Now for those who may remember, about December 18, 2013 Mark Driscoll issued a statement that was disseminated via The City. This was eventually posted by Stephanie Drury to Twitter on New Year's Eve of 2013.
Mars Hill | New Discussion Topic
From Pastor Mark Driscoll:
Dear Mars Hill Church,
In light of some recent controversy that you may or may not be aware of, I wanted to communicate with you, our church family. Earning and keeping the trust of people in our church that I love and have given my adult life to matters very much to me. It has taken us some time to provide a statement, and it was because we wanted to do the right thing, in the right way, with the right heart, and that required time.
For those who have been patient and prayerful, thank you. I am genuinely grateful for the grace I receive from the people I am honored to teach the Bible to week in and week out.
I am sorry for any concern this may have caused some of you. Because this matters greatly, it has also weighed on me heavily.
Lastly, I would encourage you to not feel any need to defend me. Our job is not to win arguments but to win people to Jesus Christ.
A full statement on the matter from my publisher and me is posted online.
A nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody,
–Pastor Mark
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Let's note that at no point did Driscoll mention the controversy was about plagiarism. Driscoll mentioned that it took time for "us" to provide a statement because they wanted to do the right thing, in the right way, with the right heart, and that required time.
December 19, let's recall, was basically an entire month after Janet Mefferd accused Mark Driscoll on the air of being a plagiarist and subsequently provided evidence for her assessment. In reaction to that Mars Hill conceded that citation errors did exist in the Trial study guide for the 1 & 2 Peter series (now completely removed). But they also claimed that Mark Driscoll did not assemble the book by himself and that the work included a team of people which included a research assistant. Mars Hill spent some time making statements and then altering or retracting statements in November/December 2013
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/12/mars-hill-altered-statement-about-trial.html
For those who didn't see what was posted at the pdf download point in the wake of the Mefferd/Driscoll dust-up.
http://cdn.marshill.com/files/collection/documents/trial_29546_document.pdf
In 2009, Pastor Mark preached through 1 & 2 Peter in a sermon series called Trial. To help our small groups, a team of people including a research assistant, put together a free study guide that was produced in-house. About 5 years later it was brought to our attention that it contained some citation errors. We have discovered that during the editing process, content from other published sources were mistaken for research notes. These sentences were adapted instead of quoted directly. We are grateful this was brought to our attention, and we have removed that document from our website to correct the mistake. Additionally, we are examining all of our similar content as a precautionary measure.
All that's gone now and the pdf will be tricky to find.
What's more Mars Hill scrubbed away Mark Driscoll's old 2009 open letter referencing exactly which people had helped on the Trial study guide.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/12/old-posts-from-jared-wilson-and-mark.html
and ...
the Tyndale statement did not address what turned out to be the majority of books in which Mark Driscoll seemed to make use of the ideas of others without properly citing them
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/12/wendy-alsup-addresses-tyndale-statement.html
and ..
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/12/mars-hill-church-admits-to-citation.html
So if Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll took time before issuing even a strictly internal statement about a press release and said they wanted to take time to do the right thing in the right way with the right heart how on earth was MH PR passive aggressively shifting blame to Mark Driscoll's research team doing any of that? How was subsequently scrubbing away any trace of Mark Driscoll's public shout-out to his research help doing the right thing? How exactly did any of the above actions on the part of Mark Driscoll or Mars Hill culminate in doing the right thing in the right way with the right heart?
Appearing to passive aggressively blame other people for citation problems in the Trial study guide that was eventually pulled and then never issuing any apology for doing so and, further, scrubbing away all of the content from the sermon series and scrubbing away any formerly publicly available evidence that Mark Driscoll gave props to his research team that worked on the Trial book doesn't seem like doing the right thing in the right way with the right heart to Wenatchee The Hatchet.
Let's not forget that the Docent Group publicly defended J-st-n H-lc-mb as having provided the citations necessary for the citation errors to have been avoided. Wenatchee The Hatchet reviewed the "battle plan" last year and came to the same conclusion independently of Docent Group statements. Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll have never once publicly apologized for anyone over there having even hinted that anyone but Mark Driscoll (whose name was on the introduction to that study guide and his alone) was ultimately responsible. By the time the plagiarism controversy emerged H-lc-mb wasn't even AT Mars Hill Church any longer and because the copyright for the Trial study guide was to the corporation known as Mars Hill even the passive aggressive attempt to pin blame on H-lc-mb (which is the opinion of WtH of how MH reaction to Mefferd's accusations came across) what was the point in even mentioning there WAS a research team if a number of them were no longer even part of Mars Hill leadership? Where did the Mark Driscoll go who claimed that headship means it's your responsibility even if it's not your fault?
And by now, well, Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll have a host of websites that have robots.txt so that the WayBack Machine and comparable cache/search systems can't be used.
If earning and keeping the trust of the people at Mars Hill Church is important to Mark Driscoll the cumulative reaction of the Mars Hill Church executive elders and the Board of Advisors and Accountability through the entirety of 2014 in the wake of evidence that Mark Driscoll plagiarized in seven of his books and that he was invoiced by RSI for securing a spot on the NYT bestseller list for Real Marriage (which only eventually included a credit to Dan Allender's work after the plagiarism controversy gained momentum and evidence mounted) suggests that the main point MH and its BOAA want to emphasize is that Driscoll may have made some mistakes but there's nothing to worry about. But the people who have been leaving MH in the last two years, whether Bill Clem or Dalton Roraback or others, do not suggest that the people jumping ship from Mars Hill Church can realistically be dismissed as disgruntled former members who were already under discipline or not in good standing, as was popular to propose in 2007. Mars Hill has been losing people from the leadership culture (like Jeff Bettger) who actually have respect, credibility and standing among even some of Mark Driscoll's sternest local critics.
Wenatchee The Hatchet has been quoting Driscoll and other leaders at Mars Hill Church as accurately as possible, as in-context as possible, and has even labored to correct popular and pervasive misrepresentations of them that have circulated in blogs and the press. And yet it seems as though quoting Mark Driscoll accurately, in context, and considering the sum of his public teaching and his actions and the actions of Mars Hill Church has turned into the last thing Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church and at least a selection of their fans and attenders want. That doesn't seem like even attempting to do the right thing at the right time with the right heart to Wenatchee The Hatchet ... but Wenatchee The Hatchet might just be "some blogger" to those sorts of people.
If Mark Driscoll wants things to be done in the right way at the right time what's introducing robots.txt to Pastor Mark TV so that James Duncan can't quote Driscoll on how Real Marriage was promoted inside of Mars Hill Church going to do to accomplish that?
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