Driscoll, who was in California co-hosting the Act Like Men Conference in Long Beach on Friday, Oct. 18, along with Pastor MacDonald and others, made a stop at MacArthur's church in nearby Sun Valley, which served as the venue for the anti-Charismatic Strange Fire conference, before kicking off his own conference.
Driscoll told CP last week that he visited MacArthur's church, also home to The Master's Seminary, to "meet with seminary students and leaders of associated organizations." Driscoll had shared via social media prior to his arrival at Grace Community Church that he would be "handing out free copies of my new book, A Call To Resurgence …"
The Mars Hill Church pastor said he thought it was gracious that he was even allowed to be on the Grace Community Church campus. "They don't owe me anything and I didn't go through an official process. I wasn't planning on it. I just happened to be in town," Driscoll told CP.
As reported in "Mark Driscoll Stokes John MacArthur's Strange Fire Conference With Impromptu Book Signing" last week by CP:
After setting a box of his books on a patio table near the back side of the church property, he began signing while meeting people in a line that was starting to grow. After signing a few books, he was told by church and conference organizers that he was not allowed to pass out the books. At this point, Driscoll continued to talk and shake the hands of people in line, after which they helped themselves to his book from the box on the table.
Moments later, organizers said they would like to take the books away and Driscoll responded by saying that he had no problem with the action and to consider the books as a gift to the church and conference staff. The box of books was then taken away.
"It wasn't that we were trying to stir up trouble with Pastor Mark, we just removed them because we have a lot of different publishing partners that are here on campus already and all of their books all the way down the line, everything they are selling has already gone through a pre-approval process," Pastor Rich Gregory, who is MacArthur's assistant, told CP. "I don't think anybody, Mark included, would probably allow their conference just to be opened to whatever private editors wanted to step onto campus and distribute anything that they wanted to. So, that's a policy that would be consistent with any church or conference."
Gregory, Pastor MacArthur's assistant, who reportedly denied that Driscoll's books were confiscated, told the Religious News Service: "If you hear from him and he wants them back, we can send those back if he wants them. We were not looking at him like, 'Boy you're trying to stir up controversy.' I don't want to judge his motives for what he wasn't trying to do. I wish they had actually stayed for the actual content of the conference."
Both Pastors Driscoll and MacArthur prescribe to some form of Calvinism, or Reformed theology — with the former being noted as part of the "New Calvinism" movement. The ministers, who both carry great influence in the Christian community, are at odds, however on the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as glossolalia. Driscoll, a continuationist, believes these Holy Spirit-inspired gifts are still available to Christians today, while MacArthur, a cessationist, believes such gifts ceased with Jesus' first-century apostles.
MacArthur's Strange Fire conference was billed as a corrective stance against the "false worship" he perceives coming out of the Charismatic movement. The minister reportedly stated, among other things during the three-day conference, that the Charismatic movement "continually dishonors God" by attributing to the Holy Spirit "works that have actually been generated by Satan."
Addressing "attacks" made in response to the Strange Fire conference, Pastor MacArthur stated during the event, "This is for the true church, so that they can discern; so that they can be protected from error; and so that they can be a source of truth for others outside the church."
MacArthur's new book, Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit With Counterfeit Worship, covers the very same topics presented at the conference. Pastor Driscoll's book, A Call to Resurgence: Will Christianity Have a Funeral or a Future?, includes a chapter on pneumatology titled, "The Holy Spirit: Empowering the Church for Mission." Both books have a November release date.
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