First, if you've ever read Wenatchee The Hatchet before you may already know the story. Mark Driscoll mentioned in a sermon that there were some people, even in the leadership of Mars Hill Church, where if he weren't going to end up on CNN over it he would have gone Old Testament on them, from the "Fathers and Fighting" sermon at the end of the Nehemiah series on September 30, 2007. That entire sermon series seems to have been scrubbed away. A short clip of the highlights should work over here. That evening, Meyer and Petry were informed they were fired, by the account of Paul and Jonna Petry.
The next day, Lead Pastor Jamie Munson formulated charges that were considered grounds for immediate dismissal for both Meyer and Petry.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-01-2007-email-from-jmunson.pdf
One of the most striking charges is Petry's refusal to cooperate with the Ministry Coaching Program. Whether or not this was a program conducted by Ministry Coaching International may have to be investigated in some other context. Munson referred to the terminations as "necessary and inevitable" but never explains why. Since there were some two dozen pastors at Mars Hill in 2007 on the eve of voting on Munson's bylaws it simply can't be explained why the opposition of a mere two of twenty-four men to the bylaws made firing them "necessary and inevitable". Munson appointed Pastor Scott Thomas head of an Elder Investigative Taskforce and the investigation and trial proceedings began.
The same day, Mark Driscoll addressed an Acts 29 teaching even of some kind and referred to, among other things, "a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus". He also made reference to two guys being fired for the first time in the history of Mars Hill and that sometimes Paul the apostle understand you had to put someone through a woodchipper. This was the second "woodchipper" reference Driscoll made in 2007, the other having been in his Raleigh address "The Man", which has since been thoroughly scrubbed of that anecdote.
On October 11, 2007, the day after informing Paul Petry that his presence at his own trial was not necessary, that the vote would be an open show of hands, and that all evidence had been sufficiently collected, Executive elder Pastor Scott Thomas informed a member of Mars Hill Church through an email sent from his Acts 29 Network address that "A team of elders just conclude a conciliatory process with these two men". What seems to have actually happened was that days later Scott Thomas made the case that the termination of Paul Petry was, as Munson said it was before appointing Scott Thomas to lead the EIT, "inevitable and necessary". It's impossible to evade the inference from all available evidence that Scott Thomas lied to a church member about the nature and goal of what was called a "conciliatory process". Driscoll's audio from October 1, 2007 presented the termination of two men from eldership at Mars Hill Church as irreversible and beyond reconsideration if what and how he spoke is any indication to an average listener.
Now let's review what Munson's bylaws had to say about church discipline of members, since that was one of the things Petry had problems with. We'll highlight a few striking passages of personal interest.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Bylaws of Mars Hill Fellowship
A Nonprofit Corporation With Members
[From pages 125-126 of the 145 doc at Joyful Exiles]
Article VIII
Section A
The reference to "member" in these bylaws is a spiritual and theological term for a member of the body of Christ that does not have any civil effect for purposes of state law. Consistent with the biblical concept of member and this Section A, members shall not have voting rights.
Section C
Church discipline
The threefold purpose of church discipline is to glorify God by mantaining purity in the local church, to edify believers by deterring sin, and to promote the spiritual welfare of the offending believer by calling him or her to return to a biblical standard of doctrine and conduct.
1. Members of Mars Hill Church and all other professing Christians who regularly attend or fellowship with this church who err in doctrine, or who engage in conduct that violates Scripture as determined by any two or more elders, shall be subject to church discipline. [emphasis added] Each potential case of discipline will be weighed on its own merits and dealt with according to Scripture.
2. Members of Mars Hill Church are not guaranteed confidentiality regarding issues of church discipline, and understand that in submitting themselves to the authority of the church, issues of a sensitive or personal nature may become known to others. [emphasis added] This includes, but is not limited to, notification of the authorities if a crime has been committed or if a real threat of someone being endangered exists, as well as other violations of scripture that may not result in physical danger.
3. Those who are members of the church or who regularly participate in church activities may be dismissed from church by the agreement of at least two elders. The dismissal of a church member may be made known to all church members. [emphasis added, WtH: it's important to stress that this section indicates that at least two elders can kick you out and make a point of telling the entire church you've been kicked out if they consider that appropriate]
4. A person dismissed from Mars Hill Church for disciplinary reasons may be reinstated to full membership if the person's repentance is accepted as genuine by the elders that oversaw the person's discipline. [emphasis added: i.e. if the pastor you ticked off enough to make the decision to discipline you causes you to be put under discipline is convinced you've repented only then can that disciplinary status be revoked.]
5. Each member of this church, and every other professing Christian who regularly attends or fellowships with this church, agrees that there shall be no appeal to any court because of a discipline process or dismissal. A member who is under discipline by the church, as defined in the previous paragraphs, forfeits and waives the right to resign from Mars Hill Church. [emphasis added] Resignation is possibly only by a member who is in good standing and who is not under any disciplinary action.
So, in summary, just by agreeing to be a member you'd agree that you have no basis for an appeal to any court because of how Mars Hill treats you in a disciplinary process. Most people who became Mars Hill members from 2008 on may have never read any of this stuff, which is a pity.
6. Separate and apart from the process of church discipline, but subject to the discretion and approval of any two or more elders, a member, non-member regular participant in church activities, or other individual, may be notified that he or she is not to be present upon church premises or at church activities for such a period of time as is deemed necessary for the safety and well-being of others. Such required absence may, but need not, be concurrent with church discipline of that person.
7. Separate and apart from the process of church discipline, but subject to the discretion and approval of any two or more elders, members who have not met all of the criteria of church membership for a period of six months or longer may be removed as a member of Mars Hill Church and may be asked to no longer attend Mars Hill Church.
So we've seen that the bylaws Munson drafted conferred a great deal of disciplinary power and authority to any two elders who decided someone merited church discipline. In fact there seemed to be no limit, in principle to what or how any two Mars Hill pastors could decide to do regarding the discipline of a church member. There was no practical restriction in the bylaws about what the limits of the "spiritual authority" of a campus pastor might be, for instance. Let's propose for sake of discussion some people actually got the idea that some kind of checklist or protocol would be a good idea but first ...
Llet's skip ahead to Pastor Jamie Munson's update to Mars Hill Church regarding Paul Petry:
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-mh-website-jamie-munson-update-on-paul-petry-forum-12-05-071.pdf
The shun command, more or less. What is now worth adding to a bunch of material that is already known would be pages from a Church Discipline document that was finalized within Mars Hill Church on December 7, 2007.
Wenatchee The Hatchet was given a copy of this December 7, 2007 document on Church Discipline a while back. It's relevant now that the Board of Advisors and Accountability seem to have declared so confidently none of the executive elders have said or done anything amiss. Nobody sinned and let's bear in mind that when Mars Hill Church was informed that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry were being fired it was stressed they weren't being fired over some kind of moral or doctrinal failure (i.e. no sex and no heresy). But it's worth noting that Munson's shunning edict came first and any documentary basis for which such a shunning would have been considered appropriate doesn't seem to have been completed until two days later. Here are a few pages from the document.
When a Christian has repeatedly rejected counsel by a church elder
When a Christian is not consistently in community
So if someone in leadership at Mars Hill Church finds out you're not consistently attending a community group, or maybe have never attended any small group inside Mars Hill, that could be considered grounds for church discipline.
Or when a Christian has "repeatedly rejected counsel by a church elder". How many times counts as "repeatedly"? Two incidents? Fourteen? You see this bit leaves open the possibility that a pastor at Mars Hill Church might put a member under discipline because a member considers the pastor to have given bad counsel and decides not to follow it. If, for instance, a pastor advised against some man marrying a woman who was not a member of Mars Hill Church but the woman's family was okay with it and the woman's family liked the guy then this could be considered repeatedly rejecting the counsel of a Mars Hill elder and the basis for church discipline.
Among other striking grounds for church discipline is when a Christian appoints themselves to leadership! So when Jamie Munson drafted bylaws in 2007 that made him Lead Pastor, legal president of Mars Hill Church, and accused Petry and Meyer of distrusting his authority and leadership could that have counted as "appoints themselves to leadership"? What about no less than Mark Driscoll's own description of his reason for planting Mars Hill Church way back in Confessions of a Reformission Rev from 2006, that he didn't like any of the other churches around him and decided to start one he did like? I suppose a lot hinges on the difference between "appoint" and "nominate". You can nominate yourself to leadership positions within Mars Hill Church all you want, and in fact historically you'd be advised that you needed to if you felt called to ministry. But ... just in case, whatever the distinction between "nominate" and "appoint" may be, it was something to keep in mind.
While there are reports that Mark Driscoll has indicated having private meetings with people he's hurt in the past there has been no indication that Mark Driscoll has ever publicly addressed the problem of citation errors (aka plagiarism) in seven of his published books. There has been no indication that he has ever reached out in any fashion to either Paul Petry or Bent Meyer. There is no evidence he may have said anything to Lief Moi and the point is not that any of these men would somehow be obliged to say anything, it's that Mark Driscoll has not so far said anything to the effect that he's met with people who have shared their history of being fired and cast out from leadership at Mars Hill.
If anything that the Board of Advisors and Accountability has stated that the executive elders have humbly or patiently endured false accusations raises the question of what has been false about the evidence produced that Mars Hill Church contracted with Result Source to get Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list/ The BOAA itself admitted it happened. Is there anything false to reports that separation and release documents effectively function as "gag orders"? Not so far and it anything this is another thing the BOAA seems to have essentially publicly conceded is really the case.
What the BOAA has not conceded is the scale of citation error in Mark Driscoll's books, seven by the count of Warren Throckmorton. There's been no concession on the part of the BOAA that Driscoll books contain historical errors and instances of plagiarism. Staying silent while the publishers of Mark Driscoll's books go back and change things (as Warren Throckmorton has been documenting) is not only not a confession, retroactive actions on the part of Mark Driscoll's publishers could be inferred as a confession of guilt. You don't go back and start acknowledging sources that weren't even mentioned in first editions unless it was sufficiently problematic to have not mentioned them you feel you have to fix the problem. So even on the matter of plagiarism, Mark Driscoll wouldn't "need" to confess to anything for the actions of Thomas Nelson to fix problems in Real Marriage to send a loud and clear signal that Allender's work needed to have been credited the first time.
And this, in a way, gets us back to that separation and release form Throckmorton published, the one that states that a breach of confidential information is considered a basis for action on the part of Mars Hill against a former pastor whether the breach was intentional or not. It is this sort of verbiage, more than other statements, that suggests that Mars Hill Church as a corporation may operate with a significant double standard. If a former pastor who signed a separation-and-release agreement could get the hammer of action for even an inadvertent slip up then what does it matter if Mark Driscoll didn't intend to be a plagiarist? Would Intervarsity Press have had a reason to even care if the "citation error" was on purpose or not? Let's not forget that the first public reaction MH PR had when this was brought to light was to rather broadly say that Mark Driscoll wasn't the only person who worked on the book and that the Trial study guide was assembled by a team that included a research assistant. When Mars Hill leadership says that confession means you don't shift blame then it looks like MH PR may have done precisely that.
Mark Driscoll has avoided confessing to anything of any significance. Even when it's been proven that he and Grace Driscoll plagiarized Dan Allender in detail there has been no confession from either of them even that mistakes were made.
And as we've seen from the December 2007 church discipline document, there wasn't exactly a clear limit to what one Mars Hill pastor, let alone two, might decide was appropriate for church discipline that was beyond appeal and that could be reported to the entire church. No one to date has produced any of the evidence the EIT presented for why Meyer and Petry needed to be canned from eldership at Mars Hill.
By comparison, the evidence for Mark Driscoll's citation errors has become so incontrovertible that books are being revised right now and one of them was even retracted. If there was nothing legally wrong or ethically problematic with using Result Source to get Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list why even mention "outside counsel"? It doesn't matter who that outside counsel was, it matters that John Sutton Turner signed a contract. It doesn't matter whether the Driscolls intended to plagiarize Dan Allender or not, it matters that Mars Hill Church had by its publication date gotten itself a scandal for letting a cease-and-desist letter over trademark and branding get sent to another church. Hypocrisy may be frequent and inadvertent and that's not necessarily the problem here, it's mounting evidence that Mars Hill leadership allowed for a double standard. When people on the out of leadership got trouble, the evidence for firing Petry and Meyer seems to have amounted to bruised egos. When evidence has mounted for the existence of plagiarism and rigging a place on the NYT bestseller list the BOAA that includes the executive elders of Mars Hill Church exonerates them and itself by saying they will stand by their men amid false accusations that, so far, all seem to have been based on evidence provided by documents drafted or signed by Mars Hill Church leadership itself.
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