Photo by John Keatley

It seems Mark Driscoll is the flame to controversy’s moth.  When he surreptitiously posted this quote on Facebook,

But this fallout from Marky-D’s post is not really about how we, as followers of The Way, are to respond to culture, at least, not really.
It’s about something else, something  none of those 400 plus comments really touched on directly.
As strong as portions of his reply can be, it also misses the point.

If any other “normal” Christian posted that exact same thing on Facebook or on Twitter, there would be relatively little response – with the possible exception of a worried mother. Certainly any response would be free of the criticism, scorn, and virulent disappointment that characterized many of the comments for Driscoll’s post.

This is because we – that is, American Christians – have forgotten (or never really knew) how to look at our leadership. We depend on those who stand before us to tell us, in precise step-by-step bullet-points, how we are to live each day. Yet we want that only to the extent that we agree with what they say.

We approach leadership as if it were a vending machine, dispensing how-to guides for the Christian life. We keep coming back to these pastoral vending machines because we like what they have to offer. But usually, when they spit out something we don’t like, we grab them and start shaking and kicking, demanding that they give us the usual. In the throes of these temper-tantrums it is so easy to forget that these people in leadership are working through the same Faith we are.

The only thing that separates them from us are social perceptions and the few feet of empty floor between the pews and the stage.

We expect them to have everything together, but frequently they have less figured out than we do ourselves. Maybe they have the answers, and maybe they don’t. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter. Leadership is fallible, and it needs to be. They are as much a part of the body as we are; we have as much to teach those on stage as they have to teach us. Their gift may be teaching, but other parts of the body have strengths in other areas which leadership may be lacking. The whole body is called to support one another, instead of depending just on the person on stage.

Honestly, we are only partially to blame for treating our own brothers and sisters in Christ like this. We live in a Christian subculture that has become just that, a mirror of the secular culture that surrounds us. We lift our celebrities as high as secular celebrities are lifted, and we drop them like a shoplifting Winona Ryder when things get messy. This is not what we are called to. We are called to be counter-cultural, to buck the cultural tendencies wherever possible.

We’re expected to do things different. Usually we don’t.

Yet Driscoll is not without fault in this. His choice of entertainment is not what is problematic, but instead how he has postured himself towards popular culture in the past. His denouncing films like James Cameron’s Avatar and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series told those who follow his speaking that he was, by and large, aligned with those Christians who reject secular culture. Thus, these Christians forged a kind of trust in Driscoll that, as can be observed from his Jay-Z post and the response it generated, was unwarranted. Although he tries to explain away his seeming inconsistency in his reply blog, he still gave the impression that his theology of culture was more conservative than it actually was, resulting in feelings of shock and even betrayal from others when his taste for secular rap music was revealed.

We, as the Church, need to find ways to address both problems this situation has brought to light: the interaction between leadership and the rest of the body, and the consistency in the manner in which the leadership is presenting themselves. It appears that a lot of this will lay in the hands of the pastors and teachers. They must learn to present themselves in a way that is more open, vulnerable, and honest. Yet those who learn from them must come to terms with the humanity of the person on stage before them and with the fact that those teaching us are fallible and broken.

Next time you are at church or listening to a podcast, remember your role. What are ways that we can realign our ideas of leadership? For those of us who are in leadership, where are we being inconsistent? It will take time and intentionality, and probably some divine intervention, but this is just another step in working towards the reconciliation of all things.