John MacArthur dead at 86

Having spent my formative years at Assemblies of God churches MacArthur's Charismatic Chaos never won me over. In later editions of the book he even conceded that Gordon Fee was a capable New Testament scholar. MacArthur is reported as having died at the age of 86. Depending on who's covering the death he's described as an "evangelical" or as a "fundamentalist" (the latter is probably just as accurate and if he retained his futurist dispensationalist eschatology then "fundamentalist" would be even more accurate in the "old school" sense of the term "fundamentalist").

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/07/died-john-macarthur-study-bible-expository-preaching-controversy/

https://baptistnews.com/article/evangelical-firebrand-john-macarthur-dead-at-86/

after Jake Meador's "The Therapeutic, Ctd": the sword of the therapeutic, the sword of the spirit, and how the former can be wielded by those accused of misusing the latter-exhibit A: post-Mars Hill Mark Driscoll

https://blogs.mereorthodoxy.com/jake/the-therapeutic-ctd/

Last year we raised a number of concerns about the ubiquity of therapeutic discourse within the evangelical movement.

In particular, a number of writers associated with Mere O, including myself, are alarmed by two things in particular:

• First, the ways in which therapeutic techniques seem to be replacing Christian discipleship as the means for pursuing personal growth.
• Second, with the ways in which categories of mental health and wellness seem to be replacing Christian maturity as the chief end of that growth.

And so when I see projects like this and language like this, well, I think my friends and I are rather vindicated in those concerns:

With the help of the Enneagram, powered by the gospel, you can experience transformation.

04. Be Transformed
And finally! You’re on your way to transforming your life and relationships.

In some sense, many of the people falling into these habits of thought have been somewhat ill-served by the church. We are now 40 years into the seeker-sensitive liturgical experiment and the results, with regards to discipleship and catechesis, have been fairly abysmal. If our churches have behaved as if “Christian discipleship” largely consists of “holding the right ideas in your head” and “consuming the right content,” then it isn’t terribly surprising that many Christians would encounter the difficulties of life and feel radically unprepared for them. Their churches didn’t teach them to expect suffering, didn’t give them models for resilience and dependence on God, and didn’t provide practical guidance in mortifying sin and offering oneself up to God. So of course we now have many Christian people who are a bit at sea, particularly given how chaotic, angry, and uncertain this cultural moment has become. In such a scenario, techniques like the enneagram have an obvious appeal.

And yet the way of imagining the Christian life as conceived by this particular sort of approach to the enneagram seems hopelessly compromised to me. For 2000 years Christians have seen transformation through the Gospel without availing themselves of the enneagram. They have endured torture, persecution, the loss of family and status, and much else besides and have done it all without the aid of modern therapeutic technique. So while I understand that the failures of the attractional model created a vacuum that therapeutic technique has rushed in to fill, I also know that the cost of allowing therapeutic technique to persist in this work is far too high.

What is that cost, exactly? The cost is that the people of God would forget how to understand themselves using the language that the people of God have always used. ...

[5:07 pm, date of publication--I just got this idea that Meador may want to, if he hasn't already, go through Ephraim Radner's A Profound Ignorance for the trajectory of how Christianity in the West dropped talk of martyrdom and discipleship in favor of personal triumph over adversity via pneumatology. Nobody in the post-seeker-sensitive milieu may embody the doctrinal and ethical vices of what Radner called the "pneumatic man" quite like the guy who used to head up a megachurch here in Seattle since he bailed on Seattle, but I"m getting ahead of myself after the fact]

Having gone my whole life until a year or so ago having never heard of the Enneagram I have to admit that it’s a challenge to understand what people use it for and why Christian writers would balk at what sounds like a variation on the Meyers Briggs Temperament Index which itself was openly indebted to the four temperaments of Hellenistic speculative thought and philosophy.  The point I'm going to make will, as usual for me, take a while, and it springs off of some of Meador's concerns.

that Josh Butler incident ... product shilling and well-poisoning are the business as usual

The first and most jaded thing that comes to mind is there's always an opportunity any time The Gospel Coalition publishes something provocative for people to plug for books.

Julie Roys: The Prosperous Lifestyle of America’s Anti-Prosperity Gospel Preacher [John MacArthur for those who don't already know the name]

https://julieroys.com/prosperous-lifestyle-americas-anti-prosperity-gospel-preacher/

For decades, John MacArthur has railed on prosperity preachers, likening them to  “greed mongerers” who led First Century cults. 

Recently, he’s also taken aim at scandal-plagued evangelical leaders, like the late apologist Ravi Zacharias and former Hillsong Pastor Carl Lentz, saying these celebrities were in ministry only for the money. That’s why “liars and frauds and false teachers” are in business, MacArthur said in a recent sermon. “False teachers always do it for the same reason—filthy lucre, money.” 

Yet according to financial statements and tax forms obtained by The Roys Report, John MacArthur and his family preside over a religious media and educational empire that has over $130 million in assets and generates more than $70 million a year in tax-free revenue.

So ... more than Joel Osteen, apparently.

revisiting a Driscoll invitation past, comparing the 2013 post-Strange Fire invitation MD gave John MacArthur in light of ignoring MacArthur up through 2009

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html

Driscoll's decision to reach out in an apologetic way to Joel Osteen because he claimed God convicted him raises another question.  Would Driscoll apologize to John MacArthur?  After all Mark Driscoll and the executive elders and James MacDonald went to the trouble of crashing the Strange Fire conference.

Wenatchee the Hatchet discussed the Driscoll invitation back in October 2013 at some length. It's something to revisit as Driscoll's gotten in front of a camera this year to talk about how God allegedly convicted him to apologize to a man he denounced for teaching problematic doctrine in 2007, but has not gotten around to sounding off on whether or not maybe his whole approach to Strange Fire was a bad idea.

The ease with which Driscoll has abandoned any links to his "tribe" in the Reformed world is not really striking.  Driscoll got lumped into the "Reformed" camp because he used enough jargon that journalists lumped him into that camp.  Driscoll's described himself as a Calvinist but his approach to ecclesiology and sacraments don't indicate he's ever been Reformed overall. He's described himself as a "charismatic with a seatbelt" but prior to about 2002 he'd consider himself basically leaning more toward the cessationist position.  He began to talk more like a charismatic moving forward from circa 2005.  That may or may not also have been the process through which governance became more formal and consolidated while he was still legal president of the corporation. 

Well, anyway, here's the old post discussing Driscoll's public invitation to MacArthur to talk things out after Driscoll spent years stonewalling MacArthur when it was MacArthur reaching out to Driscoll.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to.html


Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006page 190
Why is no one speaking in tongues during the church service?The issue of tongues is very controversial. and divisive in many churches, and thankfully it has never been so at Mars Hill. The elders do not believe the gift of tongues has ceased but believe tht it is often not done in a biblical way. Mars Hill has leaders and members who speak in tongues, as well as leaders and members who do not. What Paul does forbid regarding tongues, however, is speaking in tongues out loud during a church service because visitors and non-Christians will not know what is being said, will think we are nutjobs, and would be better served by convicting Bible teaching so they can get saved (1 Cor 14:12-25)
It's important to establish as deep background for the current situation that Mark Driscoll himself said that nobody speaks in tongues out loud in services at Mars Hill because it is considered an unbiblical use of tongues.  This means that MacArthur's polemic against charismatic/continuationist teaching and church practice is all but irrelevant to how an actual Mars Hill Church service probably still operates.  Whether or not Driscoll can be said to have properly or adequately exegeted 1 Corinthians 14 is interesting but currently irrelevant.

So just a couple of days ago Mark Driscoll made a very public invitation to one John MacArthur

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. 

Currently Mars Hill has thrown down the gauntlet to Sound Transit over real estate Sound Transit has already bought that Mars Hill would like to use to, among other things, start a Bible college and to relocate its central headquarters.  Mark Driscoll also has a new book out that includes him musing on how he keeps taking potshots for things people assume he said that he didn't say or that were taken out of context.

MacArthur simply isn't one of those people about whom it could be said "he took Driscoll out of context".  If a rejoinder to MacArthur's criticism were that simple why did Driscoll's team take down the Scotland sermon?  For that matter what was the reason Mars Hill excised the woodchipper anecdote from "The Man" after Wendy Alsup quoted from it in her review of Real Marriage in early 2012?  Precisely what was Driscoll referring to in the "Fathers and Fighting" sermon if not to elders?

Chris Rosebrough broadcast an audio clip of Mark Driscoll talking about "a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus" from an Acts 29 event of some sort that was quite possibly never made publicly available. We've visited this topic earlier.  At this point there is documentable evidence that Mark Driscoll and his team have suppressed or withheld statements about some of his controversial decisions and stances in the past.  MacArthur may have ideas or views that are disagreeable to some but he has, it seems, been pretty public about what and why he dissents from Mark Driscoll's teaching and conduct. 

As we've seen this includes MacArthur's public statement that Mark Driscoll not only refused to respond to him years ago but that the Scotland sermon postdated MacArthur's private efforts to talk with Driscoll.  Mark Driscoll, for his part, opens his recent open invitation with some profession of admiration for MacArthur, mentioning that he considered going to MacArthur's seminary at one point, and saying that he's never publicly said anything bad about MacArthur despite some differences.  Well, so what?  "There's a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus ... " wasn't broadcast to the world and that doesn't mean it was misquoted or taken out of context.  It also makes it hard to dispute the claim that Mark Driscoll is a person who will have it his way or people get thrown off and under the bus. 

The big question Driscoll has to answer at this point is why he only deigns to offer a public all-expenses paid invitation to John MacArthur NOW when MacArthur was privately contacting him years ago.  Let Driscoll's team put the November 18, 2007 Scotland sermon back online where anyone and everyone can listen to it and find out what MacArthur was even responding to and then "maybe" the new invitation will have something to it.  Until then it could be alleged by critics of Mars Hill in general and Mark Driscoll in particular that Mark Driscoll only wants to respond to or recognize MacArthur's criticisms of Driscoll's character and textual interpretation on Mark Driscoll's terms.

POSTSCRIPT: 10-28-2013
http://mennoknight.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-over-to-his-conference-kinda/

The blogger linked to above suspects the whole thing smells like a PR stunt and points out some practical reasons why the offer couldn't be accepted and that Driscoll probably already knew the offer couldn't/wouldn't be accepted.  But making the public offer is great PR and looks sincere to people who haven't been paying attention.  Even if it is sincere the blogger's case that the timing of the invitation is pretty stupid remains.

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. 

revisiting the time where Mark Driscoll crashed the Strange Fire conference, who are these guys?

Last year Mark Driscoll crashed the Strange Fire conference.  It got a little discussion here and there on the internet but most notably over at this spot.

http://www.parkingspace23.com/open-letter-mark-driscoll/

But there's something else that hasn't gotten quite as much attention as might be warranted.  Who are these guys?

Were these ... Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas?  You know, the executive elders who are part of the Board of Advisors and Accountability? Were these two guys outlined in red and blue them?  Because ... well ... if Turner and Bruskas were right there with Mark Driscoll when he crashed the Strange Fire conference and tweeted about his books allegedly being confiscated by security they were ... right ... there? 

If this was the case then in addition to Turner having signed the Result Source Inc contract that rigged a place on the NYT bestseller list for Real Marriage (a book that turned out to have plagiarized  material from Dan Allender's The Wounded Heart) then people like Turner and Bruskas have not only not done a particularly compelling job publicly reining in Driscoll's lesser stunts they may have actually been caught on video as participants with Driscoll in one of his more attention-grabbing stunts from the last 12 months. 

Well ... they kind of look like these guys. 

If there's anything about Mars Hill in the last decade we can be sure about it's that they WILL have a video and social media presence of some kind, no matter how many years of Mark Driscoll sermons they may obliterate.  It's a little tough to just run with the assumption that Sutton Turner would be holding Mark Driscoll accountable about anything if Turner signed the Result Source contract.  And it would be a little tough for Bruskas to be thought of as meaningfully holding Mark Driscoll accountable for shooting his mouth off if he was physically present with Driscoll when Driscoll crashed the Strange Fire conference.  And that question may well go double for Turner, who by the time of the Strange Fire conference had signed a contract to rig a best seller list on behalf of a Mark and Grace Driscoll book.  To add to THAT action a willingness to be present with Driscoll as he crashed the Strange Fire conference and tweeted about books being confiscated by security does not suggest that either Turner or Bruskas would be as apt to rein in Driscoll. 

Driscoll's offer to MacArthur in the wake of the stunt of crashing Strange Fire did not seem like much more than a follow-up stunt to Wenatchee the Hatchet.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/10/mark-driscoll-invites-john-macarthur-to.html

Driscoll had already blown off MacArthur's overtures at private discussions about Mark Driscoll's views of Song of Songs.  But after Driscoll crashed Strange Fire an invitation to talk was publicly extended.  To date it would seem  MacArthur's team decided one stiff refusal deserved another and, in any event, just a few weeks later Mark Driscoll would get accused by Janet Mefferd on the air of being a plagiarist, Mefferd would provide evidence, and a little scuffle about just how many books Mark Driscoll published would turn out to have cribbed from the works of others would become the subject of journalistic coverage and a little blogging. 

But whether or not the role that Turner and Bruskas played in being with Driscoll when he crashed Strange Fire has been discussed earlier is an open question at this point for Wenatchee The Hatchet.  Maybe Chris Rosebrough over at Fighting for the Faith might have mentioned something about it?  Can't recall.

But in light of the BOAA defense of the executive elders of Mars Hill issued March 2014, it seems worth revisiting that at least three of the seven members of the BOAA were present when Driscoll crashed Strange Fire ... and if James MacDonald was there then, well, a bit more than half the BOAA was with Driscoll crashing the Strange Fire conference then, wasn't it?

POSTSCRIPT 06-28-2014
8:40PM

Thanks to some comments we've got some context to suggest that James MacDonald was also definitely at Strange Fire with Mark Driscoll.

https://twitter.com/austintduncan/status/391277631737323520/photo/1

For those not already familiar with how Driscoll presented crashing the Strange Fire conference, screen caps from Instagram.

So it looks like not only was Mark Driscoll crashing the Strange Fire conference, Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas and James MacDonald were in tow.  When four of seven of the members of the Board of Advisors and Accountability are along for the ride when Driscoll crashes a conference it's getting kind of tough to make a case that the board is of advisors and accountability as much as co-participants in a publicity stunt.  How the three executive elders managed to be on the BOAA which supposedly has an important role of including people who are not employees or executive leaders within the MH governmental system could be held accountable by a BOAA that includes them to begin with has yet to be explained.  

why things are not likely to change

In spite of the news in the last few months that Mark Driscoll has used material from other authors that was not adequately cited and that his bestseller Real Marriage was bought on to a place on the NYT bestseller list, expect everything to continue.  People don't necessarily care that Mark Driscoll may have been shown to be a plagiarist who has revised the history of Mars Hill Church to increasingly be a reflection of his efforts and ideas rather than the more collaborative vision it seemed to be to people who joined more than a decade ago.  People don't necessarily care and won't necessarily care.  The Board of Advisors and Accountability has weighed in and is determined to stand by Mark Driscoll, Dave Bruskas, and Sutton Turner while not having refuted any substantial claims regarding plagiarism or status-buying, the actually significant subjects in the news cycle of the last few months.

It may be helpful to highlight that the book Real Marriage opens with a narrative.  That narrative is the basis from which the rest of the practical and propositional instructions of Mark and Grace Driscoll is given.  This microcosm speaks to the macrocosm of Mars Hill Church as a community defined by a narrative, a narrative that the Driscolls have largely defined over the years. Think of this as being somewhat like loyalty to a political party or a national narrative or family history.

Once people buy a given narrative they filter everything through commitment to that narrative.  If we treat Mark not as a pastor but as a politician or a salesman then we ignore the details of the Bible verses and look at what the real entry point is both in Real Marriage and the rest of Mark's stuff.  Mark has set up a story that applies at every level at which he wants to be an instructor, for his own life, his wife, his kids, the church he co-founded.  It's from within that overarching narrative that everything else gets filtered. 

What this means for Driscoll as a polemicist (not to say preacher or pastor) is that Mark uses his story as the prism through which people are forced to contend with how he interprets the Bible.  This has been, I think ,why so very few critics of Driscoll have been successful.  They're usually stuck having addressed just one of two elements of how Driscoll's narrative works as a polemic for whatever he insists upon. 

 

1. Either they have to focus so much on the mechanics of the text he's using to shill his particular idea that  they bore people who want to know why this matters, and when there's going to be some practical application to these debates. Or ...

2.  they directly attack Mark's propensity to hang his tendentious reading of a biblical text on his own narrative of his life, wife, kids, and church and risk looking like vindictive or whiny assholes by questioning everything about the narrative he presents.  Here the people who assume Driscoll lies all the time and doesn't tell the real story become reflexive foils that more often than not reinforce and retrench those already sympathetic to Driscoll. 

 

Driscoll got his degree in speech communications and has clearly refined the art of rhetorically forcing most of his critics into this Scylla or Charybys situation, a double-bind in which they are forced to question his integrity as a scholar about details most lay Christians don't even care about or to question the legitimacy of hanging his sketchy ideas on anecdotes about the wife and kids.

This really hit me when I heard Mark preach on Esther and built up to his claim that Esther was basically a prostitute by leaning on a story about Ashley saying she would run away instead of doing what Esther did.  So despite that degree in exegetical theology the real zinger for the sermon was "my sweet daughter Ashley wouldn't do what Esther did and that's basically why Esther was wrong."  You can't contest that approach to the book of Esther without directly dismissing Ashley Driscoll's interpretation as presented by Mark Driscoll.  Of course Ashley Driscoll's interpretation of Esther's life and character is something she's entitled to but it's ridiculous to promulgate such a view from the pulpit when one has been advertising one's masters in exegetical theology, if that degree were worth something in the case of Mark Driscoll.

 

As was demonstrated a while back, Rachel Evans wasted a bit of time trying to get someone to comment on Esther as literature without seeing through (maybe?) the real gambit Mark pulled in his sermons.  If anyone were to question Mark's interpretation they have to go through the teenaged girl he's raised in order to do so.  He's used the Ashley narrative to essentially insulate himself from either exegetical disputation or from any questions about why on earth he'd use his teenaged daughter's opinion as a basis for interpreting a biblical book from the pulpit to begin with.  It would take someone with a fairly vast grasp of both biblical literature and rhetorical techniques to see how consistently he does this kind of thing.  But the basic tools themselves are simple.

 

In a way it's like we've been seeing this dynamic play out in politics in the US for decades and Mark may just be one of a handful of high profile pastors who have figured out how the emotional game works.  It may explain why Mark's fans will defend him even after he's been caught plagiarizing.  They're defending their own investment in the story he tells, not any specific set of things he's said or done.  He seems to know this and that might be why he might be loathe let on to his own church he's been shown to be a plagiarist even on The City if they don't already know.  It would explain why leaks from The City seem to have bothered MHC leadership as much or more than just negative press. Regular readers of Wenatchee The Hatchet may already know the sheer scale of leaked content from The City that has made it to this blog. Leaks of content from The City that somehow end up on Wenatchee The Hatchet seem positively irrelevant compared to controversies about plagiarism or buying a #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list or Mark Driscoll crashing the Strange Fire conference.  Driscoll and company are so adept at creating their own bad publicity and MH PR has been managing to create rather than quell PR issues at intervals since the Andrew Lamb disciplinary situation erupted into headlines in early 2012. 

 

Yet it appears that in controversy after controversy Mars Hill would rather blame outsiders than own up to the full magnitude of what they have said and done.  So the Board of Advisors and Accountability has assured everyone the Result Source deal was some idea from outside Mars Hill.  So what?  Mars Hill Church decided to follow that advice.  What was Eve's reaction when she was confronted?  "The serpent tricked me."  What was Adam's reaction?  "The woman whom you gave me gave me fruit and I ate of it."  Well, let's keep those details in mind when we consider Mars Hill's Board of Advisors and Accountability talking about how, yes, they did have someone on their staff who signed a contract in 2011with Result Source ... but the idea was suggested by some outsider, as if that had anything to do with Mars Hill having one of their representatives actually sign the agreement. 

 

Blaming the advice on some outsider never changes the reality that someone in Mars Hill signed the agreement to begin with. Buying a spot on the NYT bestseller list for a book that plagiarized Dan Allender is still ultimately the decision and responsibility of Mars Hill Church as a corporation which has had Mark Driscoll as its president since at least 2012.  It doesn't matter in the end which outside counsel provided that idea, the corporation known as Mars Hill Church had someone sign that contract.  John Sutton Turner, specifically, signed that contract. 

 

But the story has been told and those who want to believe that story about how Mars Hill Church and its executive elders were given some counsel to use Result Source that Sutton Turner signed a contract for are going to believe what they wish to believe.  It's not that the contract is going to be seen in a positive light at this point, it's that the grand metanarrative or meganarrative or mythos, if you will, has already been written.  Preserving that is important enough that even criticism that people might consider accurate, legitimate, and factually verifiable applied to any other situation will be interpreted in this case as "gossip" or "slander".  Let's give pause to consider that these people are not defending anything less (or possibly more) than their investment of themselves into a narrative.  And it seems clearer and clearer each year that those who would attempt to critique Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill will need to account for the way in which he so entwines his interpretation of a biblical text with his own family/personal story that the popular online ways of criticizing Driscoll as a bully or a failure as an exegete will mean nothing to the fan base.  There will be plenty of people at Mars Hill tomorrow and likely year after year and this in spite of the cumulative evidence of citation errors and buying a #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list.  The story Driscoll's fans have invested themselves into isn't the kind you can buy at a store but it can be measured in member contracts and the stories they tell.

Slate returns to the subject of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2013/12/mark_driscoll_plagiarism_accusations_janet_mefferd_accused_the_seattle_pastor.single.html

Last year the subject was Andrew Lamb's disciplinary situation.  Slate's coverage was better than average for the Andrew situation in early 2012 but the entire series A Confluence of Situations (starting with part 1 and cumulatively going to part 15, be warned, it's about 18,000 words of material) was written, in part, to show how far all mainstream journalistic coverage fell of ascertaining the broader background of Andrew's disciplinary situation and the role former Mars Hill pastor James Noriega had played not only in the development of "biblical counseling" at Mars Hill in general but in its history of real estate acquisitions in particular.  In other words, the fuller story of how all the parties ended up where they were by early 2012 involved roughly a decade of history of Mars Hill that started with Mark Driscoll not getting the real estate he wanted for the initial plant of the church.  All that is for the reader to consult at leisure.

The story this time, allegations of plagiarism, is quite a bit simpler and far more easily documented.

One of the more recent developments in the story is that Mars Hill Church has rather passive aggressively tried to shift blame for improper citation on a research assistant that is not named.  The trouble is that the now deleted "battle plan" for the Trial study guide was found by Warren Throckmorton.  The initial reading of Wenatchee The Hatchet is that, per comments from Glenn Lucke at the Docent Group, sufficient documentation was provided by J-st-n H-lc-mb for proper citations to have been made.  If Mars Hill PR attempted to shift blame to a now former research assistant sent to Driscoll by Docent was supposed to put out a fire it's the opinion of Wenatchee The Hatchet that MH PR just poured gasoline over an open flame.  Compared to the essentially kangaroo court former executive elder Scott Thomas put Paul Petry through as documented by Petry's website Joyful Exiles the recent plagiarism allegations are simple. 

A striking quote from Graham's new piece is the following:

For a guy known for his aggressive leadership style, Driscoll is also a master of passive-aggressive behavior.

While Graham quotes from this piece, "We even lie about our lying", which got discussed some over here at Wenatchee The Hatchet. But as passive aggression goes it is the opinion of Wenatchee The Hatchet that Mark Driscoll's most impressive feat would be the entirety of this blog post, "The hardest part of ministry"   While the safety of Driscoll's relatives is a serious concern in itself it is useful to bear in mind how far back Driscoll has described his career and style as one of deliberate provocation.

Certainly this year's October 26 entry from Driscoll reads differently than Mark Driscoll back in 2004.
Radical Reformission
ISBN 0-310-25659-3Mark Driscoll
Zondervan
copyright 2004 by Mars Hill Church
page 14
... So I married Grace, began studying Scripture with the enthusiasm of a glutton at a buffet, and started preparing myself to become a pastor who does not go to jail for doing something stupid. To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats--which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.

As a potential sample of what inflammatory stuff Driscoll said he wrote while editing the campus newspaper there is, apparently, this. Perhaps The Daily Evergreen archives will provide more grist for the mill if asked.  Driscoll has recently taken up editorial duties at The Resurgence, which doesn't seem to have particularly needed them but who knows if it might not be useful for Driscoll to have something to do while Mars Hill PR decides how, when or if to respond to recent developments.  This week's moves on the part of MH PR ... well ...

Of course a man past 40 with five children will see things differently but Driscoll, as we've seen, has made a long history of being a provocateur and that he could describe "a few bomb threats" as "wonderful" in 2004 meant he still had that rosy sentimentality about the threat of violence in response to things he said and wrote despite being a parent.  A bit odd but nobody would say Driscoll is the most typical person, would they?

Graham's new article in Slate states that Mefferd has apologized for the interview but stands by her allegations:
“I stand by my allegations of insufficient sourcing, absolutely and unequivocally,” she said by email. “His plagiarism is a very serious ethical and moral breach. Academics and journalists alike have lost their jobs over less than what Mark Driscoll has done.”

As allegations go, there's been a recent change in a certain board. This is an excerpt from the Mars Hill Governance page from 2012:

In the event that a formal charge and/or accusation is made against Pastor Mark that, if investigated and found to be true, would disqualify him from his position as an elder in Mars Hill Church, a group of five men consisting of both elders within Mars Hill Church and Christian leaders outside of Mars Hill Church, will investigate the charge or accusation and determine if it is true. This group currently consists of Jamie Munson, Dave Bruskas, James MacDonald, Darrin Patrick, and Larry Osborne. If the charge or accusation is found to be true, this group can rebuke Pastor Mark or, if warranted, remove him as an elder at Mars Hill Church. If Pastor Mark is removed as an elder, he automatically ceases to serve on the Board of Elders, on the Executive Elder Team, and as president of Mars Hill Church.”

That wording is discussed over here at Wenatchee The Hatchet.

As of November 23, 2013 the line-up for a group that might assess charges or accusations against Mark Driscoll looks a bit different.

http://marshill.com/2013/11/23/dr-paul-tripp-joins-mars-hill-s-board-of-advisors-and-accountability
Dr. Tripp joins the current Board members: Michael Van Skaik, Dr. James MacDonald, Dr. Larry Osborne, Mark Driscoll, Dave Bruskas, and Sutton Turner. This Board of Advisors and Accountability was voted upon and installed by an overwhelmingly supportive vote from the entire eldership, with every single elder who voted doing so in approval.
Let the record show that Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner are among the governing persons of Mars Hill Church as a registered non-profit corporation in Washington state.
http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819

Governing Persons

Title	Name	Address
Vice President	Bruskas, Dave	1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107
Secretary	TURNER, JOHN SUTTON	1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107
Treasurer	TURNER, JOHN SUTTON	1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107
President	Driscoll, Mark	1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107

In other words these are men who work for Mark Driscoll, who is legal president of the church.  Larry Osborne is credited by Mark Driscoll as having an advisory part to play in the 2007 re-org that included some controversial terminations of two elders, specifically Bent Meyer and Paul Petry, documented over here.  Mark Driscoll is now officially on the Board of Advisors and Accountability, a board with shifting membership and in a setting where what Mars Hill Church has publicly made available about the nature of its governance has shifted drastically in the last 18 months.

So on the board of advisors and accountability are Mark Driscoll himself and two guys who are holding executive leadership roles in the corporation.

If Paul Tripp is part of a team that would consider allegations or charges against Mark Driscoll it remains to be seen if they will meet or reach any conclusions.  After all, Mefferd has made the allegation that Mark Driscoll has plagiarized and Intervarsity Press has sounded off on what they consider improper use and inadequate citation of one of their publications.  The research assistant can't be blamed to any effect both because the person isn't named and if it's who a number of Christians writers suspect was implied, is a man whom Docent Group is willing to defend over against nebulous insinuations by Mars Hill Church.  It's gotten to the point where it seems that men who have defended Driscoll from criticism in the past are no longer leaping to his defense. If Mars Hill Church public relations people thought that passively blaming research assistants was going to work it looks like they've just poured fuel on to a fire, but that's just Wenatchee The Hatchet's opinion.

February 27, 2008, Resurgence event, Mark Driscoll answers a question about how much he reads and about citation and research approach circa 2007-2008

http://theresurgence.com/2009/10/14/acts-29-director-revisits-his-beginnings-video-interview
[edit: oops, wrong link, try this one
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/qa-with-mark-driscoll/

On Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at the Resurgence National Conference, Pastor Mark Driscoll spent sometime answering questions from the audience. Please listen as Mark explains how he structures his schedule in order to manage his role has father, husband and preacher including sermon preparation, how his role at Mars Hill has changed over the years, how he interacts with other pastors and staff at Mars Hill, his plans for eventually passing the torch, cultivating a humble response to the pressures in his life and dealing with personal struggle. ]


Seeing as the plagiarism allegations have invited discussion of how Mark Driscoll researches and cites sources it seemed useful to go back to this lengthy video and to reference where Driscoll described his reading approach in a Q&A in early 2008.  The question about how much he read in a week shows up about halfway through minute 16 and the explanation of how and how fast he read books is something Driscoll fields in the start of the 18th minute:

... I'm not necessarily the guy who sits down and reads a book because every book has things in it that I don't need at that time.  But I'll read a chapter of this book, half of this book, page of this book ... hundreds of pages a week. ...

I read very fast and I have, I don't know if it's a photographic memory but I have a very effective memory; so much so that,uh, I can remember whole quotes from paragraphs of books that I read in the late 80s that I haven't touched since then. And so even, like, writing a book like, uh, Vintage Jesus has I think, like, six hundred footnotes--I would sit down and write the manuscript and just put in the bra[cket], the parentheses for my research assistant, like, `That's in Generous Orthodoxy', that's somewhere around page 160.' Now I haven't read that since,, like, `92 but I remember the quote, I remember the book, I remember the author, I remember the publisher, and I remember roughly where it's at in the book and so then she goes and finds it and makes all the footnotes. And so that speeds things along.

My wife isn't like that. She reads slow. It's laborious, it's prayerful, it's careful and so for her to work through a book takes a long time and I tend to go through books like chicken wings. ...

Where are they now, part 6: Tim Smith--dudely dude who helped Driscoll reverse-engineer MH to 3k and one of the guys Mark Driscoll dreamt about

Let's begin by saying that this is not just another installment in "Where are they now".  This installment deals with former Worship Pastor Tim Smith.  It draws upon a variety of primary sources that discuss how Tim Smith came to be at Mars Hill Church and specifically Mark Driscoll's account of how Tim Smith, with Jamie Munson, collaborated with Mark Driscoll to reverse-engineer Mars Hill growth to 3,000 people. 

This is also going to be a post discussing Mark Driscoll telling guys he had dreams about them, but you have to be exceptionally patient.  But first let's lay some groundwork by reviewing matters of musical style and administrative giftings:

Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006

Excerpts from page 146-148
...
I first met Tim [Smith] while teaching at a conference in New Mexico for Leadership Network. He had been raised in a Baptist home in Portland and was working as a youth worship leader at a Lutheran church in Missouri. Tim and his wife, Beth, moved to Seattle simply hoping that Tim would become a guitar player in one of our worship teams. Tim and his wife lived with Grace and me for a few months until they got settled, and I saw in Tim some very strong leadership qualities that had not been cultivated. So I spent a lot of time investing in Tim, as I was with Jamie. Tim had never played in a band, written a song, or played an electric guitar. Additionally, he did not know how to sing, and it sounded like he'd been hit by a car when he tried to hit high notes.

But I really liked Tim because he is one of the few manly men whom I have ever seen leading worship. I am not supposed to say this, but most of the worship dudes I have heard are not very dudely. They seem to be very in touch with their feelings and exceedingly chickified from playing too much acoustic guitar and singing prom songs to Jesus while channeling Michael Bolton and flipping their hair. Tim was a guy who brewed his own beer, smoked a pipe, rock-climbed, mountain biked, river rafted, carried a knife on his belt, and talked about what he thought more than what he felt.

We clicked because I drive a 1978 Chevy truck that gets single digits to the gallon and has a bacon air freshener and no functioning speedometer and because I fashion myself as the self-appointed leader of a heterosexual male backlash in our overly chickified city filled with guys drinking herbal tea and rocking out to Mariah Carey in their lemon yellow Volkswagen Cabriolets while wearing fuschsia sweater-vests that are perfectly matched with their open-toed shoes. Anyways, Tim learned quickly, took vocal lessons, and soon assumed leadership over the entire worship department. Like Jamie, he started by firing most everyone and starting over from scratch.

As opportunity seeking leaders well-suited for the creative phase, Jamie, Tim, and I began envisioning what the next phase of the church should look like if we hoped to stay on mission. I decided to never view our church as a church but rather always to view it like a church planter with a core group launching out to reach the city.
...
So I began to reverse-engineer a plan for our church to grow to more than three thousand people with help from Jamie and Tim. In the end we decided that what was in the best interest of our mission to the city was not in the best interests of each of our elders. I knew God was compelling me to state the vision to the elders. And I knew that vision would quite possibly split the church three ways between the founders--Lief, Mike, and me. Nonetheless I met with our elders to seek their input on the recommended changes, knowing it could undo all that we had worked so hard to accomplish. We spent a lengthy day going over the proposal, and things were tense.

Mike and two elders chose to take their church service out as a separate church plant. ...

The above citation is extensive but necessarily so because Driscoll devoted a strikingly large number of words to present Tim Smith as the manly antidote to the chickified Seattle scene.  Tim Smith was the dudely dude antidote to what Driscoll saw Seattle culture and normal Christian worship music as being.

It is also worth noting from this extensive sequence of excerpts that Tim Smith and Jamie Munson were two hand-picked fledgling leaders Driscoll recruited and invested a significant amount of time and money into.  Around 2000-2002 they were in some way involved in brainstorming with Driscoll how to grow Mars Hill to 3,000 people.  Jamie Munson, in 2007, would go on to be an executive elder and Lead Pastor, drafting by-laws that appointed him to this position. 

Tim Smith eventually went from leading worship to also being a pastor and an executive pastor, right up through some time in June 2007. 

from page 114 of the 145 page document available at Joyful Exiles that was distributed to members of Mars hill during the 2007 re-org in the wake of the termination of pastors Bent Meyer and Paul Petry

From Regrouping for Jesus' fame, previously sent to members on June 23, 2007
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Tim Smith shifts from being an executive elder to focus on: theology, music, arts, band development, leading corporate worship in Ballard, training worship pastors for other campuses, and launching a worship music brand line for professional distribution.  [Wenatchee The Hatchet does not recall if this was Re:Sound, and Re:Sound would be an entirely separate but related line of enquiry]

Now with all that established, let's get to Tim Smith describing how he arrived at Mars Hill from the film God's Work, Our Witness.  We're finally at the stuff that dreams are made of, or the stuff that is made from dreams.  But here, too, patience is required, because we need the stage set for us with a description of the Driscoll house in the very late 1990s when Tim Smith appeared.

http://marshill.com/media/gods-work-our-witness/gods-work-our-witness
About 27:34
The Driscolls’ Basement
Once we got kicked out of that building, literally everything moved back into our house. So offices in our house across from our bedroom, interns in the basement.

Pastor Matt: Poor Grace. Like, it was so ghetto down there because, I mean, you know bachelors. There’s like three guys living down there, and the dishes would just stack up, stack up. I remember they’d start stinking real bad. And every couple of weeks, like, we’d see the dishes done. I’d come home from work, and I’d say, “Hey, man, did you do the dishes? Thanks.” He was like, “Nah, I think Grace did them again.”

Grace: We shared laundry facilities and so, yeah, I just ended up cleaning half the time, because it was—I couldn’t even stay down there to do laundry. It was so disgusting.

Pastor Matt: Sorry, sorry, Grace.

We had just picked up Pastor Tim in Albuquerque, New Mexico, around that time and he had never played an electric guitar. He’d never sung in a band. He’d never written a song, and he couldn’t sing, man. When he sang, it actually sounded like he got captured by Al-Qaeda. So we had to pay for vocal lessons and go buy him an electric guitar.

Pastor Tim: [The kind of worshipers that he is seeking are those that will worship in spirit and truth, and that is a thought that has changed every aspect of how I think.] When I came to Mars Hill, I had never really been in a band. I played a lot of acoustic guitar with hand drums, but I hadn’t really been in a band. I hadn’t ever really written a song, and I’d never owned an electric guitar—a lot of acoustic, a lot of flannel, a lot of sandals.

Tim and his wife moved out from Missouri to live in my basement and go work Joe jobs and give it a shot because we met him for twenty minutes at a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Pastor Tim: Because you weren’t at that conference.

Beth: No, no, it was just him.

Pastor Tim: You hadn’t met these people. You hadn’t read these things. I just came home from New Mexico from this conference and said, “Hey, what if we moved to Seattle now?”

Beth: That was a little harder sell for me. We had to pray about that for a while.

Pastor Tim: Yeah, because we didn’t know anybody here.

Beth: No, no.

Pastor Tim: So in August of 1999, we rolled into the Driscoll family’s driveway. It was the second time I’d ever seen Pastor Mark. We talked on the phone a time or two and exchanged a couple of e-mails. I think we both met Grace here in this basement while she was doing the laundry.

Beth: We had a dining table right here and some chairs, and there was a futon right here. It was a little nicer.

Pastor Tim: The bathroom was nice, right?

Beth: Oh, yeah. I’m not going to—I’m not sharing that part.

Jeff: Matt lived in the basement, and I was over there a lot, and I did silk screening. I cleaned off my screens in his shower downstairs and totally stained it. I think that was permanent. And so I wrecked his basement.

Beth: That’s the first thing I cleaned. I’ll just say that. It was okay for a period of time. We knew it wasn’t forever, so—

Pastor Tim: Years later, I would ask Mark, I asked him, “Why in the world did you do that? Because I’m pretty sure you haven’t just taken anybody else in, and I’m not sure I would exactly the same way, either.” And he said that he had a dream that God told him that I was moving here, and we were supposed to work together. I had no idea what was in store, but apparently God did.

This last detail is very striking because Tim Smith was not the first man to whom or about whom Mark Driscoll said he had a dream.  With a little help from The WayBack Machine we can learn who the other man was. 

http://web.archive.org/web/20001210191200/http://www.marshill.fm/who/our_history.htm
December 10, 2000
 
Seasons of Grace: The Story of Mars Hill
By Pastor Mark Driscoll
...
In the eighth season, our worship ministry was in great disarray and I had a dream that Brad Currah, who had been a member of our core group before the launch, was leading worship. I repeatedly informed Brad that he was to be our worship leader and after numerous conversations he began volunteering time overseeing the worship and arts ministries. [emphasis added] Brad had spent a few years playing the club scene with his band Springchamber, but was quickly overwhelmed with the demands of his first time pastorate and quit his job at Microsoft to free up time for ministry and hoped to live off of his wife Devonna's salary. But, she soon became pregnant and needed to quit her job. I then got a call from a pastor in Florida who had a network that funded church plants. Grace and I met with Pastor David Nicholas at Spanish River Church, and his church planting network agreed to help us financially. This gift allowed us to bring Brad on full-time, which has culminated in a fantastic independent worship album, multiple worship teams, and an aggressive set of new songs written by some of our many gifted artists.

In our ninth season in the beginning of 1999 ...

So it was Brad Currah that Driscoll saw in a dream leading worship at Mars Hill, and that dream was what Mark Driscoll said was the basis on which he repeatedly informed Currah that Currah was to be the Mars Hill worship leader.  Currah went so far as to quit his job at Microsoft to free up time for ministry, as Driscoll recounted things.  This is the point at which we see David Nicholas mentioned, providing a financial gift that Driscoll stated let Mars Hill bring Brad Currah on full-time in his first-time pastorate.

Let's keep in mind that the "eight seasons" span from just 1996 to 1998.  The ninth season kicks in in 1999.  It is during this period that Smith arrives but by Smith's account of Driscoll's account of Driscoll's dream about him, Driscoll's dream would have to have happened before Smith's arrival in August 1999 but also after the end of 1998, the period by which Driscoll himself has recounted recruiting and installing Brad Currah as worship leader at Mars Hill. 

http://theresurgence.com/authors/tim-smith

Tim Smith came to Mars Hill Church in the summer of 1999, never having owned an electric guitar, been in a band, or written a song. Somehow, by God’s grace, he became the worship pastor there and has been able to hang on and give shape to a movement of well over 30 worship bands leading many campuses. Tim is the husband of Beth and the father of three daughters. He also leads Re:Sound, a missional network of music and artists here on the Resurgence. [we'll leave Re:Sound for later]

So, given what Driscoll said about the eight seasons that dream about Tim Smith, if it happened, would have had to have happened in 1999, wouldn't it?  Hadn't Driscoll detailed how a dream was the reason he repeatedly told Brad Currah he would be Worship Pastor at Mars Hill?  Yep, by Driscoll's own account.  Hadn't Currah's salary been made possible thanks to financial assistance from the church planting network of David Nicholas?  That's how Driscoll told it.  All that time, effort and money and then by 1999 Tim Smith arrives and for the 2011 fundraising film God's Work, Our Witness, Tim Smith recounts how when he asked Driscoll why he acted as he did, Driscoll said God told him in a dream Tim Smith was coming.  Did God specify in the dream where Brad Currah was going to end up?  Or did Tim Smith have that covered by "firing most everyone and starting from scratch"?

And like everyone else in the roster of 24 elders at Mars Hill in 2007, Tim Smith voted that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry needed to be removed from eldership.  Tim Smith is currently Lead Pastor at Mars Hill Portland. Munson announced the transition of the Smiths from Washington to Oregon on August, 16, 2011. In April 2011 we were given an introduction to Dustin Kensrue, who arrived on the Mars Hill scene and became a deacon.  It's Dustin Kensrue who is Worship Pastor now. Kensrue moved up from Orange County to Bellevue in 2012 and became Worship Pastor. 

Cessationism and continuationism, never mind the Torah, what do we think happened in the golden age when the canon was forming?

The debate between cessationists and continuationists within Protestantism is likely going to remain a permanent one.  The reason why can be approached from an ostensibly different direction.

In Mark Noll's book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis he points out when the United States could be identified as dominantly Protestant and evangelical in which the parties at least nominally all agreed to the authority and veracity of Scripture, the debate about race-based slavery was intransigent.  Noll, however, adds that what is important to notice about this time period was that it was not as though there were no answers. 

Evangelicals were able to make the case that while on textual and hermeneutical grounds slavery was permitted in biblical texts and all but universally accepted as an economic reality of ancient life there were not defensible exegetical grounds to employ this as a defense of race-based slavery in the United States.  Noll elucidates further that in rabbinical and Catholic intellectual traditions it was stated by a number of clerics that despite the fact that slavery was acceptable within the biblical texts nothing about American slavery was defensible on the basis of such an appeal.  Noll pointed out in his book, perhaps a bit dryly, that these voices regarding biblical interpretation and application were sidelined by American evangelical Protestants in the 19th century.

The bluntest way of putting it is that the average American evangelical Protestant wasn't going to accept any proposals from apostate Papists and Jews about what the Bible said about slavery. 

Which gets us conveniently right back into cessationism and charismatic theological debate.  You see, dear reader, it can sure look as though a comparable impasse will remain within Protestantism in the United States on this issue because while cessationists will appeal to sola scriptura, so will the charismatics.  Cessationists often seem determined to anchor their appeals to scripture itself and to the importance of sola scriptura as an end point to be affirmed in the process of fielding these debates at all.

The trouble is that there is no exegetically viable way of getting cessationism into canonical texts.  For another matter the issue becomes even more intractable if a cessationist is a complementarian who would defining "prophecy" as bound to anything like preaching and teaching.  Why would Paul provide instructions to women regarding prophecy if they were barred from prophecy simply for being women?  A charismatic who is complementarian could propose a number of ways this would work and the simplest textual explanation would be that because prophecy is not what is now identified as preaching or teaching (which were priestly roles in most cases anyway) that women prophecying in gatherings is simple enough. 

But if prophecy is "preaching" what about the daughters of Phillip the evangelist?  How could their gifts in prophecy have been recognized if by "prophecy" what was meant was authoritative teaching or preaching in some expository fashion?  One possible explanation is that the entire working definition of what prophecy was and what prophets did has been so constrained by debates about the veracity and authority of the canon that that debate shoves the very square peg of a sola scriptura concern into the round hole of what the real aim of prophecy was as described in the canonical texts that in many cases seem to be nothing more than a footnote to what charismatics and cessationists are probably really debating about, the nature and scope of institutional authority in religious movements.

Let's remind ourselves that these debates are settled, comparatively speaking, in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. 

As I've been writing for a few years now, if we anchor any definition and debate about the nature and role of prophets and prophecy in the canonical texts we may begin to find that the categories used by charismatics and cessationists turn out to be red herrings.  What if prophecy presupposed that accepted divine revelation, though sufficient and complete enough for a religious community to form and for individuals to have some understanding of the divine, was in itself considered insufficient enough in terms of comprehensive precepts to require supplements? 

To be more blunt still, Deuteronomy 16-18 presents us with what looks like a judicial precedent pattern.  The prophet is the end of the line after all other more readily available options are considered.  Let's also keep in mind that scholars like Frank Crusemann and Barry Webb have pointed out that prophecy did not initially include an eschatological component or even a predictive function.  What we did see, significantly in Judges, is a prophetic role that rebukes Israel for failing to be obedient to the divine revelation they already have.  And if we cast the net broader from Judges into the Samuel/Kings narrative we begin to see that Deborah was not the only prophet/judge, Samuel was, too.  The conflation of the prophetic office and activity with a judicial role in Israel is something that neither charismatics nor cessationists seem to have taken as seriously as they could.  The existence of a prophet within the OT granted that the case law and narrative of the Pentateuch was not so comprehensive as to preclude the necessity of divine consultation.  For that matter within the Torah itself cases emerged that could not be adjudicated without divine consultation via prophets.

And in the New Testament canon it is not a foregone conclusion that the teaching of Jesus would have accounted for the onset of a drought or a famine.  Enter Agabus.  Enter the daughters of Phillip the evangelist.  Enter Paul's instructions that desiring to prophecy was a good thing and that teaching prophecy should not be despised in the pastoral epistles.  So what was it?

Whatever it was, in light of the canonical body of literature, it was not "writing books of the Bible" even if it could eventually include that.  We must remember that within the times of prophets someone like Jeremiah was accused of being a false prophet and a traitor because of things said about the Temple and Jerusalem.  We must also bear in mind that Jeremiah wrote that claiming to rest on the scriptures is worthless when the scribes and teachers of the law have perverted the scriptures themselves into lies. 

Complementarians don't have a strong case that women serving as prophets were somehow defying a natural order.  There's nothing in the narrative of Judges about Deborah or about Huldah's role in Josiah's reforms that suggest either woman was arrogating some role that was inappropriate to their gender.  Even if we take as given the narrative arc in Judges having to be Israelite decline into Canaanite customs there is still no condemnation of Deborah as prophetess and judge.  And the combination of prophet with judge, if we look at Deuteronomy 16-18, makes a great deal of sense.  After all, what was the Mosaic law for?  Yes, Christians can talk about how it points to Jesus but let's not forget that it was also considered a foundation for case law in a civil society as well as a religious text.

Furthermore, what we can see in Deuteronomy 16-18 is that the trajectory is to rely on case law at the level of the clan or tribe first; to consult chieftains and judges when cases are difficult; to go to the judge of the nation or the priest when cases are too difficult even then; and that if the priest cannot divine the solution to not resort to divination but to consult a prophet.  To be sure we're told of priests who also had prophetic abilities but to give it a deliberately and overly American spin here, what we see is a recognition that there were going to be separations of powers and offices more often than not.  Consolidating the prophetic and priestly role, or consolidating the prophetic and judicial role, was unusual enough that we get mention of those unusual cases in canonical texts rather than an attempt to name the names of people who may have had just one role or the other and not both. 

If the nature and scope of prophecy was as an ultimate ad hoc committee dealing with a situation that was not directly or even indirectly addressed in accepted divine revelation available up to the time then it would make sense why prophecy would continue even after a canon was closed.  After all, Deuteronomy 29:29 didn't preclude the writing of psalms any more than early Christian authors thought it precluded the writing of pastoral epistles.  While a cessationist might say the apostles knew they were writing scripture that's immaterial to the fact that the scriptures accepted up to that point, whatever those were, were considered to point to Jesus within a truly Christian understanding, and yet epistles were getting written anyway.  Whatever was revealed was incomplete.

And if Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever then two different closed canons still include instructions on how to field prophetic activity.  Even if the canon of the New Testament is closed instructions about women prophesying with an uncovered head remain.  If prophecy is grounded in a judicial/civil/community role that fields gaps in case law in the Torah then by extension prophecy in the New Testament would take the form of Agabus anticipating drought and famine that would not be mentioned in teaching from Jesus or in apostolic transmission of early Christian doctrine. 

If we keep this in mind that the aim of prophecy is not really to "create" scripture or to supplant existing scriptures but to supplement them while being subordinate to them.  And if that is the case then neither the charismatic nor the cessationist are necessarily getting anywhere trying to focus on the canon being open or closed.  The relationship of prophetic activity to the canon seems to have changed.  The books of the prophets began to emerge, let's say, as the tilt toward exile became more and more inevitable.  Israel was nearly always flirting with if not outright practicing polytheism for much of its history and in a way this doesn't seem to have ended until after the exile kicked in, at the risk of casting the portrait in terms that are way too simple.

Again, let's consider that as scholars of Judges have pointed out, what prophecy looked like in the time of the Judges isn't precisely the same thing as what it looked like in the monarchy or in exile.  If charismatics and cessationists just debate what is supposed to be happening now in light of what people would claim was normative in the apostolic period that is very probably missing the boat.  What, if this is even possible to discover, would have authors from the apostolic period have understood the role and activity of the prophet to be?  It may have been considerably more and considerably less than charismatics and cessationists might insist it must be.    If as yet no cessationist has come up with a particularly exegetical case for cessationism from NT canon the charismatic has seemed too uninterested in grounding definitions of prophetic or apostolic activity in the canon.  Not all apostles had the same role as the Twelve and it may be worth noting that several of the churches founded by Paul don't exist and didn't exist.  Let's playfully propose that while Paul wrote documents that became canonized the churches he founded did not necessarily survive while, if we're going to heed traditions, that churches reputed to have been founded by the Twelve made it far enough to let us witness debates about which one of them is greatest.  :)