2020 interviews on the late Mars Hill: Part 4 Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas go on record about the last year of Mars Hill with Ryan Williams and then Warren Throckmorton, describing their role in crashing The Strange Fire conference and what the plagiarism scandal was like on the inside.

 

2020 has turned out to be the year that the other two former executive elders of the late Mars Hill Church decided to start speaking on the record.  From March 27, 2020 through to May 29, 2020 former Mars Hill pastor Ryan Williams had podcast conversations with former executive elders Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas in the Older Pastor/Younger Pastor” series. The topics of conversation were lessons from Mars Hill Church, very often about lessons of what not to do.  These interviews spanned many hours and would be difficult to summarize succinctly.  The links are as follows:

 

https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e1-lessons-on-repentance/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e2-lessons-on-accountability/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e3-lessons-on-church-growth/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e4-lessons-on-church-money/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e5-lessons-on-discipleship/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e6-lessons-on-narcissism/

https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e7-lessons-on-power/
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e8-lessons-on-recovering-after-crisis/

 

I’ve discussed things that stood out for me from those discussions at the following links:

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/04/sutton-turner-and-dave-bruskas-have.html

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/05/discussion-series-pastoral-lessons-from.html

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/05/notes-on-7-part-older-pastoryounger.html

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2020/05/notes-on-ep-8-of-older-pastoryounger.html

 

One of the things Mark Driscoll told Larry Osborne was that he met with about thirty former elders of Mars Hill and it was almost like they had a common script.

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-larry-osborne-conversation-with-mark_20.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzhEwT7xLsI

 

50:10

Driscoll: um, I met with thirtysome former leaders that would be sort of in the unhappy, disgruntled, frustrated category and almost every single conversation post my-resignation and transition, it's almost like it was a script, and they said the same thing which, I don't know if they were processing together, it's just where it ended up.  And it was, "I can't forgive you because you're not repentant."

 

And I'd say, "Well, I apologized" and I would give the dates that I apologized with them, one, on multiple occasions I said, "Did I ever do that again?"

 

"No, you didn't but I can't forgive you because you've not repented."

 

I asked, "Well, what does repentance look like?"

 

50:54

And over and over and over it was repentance--forgiveness, rather--forgiveness is at the END of the process, not the beginning and then I will JUDGE you and I can't forgive you until you're repentant and that means that I kind of sit in a God seat, and I need to give it a lot of time, and I can't forgive you until I believe you have come to full repentance as I see it. [emphasis added]

 

One of the basic category mistakes Driscoll may still be making is thinking that if he goes to individuals and says he apologized that this is the same thing as a public confession.  A Mark Driscoll who is willing in 2020 to claim to Carey Nieuwhof that ultimately Mars Hill Church fell apart due to some kind of battle internally over stuff and mentioning transgender-ism and same sex marriage hasn’t shown any sign that he’s repented because if he still cannot confess to his role in the death of the former Mars Hill Church through his leadership then what has he actually repented of?  Driscoll has, after all, said that forgiveness is freely given but trust has to be earned. What has Mark Driscoll said or done that suggests to former Mars Hill elders and staff that there’s good reason to trust him?

 

In contrast to Mark Driscoll’s brief line to Carey Nieuwhof, Sutton Turner said the following to Ryan Williams in a podcast that was part of the March through May series:

 

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 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.

 

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. 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]

 

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 …

 

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.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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]

 

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]

...
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]
...

Of course we know that since the March 2020 conversation between Carey Nieuwhof and Mark Driscoll there absolutely was a narrative out there that Mars Hill closed for any other reason.

Whether or not that became a reason Turner and Bruskas decided to go on record with Warren Throckmorton is only a guess.

 

What is not a guess is that in July 2020 Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas spoke with Warren Throckmorton.

 

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2020/07/28/blog-theme-mars-hill-church-interview-with-dave-bruskas-and-sutton-turner/

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2020/07/30/blog-theme-mars-hill-church-interview-with-sutton-turner-and-dave-bruskas-part-two/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPwP4ng5l4&t=1308s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWzR1WV91qo

 

For those who read much faster than they can listen there are transcripts at Sutton Turner’s website

https://investyourgifts.com/honest-answers-1/

https://investyourgifts.com/honest-answers-2/

 

Rather than try to wade into time stamps as I would normally do, I’m going to trust you have actually read the complete transcript or listened to the complete audio.  Throckmorton made a point of asking about the executive elders of Mars Hill crashing The Strange Fire conference.

 

 

Warren Throckmorton:

Okay. All right. Well, I think that gives me some insight into your thinking at the time. As things begin to move pretty quickly, toward the end of 2013, which leads me to another event that brought the church into some notoriety at John MacArthur’s Strange Fire Conference. It was in October 2013. I believe both of you were with Mark and James McDonald there at John MacArthur’s Strange Fire Conference. Driscoll, he said he just happened to show up there with his book A Call to Resurgence. That’s the title of the book and started handing them out to conference goers. What’s your recollection of that event? I got a few quotes from Driscoll, and after you tell me your recollection, I want to ask you what you think of what he had to say. What do you remember about all that?

 

Dave Bruskas:

As I think back, Warren over all the things that I participated in at Mars Hill, that certainly is the most embarrassing to me. It was just disrespectful. It was disrespectful, and it was just wrong. We were in the area. We were down, I believe, Sutton, if I recall correctly, we were in Long Beach, where we were going to participate in an Act Like Men Conference that was going to be held on a Friday, maybe Saturday or maybe a Saturday.

 

Dave Bruskas:

I think Strange Fire was going on just immediately prior to that. The initial… Mark already had the books with him. We were in town, he was going to be… I think the books were going to be available, maybe at the Act Like Men Conference.

 

Dave Bruskas:

It started out that the concept started out with us going to a nearby Starbucks, having books

available, tweeting out using social media to invite anybody who was going to the Strange Fire Conference to come and pick up a free book, maybe even signed by Mark in this space. I think Mark, as I remember the conversations we had, his seemingly motivation was to provide an alternative to cessationism for a broader evangelical community. Maybe there’s this place between cessationism and the charismatic movement as it was at the time, that was open to a continuation of the gifts. I think that was the motivation.

 

Dave Bruskas:

But as the plan unfolded, it just got weirder and weirder. It quickly went from let’s go to a nearby coffee shop, hey, let’s drive on campus. Let’s go out right during a break session in the main place where all the participants would spill out into. Let’s hand out books. I have so many regrets over that. I didn’t say anything, and I just knew as we were doing it, it was wrong. I just knew in my heart, it was wrong, and I felt that urge, I need to say something, I need to do something, and I was cowardly and didn’t.

 

Dave Bruskas:

I don’t know that could have changed the course of action. But I think Mark would have listened. In that instance, not only did I participate in something I’m really embarrassed about and was very wrong, I didn’t serve Mark well, either. I just didn’t speak up when I should have. What was going to be an opportunity to go alongside and provide an alternative for people who wanted to leave the conference to come to us quickly involved to us causing a ruckus at that conference itself, and it was really bad.

 

Sutton Turner:

Yeah, I think to give you a little background and understanding that how something like that

happens. We were in Long Beach for Act Like Men. We had brought down the lead pastor residents to have lunch with us. We’re sitting at a table, long table with all of… With Mark, with James McDonald, with all of our lead pastors residents, Dave and I. I don’t know, 12, 14 people at this table on a long table.

 

Sutton Turner:

The relationship between Mark and Dave (James) was one of a big brother and little brother. Being James being the big brother, Mark being the little brother and James… I typically, what I saw, this is my interpretation of the situation, there would be a, “I dare you to do this,” or “I dare you to say this” That would happen over and over again.

 

Sutton Turner:

Knowing Mark, you dare him to do something and it’s going to happen, especially when you dare him to do it in front of the lead pastor residents and a whole bunch of people. Not only is he going to do it, but he’s going to take it one notch up, and that’s what happened. We get in the car within. I can remember Dave, it was like, within 30 minutes, we’re in the car after the dare, books in the back.

 

James is going to meet us there. Me and Dave and Mark are in one car, James is in another car coming there. We’re not close. This isn’t down the street. We’re driving all the way from where we were staying, all the way over to Sunnyvale or whatever the town is that Grace is in, where Strange Fire Conference was, I can’t remember the town there now.

 

Warren Throckmorton:

It’s like 40 minutes, isn’t it?

 

Sutton Turner:

Yeah, it’s a drive. Dave’s right, we were planning on going to the Starbucks or whatever, and then it quickly turned into we’re in the parking lot. Not only are we in the parking lot, we’re getting out and we’re walking towards the breakout and it’s outside, and we’re right in the middle of it. I got out. Just like Dave, I wish I could do that all over again. Gosh, it was so cowardly, and it was just  horrible. It was just a horrible act.

 

Sutton Turner:

But I stood there with Mark the whole time, and saw the whole thing happen. Wish we could go back and do that again.

 

That Mark Driscoll was described as the big brother to the little brother of James MacDonald is … puzzling but I’m going to leave that alone. What I won’t leave alone is noting the irony of one of Mark Driscoll’s most famous juvenile stunts being pulled when the executive elders were en route to an Act Like Men conference.  That all three executive elders and James MacDonald were seen as participating in the stunt has been recorded for posterity.  Two of the men involved in that have now expressed regret for being involved.  As yet there’s no indication that either Mark Driscoll or James MacDonald feel similarly remorseful for crashing the Strange Fire Conference.  MacDonald has other things going on lately … although the more that comes to light about them the harder is to take seriously any past claims that his presence on the Board of Advisors and Accountability at Mars Hill was going to hold Driscoll accountable.  We’ll get to mention of MacDonald later.

 

Now we’ll get to the fateful interview with Janet Mefferd.

 

Warren Throckmorton:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. Well, then not long after that, Mark went on Janet Mefferd’s Show.  This was now Janet Mefferd, the radio host she wanted to talk about the book, the same book A Call to Resurgence. That didn’t go so well. That was November 21st, of 2013. She asked him about the Strange Fire Conference, first of all, in that interview, and then eventually accused him of plagiarizing some material from Peter Jones.

 

Warren Throckmorton:

But that was a pivotal point for some publicity concerning Mark and the church and that book and plagiarism in general. He seemed to hang up. I don’t know on your end if he did indeed hang up, or there was a connection loss, but he appeared to hang up during the interview. What was his reaction to that interview as far as you guys know, after the fact? Did he discuss any of that with you? Then more broadly, how did he handle all those allegations of plagiarism that came pretty fast and furious after that interview?

 

Sutton Turner: Yeah, my recollection of that, right after that happened was… You’ll see a pattern of behavior here, happened with Kraft, happened with John MacArthur, happened with Mefferd, happened… Anyone happened years before with Rob Smith. Anyone that comes in conflict with Mark, he’s going to double down and come back after them. He was really mad at that whole situation.

 

Sutton Turner:  From my understanding, had no idea of the plagiarism that was in the book or any of that. I think he was pretty shocked at that point in time. But then again, he was very aggressive back, I remember towards Mefferd the same situation. Same situation we just talked about with MacArthur, escalating that and wanting to escalate with her. But that was… We can talk a lot about the whole process on the plagiarism and how that came to be, but specifically about Mefferd, he was really, really angry.

 

Dave Bruskas:  I remember, I believe Sutton and I were in Salem, Oregon when that happened. We were exploring a partnership with Corbin University, great people there. What it would look like for us to provide some sort of… Seattle just didn’t have something like Corbin, at least we didn’t to our members. We were exploring educational opportunities remotely and what we could do in a partnership.

 

Dave Bruskas:  We got notice that this interview had happened. When we got back to Seattle, I remember two things that Mark felt, one was he was really surprised. I think he felt like he was going to enter into that interview and just talk about his book, The Resurgence. I think he was really surprised by Janet Mefferd’s aggressive stance and pushing on, hey, the plagiarism issue.

 

Dave Bruskas:

Then the other thing I remember, Warren, is he was really saddened as Peter Jones was a friend, and I think he was saddened that… He was sad and maybe surprised that Peter hadn’t reached out to him directly to express any concerns he had over the issue. I do remember there being mixed feelings about it, but that definitely put us into a series of events that we just never recovered from as far as being able to gain momentum and credibility among the members of Mars Hill and even fellow leaders. I just think things really begin to steamroll in my recollection after that.

 

Of interest to me is that Throckmorton admitted he waded into the plagiarism scandal because he thought Mefferd was wrong.

 

Warren Throckmorton:

Well, that did open a number of other books to scrutiny at that point, and that’s what brought me into it in a bigger way, at that point. I’m just at this moment pausing to reflect that six years ago would have been hard to imagine what we’re seeing on the screen right now, that you two and I would be sitting down to talk. Because I got into it. I’ll just say to you, that I got into it initially because I thought Janet Mefferd was probably wrong. That was my first thought was that she’s probably not right about it, he probably didn’t do that.

 

Warren Throckmorton:

Then when I got into it, I thought, well, it’s more than credible, what she’s saying. Then I went into other books and found other citation problems and a term came up that I had really not thought much about before, and that was content management system. That there was a content management system at Mars Hill, that was blamed for some of the errors, maybe many of the errors. Do you know what I’m talking about? The content management system where there was a lot of pressure internally to just put out lots of material with Mark’s name on it? That ring a bell?

 

Sutton Turner:

Yeah. Dave, you want to go first, or you want me to?

 

Dave Bruskas:

No, please go ahead. Sutton would have been more privy to all that information that happened.

 

Sutton Turner:

Yeah. Really, if you go back to when I got involved with Mars Hill in 2011. I was a General Manager, but I was in charge of a lot of different things. Jamie Munson left as executive pastor and I stepped into that role in the late summer of 2011. At that point in time, Mark had previously signed a speaker type of events with Real Marriage, which we’ve been planning on releasing at Christmas time at the end of 2011.

 

Sutton Turner:

There was these events that were going to be advertised, marketed, all those types of things with Mars Hill staff, Mars Hill… Literally, the media and communications team of Mars Hill was going to advertise these things and push these things through social media. Honestly, Dave can talk about this as well, but there was just a culture at Mars Hill of using the platform for your career, your personal career, and also your personal financial benefit. Selling books, honorariums for events, all of these different types of things.

 

Sutton Turner:

I’m sure we’re going to get into Real Marriage and the ResultSource, but, that was just a part of that whole thing, that it’s all about building that platform for each individual people. There were several people that had platforms. Obviously, nobody is as big as Mark’s. They were on the writing part, Docent… I can’t remember the-

 

Warren Throckmorton:  Docent Research?

 

Sutton Turner: Yeah, Docent Research was used heavily for not only Mark’s research for speaking or sermon series, but also for these books. There were contractors that were contracted to write, but Mark was the editor on all of that. One of the things that happened with Janet Mefferd and plagiarism, is that the reason why I agree with Pastor Dave is it was the beginning of the end, is because there were things that were wrong, that were found out publicly to be wrong, but we never came out and were honest with our church or honest with the people.

 

Sutton Turner:

Whether it be you writing the blog post or somebody else writing a blog post, but it was always spinning it. So, this idea that oh it was a “contact management system,” that’s just a big word that, basically, there was a book published that used somebody else’s material in the book, and it was wrong and most people would qualify that as plagiarism. Most people called it plagiarism because you’re using not your own original work.

 

Sutton Turner:

You use an excuse, instead of saying, you know what, yes, this was plagiarism, this needs to be

corrected, I’m very, very sorry… It was not. I think that that was for the critics of the church. When people saw that, of us not being forthcoming and truthful, and using excuses, I think it was chum in the water that just bought more and more and more people to circulate around there. It’s like, wait, wait, something’s not right here because they’re not being honest and forthcoming. There’s got to be something more, and of course there was.

 

Sutton Turner:

I think it just led and we just have one after the other, after the other of these types of situations that led to the downfall of Mars Hill.

 

Dave Bruskas:

Just to maybe add one more piece to that. I can’t recall a single time that Mark would ever say that he intentionally plagiarized. I think that was his stance throughout, that this wasn’t something I intentionally did in hopes that I could get away with it. I think that kind of content management system was his explanation of I don’t know how this happened. It slipped through the cracks, we can do better but it wasn’t my intent to try to get away with something here. I didn’t sneakily try to slide in somebody else’s work and make it my own.

 

Dave Bruskas:

Again, it put us in a weird place of trying to figure out how is this happening and what can we do to correct it? Then looking back, what do we need to do to address… Do we need to rerelease books, do we need… With correct citation, do we need to… What can we do?

 

Dave Bruskas:

In the midst of why we’re trying to figure that out and work that through and remedy that, all these other things continue to happen, and it just feels like some issues were open ended and left undone when it all ultimately came crashing down.

 

So it would seem that Mark Driscoll really didn’t think he had plagiarized anyone’s work and was surprised and confused.  Someone might propose that he merely acted surprised and confused and that he had to know what he was doing.  That Mark Driscoll or Team Driscoll transformed Docent Group contributor work into work passed off as Mark Driscoll’s is something I’ve already discussed and former Docent Group writer Jed Ostoich spoke about what retroactively becoming Mark Driscoll’s ghostwriter felt like.   That the initial PR response from Mars Hill was to shift blame to the research help is something I’ve written about in the past, too. 

 

That we live in an era in which fact-checking isn’t part of mainstream book publishing has gotten discussed enough I don’t want to slow down an already laconic stroll through Mars Hill history.  One possible explanation for how so many books could have turned out to have had so many citations errors (for those who don’t want to call it plagiarism) there were rumors (yes, rumors) that Mark slapped together some of his books in under a week making use of extent existing material. Those are, of course, rumors but the theory that Mark Driscoll never caught the citation errors that Warren Throckmorton eventually found in nearly every one of Mark Driscoll’s pre-post-MHC writing career because of a slapdash writing method at least makes sense of both what Turner and Bruskas shared with Throckmorton and that there was a plagiarism scandal.

 

If material that was initially written by contributors was by-lined as Driscoll when Driscoll didn’t write the material himself and if he or a content-management participant removed what seemed at the time to be extraneous notes then, well, that’s one possible way for a “citation error” to happen. 

 

Of course twenty years on from the writings of William Wallace II someone could float the idea that maybe the problem was that Mark Driscoll tried writing books to begin with.  Had he written no books could he have gotten in trouble for citation errors?  Well, yes, but let’s not get into preaching someone else’s sermons because the preacher couldn’t come up with one of his or her own.

 

As if being one of the books in the plagiarism scandal wasn’t enough, Real Marriage turned out to have been given its No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list through a Result Source contract,  the next topic at hand that Turner and Bruskas talked about.