Jackson 1 Kara Jackson Professor Wellman Religious Experience 12 September 2010 Mars Hill My trip to Mars Hill was

planned before I had ever been to class: some kids from my floor had heard about it and were planning on going. Would I like to come? I had been planning on going to church anyways, and I thought I might prefer a different sort of service from the traditional Catholic. The space Mars Hill was located in was in and of itself different than any other church I had been to. It was an industrial chapel: the space was small, with lovely stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings. But the floors were plain cement, and rough lighting fixtures and cans of paint littered the sides of the chapel. Instead of an altar with gilt crosses, the front of the room was a raised platform with instruments on it. On the wall behind the instruments was a huge projector screen, playing a slick looking slideshow about service. As I watched people file in, I saw that the people I went to church with were nothing like this: Mom and dad bringing their kids, older folks, and sometimes, younger couples. It seemed like a singles club for young available Christians: good looking guys and girls and many many hip pregnant women. One woman stood out to me: she had fiery red hair that only exists in a bottle, a stud in her nose, and looked like she was about to give birth right then and there. The musicians would have been in place as vegan baristas: tattoos, skinny jeans, chunky ran bay

Jackson 2 prescriptives, and a lot of flannel. I know that different churches attract different crowds, but still, I was surprised: I looked more clean cut than many of them. When the rock worship songs started, I saw some collective ecstasy people put their hands, closing their eyes, getting into the music, perhaps feeling the spirit. Very different from Catholicism, where the mass is set up a regulated to venerate the tradition. After some rock songs and a prayer from the local pastor, the projector screen rolled down, and we began to watch the head pastor Marc Driscoll via video from Ballard campus, maybe 15 away from us. He started with the typical rapport. Hey, hows your day? Pretty crappy, huh? Everyone in Seattle is glum all the time- dressed in black and the weather sucks. You were fighting with the wife and your kids are being brats, but here you are. He wanted to make people feel bad about themselves! Throughout the service, he made references to how the parishioners (you) felt like we were never good enough, not happy, and never made any lists. BUT, he argued, you are on Gods list if you accept Lord Jesus as your savior. Only then. He spoke. Heres the point. No one knows God the Father apart from God the Son. No one knows God apart from Jesus. Jesus was crucified for saying things like this, and were he walking the earth still today rather than seated in heaven, hed get crucified again. What this means is that those who are Jewish but dont love Jesus, they have no idea who the God of the Bible is. Those who are Muslim and say, We believe that God is like a father, but we dont believe Jesus is the Son of God, they have no idea who God is. The Jehovahs Witnesses who would say, We believe in God the Father, but we dont believe that Jesus is God, they have no idea who God is. There is no knowledge of God, there is no revelation of God, there is no declaration of God apart from Jesus.

Jackson 3 Some of you say, Thats very offensive. Whats more offensive to God are false religions that would encourage you to know the Father apart from the Son, meaning you dont know him at all. We dont want for you morality, religion, or spirituality. We want the Fathers love. We want you adopted into the church, the Fathers family. We want you to receive the Fathers inheritance, which begins with a down payment of the Holy Spirit, and that is only made possible through seeing and savoring Jesus as Lord, God, Savior, and Christ. When he talked about the people who considered his stance offensive, I thought Thats me .. . and at that moment, I was not proud of it. I felt shamed by him, shamed by my progressive views of God and my inability to make Jesus the center of my faith. Personally, I find God in everything good. The smile of friends, the eternity of the ocean, the taste of coffee, and the way peonies open in the spring are things that God indirectly helped create. The world can be a pretty messed up place, but at the end of the day, I believe that we continue on because humans are mostly good, and thats enough for me. I cannot believe in a God who would damn people for ignorance of his practice. Im not evangelical and I dont think the whole world would be better if it was Christian. In short, I am not his kind of Christian. But he made me feel bad about myself- like I was ignorant and hadnt read enough to understand the joys of the religion he was preaching. Driscoll is a smart man and highly charismatic. He himself impressed me with his fervor and ability to drawn in youth, a group that is often considered apathetic. But after I left, I realized that I feel okay about the world and myself. I made plenty of lists, and Im not gloom and doom all the time. His doctrine was not one that I would ever adhere to or even feel bad about not following, but only because I have the opportunity to escape his influence.

Jackson 4 Works Cited Driscoll, Mark. "Jesus Rejoices in the Holy Spirit." Mars Hill Church. Mars Hill U District, Seattle, WA. 05 Sep 2010. Lecture.