less of driscoll on spiritual gifts

Ok - I've just about run out of gas on Mark Driscoll's teaching on Spiritual Gifts. I expected him to be cool and to bust open Scripture with amazing insight. He delivered on the former and missed on the latter. He spends about 60% hammering the abuses in the charismatic camp, 35% talking about gifts as though they are personality traits, and about 5% saying something informative but not revelatory about them.

The warnings against abuse is appropriate but excessive. He talks about the abuses as if they are very common - this doesn't match my experience. Additionally, the warnings aren't solid, Scripture based warnings. For example, his counter to the prosperity message was that Jesus was homeless and was murdered. While I don't support the prosperity message, I would have liked for him to (1) hit on some of the good points that have come out of that movement to counter the gloom and doom doctrine that is out there and then to (2) address the excesses/error based on some clear Scripture.

And only once did I catch a warning about an abuse in the anti-charismatic side. Net - too much warning time for my taste and seemed to pander to aniti-charismatics.

I've already discussed the gifts v. personality point in a separate post. I don't agree.

And finally there's the 5% but that's not so much about the gifts at all - it's about Jesus. I love that but it's not enough. If he wasn't going to do better on the Spiritual Gifts teaching, he could have stuck with teaching Jesus. I'm good with that.

To quote Driscoll, "we don't chase miracles, we chase Jesus and let the miracles chase us."

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