John Mark Comer's World
A round-up of recent writing on John Mark Comer
John Mark Comer is the fad right now in the Christian world - and not without reason. I’ve learned a lot from his approach to Jesus as a rabbi, discipleship as apprenticeship, and, of course, practicing the way. But I’m also sensitive to some of the shortcomings arising in his writing and speaking.
When I first started listening to John Mark Comer, he was preaching at Bridgetown Church in Portland, and I found his approach to megachurches, discipleship, and preaching really compelling. It was fresh, different, and resonated with what I sensed was coming to post-Christian America. Since then, he’s stepped down from his church and started a non-profit teaching, writing, and coaching ministry. And in the last 5 years, he’s become one of the best-known Christian writers and teachers in the country.
I’ve noticed a few interesting articles talking about Comer lately and wanted to put together a compendium for this week’s Weekly Speak. I have more thoughts on Comer that I may post on one of the Friday editions, but for now, here’s a round-up of some of the more interesting takes on one of our most popular Christian thinkers.
“The Ruthless Elimination of Paragraphs” - Samuel James, Digital Liturgies
Samuel James wins the award for the best blog title of the year. Riffing on Comer’s book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he focuses on one feature that makes Comer’s writing so popular: the style. Comer writes like someone talks - or, maybe, more like someone texts. If you listen to him, this is not the way he talks, but it’s short, choppy sentences that stand alone without a lot of context or fluff, almost like a series of aphorisms. It’s a disarming style.
So why doesn’t everyone do it? In a fairly positive assessment of Comer, James also cautions that there’s a reason we use paragraphs; complex ideas sometimes require explanation, something you won’t get much of in Comer’s work. It sounds good, but the result is many of his statements and ideas floating in mid-air, leaving an inquisitive reader with a lot of unanswered questions. Is that realy true? Always true? Where did that come from? What’s the next logical step from that?
James makes a plea for the paragraph:
“In conversation we are not necessarily waiting for a person to show why what they’re saying is true/interesting/relevant. Interpersonal communicational is interpersonal; the relational element is natural and makes us feign interest, not probe, and smile a lot. I don’t think books are an extension of that relational dynamic. Trying to capture a TED Talk style on the page sells the power of the page short. Paragraphs and pages can and should make demands on both author and reader that conversation cannot.”
I take the point here and agree with him about what books should be, but I don’t think this is quite right with Comer. It does seem like he writes to evoke conversational interpersonal communication. I think he does want the book to feel like having coffee with a friend. That’s totally his ethos. It may not be what a book should be, but I think it’s one more reason Comer is so popular.
“My Students Are Reading John Mark Comer, and Now I Know Why” - Brad East, Christianity Today
Brad East is a professor at Abilene Christian University who noticed his students carrying around Comer’s books —and only Comer’s books. So he decided to investigate, reading through the corpus of Comer’s work, and he was pleasantly surprised. In a world where people are reading less and less, it’s a great win for Christian students to be reading anything.
“I was wrong. Comer is doing the Lord’s work. My students appear not only to be reading him but to be reading no one else. Once it was Lewis and Chesterton, then Schaeffer and Stott and Packer, and then Piper and Keller. Now it’s Comer’s world, and we’re all just living in it.”
East appreciates Comer’s emphasis on practice, essentially catechism without the baggage and fancy language. He has a gift for distilling the practical and mystical side of Christianity down into accessible and manageable bites for the person who knows very little about Christianity. He offers the approach of a “rule of life” to answer the question, “I’m a Christian. What should I do now?”
East also offers a caution. There’s something thin theologically about Comer’s project. He puts it this way,
“At times, reading Comer, I wanted a good strong dose of Martin Luther on the matchless power of God’s living Word, both audible and visible, to confront, convert, indict, and transform us broken sinners. Against Comer’s wishes, the reader walks away from his book with the sense that apprenticeship is something individuals do while granting it is best when done in community. But this gets things exactly backward. The life and calling and public worship of God’s church precede discipleship. The latter exists, if it does, by participating in the former; the former does not follow from the latter.”
It all seems very manageable. Where’s the wild side? What made Christianity such a revolutionary movement? How did this change the world?
“What Would I Say to a Young Christian Reading John Mark Comer?” - J.A. Medders, Spiritual Theology
J.A. Medders takes up this thread in a slightly more critical piece on Comer. Like East and James, he sees some of the appeal and applauds the fact that Comer is bringing young people along to read, pray, think, and practice. But he points out a few missing pieces.
Repentance is not an emphasis in anything I’ve ever heard from John Mark Comer. On the positive side, we know how to follow Jesus as apprentices, but what happens when we don’t? What do we do with all the times we’ve fallen short? What do we do with our sin?
There’s a way to read Comer that reduces down to salvation by works. Now, I don’t think Comer believes this, as Medders mentions as well, but it is not hard to see how someone could read his books and think that to become a Christian, all you have to do is start practicing some of the things Jesus did. But this is like trying to climb into a second-story window instead of the front door. The cross of Christ, the death and resurrection of Jesus, play a supporting role to the ethical teachings of Jesus.
Because of this, Medders suggests what I also think is the best strategy with Comer. Read him as a part of a well-balanced spiritual diet. Mix things up with other writers. Medders suggests the Puritans. Add in lots of other Christian writers. We’re living in an embarrassment of riches!
“How John Mark Comer’s View of God Shapes His Spiritual Formation” - Wyatt Graham
The previous three articles would be mostly appreciative of Comer’s work and would encourage Christians to read him with a mix of other things that might fill in gaps and supplement some of the anemic parts of his books—all very charitable and helpful points. Wyatt Graham is also charitable but far more critical. He’s looking at the underlying theology in Comer’s work and some of the talks he’s given that are more forthcoming about his doctrinal beliefs.
If you listen to Comer’s preaching and teaching, you’ll quickly hear his antipathy to classic and modern Reformed theology. In some ways, he offers a photo-negative reaction to the “young, restless, and reformed movement.” He questions the reformed understanding of God’s control, his foreknowledge and foreordination, and his relationship to evil. It’s fascinating on this point that Comer cites Gerry Breshears, who was Mark Driscoll’s co-author for Doctrine, a staunchly reformed Calvinistic book.
Graham sees Comer putting distance between God’s will and evil that happens in the world, along the lines of an open theist’s approach to the problem of evil; God does not necessarily know or control the actions of free moral agents. Therefore, he is not responsible for the evil that happens in the world. Along with this, there are hints at God changing over time, having human emotions, and a lack of transcendence.
None of these themes are surprising if you’ve read Comer, nor is Graham suggesting that Comer is an open theist or denies the immutability of God. The sources Comer cites and the way he talks about God do sometimes trend in that direction. I’m not surprised when he quotes Richard Rohr, Greg Boyd, or the Eastern mystics because the constellation of stances he’s taken and the emphases he’s writing about lends itself toward the work of those authors. I would not recommend them to a young Christian, but I don’t think that because Comer quotes them, he agrees with them, at least until proven otherwise. He also draws a lot from Dallas Willard, N.T. Wright, and Henry Nouwen, all people I appreciate and have learned a lot from as well. Like Graham, I think it’s unfortunate that he does not read more widely or tie into the broader streams of historical Christian orthodoxy.
My deeper concerns lie more in his doctrine of Scripture, but I’ll save that for another time!
Quick Links:
“Modern Mere Christianity” - Francis Beckwith, World Magazine
“God and Man at Wheaton” - Daniel Davis, First Things
“One Woman’s Trans Testimony” - Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity
“OpenAI Tries to “Uncensor” ChatGPT” - Maxwell Zeff, Tech Crunch
“How We Lost the Flow” - Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker
“Wall Street’s China Plans in Tatters After Years of Setbacks” - Cathy Chan, Bloomberg
Thank you for your insights. When will you follow-up with your concerns? My teen daughter's small group leader was recommending this book and I've not heard good things about Comer's theology.