to be in the emerging church, but Driscoll himself is no fan of the emerging church. He is the first to point out the fact that they do not believe in absolute truth, and that they care more about handing out “muffins and hugs” than they do about preaching the gospel. In a day where the emerging church spends more time giving happy pep talks, Driscoll is a teacher of theology. And while I do not agree with all of his theology, I do appreciate that he is teaching it. Unfortunately, it is guys like him that say just enough good s...