Since the closure of Mars Hill Sutton Turner has written about how there was a rift in the Mars Hill Board over whether or not to scapegoat him over ResultSource and Mars Hill Global, and I’ve written about this topic in the past, but it’s also worth quoting Turner directly:
http://investyourgifts.com/learning-growing-communicating-under-criticism/
Posted by Sutton Turner on
April 24, 2015
...When
the criticism of Mars Hill Global began in the Spring of 2014, I wanted to
communicate about what happened with Global, its history, the financials, and
my mistakes. Unfortunately, I was not permitted to discuss these things just as
I was not permitted to discuss the ResultSource situation in the detail that I
felt it deserved. There was actually a division on the Board of Advisors and
Accountability (BOAA) as some men wanted to put all the blame for both Global
and ResultSource on me, but I am thankful for men who did not allow that.
[emphasis added]
Eight difficult, grievous months have passed since I resigned; four
sad, yet hopeful months have passed since Mars Hill held its last service. I
began to work on each of these topics through blog posts several months ago
with the wisdom, counsel, prayer, and blessing of many friends who are former
elders and staff members at Mars Hill.
So Turner’s past account of an intra-board rift on the Board of Advisors and Accountability helps us keep in mind that in 2014 it was possible for there to be a rift within the Mars Hill boards between the Board of Overseers (who would review formal charges and call for investigations) and the Board of Elders (those assigned to actually do the investigating). The history of governance in Mars Hill is probably not more complex than that of any other church but it is still extensive.
Because it will be hard to follow what Throckmorton discusses with Turner and Bruskas without having some background on the boards, let’s do a quick review of who was on which board in late 2014.
Mars Hill Board of Overseers
Michael
Van Skaik
Larry
Osborne
Jon Phelps
Matt Rogers
For the Board of
Elders the list goes as:
Pastor
Ed Choi
Pastor
Aaron Gray
Pastor
Bubba Jennings
Pastor
Alex Ghioni
Pastor
AJ Hamilton
Pastor
Matt Rogers (commenter
ExeGe pointed out that Matt Rogers wasn’t at the protest he wrote about)
Pastor
Miles Rohde
Pastor
Tim Smith
Without understanding these boards and their
respective roles it will be hard to follow what comes up next in Throckmorton’s
interview with Turner and Bruskas.
Warren Throckmorton:
Yeah. Then right after the Acts 29, that’s when the formal charges
came, mid August of ’14. Then the 21 elders brought the formal charges. It was
about a week after they were submitted that they were leaked to me and
published. That took through the rest of August and September to investigate.
That’s when we get to October. The findings are presented to the decision
making board (BOAA) by the board of elders.
Warren Throckmorton:
Now I’m going to let you take us through that. The board of elders and
the board of advisors, and there’s so many boards.
Sutton Turner: Yeah.
Warren Throckmorton:
I think I’ve got it, but I know you do. So I’m going to let you two
take us through that. There are some shenanigans here because the board who
investigated the charges came up with one finding. There were several findings,
but they came up with a particular finding that really didn’t see the light of
day, right? It didn’t really come out, and we’re talking about disqualification
here. So if you guys could kind of take us through that, I think it would help
maybe set the record straight on some things.
Sutton Turner:
So I’ll try to
start, Dave, and then you can team in here. I think you go back to the early
part of 2014. Early part of 2014, we add into the bylaws that an investigation
will include … So what we have is we have the Board of Accountability and
Advisors (BOAA). That’s the main board of directors basically of the church, of
the 501C3. There’s seven members. Me and Dave are two of those members. Mark’s
one and then we have four outside board members.
Sutton Turner:
That Board
(BOAA) puts into the bylaws that a Board of Elders (elders), and we’ll just
call them elders, can investigate and do investigate allegations of any of the
executive elders, and that that is led by one of the Board of Accountability of
Advisors. So that was huge because that’s what didn’t happen in May of 2013
when Dave Kraft and nine elders brought similar charges. There was no process.
There was nothing. There was no group to do that. [emphasis added]
I’m going to pause a moment to highlight that
this statement makes it seem as though no protocols or procedures really
existed for disciplining or removing Mark Driscoll prior to governance changes
in 2013. For those who never followed
Mark Driscoll’s sermons there’s a weirdly telling joke he made during his 2012
Esther sermons about who he thought could actually fire him.
http://download.marshill.se/files/MH%20Audio/2012/20120921_jesus-has-a-better-kingdom_sd_audio.mp3
Jesus Has a Better Kingdom
Pastor Mark Driscoll
Esther 1:10–22
September 21, 2012
about 8:39 into the sermon.
Number two, men are castrated. Men are castrated. I’ll read it for you. “He
commanded—” and these guys got names. “Mehuman—” That’s kind of a rapper
name, I was thinking, like, ancient Persian hip-hop artist, Mehuman. That’s
how it’s spelled. “Biztha.” Sounds like a sidekick. “Harbona, Bigtha.”
That’s my personal favorite. If I had to pick a Persian name, Bigtha.
Definitely not Littletha. I would totally go with Bigtha. “Abagtha, Zethar and
Carkas.” Okay, a couple things here. The Bible talks about real people, real
circumstances, real history. That’s why they’re facts. It’s not just
philosophy. Number two, if you ever have an opportunity to teach the Bible and
you hit some of the parts with the old, crazy names, read fast and
confident. No one knows how to pronounce them, and they’ll just assume
you do.
Here are these guys. So, you’ve got seven guys,
“the seven eunuchs.” What’s a eunuch? A guy who used to have a good life,
and joy, and hope. That’s the technical definition of a eunuch. A eunuch is a
man who is castrated. [emphasis added] Proceeding
with the story before I have to fire myself.
So besides joking that eunuchs were guys who used to have a
good life, and joy and hope but never would because they were castrated,
Driscoll also threw in a joke about firing himself.
Turner went on to explain how the investigation of 2014
proceeded, as there was finally a process on paper for the potential
investigation and removal of Mark Driscoll over disqualifying conduct
:
Sutton Turner:
So those happened and that gets put into the bylaws. So then we go all
the way around and we’re in August now. These 21 elders now are putting forth
formal charges very similar to Dave Kraft’s 2013 charges. But what happens
differently this time is, as per the bylaws, these elders, board of elders, investigate
these charges. So what they do early part of … or middle of August. They really
start at the end of August and they go through September. They’re investigating
and they do 40 different interviews with 40 different people.
Sutton Turner:
There’s two
elders, there’s a note taker, and they go through this. Hundreds, literally
hundreds of hours, of testimony is being taken down. Luckily, through the
process, I have all of those records. So I have not only the interviews, but
also what’s important and what was good for Dave and I to review was there was an October 1st, October 2nd,
October 8th, October 13th, October 14th and October 18th Board of Advisors,
which is the main Board, Board of Advisors with these Board of Elders, with these
investigating elders. So we have transcripts of those meetings. [emphasis
added]
Anyone who would one day want to write a history
of Mars Hill will definitely want access to those materials. That normally
would go without saying but almost everything about Mars Hill Church as an
evangelical neo-Calvinist institution seems simultaneously abnormal and yet
archetypal so I would suggest, writing as a moderately conservative evangelical
myself, that evangelical and/or conservative scholars and historians might want
to get around to really mining the materials available about Mars Hill. One of the best safeguards toward ensuring
history doesn’t repeat itself is finding out, as far as humanly possible, what
that history was. The history of the
late Mars Hill Church turns out to hinge on a feud between two boards:
Sutton Turner:
Dave nor I … I think, Dave, you might have been in one of those
meetings, but I had already
resigned. So I
was not a part of those, but I have all of the transcripts from those meetings.
So it documents basically out those … pretty much their three main charges. I
said them earlier in the podcast, but it’s quick tempered, including harsh
speech, arrogant, and the third one is domineering in his leadership of elders
and staff. So that’s the findings that these investigating elders have and that
they are bringing those charges to the Board of Overseers, which does not
include Dave nor I in that, or Mark. So those are those outside four board
members (Board of Overseers).
Sutton Turner:
Then I think actually, Dave, you might have been a part of one of
those phone calls, but you can address that. That’s kind of where we track
everything, and I think we can hit into the differences of those two groups and
what ends up happening because this all unravels very quickly in the first two weeks
of October. If we’ll remember, when Mark took his sabbatical, he was supposed
to be out until October the 14th, I think, but it was right around there. Let’s
just throw out the second weekend in October of 2014. So that’s what was trying
to be wrapped up during that time period and that was kind of like the drop
dead date for the investigating, for the findings to come out, and for there to
be something going forward.
Sutton Turner:
Of course, during this whole time, the churches, the people are
leaving in droves, especially
after Acts 29. That’s really where you see the great exodus from the
Mars Hill churches.
Warren Throckmorton: Yeah.
Dave Bruskas:
Yeah, let me
speak to the meeting I was a part of. I probably not should speak to meetings I
wasn’t privy to. That would be dangerous. So I would have met, Warren, with …
let’s just call them, as Sutton has used the language already, the Overseers.
Those were the ones who … those are the outside board members that were making
the final decision regarding … they were rendering the verdict of the
investigation. Then the elders who had done all the investigative work.
Dave Bruskas:
So I met with
them, I believe it was Monday, October 13th. The reason that date is
significant is the Overseers had met previously to that, the weekend prior to
that Monday. They had met with Mark and Grace, communicated to them the
findings of the investigation and gave them both some restorative plan, a
restorative plan of what changes were going to have to happen and needed to happen
for Mark to be leading the church moving forward. So I was part of the meeting
where the Overseers communicated to the elders, the investigative group, here’s
what we’ve communicated to Mark and Grace. [emphasis added]
The weekend prior to Monday, October 13, 2014
would match the weekend before Driscoll’s resignation and match up with what
Driscoll recounted to Brian Houston.
Driscoll’s account was that the board laid out the investigation results
and proposed a restoration plan that Mark Driscoll said he agreed to. Bruskas’ conversation with Throckmorton then
moves on to pointing out that what the Board of Overseers presented was not the
plan the Board of Elders recommended:
Dave Bruskas:
There was some agreement in that meeting, and the two things that were
really … even looking back over the notes from that meeting, two things that I
think are important particularly for members of Mars Hill to hear, the two
points that were just evident were both bodies expressed deep love and concern
for Mars Hill Church. That was clearly a point of agreement. Both groups
expressed a deep love and appreciation for Mark and really wanted good for
Mark, wanted Mark … Both groups wanted him to thrive long-term in ministry.
Dave Bruskas:
But here were
the two points of differentiation and they were significant. The investigative
group, the elders, wanted Mark to be disqualified from the office of elder and
have an open timeline with his restoration process to restore him to the office
of elder and ultimately to resume his role as an executive elder at Mars Hill
Church. The overseers did not want Mark to be disqualified as an elder and they
had set a target date of I believe it was January 4th, 2015, so roughly … what
would that be? Two and a half months for Mark to resume his duties, albeit in a
reduced role of power. That was very clear in their plan. [emphasis added]
At this point we can cross-reference Dave
Bruskas’ account of that week in October with Mark Driscoll’s account given to
Brian Houston in 2015:
And we didn't expect to
resign. I met with the board. There was a whole list of things that were
charged by current and former leaders and there was an internal governance
struggle and threats of legal action that it got very complicated. And a lot of
it was anonymous through the internet so you don't know who is saying or doing
what. And so I invited the board to do a full examination, interview anybody,
anything, and we would submit to whatever verdict that they determined.
... When
I think about eight weeks we met Friday and Saturday, October 10 and 11. I
remember because the 11th was my birthday and so Grace and I were present with
the board and they said: "We see in your history of leadership, less in
more recent years but particularly in the past, "pride, anger and a
domineering leadership style." That would be the exact words they
used. "We don't see anything disqualifying. These are areas we want
you to grow. We want you to leadership at the church soon." They wanted to
do some clean up internally. "We want you back on January 4 in the pulpit,
give you time to heal, things to cool down, and for some changes to be
made." [emphasis added]
We agreed to that. I sent in a go-forward plan
and then we went home to have birthday cake with the kids. I think it was on
Monday night. I was in the bedroom. Grace was in the living room. And so we
told the board and told the kids, you know, we come back and ["will
do"? garbled] preaching and try and love and serve and, and fix what was a
struggling church and God had provided a way for us to do that as volunteers.
And so our plan was to come back as volunteers.
So clearly, by both Bruskas’ and Driscoll’s account the Board of
Overseers went with the restored by January, 2015 proposal. But the Board of Elders who undertook the
investigation, per Bruskas, wanted Mark Driscoll to be found disqualified from
ministry as much as the Board of Overseers apparently did not want him found
disqualified from ministry.
Bruskas told Throckmorton more about the impasse
between the BoO and the BoE:
Dave Bruskas:
Sutton had already resigned. I’d already communicated to the Overseers
that I would step away as soon as Mark came back in the pulpit, but Mark needed
a clean start and he needed new guys around him to gain credibility. He needed
a new place to begin from. So during that meeting, Warren, on that Monday, it was clear that those two groups were
at an impasse, and a decision was made by the Chairman of the Board of
Overseers to have a follow-up meeting where they could maybe resolve those two
differences. Again, whether Mark was disqualified or not, and at what point in
time if there was any set in the calendar for him to come back.
Dave Bruskas:
I was very
convinced that neither side was going to budge. I was very certain that if …
What I mean by that is, if the overseers would have said, yes this is what …
we’re doing this and you guys got to live with it, I think there would have
been mass resignation from the Board of Elders and maybe even the Lead Pastors
in their entirety. I don’t believe the Board of Overseers was open to Mark being
disqualified from ministry, from the elder role. I don’t think they were going
to give an inch on that issue, and I do think they were set on him coming back
in January.
Dave Bruskas:
Before those two
groups could reconvene and come up with some sort of resolution, Mark resigned.
So yeah, it’s left the story open ended in a way that I think it just needs to
be told. I think people need to know what happened.[emphasis added] I will say
this. Looking back on the work that the Board of Elders did, and even after
they were finished with their work, I know Sutton and I met with several of the
people that were hurt that they interviewed. Just to see the devastation and
the hurt in those folks, they did a tremendous amount of work.
Sutton Turner: Yeah.
Dave Bruskas:
They were very principled. Their contention was we can’t be pragmatic
in this at all. We’re either going to follow out what the Bible says regarding
Biblical qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and domineering as it’s
addressed in 1 Peter 5. They felt like to not disqualify Mark would be partial to
him in a way that they wouldn’t be for any other elder in that position and
place.
Dave Bruskas:
So yeah, it was tough. I don’t believe they were free to tell their
story after that was said and done. I don’t know that anybody’s really shared
anything from that to this day. Anyway, there was an impasse. I don’t believe
it was going to be resolved. Before there could be a follow-up meeting between
those two groups, Mark resigned.
The mystery at this point is why the Board of
Overseers consisting of Michael Van Skaik, Larry Osborne, John Phelps and Matt
Rogers would have decided that Mark Driscoll was not disqualified from ministry
if the Board of Elders who investigated him concluded that he was disqualified
from serving in ministry. If Bruskas and
Turner have presented statements that were inaccurate or with which the members
of the Board of Overseers disagree there’s been months since Throckmorton
published his interview in which to make counter-statements.
What we can now move along to is the question of
what Mark Driscoll meant by saying he heard God tell him “a trap has been set”.
For sake of review, here’s what Driscoll told Brian Houston about the Monday
night after he’d met with the board (of overseers):
And then on that Monday
night I was in the bedroom, Grace was in the living room and he spoke to me and
he spoke to her in a supernatural way that neither of anticipated or expected.
Ah, and so Grace walked in and she said, "I feel like the Lord just spoke
to me and said what we're supposed to do." and I said "I feel like
the Lord spoke to me and said what we're supposed to do." It's not what we
wanted; it's not what we agreed to; it's not what we've planned for. And so I
asked her, "Well, what did the Lord say to you?" cuz I didn't wanna
influence and she said, uh, she said we're [Grace Driscoll speaks but it's low
and indistinct, Driscoll pauses a moment and is urged to continue by Houston]
"The Lord revealed to me that , you know, a trap has been set, there's,
there's no way, chance we can return to leadership" and I didn't know what
that meant or what was going on at the time. And I'm, I said, [garbled]
"We need to resign". So this is not what we anticipated and a lot of
people've thought, you know, "maybe he's another plan" but we didn't.
We didn't know what we were doing.
And Grace fell to the floor and she was just
sobbing uncontrollably and I'd never seen my wife like that. She was
devastated. So we prayed and slept on it and decided we would make sure we got
this right. Talked to pastors, those that we trust and sent in our resignation
then on, it would have been Tuesday. ...
So Throckmorton asked:
Warren Throckmorton:
The resignation was an interesting story. He said something about he
and Grace got separate messages from God about being ambushed or a trap had
been set. I don’t know if either of you have any insight into that from knowing
him or just knowing of the situation, but the Elders again said one thing, and
the Board of Overseers said another thing. So do you have any insight into what
that might mean?
Sutton Turner:
Yeah. So I don’t
know, Dave, if Mark called you. He called me to tell me that Grace was upstairs.
He was downstairs. That God spoke to him and said that it was going to be
ambush, that they were going to be ambushed by obviously the Elders. Then she
came downstairs and had the same thing. Therefore, that’s why they resigned. So
that was on that day, and that’s just what he told me. [emphasis added]
While Driscoll never clarified what he thought “a trap has been set”
referred to, Sutton Turner stated for the record he thought it was obvious Mark
Driscoll was referring to the Board of Elders wanting him found disqualified
from ministry. If that’s true then,
well, nobody like Mark Driscoll needed a word from the Lord to know that one of
the boards of his church thought he was no longer fit for ministry. If he did
need an oracle from the Almighty to even come to that moment of recognition
that could be construed as a reason he wasn’t fit for ministry. After all, the
cases in which God explicitly let leaders of Israel know they were no longer
going to be in X ministry is a hall of shame ranging from Eli the priest
through King Saul through to Ahab. When God tells you you’re released from your
job in the Old Testament the results are rarely good. As Mark Driscoll used to
joke, even among Jesus’ own chosen disciples there was a Judas.
So now we know that Mark Driscoll called Sutton Turner the day he
received his oracle. This establishes that Driscoll told someone in 2014 about
his experience of being told by God “a trap has been set”. Turner interpreted
the statement to mean Mark Driscoll was aware the Board of Elders wanted him
found disqualified from ministry.
Did Bruskas hear anything?
Dave Bruskas:
Yeah, he and I never spoke about that, so we really didn’t talk about
that.
Warren Throckmorton:
So in the middle of the impasse between those two boards, that’s when
the resignation came.
Dave Bruskas:
Yeah, I think it was literally … I think the resignation was submitted
the day after that first meeting or the second day after that first meeting.
Since the closure of Mars Hill former members and
leaders have wondered whether or not there even was a formal report that any of
the boards had. Sutton Turner has stated
for the record he had the raw interview materials but the question of whether
there was ever a formally presented report has remained unanswered.
Warren Throckmorton:
Now, there was to be a report that was released, or maybe I’m wrong
about that, but everybody was kind of chasing that report for a long time. The
elders were very tight lipped about it. Was there ever a written report or was
it more of a word of mouth report given to the decision making body, the Overseers?
Sutton Turner:
So we don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if it was a written
report that the leader of those Board of Elders was producing. I do know that
there were those meetings on the first, the eighth, the 13th and the
14th that you see the
documentation of the Elders basically giving their findings to the Overseers
verbally on conference calls. Then those conference calls having detailed notes
of this person said this, this person said this, that type of transcript I
would say.
Dave Bruskas: I’ve never seen
a formal report.
If even the executive elders of Mars Hill Church
have said they don’t know if there was a written report then the members of the
Board of Elders would have to clear things up and that still would not clear up
whether such a report was retained by the Board of Overseers. If the Board of
Overseers decided that they did not find Mark Driscoll disqualified from
ministry as stated by Turner and Bruskas, then why would the Board of Overseers
have any incentive to retain documentation of the Board of Elders arguing Mark
was disqualified?
As for the post-resignation statements from Mars
Hill leaders, Throckmorton, Turner and Bruskas discuss that:
Warren Throckmorton:
Okay. Then there was a kind of script that some of the Elders read to
their congregations that did describe the results and findings that they did
find him disqualified on those three counts that you listed. But I don’t know
that that conflict between the two Boards has been laid out quite as clearly as
you just did ever before. I think you may have made some news there.
Dave Bruskas:
I’m not sure that I’m excited about making news, but I do believe, and
I think you maybe were the first person that published it, Warren. I think you
had the transcript of what Alex Ghioni wrote or said to the congregation at
Sammamish (Mars Hill Church in Sammamish, WA). The content that was read in the
churches on, I believe it was October 19th, 2014 was a compromised statement
between the Overseers and the Elders. In other words, there was no
disagreement, but that was a worked out compromise together forged document
that they read and that was scripted together. So that was actually the outcome
of a follow-up meeting that they probably had on the 18th, I think, to what was
going to be read at all the churches on the 19th.
Sutton Turner:
That’s why in those statements that were read in the churches, the
words disqualified and those specific charges weren’t outlined. So, that was
that combined. So I think that what you’ve later published, which was a
statement that came out from the Elders, which is different than what was actually
communicated in the churches on that night, October 19th.
So the Board of
Elders is reported as having found Mark Driscoll disqualified from ministry but
the Board of Overseers refused to agree to this finding and while they were at
an impasse over what to do, Mark Driscoll, sensing a trap had been set for him
regarding his qualification or disqualification for ministry, decided to
resign.
Despite Mark Driscoll’s own account to Brian Houston in 2015, in 2020
he told Carey Nieuwhof that the end of Mars Hill was a case of, “… it just kind of ebbed and
flowed but most of it was internal and it was theological in nature around the
issue of transgender-ism and same sex marriage and a lot of what was the energy
behind it was ultimately against bible teaching.” Now Driscoll may be able to preach sermons
where he brings out Jungian jargon about the shadow in contrast to persona but
what he apparently struggles to do is to admit that Mars Hill came to an end
because of his conduct. Had Mark Driscoll’s
seven stages from desire to death in ministry cultures he published in Spirit-Filled Jesus been an actual
confession of the birth, life and death of Mars Hill as defined by his own
character traits, that could have been a powerful public confession of how his
own pride and sin led to the downfall of the church he planted. Instead, in his
talk with Carey Nieuwhof, Mark Driscoll found someone else responsible for the
end of Mars Hill.
POSTSCRIPT 11-9-2020
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