Young preachers and their favorite guys

Well, Mark, you've done it again (ht to Joel Watts). He asked in a facebook post for people to tell stories of effeminate worship leader experiences they had had.

Mark Driscoll has managed to say one of those weird things that people say which makes the gospel look ridiculous. I love Mark Driscoll. He is made in God's image. He believes in the authority of God expressed in scripture. He has accurately assessed that our culture suffers from money-olatry as well as laziness. He preaches that Jesus (crucified, resurrected, and reigning) is the way to God, that God is love, and that Jesus is taking applications for discipleship.

But I also think that remarks like this betray an unusual hermeneutic. Mark seems to have as a starting point that masculinity (read: male dominance) is the proper mode of expressing Christlike behavior from the pulpit. The major problem I see with this is that Jesus never went into much detail about how awesome it was to be a man. In fact, being a human at all was so much trouble that expressing God's character got him strung up on a cross. Due to his desire to express meekness and love his enemies, Jesus never had time to talk about the virtues of male anatomy or to express his disdain that some men did not act like King Leonidas. Instead, he preached that some men might forgo marriage and live as eunuchs to further his kingdom. The meekness of living in a socially unacceptable manner (which Jesus chose for himself) was central to his message. Not everybody can take this responsibility, but for those who could, Jesus said that it was a gift from God.

The point of this rant is layered. Many young preacher types have their "guys." We all love our Francis Chan, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Matt Chandler, Dave Platt, Jim West (people who love him only preach from Romans 1:18-2:17), Dallas Willard, Dave Black, James White, or who but none of these folks are absolute. The only absolute revelation of God is that one made in Jesus Christ. Enjoy reading favorite authors, but realize that they can be wrong. Driscoll loves being a man more than anything, this appears in his preaching. John Piper loves Jonathan Edwards, and his exegesis often takes an Edwardsian turn in places where it seems that Edwards was mistaken. That's okay, they're human. Turn instead to the words of Scripture in the original languages, then commentaries, then prayer, then your guys. Too many preachers get their sermons from other preachers (Bil Cornelius does this, I know a preacher in the valley who told me he basically read from a John MacArthur book and called it his sermons for a while). This is boring and often times a bit lazy.

The aspect of the rant is to say that pastors simply need to be Jesus oriented rather than provocative. Jesus provokes enough as is. Plenty of worship leaders write songs that do not exalt the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Why bother pointing out somebodies failure to match a standard of manliness when they might be writing songs that confuse the church? Jesus breaks every standard we try to make for God. He talked about hell, he forgave the most rotten people, he demanded change, he turned the other cheek, he turned over tables, he accepted terrorists and aristocrats, and turned away people locked into acceptable practices, he took a massive beating without making a rude remark, and he finally got crucified. Jesus is provocative. More than that, he is Lord. He is the criteria for Christian preaching, not masculinity, not femininity.

So, to summarize my rant:
I commend gospel preachers/preaching, including that of Driscoll.
Masculinity is not the uniting theme of Scripture nor the criterion for gospel preaching/singing.
Preachers: preach the text not your new "it" book from a mega church pastor.
Jesus is the criterion for Christian preaching. Jesus and Jesus alone.