https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/tempest-mars-hill-driscoll.html
There's
an awful lot of material in 2.5 hours of podcast and at the moment I'm sharing
a few things that jumped out for me.
Bryan
and Jen Zug described, I think, that Mars Hill Downtown had the vibe closest to
the old days at Mars Hill and that was appealing to them. Tim Gaydos I can't speak much about because I
had left Mars Hill in the 2008-2009 period. I stopped attending before Peasant
Princess but lived in a home with Mars Hill members who hosted events, which
meant that I could not avoid Mars Hill stuff even after I had left the church. Ironically nobody at Mars Hill Central
thought to delete my profile on The City until some time in the spring of
2012! My last campus was the Lake City
campus and I felt that, besides having so many of my friends there, that campus
had a resemblance to the earlier days of Mars Hill.
Yet
here in 2021 I would say that it can be a symptom of how far a church has gone
from its early days that you have nostalgia for an earlier epoch as a reference
point for choosing a campus in what was by 2012 a closeted denomination with a
centralized and unquestionable episcopate. On the other hand, I remembered
stories of how leaders who crossed Driscoll in some way were treated and how it
was years before I heard their stories or heard of them and so I find it impossible
to have nostalgia for the 1999 through 2004 era. Driscoll was always William Wallace II at
heart. William Wallace II was the pseudonym he used to reveal, for a moment,
who he really was. I have already
written in the post where I published the raw text of "Using Your
Penis" that it was fascinating how swiftly Driscoll started as William
Wallace II but shifted to himself without breaking character! There was no significant change in tone or
substance, just Driscoll starting off with his pseudonym and then continuing
the conversation as himself.
But
the disclosure of his William Wallace II rants had nothing to do with his
demise. There are progressives and
secular writers who might wish that had been the case but publishing the
William Wallace II rants gave Driscoll an occasion to say he had admitted to
being William Wallace II in 2006 and that he felt differently.
That,
as I said years ago, was not the real point, which was to answer the question
of whether he still THINKS the same way.
For
people who got more than they lost (if anything) it's not hard to imagine they
felt they came away from Mars Hill with friends, career paths, ministry
opportunities and maybe marriages and kids--a net benefit. Many people who join up with and eventually
leave some kind of cult can reap benefits.
The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is less a history (it is not even really
that) than an oral history of former leaders and academics and pundits who at
various points spoke up about the topic of Mars Hill. One of the shortcomings that comes with this
kind of approach is highlighted in "The Tempest" by way of hours of
stories about men in leadership who disliked each other. For those who want to
defend complementarianism Mars Hill becomes the exception to the rule and for
Doug Wilson fans (those do exist) there's been some eagerness to deny that Doug
Wilson had any significant influence on Driscoll or that, at any rate, Wilson
has shown himself more adept at the long game than Driscoll. That actually remains to be seen. If Doug Wilson picked up where his father
left off that may tell us that Wilson resembles Mark in at least one way, by
building his brand and persona upon the work already done by others.
For
those who want there to be a story of Mars Hill that is some variation of The
Burning Bed, nothing in this series will ameliorate their concerns. Too many of the responses to the Christianity
Today podcast have tended to be worked out along ideological and dogmatic
lines. I don't feel any strong loyalty
to complementarianism or egalitarianism because these are, within the United
States, ideologies committed to fights about who ought to have access to formal
and sacerdotal privilege and power within the context of 501(c)3s. That may be but is not intrinsically the same
as life in a local church.
That
men disliked each other comes across in "The Tempest". That Jesse Bryan couldn't stand Sutton Turner
is more than clear. I have never
actually agreed with Anderson or others who think that Jamie Munson somehow ran
interference between Driscoll and others.
I don't personally see Munson as more than a proxy for Driscoll. Jamie Munson didn't serve as a buffer between
Mark and his bad ideas having consequences.
Jamie Munson was credited with finding the 50th street building that
became one of the biggest real estate debacles in the history of Mars
Hill. Munson had, it seems, his own
perfectly bad ideas he came up with.
What was different about Sutton Turner from Jamie Munson was not the
role of being the designated proxy to do for Driscoll what Driscoll didn't want
to do directly so as to avoid consequences, what was different about Turner was
he was a hired outsider who had no history within the culture and didn't fit
the punk-rock ethos Mars Hill old-timers had about themselves. I was never punk rock in any way. I liked prog rock more than punk and regard
punk as an aesthetically reactionary movement against progressive rock but I
digress. Suffice it to say my general
sense was Mars Hill was more hipster bro than nerd or punk, punk associations
withstanding in specific cases.
What
all of that meant was that when Sutton Turner became The Hatchet Men and Sutton
Turnover by firing and dismissing people he was doing the kind of purgative and
loathed work that Munson had actually done.
Think of Jamie Munson's initial months as president of Mars Hill where
the new bylaws were voted in and Meyer and Petry were subjected to kangaroo
court proceedings and Munson ordered that Petry and his entire family be
shunned. Why anyone would think that in
doing any of those things Munson was somehow running interference so that Mark
wouldn't implement his bad ideas without harming people is beyond me. Munson and Turner both, in the overall scope
of Mars Hill history, come across to me as minions of Driscoll. For old time Mars Hill members Munson was cut
slack by dint of longevity that Turner could not and obviously was not granted.
I
frankly never saw why anyone thought Jamie Munson was pastor material,
ever. Last I heard he's not a pastor and
is a regular churchgoer. That's for the
best. He has, as of episode 7,
apologized publicly to the Petry and Meyer families and I have it on pretty
good authority one of those families has heard and appreciated the public
apology. What that means is that here in
2021 the only person who seems set on saying what happened in 2007 was not a
travesty of justice and a vindictive abuse of church disciplinary processes is
basically Mark Driscoll.
But
even if Jesse Bryan disliked Sutton Turner and would not regard the Harvard
ring ... it's actually hard to feel much sympathy for the guy. So Bryan was locked out of the auctions where
he could have bought "his" cameras?
Were these the RED cameras that cost somewhere between a quarter to half
a million dollars depending on the make and model? Were those "his" cameras or were
the Mars Hill property? Did Jesse Bryan
remember absolutely nothing about how Zack Hubert built The City and Mars Hill
sold that some time in 2008 and that the sale meant that Mars Hill didn't end
up in debt? Zack Hubert may have done
most or all of the work designing The City but the report was that because he'd
done work on Mars Hill property Mars Hill leadership regarded it as
work-for-hire and their intellectual property to use as they saw fit.
The
City was something that I think should have been in the second half of episode
6 "The Brand". Rather than veer into the baffling and somewhat fuzzy
New Calvinism that was, in a way, part of the Mars Hill brand, I think that
pivot derailed the episode. After all,
episode 6 began with describing how Mars Hill made waves by taking up social
media, blogging and podcasts activity early on in such a way as to bypass the
gatekeepers that had existed in evangelical media at the time. Yes, I kind of remember that stuff decades
ago but the irony was that as Mars Hill became more powerful and centralized
the development of The City saw Mars Hill transform into a technocratic
gatekeeper. During the tumultuous
2006-2007 period Mars Hill had a php discussion site called Midrash, what I've
called Midrash 2.0. This was a
member-only discussion forum and Mars Hill members might recall, if they've
known me, that I wrote on there a lot.
Quite a lot, actually.
When
Petry and Meyer got fired The City was still in phases of beta testing. I was invited to beta test it and, honestly,
didn't like it at all. But the php
forums were shut down as the trials of Petry and Meyer concluded and members were
encouraged to take up The City. That
some of us contemptuously nicknamed it The Shitty would not likely please
anyone who worked on it. I'm afraid I
can't say as my opinion and convictions about The City changed. When I saw Munson describe it as the perfect
top-down communication tool Mars Hill leaders could use to keep members
informed about the state of Mars Hill that struck me as spin, what was going on
was that members were siphoned into campus-specific information silos that
precluded cross-campus communication.
Anyone who was fired, dismissed or found unfit for eldership at, say
Rainier Valley or Ballard or Bellevue could be dispensed with at that campus in
such a way that nobody within Mars Hill as a closet-denomination at other
campuses would or maybe even could know what had happened. So to me the core irony left untouched in
episode 6 "The Brand" was that by 2007 Mars Hill leaders had become
precisely the kinds of gatekeepers they had become famous for working
around. When dealing with questions or
objections about how Petry and Meyer and their families were treated the script
of choice began with "When dad and mom are having an argument the kids
don't need to know all of what's going on." 2012-2014 was not the period in which Mars
Hill had somehow become a special kind of abusive if by that we mean there were
no red flags in the previous 18 years.
But
what was different was that the new enforcer Driscoll had at his disposal
turned out to be despised by many of the old line leaders within the Mars Hill
community. This meant that whereas in
the past Mark Driscoll with men like Jamie Munson or Scott Thomas at his side
could punish men via kangaroo court proceedings and members trusted it was good
and leaders stood by their men, Turner was so much the outsider who didn't fit
in with the collective self-image of itself that when he did, as best as I can
tell, more or less the same kinds of pragmatic-perceivable-as-punitive acts as
an executive elder he was viewed as a bad guy for doing what was considered,
for reasons I can't really understand, as okay had it been done by Driscoll and
Munson. I still don't get it. It's a point at which I realize I differ from
the men who spoke with Cosper because I didn't have a sense that either Munson
or Turner were ever remotely pastoral material.
Turner's
account of how he came to a place where he felt he didn't have to stay is a bit
rambling but the sense I got was he concluded he needed to resign. That it seems someone went to the trouble to
blackmail him into resignation suggests, if his account is reliable, that one
of the messes in the late Mars Hill was that those who thought they were
speaking truth to power or confronting the men they regarded as the worst parts
of Mars Hill were capable of being wildly unscrupulous in the ways they
acted.
Which
leads me roundaboutly to the Paul Tripp audio.
Perhaps he was covering his tail by saying he thought he was speaking
confidentially to the then pastors of Mars Hill he spoke to, noting that within
something like 90 minutes of the phone conversation his comment about Mars Hill
as the most abusive coercive ministry culture he had ever seen found its way
online over against the reassurances he'd received that the phone conversation
would be confidential. It's honestly pretty hard to find any
"good guys" in the stories of the last two years of Mars Hill Church,
either within the Mars Hill empire itself or even among those who arrayed
themselves against Driscoll. There may
be people who think of THEMSELVES as heroic for the stances they took, but
that's not the same thing! Anyone
involved in so tumultuous and cataclysmic a death of a church could see
themselves as heroes. My preference is
that nobody would do that. I hoped that
Mars Hill would reform and repent and prayed that if they wouldn't that God
would destroy Mars Hill. Well, that
prayer got answered with the destroyed part but that wasn't what I had set out
as a goal, any and all reports from Driscoll and his contemporary supporters to
the contrary.
Just
because Mark Driscoll was turning out to be abusive and paranoid does not mean
everything that was said and done to point out how abusive and paranoid he
became was on the level. But it does
become clearer in "The Tempest" that men who served in ministry in
the last year or so were eager, maybe desperate, to do right by their local
congregations while Mars Hill Central seemed to be spiraling into a hurricane
of graft, paranoia and abusiveness. It
was refreshing to hear the episode start with Real Marriage and feature some
remarks from Nick Bogardus on how he advised that Driscoll NOT write a sex
book. Driscoll's claim that he'd written
all his theology sounds like the cheap and idiotic justification to transition
to writing insipid self-help books to me that I think it was and is. Driscoll co-authored Doctrine with Gerry
Breshears. If Driscoll wrote
"all" his Christian doctrine into that book then he's no Aquinas ...
or anyone else who has written systematic theologies. He sure hasn't been a John of Damascus
broaching the topic of perichoresis in Christological and Trinitarian doctrines
(I'm just getting around to starting on that, I hope).
Bogardus'
warning was, obviously, ignored and Bogardus himself got scrubbed out of Mars
Hill history. This is, per my references
in the past to how Karen Schaeffer was dismissed as a heretic for giving
Driscoll by unknown proxy counsel he would not accept, a pattern with
Driscoll. He'll recruit men and women to
his side saying he loves and cherishes their gifts and abilities right up to
the point they advise him in some way he dislikes and then he casts them aside.
That
Real Marriage threw Grace under the bus is easily established. Cosper reminds people of something I knew at
the time, that within evangelicalism Real Marriage got a mixed reception. I mentioned years ago that not just Heath
Lambert but Matthew Lee Anderson had problems with Real Marriage.
One
of the pitfalls within watchdog blogging and progressive or egalitarian (not at
all the same things) critique of Driscoll and Mars Hill writing is a failure to
distinguish between those complementarians who aligned themselves with Driscoll
for better and worse and those who didn't.
Cosper manages to get at that potentially easily overlooked element of
the reception of Real Marriage.
I
read the book in 2013 and found it the most compelling argument by example for
lifelong celibacy I had ever read in my life.
If what Mark and Grace Driscoll were selling was "real
marriage" then celibacy had to be the healthier option. It was impossible to reconcile the story of
the Driscoll marriage told in that book with the previous ten years of Driscoll
singing the praises of how happy his wife made him. Several things were simply not passing the
smell test. If Driscoll needed to cure
his moodiness and depression by convincing his wife to put out more in the
bedroom wouldn't he have said that any other husband who subjected his wife to
such things was a sex addict who needed counseling? Or did, as it turned out, Driscoll advised
couples to have sex every day as a way to grease the wheels of marital life? It
turned out to be the latter. But
Driscoll had made a point of saying that when he and Grace met Christian
marital counselors who had marriages as bad as the one he felt he had with
Grace he couldn't take them seriously ... but ... all those young people at
Mars Hill needed his counsel about marriage and sex. Did they?
Or was at some point he vicariously having a sex life he felt he wasn't
having by listening to other people in his church seek advice from him about
sex? It was in Real Marriage that Mark
Driscoll let slip the extent to which he was using double standards.
This
is actually something that probably hasn't been emphasized much in writing
about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill but it cumulative becomes inescapable if
you've listened to all of the podcast so far and have read any of Mark
Driscoll's books, let alone all of them.
This is a man who seems to have a history of putting on the appearance
of accountability when what he has really sought is credibility. He'll rag on people who have more degrees
than Fahrenheit and are educated beyond their intelligence in one polemic and
then turn around and tout his credentials from a world-class university when
explaining his own great qualification for this or that moment. He has not, a la Doug Wilson, gone so far as
to declare that he has four or five PhDs in Scottish common sense but if a man
will boast of having so many self-conferred honorary degrees he is not likely
to be interested in having to prove how he really got those or what they're
worth in the real world. There are some
credentials that have an evanescent existence within a specific polemical
context and are, even if real, only needed for specific insults. So Driscoll could dismiss counselors when it
suited him while turning around and basically being one himself. It has been strange to consider how many of
Mark Driscoll's books are not books on theology or doctrine so much as they are
self-help books.
Even
if Driscoll says self-help doesn't help he continues to write self-help
literature. He's incapable of writing a
monograph on the evolution of the idea of evil spirits in Genesis 6:1-4
interpretation like Loren Stuckenbruck. He hasn't waded into the cultural and
historical context within which Jesus' exorcistic ministry was done like Graham
Twelftree or Amanda Witmer have. He's
done a Romans series but I doubt he's going to better Adolf Schlatter on that
topic. He has never preached the Psalms to my knowledge and here Calvin and
Spurgeon are Reformed standards. He's not going to edit a book about dream
divination in the ancient near east like Esther Hamori. He's not going to discuss Trinitarian
doctrine in relationship to the receptacle theory of space or time like Thomas
Torrance. By now I trust you get the
idea I'm getting at, which is that Driscoll bills himself as a theological
heavyweight when he's a minimumweight, assuming a bit too generously he's fit
to do boxing at all.
But
Driscoll has seemed able to sell those who are biblically and theologically
under-informed that he's a heavyweight.
After twenty some years my sense about the New Calvinists is they aren't
exactly Reformed and some of them, like Driscoll are more like Amyraldian
punters who reject the TULIP if directly asked but invoke Arthur Pink for a
kind of credibility they don't have on the basis of their own work.
And
Driscoll clearly inspired enough people to join his cause by recruiting them
that by the time they had doubts about his character and competency they could
not even think those doubts without having doubts about their own fitness for ministry,
calling, faith and so on. Driscoll seems
to have so entangled the faith and lives of others into his persona that to
untangle yourself from that is, to go by reports of those stayed til the end,
something like gnawing off your own leg.
For
those who stayed through to that final debacle of a pastors' retreat in 2014 it
was funny, I'm afraid, to hear the bewilderment of men saying that they were
anticipating Mark Driscoll would actually talk about what was going on, about
the allegations regarding his character and conduct, and what would be going on
moving forward and then ... he goes on and on about adrenal fatigue? Hearing the bewilderment in the men’s' voices
made me laugh.
Why? Because back in 2007 when Driscoll explained
in a long letter why and how he believed a re:org was necessary he said his
adrenal glands were shot and he kinda felt like he was dying and went through a
rough season. Karen Schaeffer's account
of how Mark told her at times he thought his adrenals were shot suggests that
Mark defaulting to a script of adrenal fatigue is something he's done across
maybe twenty years. When he goes on
about adrenal fatigue it may almost be a tell that he's dealing with a crisis
he can't deal with in any other way but by rolling out stories about his health
issues. Time has shown that once he's
decided he's weathered the storm he'll tell everyone he's in the best health
he's ever been in and he loves his wife more than ever and it's a joy to serve
you in ministry.
If
he's saying that stuff at The Trinity Church it's a script he has had time to
refine across eighteen years at the former Mars Hill.
Something
that stuck out for me about the conference call of the Board of Overseers and
the Board of Elders is that the BoO members come across as, well, desperate to
keep Mars Hill solvent. Anything that
kept them from closing shop seemed to be the primary concern. Tim Smith, who had a role in the 2007 trials
and who Mark credited with reverse-engineering Mars Hill to become 5,000 people
alongside Driscoll himself and Jamie Munson, sticks out in the audio. Smith pointed out that there were few times
where a board-level disciplinary action was taken in the history of Mars Hill,
where an actual proceeding or trial/investigation happened. It happened in 2007 of course (and here we
must note that the Scott Thomas claims in episode 7 of the CT series still
can't be reconciled in any coherent fashion with everything Scott Thomas wrote
that was published at Joyful Exiles), but that there was also something to do
with a former pastor Noriega. My only
guess, given the history of Mars Hill, was Tim Smith was referring to James
Noriega. But Tim Smith's REAL point was
to say that in those cases those men were removed from eldership far for less
compelling reasons and with far less compelling evidence than the Board of
Elders had, in 2014, discovered that they believed showed Mark Driscoll had
disqualified himself from ministry.
Let
me underline this for you if you haven't heard "The Tempest", and
even more for you if you have, what Tim Smith was saying was that they had Mark
Driscoll dead to rights as unfit for ministry on much, much stronger basis from
his own action and testimony than they ever had for Paul Petry or Bent Meyer in
2007. To NOT find Driscoll unfit for
ministry would reveal that entire investigative process could be undone by
having an open, blatant, and brazen double standard by which Mark Driscoll
would never be found at fault by the standards that had been used on others.
And
what did the Board of Overseers do?
Well, first, let's look at what Mark Driscoll had to say in his 2021
book Pray Like Jesus.
Pray Like Jesus
by Mark Driscoll and Ashley
Chase
Copyright (c) 2021 by Mark
Driscoll and Ashley Chase
Published by Charisma House
Charisma Media/Charisma House
Book Group
ISBN 978-1-62999-926-5
e-book ISBN 978-1-62999-927-2
pages 50-51
Before I (Mark) married Grace,
I prayed a lot. She did the same. We also asked our Christian friends and
family to join us. Since we were young, we did not want simply to ask God to bless
our plan, but we wanted to ask God to give us His plan. Are we getting married?
Sort that out with God first? Whom you marry is the second-most important
decision you will ever make after whom you will worship. The same is true of
any major life decision. One of our
pastors, who has taught us a lot, walked with us through the biggest
decision-making season of our life as a married couple. We took months to pray
and asked others to pray with us and for us. We wanted God to tell us whether
we should stay in a ministry, home, and city that we had been serving for a few
decades or if we should transition into a completely unknown future in faith.
After
months of prayer God spoke to us both audibly at the same time. Grace was in
the kitchen, and I was in the bedroom on the opposite end of our home. Grace
came running in the bedroom to tell me that God had spoken to her, and stunned,
I told her that at the same moment He spoke to her, he also spoke to me. He
told us both we were "released."
This
word from the Lord led to the biggest faith step of our lives, as we did not
know what was next but knew that a season of our life had ended and we needed
to stay out together, in faith. In submission to the pastoral authority over
us, we asked our overseers whether they agreed this was a word from God. They
confirmed what God said. [emphasis added]
Without months of praying
together and God supernaturally answering this prayer, we would have been
divided and, as Jesus taught, our household would have fallen apart. Thankfully
because of prayer, we were united and able to lead our five kids through an
incredibly painful and difficult time. We are now in the holiest, happiest, and
healthiest season of our lives, doing ministry together because God heard and
answered our prayers.
So
let's revisit Mark Driscoll's resignation letter. Can we find any indication in it that God had
“released” Mark Driscoll?
October 14, 2014
Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and
Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
By God’s grace I have pastored
Mars Hill Church for 18 years. Today, also by God’s grace, and with the full
support of my wife Grace, I resign my position as a pastor and elder of Mars
Hill. I do so with profound sadness, but also with complete peace.
On August 24th I announced to
our Mars Hill family of churches that I had requested a leave of absence from
the pulpit and the office for a minimum of six weeks while a committee of
elders conducted a formal review of charges made against me by various people
in recent times. Last week our Board of Overseers met for an extended period of
time with Grace and me, thereby concluding the formal review of charges against
me. I want to thank you for assuring Grace and me that last Saturday that I had
not disqualified myself from ministry.
You have shared with us that
this committee spent more than 1,000 hours reviewing documents and interviewing
some of those who had presented charges against me. You have also shared with
me that many of those making charges against me declined to meet with you or
participate in the review process at all. Consequently, those conducting the
review of charges against me began to interview people who had not even been a
party to the charges.
I readily acknowledge I am an
imperfect messenger of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are many things I have
confessed and repented of, privately and publicly, as you are well aware.
Specifically, I have confessed to past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.
As I shared with our church in August, “God has broken me many times in recent
years by showing me where I have fallen short, and while my journey, at age 43,
is far from over, I believe He has brought me a long way from some days I am
not very proud of, and is making me more like Him every day.”
Prior to and during this
process there have been no charges of criminal activity, immorality or heresy,
any of which could clearly be grounds for disqualification from pastoral
ministry. Other issues, such as aspects of my personality and leadership style,
have proven to be divisive within the Mars Hill context, and I do not want to
be the source of anything that might detract from our church’s mission to lead
people to a personal and growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and
seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded
it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family,
that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in
1996. I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to
our separation. [emphasis added]
Recent months have proven
unhealthy for our family—even physically unsafe at times—and we believe the
time has now come for the elders to choose new pastoral leadership for Mars
Hill. Grace and I pledge our full support in this process and will join you in
praying for God’s best for this, His church, in the days and years ahead. Grace
and I would also covet your prayers for us as we seek God’s will for the next
chapter of our lives. Therefore, consider this written notice of my voluntary
termination of employment.
Finally, it would be my hope to
convey to the wonderful members of the Mars Hill family how deeply my family
and I love them, thank them, and point them to their Senior Pastor Jesus Christ
who has always been only good to us.
Sincerely,
Pastor Mark Driscoll
So
there was no indication he spoke to the Board of Overseers about God telling
him he was released, let alone that the Board of Overseers agreed that God had “released”
Mark Driscoll.
On
October 15, 2014 ... Mars Hill issued the following statement.
Pastor Mark Driscoll's
Resignation
By: Mars Hill Church
Posted: Oct 15, 2014
On Tuesday, October 14, Pastor
Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as an elder and lead pastor of Mars
Hill Church. The Board of Overseers has accepted that resignation and is moving
forward with planning for pastoral transition, recognizing the challenge of
such a task in a church that has only known one pastor since its founding. We
ask for prayer for the journey ahead.
As is well known, inside and
outside of Mars Hill, Pastor Mark has been on a leave of absence for nearly two
months while a group of elders investigated a series of formal charges brought
against him. This investigation had only recently been concluded, following
some 1,000 hours of research, interviewing more than 50 people and preparing
200 pages of information. This process was conducted in accordance with our
church Bylaws and with Pastor Mark’s support and cooperation.
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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. We found some of the
accusations against Pastor Mark to be altogether unfair or untrue.
4. Other charges had been
previously been addressed by Pastor Mark, privately and publicly. Indeed, he
had publicly confessed and apologized for a number of the charges against him,
some of which occurred as long as 14 years ago.
5. We commend Mark for acting
upon the vision God gave him to start Mars Hill Church and for his ministry of
faithfully teaching the Word of God for the past 18 years. We commit to pray
for him, for Grace, and for their children as they transition from ministry at
Mars Hill Church.
We would ask for patience as we
now make plans for the first transition of pastoral leadership in the history
of Mars Hill Church. We have asked Pastor Dave Bruskas to serve as the primary
teaching pastor while we work on long-term plans and decisions. Our elders and
board members will work closely with the church staff to support the ongoing
operations of Mars Hill in the days and months ahead.
Finally, Mark Driscoll was not asked to resign; indeed, we were surprised to
receive his resignation letter. While he can speak to his decision as he
chooses, we would point to just two things from his letter. He noted that he
had concluded “it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars
Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church.” [emphasis added] Secondly, he
specifically wanted to convey “to the wonderful members of the Mars Hill
family, how deeply my family and I love them, thank them, and point them to
their Senior Pastor, Jesus Christ, who has always been only good to us.”
Mars Hill Board of Overseers
Michael Van Skaik
Larry Osborne
Jon Phelps
Matt Rogers
Even
if we grant that Mark and Grace Driscoll spent months in 2014 praying about
whether to stay or leave none of that comes up in the initial documents of Mark
Driscoll’s resignation. There is also no indication that his resignation was
other than a surprise.
Strikingly,
the Board of Overseers presented the findings of the Board of Elders as saying
Mark Driscoll was not found disqualified from ministry. They summarily conclude that nothing the
Board of Elders found in their investigation suggested Driscoll was unfit to be
in pastoral ministry. At the Sammamish
campus there was a statement that Driscoll’s resignation precluded the
possibility of participating in a restoration plan.
A
statement made at the Sammamish campus:
The
investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of
persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board
of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for
persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his
eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the
Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was
lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church.
[emphasis added]
Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a
church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. Today
begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one
direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand
this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of
the church and that has not changed.
The elders of Mars Hill Church
acknowledge as we’ve gone through all of this investigation, and heard all of
these stories, we acknowledge that we have personally led in some of the same
ways that demonstrate some of the same ways that Pastor Mark had. And those
things require repentance and forgiveness and restoration. We realize that
there are ways that we have led as elders in ways that have been domineering,
sometimes arrogant and sometimes boastful and at least for my part, I want to
say I deeply regret those sins and I ask for your forgiveness. We want to lead you into the future in a way
that displays more grace, more love as we speak the truth to each of you. If
there are people that I have offended in ways I have pastored this church, I
would welcome that you come to me and speak with me to allow me the opportunity
to reconcile with you.
At this time Mars Hill Church
is going to move ahead under the Board of Overseers established plan for
transition. Pastor Dave Bruskas will
serve as the teaching and preaching pastor during an interim period of time
until we establish a direction we are going as a church. The Board of Advisors
are going to be working in the weeks to come on a plan for moving forward and
for how that will unfold, what the next steps are, there are a lot of things to
consider. As we discover what those things are, what the spirit shows us, then
we want to communicate clearly to you and transparently to you what’s
happening, the directions and the changes that will be taking place.
In
2015, at the Thrive performance, Mark Driscoll introduced a previously
unmentioned narrative element, a direct divine edict. This is something we’ve looked at in the
past. Driscoll waited until 2015 to
share stories of how he audibly heard from God that “a trap has been set” and
that he was “released”.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/05/13/transcript-of-mark-driscolls-speech-at-the-thrive-leadership-conference-2015/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
There
would turn out to be at least six different accounts of how and why Mark
Driscoll resigned by 2015 and there have been other accounts since.
In
2021 Mark Driscoll has claimed that his board of overseers agreed he and Grace
had heard from God that they were released from ministry. If that were the case then why did Van Skaik,
Rogers, Phelps and Osborne not mention that?
Why did they claim to be surprised by the resignation? Why did Driscoll lean so hard on wise counsel
advising him to leave if he heard audibly from God as he only later
recounted? By now we’ve looked over a
lot of Driscoll’s accounts of divine calling and to be called apart from among
many to lead men might sound like a divine directive to Driscoll but it isn’t
out of place fitting into what he already wanted for himself before he
considered himself any kind of born-again Protestant. As Adolf Schlatter put it, it’s the height of
idolatry to make God in our own image and to make our own lust God’s will and
it’s hard for Mark Driscoll, after so many decades, to just hand wave away the
possibility that the divine directives and prophetic dreams he’s claimed to
have had might have more mundane and worldly origins. I’ve
looked at the history of his accounts of relying on dream divination already
and in each case the ostensibly prophetic dream reflected upon flesh and blood
power struggles and institutional weaknesses Mark Driscoll was already worried
about.
When
we get to 2:22:00 in “The Tempest” we hear Tim Smith say that Mark displayed in
his reaction to the investigation that he thought that the whole reason things
had come to that point was because the elders had too much power. So at 2:23:00 or so, Cosper recounted that the
Board of Elders concluded that Mark Driscoll needed to be publicly rebuked for
his sin and to enter a process of reconciliation.
At
2:23:40 or so we got audio from the call between the Board of Overseers and the
Board of Elders. When we hear Michael Van Skaik, introduced by Cosper, in the
conference call, speaking at about 2:25:30, he says “… we want to work with
Mark … “ so that when he was ready, there would be a church to come back
to. At this point those not already
familiar with Mark and Grace Driscoll’s interview with Brian Houston should
know that Mark claimed he agreed to submit to the restoration plan the Board of
Overseers presented him with and even told their kids that was the plan moving
forward.
BUT,
as we now know, Driscoll claimed that the day AFTER that announcement, Mark and
Grace Driscoll both claimed God audibly spoke to them about things such as “a
trap has been set” and “we’re released”.
If Van Skaik hedged about accepting the findings of the Board of Elders
that Mark Driscoll was disqualified from pastoral ministry in a hope that by
working with Driscoll there could be a Mars Hill Church to come back to that
gamble was a spectacular failure. The Board of Overseers, for reasons only they
know, basically did not accept the findings of the Board of Elders about
Driscoll’s demonstration across his ministry career that he was, in fact, unfit
for pastoral ministry.Assuming that Mark Driscoll told Houston the truth about
what he agreed to, it was literally the day after he agreed to submit to the
Board and its plan that, lo and behold, God showed up and “released” him and
his wife Grace from having to actually submit to the plan after all! Amazing!
So
with all that in mind let’s consider, for those of us who have heard “The
Tempest”, what Tim Smith said in the audio from 2:27:00 through 2:28:28 that he
personally voted for the removals of Paul Petry and James Noriega earlier and
the cases against them were a lot less than the case against Driscoll’s fitness
for ministry in 2014 and that anything less than an indefinite suspension of
Mark Driscoll from pastoral ministry pending an outcome-based reconciliation rather
than a timeline-based return to ministry would admit to partiality in Driscoll’s
favor.
This
sheds more light on some things Warren Throckmorton documented years ago.
So
it may be time to revisit earlier accounts again:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/06/29/hillsongs-brian-houston-interviewed-mark-and-grace-driscoll-after-all/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/06/DriscollHillsong.mp4
39.45
I never got to say good-bye to the church and the people and so what went
public was actually the resignation letter that went to the legal governing
board that was in authority over me and so, uh, i uh, I know under the
circumstances there wasn't a way to do that that would have been, uh, clean or
easy. I don't have any criticism of the board. I think that, for the people,
that there wasn't closure and I didn't, we didn't get to say anything.
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 woud 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."
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.
42:10
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. ...
If Driscoll’s account can be trusted (and I know that is a
big “if” for many) notice what he described, that in contrast to what the Board
of Elders wanted, which was an outcome-based plan for reconciliation and not a
timeline-based plan, the Board of Overseers decided not only that Mark Driscoll
was not found disqualified from pastoral ministry but that they were giving him
a timeline-based restoration plan and, in Driscoll’s understanding, the Board
of Overseers was going to do some “cleanup” and Mark said he agreed to this
plan.
And yet … the Erma Gauthier account Throckmorton reported
went like this:
Erma Gauthier They
would not let him preach
Erma Gauthier He
wanted to
Yesterday at
10:15am
Erma Gauthier Yeah.
I think they really did a number on him. Not biblical or keeping with The Word
or process.
Yesterday at 10:16am
That there was some kind of restoration plan that Driscoll
opted not to comply with has been attested to in multiple places.
archive.today webpage capture
Saved from
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this url
22 Jun 2019 20:30:51 UTC
Did you see a final report which said
he was qualified to preach? He was rebuked as being in persistent sin and was
supposed to enter a restoration plan but resigned before he did so.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
Justin Dean @justinjdean
Replying to @wthrockmorton @dawirice
and 4 others
Yes the report said he was not
disqualified as an elder but was found to have a pattern of arrogance so they
wanted him to step down from management, get help for the arrogance, but still
be the preaching pastor... then the 15 lead pastors would be in charge.
1:25 PM - 22 Jun 2019
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
https://twitter.com/justinjdean/status/1142526895604600832
Replying to @wthrockmorton @dawirice
and 4 others
Yes he said he and Grace prayed in
separate rooms and both felt God wanted him to quit so he did. He was never
found unqualified. They wanted him to continue preaching, but not lead the
church or staff. Had he stayed he would have been removed from managing.
1:16 PM - 22 Jun 2019
https://twitter.com/justinjdean/status/1142529052626051073
Yes the report said he was not
disqualified as an elder but was found to have a pattern of arrogance so they
wanted him to step down from management, get help for the arrogance, but still
be the preaching pastor... then the 15 lead pastors would be in charge.
1:25 PM - 22 Jun 2019
Justin
Dean’s understanding was that Mark Driscoll was going to be allowed back into
the pulpit to preach but would not be able to participate in management of the
church. If this was the restoration plan
the Board of Oversees settled upon (and that plan would have been co-drafted,
potentially, by Larry Osborne) it now seems baffling to me why they would even
able to imagine that Mark Driscoll could comply with such a plan even if he
literally told them he would. As he has
since said many times, governance is from the throne down and not the pew
up.
For
those who have never read the Mars Hill bylaws in force at the time.
Article 9
Section 9 .1. Election, Qualification. The primary
preaching and teaching pastor for the Church shall serve as the president of
the Church and shall have the authority to appoint other elders who are
employed by the Church (or, if necessary to fill a vacancy while an individual
completes the eldership process, a deacon) to fill other offices of the Church. The
officers of the Church shall at a minimum include a president and a secretary.
The president may also choose a chief operating officer, a chief financial
officer, one or more vice presidents, a treasurer, one or more assistant
secretaries and assistant treasurers and such other officers and agents as he
shall deem necessary. Any number of offices may be held by the same person,
unless the Articles of Incorporation or these Bylaws otherwise provide. The
office of president and secretary may not be held by the same person.
If
Mark Driscoll was not president of the corporation it would be because he
either wasn’t the preaching and teaching pastor or because the governance would
have had to be revised so as to let him be the preaching and teaching pastor
but not the president of the corporation. Now this had actually been done in
the past from the 2007 through 2011 era when Jamie Munson was president. It makes sense that a Board of Overseers that
included Phelps and Van Skaik and Osborne, even, could conceive of such a
change working because it was literally what Driscoll settled on in the 2006-2007
period after recounting, in Confessions
of a Reformission Rev, that he had begun to reconceive governance after
conversation with Larry Osborne.
So
now with all that background in mind we get back to “The Tempest”. No official
records were kept of the Board of Overseers meetings with Driscoll on Friday
and Saturday night. Cosper recounts at
2:30:09 how the Board of Elders were given the beats of the meetings:
… on Friday night, when they
[the BoO] communicated their intent to extend his time out of the pulpit, there
was an eruption and the conversation went south for about twenty minutes. They
were able to resume the conversations, though, and worked through the rest of
the investigation’s findings and talk about the future. Still, the overall
experience confirmed for the Board of Overseers that he needed to remain out of
leadership for the time.
There was still a point of
contention, though, between the two boards over whether or not the restoration
plan should have an end date. The Board of Elders was emphatic that it should
not but the overseers were trying to thread a needle, keeping Driscoll engaged
in the process and having a carrot for church members to keep them around until
he came back. According to Sutton Turner, who was still in contact with Mark at
this time, Driscoll was seeking counsel from Larry Osborne, who was actually
still on the Board of Overseers, and Mark DeMoss, a public relations
specialist.
Then, on Wednesday the 15th,
a resignation letter from Driscoll, addressed to Michael Van Skaik, appeared
online at Religion News Service. The
Board of Elders and the Board of Overseers were unaware that he had made the
decision to resign. …
So
Matt Rogers as on the Board of Elders investigation and also on the Board of
Overseers and Osborne was on the Board of Overseers and advising Driscoll, as
recounted to Mike Cosper by Sutton Turner.
Sutton Turner has gone on record that what he thinks Mark meant by
saying “a trap has been set” meant was that Driscoll believed the Board of
Elders wanted to remove him from eldership and take over the church. This
account seems to be backed up by Tim Smith’s perplexed recollection of a
conversation he had with Mark Driscoll after Mark’s resignation, wherein Mark
said he had forgiven Tim for his sins against him.
It’s
hard to shake a sense that the Board of Elders investigation was going to be
ignored by the Board of Overseers and it’s hard to shake a sense that the Board
of Overseers may have thought that offering Mark Driscoll the opportunity to just
“preach the Bible” without having formal power in the corporation named Mars
Hill Church would be a salve for his wounded ego. But Driscoll was clearly not
willing to merely be a preacher who was not on the throne of the church he had
ruled for so many years and he resigned.
That much, after so many years, seems to have become clear. Driscoll didn’t lead in 2014 with “God told
me I get to quit”, the stories of “we’re released” came in 2015.
The
problem with that kind of story for anyone who bothers to read the Bible is
that the kinds of leaders whom God “released” from ministry have tended to be
men like Eli, King Saul, or others. Even
if we take the very big step of assuming Mark Driscoll audibly heard from God
that he and Grace Driscoll was released no one who reads biblical literature
and takes it seriously is obliged to think that Mark being audibly told he was “released”
means anything good about his character.
Have Mark and Grace Driscoll confided to anyone in the last five years
they have come under spiritual attacks?
Well, okay, King Saul was afflicted by a tormenting spirit after the
Spirit of the Lord left him and settled upon David. There are any number of cases where, as Ryan
Stokes or G. B. Caird or Loren Stuckenbruck or Archie T. Wright have pointed
out in monographs, if there’s a satan against you and you’re a figure in a
narrative in the Hebrew Bible that’s not a demon as such, it’s a tormenter from
the Lord sent to punish you for your wickedness.
In
“The Tempest” A. J. Hamilton is heard to say that the Board of Overseers were
Mark Driscoll’s hand-picked men. Hamilton said that Mark would not listen to
the Board of Elders or heed their conclusion but he would listen to the Board
of Overseers. Cosper’s massive episode “The
Tempest” suggests that this was not, in fact, what happened; there was an
initial “eruption” that took twenty minutes to subside.
Yet
here we are in 2021 and what did Driscoll say about his meeting with that
board?
… One of our pastors, who has taught
us a lot, walked with us through the biggest decision-making season of our life
as a married couple. We took months to pray and asked others to pray with us
and for us. We wanted God to tell us whether we should stay in a ministry,
home, and city that we had been serving for a few decades or if we should
transition into a completely unknown future in faith.
After months of prayer God
spoke to us both audibly at the same time. Grace was in the kitchen, and I was
in the bedroom on the opposite end of our home. Grace came running in the
bedroom to tell me that God had spoken to her, and stunned, I told her that at
the same moment He spoke to her, he also spoke to me. He told us both we were
"released."
This word from the Lord led to
the biggest faith step of our lives, as we did not know what was next but knew
that a season of our life had ended and we needed to stay out together, in
faith. In submission to the pastoral authority over us, we asked our overseers
whether they agreed this was a word from God. They confirmed what God said.
No
longer do we get Mark hearing that “a trap has been set and there’s no way we’re
returning to ministry”. At this point the repeated claims from participants in
the Board of Elders to the contrary are moot, it would appear Driscoll assumed
a trap had been set and was willing to say God audibly told him so. He was
also, to go by Sutton Turner’s previous accounts, willing to say he thought the
Board of Elders were conspiring against him.
As for the newer claim Driscoll has made that he heard a word from God
that he was released and, after sharing it with the Board of Overseers, they
agreed with it, there is no evidence from any correspondence or recorded audio
to back up that claim.
POSTSCRIPT 11-21-2021 9:13am
It may seem a bit obvious, but which set of overseers gave their agreement, the Mars Hill Board of Overseers from the Board of Advisors and Accountability, or the men who would become the board of The Trinity Church? Driscoll's writing would seem to imply the former but given all documentary evidence we have from the Mars Hill BoO doesn't lend any support to such a narrative, it's possible that perhaps Driscoll was referring to his current board, perhaps?
Let's recall how quickly after his resignation Mark Driscoll gave a word at the Gateway Conference.
Take the Jimmy Evans prophetic word recounted by Warren Throckmorton
Or ... possibly the men on the board of what was Mark Driscoll Ministries and has become Real Faith?
One of the things we may have to continually remind ourselves of is that just because Driscoll refers to a board doesn't mean he's said anything about which board. Recall that when Justin Brierley asked him about what he said about Ted and Gayle Haggard Driscoll said immediately that he never talked about the Haggards. That's true, he merely used the Ted Haggard scandal as a springboard to get on his usual soapbox issues. But given his penchant for getting himself in trouble on purpose (such as "it's time" when he began to promote Christian Theology vs Critical Theory by saying it had been a while since he'd gotten into trouble), if letting people jump to conclusions to give him a pretext to advertise himself is an integral part of his public conduct perhaps letting supporters and real or perceived adversaries jump to erroneous conclusions by letting them work from their assumptions rather than ask questions could be part of how Driscoll has gone through his career with respect to governance. I've noted in the past that Driscoll said he leaned cessationist circa `99 through `02 and that was during a period when Mars Hill seemed to be strategically dependent on funding from cessationist sources. It may be possible Driscoll says his "board" agreed he had heard from God about being released as a purely intra-The Trinity Church polemic.
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