Can Mark Driscoll Happen Here?

Paleo Protestant Pudcast

Yes, that's a bit of a tease (maybe more) but it may be the best way to encourage people to listen to a conversation about church polity. Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have many differences in theology and worship and these are likely the easiest to identify. But when it comes to the structures of government that bind and unify each of these confessional Protestant communions, awareness likely diminishes.

In this recording Korey Maas (Lutheran), Miles Smith (Anglican), and D. G. Hart (Presbyterian) talk about the structures and procedures that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church use to regulate church life. They also discuss the degree to which church government is part of a Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian identity. Spoiler alert: Presbyterians put church government into their very own denominational label, and yet members of Presbyterian churches often do not know the basics of their own communion's government. Why Presbyterians have been so particular historically about church polity and what it means for the health of Presbyterianism that many church members are unaware of ecclesiastical government lurk in the background of this session. Spooky.

So does Mark Driscoll who it turns out decided not to become ordained by an existing church but chose to start his own (along with a larger network of churches). Which leaves two questions: does church government scare American Protestant entrepreneurs away (it is a self-selecting mechanism)? If Driscoll had been ordained in a confessional Protestant church, could one of those bodies have saved him from himself?