In my last post I mentioned that Mark Driscoll was the keynote speaker at the Newfrontiers leadership conference in 2008. It turned out to be impactful for one significant reason. Completely unbeknown to the Newfrontiers leadership, during his last main session Mark gave a direct challenge about the need for a succession plan. The founder, Terry Virgo and other key leaders were all sitting on the front row with 4 or 5000 of their leaders from around the world sitting behind them. You can listen to Mark describe that moment from his point of view in the first few minutes of this video.

David Devenish, who has been one of the key leaders of Newfrontiers, describes this moment and their handling of it in his book Succession or Multiplication? Transitioning a Movement to Next Generation Leadership.

Mark’s first two messages were relatively uncontroversial but then his third message was an overview of movements within the Christian church, where they had succeeded and where they had failed. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, he referred to Newfrontiers and raised the question to all in the hall, ‘Does this movement value the founder more than the future, or the future more than the founder?’ You can imagine the hush in the room at this point. Mark then made it clear that this was no mere rhetorical question, and invited the audience to put their hands up as to who thought that the movement valued the founder the most and who the future.

Terry Virgo, who had founded the Newfrontiers movement, had no idea that this challenge was going to be given. Indeed, my wife, Scilla, Terry’s wife, Wendy, and some of the other leaders’ wives had ‘skipped’ that session to spend some time together at Terry and Wendy’s house and so missed the whole event. I was sitting on the front row, as part of the leadership team of the movement, and was too embarrassed to turn around to see what proportion thought we valued the founder more than the future, but I gathered that this was the majority.

Devenish, David. Succession or Multiplication?: Transitioning a Movement to Next Generation Leadership (eBook) – Help and Advice on Changing Church Leaders a (p. 1-2). Authentic Media Ltd. Kindle Edition.

It’s not a bad question. It’s just an interesting one to throw out there publicly without any warning. Here’s the substance of what Driscoll said next:

Having raised the question as to whether the Newfrontiers movement valued its founder or the future most, Mark then went on to share what he considered to be a prophetic picture, based on a photograph he had seen in Terry and Wendy’s home of Terry taking his daughter, Anna, down the aisle on her wedding day to be married to a young man. Mark felt that this was a picture of what needed to happen within Newfrontiers; Terry needed to ‘give away’ his Newfrontiers ‘daughter’ to a next generation leader over the next three to four years.

Immediate reactions to this bombshell were many and various. Terry remained calm about it and did not feel threatened (this was a good measure of his genuine servant leadership and trust in God). Some were at least happy that the matter had been raised so that it could be more freely discussed, even though they were shocked by the public nature of the way in which this had happened.

Devenish, David. Succession or Multiplication?: Transitioning a Movement to Next Generation Leadership (eBook) – Help and Advice on Changing Church Leaders a (p. 38-39). Authentic Media Ltd. Kindle Edition.

What I hadn’t really thought about before, and I very much doubt whether Driscoll considered it, was how people from non-western cultures might receive it. Here’s how:

Some of our friends from Africa and Eastern Europe were quite scandalized and saw it as completely rude and dishonouring to Terry. Their view was that these things should be discussed behind closed doors. I well remember one particular Russian lady, who kept asking me, ‘Was this really done without specific permission from Terry?’ When so much of the conceptual discussion (though not necessarily the practice!) concerning the phenomenon of ‘movements’ takes place in the context of western academic debate, it is easy to forget that the Newfrontiers family being addressed is a multicultural movement.

Devenish, David. Succession or Multiplication?: Transitioning a Movement to Next Generation Leadership (eBook) – Help and Advice on Changing Church Leaders a (p. 39). Authentic Media Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Now I don’t know about you but it takes some chops to give that kind of public challenge to a movement of churches but it takes more chops to take that challenge and not just bin it because it you were hijacked by the speaker in a very public way. So although they went on to reject the proposal put forward by Mark of a single successor, they did not reject the challenge out of hand. As Devenish says,

Despite some of the cultural objections from those from a non-Western background, we still believe it was from the Lord that Mark spoke to us in that way to provide the necessary impetus to us for the journey along which God was leading us.

Devenish, David. Succession or Multiplication?: Transitioning a Movement to Next Generation Leadership (eBook) – Help and Advice on Changing Church Leaders a (p. 41). Authentic Media Ltd. Kindle Edition.

And the result was multiplication. So, here’s the thing – amidst all the dunking on Driscoll for all that he got wrong, he was used by God so that even when he got it wrong (which we think he did) the result brought blessing to us. Which surely gives you encouragement about the sovereignty of God.