Discerning The Most Popular Christian Podcast in the Country: Positives and Cautions

the rise and fall of mars hill is a podcast produced by christianity today and it has been number one on the religion and spirituality charts on apple podcasts for several weeks this is the podcast everyone is talking about it traces the history of pastor mark driscoll and mars hill church from its founding in the late 90s to its explosion of growth through the 2000s and then ultimately to its downfall and disillusion in 2015. as of the recording of this video seven episodes have been published and i've listened to them all several people have asked for my opinion so i thought today i could just offer a little bit of analysis tell you what i think are some of the positives and then maybe offer a few cautions for listening to the podcast going forward so on the positive side i think the podcast is incredibly well produced it's entertaining it's fascinating interesting well documented and well presented i think they do a really good job of bringing to light a topic that i think more christians should be talking about and that's the issue of spiritual abuse in my work analyzing the movements of progressive christianity and deconstruction what you hear in so many deconstruction stories is that they start with a story of spiritual abuse this is something we need to be talking about exposing and acknowledging when someone's been through spiritual abuse it can be incredibly confusing because at the same time they may have had a genuine encounter with god they may have even become a christian in a particular church that ends up becoming an abusive atmosphere so i think this podcast did a really good job of showing the balance they interviewed people who had had good experiences they highlighted some of the positives but they also uncovered an atmosphere of bullying and abuse from the founding pastor mark driscoll mark driscoll was a part of the early emergent church movement which eventually would go on to become what we know today as progressive christianity but early in the movement there were both conservative and more liberal voices they ended up parting ways which is why the emergent movement is largely remembered today as a more theologically liberal movement the rise and fall of mars hill traces some of that history through a particular narrative which brings me to one of the cautions i might have listening to the podcast going forward the podcast highlights the voices of several progressive christians who i actually write about in my book another gospel the progressive christians who are interviewed and talked about on the podcast are definitely portrayed as the heroes of the story this is where i think it can be kind of confusing for people who aren't aware of who some of the major players in the podcast are and so i think it's really important that we use discernment when we listen to this podcast because some of those same progressive voices went on to deny the sufficiency of scripture and the historic christian gospel another point of caution i might offer has to do with the way the podcast portrays the views of complementarianism and egalitarianism so if you're unfamiliar with those terms essentially complementarians believe that men and women were both made in the image and likeness of god and therefore are equal in dignity and value and worth but they're different in their roles and callings and vocation whereas in the egalitarian view it starts the same men and women are both created in the image and likeness of god equal in dignity and value and worth but they are also interchangeable in role calling and vocation so christians have debated these issues for years this is not something that i think christians should divide over as brothers and sisters in christ it certainly is an important topic to debate where you land on it is probably going to determine where you would choose to go to church and who you would consider to be your leadership at that church i am personally a complementarian and i think there's great beauty and value in seeing the difference between the roles callings and vocation of both men and women in the home and in the church so one of the criticisms of mark driscoll in the podcast rise and fall of mars hill is the hard stance he took on complementarianism and so one of the narratives that's put forth in the podcast is that complementarianism is in and of itself abusive now they never explicitly say this but it's definitely the implication and it's what you walk away thinking they interview mostly egalitarians to analyze the complementarianism of mark driscoll but as many of my friends in apologetics say you can't judge a philosophy or a teaching on its abuses and i would agree that mark driscoll's view some of the teachings i heard on the podcast would be an abuse of a proper view of complementarianism complementarianism when lived out in a biblical way when everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing is quite beautiful and i think establishes a great structure for the home and for society now again i know there are christians who are going to disagree with me on that and that's fine but what i take issue with is the portrayal of complementarianism as being abusive in and of itself and so with that said i'd like to leave us with a couple of principles that we should always be using as christians when we listen to podcasts and take in media especially media that has the label christian on it this first one has actually been on my heart a lot lately because of the rise of the social media platform and that is be aware of narratives look we're all human none of us are perfectly capable of analyzing something from an entirely unbiased perspective this is why i'm always trying to pinpoint what are my biases what is my experience with this what baggage am i bringing to this podcast that's going to make me think about it in a certain way the best we can do is to acknowledge those biases and try to move past them so my encouragement to us even as we listen to this podcast is be aware of narratives whether they intend to or not there are narratives being put forward the history is being analyzed in a certain way so we just need to be aware of that and make sure we're thinking critically as we encounter all of the material in the podcast and the second thing i would say is just filter everything through the scriptures so for particular doctrine or teaching is being presented as abusive we need to go back to the scriptures what do the scriptures teach about this that's how we'll know if the doctrine is being abused or if it's being implemented properly and filtering everything through scripture can keep us from swinging from one extreme to another we can listen to a podcast like this learn from it we can glean the good stuff but rather than following every voice that might actually have something true to say on one point we keep our authority where it belongs and that's with scripture [Music] you

Channel: Alisa Childers

Views: 106,852

Keywords: apologetics

Id: k6uneL8DW5A

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021