https://vimeo.com/134722998
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Vimeo has removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Hillsong Church Ltd. claiming that this material is infringing: Mark Driscoll interview with Brian Houston
Removed on Friday, July 31, 2015 At 9:31 AM
A public record of this claim is available at: http://chillingeffects.org/notices/11024398
https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/11024398#
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2015/june/distraction-down-under-hillsong-mark-driscoll-conference.html
Morgan Lee and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra [ posted 6/30/2015 05:36PM ]
[Originally published on June 8 as "Distraction Down Under: Hillsong Drops Mark Driscoll from Conference"]
CT covered things Driscoll shared with Houston back on June 8, which is why this week's headlines from Charisma and the Christian Post are such bad jokes. Way to be more than a month late talking about something Driscoll had said via video.
There's been more than a month to enquire as to whether anyone on Joel Osteen's side got the contact attempt from Mark Driscoll. Since Osteen at one point was asked what he thought about Driscoll's tirade against him from 2007 and Osteen's response was to ask who Driscoll was, even Mark Driscoll's apology may not have been worth paying attention to because Mark Driscoll was never worth Osteen's attention.
Meanwhile, whoever posted video to vimeo got Hillsong attention.
Which makes it interesting that Houston didn't ask Grace Driscoll about her thoughts and feelings about the plagiarism scandal of 2013 since it was her chapter 7 "Grace and Disgrace" that was part of the larger controversy about whether Driscoll books had properly cited the published works of others.
Amid the length of the plagiarism controversy not one person opted to file a copyright infringement claim against the Driscolls. This has been invoked by Driscoll apologists as a negative proof that Mark Driscoll didn't do anything wrong. The retroactive revisions to Mark Driscoll's published work, documented by Warren Throckmorton about Real Marriage in particular, makes that case seem dubious.
Grace Driscoll did not just fail to credit Allender's work in the first edition of the 2012 book she co-authored, she also had a story about how all the ministry and resources at Mars Hill up into 2006 were inadequate because they focused on behavioral change or were not gospel-centered.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/10/real-marriage-chapter-7-grace-driscolls.html
Ironically, whatever implied flaws there were in the Dan Allender book available to buy at Mars Hill in 2006 that Grace Driscoll may have been thinking of when she wrote chapter 7 of Real Marriage, she still took time to make use of the taxonomy of masks as secondary symptomology or "style of relating" for sex abuse victims. The book can't have been that bad if Grace Driscoll appropriated the concepts after having announced to the whole internet 12 years earlier that Dan Allender was one of her favorite authors.
So the question is not necessarily whether the Driscolls appropriated the published works of others in a way that "could" have become the basis for a copyright infringement claim. IVP said the Trial study guide was not defensible by an appeal to Fair Use, after all. A possibly unanswerable question is why nobody bothered to make a claim of coyright infringement against the Driscolls.
Showing posts with label Houston interviews driscolls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Houston interviews driscolls. Show all posts
Saturday, August 01, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
a diachronic survey of the Driscoll resignation narratives, Driscolls released to quit Oct 13, consult people/send letter Oct 14, and Driscoll kids find out about this on October 15?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/07/six-available-accounts-of-mark-driscoll.html
Here at Wenatchee The Hatchet we've looked at multiple narratives recounting the incidents and motivations described by Mark Driscoll and others about his late 2014 resignation from Mars Hill. There's the resignation letter itself, the MH leadership statements from shortly after the resignation was announced, the Robert Morris Gateway narratives (mostly Morris there), there's the Thrive presentation, and most recently the Houston interview. It might be tempting for some readers to assume that all the stories are false. Well, actually, that's not at all necessary. In fact, it's possible to reconstruct a pretty coherent linear narrative from all of the narratives previously presented and discussed.
Based on the Houston interview, Driscoll initiated a review process for himself by telling the board (BoO? BoE? BoE as surrogate) to check whether he was not fit for ministry. On the weekend of his birthday, or his birthday, he met with the board. The board said there was nothing disqualifying him for ministry but they wanted him to participate in a restoration plan. By Driscoll's account he agreed to this and he and Grace explained to their kids what was going to happen. That is all spelled out in the Houston interview.
Now what seems to have happened next was the Monday after the meeting, Driscoll stated he heard a voice. The way he described it at Thrive was he was released from responsibility to serve in ministry at Mars Hill. In the Houston interview the story is more detailed and Driscoll mentioned hearing a voice that said "a trap has been set". There's another transcript that can be consulted now, over here:
http://hillsongchurchwatch.com/2015/07/14/transcript-of-brian-houstons-nice-interview-with-mark-grace-driscoll-2/
In this newer account the Driscolls describe "we're released" (Grace Driscoll) and "a trap has been set and they could not return to ministry. Since the Hillsong focused blog features a much longer transcript that captured more of the statements we'll refer to that some:
so I asked her well what did the Lord say to you because I didn’t want to influence her and so she said, uh, she said we’re” (39:45-42:42)
Grace Driscoll: “We’re released.” (42:43)
Brian Houston: “We can take a moment.” (42:52)
Mark Driscoll: “So, she said well what have you heard so I can hear it. “Well the Lord revealed to me that, you know, a trap has been set there’s no way in which to return to leadership.” And I didn’t know what that meant or what was going on at the time. And um, I said, he said well release too we need to resign. And so, um, you know, this is not what we anticipated, and uh a lot of people thought you know, maybe he’s got another plan, or, 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’ve never seen my wife like that she was devastated. Um, so we prayed and slept on it decided that we would make sure we got this right, and uh.”
Grace Driscoll: “Speak with wise council.”
Mark Driscoll: “Sought the pastors of those we trust and sent in our resignation in on that, it would’ve been that Tuesday, yeah, and resigned.” (42:53-43:57)
Now this comes across as though the Driscolls say they heard God release them from ministry Monday night. They decided to sleep on it and Grace mentioned "wise council" Mark Driscoll mentioned "sought the pastors of those we trust". So if they "slept on it" Monday night, this would have been Tuesday that they sought the council and consideration of other pastors, although if they were sure a voice from God told them they could quit what confirmation they would need or want seems moot.
But that does, in any case, get us to the resignation letter itself.
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
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.
...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. [emphasis added] I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
No mention of any instruction from God there, just the godly counsel. As before, it would seem that if God told the Driscolls they were released that would have been the thing to lead with back on October 14, 2014. And as Wenatchee The Hatchet has discussed at some length in the past, the scriptural precedent for God telling leaders "you're off the job" conspicuously features the likes of King Saul and King Ahab. What was attested by the BoAA at the time was what a surprise the resignation was.
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
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 [emphasis added] 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.
...
Finally, Mark Driscoll was not asked to resign; indeed, we were surprised to receive his resignation letter. [emphasis added]
This was not the only statement made about the Driscoll resignation by leaders at Mars Hill, of course:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Alex-Ghioni-Announcement.m4a
starting about 3:45
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.
So both accounts present Driscoll's resignation as a surprise, and the second account presents the decision as having pre-empted the restoration plan that was proposed for him to be able to return to ministry.
In light of the Houston interview the Driscolls may have fit in all the seeking godly counsel Tuesday after they "slept on it" about the voices saying they were released from ministry/a trap was set. This could account for why the BoAA found Mark Driscoll's resignation to be a complete surprise. They weren't expecting it because, per Mark Driscoll's longer account in talking with Houston, he said he asked the Board to investigate him and present him with a result and he'd comply with what they decided. By Mark Driscoll's account he said he agreed to cooperate with the restoration process proposed and told his kids what the plan would be. Then, come Monday, all that changed. Tuesday, it seems, the Driscolls talked to those they considered godly counsel.
Which gets us to Robert Morris and his account.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris: Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added]
So by this account Robert Morris could have been one of the people the Driscolls reached out to on Tuesday, after the Monday voices and their respective messages to Mark and Grace Driscoll. Now it's possible Mark Driscoll opted to not tell Robert Morris "God told me we get to quit" in so many words. Morris may have either not known what Mark Driscoll says God told him, or Morris may not have mentioned it. In any event, the observation here is that Robert Morris' story does not contradict the cumulative Driscollian narrative we can assemble from the multiple accounts--Driscoll wrote that he/they sought counsel and Morris recounted that he and Mark decided together that Mark should step out for a while.
So this presents a story in which Monday voices are heard and Tuesday people are consulted, a letter is drafted, and the resignation is made official. This completely explains the elements from the Thrive presentation:
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
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
See Links to Timestamps at the end of this doc. [these omitted here]
...
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN. [emphasis added]We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked.
We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. [emphasis added] So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked. We’d served in that city for 20 years. Founded that church in our living room. And served it for 18 years. (loud applause) Baptized somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (audible amens from crowd).
[8:13]
So, we’re sitting with the kids explaining to them that dad had resigned and that we were going to continue forward and that God had released us very clearly.
CNN was it? When did CNN cover the resignation?
Let's pull that up
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-top-megachurch-pastor-resigns/
October 15, 2014 at 4:33pm.
and RNS also covered the resignation October 15.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
cf HuffPo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-resigns_n_5991998.html
The story seems to have broken about 3pm October 15. And, of course
https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
So threading all the accounts together, Mark Driscoll seems to have drafted the letter Tuesday October 14. It was submitted to the BoAA, who released it to the public and RNS published the resignation letter October 15. In the Thrive presentation Mark Driscoll described that "within minutes" of going to get his kids, CNN was discussing his resignation. It leads us to a remarkable little question that needs some narrative grounding.
Mark and Grace Driscoll told the Fab Five Poppa Daddy agreed to the restoration plan the Board proposed October 10th and/or 11th; and if by Mark and Grace Driscoll's account they heard from God they were released from ministry responsibility and able to quit on Monday, October 13; if the Driscolls consulted people on October 14th and Mark Driscoll wrote and sent his resignation letter that day; then when the media reported the resignation on October 15 there had been at least some time in there for Mark and Grace Driscoll have told their kids that Poppa Daddy had made the decision to quit, right?
If Mark Driscoll's story at the Thrive conference is true and the Houston story account shared by Mark and Grace Driscoll is true then the question to ask is why on earth they waited for their children to find out about Mark Driscoll's resignation the way they did rather than telling their own children Poppa Daddy and Mom heard audibly from God that they were released from ministry at Mars Hill and this meant they could quit, and to tell the kids first? The space between Monday evening and about 3:00pm October 15, 2015 PST gave them at least twenty-four hours, didn't it? No sitting the kids down the afternoon or evening of Tuesday, October 14, 2014 to break the news? Could not the Driscolls have shared the news with their children FIRST and THEN sent off that letter to the BoAA?
Still, if the Driscolls decided the best way for their kids to find out was some other way, okay. Maybe the idea was the resignation letter would get sent off and the BoAA would just, I don't know, sit on it for at least a few days beore releasing it to the press? That might have given the Driscolls time to have told their children some time after October 14. Let's keep in mind
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
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.
If Mark and Grace Driscoll decided their family was not in a healthy spot and was even physically unsafe at times then that would seem all the more reason to not leave the announcement of Mark Driscoll's resignation wait until October 15 when the media got the story. It would seem like something to have mentioned somewhere between October 13 and the and of October 14. But perhaps Mark and Grace Driscoll had reasons to not mention anything about the resignation and to let things play out. By Mark Driscoll's account at the Thrive conference the way the Driscoll kids learned about the resignation was through social or broadcast media, maybe CNN. Driscoll's Thrive account makes it almost seem as though the way the kids found out about his resignation was through media coverage because he hadn't told them himself yet. Maybe that's not what he meant but that's the impression that comes across to Wenatchee The Hatchet.
So ... waiting anywhere between 24 to 32 hours to let someone else break the news to your children you've made a decision that will alter everything about their social lives as they'd come to know it was ... part of the plan for Mark and Grace Driscoll? It seems weird, but it's just how things come across threading all the narratives of Mark Driscoll's resignation together. The Thrive narrative and the Houston narrative basically overlap and don't really contradict each other so long as we take as given that neither Mark nor Grace Driscoll saw any reason to tell their kids the evening of October 14 what they had decided based on something they claim they heard on what seems to have been October 13.
POSTSCRIPT
We've already discussed the few precedents there are in the biblical narrative literature for God explicitly telling a leader he is released from leadership or no longer bearing the responsibility of a previously divinely appointed role.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-biblical-precedent-for-god-releasing.html
If you want to read a dry but informative survey of the rise and decline of King Saul V. Phillips Long has a great dissertation on that subject.
We've also looked at precedents in Old Testament narrative literature for traps God set for wicked rulers who misappropriated authority and power for themselves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/as-mark-driscolls-recent-spiritual.html
Whether Abimelech seeking kingship by treachery and murder; or King Saul being tormented by a spirit sent by God; or Ahab's prophets being deluded by a spirit of calamity that misled them, we simply cannot take as given that just because the Driscolls say they heard an audible voice telling them they were released from ministry in contradiction of what they just agreed to do was necessarily God, or a god. No matter how many times Mark Driscoll protests otherwise, if Mark and Grace Driscoll did not want to quit being part of Mars Hill they could have stayed on. By Mark Driscoll's account the Board found nothing that disqualified him for ministry and he claimed to Brian Houston he agreed to submit to their restoration plan. Then all of a sudden, as he's lately recounted it, he heard a voice saying "a trap has been set", or something like that.
Let's not forget that even though God was described as commanding Abraham to kill Isaac the Bible also tells us God stopped Abraham from actually doing that. What's fascinating about the Driscoll narratives is they never bothered to say God said anything to either of them until this year on the road talking to people at Thrive or in a video-taped interview with Houston. Even if we assume for the sake of friendly conversation a voice said the Driscolls were released, the cumulative precedent of OT canon does not suggest that being released is a sign of approval, rather it tends to be a sign of substantial divine disapproval and even judgment. So it's not impossible God released them because of some shortcoming and the sticky wicket here is that if we go by what the biblical texts say, when God says someone's no longer on the job, their salvation is frequently an open question at best. Lots of people would consider kings like Saul and Ahab to have not been believers to begin with. So there's that.
Here at Wenatchee The Hatchet we've looked at multiple narratives recounting the incidents and motivations described by Mark Driscoll and others about his late 2014 resignation from Mars Hill. There's the resignation letter itself, the MH leadership statements from shortly after the resignation was announced, the Robert Morris Gateway narratives (mostly Morris there), there's the Thrive presentation, and most recently the Houston interview. It might be tempting for some readers to assume that all the stories are false. Well, actually, that's not at all necessary. In fact, it's possible to reconstruct a pretty coherent linear narrative from all of the narratives previously presented and discussed.
Based on the Houston interview, Driscoll initiated a review process for himself by telling the board (BoO? BoE? BoE as surrogate) to check whether he was not fit for ministry. On the weekend of his birthday, or his birthday, he met with the board. The board said there was nothing disqualifying him for ministry but they wanted him to participate in a restoration plan. By Driscoll's account he agreed to this and he and Grace explained to their kids what was going to happen. That is all spelled out in the Houston interview.
Now what seems to have happened next was the Monday after the meeting, Driscoll stated he heard a voice. The way he described it at Thrive was he was released from responsibility to serve in ministry at Mars Hill. In the Houston interview the story is more detailed and Driscoll mentioned hearing a voice that said "a trap has been set". There's another transcript that can be consulted now, over here:
http://hillsongchurchwatch.com/2015/07/14/transcript-of-brian-houstons-nice-interview-with-mark-grace-driscoll-2/
In this newer account the Driscolls describe "we're released" (Grace Driscoll) and "a trap has been set and they could not return to ministry. Since the Hillsong focused blog features a much longer transcript that captured more of the statements we'll refer to that some:
so I asked her well what did the Lord say to you because I didn’t want to influence her and so she said, uh, she said we’re” (39:45-42:42)
Grace Driscoll: “We’re released.” (42:43)
Brian Houston: “We can take a moment.” (42:52)
Mark Driscoll: “So, she said well what have you heard so I can hear it. “Well the Lord revealed to me that, you know, a trap has been set there’s no way in which to return to leadership.” And I didn’t know what that meant or what was going on at the time. And um, I said, he said well release too we need to resign. And so, um, you know, this is not what we anticipated, and uh a lot of people thought you know, maybe he’s got another plan, or, 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’ve never seen my wife like that she was devastated. Um, so we prayed and slept on it decided that we would make sure we got this right, and uh.”
Grace Driscoll: “Speak with wise council.”
Mark Driscoll: “Sought the pastors of those we trust and sent in our resignation in on that, it would’ve been that Tuesday, yeah, and resigned.” (42:53-43:57)
Now this comes across as though the Driscolls say they heard God release them from ministry Monday night. They decided to sleep on it and Grace mentioned "wise council" Mark Driscoll mentioned "sought the pastors of those we trust". So if they "slept on it" Monday night, this would have been Tuesday that they sought the council and consideration of other pastors, although if they were sure a voice from God told them they could quit what confirmation they would need or want seems moot.
But that does, in any case, get us to the resignation letter itself.
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
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.
...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. [emphasis added] I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
No mention of any instruction from God there, just the godly counsel. As before, it would seem that if God told the Driscolls they were released that would have been the thing to lead with back on October 14, 2014. And as Wenatchee The Hatchet has discussed at some length in the past, the scriptural precedent for God telling leaders "you're off the job" conspicuously features the likes of King Saul and King Ahab. What was attested by the BoAA at the time was what a surprise the resignation was.
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
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 [emphasis added] 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.
...
Finally, Mark Driscoll was not asked to resign; indeed, we were surprised to receive his resignation letter. [emphasis added]
This was not the only statement made about the Driscoll resignation by leaders at Mars Hill, of course:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Alex-Ghioni-Announcement.m4a
starting about 3:45
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.
So both accounts present Driscoll's resignation as a surprise, and the second account presents the decision as having pre-empted the restoration plan that was proposed for him to be able to return to ministry.
In light of the Houston interview the Driscolls may have fit in all the seeking godly counsel Tuesday after they "slept on it" about the voices saying they were released from ministry/a trap was set. This could account for why the BoAA found Mark Driscoll's resignation to be a complete surprise. They weren't expecting it because, per Mark Driscoll's longer account in talking with Houston, he said he asked the Board to investigate him and present him with a result and he'd comply with what they decided. By Mark Driscoll's account he said he agreed to cooperate with the restoration process proposed and told his kids what the plan would be. Then, come Monday, all that changed. Tuesday, it seems, the Driscolls talked to those they considered godly counsel.
Which gets us to Robert Morris and his account.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris: Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added]
So by this account Robert Morris could have been one of the people the Driscolls reached out to on Tuesday, after the Monday voices and their respective messages to Mark and Grace Driscoll. Now it's possible Mark Driscoll opted to not tell Robert Morris "God told me we get to quit" in so many words. Morris may have either not known what Mark Driscoll says God told him, or Morris may not have mentioned it. In any event, the observation here is that Robert Morris' story does not contradict the cumulative Driscollian narrative we can assemble from the multiple accounts--Driscoll wrote that he/they sought counsel and Morris recounted that he and Mark decided together that Mark should step out for a while.
So this presents a story in which Monday voices are heard and Tuesday people are consulted, a letter is drafted, and the resignation is made official. This completely explains the elements from the Thrive presentation:
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
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
See Links to Timestamps at the end of this doc. [these omitted here]
...
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN. [emphasis added]We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked.
We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. [emphasis added] So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked. We’d served in that city for 20 years. Founded that church in our living room. And served it for 18 years. (loud applause) Baptized somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (audible amens from crowd).
[8:13]
So, we’re sitting with the kids explaining to them that dad had resigned and that we were going to continue forward and that God had released us very clearly.
CNN was it? When did CNN cover the resignation?
Let's pull that up
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-top-megachurch-pastor-resigns/
October 15, 2014 at 4:33pm.
and RNS also covered the resignation October 15.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
cf HuffPo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-resigns_n_5991998.html
The story seems to have broken about 3pm October 15. And, of course
https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
So threading all the accounts together, Mark Driscoll seems to have drafted the letter Tuesday October 14. It was submitted to the BoAA, who released it to the public and RNS published the resignation letter October 15. In the Thrive presentation Mark Driscoll described that "within minutes" of going to get his kids, CNN was discussing his resignation. It leads us to a remarkable little question that needs some narrative grounding.
Mark and Grace Driscoll told the Fab Five Poppa Daddy agreed to the restoration plan the Board proposed October 10th and/or 11th; and if by Mark and Grace Driscoll's account they heard from God they were released from ministry responsibility and able to quit on Monday, October 13; if the Driscolls consulted people on October 14th and Mark Driscoll wrote and sent his resignation letter that day; then when the media reported the resignation on October 15 there had been at least some time in there for Mark and Grace Driscoll have told their kids that Poppa Daddy had made the decision to quit, right?
If Mark Driscoll's story at the Thrive conference is true and the Houston story account shared by Mark and Grace Driscoll is true then the question to ask is why on earth they waited for their children to find out about Mark Driscoll's resignation the way they did rather than telling their own children Poppa Daddy and Mom heard audibly from God that they were released from ministry at Mars Hill and this meant they could quit, and to tell the kids first? The space between Monday evening and about 3:00pm October 15, 2015 PST gave them at least twenty-four hours, didn't it? No sitting the kids down the afternoon or evening of Tuesday, October 14, 2014 to break the news? Could not the Driscolls have shared the news with their children FIRST and THEN sent off that letter to the BoAA?
Still, if the Driscolls decided the best way for their kids to find out was some other way, okay. Maybe the idea was the resignation letter would get sent off and the BoAA would just, I don't know, sit on it for at least a few days beore releasing it to the press? That might have given the Driscolls time to have told their children some time after October 14. Let's keep in mind
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
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.
If Mark and Grace Driscoll decided their family was not in a healthy spot and was even physically unsafe at times then that would seem all the more reason to not leave the announcement of Mark Driscoll's resignation wait until October 15 when the media got the story. It would seem like something to have mentioned somewhere between October 13 and the and of October 14. But perhaps Mark and Grace Driscoll had reasons to not mention anything about the resignation and to let things play out. By Mark Driscoll's account at the Thrive conference the way the Driscoll kids learned about the resignation was through social or broadcast media, maybe CNN. Driscoll's Thrive account makes it almost seem as though the way the kids found out about his resignation was through media coverage because he hadn't told them himself yet. Maybe that's not what he meant but that's the impression that comes across to Wenatchee The Hatchet.
So ... waiting anywhere between 24 to 32 hours to let someone else break the news to your children you've made a decision that will alter everything about their social lives as they'd come to know it was ... part of the plan for Mark and Grace Driscoll? It seems weird, but it's just how things come across threading all the narratives of Mark Driscoll's resignation together. The Thrive narrative and the Houston narrative basically overlap and don't really contradict each other so long as we take as given that neither Mark nor Grace Driscoll saw any reason to tell their kids the evening of October 14 what they had decided based on something they claim they heard on what seems to have been October 13.
POSTSCRIPT
We've already discussed the few precedents there are in the biblical narrative literature for God explicitly telling a leader he is released from leadership or no longer bearing the responsibility of a previously divinely appointed role.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-biblical-precedent-for-god-releasing.html
If you want to read a dry but informative survey of the rise and decline of King Saul V. Phillips Long has a great dissertation on that subject.
We've also looked at precedents in Old Testament narrative literature for traps God set for wicked rulers who misappropriated authority and power for themselves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/as-mark-driscolls-recent-spiritual.html
Whether Abimelech seeking kingship by treachery and murder; or King Saul being tormented by a spirit sent by God; or Ahab's prophets being deluded by a spirit of calamity that misled them, we simply cannot take as given that just because the Driscolls say they heard an audible voice telling them they were released from ministry in contradiction of what they just agreed to do was necessarily God, or a god. No matter how many times Mark Driscoll protests otherwise, if Mark and Grace Driscoll did not want to quit being part of Mars Hill they could have stayed on. By Mark Driscoll's account the Board found nothing that disqualified him for ministry and he claimed to Brian Houston he agreed to submit to their restoration plan. Then all of a sudden, as he's lately recounted it, he heard a voice saying "a trap has been set", or something like that.
Let's not forget that even though God was described as commanding Abraham to kill Isaac the Bible also tells us God stopped Abraham from actually doing that. What's fascinating about the Driscoll narratives is they never bothered to say God said anything to either of them until this year on the road talking to people at Thrive or in a video-taped interview with Houston. Even if we assume for the sake of friendly conversation a voice said the Driscolls were released, the cumulative precedent of OT canon does not suggest that being released is a sign of approval, rather it tends to be a sign of substantial divine disapproval and even judgment. So it's not impossible God released them because of some shortcoming and the sticky wicket here is that if we go by what the biblical texts say, when God says someone's no longer on the job, their salvation is frequently an open question at best. Lots of people would consider kings like Saul and Ahab to have not been believers to begin with. So there's that.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
The Evolution of Markulinity: seed of implosion, a blue collar Jesus for a white collar male? Driscoll's quest to get the college-educated establishment of tomorrow was going to cost him his blue collar base in the end
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
03.00ish
I've made a lot of mistakes and one of them was going too fast. There's the Lord's calling and there's the Lord's timing and I should have waited longer. I should have been under godly spiritual authority, for Grace and I to be under a godly couple, that was [a] senior pastor, so that we could learn and grow. I, I, my character was not caught up with my gifting and I did start to young. And I believe God called us to start the church and he was very, very, very gracious to us, uh, but had I to do it over again I would not look at a 25-year old and say, "Do what I did." :
03:57ish
... We went into the urban core and we felt, specifically, called to go after young, college-educated males. That was really my heart. I wanted everybody to meet Jesus but I felt particularly if we were gonna make in the city and the legacy of families and, you know, the way that women and children and culture treated, that getting young men to love Jesus would be paramount. [emphasis added] So that was really the focus and I didn't think the church would amount to much. The first three years we didn't collect a salary; it was very small; we met at night; we moved a lot because we kept losing our rental location; the offices were in our house, so it wasn't a big deal and we didn't anticipate that it would become what it ultimately did.
37:26
... young men aren't going to church. Young men aren't going to college. Young men aren't marrying women. Young men are not raising their children and I have such a deep burden and passion to see men--you know, 1 Corinthians 13--I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me--I want, I want to compel young men to grow up, to take responsibility. And sometimes, in doing that, I have communicated that in a way that demeans women and that's not helpful and that's not right. In the grace of God I need to repent and be better about that but I still want, I mean no one would say young men are, in the Western world, highly impressive and we're all encouraged. There's a lot of work to be done. [emphasis added]
The interview with Brian Houston has inadvertently highlighted another tension within Driscoll's approach toward men, masculinity and evangelism. Let's consider how long and how steadily he formulated his blue collar version of Jesus, the guy who grew up in a dumpy rural hick town with a dad named Joe who swung a hammer for a living. Mark leaned on that plenty and also leaned on that being his own background. Even if we set aside the potential and latent (or the neither potential nor latent) self-importation involved in the narrative, let's look at Driscoll's words "young, college-educated males". That would fit with what Bent Meyer described as an interest on the part of Mars Hill leadership in getting the young men who would be the future establishment and make the culture. Driscoll's use of "upstream" has been prevalent enough. But at some point there was going to be a fracture point between the blue collar dude Jesus Mark Driscoll kept using to appeal to the masses (and for the moment we'll just do nothing more than allude to "Masscult and Midcult" there on that) and the actual target demographic he's been saying he was going for.
Something that Wenatchee The Hatchet has observed about Mark Driscoll's responses to insiders and outsiders in controversy is that for the inside group he leveraged his blue collar ghetto narrative and for outsiders, particularly from 2012 controversies, he was more apt to highlight his credentials, whether academic or professional. Most notably he leaned on his college education and journalistic credentials (though he never managed to prove he ever had the latter) when blogging about the Justin Brierley interview. When the Liberty University "kerfuffle" happened he also leaned on his formal credentials. When the plagiarism controversy erupted Driscoll mentioned he'd be taking over editorial duties at Resurgence. During that stint he mentioned having written a few things. The controversies of 2012 inside and outside Mars Hill seemed to show us that for insiders Mark Driscoll emphasized his blue collar street cred and when it came to controversies that either involved outsiders like Justin Brierley Driscoll leaned heavily on his white collar, "upstream" credentials.
At the time that rhetorical savvy regarding audience was pretty shrewd but in a more long-game sense it revealed a weakness--ultimately the kinds of future Establishment college-educated dudes Mark Driscoll most wanted to get were not the same guys who maybe only finished high school and were working at dead end joe jobs working on cars or construction.
As popular as it has been for those who were never part of Mars Hill to write about Mark Driscoll and Driscoll alone, those who were at Mars Hill circa 1995-2002 will likely still recall how necessary Mike Gunn and Lief Moi were to the formative years of the church. If we revisit Driscoll's modes of markulinity in light of what can be observed and (we can hope) be further shared by those who interacted with the early founders, we can see that whether blue or white collar, Mark Driscoll's persona depended in some ways on Gunn and Moi. Moi had construction companies and the radio program Street Talk. Mike Gunn had an M. Div and worked with Athletes in Action over at the University of Washington, if memory serves. In other words Gunn and Moi had local school cred and street cred that the newcomer Mark Driscoll didn't have on either front, but he had their interest and trust in the viability of planting a church and a nascent Christian community interested in the arts and in interacting with people in the Puget Sound area. As mentioned earlier in this series (maybe?) Driscoll was Kirk, and Kirk needed Spock and McCoy to complete his role, so to speak. Or we could say that Blossom needed Bubbles and Buttercup ... actually ... that analogy sounds cooler to Wenatchee The Hatchet at the moment. Anyway ...
If a person were able to survey a majority of public testimonies about the shifting ideas and conduct of Mark Driscoll as a public figure there seems to have been a shift past 2002 when Mike Gunn departed and Lief Moi's role began to recede. Driscoll's blue collar manly Jesus could work as a rhetorical approach and a persona for as long as it could be embodied but by 2005 with the videology approach Mark Driscoll was no longer accessible to the vast majority of people at the church he helped start.
By 2012 he'd pulled up stakes and forsaken King County altogether, though he scrupulously avoided mentioning that he'd moved to Woodway (it seems) when he was writing in 2013 about the travails of his family in "The Hardest Part of Ministry". Driscoll's church had become Driscoll's church, and by that point it had mutated into the kind of "God box" he warned Mars Hill about back in 2004 or so. He had by this time isolated himself from even much campus leadership, let alone rank and file members. In contrast to an obscure figure such as Chaplain M. S. Evers, whose clean, manly evangelicalism was very compelling for soldiers in World War I because he lived it out in the trenches, very literally, with them, Mark Driscoll's blue collar Jesus had long stopped being incarnated in any kind of life shared with the men he claimed he cared to reach.
By 2012 he had also symbolically disconnected himself from being plausibly identified as Reformed by claiming T. D. Jakes was Trinitarian and a brother in Christ in spite of having never addressed what to say about Jakes' alleged word-faith teaching--let's remember that in 2007 Driscoll himself had denounced T. D. Jakes as a word-faith wingnut to church leaders. By 2012 he'd made nice overtures about Joel Osteen and shook hands with T. D. Jakes. The men he'd denounced as false teachers or heretics or those teaching dangerous doctrines had by turns become part of a "tribe" he now seems to be grooming himself to join. And with that he jettisoned any meaningful connection to the Reformed traditions he's alleged he endorses. It seems more accurate to say that under-educated religion reporters mistook Mark Driscoll's posturing and name-dropping as being the same as endorsing Reformed ecclesiology, soteriology, and the like.
And then we get to the 2013-2014 plagiarism controversy and the Result Source controversy. If Driscoll's aim was to reach college-educated young men, any realistic shot he had at connecting to them was going to run into trouble when he was confronted and accused of plagiarism. That's the sort of thing that can get a young guy failed out of a class. As Driscoll apologized in one or two isolated incidents it went largely unremarked upon by members of the press that an early reaction on the part of Mars Hill to the plagiarism controversy was to shift blame to Driscoll's research assistants from the past. Driscoll claimed Janet Mefferd was being "accusatory and unkind". But Thomas Nelson ended up changing Real Marriage. The fact that nobody opted to litigate over copyright infringement was not a sign that nothing had gone wrong. Newer editions of the 2012 book have acknowledged a debt of influence to Dan Allender that was not acknowledged in the first print edition of the book.
Beyond the problematic story of a Driscoll marriage almost perpetually on the rocks until Mark could convince Grace to put out more sex, there was by 2013 and 2014 the problematic revelation that to the extent that Mark Driscoll had original ideas they were weak ones that could not be supported by a thorough exegetical or historical method, and to the extent that the Driscoll book conveyed any actually good ideas, research by authors like Janet Mefferd and Warren Throckmorton revealed that even Driscoll's good ideas turned out to be second-hand. Whether by the measure of blue collar or white collar manhood, Mark Driscoll was turning out to be a very bad joke.
So now we come to 2015. Driscoll hasn't had any plausible connection to the blue collar Jesus from a dumpy rural hick town whose dad Joe swung a hammer for a living. But Driscoll's never competently or convincingly passed himself off as a scholar of any merit, either. The plagiarism controversy of 2013-2014 revealed he was at most a second-rate hack who appropriated the ideas of others second-hand and sometimes didn't remember to give credit where it was due. He also agreed to have one of his books rigged a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, to boot. If Driscoll had hoped to reach young men he had by 2014, when he resigned, reached a point where he revealed he was willing to resign rather than stay on at the only church he was ever a member of. There's no indication at all he's a member of a church now.
The one plausible shot Mark Driscoll might have at turning things around seems the thing he's least likely to do. Driscoll should forsake any public ministry and any ministry. He should become a member of a church and just be a rank and file tithing guy for at least five years, submitted to the spiritual authority of whomever he'd be willing to actually submit to. Then if the elders in spiritual authority over him consider his life to merit the suggestion, maybe he could be reconsidered for some kind of ministry within the confines of the existing church structure or denominational apparatus in which he decides to submit himself. Who knows, he might actually be considering this.
But it seems like a long shot Mark Driscoll would do such a thing. After having spent decades advising others to submit to spiritual authority and have regard for their discipline he pulled a "God told me" move that gave him the occasion to quit the only church he was ever a member at, the church he planted. Driscoll's credibility has been destroyed by his own arrogance and domineering approach. Driscoll has also at length revealed that whether the blue collar or the white collar, he has failed to live up to the ideals of masculinity he has admonished other men to live by. It may also be proposed that he never lived up to them to begin with.
For as long as there was a mostly impermeable boundary between what insiders at Mars Hill could read or hear and what outsiders could be aware of, Mark Driscoll could keep employing the blue collar rhetorical style internally while selectively employing a white collar style for outside scandal in 2012. The trouble was that by 2012 a controversy had erupted for which it turned out The City had no walls. So when Mark Driscoll declared to Mars Hill via The City "we're not a wealthy church" it was not difficult to raise the question of what it was about a roughly $30 million dollar annual budget that made Mars Hill poor.
Over time, whether internally or externally, the gap between the ideal and the rhetorical style on the one hand and the economic and social realities of Mars Hill on the other, became too significant to ignore. If everything within Mars Hill was precisely as advertised inside and out would anyone have leaked anything? What if 2012 was a turning point because between internal and external controversies it became a year in which Driscoll's previously separable rhetorical styles for insiders and outsiders became easier to compare and contrast. Eh, that's just proposing an idea for consideration, it's not necessarily the best one. But what we're discussing here is the gap between the image and the actual, as well as the tension inherent in a blue collar and a white collar approach to manliness.
It is not without cause a Lutheran could say of Mark Driscoll he has a whole lot of Law but lacks the Gospel. We can see the plausibility of such a proposal in what Mark Driscoll told Brian Houston in this year's interview, " ... I want to compel men to grow up, to take responsibility ... ." But why should they? Why should they be compelled to grow up and take responsibility on the basis of a "how dare you!?" from a Mark Driscoll? The man could not even live out his own preaching and teaching in the way he chose to resign membership and eldership from his own church in 2014. As with his marriage, so with his church leadership and approach to membership, his words and actions seem to say "Do as I say the Bible says you should do, not as I have done or as I'm doing right now." If that's the case neither a blue-collar nor a white-collar version of manliness should do him any good.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/06/DriscollHillsong.mp4
03.00ish
I've made a lot of mistakes and one of them was going too fast. There's the Lord's calling and there's the Lord's timing and I should have waited longer. I should have been under godly spiritual authority, for Grace and I to be under a godly couple, that was [a] senior pastor, so that we could learn and grow. I, I, my character was not caught up with my gifting and I did start to young. And I believe God called us to start the church and he was very, very, very gracious to us, uh, but had I to do it over again I would not look at a 25-year old and say, "Do what I did." :
03:57ish
... We went into the urban core and we felt, specifically, called to go after young, college-educated males. That was really my heart. I wanted everybody to meet Jesus but I felt particularly if we were gonna make in the city and the legacy of families and, you know, the way that women and children and culture treated, that getting young men to love Jesus would be paramount. [emphasis added] So that was really the focus and I didn't think the church would amount to much. The first three years we didn't collect a salary; it was very small; we met at night; we moved a lot because we kept losing our rental location; the offices were in our house, so it wasn't a big deal and we didn't anticipate that it would become what it ultimately did.
37:26
... young men aren't going to church. Young men aren't going to college. Young men aren't marrying women. Young men are not raising their children and I have such a deep burden and passion to see men--you know, 1 Corinthians 13--I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me--I want, I want to compel young men to grow up, to take responsibility. And sometimes, in doing that, I have communicated that in a way that demeans women and that's not helpful and that's not right. In the grace of God I need to repent and be better about that but I still want, I mean no one would say young men are, in the Western world, highly impressive and we're all encouraged. There's a lot of work to be done. [emphasis added]
The interview with Brian Houston has inadvertently highlighted another tension within Driscoll's approach toward men, masculinity and evangelism. Let's consider how long and how steadily he formulated his blue collar version of Jesus, the guy who grew up in a dumpy rural hick town with a dad named Joe who swung a hammer for a living. Mark leaned on that plenty and also leaned on that being his own background. Even if we set aside the potential and latent (or the neither potential nor latent) self-importation involved in the narrative, let's look at Driscoll's words "young, college-educated males". That would fit with what Bent Meyer described as an interest on the part of Mars Hill leadership in getting the young men who would be the future establishment and make the culture. Driscoll's use of "upstream" has been prevalent enough. But at some point there was going to be a fracture point between the blue collar dude Jesus Mark Driscoll kept using to appeal to the masses (and for the moment we'll just do nothing more than allude to "Masscult and Midcult" there on that) and the actual target demographic he's been saying he was going for.
Something that Wenatchee The Hatchet has observed about Mark Driscoll's responses to insiders and outsiders in controversy is that for the inside group he leveraged his blue collar ghetto narrative and for outsiders, particularly from 2012 controversies, he was more apt to highlight his credentials, whether academic or professional. Most notably he leaned on his college education and journalistic credentials (though he never managed to prove he ever had the latter) when blogging about the Justin Brierley interview. When the Liberty University "kerfuffle" happened he also leaned on his formal credentials. When the plagiarism controversy erupted Driscoll mentioned he'd be taking over editorial duties at Resurgence. During that stint he mentioned having written a few things. The controversies of 2012 inside and outside Mars Hill seemed to show us that for insiders Mark Driscoll emphasized his blue collar street cred and when it came to controversies that either involved outsiders like Justin Brierley Driscoll leaned heavily on his white collar, "upstream" credentials.
At the time that rhetorical savvy regarding audience was pretty shrewd but in a more long-game sense it revealed a weakness--ultimately the kinds of future Establishment college-educated dudes Mark Driscoll most wanted to get were not the same guys who maybe only finished high school and were working at dead end joe jobs working on cars or construction.
As popular as it has been for those who were never part of Mars Hill to write about Mark Driscoll and Driscoll alone, those who were at Mars Hill circa 1995-2002 will likely still recall how necessary Mike Gunn and Lief Moi were to the formative years of the church. If we revisit Driscoll's modes of markulinity in light of what can be observed and (we can hope) be further shared by those who interacted with the early founders, we can see that whether blue or white collar, Mark Driscoll's persona depended in some ways on Gunn and Moi. Moi had construction companies and the radio program Street Talk. Mike Gunn had an M. Div and worked with Athletes in Action over at the University of Washington, if memory serves. In other words Gunn and Moi had local school cred and street cred that the newcomer Mark Driscoll didn't have on either front, but he had their interest and trust in the viability of planting a church and a nascent Christian community interested in the arts and in interacting with people in the Puget Sound area. As mentioned earlier in this series (maybe?) Driscoll was Kirk, and Kirk needed Spock and McCoy to complete his role, so to speak. Or we could say that Blossom needed Bubbles and Buttercup ... actually ... that analogy sounds cooler to Wenatchee The Hatchet at the moment. Anyway ...
If a person were able to survey a majority of public testimonies about the shifting ideas and conduct of Mark Driscoll as a public figure there seems to have been a shift past 2002 when Mike Gunn departed and Lief Moi's role began to recede. Driscoll's blue collar manly Jesus could work as a rhetorical approach and a persona for as long as it could be embodied but by 2005 with the videology approach Mark Driscoll was no longer accessible to the vast majority of people at the church he helped start.
By 2012 he'd pulled up stakes and forsaken King County altogether, though he scrupulously avoided mentioning that he'd moved to Woodway (it seems) when he was writing in 2013 about the travails of his family in "The Hardest Part of Ministry". Driscoll's church had become Driscoll's church, and by that point it had mutated into the kind of "God box" he warned Mars Hill about back in 2004 or so. He had by this time isolated himself from even much campus leadership, let alone rank and file members. In contrast to an obscure figure such as Chaplain M. S. Evers, whose clean, manly evangelicalism was very compelling for soldiers in World War I because he lived it out in the trenches, very literally, with them, Mark Driscoll's blue collar Jesus had long stopped being incarnated in any kind of life shared with the men he claimed he cared to reach.
By 2012 he had also symbolically disconnected himself from being plausibly identified as Reformed by claiming T. D. Jakes was Trinitarian and a brother in Christ in spite of having never addressed what to say about Jakes' alleged word-faith teaching--let's remember that in 2007 Driscoll himself had denounced T. D. Jakes as a word-faith wingnut to church leaders. By 2012 he'd made nice overtures about Joel Osteen and shook hands with T. D. Jakes. The men he'd denounced as false teachers or heretics or those teaching dangerous doctrines had by turns become part of a "tribe" he now seems to be grooming himself to join. And with that he jettisoned any meaningful connection to the Reformed traditions he's alleged he endorses. It seems more accurate to say that under-educated religion reporters mistook Mark Driscoll's posturing and name-dropping as being the same as endorsing Reformed ecclesiology, soteriology, and the like.
And then we get to the 2013-2014 plagiarism controversy and the Result Source controversy. If Driscoll's aim was to reach college-educated young men, any realistic shot he had at connecting to them was going to run into trouble when he was confronted and accused of plagiarism. That's the sort of thing that can get a young guy failed out of a class. As Driscoll apologized in one or two isolated incidents it went largely unremarked upon by members of the press that an early reaction on the part of Mars Hill to the plagiarism controversy was to shift blame to Driscoll's research assistants from the past. Driscoll claimed Janet Mefferd was being "accusatory and unkind". But Thomas Nelson ended up changing Real Marriage. The fact that nobody opted to litigate over copyright infringement was not a sign that nothing had gone wrong. Newer editions of the 2012 book have acknowledged a debt of influence to Dan Allender that was not acknowledged in the first print edition of the book.
Beyond the problematic story of a Driscoll marriage almost perpetually on the rocks until Mark could convince Grace to put out more sex, there was by 2013 and 2014 the problematic revelation that to the extent that Mark Driscoll had original ideas they were weak ones that could not be supported by a thorough exegetical or historical method, and to the extent that the Driscoll book conveyed any actually good ideas, research by authors like Janet Mefferd and Warren Throckmorton revealed that even Driscoll's good ideas turned out to be second-hand. Whether by the measure of blue collar or white collar manhood, Mark Driscoll was turning out to be a very bad joke.
So now we come to 2015. Driscoll hasn't had any plausible connection to the blue collar Jesus from a dumpy rural hick town whose dad Joe swung a hammer for a living. But Driscoll's never competently or convincingly passed himself off as a scholar of any merit, either. The plagiarism controversy of 2013-2014 revealed he was at most a second-rate hack who appropriated the ideas of others second-hand and sometimes didn't remember to give credit where it was due. He also agreed to have one of his books rigged a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, to boot. If Driscoll had hoped to reach young men he had by 2014, when he resigned, reached a point where he revealed he was willing to resign rather than stay on at the only church he was ever a member of. There's no indication at all he's a member of a church now.
The one plausible shot Mark Driscoll might have at turning things around seems the thing he's least likely to do. Driscoll should forsake any public ministry and any ministry. He should become a member of a church and just be a rank and file tithing guy for at least five years, submitted to the spiritual authority of whomever he'd be willing to actually submit to. Then if the elders in spiritual authority over him consider his life to merit the suggestion, maybe he could be reconsidered for some kind of ministry within the confines of the existing church structure or denominational apparatus in which he decides to submit himself. Who knows, he might actually be considering this.
But it seems like a long shot Mark Driscoll would do such a thing. After having spent decades advising others to submit to spiritual authority and have regard for their discipline he pulled a "God told me" move that gave him the occasion to quit the only church he was ever a member at, the church he planted. Driscoll's credibility has been destroyed by his own arrogance and domineering approach. Driscoll has also at length revealed that whether the blue collar or the white collar, he has failed to live up to the ideals of masculinity he has admonished other men to live by. It may also be proposed that he never lived up to them to begin with.
For as long as there was a mostly impermeable boundary between what insiders at Mars Hill could read or hear and what outsiders could be aware of, Mark Driscoll could keep employing the blue collar rhetorical style internally while selectively employing a white collar style for outside scandal in 2012. The trouble was that by 2012 a controversy had erupted for which it turned out The City had no walls. So when Mark Driscoll declared to Mars Hill via The City "we're not a wealthy church" it was not difficult to raise the question of what it was about a roughly $30 million dollar annual budget that made Mars Hill poor.
Over time, whether internally or externally, the gap between the ideal and the rhetorical style on the one hand and the economic and social realities of Mars Hill on the other, became too significant to ignore. If everything within Mars Hill was precisely as advertised inside and out would anyone have leaked anything? What if 2012 was a turning point because between internal and external controversies it became a year in which Driscoll's previously separable rhetorical styles for insiders and outsiders became easier to compare and contrast. Eh, that's just proposing an idea for consideration, it's not necessarily the best one. But what we're discussing here is the gap between the image and the actual, as well as the tension inherent in a blue collar and a white collar approach to manliness.
It is not without cause a Lutheran could say of Mark Driscoll he has a whole lot of Law but lacks the Gospel. We can see the plausibility of such a proposal in what Mark Driscoll told Brian Houston in this year's interview, " ... I want to compel men to grow up, to take responsibility ... ." But why should they? Why should they be compelled to grow up and take responsibility on the basis of a "how dare you!?" from a Mark Driscoll? The man could not even live out his own preaching and teaching in the way he chose to resign membership and eldership from his own church in 2014. As with his marriage, so with his church leadership and approach to membership, his words and actions seem to say "Do as I say the Bible says you should do, not as I have done or as I'm doing right now." If that's the case neither a blue-collar nor a white-collar version of manliness should do him any good.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
The Evolution of Markulinity: Driscoll to Houston in 2015 " ... I want to compel young men to grow up ... "
During the Brian Houston interview we got to hear a recapitulation of what
have come to be known as central Driscollian concerns, what some have described
as the Testosterone Gospel, and that Wenatchee The Hatchet has previously
described as Markulinity. The recent remarks Driscoll made to Brian Houston are
a distillation of themes for which he has come to be famous:
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
03.00ish
I've made a lot of mistakes and one of them was going too fast. There's the Lord's calling and there's the Lord's timing and I should have waited longer. I should have been under godly spiritual authority, for Grace and I to be under a godly couple, that was [a] senior pastor, so that we could learn and grow. I, I, my character was not caught up with my gifting and I did start to young. And I believe God called us to start the church and he was very, very, very gracious to us, uh, but had I to do it over again I would not look at a 25-year old and say, "Do what I did." :
03:57ish
... We went into the urban core and we felt, specifically, called to go after young, college-educated males. That was really my heart. I wanted everybody to meet Jesus but I felt particularly if we were gonna make in the city and the legacy of families and, you know, the way that women and children and culture treated, that getting young men to love Jesus would be paramount. [emphasis added] So that was really the focus and I didn't think the church would amount to much. The first three years we didn't collect a salary; it was very small; we met at night; we moved a lot because we kept losing our rental location; the offices were in our house, so it wasn't a big deal and we didn't anticipate that it would become what it ultimately did.
37:26
... young men aren't going to church. Young men aren't going to college. Young men aren't marrying women. Young men are not raising their children and I have such a deep burden and passion to see men--you know, 1 Corinthians 13--I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me--I want, I want to compel young men to grow up, to take responsibility. And sometimes, in doing that, I have communicated that in a way that demeans women and that's not helpful and that's not right. In the grace of God I need to repent and be better about that but I still want, I mean no one would say young men are, in the Western world, highly impressive and we're all encouraged. There's a lot of work to be done. [emphasis added]
And so I regret the times that I have not communicated in such a way that, in trying to compel the men up it seemed like I was pushing the women down and that's my fault.
We've also discussed elsewhere at this blog comments and observations from others about how the aim of Mars Hill leadership, even from early on, was to inspire the young men who would go on to become the future establishment. Get the young men and you get "everything", Driscoll would say. But he never fleshed out precisely how or why it was so necessary to get the young men. Perhaps Driscoll has not been steeped in enough writing by social scientists to have invoked the work of Roy Baumeister. Baumeister wrote years ago that the demographic most likely to resort to physical and emotional violence and commit crimes was, without doubt, young men at the peak of sexual reproductive capacity.
While progressive critics of Driscoll in secular and religious circles have focused on Driscoll’s bullying language and conduct, Driscoll’s defenders have seen him as a defender of women and a man challenging other men to truly be men. This disconnect has been pervasive and it will continue for as long as progressives fail to engage Driscoll’s inflammatory rhetoric in terms that account for the problems he says he’s set out to solve . It’s not that any of us have to agree either with the nature of the problem as Mark Driscoll has diagnosed it, or that even if we do see merit to his diagnoses that his proposed solutions have to be taken seriously, but it seems necessary to understand what the appeal of Mark Driscoll was and is for those who actually respect and admire him.
Now by Driscoll’s own account his aim is to compel young men to grow up. A Lutheran would quickly suggest that’s all Law and absolutely no Gospel and the Lutheran would be right, but since Calvinists tend to think the Third Use of the Law is a legitimate category for expository preaching we might have to set all that to the side for a while. Let’s just say that Driscoll’s mission, as he has described it, was to get young guys to grow up.
Okay, so … as famous as this point seems to be let’s back up a bit and ask whether, in fact, this was really a theme clearly articulated by Driscoll and Mars Hill from the foundational years of the church plant. If we go over what early coverage and writers who interacted with the young Mark Driscoll had to say about him, we might come away with the impression that although the seeds for the Testosterone Gospel may have been planted, the earliest years of Mars Hill were not necessarily characterized by that Dude/Bro Gospel.
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
03.00ish
I've made a lot of mistakes and one of them was going too fast. There's the Lord's calling and there's the Lord's timing and I should have waited longer. I should have been under godly spiritual authority, for Grace and I to be under a godly couple, that was [a] senior pastor, so that we could learn and grow. I, I, my character was not caught up with my gifting and I did start to young. And I believe God called us to start the church and he was very, very, very gracious to us, uh, but had I to do it over again I would not look at a 25-year old and say, "Do what I did." :
03:57ish
... We went into the urban core and we felt, specifically, called to go after young, college-educated males. That was really my heart. I wanted everybody to meet Jesus but I felt particularly if we were gonna make in the city and the legacy of families and, you know, the way that women and children and culture treated, that getting young men to love Jesus would be paramount. [emphasis added] So that was really the focus and I didn't think the church would amount to much. The first three years we didn't collect a salary; it was very small; we met at night; we moved a lot because we kept losing our rental location; the offices were in our house, so it wasn't a big deal and we didn't anticipate that it would become what it ultimately did.
37:26
... young men aren't going to church. Young men aren't going to college. Young men aren't marrying women. Young men are not raising their children and I have such a deep burden and passion to see men--you know, 1 Corinthians 13--I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me--I want, I want to compel young men to grow up, to take responsibility. And sometimes, in doing that, I have communicated that in a way that demeans women and that's not helpful and that's not right. In the grace of God I need to repent and be better about that but I still want, I mean no one would say young men are, in the Western world, highly impressive and we're all encouraged. There's a lot of work to be done. [emphasis added]
And so I regret the times that I have not communicated in such a way that, in trying to compel the men up it seemed like I was pushing the women down and that's my fault.
We've also discussed elsewhere at this blog comments and observations from others about how the aim of Mars Hill leadership, even from early on, was to inspire the young men who would go on to become the future establishment. Get the young men and you get "everything", Driscoll would say. But he never fleshed out precisely how or why it was so necessary to get the young men. Perhaps Driscoll has not been steeped in enough writing by social scientists to have invoked the work of Roy Baumeister. Baumeister wrote years ago that the demographic most likely to resort to physical and emotional violence and commit crimes was, without doubt, young men at the peak of sexual reproductive capacity.
While progressive critics of Driscoll in secular and religious circles have focused on Driscoll’s bullying language and conduct, Driscoll’s defenders have seen him as a defender of women and a man challenging other men to truly be men. This disconnect has been pervasive and it will continue for as long as progressives fail to engage Driscoll’s inflammatory rhetoric in terms that account for the problems he says he’s set out to solve . It’s not that any of us have to agree either with the nature of the problem as Mark Driscoll has diagnosed it, or that even if we do see merit to his diagnoses that his proposed solutions have to be taken seriously, but it seems necessary to understand what the appeal of Mark Driscoll was and is for those who actually respect and admire him.
Now by Driscoll’s own account his aim is to compel young men to grow up. A Lutheran would quickly suggest that’s all Law and absolutely no Gospel and the Lutheran would be right, but since Calvinists tend to think the Third Use of the Law is a legitimate category for expository preaching we might have to set all that to the side for a while. Let’s just say that Driscoll’s mission, as he has described it, was to get young guys to grow up.
Okay, so … as famous as this point seems to be let’s back up a bit and ask whether, in fact, this was really a theme clearly articulated by Driscoll and Mars Hill from the foundational years of the church plant. If we go over what early coverage and writers who interacted with the young Mark Driscoll had to say about him, we might come away with the impression that although the seeds for the Testosterone Gospel may have been planted, the earliest years of Mars Hill were not necessarily characterized by that Dude/Bro Gospel.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
so Driscoll said it was revealed to him "a trap has been set", but the potential threat of a RICO suit was publicized back on August 2014, and Mark said he agreed to the restoration plan so ... ?
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
on the resignation letter
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. [emphasis added]
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. ...
Now we've discussed this segment of audio plenty at Wenatchee The Hatchet in the last week. It is, alas, however a gift that keeps on giving for bewilderment and contradictions with earlier narratives ... or even within the narrative itself. We've discussed how Mark Driscoll said he both initiated the investigation into his fitness for ministry and said he would submit to the board's conclusions, and then thanks to the above account we're told he just up and decided to reneg on everything he said he'd agree to because he claims God told him ... a trap had been set.
But Mark Driscoll wouldn't have needed a divine missive to know there was the potential threat of a RICO suit. All Driscoll needed to do was read WORLD magazine.
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/07/changing_course
Mark Driscoll's publishers went back and revised various egregious citation errors in Driscoll's published work and, contrary to Mars Hill's own cease-and-desist scenario from 2011, nobody whose work Mark Driscoll may have potentially or actually infringed upon ever gave any indication of bringing suit. If we want to consult the actual Bible for examples of traps being set for leaders there's this trend of God setting traps to punish, humiliate or even kill corrupt and self-serving rulers who have abused God's people ... but let's not bore you with those details. It may suffice to say that one of the ways God has seen fit to trap and punish errant leadership is to send them a false prophecy, warn that the prophecy was false, and then let the errant leader go to his demise anyway. Ahab, anyone?
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/06/DriscollHillsong.mp4
on the resignation letter
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. [emphasis added]
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. ...
Now we've discussed this segment of audio plenty at Wenatchee The Hatchet in the last week. It is, alas, however a gift that keeps on giving for bewilderment and contradictions with earlier narratives ... or even within the narrative itself. We've discussed how Mark Driscoll said he both initiated the investigation into his fitness for ministry and said he would submit to the board's conclusions, and then thanks to the above account we're told he just up and decided to reneg on everything he said he'd agree to because he claims God told him ... a trap had been set.
But Mark Driscoll wouldn't have needed a divine missive to know there was the potential threat of a RICO suit. All Driscoll needed to do was read WORLD magazine.
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/07/changing_course
But in other ways, Driscoll’s critics charge, it’s business as usual. Just weeks after Driscoll’s public confession, the executive elders (Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner, and Dave Bruskas) surprised Mars Hill staff by announcing a new document retention policy that would destroy all staff emails more than three months old. The plan was dropped only after a group of former staff, elders, and members sent a letter to the church saying the new policy was an attempt to destroy documents that might be used in litigation against the church. The group’s attorney, Brian Fahling, asked the church to “preserve electronically stored information that may contain evidence” for legal action in which the church, Driscoll, and others in church leadership “will be named as defendants.” The letter lists anticipated litigation in the areas of “RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act], Fraud, Conspiracy, Libel, Slander, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.”
And it was the Board of Overseers or Board of Elders or both that Driscoll claimed said he was okay, not unfit for ministry, but needed a restoration plan. Driscoll said he agreed to submit to the restoration plan, so whatever the trap allegedly was can't have been THAT because by Driscoll's account you're supposed to do things in a godly way with a godly heart submitted to godly authority and, well, why would Driscoll doubt the Board(s)? Whatever the trap theoretically could have been it couldn't have been a RICO suit that may never even materialize anyway. Let's keep in mind that earlier this year Justin Dean taunted Rob Smith about having failed to produce a lawsuit for more than a year. Revisit this post for that.
Justin Dean publicly apologized to Rob Smith for having brought up either of those two things, by the way. Now the salient thing in this is this--Justin Dean couldn't have taunted Rob Smith about tax liens and having failed to produce a suit for more than a year in March 2015 if, as Mark Driscoll claimed, the people that were raising concerns and criticizing his ministry were doing so anonymously. Since when has Rob Smith been anonymous on the subject of Mark Driscoll or Mars Hill in the last five years, again? Since when has Joyful Exiles been anonymous? Since when was Wendy and Andy Alsup's critical review of Real Marriage anonymous? Wenatchee The Hatchet couldn't have gotten a certified letter from Ballard campus pastor Scott Harris in 2013 if Mars Hill didn't actually have any clue at all who they were dealing with online. Not only did Mars Hill leadership know who they were dealing with one of the small dramas within Mars Hill was figuring how many people were leaking content to Wenatchee The Hatchet. The more Driscoll tries to claim the confrontation from people online was anonymous the more bald the assertion becomes.
So, let's get back to whatever the alleged trap was that Driscoll claims the Lord revealed had been set.
"If" the trap God allegedly told Driscoll about had anything to do with RICO that wasn't something to resign over. If a person has read any of the coverage of what such a suit would likely entail if it ever even happens is that the suit would be against the officers and not the corporation. What that seems to mean is that regardless of resignation the suit wouldn't be against Mars Hill but it could conceivably include Driscoll as a defendant. So even "if" someone were to speculate that that was the trap, it couldn't possibly be escaped via resignation.
Mark Driscoll's publishers went back and revised various egregious citation errors in Driscoll's published work and, contrary to Mars Hill's own cease-and-desist scenario from 2011, nobody whose work Mark Driscoll may have potentially or actually infringed upon ever gave any indication of bringing suit. If we want to consult the actual Bible for examples of traps being set for leaders there's this trend of God setting traps to punish, humiliate or even kill corrupt and self-serving rulers who have abused God's people ... but let's not bore you with those details. It may suffice to say that one of the ways God has seen fit to trap and punish errant leadership is to send them a false prophecy, warn that the prophecy was false, and then let the errant leader go to his demise anyway. Ahab, anyone?
The trouble with Driscoll claiming to have heard a prophetic oracle that let him quit in defiance of his own pastoral counsel about submission to authority is that, well, THAT may have been the trap. Perhaps just as some preacher comes up with a theology as an excuse to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, perhaps in a vaguely comparable way a preacher can claim against his own history of preaching and teaching that even though YOU should submit to godly authority and not bail on the church like a dissatisfied consumer HE gets to go back on his word to his own board and apparently his own children to just go quit because, he claims, God audibly gave permission to him and his wife that they could quit. Too bad Grace Driscoll's never seen fit (or been given a chance?) to even explain what her side is. Then again, maybe Mark Driscoll's functional pastor didn't hear anything important enough from God to share it as a way of corroborating or expanding upon what Mark Driscoll told Brian Houston?
So for the time being there's as yet no plausible explanation of what the alleged "trap has been set" could be, let alone why that would constitute a plausible ground for a next-day resignation in direct contradiction of what Mark Driscoll claims he agreed to do with the Board or what he and his wife allegedly conveyed to their own children in the days prior to the formal resignation.
Unless we consider the idea that Mark resigning rather than submitting to the spiritual authority of the governing board WAS the trap, and if it was the trap, he totally fell for it.
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
Houston and Driscoll, an observation about the chaos the Driscoll resignation introduced for the family
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
Those of you who listened to the whole audio may recall that Mark Driscoll said it was a challenge for his kids, because they had spent their whole lives in the church, at Mars Hill. Now they aren't there.
The passivity of the language when Driscoll talks about the social lives of his kids is remarkable. After all, whose decision to resign membership and eldership at Mars Hill put the Driscoll kids in that situation? Mark Driscoll, obviously, and Grace Driscoll, slightly less obviously. When Driscoll has shared stories of exation involving his children it's actually easy to have some sympathy for them simply because when their dad makes the kinds of decisions he's described himself making, and that he made in the way he's described, it WOULD be confusing. By Driscoll's most recent account ...
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. ...
As you can see from this narrative what Mark and Grace Driscoll would have told their children, according to Mark Driscoll's most recent narrative, anyway, would have been drastically different from what reality turned out to be Monday, let alone Tuesday. Compare that to this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
Since by the new account the resignation letter was drafted, it seems, the very day the resignation was announced, there wouldn't have been time to notify the children of a decision that was taking shape the night before. The Thrive account mentions "things apparently were hacked" but there's never been any evidence anything of the sort occurred. If Mark Driscoll really drafted his resignation letter October 14, 2014 and sent it to the BoAA then it would be natural for the BoAA to disclose that resignation. The only thing that could be "relatively" sure about information within the leadership culture at Mars Hill was that there was informational hemorrhaging at almost every level. Wenatchee The Hatchet could write an entire post about the nature of the informational leaks that happened over the last ... few years ... but that's not interesting at the moment. What is interesting is that at the Thrive performance Mark Driscoll made it seem like the resignation "could" have been released by the Board sooner than expected and that, well, the implication that email or serves were hacked and there was no way for anything to get done without it being public is sidestepping a more obvious point.
When the president of Mars Hill resigned it was the resignation of the highest ranking legal officer in the corporation and it would have to be a matter of public record for state record purposes. It would also be news.
Driscoll told Houston "we never got to say goodbye". That's what the resignation letter already did. It turned out Mark Driscoll resigned from the only church he was eve ra member of, a church he co-founded back in 1995. He resigned after he had, as he told Houston, both initiated an investigation and agreed to submit to the findings of that investigation right up to the point that he heard some voice say "a trap has been set."
Was that voice worth resigning over? Was that voice worth actually or just potentially dismantling the social lives of the Driscoll children over? After all back in 2007 it wasn't unknown that the Driscolls and Petrys visiteded each other. When Munson's shunning edict came down it's not like that didn't establish as policy an ending of social interactions between families.
So if the latest Driscoll account is true (and it does seem to fit the Thrive narrative, more or less) then the Driscoll resignation comes across as impulsive and reactionary; it also comes across as a decision that flatly contradicted what Driscoll said he would agree to comply with. It's not difficult to imagine, as Driscoll said was a concern since the resignation, that there'd be some worry the Driscoll kids might be upset or resentful about their parents decision to bail on the church they helped plant that the kids grew up in.
And as Mark Driscoll used to teach about husbandly/fatherly headship, it means that it's your responsibility even if technically you'd say it wasn't really your fault. Regardless of whether Mark can claim God said " a trap has been set", it was Mark Driscoll who decided to interpret that as "we should quit" rather than to submit to the leadership he said he was going to submit to and see where things led.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/06/DriscollHillsong.mp4
Those of you who listened to the whole audio may recall that Mark Driscoll said it was a challenge for his kids, because they had spent their whole lives in the church, at Mars Hill. Now they aren't there.
The passivity of the language when Driscoll talks about the social lives of his kids is remarkable. After all, whose decision to resign membership and eldership at Mars Hill put the Driscoll kids in that situation? Mark Driscoll, obviously, and Grace Driscoll, slightly less obviously. When Driscoll has shared stories of exation involving his children it's actually easy to have some sympathy for them simply because when their dad makes the kinds of decisions he's described himself making, and that he made in the way he's described, it WOULD be confusing. By Driscoll's most recent account ...
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. ...
As you can see from this narrative what Mark and Grace Driscoll would have told their children, according to Mark Driscoll's most recent narrative, anyway, would have been drastically different from what reality turned out to be Monday, let alone Tuesday. Compare that to this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
Since by the new account the resignation letter was drafted, it seems, the very day the resignation was announced, there wouldn't have been time to notify the children of a decision that was taking shape the night before. The Thrive account mentions "things apparently were hacked" but there's never been any evidence anything of the sort occurred. If Mark Driscoll really drafted his resignation letter October 14, 2014 and sent it to the BoAA then it would be natural for the BoAA to disclose that resignation. The only thing that could be "relatively" sure about information within the leadership culture at Mars Hill was that there was informational hemorrhaging at almost every level. Wenatchee The Hatchet could write an entire post about the nature of the informational leaks that happened over the last ... few years ... but that's not interesting at the moment. What is interesting is that at the Thrive performance Mark Driscoll made it seem like the resignation "could" have been released by the Board sooner than expected and that, well, the implication that email or serves were hacked and there was no way for anything to get done without it being public is sidestepping a more obvious point.
When the president of Mars Hill resigned it was the resignation of the highest ranking legal officer in the corporation and it would have to be a matter of public record for state record purposes. It would also be news.
Driscoll told Houston "we never got to say goodbye". That's what the resignation letter already did. It turned out Mark Driscoll resigned from the only church he was eve ra member of, a church he co-founded back in 1995. He resigned after he had, as he told Houston, both initiated an investigation and agreed to submit to the findings of that investigation right up to the point that he heard some voice say "a trap has been set."
Was that voice worth resigning over? Was that voice worth actually or just potentially dismantling the social lives of the Driscoll children over? After all back in 2007 it wasn't unknown that the Driscolls and Petrys visiteded each other. When Munson's shunning edict came down it's not like that didn't establish as policy an ending of social interactions between families.
So if the latest Driscoll account is true (and it does seem to fit the Thrive narrative, more or less) then the Driscoll resignation comes across as impulsive and reactionary; it also comes across as a decision that flatly contradicted what Driscoll said he would agree to comply with. It's not difficult to imagine, as Driscoll said was a concern since the resignation, that there'd be some worry the Driscoll kids might be upset or resentful about their parents decision to bail on the church they helped plant that the kids grew up in.
And as Mark Driscoll used to teach about husbandly/fatherly headship, it means that it's your responsibility even if technically you'd say it wasn't really your fault. Regardless of whether Mark can claim God said " a trap has been set", it was Mark Driscoll who decided to interpret that as "we should quit" rather than to submit to the leadership he said he was going to submit to and see where things led.
Saturday, July 04, 2015
Chris Rosebrough on Driscoll repenting of criticizing Joel Osteen but not, apparently, apologizing for his stunt and spin at Strange Fire
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2015/07/driscoll-repents-for-criticizing-osteen.html
Driscoll may have (or may not have) reached out to Joel Osteen's camp and as yet nobody from Joel Osteen's crew has confirmed that this even happened. So given that Mark Driscoll told Christianity Today he and Grace were virgins before they started fornicating with each other; and given that Driscoll couldn't even remember there were, in fact, kids at the start of Mars Hill, it's increasingly difficult to believe how accurate or credible Mark Driscoll's stories about himself may actually be.
We can't forget, either, that Mars Hill PR asserted a relationship with Lifelong AIDs Alliance that turned out to not really exist, which The Stranger covered.
All that is to say that an Osteen-side confirmation that Mark Driscoll said or did anything is necessary in order for Driscoll's claim to even be believed at this point. Still, with that in mind, Rosebrough's point stands, if Mark Driscoll's been willing to make nice to a Joel Osteen he may have never met, has Driscoll apologized to John MacArthur and others for his stunt at Strange Fire?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
What Mark Driscoll decided to do in the wake of Strange Fire was invite MacArthur to talk with him, even though back in 2009 when MacArthur's side was actively reaching out to Driscoll he was snubbing them. Though it seems a bit clunky, let's revisit what Wenatchee The Hatchet has already written:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to.html
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to-resurgence-conference-asks-for-face-to-face-meeting-107447/
That's the Christian Post link for you there.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/10/25/see-you-in-seattle-pastor-john-macarthur
.. As a Bible preacher, I rejoice in that. I actually considered attending your school myself after I finished my undergraduate work, but I was newly married and could not afford any seminary at the time. [
...
As Bible teachers, we both know that people often arrive at the wrong conclusion when they extract a line out of an ongoing discussion, ignoring the context, and then wrongly impugn someone’s character. I am guessing the security team and pastoral team were not entirely rowing in the same direction, and that security thought they were just doing their job.
Mistakes happen. I understand. And since no one owes me anything, I am grateful I got to hang out for a bit and meet some of the pastoral staff and your son. I would’ve been glad to have met you as well.
Maybe that can still happen?
..
At this point, I believe what would honor Jesus is for us to sit down and talk. So, I am formally inviting you to Seattle to join me on stage for our national Resurgence Conference on November 5–6.
I will pay for your travel. I will give an honorarium to you or any ministry you choose. And, I will cover the travel costs of any of your pastoral staff you’d like join us, as I would actually like to see them again.
Originally, I was going to have a company live stream our conference online for people who paid an access fee, but I recently tore up that contract. We’re now going to show the conference free online for the world in an effort to open up our important discussion to as many people as possible. I would also post our discussion in its entirely—without any editing—for free online.
I am working as an unpaid volunteer for this event, and I believe the loss of live stream revenue is worth it for an investment in the Kingdom. I assure you, I will be very kind and gracious and respectful. Ours will be a dialogue on very important issues, and I pray by the Spirit’s power we can model some graciousness and clarify terms while striving to state what we believe to be biblical truth.
I believe this could be a very profitable discussion—especially for young leaders who will be tuning in to learn as we model how to handle disagreement. In our day when online misquoting and Internet flame throwing hinder real progress, I truly believe we have a great opportunity to model a different way of dealing with important issues for God’s glory.
So now there's a public invitation of an all expenses paid visit from Mark Driscoll to John MacArthur. As usual Driscoll talks about how single lines taken out of context can be used to impugn someone's character. But the thing about John MacArthur and Mark Driscoll is that the breach between Mark Driscoll and John MacArthur has been close to a decade in forming and when the shoe was on the other foot MacArthur has already publicly informed us that when it was his idea to get in touch with Driscoll to talk about disagreements Mark Driscoll had no interest.
There's nothing about MacArthur's criticism of the November 18, 2007 sermon in Scotland from Song of Songs that seemed to take any lines or even entire sermons of Mark Driscoll out of context. In fact Mark Driscoll mentioned somewhere or other that in light of criticisms of the sermon it seemed wise to take the sermon down. But let's let MacArthur speak for himself a bit.
http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/a399/the-rape-of-solomons-song-part-4
April 17, 2009
7. Why did you single out Driscoll and connect him with the "sex challenges"? Why call him out publicly? He has already repented of his unguarded speech, and he is being privately discipled by men like John Piper and C. J. Mahaney, who keep him accountable. Did you consult them before calling Driscoll out by name? If the problem is as serious as you claim, why haven't they said something publicly about it?
In the sermon that prompted this series, Mark Driscoll (speaking specifically to wives in the congregation) made several comments that were far, far worse than the seamiest sex challenges. Furthermore, Driscoll's edicts to married women were not mere "challenges" but directives buttressed with the claim that "Jesus Christ commands you to do [this]." That material has been online and freely circulated for more than a year. But you’ll be hard pressed to find even a single Web forum where anyone has demanded that Driscoll explain why he feels free to say such things publicly.
...
Nevertheless, I have written Mark privately with my concerns. He rejected my counsel. As a matter of fact, he preached the sermon I have been quoting from seven weeks after receiving my private letter encouraging him to take seriously the standard of holiness Scripture holds pastors to. Here is a small selection from the six-page letter I sent him ... [emphasis added]
So MacArthur has explained that he wrote to Mark Driscoll regarding some concerns and that, it seems on a plain reading, that Mark Driscoll preached the November 18, 2007 Scotland sermon on Song of Songs seven weeks AFTER receiving MacArthur's letter. Not only did Driscoll not have any interest in responding to MacArthur in 2007 he preached one of his racier sermons just a couple of months after getting the letter
***
So it looks like Mark Driscoll kept ignoring MacArthur's efforts to work out differences privately until the Strange Fire stunt. Then, all of a sudden, it was like Mark Driscoll suddenly cared what MacArthur thought enough to invite him. That MacArthur declined wouldn't have been a surprise at all. Why take someone seriously who spurned years of efforts to talk in private if he only makes a public offer to talk things out after he'd just been shown to have been dishonest about how a stunt he pulled crashing a cessationist conference turned out? It seems improbable that MacArthur or his crew would disagree with, say, a Gordon Fee the way they'd disagree with a Mark Driscoll. There's a scholarly consensus that Gordon Fee knows the biblical texts.
Of course if Mark Driscoll wants to talk about pastors he's reached out to who he may have harmed there are people far, far closer to home that should have been contacted by now.
Driscoll may have (or may not have) reached out to Joel Osteen's camp and as yet nobody from Joel Osteen's crew has confirmed that this even happened. So given that Mark Driscoll told Christianity Today he and Grace were virgins before they started fornicating with each other; and given that Driscoll couldn't even remember there were, in fact, kids at the start of Mars Hill, it's increasingly difficult to believe how accurate or credible Mark Driscoll's stories about himself may actually be.
We can't forget, either, that Mars Hill PR asserted a relationship with Lifelong AIDs Alliance that turned out to not really exist, which The Stranger covered.
All that is to say that an Osteen-side confirmation that Mark Driscoll said or did anything is necessary in order for Driscoll's claim to even be believed at this point. Still, with that in mind, Rosebrough's point stands, if Mark Driscoll's been willing to make nice to a Joel Osteen he may have never met, has Driscoll apologized to John MacArthur and others for his stunt at Strange Fire?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
What Mark Driscoll decided to do in the wake of Strange Fire was invite MacArthur to talk with him, even though back in 2009 when MacArthur's side was actively reaching out to Driscoll he was snubbing them. Though it seems a bit clunky, let's revisit what Wenatchee The Hatchet has already written:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to.html
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to-resurgence-conference-asks-for-face-to-face-meeting-107447/
That's the Christian Post link for you there.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/10/25/see-you-in-seattle-pastor-john-macarthur
.. As a Bible preacher, I rejoice in that. I actually considered attending your school myself after I finished my undergraduate work, but I was newly married and could not afford any seminary at the time. [
...
As Bible teachers, we both know that people often arrive at the wrong conclusion when they extract a line out of an ongoing discussion, ignoring the context, and then wrongly impugn someone’s character. I am guessing the security team and pastoral team were not entirely rowing in the same direction, and that security thought they were just doing their job.
Mistakes happen. I understand. And since no one owes me anything, I am grateful I got to hang out for a bit and meet some of the pastoral staff and your son. I would’ve been glad to have met you as well.
Maybe that can still happen?
..
At this point, I believe what would honor Jesus is for us to sit down and talk. So, I am formally inviting you to Seattle to join me on stage for our national Resurgence Conference on November 5–6.
I will pay for your travel. I will give an honorarium to you or any ministry you choose. And, I will cover the travel costs of any of your pastoral staff you’d like join us, as I would actually like to see them again.
Originally, I was going to have a company live stream our conference online for people who paid an access fee, but I recently tore up that contract. We’re now going to show the conference free online for the world in an effort to open up our important discussion to as many people as possible. I would also post our discussion in its entirely—without any editing—for free online.
I am working as an unpaid volunteer for this event, and I believe the loss of live stream revenue is worth it for an investment in the Kingdom. I assure you, I will be very kind and gracious and respectful. Ours will be a dialogue on very important issues, and I pray by the Spirit’s power we can model some graciousness and clarify terms while striving to state what we believe to be biblical truth.
I believe this could be a very profitable discussion—especially for young leaders who will be tuning in to learn as we model how to handle disagreement. In our day when online misquoting and Internet flame throwing hinder real progress, I truly believe we have a great opportunity to model a different way of dealing with important issues for God’s glory.
So now there's a public invitation of an all expenses paid visit from Mark Driscoll to John MacArthur. As usual Driscoll talks about how single lines taken out of context can be used to impugn someone's character. But the thing about John MacArthur and Mark Driscoll is that the breach between Mark Driscoll and John MacArthur has been close to a decade in forming and when the shoe was on the other foot MacArthur has already publicly informed us that when it was his idea to get in touch with Driscoll to talk about disagreements Mark Driscoll had no interest.
There's nothing about MacArthur's criticism of the November 18, 2007 sermon in Scotland from Song of Songs that seemed to take any lines or even entire sermons of Mark Driscoll out of context. In fact Mark Driscoll mentioned somewhere or other that in light of criticisms of the sermon it seemed wise to take the sermon down. But let's let MacArthur speak for himself a bit.
http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/a399/the-rape-of-solomons-song-part-4
April 17, 2009
7. Why did you single out Driscoll and connect him with the "sex challenges"? Why call him out publicly? He has already repented of his unguarded speech, and he is being privately discipled by men like John Piper and C. J. Mahaney, who keep him accountable. Did you consult them before calling Driscoll out by name? If the problem is as serious as you claim, why haven't they said something publicly about it?
In the sermon that prompted this series, Mark Driscoll (speaking specifically to wives in the congregation) made several comments that were far, far worse than the seamiest sex challenges. Furthermore, Driscoll's edicts to married women were not mere "challenges" but directives buttressed with the claim that "Jesus Christ commands you to do [this]." That material has been online and freely circulated for more than a year. But you’ll be hard pressed to find even a single Web forum where anyone has demanded that Driscoll explain why he feels free to say such things publicly.
...
Nevertheless, I have written Mark privately with my concerns. He rejected my counsel. As a matter of fact, he preached the sermon I have been quoting from seven weeks after receiving my private letter encouraging him to take seriously the standard of holiness Scripture holds pastors to. Here is a small selection from the six-page letter I sent him ... [emphasis added]
So MacArthur has explained that he wrote to Mark Driscoll regarding some concerns and that, it seems on a plain reading, that Mark Driscoll preached the November 18, 2007 Scotland sermon on Song of Songs seven weeks AFTER receiving MacArthur's letter. Not only did Driscoll not have any interest in responding to MacArthur in 2007 he preached one of his racier sermons just a couple of months after getting the letter
***
So it looks like Mark Driscoll kept ignoring MacArthur's efforts to work out differences privately until the Strange Fire stunt. Then, all of a sudden, it was like Mark Driscoll suddenly cared what MacArthur thought enough to invite him. That MacArthur declined wouldn't have been a surprise at all. Why take someone seriously who spurned years of efforts to talk in private if he only makes a public offer to talk things out after he'd just been shown to have been dishonest about how a stunt he pulled crashing a cessationist conference turned out? It seems improbable that MacArthur or his crew would disagree with, say, a Gordon Fee the way they'd disagree with a Mark Driscoll. There's a scholarly consensus that Gordon Fee knows the biblical texts.
Of course if Mark Driscoll wants to talk about pastors he's reached out to who he may have harmed there are people far, far closer to home that should have been contacted by now.
Driscoll to Houston, "there was an internal governance struggle". This only showed up in Driscoll's account after Sutton Turner said for the record the BoAA wanted to scapegoat him alone for the PR problem of Result Source
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
on the resignation letter, this is a transcript of the audio, though thanks to coughing people and garbled voices and murmurs it's not always easy to make out every last little syllable. There may be some inaccuracies but the audio link is available. Transcription is not necessarily one of Wenatchee The Hatchet's great gifts.
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."
It's kind of amazing that Mark Driscoll only saw fit to mention that there was an internal governance struggle in the last week but not mention anything as to what it might have been about. The reason it's so bad that that's how Driscoll broached the topic of a split within top level Mars Hill leadership is Sutton Turner has explained that there was a situation here the Board was split, and it was over whether or not to scapegoat him alone over the Result Source controversy. Why would that be a problem? Well, according to Sutton Turner, he voiced an objection to the effectiveness and rightness of the Result Source campaign being used at all. He signed the contract anyway because, as he claimed, if he didn't sign it someone else would have signed it. But then when news hit the internet if Turner HADN'T signed it then it would have been impossible for him to have been a scapegoat candidate. Wenatchee The Hatchet discussed the statements of Turner at the following blog post, with relevant quotes:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/turners-account-of-how-he-signed-result.html
http://investyourgifts.com/resultsource1/
Posted by Sutton Turner on April 20, 2015
...
In July 2011, a new marketing proposal was already in the works at Mars Hill: ResultSource. I learned of the project from the manager who was overseeing it. ResultSource was a marketing practice that purchased books through small individual bookstores that would qualify the book for the New York Times Best Seller List. Then, these books would be shipped to Mars Hill and sold in our nine church bookstores. It was proposed that being listed on the New York Times Best Seller List would increase the awareness of the church, support the upcoming sermon series, and increase church size.
I had a couple of meetings with the manager who was working on this project and at the time he stated his concern with the marketing proposal. I was not invited to any meetings to discuss ResultSource in my role as General Manager overseeing finance. However, I wrote several memos to my supervisor sharing my concern and lack of support for this marketing practice. I was relatively new to the staff and obviously not on the Board of Directors, nor was I asked to be a part of this particular decision. But due to my adamant disagreement and desire to best serve the staff and church, I wrote a memo on August 26, 2011 to my supervisor saying the following:
•The plan was poor stewardship.
•If the plan were to be revealed, it would look poorly on the stewardship of Mars Hill Church.
•If the plan were to be revealed, it would look poorly on Pastor Mark Driscoll.
A week later, I was notified that my advice was not taken and the plan to use ResultSource was approved. I don’t know who approved the plan. I don’t know what process was conducted concerning the decision. I do know that it showed that the process of making big decisions was broken and it needed to be fixed.
...
Shortly after the decision to execute the ResultSource marketing plan was made, my supervisor resigned. After him, I was the highest-ranking employee in administration. The decision had been made but the contract hadn’t yet been signed. On October 13, 2011, I signed the ResultSource contract as General Manager a full month before being installed as an Executive Elder. After signing the contract, I emailed an elder, stating my frustration with having to be the one to sign the contract when I had voiced my disagreement with it. But few in the organization (or in the media since then) knew of my disagreement. When you stay in an organization and you do not agree with a decision, you have to own that decision as your own. Unfortunately, I will always be linked to ResultSource since my name was on the contract even though I thought it was a bad idea. If given the same opportunity again, I would not sign the ResultSource contract, but honestly, my missing signature would not have stopped it. Someone else would have signed it anyway since the decision had already been made.
To date Turner has not explained why he had to be the one to sign the contract. He would not have been the highest ranking officer ... although in the wake of Munson's resignation he could have been the highest ranking employee in the organization. But under Munson's bylaws (or Driscoll's, we've discussed the ambiguity of whose creation the 2007 bylaws ultimately was over here earlier this week) if Munson resigned as president the vice president was the preaching pastor, Mark Driscoll.
Still, there's a sense in which we should remember that Turner describes himself as willing to comply with policies he disagreed with. So in a sense while his name will always be attached to the Result Source Contract we should move forward a bit.
http://investyourgifts.com/learning-growing-communicating-under-criticism/
Posted by Sutton Turner on April 24, 2015
...
When the criticism of Mars Hill Global began in the Spring of 2014, I wanted to communicate about what happened with Global, its history, the financials, and my mistakes. Unfortunately, I was not permitted to discuss these things just as I was not permitted to discuss the ResultSource situation in the detail that I felt it deserved. There was actually a division on the Board of Advisors and Accountability (BOAA) as some men wanted to put all the blame for both Global and ResultSource on me, but I am thankful for men who did not allow that. [emphasis added]
Eight difficult, grievous months have passed since I resigned; four sad, yet hopeful months have passed since Mars Hill held its last service. I began to work on each of these topics through blog posts several months ago with the wisdom, counsel, prayer, and blessing of many friends who are former elders and staff members at Mars Hill.
***
So if Mark Driscoll just lately decided to share there was an internal struggle on the board (whichever board that was) but not explain what it was Sutton Turner's account is more specific about what and when. Of course had Mark Driscoll not decided, as president of Mars Hill around the time the Result Source contract got signed, that the contract was a great way to promote Real Marriage, the internal struggle he seems to merely allude to which may have been what Turner described could not have taken place.
If Driscoll were one of the men who did not want Sutton Turner scapegoated we'll never know. Then again, considering that Mark Driscoll told Christianity Today he and Grace were both virgins when they met in contradiction to the testimony of Real Marriage itself ... .
Friday, July 03, 2015
Mark Driscoll explained to Brian Houston how he submitted to a plan and then how God told him a trap had been set; yet last year Driscoll preached "You can't just pull out the `God told me' card."
The Brian Houston interview 2015
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
on the resignation letter
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. ...
The first thing to notice is the "I invited" part, because in this new account Mark Driscoll says he invited the Board to investigate him. That presents the decision as one he initiated and he explicitly said he told the Board he would submit to the results they came up with.
Then notice that Driscoll explained that he and Grace told the Driscoll kids they'd agreed with a plan set up by the Board.
It becomes easy to reconcile the Thrive narrative with the Houston interview on the point of how the Driscolls did not have time to notify the kids of the resignation thanks to this recent narrative. After all, by Mark Driscoll's account he said he agreed to submit to the restoration plan and Grace was with him. They assented to the restoration plan and then on Monday Mark claims he heard from God and God is alleged to have said "a trap has been set". So Mark and Grace Driscoll sleep on it and on Tuesday conclude they still believe they should resign from ministry at Mars Hill, write a letter, and this letter was released by the Board the day it was submitted.
Now it's curious that Mark describes that both he and Grace resigned from ministry at Mars Hill. Why was it both? Grace wasn't a charter member listed on articles of incorporation for the corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Fellowship was she? Because that's practically the only way to make sense of why Mark Driscoll would say they BOTH felt released from ministry or that they ought to resign.
Notice that in this account Driscoll never says what God said to Grace. In the earlier Thrive performance Driscoll said God audibly spoke to both of them and released them from ministry but in this Houston interview account the story is Mark said God said a trap had been set and ... we never get to hear what God is alleged to have said to Grace Driscoll. In this new narrative it's not even clear that Mark was interested in finding out what Grace said God told her.
Instead Mark Driscoll highlights that they wrote a letter and sent it Tuesday.
So what was "a trap" that had been set? It's never clear what even could have been a trap. Mark Driscoll's story has kept shifting from the resignation letter itself, which seemed to state that the Driscolls did an informal poll of men and women across the country, decided that it was best to quit, and then quit Mars Hill; through to the Robert Morris "I advised Mark to quit" story; through to the 2015 stories about God releasing Mark and Grace Driscoll from responsibility to ministry. Observe ...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
But as this narrative cements in detail and substance here's what it constitutes--Mark Driscoll claimed that both he and his wife agreed to submit to the restoration plan and that on the week of his birthday. Then on Monday, apparently the day before the resignation was tendered, Mark claims God told him he was released. But the new account doesn't really work all that hard to emphasize senior pastor Jesus stuff. It's just Mark heard "a trap has been set." What trap? Submitting to the spiritual authority of the leaders? And as for invoking "God told me" had not Mark Driscoll that same year advised the congregations of Mars Hill to view such sweeping invocations of divine permission with some skepticism?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-early-may-2014-driscoll-advises-to.html
EMPOWERED BY THE SPIRIT FOR MINISTRY
Pastor Mark Driscoll
ACTS (5:12-42)
May 04, 2014
http://marshill.com/media/acts-chapters-6-11-empowered-for-jesus-mission/acts-12-6-1-7
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_sd_audio.mp3
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_vodcast.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_tv_sd_progressive.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_tv_hd_progressive.m4v
http://marshill.com/en/transcript/acts-chapters-6-11-empowered-for-jesus-mission/acts-12-6-1-7
41:26ish
...
So I want to be careful with this because this can be an opportunity for spiritual abuse. Because sometimes people say, “God told me.” Well, we’ll see, OK? You can’t just pull out the “God told me” card. [emphasis added] Ladies, let’s say you meet a guy and the guy says, “God told me to marry you.” “Interesting, he didn’t tell me or my dad, you know, so I don’t have to just assume that because you say the Lord says that the Lord in fact has spoken.”
You need to be very careful. Somebody comes along, “God told me to plant a church.” Let’s check that. All right, you can’t—I mean, 1 Corinthians 14 is clear. If you think you got a word from the Lord, you’ve got to check it by the leaders. So what we’re looking for, if you believe God has told you something, especially to do something that is difficult like this, we’re looking for a godly person—Peter’s a godly person. In godly community—it says he’s with the apostles, they’re all agreed. Under godly authority—they all agree on this. With a godly motive—to talk about Jesus. Doing a godly thing—wanting to minister to people. In a godly way—by being open in public and not hiding anything. So if you believe the Lord has told you something, he may have, but I would ask, “Are you a godly person in godly community under godly authority with a godly motive doing a godly thing in a godly way?” ... [emphasis added]
The new narrative may sound peachy to a Brian Houston but this actually exacerbates the problem in Driscoll's credibility. Mark Driscoll has now said that he and Grace agreed to cooperate with the restoration plan and come back as volunteers. That begs for further clarification from Mars Hill leadership if Kerry Dodd and Caleb Walters or anyone else within Mars Hill corporate leadership is willing to clear things up. Claiming God released the Driscolls from responsibility to ministry increasingly looks like a last second impulsive decision made in the wake of the Driscolls agreeing to the restoration plan. In this new narrative, in fact, it would explain that the reason the Driscoll kids did not know their dad had resigned was because Mark had not told any of the kids yet and the letter may have been drafted and sent by Driscoll THE DAY HE RESIGNED.
Notice, too, that by Mark Driscoll's account he had explained to the children a day or so earlier that he was agreeing to comply with the restoration plan the Board had said would be in place.
Whatever God allegedly said to the Driscolls it's remarkable that for as many decades as Mark Driscoll invoked an audible divine commission to marry Grace, teach the Bible, train men and plant churches the initial resignation letter mentions no divine audible command, just what looks like an ad hoc informal committee of godly men and women. Robert Morris said he told Mark to step aside a while in 2014, and Mars Hill confirmed the unexpected and disappointing nature of the resignation, but it wasn't until 2015 the "God said I could quit" narrative emerged.
There's very little evidence that the more Mark Driscoll unveils about how and why he quit, most of all when he invokes a "God told me" narrative, that he's morally congruent with his own teaching to the people of Mars Hill on that subject. Mark Driscoll told Brian Houston he invited the Board to investigate him, agreed to submit to their restoration plan and then, on a Monday, claims God said "a trap has been set" and then Mark Driscoll's conclusion was he had to resign.
Hey, think about that a minute. In this new story Mark doesn't really say God told him to quit. He says he heard "a trap has been set" and something about how there's now way they could return to leadership at Mars Hill ... but that's not the same thing as claiming God audibly told Mark and Grace separately they were released from responsibility to do ministry at Mars Hill. In fact in this new narrative Grace Driscoll never even gets to say what it was she believed God told her. Mark declares the necessity of resignation and then recounts Grace falling to her knees and sobbing.
As for Grace, she never said a thing to expand upon or corroborate this narrative. Driscoll did all the talking. Grace seemed to say things that could have come across as verbal cues of some kind explicable only to the Driscolls, but even though Houston interviewed both of them, in principle, practically the story was entirely Driscoll's.
So now it could be Mark Driscoll quit ministry over "a trap has been set" stuff, and that this was not in fact much indication the Driscolls were actually released from ministry.
There's something else but that warrants a separate post.
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
on the resignation letter
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 [emphasis added] anybody, anything, and we would 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 I was to come back as a volunteer. [emphasis added]
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. ...
The first thing to notice is the "I invited" part, because in this new account Mark Driscoll says he invited the Board to investigate him. That presents the decision as one he initiated and he explicitly said he told the Board he would submit to the results they came up with.
Then notice that Driscoll explained that he and Grace told the Driscoll kids they'd agreed with a plan set up by the Board.
It becomes easy to reconcile the Thrive narrative with the Houston interview on the point of how the Driscolls did not have time to notify the kids of the resignation thanks to this recent narrative. After all, by Mark Driscoll's account he said he agreed to submit to the restoration plan and Grace was with him. They assented to the restoration plan and then on Monday Mark claims he heard from God and God is alleged to have said "a trap has been set". So Mark and Grace Driscoll sleep on it and on Tuesday conclude they still believe they should resign from ministry at Mars Hill, write a letter, and this letter was released by the Board the day it was submitted.
Now it's curious that Mark describes that both he and Grace resigned from ministry at Mars Hill. Why was it both? Grace wasn't a charter member listed on articles of incorporation for the corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Fellowship was she? Because that's practically the only way to make sense of why Mark Driscoll would say they BOTH felt released from ministry or that they ought to resign.
Notice that in this account Driscoll never says what God said to Grace. In the earlier Thrive performance Driscoll said God audibly spoke to both of them and released them from ministry but in this Houston interview account the story is Mark said God said a trap had been set and ... we never get to hear what God is alleged to have said to Grace Driscoll. In this new narrative it's not even clear that Mark was interested in finding out what Grace said God told her.
Instead Mark Driscoll highlights that they wrote a letter and sent it Tuesday.
So what was "a trap" that had been set? It's never clear what even could have been a trap. Mark Driscoll's story has kept shifting from the resignation letter itself, which seemed to state that the Driscolls did an informal poll of men and women across the country, decided that it was best to quit, and then quit Mars Hill; through to the Robert Morris "I advised Mark to quit" story; through to the 2015 stories about God releasing Mark and Grace Driscoll from responsibility to ministry. Observe ...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
But as this narrative cements in detail and substance here's what it constitutes--Mark Driscoll claimed that both he and his wife agreed to submit to the restoration plan and that on the week of his birthday. Then on Monday, apparently the day before the resignation was tendered, Mark claims God told him he was released. But the new account doesn't really work all that hard to emphasize senior pastor Jesus stuff. It's just Mark heard "a trap has been set." What trap? Submitting to the spiritual authority of the leaders? And as for invoking "God told me" had not Mark Driscoll that same year advised the congregations of Mars Hill to view such sweeping invocations of divine permission with some skepticism?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-early-may-2014-driscoll-advises-to.html
EMPOWERED BY THE SPIRIT FOR MINISTRY
Pastor Mark Driscoll
ACTS (5:12-42)
May 04, 2014
http://marshill.com/media/acts-chapters-6-11-empowered-for-jesus-mission/acts-12-6-1-7
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_sd_audio.mp3
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_vodcast.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_tv_sd_progressive.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2014/05/04/20140504_acts-12-6-1-7_tv_hd_progressive.m4v
http://marshill.com/en/transcript/acts-chapters-6-11-empowered-for-jesus-mission/acts-12-6-1-7
41:26ish
...
So I want to be careful with this because this can be an opportunity for spiritual abuse. Because sometimes people say, “God told me.” Well, we’ll see, OK? You can’t just pull out the “God told me” card. [emphasis added] Ladies, let’s say you meet a guy and the guy says, “God told me to marry you.” “Interesting, he didn’t tell me or my dad, you know, so I don’t have to just assume that because you say the Lord says that the Lord in fact has spoken.”
You need to be very careful. Somebody comes along, “God told me to plant a church.” Let’s check that. All right, you can’t—I mean, 1 Corinthians 14 is clear. If you think you got a word from the Lord, you’ve got to check it by the leaders. So what we’re looking for, if you believe God has told you something, especially to do something that is difficult like this, we’re looking for a godly person—Peter’s a godly person. In godly community—it says he’s with the apostles, they’re all agreed. Under godly authority—they all agree on this. With a godly motive—to talk about Jesus. Doing a godly thing—wanting to minister to people. In a godly way—by being open in public and not hiding anything. So if you believe the Lord has told you something, he may have, but I would ask, “Are you a godly person in godly community under godly authority with a godly motive doing a godly thing in a godly way?” ... [emphasis added]
The new narrative may sound peachy to a Brian Houston but this actually exacerbates the problem in Driscoll's credibility. Mark Driscoll has now said that he and Grace agreed to cooperate with the restoration plan and come back as volunteers. That begs for further clarification from Mars Hill leadership if Kerry Dodd and Caleb Walters or anyone else within Mars Hill corporate leadership is willing to clear things up. Claiming God released the Driscolls from responsibility to ministry increasingly looks like a last second impulsive decision made in the wake of the Driscolls agreeing to the restoration plan. In this new narrative, in fact, it would explain that the reason the Driscoll kids did not know their dad had resigned was because Mark had not told any of the kids yet and the letter may have been drafted and sent by Driscoll THE DAY HE RESIGNED.
Notice, too, that by Mark Driscoll's account he had explained to the children a day or so earlier that he was agreeing to comply with the restoration plan the Board had said would be in place.
Whatever God allegedly said to the Driscolls it's remarkable that for as many decades as Mark Driscoll invoked an audible divine commission to marry Grace, teach the Bible, train men and plant churches the initial resignation letter mentions no divine audible command, just what looks like an ad hoc informal committee of godly men and women. Robert Morris said he told Mark to step aside a while in 2014, and Mars Hill confirmed the unexpected and disappointing nature of the resignation, but it wasn't until 2015 the "God said I could quit" narrative emerged.
There's very little evidence that the more Mark Driscoll unveils about how and why he quit, most of all when he invokes a "God told me" narrative, that he's morally congruent with his own teaching to the people of Mars Hill on that subject. Mark Driscoll told Brian Houston he invited the Board to investigate him, agreed to submit to their restoration plan and then, on a Monday, claims God said "a trap has been set" and then Mark Driscoll's conclusion was he had to resign.
Hey, think about that a minute. In this new story Mark doesn't really say God told him to quit. He says he heard "a trap has been set" and something about how there's now way they could return to leadership at Mars Hill ... but that's not the same thing as claiming God audibly told Mark and Grace separately they were released from responsibility to do ministry at Mars Hill. In fact in this new narrative Grace Driscoll never even gets to say what it was she believed God told her. Mark declares the necessity of resignation and then recounts Grace falling to her knees and sobbing.
As for Grace, she never said a thing to expand upon or corroborate this narrative. Driscoll did all the talking. Grace seemed to say things that could have come across as verbal cues of some kind explicable only to the Driscolls, but even though Houston interviewed both of them, in principle, practically the story was entirely Driscoll's.
So now it could be Mark Driscoll quit ministry over "a trap has been set" stuff, and that this was not in fact much indication the Driscolls were actually released from ministry.
There's something else but that warrants a separate post.
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