Allegory is alive and well

After listening to Mumford & Sons on the long drive from Sydney to Tamworth, I was in the M's on my iPod and keen for random sermon time. So Mark Driscoll it was. Sarah was just about to fall to sleep, but became so fascinated by the approach to Nehemiah that she sat bolt upright beside me, and listened in.

Okay, so it's not quite allegory, but did you know Nehemiah was an urban church planter? Neither did I.

Mark Driscoll, from here;

As we're dealing with urban ministry, I think one of the greatest but most overlooked examples is Nehemiah. Everyone likes to read him as a leadership manual, but he's really an urban ministry guy so all of his his leadership principles are in-particularly applicable to urban ministry and urban church planting, because in my opinion Nehemiah was planting a church for the purpose of transforming the city of Jerusalem.

Considering MD's huge focus on Christology, his lack of biblical theology in this sermon really surprised me. He started to go there...

What I love about Nehemiah is that it's about a city. It's a about a very important city, it's about the city from which the gospel of Jesus was to ring out to the nations of the earth. You remember early on in the book of Acts Jesus actually said that the gospel was to ring out from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And so Jersualem was incredibly important in God's economy and plan, that Jerusalem was to be headquarters for world mission, evangelisation and church-planting. And as you all know it is not accidental but actually providential, that God would chose a major urban city at which to begin the ministry of the news of Jesus spreading out to the world. Well, the problem in the city of Jerusalem is that it was in no way ready for the coming of Jesus, and was not set up in such a way that it could be an exemplary city for the other cities of the world, that it could be an outpost through which communication of the gospel could flow. And so God's going to call this man Nehemiah to go to work in the city of Jerusalem for the purpose of planting a church there.

This is where it ends. The following 49 minutes reads Nehemiah as a church-planting manual. Keep a diary like Nehemiah, do research, align yourself with supporters, appoint administrators, don't be surprised by enemies like Sanballat and Tobiah (a.k.a. bloggers) etc.

I'm still a bit flabbergasted by the whole thing. It's not as if the illustrations weren't valid, but there was really no placing the story within the wider biblical narrative for any extended period of time.

The above quote continues...

And so God's going to call this man Nehemiah to go to work in the city of Jerusalem for the purpose of planting a church there. If you're a dispensationalist, it is a church that he is planting. And he is planting a church there, for the purpose of seeing the renewal of the entire city, which had fallen into disrepair.

As I said above, the approach to the Bible just really took me aback. I don't think I've heard MD on the OT before. He fails to distinguish if Nehemiah is descriptive or prescriptive. There was lots of good wisdom in there for church-planters, but not a lot of insight into reading Nehemiah.