I want to provide a real life example of this arrogant attitude being taught as being pastoral. Mark Driscoll once ran a mega church in Seattle with over 15,000 people across several sites. As a Warren adherent who clearly loved the purpose driven church, he let slip one day this myopic attitude that Carey Nieuwhof summarizes here. Driscoll said,
"I'm all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies under the Mars Hill bus [chuckles] and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus. Those are the two options. But the bus ain't gonna stop. And, uh, I'm just a guy who's like, "Look, we love you. But this is what we're doing. There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus. They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off, because they want to go somewhere else. I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed." -- Mark Driscoll
The crass, uncaring, and arrogant attitude Driscoll displayed would cost him his job and his church eventually. It started however with the term blessed subtraction, which is directly taken from Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Church. Warren has now taught this generation's pastors the garbage that Nieuwhof is now selling. That mission and vision are more important than the individual sheep that belong to God. They want to grow their church to mega status so they can land sweet book deals but in order to convince goats to stay they have to water down the gospel to the point that it cannot actually save anyone. So each week they entertain the goats as best they can. Smoke machines, rocking worship and a relevant but unbiblical sermon designed to make them feel good. Meanwhile the real sheep are starving in these churches and when they dare ask for a morsel to be fed they are greeted by the teachings of Carey Nieuwhof that label them as selfish gossipers who can't stand change and want to live in the past. Either that or their pastor CEO dude runs them over with the church bus in the spirit of blessed subtraction. The real problem is that they just cannot see through their myopia that the problem is not the sheep but their own desire to slaughter them.
Reverend Anthony Wade - February 4, 2019
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