Robert Morris has stepped down from pastoring Gateway Church, revisiting his role in Mark Driscoll's 2014 resignation from Mars Hill and a brief survey of his endorsements of post-MH Driscoll books

At some point Mark Driscoll’s admirers in 2024 may have to take stock of the track records of the men who have publicly endorsed him.  It’s a topic I’ve written about in the past.  It can seem as though it's been more than just this year where men who lavished praise on Mark Driscoll in the past have done take-backs or have had skeletons in their closet about their own moral failings in public ministry or as authors.

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/07/real-marriage-in-2016-looking-back-on.html

 

For those who didn’t already know, one of the first post-resignation from Mars Hill public appearances Mark Driscoll made was at the Gateway conference of 2014. 

 

https://wthrockmorton.com/2014/10/20/mark-driscoll-rocks-the-gateway-conference/

https://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf

https://wthrockmorton.com/2014/10/21/mark-driscoll-no-i-want-that-other-wise-counsel/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZVtuOIrrDg

https://wthrockmorton.com/2014/11/02/open-letter-to-gateway-pastor-robert-morris-from-a-former-member-of-mars-hill-church/

https://wthrockmorton.com/2015/12/16/remembering-the-prophecy-about-mark-driscolls-new-church-and-daddy-issues/

 

For those who already know who Robert Morris is it is still worth noting that Morris wrote the Foreward to Mark Driscoll’s 2018 Spirit-Filled Jesus. Now I would personally say there’s no real use to reading Spirit-Filled Jesus when you could read Adolf Schlatter or Myk Habets’ book The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology. That’s because, contra Mark Driscoll, there have been people who have written about Jesus living and doing ministry with the help of the Holy Spirit.  If Driscoll has proven too lazy and incompetent a theologian and biblical scholar to have ever learned who those authors were that’s on him. For whatever reason Robert Morris decided to share that he regarded Mark Driscoll as a good friend and warmly endorsed his work in the Foreward to Spirit-Filled Jesus. 

 

Driscoll had a thanks to share on Instagram to Morris years ago when Win Your War came along, the second of Mark Driscoll’s post-Mars Hill books (also published by Charisma House like its predecessor). On the first page when you open the book an endorsement from Robert and Debbie Morris appears.

 

Morris also wrote an endorsement for Pray Like Jesus, a book written by Mark Driscoll and Ashley Chase that was, I think, the third book published by Charisma House.

As Sutton Turner and others have recounted, Robert Morris said he advised Mark Driscoll to step aside from ministry for a while to heal up back in 2014.  I made a diachronic survey of varying accounts of how and why Mark Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill back in 2015.

 

So in the last few days it doesn’t seem as though Mark Driscoll has had much to say that’s been on his X feed (that I know of) in light of recent news about Robert Morris.

 

https://thewartburgwatch.com/2024/06/14/i-was-12-years-old-and-wearing-my-pink-pajamas-when-robert-morris-now-of-gateway-church-began-to-molest-me-the-alleged-abuse-lasted-for-4-1-2-years-churchtoo-arctoo/

https://fortworthreport.org/2024/06/18/gateway-church-founder-robert-morris-resigns-following-sexual-abuse-allegations/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/robert-morris-resigns-gateway-church-child-sex-abuse-allegation-rcna157806

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/18/robert-morris-gateway-church/74126402007/

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2024/june/robert-morris-resigns-gateway-church-abuse-allegations-tx.html

https://nypost.com/2024/06/18/us-news/megachurch-pastor-robert-morris-resigns-after-being-accused-of-molesting-12-year-old/

[see also https://churchleaders.com/news/487772-robert-morris-resigns-as-church-of-the-highlands-overseer-following-sexual-abuse-allegations.html/4]

 

And what has Driscoll been tweeting on X lately

https://x.com/PastorMark/status/1802345308736934060

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there. Except the stay at home dads. Get a job.

7:19 AM · Jun 16, 2024

 

What was he during the period between his departure from Mars Hill and before he began to really found The Trinity Church but, at least for a time, a stay-at-home dad?  He had a job and he quit, after all.

 

What else?

https://x.com/PastorMark/status/1802389490876710980

Pastor Mark Driscoll

@PastorMark

My first ever book on masculinity is available today. My prayer is that this long-awaited book helps the men be healthier men and helps the women in their life love and support them. Find it at the link in my bio 💪

10:15 AM · Jun 16, 2024

 

“from controversial pastor Mark Driscoll” … he’s got a new book you can pre-order.

 

Earlier this year John Lindell had a situation with Mark Driscoll, and it's noteworthy that he had a few endorsements of post-Mars Hill Driscoll books himself. Back in 2021 when Pray Like Jesus was published Lindell endorsed the book by saying you'd want to get a copy and a few copies to give away to friends so everyone you know could read Mark and Ashley's book.  Then this sword-swallower thing happened in a conference here in 2024 and Lindell seems to have had a different sentiment about Mark Driscoll.  In fact John Lindell endorsed Spirit-Filled Jesus, Win Your War and Pray Like Jesus.  But this year Lindell believes Mark Driscoll needs to repent for allegedly attempting to get him removed from leadership as pastor of James River Church.

Longtime readers don't need to be told I have doubts about the viability of Mark Driscoll's scripts of masculinity both in terms of how much scriptural sanction he claims on behalf of them and, more crucially, whether he even bothers to actually practices what he has made a point of becoming notorious for preaching.  It's one thing to tell guys to man up and another to do so while renting every spare room in your house to single guys while ranting as William Wallace II. The problem isn't hypocrisy as such.  As I have put it a few times, we all fail to live up to our best and brightest ideals.  Sinners sin but it's another thing to have obvious double standards in which you find others wanting by standards that, when push comes to shove, you won't even consistently use on yourself.  Mark Driscoll and, increasingly it seems, the kinds of men who endorsed him, seem too often to be cut from that same kind of double-standardized cloth. 

But it is unlikely that Mark Driscoll stops long to think about the possibility that if the kinds of men who platformed him from 2014 onward have turned out to have all sorts of problems his own fitness for ministry ought to be in question. 

POSTSCRIPT 6-19-2024 5.25PM

To put this closing point more directly, there's as yet no indication from Mark "I see things" Driscoll or his team that he was aware of the things reported about and/or alleged to have been done by Robert Morris.  For a man who has claimed that he has discernment at such a level that it's as though he's reading people's mail or seeing things on a television screen, it would seem that if he had such a capacity why didn't it alert him to anything amiss in Robert Morris' life, character or past.  Or, to make this point sharper still, was the 2014 Mark Driscoll such a pragmatist he was just grateful to get platformed and, well, whatever would be, would be?