Confessions of a movement leader

Mark Driscoll was just 19 years old when God spoke to him and told him and said, â€œMarry Grace (his girlfriend), preach the Bible, train men and plant a church that plants other churches.

At that time he had only been a Christian for two years. He had never been a pastor, never preached before, never been a member of a church and so he thought it would be a good idea to start his own. He had no idea what he was doing.

Mark and Grace moved back to Seattle in 1996, one of Americaâ€™s least churched cities and planted Mars Hill with a team of just three families.

Driscoll writes, â€we were theologically conservative and culturally liberal, which caused great confusion because half of the church was angry that the other half was smoking, while the other half was angry that I taught from the Bible.â€œ

Today, attendance at Mars Hill exceeds 6,000. The church meets in five locations with a total of fourteen services each Sunday. One more location is scheduled to open before Easter 2008 in a former downtown nightclub.

Even more significant is Markâ€™s work to plant churches that are both missional and evangelical through the Acts29 Network.

So far, 170 churches have been planted, mostly in the US but also in Canada, Africa, India and Thailand. Mark has a vision to see 1,000 churches planted in the US reaching 250,000 people.

For more on Mark Driscoll have a listen to his message: â€Church planting in Corinthâ€œ or check out Pastor Provocateur. Even better buy the book.

â€Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (The Leadership Network Innovation)â€œ (Mark Driscoll)

By: Steve | 04/03/08 | Church planting movements | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

2 Responses to “Confessions of a movement leader” »»

Teddy Awad

Comment by Teddy Awad | 04/07/08 at 2:41 am

I love Acts 29, it has been a wonderful blessing from God to hear such practical advice and solid bible. I have been looking for something like Acts 29 for the last four years. I am looking for a church planting network that loves the bible and am not selling out to be relevant. I have moved with family to the Tampa Bay area, doing missionary work in America for about eight months again the process of a church plant. I have been fed , convicted, and encouraged by this network. I have tried to get connected with them with no success, sent emails, applied online to be a planter, and tried to call pastors in the Florida area. They were all just to busy to help or let me know how to get connected with Acts 29. I pray that I can find other networks that are as bible based and that have such passion. God Knows. I will continue to listen to these messages, read the books and blogs because they are pastoring me through this planting process. I have been in ministry of over 15 years and preached on five continents and lived in the bush of 15 countries in Africa as a missionary. We used very basic methods and majored on the Teaching and preaching the words of Life, which thousands of people and planted numerous churches through bible college students in their own villages. I am now convinced that the young adults in America are in crisis and are leaving the traditional church by the droves. The church is at a crisis point and we are losing more than we are reproducing and are going to be extinct or worst irrelevant. I am so convinced of this call to radically reach this generation that I closed my home and moved to an area that had a young adult population to reach. I have these words that God commissioned me with GO, GATHER, GROW(build), GOING(REPRODUCE), DEVELOP PEOPLE, LEAVE and get GOING AGAIN. Please pray for my family and me. We need people to walk with us on this Journey who are seasoned church planters and will care for us and help us through the commission of God for our lives. God Bless. I also hope I can connect some day with ACTS29 Network.
In His Grace Forever,
Teddy and Family