In this episode we debrief our experiences listening to Christianity Today’s podcast series, The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, which is all about Mark Driscoll’s leadership at a megachurch in Seattle from 1996 to 2014. Joining us for this conversation are Aimee Byrd, the author of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (published by Zondervan), and Dr. Michael Bird, who is Academic Dean and Lecturer in Theology at Ridley College, Melbourne. You can find...
Mark Driscoll is trending again. This past week I read an interview transcript by John Piper on the subject of Mars Hill and Driscoll. I also read that Driscoll is beginning a new bible study series on Ecclesiastes that will be hosted on his website. I have often wanted to share my own experience at Mars Hill, and now I have the chance to do so. This is my personal story about Mars Hill. Just over 3...
It was announced the other day that, on top of everything else surrounding the Mark Driscoll controversy of the past few years, Mars Hill church is now going to disband. The Mars Hill website stated their plans with the following four points: “(1) All of Mars Hill’s existing church properties will either be sold, or the loans on the individual properties will be assumed by the independent churches, subject to approval by the lender; (2)...
I’ve recently been thinking about the Strange Fire Conference put on by John MacArthur, since there has been quite a big uproar about it on the blogosphere in Evangelical circles. John MacArthur, being a staunch cessationist (believing that sign gifts from the Holy Spirit were only part of the early church, and have ceased), hosted a conference on the dangers against the Charismatic movement, and the necessity to guard against the false doctrine that the...
We have a new logo courtesy of Steve Feld. Thanks so much for the awesome design! This week a spoken word poet named Jefferson Bethke went viral with his video: Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus. The guys over at Resurgence posted this about the video: “We don’t post poetry very often, but we do when it’s pretty good. Check out this poem on how the gospel of Jesus is the good news that breaks...
“We did have mediocre sex that eventually resulted in five children and one miscarriage.” [1] Include a line like this in your introductory chapter, and you’ll likely perk up some ears and some curiosity. Especially if your audience consists of “Evangelical” Christians. But, real life confessions, biographical descriptions, and frank honesty on some of (especially “Christian”) cultures most feared taboos, pretty much summarizes the mission of Mark and Grace Driscoll’s new (and as always,...
CNN interacts with Mark Driscoll’s new book, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, co-written with his wife. Read CNN’s article here. In light of the recent Iowa Caucuses to determine the future GOP candidate and the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and so on, Kevin DeYoung gives us 7 anthropological principles for politics. Matthew Lee Anderson discusses predictions for the New Evangelicals in 2012. Michael Horton discusses the...
The first rule at The Two Cities is, You must write about biblical manhood. The second rule at The Two Cities is, You must write about biblical manhood. This website has dedicated more posts to the subject of biblical manhood than any other subject. First Ryan did an excellent series on the topic, examining the biblical manhood movement from a number of different angles. Then John offered a helpful insight to the fact that some in...
So far on this blog we’ve had some discussion led by Ryan about how the biblical manhood movement (mis)uses statistical cultural analysis when applying it to the Church (For the relevant posts in the 6-part series: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6). I do not intend here to pick up the discussion further, or to write multiple posts on the topic of Complementarianism vs. Egalitarianism. Rather I am concerned with the way Christians talk about...
Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be looking at multi-site churches. They represent an increasingly popular phenomenon, aided in no small part by advances in technology. In this first installment, we’ll look briefly at what multi-site churches are, with future installments looking at the arguments in favor of and against using such a medium as a way of doing church. First off, let’s define the terms. According to The Multi-Site Church Revolution,...
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