Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll (b. 1970) is an author, church planter, and conservative evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. In 2005, Mars Hill Church was dubbed one of the top 50 most influential churches in America from a survey that was sent out to 2,000 church leaders. Mars Hill Church has grown from 9 to over 8,000 in ten years, now meeting at multiple locations.
Raised Irish Catholic, he was born again in late 1989. He later graduated with a B.A. in Speech Communications in 1993, and is currently completing an M.A. in Exegetical Theology at Western Seminary. Driscoll founded Mars Hill Church in Seattle the fall of 1996, which has grown to almost 8,000 in one of America's least churched cities. 
 
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==Additional background==
Driscoll co-founded and is President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network that has over 100 churches in America, as well as international churches. It is a network that helps plant Gospel-centered, missional, church-planting churches. He also founded and leads The Resurgence Missional Theology Cooperative. He has been named one of the most influential young preachers in America by Christianity Today with over one million downloads of his sermons each year. 
His writing includes two books: The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out and Confessions of a Reformission Rev: Hard Lessons From an Emerging Missional Church. He has also contributed to a 4 views book on the emerging church. Driscoll has endorsed the ESV and will be authoring a number of books for Crossway during 2007.
Although in the past some associated Driscoll with the Emergent church, he is critical of this "conversation" and his conservative theology is at odds with most Emergent proponents. Although "emerging" and "emergent" are generally considered synonymous in popular usage, Driscoll attempts to make a distinction between the two terms. Driscoll embraces an emphasis on missional living, decentralized organization, and less confrontational approaches to evangelism, while rejecting the more liberal bent and unorthodox doctrinal elements associated with "emergent village". http://www.emergentvillage.com He defines the term "emergent" narrowly to refer to the "emergent village" and insists that he is emerging but not emergent.
==Relationship to Emergent==
"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake." Driscoll's blog 
== Jesus ==
* "There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up."http://web.archive.org/web/20071013102203/http://relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7418
==Publications==
* Religion Saves and Nine other Misconceptions. Crossway 2009.
* Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods. Crossway 2008.
* Death by Love: Letters from the Cross. Crossway, 2008.
* On Who Is God?. A book you'll actually read Series. Crossway, 2008.
* On Church Leadership. A book you'll actually read Series. Crossway, 2008.
* On the New Testament. A book you'll actually read Series. Crossway, 2008.
* On the Old Testament. A book you'll actually read Series. Crossway, 2008.
* Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions. Crossway, 2008.
* The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World. Crossway, 2007.
* Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives. Zondervan, 2007.
* Confessions of a Reformission Rev: Hard Lessons From an Emerging Missional Church, revised edition. Zondervan, 2006. 
* Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out. Zondervan, 2004.
== Notes ==
== See also ==
* Missions
* Emerging church
==External links==
* Mars Hill Church Website
* Acts 29 Website
* Resurgence Website
* Reformission.com
* Email from Driscoll to Acts 29 pastors
* Blog Interview with Mark Driscoll
Driscoll