A Gathering Voices post by Lynne M. Baab
My son sent me a link to an article in the Stranger (a Seattle area alternative newspaper) about the furor around Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The article is entitled “Church or Cult?”, which gives you a hint of the tone. I not only read the article, I read most of the 200 comments and some of the blog posts for which there were links in the article.
I’ve always had a lot of mixed feelings about Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll, the controversial pastor there. Because Seattle was my home until 2007, I’ve met people who attend Mars Hill, and I’ve heard them talk about the ways they have grown in faith in the church. In some ways, Mark Driscoll has been prophetic in trying to describe a form of Christianity that is not feminized. Those are good things.
However. A big however. I disagree with many of Mark Driscoll’s views on the role of women in ministry and in marriage. I found the Stranger article titillating, a sort of guilty pleasure. And yet I hate to see Christians discredited in the press. I was glad some members at Mars Hill defended the church in their comments.
I probably spent an hour and a half reading the article, the comments, and the blog posts. I felt uneasy and disturbed for the rest of the evening.
The next day I woke up feeling fine, and during the day I wasn’t thinking about Mars Hill at all. Late in the day I happened to remember that a friend had raved about a sermon at her church, the church where I used to work, Bethany Presbyterian Church in Seattle. I went online, found the sermon, and discovered that Pastor Heidi Husted Armstrong had preached one of the best sermon I’ve heard lately. She focused on parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt 13:24-30, 36-43), and she talked about the fact that all of us as individuals, and all of us in Christian communities, are a mix of wheaty-ness and weedy-ness. Jesus says that we are to let the weeds and wheat grow up together until the end of the age. To tear out the weeds now would be to damage the wheat.
Suddenly Mars Hill was back in my mind. There’s definitely wheat at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, even though it pains me sometimes to acknowledge that. I believe there are weeds there as well. Because God, the Lord of the Harvest, has asked us not to tear out the weeds prematurely, I have to have patience. I am called to speak the truth as I see it, but to speak in love (Eph 4:15).
Heidi quoted Gregory the Great in her sermon: The good we do has no value if we fail to be patient with the evildoing of another. Do I really believe that?
I felt such a myriad of emotions when reading the Stranger article: glee and sorrow, coupled with shame at my own response. The juxtaposition of those emotions with Heidi’s sermon actually seemed to illustrate her main point. Wheaty-ness and weedy-ness were evident in my thoughts and feelings.
I’m glad God will deal with wheat and weeds at the end of the age. I’m glad I can rest in God’s competence to do that. But I do feel challenged to find a bit more love in my heart for people with whom I disagree.
