Their statement also includes a never-before-released document from October 2014 that details how the church investigation, conducted by members of the elder board at the direction of Mars Hill’s board of overseers, found Driscoll to be quick-tempered, arrogant, and domineering.
Based on my own reading and study of Mars Hill Church history the statement was actually released, or rather leaked, some time ago.
You can compare the document published at Christianity Today with the statements leaked to Warren Throckmorton for comparison. the signatories are, in both cases:
Ed Choi
Alex Ghioni
Aaron Gray
AJ Hamilton
Bubba Jennings
Miles Rodhe
Tim Smith
Warren Throckmorton has posted on the recent disclosures.
Let's revisit a question I raised back on November 1, 2014 in which I noted that Mark Driscoll proclaimed that arrogance was satanic in a teaching marathon in 2008 and yet the Board of Overseers concluded, apparently, that Driscoll's arrogance was not satanic enough to merit his removal from eldership.
...While a group of seven elders plus one member of the Board of Overseers was charged with conducting this investigation, the full Board of Overseers is charged with reaching any conclusions and issuing any findings. In that capacity, we believe it appropriate to publicly mention the following:We concluded that Pastor Mark has, at times, been guilty of arrogance, responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading the staff and elders in a domineering manner. While we believe Mark needs to continue to address these areas in his life, we do not believe him to be disqualified from pastoral ministry.Pastor Mark has never been charged with any immorality, illegality or heresy. Most of the charges involved attitudes and behaviors reflected by a domineering style of leadership.
see also
...
Keep in mind what was noted on October 15, 2014, that the seven elders were also charged to conduct an investigation with one member of the Board of Overseers, the board that Turner and Bruskas said refused to accept the conclusions of the Board of Elders.
Within literally minutes of Kate Shellnutt's article going up, Mark Driscoll tweeted:
The Trinity Church, where I have the honor of preaching most weekends, was born and has been sustained by, as Paul puts it “word and deed” and “by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God”. https://bit.ly/2VL62Lp
7:04 AM · Jul 26, 2021·Sprout Social
Romans 15:18-19 – For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God…The Trinity Church, where I have the honor of preaching most weekends, was born and has been sustained by, as Paul puts it “word and deed” and “by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God”.When we lived in another state, we were unsure what God has for us next and we were in the time between the times, healing up and processing from a very difficult season for our family.I felt inclined to go to a pastor’s conference in Florida. I wasn’t part of the network, but I had some friends going, so I got on a plane and went to Florida. In the last session before I was supposed to fly out, I felt the Holy Spirit leading me that I was supposed to leave to go meet with the Lord.So, I left and was looking for a coffee shop. The directions took me to a dead end in the middle of nowhere. My time was running short, and I still hadn’t found my destination.I turned around and passed a Mexican restaurant, so I pulled in. The moral of the story here is when all else fails, go to a Mexican restaurant. I walked in and grabbed a table and there were some people with their backs to me. One guy at the table, a pastor from Florida, who I’d never met, turned around and said, “Pastor Mark!” because he recognized my voice from listening to sermons online.He asks me to come sit with them and tells me he’s been praying for me and for my family. It was so crazy; he was a total stranger, and I was completely across the country in Florida. He asked if they could pray for me and he did, I thanked him, and then headed back to my table to eat.Before I left, he told me that, while he was praying, God gave him a vision. He told me that he saw my family and I packing up, moving to a different state in the desert where it was very hot, that we would plant a church as a family and that it would be fruitful, and that God would bless us. He asked if that made any sense to me.I told him the crazy thing was that I was leaving for the airport in a matter of a couple hours to fly to Arizona. Grace and the kids were planning to meet me, and we were praying and asking God whether He’d called us to start a church here. I told Grace, “I think we got our confirmation.” We came to the Valley, met with some pastors, and they welcomed us and prayed over us.A total stranger at a Mexican restaurant had the Holy Spirit, so God could speak to him and through him. And the same Holy Spirit led me away from my original plan of a coffee shop to that Mexican restaurant in Florida so that we could meet, and he could encourage me and my family. I’m so thankful that the Holy Spirit can speak to each of us individually, bring us to where we need to be, and give us a message we need to hear in that exact moment.Have you ever had the Holy Spirit speak through you to someone else or through someone else to you?
Earlier Driscoll had tweeted
Pastor Mark Driscoll@PastorMark·Jul 23Sometimes, the supernatural happens and an angel shows up. People get miracles, healing, dreams, and they wonder if it was God, Satan, or just the chalupa. https://bit.ly/3ktSLBd
Earlier in my ministry, I’ll never forget this woman who had become a Christian, but her mom was literally a witch and ran a coven. She met Jesus but there was a spirit who had been with her for a long time, since she was a child. It was her invisible friend. He wasn’t imaginary, just spiritual.I was meeting with her one time, and she manifested a completely different personality. I said, “Who are you?” and this spirit speaking through her said “My name is Jesus”. And I said, “Are you Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary?” and she got this wicked smile on her face that I will never forget, and she said “No, not that Jesus.”So, there was a demon who had been deceiving her since she was a little girl and she’s now a Christian, so she’s confused because this demon says his name is Jesus.In 2 Corinthians 11:14, Paul says Satan will masquerade himself as an angel of light, he will pretend to be holy when he’s unholy. So, we have to test the spirits.Sometimes, the supernatural happens and an angel shows up. People get miracles, healing, dreams, and they wonder if it was God, Satan, or just the chalupa. I’ve had chalupa dreams, they’re very confusing.Discernment is asking “What’s the source behind this?” We don’t chase signs, wonders, and miracles, but we expect that, as we follow God, signs, wonders, and miracles will follow us as we follow Jesus.
Let's bear in mind that during the year of resignation (2014) Mark Driscoll didn't say God had released him. He simply indicated that he and Grace got "wise counsel" from Christians abroad and decided it would be best to resign. Robert Morris even claimed within days of Mark Driscoll's resignation that the resignation idea was a suggestion he made. It was only in 2015 at the Thrive conference Driscoll began to say God told him he was released, oh, and Grace heard that, too. Whether or not Mark Driscoll ought ever to have been trusted on that should have become clearer in 2012 when comparing a story he shared to one he'd shared earlier.
Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
page 122-123
My family also started coming under spiritual attack. At one point, my daughter Ashley, who was only a few years old, started having a really bad attitude. [emphasis added] Despite days of repeated discipline her behavior did not improve, and I was befuddled as to why. Late one night I went in to check on her, and she was still awake. I asked her why she was not sleeping, and she began to cry but refused to tell me. I prayed over her, and eventually she told me that for days she had not slept because "bad angels" kept showing up in her room, saying bad things about Jesus and pulling her hair when she tried to sleep. They scared her by saying that if she told me, they would kill me. She had been acting up for a few days because she was sleep deprived, and I had been disciplining her sternly because I was worn out and on edge. I broke down and wept openly for the first time I can remember in my adult life and held my daughter, praying over her and repenting to God for allowing the Enemy to drive a wedge between my daughter and me.
... During this difficult season, I was burned-out, overworked, out of shape, stressed, and had picked up a nervous twitch in my eye along with ongoing acid reflux and high blood pressure. I was not sleeping much, and my sleep was often interrupted due to stress that kept me awake, thinking. I would also often wake up after a prophetic dream or spiritual attack to pray strategically, which only contributed to the fatigue. [emphasis added] But thanks to growing insights on how to win spiritual battles, I was optimistic that we would weather the storm and that the church would survive.
Then I had the worst experience of my whole life.
I went to bed one night hoping to get caught up on sleep. In the middle of the night, I had a prophetic type of dream that was like other prophetic dreams I had previously except it did not include Scripture that clarified its meaning, because it was from Satan. I cannot go into great detail about the dream because it would impugn the character of someone else. Something horrendous happened to this person that I was not present to witness. But my dream was the equivalent of a horrifying film that showed me every gruesome detail of the worst day of their life. I was not present for the sin they committed, but I told them about my dream later and they confirmed the very graphic details that I saw.
The dream was so vivid that I felt sick and woke up just in time to run into the bathroom and throw up in the toilet. I went downstairs and spent the rest of the night sitting on the couch, staring blankly into the dark and asking God to allow me to do anything but be a pastor. I just wanted to be done with ministry and do something, anything, that would not kill me before I turned thirty. [emphasis added]For weeks, I watched the mental film every night as I tried to sleep. I knew it was an accusation but could not get it to stop, and so the torment continued night after night (Rev 12:10b). Not knowing what to do, I withdrew from God and my wife and threw myself into my work to keep my mind occupied with something else. I sometimes worked all night just so that I would not have to go to bed and watch the nightmare yet again.
So in that account the dream may have had some prophetic element to it but Driscoll regarded it as unambiguously satanic. Now compare that account to this:
Real Marriage
Mark and Grace Driscoll
Thomas Nelson
(c) 2012 by On Mission, LLC
ISBN 978-1-4002-0383-3
ISBN 978-1-4041-8352-0
page 11-12
... One night, as we approached the birth of our first child, Ashley, and the launch of our church, I had a dream in which I saw some things that shook me to my core. I saw in painful detail Grace sinning sexually during a senior trip she took after high school when we had just started dating. It was so clear it was like watching a film--something I cannot really explain but the kind of revelation I sometimes receive. I woke up, threw up and spent the rest of the night sitting on the couch, praying, hoping it was untrue, and waiting for her to wake up so I could ask her. I asked her if it was true, fearing the answer. Yes, she confessed, it was. [emphasis added] Grace started weeping and trying to apologize for lying to me, but I honestly don't remember the details of the conversation, as I was shell-shocked. Had I known about this sin, I would not have married her. But God told me to marry Grace, I loved her, I had married her as a Christian, we were pregnant, and I was a pastor with a church-plant with young people who were depending on me. [emphasis added]
He woke up, threw up, and spent the rest of the night sitting on the couch, praying and hoping the content of the nightmare was untrue but Grace confirmed it was.
I asked in the past why these two accounts seemed to refer to the same nightmare. As noted previously, it seemed as though Mark Driscoll took a narrative that, in 2006, was clearly a few years after the birth of Ashley in Confessions of a Reformission Rev and moved it to before her birth for Real Marriage. Of course it must be noted that Mark Driscoll claimed to Christianity Today that he and Grace were both virgins when they met and began dating when the Driscolls emphatically stated neither of them were virgins when they started dating each other in Real Marriage. To put things plainly, there are reasons based on Mark Driscoll's public statements to members of the press and within his books that he alters stories depending on what point he's trying to make in a given rhetorical or communicative context.
By the way, for someone who said he thought the TULIP was garbage it's curious how committed Mark Driscoll was to the daffy portmanteau "Reformission" if he would now have us believe he was only considered a thought leader in the young, restless and Reformed by "the media". Why include the portmanteau in the title of one of his books if he was never the least bit Calvinist?
So ... in the wake of thirty-nine former pastors from Mars Hill saying Mark Driscoll was found unfit for ministry and that he ought to resign, and in the wake of Christianity Today reporting this, literally within minutes Mark Driscoll loads up a devotional reading that talks about how at a Mexican restaurant there was some guy who was a pastor who instantly recognized Pastor Mark as "Pastor Mark" (but is presented as a total stranger and not as a previously unidentified fan). This fan feels led to pronounce on a vision he had. If Mark Driscoll were talking about anyone else but himself he might say, "Eh, maybe it was a chalupa dream." But since Mark Driscoll posted about himself, an oracle pronounced on the basis of a vision provided by a "complete stranger" who nevertheless instantly recognized Driscoll's voice from listening to podcasts, well, that was just clearly an authentically authenticiated divine message for Driscoll to keep on with a new plan to move to Arizona and plant a church there because he was welcomed.
So in 2021 it doesn't change anything for thirty-nine former Mars Hill pastors to publicly state that Mark Driscoll was found unfit to be a pastor of any kind. Some of us eventually reached that conclusion without much pastoral encouragement from Mars Hill leadership.
That said .... compare this list
Jerry Austin
Kyle Firstenberg
Dick A McKinley
James Rose
Ryan Welsh
Joel Brown
Carlos Garcia
Ryan Mount
Gary Shavey
Ryan Williams
Dave Bruskas
Tim Gaydos
Steven Mulkey
Tim Smith
Steve Zietlow
Ed Choi
Aaron Gray
Bob Paulsen
Joe Stengele
Josh Clayton
Bubba Jennings
Tim Patton
Brian Stoddard
Gabe Davis
Matt Johnson
Andy Phipps
Jim Tomisser
Rich Downen
Brian Jonkman
Adam Ramsey
Steve Tompkins
Cliff Ellis
Dave Kraft
Miles Rohde
Sutton Turner
David Fairchild
Ryan Kearns
Paul Rohrbaugh
Matt Wallace
to this list ...
and it does look as though the former pastors/elders who decided to state for the record Driscoll is unfit for ministry now numbers most of the pastoral staff from the late Mars Hill period.
UPDATE 7-27-2021
Some names jump out. Bubba Jennings and Tim Smith were on the elder board in 2007 when Petry and Meyer were subjected to their kangaroo court trials. So was AJ Hamilton. Hamilton was Driscoll's personal assistant for years and, to put this as plainly as possible, Hamilton seemed like a toady of toadies when it came to working with and for Mark Driscoll. Whatever it took for Hamilton to conclude Driscoll showed himself unfit for ministry might be something Hamilton would want to explain because a lot of us saw him behave like the bluntest of blunt instruments in enforcing Mars Hillian conformity standards.
Driscoll isn't going to resign and anyone who has not read Win Your War won't know that the most probable play that comes next is to say how much satanic deception has happened and why God released Mark and Grace to go on to plant in Arizona. It has become clear that a vision recounted by a podcast listening fanboy from another state held more weight in the heart and mind of Mark Driscoll than the elders investigating him who, testimonies have shown, Mark seemed to believe had set a trap for him to push him out of ministry.
If Mark and Grace Driscoll have really been "released" from ministry at Mars Hill as they claim there's nothing in the 1 & 2 Samuel through 1 & 2 Kings books that suggests that being "released" is a sign of divine vindication. If even during the writing of Win Your War Grace said dark shapes seemed to prepare to attack her this might necessitate a discussion of how in the Old Testament satans are not demons so much as divinely appointed adversaries to punish and even kill wicked and depraved leaders. If you want a survey of that topic ..
My observation stands, if Mark Driscoll were reading about anyone else but himself saying that he heard a direct revelation that he got to quit amidst controversies about his character; if he heard anyone else then go on to say this one random fanboy podcast listening claimed to have a vision; Mark would say "maybe it was the chalupa". But when it's Mark Driscoll himself the random fanboy podcast listener's vision and his own alleged experiences still count for dozens of fellow pastors testifying against his character and conduct. The people who warned that he had turned into everything he used to preach against gave their warnings.
Don't think of Mark Driscoll as being like a King David. It's more accurate to think of him as being like Eli, a man whose fattened himself on the sacrifices of the faithful and whose children are now part of a corrupt system of extracting comfort for themselves with their father's allowance .
Don't think of Mark Driscoll as being like King David, consider him instead to be a King Saul. Saul was appointed and failed tests of character and obedience enough times that God revoked his calling and found someone else instead. If the Driscolls, by Mark and Grace's account in Win Your War, still struggle against things they regard as dark or tormenting spirits then comparing Driscoll to Saul makes far more sense than comparing him to David.
Don't think of Mark Driscoll as a King David when you can consider him a Jehu, a man who may have been designated by God to battle problems in Israel but who used murder, conspiracy, deceit and every under-handed method at hand to massacre everyone who stood in his way and conflated his own ambitions with the divine command.
Really, for people to keep comparing Driscoll, with all his faults, to King David suggests a lot of people can't be bothered to think about the biblical narratives enough to realize that a Driscoll-David comparison falls short at many levels.
UPDATE 7-28-2021
8.36pm
I see Sutton Turner had to correct an inaccurate identification by a commenter. Will Little was at Mars Hill Downtown. I remember this because as I was chronicling resignations among volunteer and paid staff via leaks from The City the location of Will Little in the MHC geograph came up.
Not that most people will even have a reason to care but I remember having a generally positive impression of Will Little (so, Will, if you see this, it's so noted. :) Hope you and your family are safe and well!).
Willie Wilson was at Rainier Valley
I never got to meet Willie Wilson as I'd left Mars Hill around 2009 and had been at the Lake City campus (and those who know me wouldn't be at all surprised about that!). I hope Wilson is doing well, too.
UPDATE 7-29-2021
Something that people who never read the church governance documents might ask is why the multiple elders didn't do or say anything to keep Driscoll accountable. The Board of Elders as a cumulative group had delimited powers about approving doctrine, whereas the Board of Advisors and Accountability had more formal power. Pastors below the executive level were in crucial respects simply at-will employees who could be removed at any time with or without cause.
In other words, since the governance changes of the 2006-2007 period the rank and file elders or pastors, regardless of their numbers, were all individuals who could be summarily fired and didn't really have formal powers to investigate or discipline Mark Driscoll.
In the past I've revisited how accounts of what the board did or didn't do differed. "Erma Gauthier" had claimed the board would not let Driscoll preach though he wanted to, which is impossible to square with Mark Driscoll's own account that he accepted the Board of Overseers/Board of Advisors and Accountability restoration plan the day before he decided to resign
2 comments:
This kind of story - and the follow-up in the next post - if it were related about someone who was an unknown would prompt most people to ask about the circumstances of their initial calling in the first place.
Laying aside the problem with the fuzziness around the initial calling, the related issue was there was not likely to be much in the way of follow-up to see whether someone was still fit to lead the ministry given what it had grown to (no one was in the position to direct Driscoll's dictum of X can only lead a maximum of Y people his way).
Of course, once you have numbers you can set up an elder board, and then you are free of any obligations that may stem from the original mandate you had. In this way it seems that the average pastor is considerably more free than the average CEO of a startup - who will have investors calling and so on.
a friend of mine told me a few years ago that it struck him that Driscoll's claim that God told him to 1) marry Grace 2) teach the Bible 3) plant churches and 4) teach young men may all have happened but none of that required Driscoll seeking to be a pastor or get ordination. It's a fair point.
Since Hutcherson and Nicholas have both passed on no one can ask them if they had doubts about Driscoll's legitimacy. I heard word from one or two people that there were worries that if ABC leadership saw William Wallace II rants they'd reconsider their support of Mars Hill.
Driscoll used to joke that the "God told me" needs to be vetted, since there was no shortage of single guys saying "Gold told me I'm going to marry girl X". Driscoll's recent response amounts to a counter to 39 pastors from MHC saying he's unfit by saying "God said I could quit and this random stranger who listens to my podcasts said God told HIM I would be starting a church with my family". The odds that Driscoll would accept a comparable set of divinatory proclamations regarding one of his daughters seem low for clear and understandable reasons, which is what makes the bad faith of Driscoll invoking precisely that kind of "God told me" and "God told some stranger" seem like bad faith claims in relationship to Mark Driscoll's own pulpit teaching. Why he gets to do what he has disallowed others has been one of the recurring threads in his ministry history.
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