Notes on Episode 1, lessons on repentance
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e1-lessons-on-repentance/
Each episode starts with a synopsis of Mars Hill and how it had as many as fifteen campuses at its peak and that from it's peak to its closure was 24 months.
Ryan Williams and the others introduce themselves. Williams moved to the U.S. from Australia to participate in Mars Hill and became campus pastor at Everett. Williams has gotten some brief mentions at posts at Wenatchee The Hatchet
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/w-throckmorton-memo-regarding-mh-global.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/04/foundation-church-formerly-mars-hill.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/mars-hill-leadership-confirms-that.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/01/sutton-turner-says-jesus-wants-business.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-list-from-mhc-leader-response-to.html
That would be some brief mentions, for the most part, as Williams' role at Mars Hill was not the kind that was on my radar which, given how abusive and vindictive the leadership culture turned out to be at Mars Hill, not being on Wenatchee The Hatchet's radar could sometimes seem like a kind endorsement by silence.
Bruskas and Turner need less introduction for those already familiar with the history of Mars Hill.
Early in this episode Bruskas mentions that Mars Hill had a three C definition of repentance:
1. contrition
2. confession
3. change
Bruskas now believes a fourth is necessary, 4. conciliation.
You have to be able to reach a point where you can empathize and sympathize with those you have sinned against, hurt, and be reconciled. This happens in the zone of 11:00 to 13:00 and Bruskas said that the fourth C was not part of a Mars Hill definition of repentance.
14:30 Bruskas shared that in the initial closure phase of Mars Hill it was very easy to see responsibility in singular terms, to see one person as at fault and to blame for the closure. Over time, however, Bruskas saw himself as defining himself by being part of a big thing, that thing being Mars Hill.
15:00 Bruskas points out that he and Turner were newcomers to Mars Hill in the 2011 period and that they were not sympathetic to more long-time Mars Hill members, staff and participants who, Bruskas now realizes, were far more harmed and hurt by the abuses at Mars Hill than Bruskas or Turner were in a position to understand or appreciate.
16:20 Turner mentions his 2015 spring blog posts wherein he discussed governance at Mars Hill and Mars Hill Global. At about 17:00 he mentions "We had an amazing culture of talking about sin and repentance ... the thing, though, was there was a lack of repentance in the leadership culture . . . "
17:20 "There was a separation between what was expected as a member and of the church and what was excused as a leader of the church." Turner observed.
As I have occasionally alluded to it, there was a double-standardized set of tests through which a rank-and-file member might be subjected to a disciplinary beat-down while a Mark Driscoll or other comparably high-ranking leader at Mars Hill could be described as "made a mistake". This is a point Turner and Bruskas will get to, by the way. Something I've mentioned in more than just passing is that documents written by Turner that have been leaked have shown that several things I warned MHC was in danger of being waylaid by turned out to be things Turner was explicitly and emphatically concerned about: 1) that Mars Hill was gaining operationally liabilities through recurring expenses faster than it was consolidating and cultivating a functional donor base was pretty close to my wording to a friend on my way out, so it was not a shock at all to see Sutton Turner, as soon as hew as in the leadership orbit of Mars Hill voiced much the same concern 2) I was concerned that the biblical living and counseling approach of Mars Hill could be arbitrary, brutally punitive and rife with inconsistency. I was referring at the time to the disciplinary actions taking regarding Meyer and Petry but Andrew Lamb's case eventually bore out that the concerns I had were still valid. Turner and Bruskas do not actually discuss the Lamb case but I mention it as an example of how things could differ by way of double standards for leaders or their kin and regular rank-and-file members.
About 20:00 Turner says "At Mars Hill there was an amazing culture, especially within leadership, to NOT say something was either a mistake, was wrong, was unloving, was a sin but BLAMING it on something else."
Turner then cited the Mars Hill BoAA response to Warren Cole Smith's WORLD Magazine article on Result Source as a perfect example of how Mars Hill leadership did not take responsibility (himself included in that BoAA) when confronted with the reality that the outside world learned what they had done to promote Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage.
At 26:00 Turner refers to a schism within the upper echelon of Mars Hill leadership over the issue of Result Source. Turner said that some leaders viewed sin as anything unloving while others viewed sin as very specific categories of wrongdoing . You could have a leadership culture where one person can all something a sin and another person calls it a mistake. For those who don't remember all of that content let me remind you that Turner wrote that during a rift in the Mars Hill board over Result Source and bad press coverage the board split on the topic and at least some of the board, in Turner's account, wanted to scapegoat Turner as solely responsible. For those who didn't read that material earlier ...
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/08/todays-turner-post-discussed-tension-in.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/turners-account-of-how-he-signed-result.html
From about 30:00 to 32:00 there's some discussion of how the double standards of the leadership culture shipwrecked the faith of many members. There's also some discussion about how leadership models things. Bruskas has concluded that leaders lead first by their example.
Notes on episode 2, lessons on accountability
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e2-lessons-on-accountability/
Williams, Bruskas and Turner open the episode talking about how Mars Hill Church demanded a high level of accountability from members, community groups, and lower level leadership but that at the highest level of leadership there was a kind of erosion of the kind of accountability expected of the lower level people. See about 6:00 for that.
7:40 Turner said lack of accountability at the highest level of leadership was one of the main issues that brought about the downfall of Mars Hill.
8:17 an example of what caused the BoAA to get designed, Result Source. Turner, as is known to historians of Mars Hill, drafted new governance documents around 2011. What Turner has said recently is that he's come to view it as a mistake to have ever thought that governance in itself was ever going to hold leaders accountability who did not demonstrate character that would ensure they were holding themselves accountable to others. I admit to paraphrasing that but that's about the spot in the episode where you can hear Turner discuss the origin of the BoAA.
Turner around 9:25 describes a more formative failure in Mars Hill governance as beginning around 2006. Many would think that this is a reference to 2007 and to the by-laws but it's interesting how consistently Turner identifies the critical failure as beginning in 2006. I'm throwing him a bone on this point for two very big reasons. Reason No. 1 is that in his 2006 book Confessions of a Reformission Rev Mark Driscoll described talking with Larry Osborn and realizing he needed to restructure everything about Mars Hill, at the risk of a mere thumbnail sketch. You can go consult the last chapters of Driscoll's book in its first edition for details. Reason No. 2, Driscoll had more or less announced the direction he wanted governance to go in within the last pages of said book and 2007 was in many respects simply the culmination in practice of what Driscoll had announced in vision-casting.
Turner has come to a view that the real plurality of elders should not have been compromised. Instead it would have been better for the church to have actually split over the issue of governance in the 2006-2007 period so that those with different convictions about church leadership could have gone their separate ways. Pretty big hypothetical but there is an axiom among historians and historiography, I have heard, that in order to understand the full significance of what DID happen you have to have some idea of the range of possibilities of what COULD HAVE happened. If that's the case then Turner's thought experiment is still worth considering because by now those of us who have tracked the history of Mars Hill know that such an agreed upon split over convictions regarding plurality of elders was not what took place. This episode 2 is where he discusses that "what if" a little.
About 12:00 Turner said that Result Source was approved by the Mars Hill board of directors, if I understood him correctly, before Turner was even brought on staff as general manager or added to the executive elder team. That fleshes out why in his 2015 blog posts Turner mentioned that he felt if he didn't sign the contract someone else was going to because the decision was in some sense a foregone conclusion. If at a procedural level and no other, the recent comment by Turner clarifies why he thought that at the time. This can also, it should be noted, correspond to reporting done by Warren Throckmorton about how Kevin Small networked with then president of Mars Hill Jamie Munson and Sealy Yates regarding Result Source.
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2014/12/16/mars-hill-church-executive-elder-dave-bruskas-on-mark-driscoll-nyts-best-seller-list-strange-fire-and-more/
...
Bruskas disclosed to friends that he was going to take the #2 position at Mars Hill in July 2011. That was about a month after Mark and Grace Driscoll and their agent Sealy Yates met at Thomas Nelson to discuss the ResultSource approach to scamming the best-seller list. This June 27, 2011 note from Sealy Yates to Kevin Small was included in a Mars Hill memo on the ResultSource-Real Marriage campaign.
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Yates2SmallJun11.png
...
From about 13:00 to 14:00 Turner mentions feeling conflicted enough about the use of Result Source that he was considering leaving Mars Hill. Now obviously, as he would note himself, he didn't. What he did instead was develop the BoAA, which he has since come to regard as a mistaken decision. He thought an external board would provide accountability that was lacking internally to the leadership culture within Mars Hill that had signed off on using Result Source to promote Real
Marriage.
About 15:00 to 16:00 Bruskas mentions that he also approved of Result Source and regrets it because he did not seriously pursue questions as to its legitimacy and trusted what he was told (by who?) when he was told it was above board and fine.
18:00 there's some discussion about how Mars Hill members were getting minimal communication from upper level leadership. Even in the non-executive levels of leadership people at Mars Hill were finding out about resignations from blogs from outside of Mars Hill or the press. When Mars Hill members and staff were getting fuller communication from outsiders than from the executive leaders the result was a rapid deterioration of the credibility of the upper level leaders.
The executive elders were not accountable to the Board of Advisors and Accountability seems to be the consensus of Bruskas and Turner as they talk through things in this episode.
19:00 Ryan Williams affirms that he got information on Mars HIll Church resignations not from the MHC top level leaders but from bloggers.
Now ... I'll admit as Wenatchee The Hatchet that these confessions are not surprising. Readership spiked the week I disclosed the resignation of Bill Clem, for instance and there was a spectacular spike around the time the memo discussing Driscoll's compensation got published here. It had become very clear that the executive leadership had become so secretive that basic questions about how much Mark Driscoll was paid and how he was paid were livewire questions. It had also become clear that the way The City (which, full disclosure, I always hated) became an information silo tool, the top-level leaders had refined The City into a system that segregated campuses as much as possible--that meant I felt an obligation to network as widely across all of the campuses for sources as possible, a reality that the executive elders were probably aware of seeing as Turner knows who Wenatchee The Hatchet is. And, to be fair, Turner is welcome to comment here as is Bruskas or Williams. I will admit to having completely stonewalled Turner for years because I didn't think he was in a position to understand how catastrophically abusive the leadership culture of Mars Hill was but based on the first two episodes alone, and I've not even gotten to the seventh, it sounds like Turner and Bruskas have been realizing what many of us had worked out about the brutally toxic aspects of Mars Hill culture. That's a rambling digression, I admit.
About 28:00 there's some conversation about how ANY accountability system, whatever it is, can be circumvented. On paper accountability and governance systems cannot compensate for leaders of poor character.
About 39:00 Turner describes his governance change as putting a band-aid on a sore, a sore that got infected--he spends some time explaining how he has come to believe the BoAA was a failure from inception. That's an interesting new perspective from Turner in light of Paul Tripp's comments that the BoAA was, by the nature of its design, incapable of doing what it was supposed to do. It seems that Turner has come around to Tripp's view of the foundational inadequacy of the BoAA to have had any capacity to hold Mark Driscoll or the other executive elders accountable.
Episode 3, lessons on church growth
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e3-lessons-on-church-growth/
7:30 Turner mentions that when he was brought on staff he was waived from being in a community group or a redemption group. He didn't have to go through the same protocols normal members had to go through regarding community or accountability. Turner mentions that the idea was the executive elders were themselves some kind of community group when in actuality such a small group/community group of executive elders didn't really exist, not like the community groups as regular Mars Hill members would or could have understood them if I'm understanding Turner's comments correctly.
Turner notes that like the current president some things got said so often they were taken as actually true. For instance, there was a mantra at Mars Hill that "Living things grow".
At about 8:45 Turner remarks on the mantra saying, "That is so wrong. There are things that grow, like covid-19, that aren't healthy." I might throw in that cancer grows but nobody would consider it healthy, either. Point taken indeed!
From about 11:00 to 13:50 there's discussion about how Mars Hill kept consolidating growth patterns without stabilizing, which led to burn out at most every level. Ryan Williams mentions a scenario in which 30 people get baptized but of those only five end up plugged into community groups. For all those who heard Mark Driscoll say "it's not all about the numbers" a whole lot of us knew better and to hear former pastors and executive elders concede the point sounds like progress.
16:00 Williams describes checking the numbers each week to see if by chance they went down.
17:00 or so, Bruskas mentions that community groups would meet about six times before they were expected to "multiply" so that even community groups were not necessarily communities.
20:00 another mantra gets mentioned "Preaching grows the church." At this point nobody with a modicum of knowledge about Mars Hill has to wonder whose preaching was expected to grow the church. That would be Pastor Mark, obviously.
22:00 to 23:00 is the range where Bruskas said he felt he was one downturn season away from losing his place at Mars Hill (i.e. including his job).
24:00 to 25:00 Turner mentions dreading being humiliated and called an enemy and in that Mars Hill setting you tried to produce and if you couldn't keep up you fell off the treadmill.
25:00 to 29:00 there's some mention about how discipleship was sacrificed on the altar of growth, not their wording so much as my wording of my sense of what they said.
31:20 Turner says "Are you using someone or loving someone? Did I love people well or did I use people?" He has concluded he used people rather than loved them, something he says at a few points throughout the seven episode run.
If you want to read a study in contrasts compare any of Turner's comments in just the first three episodes to Mark Driscoll's conversation with Larry Osborne discussed in the following series of posts.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/05/index-of-posts-discussing-background-of.html
or Driscoll's interview with Sheila Walsh for that matter
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/walsh%20Robison%20interview
The culture of top level leadership sketched out by Turner and Bruskas here in 2020 does not seem to mesh well with Justin Dean's account of Mars Hill's top leadership culture since Mars Hill shut down.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/PR%20Matters
Dean's book made a case that PR can help your church but as I've discussed at some length, it could look to an outsider as though the start of Mars Hill's catastrophic demise was at least partly catalyzed by Justin Dean's tenure handling public relations. There's more to the episode, of course, but as I'm jotting down notes about what stands out from each episode I'm wrapping up notes on this specific episode.
Episode 4, lessons on money
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e4-lessons-on-church-money/
About 6:00 in there's discussion of how there was no transparency about money at the top level leadership stratum of Mars Hill. This nearly anyone who was actually at Mars Hill probably eventually figured out but it's nice to hear it officially confirmed. It took me years to finally come across any documentation regarding Driscoll's compensation, for instance, and precisely how Driscoll got paid was so opaque this is the episode where that finally gets sketched out.
7:00 to 8:00 Result Source cited as perfect case study of where executive leadership were neither honest nor transparent about what the funds were used for and, instead, spun things when news of the use of Result Source hit the press. That's a synopsis and I'd strongly recommend listening to the episode for yourself since our understandings could potentially vary.
Turner pointed out that Mars Hill would publicly attack churches for doing things that Mars Hill itself was also or already doing, such as rigging sales rankings for pastors' books. This is one of those details that reinforces the sense I have had that the top dogs at Mars Hill but especially Mark himself, had a set of double standardized tests as to what constituted a "sin" for anyone else but a "mistake" for Pastor Mark. Hearing Turner admit to the double standard and the hypocrisy of publicly criticizing churches for doing what Mars Hill was doing gives me the sense that Turner and Bruskas are working through an actual change of perspective and can see that they were part of an abusive church culture as part of the triumvirate of top dogs in leadership there.
From 12:40 for a few minutes Turner mentions that anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of a church budget is just for staff compensation.
13:00 it's pointed out that a high priority was given to executive elder compensation. Anyone who read this post would not be surprised to learn that. Let the reader consider that at a bit more than 12,000 views this post below on Driscoll's compensation is the single most-read post in the history of Wenatchee The Hatchet.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/sutton-turner-memo-recommended-raise.html
About 19:00 to 21:00 Turner describes how Mars Hill hired an outside company, which recommended compensation rates given by firms invested in by, if I understood Turner's description, well-heeled church leaders. The part that's easier for me to get is Turner described how a lot of research into pastor compensation isn't really research but using tiny insular samples of high income preachers to justify more high compensation rates. He'll later mention that one of his projects has been to work on developing compensation research that uses larger and more credible sample sizes.
26:00 we finally get to the debacle of Mars Hill Global. If in the Munson era Mars Hill Global was openly sold as Mars Hill Global Expansion during the Turner era there was a new understanding that "Global" meant "overseas" or "not the United States". Rather than attempt to unpack the morass of that history I recommend you go read as much of Warren Throckmorton's work on Global as you can and also review everything that has the tag "global" here at Wenatchee The Hatchet.
I had the opportunity to transcribe the sermon segment in which Driscoll explained exactly what Mars Hill Global was intended to be during the Jamie Munson period and yet that sermon was never transcribed for posterity that I can recall, most likely because it was the sermon where Mark Driscoll explained why all the campuses he wasn't preaching live at would get his sermons a week later. Retaining the illusion that Mark was preaching to "you" the same Sunday he was preaching to everyone else was pretty important. I ended up at a community group full of Ballard attenders while I was at the Lake City campus and discovered that I was a week behind but I was conversant enough in biblical literature and Mark was predictable enough I didn't have any problem keeping up during the Peter series when Mars Hill folks met at a place I was staying at. I noticed that for recommended readings Driscoll had name-dropped Richard Bauckham's work on 2 Peter and Jude, if memory serves. Well, read Bauckham, maybe don't listen to Driscoll quite so much. :)
So Turner mentioned that he tried to publish the numbers for Mars Hill Global in 2015 but he got emails and letters from attorneys representing Mars Hill telling him to stop. This sounds like it was one of the pivotal moments where Turner began to realize that a church that was already announced dead and yet had lawyers telling him he could not disclose the Global numbers was a church that had a serious corruption problem. Listen for that in the zone of 30:00 to 31:00
Notes on episode five, lessons on discipleship
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e5-lessons-on-discipleship/
Turner and Bruskas, in sum, concede the cataclysmic failure of Mars Hill on discipleship, which they sacrificed on the altar of church growth. I have to admit episodes 5 and 6 kind of blur together for me so be sure to listen to these episodes for yourself if you want to hear what Turner, Bruskas and Williams say. I've come back from a break from blogging so I'll admit that I might not be in top form trying to wade into the realm of Mars Hill topics and summarizing no less than five hours of audio!
Episode 6, lessons on narcissism
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e6-lessons-on-narcissism/
This episode is not about narcissism in individuals but church cultures, and Mars Hill is described as a narcissistic church culture. There's also a guest, Chuck DeGroat. This episode was not quite as interesting to me, to be honest, as I have heard plenty of suggestions that Mark Driscoll is a malignant narcissist in my time and the question of whether anyone has diagnosed him is still open-ended. A company of lay assessments are not the same thing as a professional diagnosis, even if isn't hard to see that Mark Driscoll's grandiose claims to super-powers such as "I see things" or bragging about praying that God would kill someone and that supposedly God killed that person suggest someone who has some issues with humility. That Driscoll has never publicly accounted for a writing career in which infringement level use of uncredited materials managed to be found in nearly all his major books from the start of his writing career through to 2014 is something that is not likely to change. He's revised his published work but without necessarily admitting along the way that he even "made mistakes" in failing to credit, say, Dan Allender's work in the first edition of Real
Marriage. It took some time but I was able to establish beyond all doubt that both Mark and Grace Driscoll knew of and recommended Allender's work in 2006 and that Grace Driscoll mentioned Allender as a favorite author as far back as about 2000, which made the absence of any credit given to him in their marriage book all the more unaccountable.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/07/real-marriage-chapter-7-grace-and.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/09/real-marriage-chapter-7-part-2.html
Despite the admission above that this one was not as interesting to me, about 10:00 into this episode Bruskas mentioned that there was a cultural paradigm in which personal loyalty was equated with godliness, which does seem like it could fit with a church culture dominated by narcissism. About 11:30 there's some mention of how narcissistic leaders make everything about themselves. Turner mentions about 12:00 to 13:00 that when he looks at the nine diagnostic indicators of narcissism every single one of them was present at Mars Hill Church in its leadership culture, particularly at the top and that he admits (several times) he was one of those leaders. Turner also emphasizes that there is no structure or accountability system that can actually curb a narcissist. Having written a bit about Mark Driscoll and the allure of legacy and the temptation toward tower-building a la Babylon elsewhere at this blog I don't feel much need to linger on this episode.
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e7-lessons-on-power/
Turner and Bruskas agree that domineering abusive use of power was the reason Mars Hill Church closed and had to close. Every other reason that Mars Hill closed is merely subordinate to the reality that the Mars Hill leadership culture from the top down was abusive and domineering. Full stop, no qualifications or caveats from either Turner or Bruskas. Honestly, hearing them put it that way was refreshing.
There's a lot I could discuss from this episode but I've written so much already I want to restrict myself to a few things.
About 9:00 to 10:00 Turner mentions that there was an investigation from August to September in 2014. Forty people were interviewed, hundreds of hours of interviews were taken down, that Mark Driscoll was found to have a literally domineering leadership style (in explicit contrast to what Bruskas and Turner note was Jesus' instruction that His disciples should not be domineering), and, well, that's that.
About 11:00 to 12:00 there's some discussion that the churches that survived the collapse of Mars Hill had some hard times but that they seem to have dropped the domineering leadership paradigm. Based on comments made about the merger-demise of what used to be Mars Hill Portland and some informal complaints about Olympia I am not sure if that's altogether true across the board but I have heard some positive things from former MHC about some ex-MHC leaders who I won't name as a matter of not feeling obliged to. Those who know who WtH may already know which people I think came through the other side of MHC's debacle with their integrity intact. I wasn't just dinking around when I wrote that even in the court of Ahab there could be an Obadiah or two, let the reader understand.
12:00 to 14:00 Bruskas has come to a point where Paul Tripp's briefly infamous comment that Mars Hill was the single most abusive church ministry culture he'd ever seen haunts him. Bruskas now has come to see that what Tripp said was true, that Mars Hill was a terribly abusive and domineering church culture, especially at the top and going all the way done. Turner has, here in 2020 come to agree that that assessment was true. He may not have felt so much back in 2015 that Paul Tripp was right but it sounds as if Turner and Bruskas agree that Tripp was trying to help Mars Hill and that his warning that the church had the most abusive ministry culture he'd ever seen and that the BoAA was incapable of remedying that problem was true. Whether Justin Dean, for instance, has come around to agreeing with those warnings is a question that we'll have to leave open-ended. Last time Dean talked much about Mars Hill was in his not-so-faintly-woe-was-me account of PR at Mars Hill dealing with media.
For their parts, Turner and Bruskas don't want there to be any other account of the demise of Mars Hill that has the domineering and abusive leadership culture they were part of being given as the reason Mars Hill collapsed. They've mentioned throughout the episodes that they hope that by sharing what they now see as their sins that other pastors can avoid repeating those sins. Bruskas is at The Village Church now, if memory serves. Turner is not a pastor and never plans to pastor again.
At about 15:00 Turner mentions that he has audio and materials from the 2014 investigation. If this is reference to the investigation of Mark Driscoll then, well, to ask directly ...
Sutton Turner, are you in a position where you are able to to disclose any, some or all of those materials for public consideration? If not are there reasons of legal constraint such as what happened in 2015 when you were contacted by attorneys representing Mars Hill? If so, if you can disclose materials would you be willing to do so in the future?
To be clear, this isn't an expectation that Sutton Turner has to comment. Long-time readers of Wenatchee The Hatchet may recall that on the subject of MHC this blog has been more a journalistic/historical chronicle than any kind of explicitly activist blog. It has also never been, contrary to the assertions of some Pastor Mark fans, a watchdog blog, watchblog or blog that "only" ever rips on Pastor Mark. I think for people who aren't fans of Mark Driscoll right now that probably couldn't be more obvious but it probably bears repeating because during the 2011-2014 period I had moments where people were talking to me as though I would one day have to stand before God and face judgment for every bad thing I ever said about Mars Hill via comments or messages, perhaps not realizing that was precisely why I was writing what I was writing. I get a sense from having listened to five hours of Williams, Turner and Bruskas this year that they might all get that Wenatchee The Hatchet was writing in the hope that Mars Hill Church could reform and only that if the leaders wouldn't reform that the church would die. As I told one of my pastor friends, I loved the people of Mars Hill Church but was opposed to what I regarded as the principality of Mars Hill Church. So, at the risk of sharing personal stuff once again, that's some context for all the who knows how many words I've written about the former Mars Hill over the last decade. If Turner comments I might publish the comments or it might be something that doesn't get published depending on what he is or isn't at liberty to discuss.
Episode 7 is definitely worth listening to. At this point, having written about 5,200 words, the notes are wrapped up.
UPDATE
5-29-2020
Sutton Turner has published a transcript of the seventh episode at the following link
https://investyourgifts.com/lessons-on-power/
For the passage on the investigation:
...
Sutton Turner:
As we get, what are we, five years, six years from Mars Hill closing? I don’t want there to be a narrative out there that says that Mars Hill closed for any other reason besides this specific reason. And why do I know this reason? It’s because there was an investigation of over 40 people and there was hundreds of hours of interviews that I have all of those documents for and I have audio of the deliberations of that. This is it. This is it. This is the reason. This is what happened in Mars. What happened? People ask me all the time, “What happened in Mars Hill?” This is what happened in Mars Hill. [emphasis added]
...
If Turner is able to disclose any, some or all of those documents I hope he is able to do so as soon as practical.
There is also, apparently, an episode 8
https://investyourgifts.com/recovering-after-crisis/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e8-lessons-on-recovering-after-crisis/
Turner and Bruskas agree that domineering abusive use of power was the reason Mars Hill Church closed and had to close. Every other reason that Mars Hill closed is merely subordinate to the reality that the Mars Hill leadership culture from the top down was abusive and domineering. Full stop, no qualifications or caveats from either Turner or Bruskas. Honestly, hearing them put it that way was refreshing.
There's a lot I could discuss from this episode but I've written so much already I want to restrict myself to a few things.
About 9:00 to 10:00 Turner mentions that there was an investigation from August to September in 2014. Forty people were interviewed, hundreds of hours of interviews were taken down, that Mark Driscoll was found to have a literally domineering leadership style (in explicit contrast to what Bruskas and Turner note was Jesus' instruction that His disciples should not be domineering), and, well, that's that.
About 11:00 to 12:00 there's some discussion that the churches that survived the collapse of Mars Hill had some hard times but that they seem to have dropped the domineering leadership paradigm. Based on comments made about the merger-demise of what used to be Mars Hill Portland and some informal complaints about Olympia I am not sure if that's altogether true across the board but I have heard some positive things from former MHC about some ex-MHC leaders who I won't name as a matter of not feeling obliged to. Those who know who WtH may already know which people I think came through the other side of MHC's debacle with their integrity intact. I wasn't just dinking around when I wrote that even in the court of Ahab there could be an Obadiah or two, let the reader understand.
12:00 to 14:00 Bruskas has come to a point where Paul Tripp's briefly infamous comment that Mars Hill was the single most abusive church ministry culture he'd ever seen haunts him. Bruskas now has come to see that what Tripp said was true, that Mars Hill was a terribly abusive and domineering church culture, especially at the top and going all the way done. Turner has, here in 2020 come to agree that that assessment was true. He may not have felt so much back in 2015 that Paul Tripp was right but it sounds as if Turner and Bruskas agree that Tripp was trying to help Mars Hill and that his warning that the church had the most abusive ministry culture he'd ever seen and that the BoAA was incapable of remedying that problem was true. Whether Justin Dean, for instance, has come around to agreeing with those warnings is a question that we'll have to leave open-ended. Last time Dean talked much about Mars Hill was in his not-so-faintly-woe-was-me account of PR at Mars Hill dealing with media.
For their parts, Turner and Bruskas don't want there to be any other account of the demise of Mars Hill that has the domineering and abusive leadership culture they were part of being given as the reason Mars Hill collapsed. They've mentioned throughout the episodes that they hope that by sharing what they now see as their sins that other pastors can avoid repeating those sins. Bruskas is at The Village Church now, if memory serves. Turner is not a pastor and never plans to pastor again.
At about 15:00 Turner mentions that he has audio and materials from the 2014 investigation. If this is reference to the investigation of Mark Driscoll then, well, to ask directly ...
Sutton Turner, are you in a position where you are able to to disclose any, some or all of those materials for public consideration? If not are there reasons of legal constraint such as what happened in 2015 when you were contacted by attorneys representing Mars Hill? If so, if you can disclose materials would you be willing to do so in the future?
To be clear, this isn't an expectation that Sutton Turner has to comment. Long-time readers of Wenatchee The Hatchet may recall that on the subject of MHC this blog has been more a journalistic/historical chronicle than any kind of explicitly activist blog. It has also never been, contrary to the assertions of some Pastor Mark fans, a watchdog blog, watchblog or blog that "only" ever rips on Pastor Mark. I think for people who aren't fans of Mark Driscoll right now that probably couldn't be more obvious but it probably bears repeating because during the 2011-2014 period I had moments where people were talking to me as though I would one day have to stand before God and face judgment for every bad thing I ever said about Mars Hill via comments or messages, perhaps not realizing that was precisely why I was writing what I was writing. I get a sense from having listened to five hours of Williams, Turner and Bruskas this year that they might all get that Wenatchee The Hatchet was writing in the hope that Mars Hill Church could reform and only that if the leaders wouldn't reform that the church would die. As I told one of my pastor friends, I loved the people of Mars Hill Church but was opposed to what I regarded as the principality of Mars Hill Church. So, at the risk of sharing personal stuff once again, that's some context for all the who knows how many words I've written about the former Mars Hill over the last decade. If Turner comments I might publish the comments or it might be something that doesn't get published depending on what he is or isn't at liberty to discuss.
Episode 7 is definitely worth listening to. At this point, having written about 5,200 words, the notes are wrapped up.
UPDATE
5-29-2020
Sutton Turner has published a transcript of the seventh episode at the following link
https://investyourgifts.com/lessons-on-power/
For the passage on the investigation:
...
Pastor Ryan Williams:
Sutton, would you jump in, give us some thoughts?
Sutton, would you jump in, give us some thoughts?
Sutton Turner:
Yeah. This is heavy for me today. Woke up early this morning reading about this and just kind of praying over this. I think the difficulty I have when I’m reading the scripture is this is an area that we failed, we, all three of us and many others failed at. We were a part of a failed culture.
Yeah. This is heavy for me today. Woke up early this morning reading about this and just kind of praying over this. I think the difficulty I have when I’m reading the scripture is this is an area that we failed, we, all three of us and many others failed at. We were a part of a failed culture.
Sutton Turner:
I look back at the … We’ve done, I don’t know, five or six of these podcasts on Mars Hill. We’ve talked about accountability, and here Paul says, “Serve as a fellow elder.” And implied in there is the fellowship and accountability there. We’ve talked a lot about the lack of accountability at Mars Hill.
I look back at the … We’ve done, I don’t know, five or six of these podcasts on Mars Hill. We’ve talked about accountability, and here Paul says, “Serve as a fellow elder.” And implied in there is the fellowship and accountability there. We’ve talked a lot about the lack of accountability at Mars Hill.
Sutton Turner:
If I go on and I say shameful gain, don’t use it for shameful gain. We talked about this one week. We talked about loving people and not using people. And we did that. We used people. We didn’t love them well, whether they were staff members or they were people in the congregation. [emphasis added]
If I go on and I say shameful gain, don’t use it for shameful gain. We talked about this one week. We talked about loving people and not using people. And we did that. We used people. We didn’t love them well, whether they were staff members or they were people in the congregation. [emphasis added]
Sutton Turner:
Then the word that sticks out throughout this, not domineering. That was probably the hardest word to read. I know in the past that I have been domineering. I can’t speak for others, but I can only speak for myself, and I look back on the culture of Mars Hill and I look at the …
Then the word that sticks out throughout this, not domineering. That was probably the hardest word to read. I know in the past that I have been domineering. I can’t speak for others, but I can only speak for myself, and I look back on the culture of Mars Hill and I look at the …
Sutton Turner:
Well, I mean, if you just look at the end of Mars Hill August and September of 2014 investigation, 40 people were interviewed. Hundreds of hours of interviews were taking place, and literally, domineering was one of the findings. If you look at the findings that were there, quick-tempered, include harsh speech, arrogant, and domineering in leadership of elders and staff.
Well, I mean, if you just look at the end of Mars Hill August and September of 2014 investigation, 40 people were interviewed. Hundreds of hours of interviews were taking place, and literally, domineering was one of the findings. If you look at the findings that were there, quick-tempered, include harsh speech, arrogant, and domineering in leadership of elders and staff.
Sutton Turner:
Luckily, I’m thankful that that’s not the end of the story, but, unfortunately, that was the end of Mars Hill Church, but it was not the end of the story. The end of the story is you guys, like Ryan, you. Pastor Dave, you going back to Albuquerque, Ryan in Everett, continuing on with churches and pretty much removing that element of the culture that was in Mars Hill on a pivotal date right there in the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015.
Luckily, I’m thankful that that’s not the end of the story, but, unfortunately, that was the end of Mars Hill Church, but it was not the end of the story. The end of the story is you guys, like Ryan, you. Pastor Dave, you going back to Albuquerque, Ryan in Everett, continuing on with churches and pretty much removing that element of the culture that was in Mars Hill on a pivotal date right there in the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015.
Sutton Turner:
I’m thankful that that’s not the end of the story. I’m thankful that the people that are listening that maybe go, “Gosh, I don’t want to be that part of Mars Hill,” that’s not the end of the story. The end of the story is there’s a lot of healthy churches that came out of Mars Hill Church today that do not have that domineering, that arrogant, that quick-tempered culture. I’m thankful of that.
I’m thankful that that’s not the end of the story. I’m thankful that the people that are listening that maybe go, “Gosh, I don’t want to be that part of Mars Hill,” that’s not the end of the story. The end of the story is there’s a lot of healthy churches that came out of Mars Hill Church today that do not have that domineering, that arrogant, that quick-tempered culture. I’m thankful of that.
Sutton Turner:
But this is heavy. I mean, this is heavy to me today because it really, it illuminates one of the big areas that I feel like that Mars Hill was lacking.
But this is heavy. I mean, this is heavy to me today because it really, it illuminates one of the big areas that I feel like that Mars Hill was lacking.
Pastor Dave Bruskas:
Sutton, I’m glad you said that. I know that’s hard to come to terms with, and I know I’ve struggled with that as much as anything. My perspective is just one perspective, and I want to be very clear about that. The way that I perceive and I see what happened and try to explain it, any attempt I make is going to be overly simplistic, but if I were to explain from my perspective what it was that took Mars Hill down, it was this issue. It was the power dynamic that was in play that was unhealthy and dysfunctional and not good.
Sutton, I’m glad you said that. I know that’s hard to come to terms with, and I know I’ve struggled with that as much as anything. My perspective is just one perspective, and I want to be very clear about that. The way that I perceive and I see what happened and try to explain it, any attempt I make is going to be overly simplistic, but if I were to explain from my perspective what it was that took Mars Hill down, it was this issue. It was the power dynamic that was in play that was unhealthy and dysfunctional and not good.
Pastor Dave Bruskas:
I remember the quote, Ryan and Sutton, from Paul Tripp as he was on our board and as he was evaluating what was going on, actually trying to help us correct the power dynamic there. He said, this is his quote, speaking of Mars Hill, “This is without a doubt the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.” [emphasis added]
I remember the quote, Ryan and Sutton, from Paul Tripp as he was on our board and as he was evaluating what was going on, actually trying to help us correct the power dynamic there. He said, this is his quote, speaking of Mars Hill, “This is without a doubt the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.” [emphasis added]
Pastor Dave Bruskas:
That’s heartbreaking. That’s painful, especially given the light, what Jesus tells us about the subject. I think the thing in the years that have followed that have been surprising to me is how quickly, it seems to me, in the Christian culture people downplay abuse of power. We almost have these categories of, hey, as long as leaders are not being sexually immoral, as long as they’re not committing financial impropriety, we don’t really care what they do in the realm of how they handle their power. [emphasis added]
...That’s heartbreaking. That’s painful, especially given the light, what Jesus tells us about the subject. I think the thing in the years that have followed that have been surprising to me is how quickly, it seems to me, in the Christian culture people downplay abuse of power. We almost have these categories of, hey, as long as leaders are not being sexually immoral, as long as they’re not committing financial impropriety, we don’t really care what they do in the realm of how they handle their power. [emphasis added]
Sutton Turner:
As we get, what are we, five years, six years from Mars Hill closing? I don’t want there to be a narrative out there that says that Mars Hill closed for any other reason besides this specific reason. And why do I know this reason? It’s because there was an investigation of over 40 people and there was hundreds of hours of interviews that I have all of those documents for and I have audio of the deliberations of that. This is it. This is it. This is the reason. This is what happened in Mars. What happened? People ask me all the time, “What happened in Mars Hill?” This is what happened in Mars Hill. [emphasis added]
...
If Turner is able to disclose any, some or all of those documents I hope he is able to do so as soon as practical.
There is also, apparently, an episode 8
https://investyourgifts.com/recovering-after-crisis/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e8-lessons-on-recovering-after-crisis/
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