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 enlarge | Authors: Gerry Breshears, Mark Driscoll
Publisher: Crossway Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $11.79
You Save: $8.20 (41%)
New (28) from $11.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 3488
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 1581349750
Dewey Decimal Number: 232
EAN: 9781581349757
ASIN: 1581349750
Publication Date: February 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Vintage Jesus: Mark Driscoll, technology, and timely questions June 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm currently reading a book called Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions by Mark Driscoll, pastor of a megachurch in Seattle. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek in places, but quite appropriate and provocative. Living in the Bible Belt for the past two years, I've come to realize how much American culture has become inundated with pop Christian iconography. Where I live in Tennessee, everyone is a "Christian." Sometimes, it makes me not want to be one. It brings back memories of living in Seville, Spain, where every street corner and public edifice had a picture or reference to Christ or his mother Mary. Yet, most people I ran into had no idea about the biblical Jesus, the God who came to earth as a man to liberate all of humanity from sin and death. Maybe what America (and Spain) needs is a fresh look at the real Jesus, not how we want him to be, but who he was and is.
To introduce such a Jesus, Driscoll's book begins with a sobering and less-than-conventional Gospel story:
Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus' mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted a crazy story to cover the "fact" that she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of the car at the prom. Jesus was adopted by a simple carpenter named Joseph and spent the first thirty years of his life in obscurity, swinging a hammer with his dad. (Vintage Jesus, p. 11)
Just as his book begins unconventionally, Mark Driscoll's career as a minister wasn't your textbook Bible school graduate story. Raised behind a strip club, Driscoll got his start at life by getting into fights, being sexually promiscuous, and joining a social fraternity in college. As a business school undergrad, he became a Christian at age 19. When he was 20, he finally read the Bible cover-to-cover and started questioning what it meant to be part of the mission of Jesus. At age 25, without any formal seminary training, he started his own church with 12 attendees. In 11 years, church attendance has increased to over 6,000.
At Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA, which is reported to be the least-churched city in America, Driscoll tackles taboo topics that many mainline preachers are wary to approach. Having his beginnings with the likes of Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt, he was initially an advocate for the "Emerging Church" movement in the 90s. He has since distanced himself from those who adopt more of a "progressive theology" stance on doctrine. He often criticizes liberal Christians and "their Emergent offspring," saying that he wants more than the "Jesus in a pink dress" or a God that he can beat up. (In Jesus for President, another book pointing to the cultural success of Jesus as a pop icon, authors Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw actually criticize Driscoll's treatment of Jesus as being unbiblical. Someone is always reacting to someone else, it seems.) Mark explains his reasoning for disassociating himself from McLaren, Pagitt, and others, despite their common desire to see Christianity represented in a culturally relevant and "seeker-sensible" manner:
"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." (Wikipedia)
Driscoll is open, authentic, and brutally honest. He is known to regularly shout out not-oft-mentioned sins from the pulpit (such as oral sex outside of wedlock) followed by a call to genuine repentance and to life in Christ. He does not walk on eggshells in his preaching nor in his writing, and this authenticity is what makes him so particularly appealing. With Vintage Jesus, he takes what might be considered dry theological vignettes and makes them extremely relevant by providing real-life examples and injecting pieces of pop culture into each chapter.
By quoting the likes of Hugh Heffner, Ghandi, and Bart Simpson, while juxtaposing that with biblical doctrine, Mark can make you laugh and squirm in your seat at the same time. He pulls no punches, but also preaches a message of hope and salvation based on grace alone.
In his preaching ministry, he uses technology to connect with a younger audience. Whether it's addressing his 3900 friends on Facebook or utilizing text messaging (within the walls of a church!) to answer difficult life questions about anything from making crude jokes to hating religion, he is passionate about connecting a younger generation with theological truth and a practical Christian worldview. Because of these and other non-traditional methods of incarnating Christ, Driscoll's church has quickly become the eighth most influential in America. It continues to grow exponentially.
In the spirit of openness, Driscoll encourages his congregants--and the world--to "Ask Anything" of him. He continues this practice in Vintage Jesus by pairing up with theologian Gerry Breshears to answer simple questions about Christian orthodoxy at the end of each chapter .
Mark often marries his passion for the Bible with technology. He recently prepared for a sermon series entitled "Religion Saves and Nine Other Misconceptions" by soliciting questions on his website (www.marshillchurch.org). The results were more than 900 questions, 550,000 comments and 343,000 votes that determined the top nine questions Driscoll would be answering in the series.
This pastor's rise to success can be traced back to people's increasing fascination with a preacher who is curiously liberal in cultural propriety (he is an avid viewer of TV sitcom The Office and calls those who aren't fans to "repent"), while theologically conservative (he claims John Calvin and C.H. Spurgeon among his personal heroes). To say the least, Driscoll is an anomaly in the church, but one who is welcomed with a sigh of religious relief and maybe a scratch on the head. Every Sunday, he preaches to urban twenty-somethings and young families, many sporting mohawks and tattoos. On each side of the stage are bouncers who wear fitted black T-shirts reading "SECURITY". Apparently, he has needed them ever since he started receiving numerous death threats and was charged while preaching on-stage by a man with a knife in 2006.
As a preacher and writer, Pastor Mark is indeed provocative, to say the least. Yet, his provocation (although sometimes met with a knife mid-service) is also welcomed by many. His sermon podcast is ranked Number 1 in the "Religion and Spirituality" section on iTunes. Perhaps, no one has yet done such a fine job of combining complex theological truths with cultural relevance and technology, but who knows what Driscoll's methodologies will provoke. His new book will do probably what his preaching has already done - anger many, while calling others to life-changing repentance. Most likely, that was the author's intention - to leave no gray areas, but to present readers with a clear decision to accept or deny this Jesus presented.
Although it is still too early to tell, Driscoll's Vintage Jesus may do for this generation of young seekers what Lewis' Mere Christianity and McDowell's More than a Carpenter did for theirs... with the addition of quotes by Marilyn Manson and the described-in-detail bodily functions of baby Jesus.
 Vintage Jesus = Vintage good book June 23, 2008
Great teaching on the core issues of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Christian faith in a wonderful modern english.
Resurected Truths in Vintage Jesus June 20, 2008
Vintage Jesus proved to be a perfect companion to the sermon series that Pastor Mark preached about regarding "Vintage Jesus." Well written and researched, Pastor Mark and Gerry Breshears provide us very expressive version of the gospel story. It's easy to enjoy how Pastor Mark teaches, like a down to earth normal dude, but he carries with him the faith and steadfast convictions of the great men from our past like; Paul, AW Tozer or Charles Finney.
If you're a very conservative Christian and have it all figured out you will be blown away by Pastor Mark's crass expression of the gospel. If you're a liberal "all paths lead to God" type, you will be set back by Mark's steadfast conviction that the Bible is the Word of God and truth. Personally, I find Mark's approach and heart for the Lord life-giving and packed full of hard-hitting biblical truths. As a matter of fact he is the Pastor of my second favorite church and is my second favorite Pastor to podcast.
The only fault I found in the book is that Pastor Mark communicated orally so well that nothing inside the pages jumped out at me as new. In essence this was the same great sermon and talks he graciously gives his congregations on a regular basis. Part of me was hopping for a new insight or revelation about King Jesus.
Having said that I can easily endorse this book and recommend it especially to those religious neat-nicks who need to learn and grow from Mark's hard hitting relevant truths. Also I can and do recommend this book to those liberal types who could use a hard dose of God's truth right between the eyes. Like Mark, or not, this book delivers in a way seldom found by the Glory preachers or the hard core religious types. This book, simple put, is music to my ears and psalms to my soul.
 Not so much...... June 9, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
OK, I'm a little tired so this won't be a long one. Just wanted to touch base on a book I am going through and put some thoughts out there. The book is called "Vintage Jesus" by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle, Washington.
I have been wanting to go a little deeper into Pastor Driscoll for awhile. I became aware of him when I was at Solomon's Porch for the Emergent Summer Institute a few years back. He was one of the founding people for Emergent (negative) but made a stand and left the group (positive) when more of the leaders of the group became more vocal about scary beliefs. I read he was conservative with his beliefs (positive) and ran a contemporary church (positive). He;s know for a foul mouth; "the cussing pastor" (negative) and being angry and spiteful towards fellow emergent leaders (negative) but later publicly apologized (positive). So as you can see, Mark has been a roller coaster ride for me.
So I picked up his new book "Vintage Jesus" on audio book. I was happy to see he was the one doing the reading itself so it would give me a better feel for him over all. So far, I have found a few redeeming qualities including the ample research and presentation that makes his knowledge on the topics impressive. However, there is a great deal of attitude represented that turns me off. Even as one who agrees with many of the beliefs being presented, I am turned off by the cockiness within the tone and words of the author. I would even more so be turned off if I was someone seeking the Lord and this is what I came across. I'm all about confidence but a majority of what is shared is over the line.
Before I got the book, I found on-line reviews of ultra conservatives who shared frustration about Mark's flippant attitude in his writing. I did not share the same concern some of them shared. He often uses shocking words and phrases to capture an effect which doesn't throw me. However, what I was concerned about was his way of taking portions of Scripture out of context just far enough to make a point that has nothing to do with the Scripture. For instance, he has a lengthy section about Jesus having a sense of humor. As Mark goes chapter by chapter through the gospel of Mark (I think it was Mark if I remember correctly), he throws out the hilarious things Jesus said or did. As he comes to Mark 9 and shares how zany Jesus is for suggesting we would cut out an eye or cut off a hand if it makes us sin. Obviously this is so out there it must be a great prank! Funny Jesus.
I'm all about Jesus having a sense of humor. I would bet my life that He did. However, Jesus had a point to make of the serious of sin and how important it is to address and not play games with temptation. I don't feel comfortable with throwing that point under the bus to twist it into it was just Jesus feeling a little zany and cracking everyone up.
That being said, a lot of times I can blow off the little things that annoy to get the wealth of information in the book. However, this is not so in this book. The pompus attitude and carefree handling of the Word take away from the study itself. I wouldn't take too much time on this one.
 OK: Not as Unique and Compelling as the First Two May 31, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a decent book, but personally I found Driscoll's first two more compelling. There's some stuff in here that I felt distracted from the Gospel message a bit. One of the things Driscoll is good at is getting past the stuff that the institutional church has gotten mired in and presenting the gospel and godly ways of living (at least as he interprets) in a very straightfoward way. I felt this book had some parts that veered away from that. For example, I honestly don't care who thinks what about whether Jesus's mother was a virgin or not. I do accept him as the divine Son of God and beyond that, it's just not a biggie for me. It doesn't seem to be a huge thing in the Gospel, either. The colloquial style that generally works very well in Driscoll's writing and speaking also distracts in this book... and, actually, is used to the extent I almost wonder if he has some pride issues wrapped up in it.
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