Dear Pastor Mark II

Last night Mark Driscoll published a response to the angry storm whipped up by the selective comments published ahead of his interview for Christianity magazine. In it he acknowledges the peculiarities of the British cultural and spiritual context. He goes on to call for a renewed search for truly great and influential preachers. So far, so conciliatory.

However, the implication that Britain is starved of good preachers and must always look across the Atlantic to fill its conference platforms still stings. His plea to  ‘reach, train, and deploy godly, gifted men, especially young men’  dismisses at a stroke the ranks of Godly and gifted women who serve in so many churches.

The brilliant Guy Browning once wrote that “apologies are the old rubber tyres that are hung over the sides of huge egos when they rub up against each other.”

Maybe we need thicker tyres…

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