I would have leaned toward postcards from Scottsdale since that's the location but for the time being "postcards from Phoenix" is the theme.
One of the recent questions that emerged was who allegedly arranged for a private investigator to tail someone who was formerly affiliated with the church.
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The first one is complex in that it was triggered by a report from an anonymous witness to a recent spirited conversation between Grace Driscoll and another woman after women’s Bible study group. The argument was centered around a woman leaving the church amidst the current upheaval and controversies at The Trinity Church.
As a part of the argument, Grace Driscoll reportedly alleged that former director of security Chad Freese hired the private investigator who surveilled the Manuele family (see here and here for details). The implication was that the church shouldn’t be held responsible for this since Freese did it. This caught my attention for a couple of reasons. One, it demonstrates that recent news reporting is being followed widely in the church. Two, I wondered if there was any truth to the allegation that Chad Freese both instigated the hiring of the PI and then later complained about it.
One of the things that springs to mind about this report is that while it is a report that might need future corroboration or disconfirmation as may happen, there is something that should be kept in mind from Mars Hill history. The report above states that there was a spirited conversation between Grace Driscoll and another woman after a study group in which Driscoll reportedly alleged that the former director of security at The Trinity Church Chad Freese hired the private investigator who surveilled a family.
Why is that significant? The short version for people not already immersed in a decade of material related to the former Mars Hill is that Driscoll fired Paul Petry and Bent Meyer in person but at a formal, procedural level the charges were drafted by Jamie Munson and the investigations were overseen by Scott Thomas.
It is necessary to remind anyone who has not read the material that former Mars Hill elder Paul Petry was informed by former executive elder at Mars Hill Church Scott Thomas that Petry's presence was not actually required at his own trial.
the very next day Scott Thomas informed a member of Mars Hill that a conciliation process had just been completed with Meyer and Petry.
It turned out Meyer and Petry were both terminated and Petry was to be shunned.
In other words, the sheer bad faith exercised by executive leadership in 2007 was not something as simple as all the above alluded to by links--if you take the time to go through all the documents in the timeline something that becomes clear is that whatever Mark Driscoll said he did at an interpersonal level, a labyrinth of formal statements and actions were undertaken by executive elders, whether Jamie Munson or Scott Thomas. In other words, Mark Driscoll may have issued commands but they were frequently through proxies. Chad Freese may have arranged for a private investigator but the Driscollian precedent observed in the Mars Hill years strongly suggests that if he did so it was at the behest of a Driscoll, through proxies, and not something Freese would have come up with independently.
Which is, in sum, what the available statements or evidence at hand seem to indicate. Pastor Anderson is described as coming up with the idea of contacting a private investigator. Whether Anderson will confirm or deny may be moot if one of the axioms at The Trinity Church is "if you engage, you will enrage".
The decision to not "engage" criticism or critics in public at The Trinity Church, if I understand that policy correctly, probably was informed to some degree (or a great deal) by the failure of Mars Hill leadership at all levels to make long-term progress preventing members and former members from publishing criticisms of governance and financial activities. I've blogged in the past about how there was a tension between Mark Driscoll's publicly dismissive stance toward bloggers from the pulpit and social media (including his blogs) and the actual activities of Mars Hill pastors/elders at the campus level and lower levels.
Despite public claims that bloggers were not significant I was contacted via certified letter by a Mars Hill pastor back in December 2013. Clearly the leaders of Mars Hill knew who I was and where I lived. A couple of campus leaders approached at least one person who lived in the same house I lived in at the time who still attended and it was mentioned, as I heard, that Mars Hill leaders were concerned that Wenatchee The Hatchet was publishing things that made Mars Hill look bad. Fortunately and providentially the person's thought on the matter was that if Mars Hill would stop doing things that make them look bad then maybe Wenatchee The Hatchet wouldn't publish things that seem so incriminating. I.e. stop being worthy of public criticism and the public criticism will stop. Now that Mars Hill has been defunct since 2015 we know that was ultimately not how leadership at the topmost level of Mars Hill chose to handle things.
Moreover, there may be some evidence that when an elder did make formal charges against Mark Driscoll in 2013 the response of the BoAA was not necessarily to disclose that an investigation into formal charges was being done. I was given materials by a former Mars Hill staffer showing that there was a post-employment survey and none of that material presented to me (some of which is discussed at the blog) indicated formal charges had been made. To read about that follow this link below.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/03/mhc-boaa-sent-letters-in-2013-inviting.html
There was a response, quoted from in the linked post, that indicated the following about executive elders at Mars Hill:
There was a response, quoted from in the linked post, that indicated the following about executive elders at Mars Hill:
8. You can file this under "will never happen" but here is my feedback, specifically for the EE:a) Mark should fire Sutton for abusing employees under himb) Mark should then repent for 1. his pride 2. the cult of personality he has cultivated 3. his authoritarianism and 4. his decision to hire Sutton and embrace a business model for running the church that is absolutely foreign and antithetical to New Testament ecclesiology. He should then resign from eldership and leadership of the church until and unless people can honestly say he is "above reproach" without watching to see if their nose is growing.c) Dave should take a sabbatical wherein he can contemplate why he so willingly and ably provided the glossy PR sheen to all of Mark's destructive and whiplash-like initiatives.I believe God called Mark and blessed Mars Hill. But I also believe Mark has, increasingly over the past 6 or 7 years, told God "I'll take it from here". The veracity of his initial calling has no bearing on whether he runs the church today in a destructive way out of his flesh.
So back in 2013 there was a former staffer who, when solicited for feedback about the executive elders, point blank stated that Mark Driscoll needed to repent of the four enumerated points quoted above.
As I have discussed the matter here and offline, one of the things that sticks out about Mark Driscoll's approach to leadership is that he insulated himself from having to bear the brunt of criticism of his ideas by working through proxies. Mike Anderson at one point expressed an idea that Jamie Munson may have been a buffer who played a positive role in insulating people from Mark Driscoll's worst vices but I would propose precisely the opposite was the case, that Mark Driscoll found it useful to use men like Jamie Munson as proxies. Note that, if you have read Jamie Munson's claims regarding cause for termination for Paul Petry, there was a charge of distrust of and disrespect for executive eldership. I.e. Munson. Now an elder being able to level charges and appoint the head of an investigation would seem like a conflict of interest too egregious to ignore but if we think about the 2007 events from a different perspective, if Munson were thought of as a proxy for Mark Driscoll then the charges may have been both real and mere formality, since by Petry's account Driscoll announced in person that Petry and Meyer were fired. Munson was, according to Sutton Turner's accounts, the one who was positive that Result Source was above board but whose book was ultimately promoted? Mark and Grace Driscolls.
It might not be a lie if a person said that Chad Freese hired someone as a bald statement of what happened. Freese, however, has written a statement that what he did was at the behest of Pastor Anderson. The cumulative evidence, testimony and historical materials available about Mars Hill here at Wenatchee The Hatchet I compiled from primary and secondary sources suggests to me that Mark Driscoll worked extensively by proxies in the Mars Hill years and that something similar is likely happening at The Trinity Church. This is not necessarily saying Grace Driscoll is lying since the report is two second-hand or even third-hand to be certain such a statement was ever made by Grace Driscoll. However, the mass of material at Joyfule Exiles in the timeline demonstrated, for those who actually read through all the material, that Driscoll was able to completely insulate himself from any direct documentable involvement in the formal termination and trials of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer.
Now that nearly every former Mars Hill elder/pastor who was involved in what turned out to be kangaroo court proceedings for Meyer and Petry have renounced, recanted and repented of their involvement the burden of proof that Mars Hill actually fell apart because of fights in leadership over LGBTQ issues as per Mark Driscoll's claim to Carey Nieuwhof last year is substantial indeed. I attended Mars Hill from roughly 1999 to 2009 and remained friends (and remain friends, for that matter) with a variety of people and Driscoll's claim that Mars Hill fell apart in 2014 due to battles internally over transgenderism and gay marriage has zero evidence to back it up. Driscoll's claim seems to be a complete fabrication.
Changing the name of the ministry from Mark Driscoll Ministries to Real Faith makes some sense, if simply on the basis of Driscoll's prior statements that naming a ministry after yourself is a bad idea from his Mars Hill years.
Part 3 of 1st Corinthians
Pastor Mark Driscoll
1 Corinthians 1:10-17
January 22, 2006
...
Some of you have teams that you consider yourself to be on, theologically or philosophically insofar as how church should be done. And what happens is that certain Christians get elevated like rock stars, and it’s not good. It’s not good at all. I know one church the pastor’s name is the domain for the church website. That’s not good. Like if it was www.PastorMarkRocksMyWorld.com and that was our website, you’d go, “You know that’s a little much.” That’s a little much, because if he gets hit by a car do we gotta get a new name? That seems that the church should be more than a focus on one person. That’s why to be honest with this church I try not to show up and speak at every event.
...
It’s amazing how few Christians have a pastor and have a church that they actually are connected to, involved in, and growing in. There is a growing number of people who profess to be Christians and just claim to be on Team Jesus. “I don’t need a church. Just me and Jesus, we hang.” These are people who have no respect for spiritual authority. They don’t have any real heart to show up and contribute to and benefit their church. They just tend to be people who are very – quite frankly – arrogant and proud. They’re so close to Jesus and they’re so much like him that they don’t need anybody else
So, naturally, shifting from Mark Driscoll Ministries to Real Faith makes a kind of sense. But Real Men? Does a real man hide his most tendentious interpretive move regarding Esther in the book of Esther behind a story about his teenage daughter when he has talked about having a degree in exegetical theology? Couldn't he just exegete the text and not involve his daughter in the sermon at all? I have not gotten around to writing about Win Your War but Mark Driscoll presenting some of the more slippery and slipshod ideas in his preaching and books as ideas he credits to Ashley Chase seems like something less than what a "real man" who wants men to think about their legacies and take ownership of their actions would do.
The "postcard" includes the following statement that was written (per the introduction Throckmorton provided) by Chad Freese:
Keep in mind, my role as a volunteer was to provide recommendations, but they make the decisions. In fact, Pastor Mark has made it clear on many occasions that he is in charge and what he says goes.
In other words, as I've outlined extensively above and through links to previous writing I've done, this quoted statement indicates Mark Driscoll made it clear he is in charge and what he says goes. This does not preclude, however, running things by layers of proxies. It would seem that what was conventional at Mars Hill Church is unsurprisingly conventional at The Trinity Church.
The key difference seems to be that in the Mars Hill years the director of security seemed to be an actually paid position whereas Chad Freese's account describes directing security at The Trinity Church as a volunteer capacity.
If implementing policies, particularly potentially controversial or unpopular policies, by the mediation of proxies has been a deliberate strategy there is a shrewdness to it. Driscoll could have fired Petry and Meyer directly face-to-face but the investigation, trial and so forth were mediated by layers of proxies. This would insulate Driscoll from ever having to directly take any responsibility for firing Petry and Meyer. The long-term disadvantage of working so thoroughly through layers of proxies was that when the proxies repented of being involved in what they regarded as an unjust and corrupt policy Driscoll may have been stuck. There wasn't anything he could do within leadership at Mars Hill that wouldn't come back to him if various levels of enforcers were no longer willing to enforce what they regarded as bad policies. It would seem that in the end Mark Driscoll pulled a Richard Nixon and resigned. It may be history is repeating itself, or at least rhyming.
Chad Freese, at least to go by the statement made so far, was a proxy enforcer of policies who balked at continuing with that path. Given the axioms of the culture of The Trinity Church it is not likely there will be any public response. One of the potential feature benefits of working through proxies when the approach works, though, is that if something does come to light then a Driscoll could, if need be, shift all responsibility onto the proxy (whether a first layer or second layer proxy) rather than concede that the proxy was acting at the behest of a Driscoll to begin with.
Someone who has a ministry called Real Men should be able to answer a basic question, if he wants to tell us how to be real men why didn't he sign the Result Source contract himself instead of leaving that task to Sutton Turner?
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