MacArthur: Grow Up. Settle Down. Keep Reforming. Advice for the Young, Restless, Reformed

It has been five years since Christianity Today published Collin Hansen’s article titled ‘Young, Restless, Reformed.’ Hansen later expanded the article into a book with the same title (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). …”

Discussion

Check out John MacArthur’s second post. It is better yet, since he deals with specifics and the principle of maturity in a pastor. He is doing a service for the rest of us.

Jeff Brown

[Chip Van Emmerik] I’ve always thought the word reformed was ill-defined in most people’s minds. If I use the word at all, it is always as a modifier, as in holding to reformed soteriology.
If someone asks me if I’m reformed. I almost never say “yes” or “no.” I almost always ask “what do you mean by that?” If they have an agenda, they normally get frustrated at the question, because frankly not many people really know what it means, even to themselves.

I read the second article. To whom is he speaking? Where are all these immature, hipster pastors? That’s a serious question. I don’t follow much in the contemporary blogosphere. I haven’t noticed this phenomenon in the PCA or the OPC (actual Reformed churches). None of the people with whom I went to seminary fit this description. I know a few people at Southern Seminary, RTS, and Covenant, and none of them fit this description. Maybe I just don’t run in those circles.

So, is this really a young Reformed issue, or is it more of an issue with quasi-charismatic-baptistic-revivalist types who recently picked up unconditional election?

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Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin

Charlie, if you would attend T4G or TGC Conference you’d see who he is talking about.

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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University

Well, I should have read his second article before I responded to Charlie. I was primarily thinking of the hipster style of dress when I referred to the two conferences. As far as those who “are perfectly happy to give the world the impression that cage fighting, beer-drinking, cigar-smoking, hard-partying, and other forms of bad-boy-behavior are the distinguishing marks of their religion”…well, I don’t personally know of many people like that myself. And even if they are out there in the YRR movement, are they a “sizable core” as MacArthur asserts?

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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University

I read the second article. To whom is he speaking?
I think Mark Driscoll is certainly one person he is speaking about. He’s a chest-pounding, rude and crude, mock the refined, bad-language is macho kind of guy.

I think Wayne’s onto it…MacArthur has never really been close with Driscoll as far as I know, and lately he’s been coming out and speaking against Driscoll or his practices without specifically saying “Thou art the man!”

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells