additional coverage and updates on the Harvest Bible Chapel/James MacDonald situation, with a comparison to the MH statement regarding Driscoll's three areas of weakness as a leader

https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/02/02/campu-pastor-update/
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/02/13/february-2019-elder-update-2/
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/02/17/february-2019-elder-update-3/
http://julieroys.com/mancow-interview-former-worship-leader-harvest-accuses-james-macdonald-inappropriately-touching-private-plane/

https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/02/18/response-statement-regarding-pastor-james-and-anne-green/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-harvest-bible-chapel-future-20190217-story.html
...

The turning point for church leadership may have been the audio recordings broadcast on Erich “Mancow” Muller’s morning radio show on WLS-AM 890 in which MacDonald appears to disparage his critics.

Muller, once friends with MacDonald, said last week that MacDonald is “a carnival barker actor” who was running the church as “essentially a giant Ponzi scheme.”

In a January message to church members announcing he was temporarily stepping aside, MacDonald did not specify the “sin.” But Harvest leadership has been accused by a few vocal former members of financial mismanagement and dishonest operations.

...

Even though the former pastor’s contributions for growing the church will be remembered, said Sperling, “the elders concluded that there is a sinful pattern of inappropriate language, anger and domineering behavior.” [emphasis added]

It isn't that difficult to recall how and why that might resemble another church situation from just a few years ago.

http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
Pastor Mark Driscoll's Resignation
By: Mars Hill Church
Posted: Oct 15, 2014

On Tuesday, October 14, Pastor Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as an elder and lead pastor of Mars Hill Church. The Board of Overseers has accepted that resignation[emphasis added] and is moving forward with planning for pastoral transition, recognizing the challenge of such a task in a church that has only known one pastor since its founding. We ask for prayer for the journey ahead.

As is well known, inside and outside of Mars Hill, Pastor Mark has been on a leave of absence for nearly two months while a group of elders investigated a series of formal charges brought against him. This investigation had only recently been concluded,[emphasis added] following some 1,000 hours of research, interviewing more than 50 people and preparing 200 pages of information. This process was conducted in accordance with our church Bylaws and with Pastor Mark’s support and cooperation.

While a group of seven elders plus one member of the Board of Overseers was charged with conducting this investigation, the full Board of Overseers is charged with reaching any conclusions and issuing any findings. In that capacity, we believe it appropriate to publicly mention the following:

1. We concluded that Pastor Mark has, at times, been guilty of arrogance, responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading the staff and elders in a domineering manner. While we believe Mark needs to continue to address these areas in his life, we do not believe him to be disqualified from pastoral ministry. [emphasis added]

...
Finally, Mark Driscoll was not asked to resign; indeed, we were surprised to receive his resignation letter. [emphasis added]

It would seem that Driscoll and MacDonald ended up being described by their own respective boards at their respective churches as having similar character flaws.  These were not character flaws that precluded the men from being considered fit for ministry to begin with, obviously, but were character flaws that came to be seen as ... liabilities to the public reputation of a church as corporation?


It is worth remembering that MacDonald left the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability about the time Paul Tripp did.

Julie Roys article at WORLD mentions a 50k gift given by HBC/James MacDonald to Mark Driscoll to help launch of The Trinity Church, an overview of MacDonald's role in Mars Hill board leadership

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/12/julie-roys-article-at-world-mentions.html

https://world.wng.org/2018/12/hard_times_at_harvest
...

Bob Langdon, the former financial director of HBF who also participated in the audit, confirmed Wisen’s account. He said some of the items HBF paid for appeared to benefit Harvest Bible Chapel much more than the fellowship. For example, Langdon said HBF paid $500,000 for a church management systems upgrade that included new hardware for Harvest’s main campus in Elgin.

HBF also paid about $570,000 that Langdon said his boss, former Harvest Chief Financial Officer Fred Adams, had allocated for “overhead” and discretionary expenses. (Adams resigned at the end of 2017 and did not respond to a request for comment.) Langdon said those expenses included a percentage of the salaries for certain top Harvest Bible Chapel executives and a $50,000 donation to pastor Mark Driscoll’s Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Driscoll, a longtime friend of MacDonald’s, resigned from the former Mars Hill Church in Seattle in 2014 amid charges of domineering leadership.) Langdon said that during the audit, Wisen and auditors repeatedly asked Harvest executives to give justification for various HBF allocations “and there really wasn’t one.” [emphases added]

...
MacDonald, for those who may remember that Mark Driscoll had a book out last year, endorsed Mark Driscoll's Spirit-Filled Jesus by way of a blurb at the front of the book.

Driscoll, who is hosting a church governance conference, used to have MacDonald, for a time, on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability.  In light of the recent statements from Harvest Bible Chapel about their former preacher it has begun to seem as though the two men Driscoll and MacDonald have been described by their own former leadership boards as having similar vices.  The descriptions, however, are still rather general.  The future of HBC is in transition. 

Whether or not it survives remains to be seen.  Maybe it will.  Most of the former Mars Hill campuses survived, with a few notable exceptiosn that folded before Mars Hill was dissolved and the recently folded former Mars Hill Portland.  HBC may weather the storm ... but a sermon on David dealing with Amalekites doesn't seem like it might be the most apt sermon text in light of what has taken place.  Then again, there's a long and not necessarily venerable tradition of preachers transforming sermons on narrative literature from the Old Testament into talking points about recent church politics.  Who at Mars Hill during the 2007 period could  entirely forget the Nehemiah sermons? 

We'll get back to other topics that are more musical in some time but the events of late in the realm of megachurches have enough ties to the former MH it seems necessary to note some of the recent events.