Chapter 1. The book really began with Chapter 0, so Chapter 1 is a continuation of sorts. This chapter is the 0-45 member chapter. The early years of Mars Hill.

So far the book seems to be an apologetic for Driscoll rather than reflection. He gives his methods and admits to mistakes, but takes every opportunity to jab at things he opposes and promote his work as a "biblical and evangelical" thing.

He continues with an increasing chip on his shoulder as he does not seem to resist sticking it to his Emergent friends or those who see differently on gender roles in church. Driscoll is adamant about patriarchal leadership in church and uses cynical rhetoric to bolster his claims. He does not however mention Bible verses at all to back himself up. It does not seem so "biblically" based, but personally based to me.

Early on Driscoll seemed to recognize the missional necessity of church. It is an incredible vision, one that he seems to pursue whole heartidly. He comes to the realization of how neglected mission is in church and lists his experiences of visiting churches. His pokes retain the same comedy that the preceding chapter has and gets old really quickly. They deviate from his point and make him look like a washed up comedian rather than writer.

I am impressed with his anthropological approach to developing a missional church. He spends one paragraph listing the types of folks he went to visit - college kids, bankers, street folk and others. That is incredibly impressive, and takes some dedication to attempt to be observant and open to understanding the culture rather than dictating the culture. I wish he would have included greater details of his findings from these conversations rather than adding about 30 one-liners to each paragraph.

Chapter 1 down, and motivation for continuing this book is dropping to only be from duty - the duty to give a responsible review of the book since that is what I agreed too. Responsible would mean to complete it, to give it a shot in its entirety. This also allows me to give Driscoll's writing another chance, and another and another.

To this point, I think Zondervan is capitalizing on a name rather than on a good book. Editers should have done a better job cleaning up Driscoll's work, allowing for his personality come out, but to not overshadow his message.

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