All That Matters is the Fruit
By their fruit you will recognize them.
(Here’s part 1 of what may be an ongoing series regarding “fruit” of pastors, elders, and Christian people. Part 2 is here.)
I came late to the Rise & Fall of Mars Hill podcast. I know, I know, no excuse. My dad, my friends, hell even my spiritual director were telling me they couldn’t get enough. Even my very own favorite Christian podcast, Voxology, quoted from it all the time.
But, I think I was scared to listen. Probably not for the reason you think though.
See I was nervous to hear it again. While I was by no means a Driscollite nor a Mars Hill attendee and/or devoted listener nor was I even Reformed in my theology.
Yet Mark’s shadow looms large, even now. Some extended family of mine continues to not only go to his new church but actually work for the guy in Arizona. And many, many, many people I’ve known in the Christian world have somehow, some way been connected to the whole fiasco.
As the podcast eloquently and surprisingly shows however, it wasn’t all bad. Some people found Christ. Some found healing and redemption and community and love. Some light shone in the darkness that was Mars Hill.
But for the 17 year old guy who got yelled at by a screaming and incredibly important figurehead in the capital C church in the famous “who do you think you are?!?!” rant, I just thought ‘this isn’t for me.’
I didn’t fit his mold for biblical masculinity. I probably don’t fit into his mold of it even now. Honestly, it’s likely for the best (and I hope my fiancé could attest to this).
Probably the most low-hanging fruit statement of this entire blog, but the whole tree growing there in Seattle was, at its core (if not at the beginning), rotten. It didn’t matter how big the tree was, how sprawling the branches extended into other Christianity “trees.”
Charisma isn’t a fruit of the spirit. Neither is celebrity, drawing a large crowd, nor preaching the Gospel in a coercive way that “converts” people by the thousands.
Especially and particularly when the process of conversion hurts people more than it heals them.
I had just moved to Portland. I was wide-eyed, barely rechurched, long-haired, hippy-ish, and always, always massively skeptical of this church thing. I was hanging by a thread from a nominal, backsliding, “lukewarm” leaning cold cultural Christian to an ardent, hardboiled, punk-band leather coat wearing fierce atheist.
And I went to Bridgetown Church for the first time.
What a weird transition from conservative, mainline private Baptist school and non-denominationally Reformed church to finally land in an Arminian (?), semi Pentecostal, practice-based church.
It was in between, when I went to a nuts and bolts “let’s just love Jesus” church that saved me in the middle from ages 18-19. A sincere community (many of whom have since walked away), an honest pastor, a welcoming aura. This smelled like Jesus more than airtight Calvinism or being a soldier in the war against cultural Christianity.
I felt like I could be myself and be liked by Jesus.
But when I was 17, in that Bible class, and that raving pastor from Seattle screamed through the speaker about “bad men” in a rant that was sort of true, mostly whackado, yet altogether frightening, all of my ambivalent feelings about this Christianity thing were in full force.
Because Mark was right. Kind of. There are a lot of misognystic, entitled, abusive, childish boys posing as men who hurt women, especially in the church. And I hate it too. Just because I don’t scream about it doesn’t mean I’m any less mad about it.
Yet I was masturbating at the time. I was interested in what the girls in my class looked like with less clothes. And I was emotionally manipulative too, just like Mark if with a much smaller pool of others to coerce.
Thank God for Mr. Gritters. Where Mark’s machismo enneagram 8 energy freaked the hell out of me, Jered’s enneagram 9/5/4/1 energy (can’t know for sure), with it’s detached assurance and warm inviting posture, smelled like Jesus. Where he went, good things seemed to follow. People had good things to say about him. He never mentioned good things people said about him.
Because he was concerned about what other people, especially students, were learning from him and less concerned about whether people liked his brand.
And so graduation came, and that gap between nominal Christianity and aggressive atheism had a safe dam built between. The college group added a bit more concrete. And I was certainly hoping this hip Portland church would lay an even deeper foundation.
It did. But not right away. In fact, at first, it laid waste to what I was barely holding onto.
John Mark was kind of effeminate. I’m not throwing stones nor is this a cheap shot. I’m kind of effeminate too. At least when compared to Driscoll standards.
He was really smart and compelling. Good looking, which I hated. Nerdy, which I loved. But for whatever reason, when I first went to Bridgetown off and on in 2011-2014, I just didn’t jive.
Partially due to sin, due to perceived moralism, due to ongoing angst with all things church, I wasn’t having it. I did my own thing. I attended house churches, essentially the opposite of Mars Hill and Bridgetown. Not only in scale, scope, and size but also in belief.
It was the Wild West out there.
Hell? Let’s examine again. Women in the church? Maybe let’s hear… what the ladies think. Presuppositional truth? Well… that can’t possibly be the ONLY things that matter in church. There’s more following Jesus than being intellectually and morally right.
Right?
It was unanchored, and afterward I fell away from God (sort of). Hell, a lot of the people I knew from that period of time fell away too. But, and I can always speak to this clearly, those people tended to love without condition. For real. Even if my theology, questioning, and uncertainty informed my spirituality.
Whereas the majority of time spent in baptist school and reformed church was avoiding the inauthentic culturally Christian norms present while also digging deep to prove my own belief in Jesus somewhere in my tortured soul, the whole thing was so tiring.
The games we play in church groups, in accountability groups, in the five minute talk. I just needed to be away.
The Jesus posturing killed me.
But this deconstruction-y period of time was absolutely essential to the fruit I have now. The pruning, the burning, the examining from as many of the hundreds of different angles as I could.
And so when I came back to Bridgetown, in 2016, although I could be wrong here, I believe something shifted in John Mark too. The fruit of his ministry and teaching, while not perfect as no pastor can be, fostered more growth in me. It was as if he saw the fame and where it would take him, and recognized how it would not only poorly serve his congregants but would, eventually in a blow-up, adultery, or abuse scandal, destroy him as well. He kept rattling about Jesus, and his practices, and His life.
And he helped a lot of people follow Jesus better.
Not because of his celebrity or his eloquence or his speaking or his studying or his charisma.
Because his brand was Jesus, not John Mark.
Even before this Rise & Fall binge listening, I’ve been stuck on this fruit thing. Systematic theology means literally zero to me, and right now I’m at a seminary (but for counseling to be fair). Debates about baptism, predestination, communion, and the like feel so unimportant in the grand scheme of life let alone the Christian life.
Hearing two articulate, wise, charismatic, charming, and eloquent speakers debate about a theological topic doesn’t matter now, won’t matter later, and hasn’t mattered in the past.
When it comes to Christianity, to following Christ, to ministry, to worship, to prayer, to loving people well, the ability to deliver a good sermon matters nil.
All that matters is the fruit. All that matters is whether the man or woman up on the stage not only practices what they preach, but that what they preach is seen in the way they practice following Jesus in real time.
It certainly isn’t about being perfect but it definitely is about being real. And while being real is important, being a jerk because it’s “being real” or “telling it like it is” is sinful. It was and is and will always be this way.
A pastor’s life has to be seamless. What you see must be what you get. And what I saw in Driscoll when I was 17, oddly to his credit, is what we got when he resigned. A bully through and through, even if an articulate one.
And I’m afraid I must go there (because the podcast did if only briefly) but… I can’t help but wonder if the belittling, ad-hominem, brash, and warlike rhetoric found in Driscoll was a one-way ticket to Trump and the endorsement from the Evangelical community.
Both largely endorsed by huge swaths of Christian culture, both largely and deeply unlike Christ not only in oratory style but also in character, kindness, and love.
And yet, this fruit I claim I don’t see in those two has to come from me. If I expect it in Christian leaders or leaders Christians follow, I have to expect it in myself. If I call out inconsistencies in others, I have to call out in me. This, too, begs the deepest question posed from Rise & Fall, from 2016, from January 6th, from decades of theology, church movements, and revivals in American Christianity:
Who do we follow? Who do we follow… really?
The problem with the pedestal at the pulpit is the undue deference given to a man not named Jesus. I was raised in, you were raised in, we were all brought up in a context where the particularly insightful opinions of charismatic men took the place of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man.
It was rebranded, bought and sold, and just thrown out. Dying to your cross, turning the other cheek, loving your enemy, blessing peacemakers, and caring for the lost, the lonely, the lambasted.
We lost sight of it. Kierkegaard was right;
“The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”
The reason people are leaving the church is obvious, and this is coming from a dedicated church follower already post deconstruction.
The sooner we firmly, firmly, firmly place emphasis on fruit of the spirit, not attendance, money, or notoriety, the sooner people will come back. It’s that simple.
All that matters is the fruit. That’s what I want to improve, that’s where I want to do better. For me, for my family and friends and fellow church goers.
Even now I have this compulsion and assumption to write something not so simplistic as “it’s all about love.” But really, truly, honestly, if there’s anything we can and always should be known for, it’s love.
Not for being right.
After all, love is, first and foremost, the greatest fruit of the spirit.