James MacDonald, of whom Mark Driscoll once said, "James has the spiritual gift of real estate acquisition" (you can hear Mark Driscoll enumerate that alleged gift of the Spirit at 0:21 in the video embedded in the page I've linked to), has a notice of foreclosure on a mansion.
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2020/07/16/james-macdonalds-mansion-notice-of-foreclosure/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/page-one-james-Macdonalds-foreclosure.jpg
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/page-two-James-MacDonald-Foreclosure.jpg
James MacDonald's role in the history of Mars Hill, in retrospect, seemed to involve being on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability for just long enough to defend the use of Result Source to rig a No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list for Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage and then depart because he was so confident that the BoAA would do its job he didn't need to be part of that process.
Showing posts with label MacDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MacDonald. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Friday, November 22, 2019
Wagenmaker & Oberly share findings from SDK regarding Harvest Bible Chapel and James MacDonald, HBC presentation covered by Julie Roys and Warren Throckmorton, MacDonald has response
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2019/11/22/lawyer-takes-james-macdonald-and-harvest-bible-chapel-to-the-woodshed/
https://julieroys.com/harvest-report-shows-massive-governance-failure-allowing-james-macdonald-to-misuse-millions/
November 22, 2019 11:46am
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Report.HBC_.Legal-Eval.with-Forensic-Accounting.2019-11-21.pdf
from pages 5-6
...
As a church leader, MacDonald owed significant fiduciary duties to HBC including a duty of loyalty, to maintain the HBC's interest as paramount over any conflicting personal interests. Such responsibility is grounded in a nonprofit governing leader’s legal obligation to take care of the organization’s well-being in furtherance of its religious tax-exempt purposes. This responsibility is also consistent with Biblical standards of integrity and stewardship for church leaders. While such paradigm may carry some challenges within a ministry context with an inherent overlay of spiritual authority, it is nevertheless vitally important to both effective governance generally and legal compliance. Within this context, a leader who receives a tangible personal benefit as a result of a decision affecting the church’s operations or assets has an inherent conflict of interest that must be fully addressed through disinterested, independent leadership decision-making. Based on our legal evaluation, MacDonald seems to have acted in his own personal interests - reaping significant personal financial benefits, avoiding accountability to any governing board, and with heavy-fisted exclusionary leadership. His close inner circle of HBC leaders helped him o do so and without the important accountability measures needed for effective nonprofit ministry governance. Such actions are obvious and patent, such as through lack of appropriate financial controls over certain bank accounts, the removal of MacDonald from the conflict of interest policy’s coverage, his spending, and the lack of proper executive compensation evaluations. We understand that the new HBC Elder Board has embraced governance principles of proper independent judgment and active oversight, which is commendable. More specifically, and with HBC’s troubled past in clear view, the new HBC Elder Board has further addressed governance matters through drastically improved corrective measures such as fuller engagement of each elder, better processes for conflict resolution, improved financial oversight, and other significant governance improvements. All such changes are essential for HBC’s current and future vitality
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-responds-to-harvest-report-claims-hes-innocent-of-misusing-church-funds/
November 22, 2019 7:19pm
In an Instagram post today, MacDonald claimed that his expenses were “Elder and auditor approved” and “predate the involvement of those now speaking.” The elders who are now speaking are all part of a new board, which replaced the former elders who resigned in the wake of the scandal involving MacDonald. MacDonald also claimed that “significant exculpatory information” was excluded from the report due to “an Elder imposed moratorium” on communicating with MacDonald.
...
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5Lwqi_Ac3L/
On Thursday, November 21, Harvest Bible Chapel leaders announced results of their financial investigation. The study covered Elder and auditor-approved spending and compensation, all of which predate the involvement of those now speaking. .
It is disappointing that Harvest would publicize their alleged findings while simultaneously seeking resolution of these issues through confidential Christian arbitration. Behind it all since the start are issues surrounding historic agreements related to the disposition of Walk in the Word and other matters connected with my departure. The Elder-imposed moratorium on communicating with us directly has excluded significant exculpatory information. .
We began down the road of trusting God to be our defense (Psalm 37:5-6) through the bylaw-prescribed method of Christian arbitration, and we will not change paths now nor violate the rules of arbitration by speaking uncharitably about the actions of others. Truth will come to light in God’s time as we continue entrusting ourselves to Him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).
The study covered elder and auditor-approved spending and compensation, apparently, but the study seems to pose questions as to whether all of those expenditures and compensation elements should have been approved.
Since MacDonald was terminated with cause from HBC and the anti-defamation suit filed by HBC got dropped by HBC it seems as if no one is necessarily operating from a strong position. The disclosure
Roys posted her update in the last couple of hours and Throckmorton has added reference to the Instagram post as of, right now it's 8:50ish pm.
At the risk of assuming you have read the report, what's interesting about that report is that there are thematic overlaps with concerns and criticisms that emerged about Mark Driscoll during the 2012-2014 period. In the Mars Hill days how much Driscoll was paid was a completely opaque issue. Nobody seemed to know how much Driscoll was paid, exactly how it was paid, and what the rationale was for the amount of payment. Eventually a document was leaked to Wenatchee The Hatchet that shed some light on that. That document was published in a post that is the single most viewed post in the history of this blog.
Something distinctive about the HBC situation seems to be intellectual property. It's a bit fuzzy to me at the moment but it seems there wasn't an entirely clear delineation between MacDonald and Walk in the Word and HBC. Somewhat by contrast, Mark Driscoll copyrighted the majority of his works to himself and although intellectual property was copyrighted to Mars Hill as a non-profit those distinctions were apparently clear in a way that is, to go by what has been released in the above referenced report, not quite so clear in the case of HBC.
The lack of observably meaningful external accountability or functioning checks and balances regarding expenditures or reporting thereof might be a common theme, though.
An accountant friend of mine once told me that the thing about everything checking out in an audit is that although it's useful what audits establish is that the internal prescribed procedures of an organization are being followed. This would not, in and of itself, mean the organization has a clean bill of health in terms of fiscal policies. In other words, an entity like ECFA could assess an entity like the former Mars Hill Church and everything could come up clean in terms of policies being followed but that wouldn't necessarily preclude other concerns coming up.
Having chronicled the peak and demise of Mars Hill one of the most salient issues of the demise of that corporate entity was who would end up getting what amount of intellectual property associated with the entity. Driscoll got what Driscoll copyrighted to himself and also made reference to an auction.
Resurgence was bought at an auction.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-follow-up-on-resurgence-as-distinct.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/07/driscolls-announce-pending-move-to.html
the default for the old link is to Driscoll's new Patheos blog
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdriscoll/2015/07/driscoll-family-update/
date July 27, 2015
Back in 2015 it was http://markdriscoll.org/driscoll-family-update/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150728081055/http://markdriscoll.org/driscoll-family-update/
...
The Resurgence and our Move to Phoenix
The Mars Hill Church board also very recently approved the sale of the assets of The Resurgence ministries through an independent auction conducted by a law firm. Having now gained first access to these resources, it will be some time before we catalogue and decide what will happen with the content.
However, if you are newly receiving this email it is likely because you were part of The Resurgence mailing list. If you would like to receive ongoing updates from me, as well as free Bible teaching, you need to do nothing. If you would like to be removed from the mailing list you can do so by clicking the link at the bottom of this email and following the automated process.
After meeting with many former church leaders for reconciliation and closure in Seattle, our family is in the midst of a new adventure as we have moved to the Phoenix area.
...
I.e. enough of the assets of The Resurgence, which would likely have included intellectual property, was distinct enough from Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll's personal intellectual property assets that they could be auctioned and Driscoll could announce having bought those assets in a July 27, 2015 update.
An upshot of the recently published and discussed report regarding James MacDonald, Harvest Bible Chapel, and Walk in the Word seems, on initial reading, to indicate that a comparable level of clarity and differentiation was not necessarily going on.
That validation from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability has begun, on further investigation, seem like a rubber stamp formality has been getting coverage in the last year.
https://world.wng.org/2019/09/an_easy_a
...
HARVEST BIBLE CHAPEL joined ECFA in 2013. At that time the Chicago-area megachurch was already embroiled in scandal. Former elders and members were raising questions about Pastor James MacDonald’s leadership, lifestyle, and undisclosed salary. Harvest remained an ECFA member for the next six years as more of the church’s problems became evident. ECFA only terminated Harvest’s membership four months after a December 2018 WORLD story that detailed MacDonald’s abusive leadership and reckless spending, and two months after Harvest fired MacDonald.
As Roys has described it:
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-responds-to-harvest-report-claims-hes-innocent-of-misusing-church-funds/
...
https://julieroys.com/harvest-report-shows-massive-governance-failure-allowing-james-macdonald-to-misuse-millions/
November 22, 2019 11:46am
Harvest Bible Chapel (HBC) suffered “a massive corporate governance failure,” which enabled former senior pastor, James MacDonald, to “extensively” misuse millions in church funds “for improper financial benefit.”
This was the conclusion of a financial review, which was revealed last night live at a sparsely attended meeting at Harvest’s Elgin campus, and simulcast to Harvest’s six other Chicago-area campuses.
“MacDonald’s strong and persuasive role as authoritative senior pastor, along with his close inner circle, insulation from proper accountability mechanisms, and key changes to the church’s operational structures, resulted in a highly problematic culture,” stated the report prepared by Wagenmaker & Oberly. This led to “systemic failure,” which enabled MacDonald to enrich himself with church money and treat ministries like his former broadcast ministry, Walk in the Word, as “essentially his own business.”
...
During the entire period studied, Harvest submitted to regular audits by Capin Crouse and was a member in good standing with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). Despite numerous attempts over the past six years to alert the ECFA to wrongdoing at Harvest, ECFA did not suspend Harvest’s accreditation until March of this year.
ECFA claims to hold its members accountable to good governance, transparency, financial oversight, and propriety in compensation-setting. Yet according to the financial review, not only did Harvest have abysmal governance and transparency. Harvest’s procedures for setting MacDonald’s compensation also “lacked the requisite independence, evidence of appropriate due diligence, transparency . . . and any accompanying minutes or report reflecting such required information.”
...
The report is here:https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Report.HBC_.Legal-Eval.with-Forensic-Accounting.2019-11-21.pdf
from pages 5-6
...
As a church leader, MacDonald owed significant fiduciary duties to HBC including a duty of loyalty, to maintain the HBC's interest as paramount over any conflicting personal interests. Such responsibility is grounded in a nonprofit governing leader’s legal obligation to take care of the organization’s well-being in furtherance of its religious tax-exempt purposes. This responsibility is also consistent with Biblical standards of integrity and stewardship for church leaders. While such paradigm may carry some challenges within a ministry context with an inherent overlay of spiritual authority, it is nevertheless vitally important to both effective governance generally and legal compliance. Within this context, a leader who receives a tangible personal benefit as a result of a decision affecting the church’s operations or assets has an inherent conflict of interest that must be fully addressed through disinterested, independent leadership decision-making. Based on our legal evaluation, MacDonald seems to have acted in his own personal interests - reaping significant personal financial benefits, avoiding accountability to any governing board, and with heavy-fisted exclusionary leadership. His close inner circle of HBC leaders helped him o do so and without the important accountability measures needed for effective nonprofit ministry governance. Such actions are obvious and patent, such as through lack of appropriate financial controls over certain bank accounts, the removal of MacDonald from the conflict of interest policy’s coverage, his spending, and the lack of proper executive compensation evaluations. We understand that the new HBC Elder Board has embraced governance principles of proper independent judgment and active oversight, which is commendable. More specifically, and with HBC’s troubled past in clear view, the new HBC Elder Board has further addressed governance matters through drastically improved corrective measures such as fuller engagement of each elder, better processes for conflict resolution, improved financial oversight, and other significant governance improvements. All such changes are essential for HBC’s current and future vitality
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-responds-to-harvest-report-claims-hes-innocent-of-misusing-church-funds/
November 22, 2019 7:19pm
In an Instagram post today, MacDonald claimed that his expenses were “Elder and auditor approved” and “predate the involvement of those now speaking.” The elders who are now speaking are all part of a new board, which replaced the former elders who resigned in the wake of the scandal involving MacDonald. MacDonald also claimed that “significant exculpatory information” was excluded from the report due to “an Elder imposed moratorium” on communicating with MacDonald.
...
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5Lwqi_Ac3L/
It is disappointing that Harvest would publicize their alleged findings while simultaneously seeking resolution of these issues through confidential Christian arbitration. Behind it all since the start are issues surrounding historic agreements related to the disposition of Walk in the Word and other matters connected with my departure. The Elder-imposed moratorium on communicating with us directly has excluded significant exculpatory information. .
We began down the road of trusting God to be our defense (Psalm 37:5-6) through the bylaw-prescribed method of Christian arbitration, and we will not change paths now nor violate the rules of arbitration by speaking uncharitably about the actions of others. Truth will come to light in God’s time as we continue entrusting ourselves to Him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).
The study covered elder and auditor-approved spending and compensation, apparently, but the study seems to pose questions as to whether all of those expenditures and compensation elements should have been approved.
Since MacDonald was terminated with cause from HBC and the anti-defamation suit filed by HBC got dropped by HBC it seems as if no one is necessarily operating from a strong position. The disclosure
Roys posted her update in the last couple of hours and Throckmorton has added reference to the Instagram post as of, right now it's 8:50ish pm.
At the risk of assuming you have read the report, what's interesting about that report is that there are thematic overlaps with concerns and criticisms that emerged about Mark Driscoll during the 2012-2014 period. In the Mars Hill days how much Driscoll was paid was a completely opaque issue. Nobody seemed to know how much Driscoll was paid, exactly how it was paid, and what the rationale was for the amount of payment. Eventually a document was leaked to Wenatchee The Hatchet that shed some light on that. That document was published in a post that is the single most viewed post in the history of this blog.
Something distinctive about the HBC situation seems to be intellectual property. It's a bit fuzzy to me at the moment but it seems there wasn't an entirely clear delineation between MacDonald and Walk in the Word and HBC. Somewhat by contrast, Mark Driscoll copyrighted the majority of his works to himself and although intellectual property was copyrighted to Mars Hill as a non-profit those distinctions were apparently clear in a way that is, to go by what has been released in the above referenced report, not quite so clear in the case of HBC.
The lack of observably meaningful external accountability or functioning checks and balances regarding expenditures or reporting thereof might be a common theme, though.
An accountant friend of mine once told me that the thing about everything checking out in an audit is that although it's useful what audits establish is that the internal prescribed procedures of an organization are being followed. This would not, in and of itself, mean the organization has a clean bill of health in terms of fiscal policies. In other words, an entity like ECFA could assess an entity like the former Mars Hill Church and everything could come up clean in terms of policies being followed but that wouldn't necessarily preclude other concerns coming up.
Having chronicled the peak and demise of Mars Hill one of the most salient issues of the demise of that corporate entity was who would end up getting what amount of intellectual property associated with the entity. Driscoll got what Driscoll copyrighted to himself and also made reference to an auction.
Resurgence was bought at an auction.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-follow-up-on-resurgence-as-distinct.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/07/driscolls-announce-pending-move-to.html
the default for the old link is to Driscoll's new Patheos blog
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdriscoll/2015/07/driscoll-family-update/
date July 27, 2015
Back in 2015 it was http://markdriscoll.org/driscoll-family-update/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150728081055/http://markdriscoll.org/driscoll-family-update/
...
The Resurgence and our Move to Phoenix
The Mars Hill Church board also very recently approved the sale of the assets of The Resurgence ministries through an independent auction conducted by a law firm. Having now gained first access to these resources, it will be some time before we catalogue and decide what will happen with the content.
However, if you are newly receiving this email it is likely because you were part of The Resurgence mailing list. If you would like to receive ongoing updates from me, as well as free Bible teaching, you need to do nothing. If you would like to be removed from the mailing list you can do so by clicking the link at the bottom of this email and following the automated process.
After meeting with many former church leaders for reconciliation and closure in Seattle, our family is in the midst of a new adventure as we have moved to the Phoenix area.
...
I.e. enough of the assets of The Resurgence, which would likely have included intellectual property, was distinct enough from Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll's personal intellectual property assets that they could be auctioned and Driscoll could announce having bought those assets in a July 27, 2015 update.
An upshot of the recently published and discussed report regarding James MacDonald, Harvest Bible Chapel, and Walk in the Word seems, on initial reading, to indicate that a comparable level of clarity and differentiation was not necessarily going on.
That validation from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability has begun, on further investigation, seem like a rubber stamp formality has been getting coverage in the last year.
https://world.wng.org/2019/09/an_easy_a
...
HARVEST BIBLE CHAPEL joined ECFA in 2013. At that time the Chicago-area megachurch was already embroiled in scandal. Former elders and members were raising questions about Pastor James MacDonald’s leadership, lifestyle, and undisclosed salary. Harvest remained an ECFA member for the next six years as more of the church’s problems became evident. ECFA only terminated Harvest’s membership four months after a December 2018 WORLD story that detailed MacDonald’s abusive leadership and reckless spending, and two months after Harvest fired MacDonald.
While ECFA says it requires
transparency from its members in disclosing financial documents, ECFA won’t
reveal details about how it reviewed Harvest’s finances while it was still a
member. The Guardian/Busby written statement says, “We believe it is the responsibility
of a former member to determine appropriate transparency concerning further
details.”
ECFA has proceeded slowly with
ministries getting into trouble. One reason could be organizational structure.
ECFA pays its bills by charging membership fees to the organizations it’s
supposed to monitor. In 2018 ECFA brought in more than $5 million in total
revenue. Nearly three-fourths of that—$3.7 million—came from fees charged to
its members.
Annual accreditation fees are based
on each applying organization’s revenue: The bigger the organization, the
bigger ECFA’s accreditation fee. According to a fee schedule on ECFA’s website,
NRB pays a $1,650 accreditation fee based on its revenues. Compassion
International, which has more than $800 million in total revenue, pays $16,000
in yearly accreditation fees.
If ECFA terminates members, it cuts
off revenue. Since 2017, 150 organizations have left ECFA. Some lost
accreditation because of failure to turn in required paperwork, or due to a
merger with another organization. Harvest Bible Chapel is the only group in
that time terminated for failure to meet ECFA’s Seven Standards of Responsible
Stewardship, whose requirements include a written statement of faith, a board
of directors not made up mostly of employees or family members, a yearly audit
by a CPA, compliance with relevant laws and Biblical mandates, and compliance
with ECFA policy on setting a top executive’s salary.
According to Busby, Harvest failed
four ECFA standards—but it took organizations other than ECFA to bring those
failures into the open. When problems arise, ECFA’s website says, they “are
addressed respectfully, confidentially, and with a redemptive approach.” That
approach appears to value the confidentiality of member organizations more than
donors’ need to know.
...
So in the last couple of years ECFA vetting has begun to seem more and more as if it's merely a rubber stamp that provides little to no assurance the organization vetted should be considered financially transparent or worthy of support.
As Roys has described it:
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-responds-to-harvest-report-claims-hes-innocent-of-misusing-church-funds/
...
In an Instagram post
today, MacDonald claimed that his expenses were “Elder and auditor approved”
and “predate the involvement of those now speaking.” The elders who are now
speaking are all part of a new board, which replaced the former elders who
resigned in the wake of the scandal involving MacDonald. MacDonald also claimed
that “significant exculpatory information” was excluded from the report due to
“an Elder imposed moratorium” on communicating with MacDonald.
MacDonald
also made reference to “historic agreements” concerning Walk in the Word
(WITW), MacDonald’s former broadcast ministry. MacDonald and Harvest are
currently in arbitration over ownership of WITW.
According to
Harvest’s report, the former executive committee at the church and MacDonald
had a signed an agreement dated January 1, 2015, which gave MacDonald ownership
of all “works of authorship created by MacDonald.” It also gave MacDonald “all
net financial and legal assets related to Walk in the Word.”
However, the
report called into question the legitimacy of this agreement because there
appeared to be no corporate board minutes “reflecting proper due diligence
regarding intellectual property matters.” The report also said that the church
did not have “documentation or other information reflecting whether MacDonald
recused himself from deliberations and votes” on the WITW commitment. It added
that the agreement also is “problematic” because it shows Harvest relinquished
“charitable assets” for which MacDonald had already been compensated “as part
of his pastoral duties.” ...
So ... seems like a quagmire. It's not impossible for there to be exulpatory information regarding James MacDonald now that he's been terminated from working and preaching at Harvest Bible Chapel but ... it seems improbable based on what has been reported so far in the last two years. Friday, November 08, 2019
James MacDonald issues statement regarding statement of disqualification issued by HBC regarding him and ministry
[adding excerpt from HBC statement for background 11-9-2019]
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/11/03/november-3-2019-elder-update/
...
[originally published post starts here]
https://www.facebook.com/DrJamesMacDonald/posts/2807916235899479?
...
My Repentance
I was, am, and will remain very sorry for the careless and hurtful words that were illegally recorded and publicized. I immediately sent written apologies where appropriate, grieving what it revealed about the state of my heart at the time, as well as the hurt caused to those who trusted us to be a more consistent example of Christlikeness. I have no excuse and am truly sorry.
...
As part of this, I have come to see my sin of handling pressure in a way that got things done, but neglected the priority of love and the presiding humility of serving others first. Letters have been sent to those the Holy Spirit has brought to mind, owning what is true without reference to what is false. We are looking to the Lord to keep my focus here as long as it takes in hopes of reconciliation with every willing heart.
...
Decisions by the current Elder/staff, along with inaccurate announcements and recent public condemnation, signaled clearly the timing to communicate our message directly. With sadness we accept that no face-to-face confession or truth-advancing interaction will be forthcoming.
...
That first quoted paragraph is striking. "I was, am, and will remain very sorry for the careless and hurtful words that were illegally recorded and publicized." is constructed in such a way that it's possible to misread it as MacDonald being sorry that the things he said were recorded and publicized and that illegally. Was the alleged illegality of the recording and subsequent publication what he is sorry for? Or is it the substance of what he said, the recording and publication of which highlighted that he said what he is now sorry for. Had the publicized words been officially on the record would he be sorry for them? This reads like a James MacDonald moment of being sorry that careless and hurtful words were illegally recorded and publicized more than that he ever said the words.
I saw variations of this kind of thing inside of Mars Hill, something along the lines of "I'm sorry that the words I said upset and offended you." The parallel is inexact, as parallels go, but the opening paragraph would read as a more direct confession if someone was sorry that he said the words, full stop, and didn't immediately proceed to express regret that his words were recorded (allegedly illegally) and publicized.
The second quoted paragraph has a pronoun shift from "I" to "we" that is apparently a reference of some kind to James MacDonald that transforms into the "we" of James and Kathy MacDonald but without necessarily being clear as to why she needed to or felt obliged to be involved in sending letters. Actually, "Letters have been sent to those the Holy Spirit has brought to mind ... " doesn't even specific which of the two, if either of them, sent letters. Since no one's mind is mentioned in particular and the paragraph shifts form "I" to "we" the alluded to sentence floats in a kind of limbo in which there is no subject--surely that collection of words is an exemplar of the passive voice
The third quoted paragraph states that decisions by the current elder/staff ... signaled clearly the etiming to communicate a message directly. "Our" not "my". Does a man like James MacDonald have to write a "My Repentance" as a document that consistently drags his wife into the repentance? One flesh, I suppose, but in the neo-Calvinist Acts 29 Gospel Coalition style orbit that Mark Driscoll used to be part of there was this axiom I heard that "headship means it's your responsibility even if it's not your fault" but that applied to the dudes, not their wives.
MacDonald has a "My Repentance" but it read as if he's dragging his wife into stuff that he seems singularly to have said and done. It also reads as if the public statement from HBC leadership that they regard him as currently disqualified from being in ministry is a public statement that inspired a reaction. If those letters got sent surely someone could have verified that they received letters.
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-issues-my-repentance-on-facebook/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2019/11/08/james-macdonald-responds-to-disqualification-decision/
Had the penitential psalms been written in comparably thorough-going passive voice expressions of sentiments bereft of subject how many of us would have memorized Psalm 51?
POSTSCRIPT
11-9-2019
Something that could be easy to forget (or not known in 2019) is that when Sutton Turner wrote about his role in Mars Hill Church using Result Source to rig a #1 spot for Real Marriage on the New York Times bestseller list he mentioned that when the thing became known in the news there was a split in the MHC BOAA over whether to scapegoat him alone for the project being taken up.
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.
After the first blogs were published, many people asked me, “Are you stabbing Pastor Mark, Pastor Dave, Mars Hill and … in the back?”
Since leaving Mars Hill in September, I have been in frequent contact with Pastor Dave Bruskas, Matt Rogers, and other pastors with whom I directly served, board members with whom I served, and many other top leaders with whom I have served shoulder-to-shoulder while at Mars Hill. Many of these men remained at Mars Hill after my resignation and some still faithfully remain at Mars Hill selling assets and closing the organization. Our ongoing contact has been as friends, not in any managerial or oversight context with regards to Mars Hill—I’m thankful that Jesus has allowed our friendships to extend leaps and bounds beyond that. We are family in Christ.
Turner didn't say who among the BOAA wanted to put all of the blame for both Mars Hill Global and ResultSource on Sutton Turner but this is a case in which MacDonald having been on the BOAA at the times means that, though we can't be certain he was on one side or the other we can't be certain he wasn't.
If MacDonald and associates would clarify that Turner's account of a split in the MHC BOAA is accurate or not that could in itself be clarifying. There are a lot of things about the late stages of Mars Hill that have remained a bit opaque. People sometimes raise questions as to what happened to all the real estate, who got the intellectual property, things like that. The aftermath of the late Mars Hill Church has left enough of an effect in the Puget Sound area I sometimes still, five years later, come across people from that scene who have questions and questions that I consider pretty fair questions to ask and get answers to. MacDonald was on the BOAA at the time ResultSource became news and whether he was for or against Turner being designated the sole scapegoat for Mars Hill Global and ResultSource, if it's possible to know that, could be relevant to MacDonald's recent public statement that he's got some flaws but he is, implicitly, someone who should still be in ministry.
If Sutton Turner, who was an executive elder and on the BOAA, was able to say things for the record in 2015 then couldn't other MHC BOAA members say something, too? If not, why not?
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/2019/11/03/november-3-2019-elder-update/
...
On February 12, 2019, James MacDonald’s employment was terminated by our Elder board as our Senior Pastor for not being “above reproach” and for having a “sinful pattern of inappropriate language, anger, and domineering behavior.” Since then, there was a full transition to the new Elder board. The Walk in the Word donor list was also informed about the termination of James’ employment and that Harvest was closing the Walk in the Word website and no longer accepting donations.
You may be wondering why we are coming to you now, months after James’ dismissal. As we spent time with the congregation and visited all of our campuses, it became clear that there was confusion over the previous statements about our former Senior Pastor. We are here today to provide clarity to our church family and also to those who listened to and supported Walk in the Word, a ministry of Harvest Bible Chapel. We understand the seriousness of these spiritual matters and desire to be wise and discerning as we seek the Lord to guide us through the Scriptures.
1 Timothy 5:19-20 says, “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.”
In accordance with this passage, over the past several months we have been investigating the charges against our former Senior Pastor. 1 Timothy 5 is the guiding passage for this circumstance because James was an Elder of Harvest Bible Chapel. We have interviewed and documented first-hand evidence of these accusations seeking to validate or refute them. In this investigation, you can be assured of these three things: (1) We have only considered accusations that included two or three witnesses. In fact, all that is covered in this letter includes many more witnesses than the biblical requisite of two or three. (2) We have only considered evidence from first-hand witnesses. (3) We have listened to these witnesses in groups of two interviewers in order to protect us from an individual opinion swaying the outcome.
These accusations address James’ qualifications to be an Elder or Pastor in the church. The results of this investigation have led us to conclude that James had a substantial pattern of sinful behavior in the following areas:
- Above Reproach (Titus 1:6) – To be above reproach is to have a reputation of being blameless and honorable. The accusations against James are of great quantity and continue to be brought forward. His character should have been such that this magnitude of accusations would not have been believable. But sadly, James’ reputation does not defend his character. Instead, his reputation affirms many of the accusations against him as plausible.
- Respectable (1 Tim. 3:2) – The antithesis of being respectable is to be disruptive. We found that James had a pattern of being disruptive in public and private settings at the expense of other people’s well-being.
- Upright (Titus 1:8) – We found that James failed to meet the standard of dealing with others fairly and honorably. At times, he misrepresented gifts paid for by the church as gifts from him personally.
- Not Arrogant or Violent (Titus 1:7) – James’ behavior and language indicated that he thought of himself more highly than he should as evidenced by his pattern of insulting, belittling, and verbally bullying others.
- Not Quick-Tempered or Quarrelsome (Titus 1:7; 1 Tim. 3:3) –We found James had a pattern of quickly becoming angry, manifesting itself in unmerited force and frequency. James’ behavior was that of a combative person who insisted on his own ways and failed to cultivate peace.
- Not Domineering (1 Peter 5:3) –We found that James had a pattern of improperly exercising positional and spiritual authority over others to his own advantage.
- Not Greedy for Gain or A Lover of Money (Titus 1:7;1 Tim. 3:3) –We found that James made repeated efforts to profit himself beyond what was honorable. There was a pattern of extravagant spending utilizing church resources resulting in personal benefit.
- Disciplined (Titus 1:8) – James failed to keep his emotions under control. The failure is not in the dynamic range of his personality, but in the lack of self-discipline, which an Elder should display in a bridled tongue and sound speech.
- Self-Controlled and Sober-Minded (Titus 1:8; 1 Tim. 3:2) –We found that James had a pattern of acting on sudden impulses with insufficient deference to wise but differing views. In some of the most crucial moments where James needed to be calm and cautiously wise, he was hasty and reckless.
Because of these findings, James was biblically disqualified from the position of Elder, meaning he did not meet the spiritual standards to which a Harvest Bible Chapel Elder is held. The Bible does not teach that disqualification from ministry is permanent; however, with the scope of the damage caused by his behavior, James will not be able to serve again as an Elder or Pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel.
We believe James could be restored to ministry someday, but in order for that day to come, the fruits of repentance must be evident. Based on Harvest Bible Chapel’s interpretation of the scripture, we have not yet seen evidence of this. There is much potential for God to be glorified through him in the coming years, and our hope is to witness that someday.
...[originally published post starts here]
https://www.facebook.com/DrJamesMacDonald/posts/2807916235899479?
...
My Repentance
I was, am, and will remain very sorry for the careless and hurtful words that were illegally recorded and publicized. I immediately sent written apologies where appropriate, grieving what it revealed about the state of my heart at the time, as well as the hurt caused to those who trusted us to be a more consistent example of Christlikeness. I have no excuse and am truly sorry.
...
As part of this, I have come to see my sin of handling pressure in a way that got things done, but neglected the priority of love and the presiding humility of serving others first. Letters have been sent to those the Holy Spirit has brought to mind, owning what is true without reference to what is false. We are looking to the Lord to keep my focus here as long as it takes in hopes of reconciliation with every willing heart.
...
Decisions by the current Elder/staff, along with inaccurate announcements and recent public condemnation, signaled clearly the timing to communicate our message directly. With sadness we accept that no face-to-face confession or truth-advancing interaction will be forthcoming.
...
That first quoted paragraph is striking. "I was, am, and will remain very sorry for the careless and hurtful words that were illegally recorded and publicized." is constructed in such a way that it's possible to misread it as MacDonald being sorry that the things he said were recorded and publicized and that illegally. Was the alleged illegality of the recording and subsequent publication what he is sorry for? Or is it the substance of what he said, the recording and publication of which highlighted that he said what he is now sorry for. Had the publicized words been officially on the record would he be sorry for them? This reads like a James MacDonald moment of being sorry that careless and hurtful words were illegally recorded and publicized more than that he ever said the words.
I saw variations of this kind of thing inside of Mars Hill, something along the lines of "I'm sorry that the words I said upset and offended you." The parallel is inexact, as parallels go, but the opening paragraph would read as a more direct confession if someone was sorry that he said the words, full stop, and didn't immediately proceed to express regret that his words were recorded (allegedly illegally) and publicized.
The second quoted paragraph has a pronoun shift from "I" to "we" that is apparently a reference of some kind to James MacDonald that transforms into the "we" of James and Kathy MacDonald but without necessarily being clear as to why she needed to or felt obliged to be involved in sending letters. Actually, "Letters have been sent to those the Holy Spirit has brought to mind ... " doesn't even specific which of the two, if either of them, sent letters. Since no one's mind is mentioned in particular and the paragraph shifts form "I" to "we" the alluded to sentence floats in a kind of limbo in which there is no subject--surely that collection of words is an exemplar of the passive voice
The third quoted paragraph states that decisions by the current elder/staff ... signaled clearly the etiming to communicate a message directly. "Our" not "my". Does a man like James MacDonald have to write a "My Repentance" as a document that consistently drags his wife into the repentance? One flesh, I suppose, but in the neo-Calvinist Acts 29 Gospel Coalition style orbit that Mark Driscoll used to be part of there was this axiom I heard that "headship means it's your responsibility even if it's not your fault" but that applied to the dudes, not their wives.
MacDonald has a "My Repentance" but it read as if he's dragging his wife into stuff that he seems singularly to have said and done. It also reads as if the public statement from HBC leadership that they regard him as currently disqualified from being in ministry is a public statement that inspired a reaction. If those letters got sent surely someone could have verified that they received letters.
https://julieroys.com/james-macdonald-issues-my-repentance-on-facebook/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2019/11/08/james-macdonald-responds-to-disqualification-decision/
Had the penitential psalms been written in comparably thorough-going passive voice expressions of sentiments bereft of subject how many of us would have memorized Psalm 51?
POSTSCRIPT
11-9-2019
Something that could be easy to forget (or not known in 2019) is that when Sutton Turner wrote about his role in Mars Hill Church using Result Source to rig a #1 spot for Real Marriage on the New York Times bestseller list he mentioned that when the thing became known in the news there was a split in the MHC BOAA over whether to scapegoat him alone for the project being taken up.
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.
After the first blogs were published, many people asked me, “Are you stabbing Pastor Mark, Pastor Dave, Mars Hill and … in the back?”
Since leaving Mars Hill in September, I have been in frequent contact with Pastor Dave Bruskas, Matt Rogers, and other pastors with whom I directly served, board members with whom I served, and many other top leaders with whom I have served shoulder-to-shoulder while at Mars Hill. Many of these men remained at Mars Hill after my resignation and some still faithfully remain at Mars Hill selling assets and closing the organization. Our ongoing contact has been as friends, not in any managerial or oversight context with regards to Mars Hill—I’m thankful that Jesus has allowed our friendships to extend leaps and bounds beyond that. We are family in Christ.
Turner didn't say who among the BOAA wanted to put all of the blame for both Mars Hill Global and ResultSource on Sutton Turner but this is a case in which MacDonald having been on the BOAA at the times means that, though we can't be certain he was on one side or the other we can't be certain he wasn't.
If MacDonald and associates would clarify that Turner's account of a split in the MHC BOAA is accurate or not that could in itself be clarifying. There are a lot of things about the late stages of Mars Hill that have remained a bit opaque. People sometimes raise questions as to what happened to all the real estate, who got the intellectual property, things like that. The aftermath of the late Mars Hill Church has left enough of an effect in the Puget Sound area I sometimes still, five years later, come across people from that scene who have questions and questions that I consider pretty fair questions to ask and get answers to. MacDonald was on the BOAA at the time ResultSource became news and whether he was for or against Turner being designated the sole scapegoat for Mars Hill Global and ResultSource, if it's possible to know that, could be relevant to MacDonald's recent public statement that he's got some flaws but he is, implicitly, someone who should still be in ministry.
If Sutton Turner, who was an executive elder and on the BOAA, was able to say things for the record in 2015 then couldn't other MHC BOAA members say something, too? If not, why not?
Monday, November 04, 2019
Julie Roys: Elders at Harvest Formally Disqualify James MacDonald From Ministry (i.e. former MHC BoAA member James MacDonald)
https://julieroys.com/elders-at-harvest-formally-disqualify-james-macdonald-from-ministry/
James MacDonald has been declared formally disqualified from serving in pastoral ministry on the basis of findings with regard to his conduct and character.
We've looked at Roys' coverage of James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel in the past.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/12/julie-roys-article-at-world-mentions.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/10/statement-from-james-macdonald.html
Here in 2019 it can seem that a few of the people who endorsed Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage back in 2012 landed themselves in some controversy.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/07/real-marriage-in-2016-looking-back-on.html
MacDonald is the highest profile recent example but Bob Coy, Perry Noble, Les & Leslie Parrott and Darrin Patrick all had varying levels of controversy. What makes the MacDonald situation unique is simply that the HBC board has issued a public statement declaring that he is currently not considered by them to be qualified to work in continuing ministry.
This blog having more of a history of dealing with things Mars Hill this isn't the venue for advocates for JM or HBC to comment and expect that to make it out of moderation.
That MacDonald was with Mark Driscoll when he decided to crash The Strange Fire conference has been easily established.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
That other party-crashers with Driscoll included Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner along with James MacDonald seemed, to me, to establish that Paul Tripp was correct when he assessed that the BoAA was incapable of doing what it was expected to do, keep Mark Driscoll accountable. In light of subsequent discoveries and coverage about MacDonald's conduct, termination, and the recent announcement from HBC that he is not regarded as qualified to be in ministry right now, this is something that should be kept in mind in light of Mark Driscoll's repudiation of the Calvinist TULIP and his claim that the young, restless Reformed guys are little boys with father wounds who prefer big brother figures and don't want to be accountable to father figures. In light of James MacDonald's conduct and role on the MHC BoAA it might be fair to ask whether Mark Driscoll has avoided even "older brother" figures for accountability. As noted earlier, Darren Patrick was born a month after Mark Driscoll, he of whom Driscoll once said "He's my pastor, you know?" As for Jamie Munson, the at one time legal president of Mars Hill from 2007 to 2011, Driscoll was formally subordinate to Munson as president but the nickname "Mini-Mark" was not without cause. Munson could be regarded as another case in which Mark Driscoll had men on a board to which he was said to be accountable that featured people who were arguably "little brother" figures rather than "older brother" figures.
There was a kind of father figure pastor in the early Driscoll public career, David Nicholas.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=2
How do you do this over such long distance?
Driscoll: We talk all the time. David is my pastor.[emphasis added] He prays for me. He invests in me. He doesn't tell me what to do, but when he sees things in my character or theology that need to be challenged, he speaks to that very directly. I desperately need that. I tend to be stubborn and aggressive. I need someone strong speaking into my life, saying, "Think about this." But it has to be predicated on friendship and love.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=3
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=4
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=5
But what happened to that relationship is anybody's guess. The possibility that what Mark Driscoll has called accountability might be a formality or involve a set of relationships in which the people to whom he says he's accountable are people that under a variety of circumstances would be, in his historic pattern of teaching, people who would have to submit to him is something that's been discussed here in the past. For sake of review.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/08/spiritual-authority-accountability.html
MacDonald, of course, resigned from the MHC BoAA about the same time Paul Tripp, though providing a drastically different rationale for resignation. Where Tripp declared the MHC BoAA was incapable of accomplishing its purpose, MacDonald said he was so confident in Pastor Mark's goodwill he saw no reason to continue being on the MHC BoAA.
UPCOMING CHANGES TO THE BOAA
A couple of months later Driscoll resigned to the stated surprise of the BoAA, a matter that former BoAA member Larry Osborne could potentially address now if willing to field questions on the topic of Mark Driscoll's resignation.
That MacDonald has been found unfit to currently serve in ministry probably should be kept in mind in assessing the nature of Mark Driscoll's resignation in late 2014. MacDonald, after all, was not necessarily involved in the investigation that Driscoll said was made and if he wasn't then on what basis could MacDonald be confident that Driscoll would or could not be found unfit to continue in pastoral ministry without some kind of restoration plan?
James MacDonald has been declared formally disqualified from serving in pastoral ministry on the basis of findings with regard to his conduct and character.
We've looked at Roys' coverage of James MacDonald and Harvest Bible Chapel in the past.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/12/julie-roys-article-at-world-mentions.html
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/10/statement-from-james-macdonald.html
Here in 2019 it can seem that a few of the people who endorsed Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage back in 2012 landed themselves in some controversy.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/07/real-marriage-in-2016-looking-back-on.html
MacDonald is the highest profile recent example but Bob Coy, Perry Noble, Les & Leslie Parrott and Darrin Patrick all had varying levels of controversy. What makes the MacDonald situation unique is simply that the HBC board has issued a public statement declaring that he is currently not considered by them to be qualified to work in continuing ministry.
This blog having more of a history of dealing with things Mars Hill this isn't the venue for advocates for JM or HBC to comment and expect that to make it out of moderation.
That MacDonald was with Mark Driscoll when he decided to crash The Strange Fire conference has been easily established.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
That other party-crashers with Driscoll included Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner along with James MacDonald seemed, to me, to establish that Paul Tripp was correct when he assessed that the BoAA was incapable of doing what it was expected to do, keep Mark Driscoll accountable. In light of subsequent discoveries and coverage about MacDonald's conduct, termination, and the recent announcement from HBC that he is not regarded as qualified to be in ministry right now, this is something that should be kept in mind in light of Mark Driscoll's repudiation of the Calvinist TULIP and his claim that the young, restless Reformed guys are little boys with father wounds who prefer big brother figures and don't want to be accountable to father figures. In light of James MacDonald's conduct and role on the MHC BoAA it might be fair to ask whether Mark Driscoll has avoided even "older brother" figures for accountability. As noted earlier, Darren Patrick was born a month after Mark Driscoll, he of whom Driscoll once said "He's my pastor, you know?" As for Jamie Munson, the at one time legal president of Mars Hill from 2007 to 2011, Driscoll was formally subordinate to Munson as president but the nickname "Mini-Mark" was not without cause. Munson could be regarded as another case in which Mark Driscoll had men on a board to which he was said to be accountable that featured people who were arguably "little brother" figures rather than "older brother" figures.
There was a kind of father figure pastor in the early Driscoll public career, David Nicholas.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=2
How do you do this over such long distance?
Driscoll: We talk all the time. David is my pastor.[emphasis added] He prays for me. He invests in me. He doesn't tell me what to do, but when he sees things in my character or theology that need to be challenged, he speaks to that very directly. I desperately need that. I tend to be stubborn and aggressive. I need someone strong speaking into my life, saying, "Think about this." But it has to be predicated on friendship and love.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=3
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=4
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2000/fall/6.44.html?start=5
But what happened to that relationship is anybody's guess. The possibility that what Mark Driscoll has called accountability might be a formality or involve a set of relationships in which the people to whom he says he's accountable are people that under a variety of circumstances would be, in his historic pattern of teaching, people who would have to submit to him is something that's been discussed here in the past. For sake of review.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/08/spiritual-authority-accountability.html
MacDonald, of course, resigned from the MHC BoAA about the same time Paul Tripp, though providing a drastically different rationale for resignation. Where Tripp declared the MHC BoAA was incapable of accomplishing its purpose, MacDonald said he was so confident in Pastor Mark's goodwill he saw no reason to continue being on the MHC BoAA.
…
UPCOMING CHANGES TO THE BOAA
Dr. Paul Tripp joined our Board of Advisors and Accountability in November 2013 and has been an immense help to our leaders over the past year. Dr. Tripp has extensive experience in discipleship and biblical counseling. Earlier this month, we made the decision together to open the opportunity for him to work with greater focus on issues directly related to his expertise, namely the continued development of our community and redemption ministries. Because simultaneously being a board member and a consultant does not allow for the required definition of independence, Dr. Tripp graciously submitted his resignation from the BOAA in early June so that he can more extensively serve our church as a consultant. We are excited to continue this work with him, and are thankful for his continued support of Mars Hill Church.
Similarly, Pastor James MacDonald informed the board at the July meeting of his decision to transition from his current role on the board pending his replacement. Pastor James has been a great help in forming the current board’s direction, and we are very grateful for his time and wisdom over the last several years. He said about this transition, “I have great love and affection for Mars Hill Church and I want to make clear this change is not because I am unhappy with Mark’s response to board accountability. On the contrary, I have found him to be exemplary in his current readiness to live under the BOAA oversight. I am not resigning because I doubt Mark’s sincerity in any way. I believe in Mark Driscoll and his heart to leverage difficult lessons [emphases added] in service to Christ and his church in the years ahead. I am excited to continue to support that trajectory as Mark’s friend, as I focus my efforts on Harvest Bible Fellowship.” [emphases added]
Considering these transitions, Pastor Mark shared, “I am thankful for the service of both Paul and James, two men I admire and respect. Their service on our board has been a blessing to me and Mars Hill Church in countless ways. The amount of hours they have given as volunteers is extraordinary, especially in light of their other ministry demands.” Candidates are currently being interviewed to replace these open board positions. They will be submitted before the Full Council of Elders for their approval as soon as possible.
A couple of months later Driscoll resigned to the stated surprise of the BoAA, a matter that former BoAA member Larry Osborne could potentially address now if willing to field questions on the topic of Mark Driscoll's resignation.
That MacDonald has been found unfit to currently serve in ministry probably should be kept in mind in assessing the nature of Mark Driscoll's resignation in late 2014. MacDonald, after all, was not necessarily involved in the investigation that Driscoll said was made and if he wasn't then on what basis could MacDonald be confident that Driscoll would or could not be found unfit to continue in pastoral ministry without some kind of restoration plan?
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Julie Roys mentions that Mark Driscoll slated to speak at Larry Osborne conference, sponsors drop
https://julieroys.com/disgraced-pastor-mark-driscoll-to-speak-at-larry-osbornes-conference-on-healthy-thriving-ministries-sponsors-drop/
This has come up recently and while Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't necessarily writing much about what's been going on at The Village Church (connections being Matt Chandler and Dave Bruskas) it doesn't mean I don't keep any tabs on those kinds of developments. Tim Smith did end up listed on staff at Door of Hope in Portland, for instance, after what used to be Mars Hill Portland shuttered.
Of former MHC associated leadership James MacDonald was a bit more newsworthy in the last year on account of, among a number of things, reporting done by Julie Roys. The latest bit of news connecting to Driscoll is Roys has reported that Driscoll is scheduled as a speaker at a Larry Osborne connected conference on healthy, thriving ministries, and some named sponsors are no longer sponsors or have not yet made decisions.
What is of significance with respect to both Driscoll and Osborne is the degree to which I've documented Mark Driscoll saying that a meeting with Osborne proved fateful for inspiring him to reorganize Mars Hill, something he announced in the closing chapters of Confessions of a Reformission Rev which was undertaken in the period from roughly 2006 to 2007. Along the way there were substantial revisions to the governing documents that consolidated and centralized power from a two-dozen elder board to anywhere between three to five executive elders who were given the power to decide to acquire real estate, for instance.
I reviewed some history between Mark Driscoll and Larry Osborne in the following series of posts.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/osborne%20driscoll%20talk
Something that is worth mentioning is that, you'll need to plug this into the Wayback Machine or find a corrresponding link at marshill.se, Osborne was listed as a member of the Mars Hill BoAA in 2013. This notice was made around the time of the fateful late 2013 interview with Janet Mefferd in which Mefferd accused Mark Driscoll of being a plagiarist on air and shortly thereafter provided documentation establishing the credibility of the accusation. Eventually Warren Throckmorton would chronicle the ways in which books spanning what was up until 2013 Mark Driscoll's catalog of books turned out to have citation errors. Those citation errors have since been fixed in second editions and some books are in the process of revision, most notably Doctrine, which Mark Driscoll said he's rewriting this year.
Osborne and MacDonald were both on the BoAA during the plagiarism controversy of late 2013
http://marshill.com/2013/11/23/dr-paul-tripp-joins-mars-hill-s-board-of-advisors-and-accountability
...
Paul Tripp
Michael Van Skaik
James MacDonald
Larry Osborne
Mark Driscoll
Dave Bruskas
Sutton Turner
...
According to the Wayback Machine, as far back as May 2012 the following were listed as part of a committee that would investigate allegations against Mark Driscoll.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120531232846/http://marshill.com/governance
...
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.
...
Jamie Munson doesn't seem to be listing anything of his executive elder days with Mars Hill in his resume lately. If you didn't know from being at Mars Hill from about 2000 to 2013 that Jamie Munson was one of the fixtures of Mars Hill leadership you might not be able to guess he had anything to do with any ministry Mark Driscoll was ever connected to this year.
Dave Bruskas is quoted by Roys in her recent coverage.
https://julieroys.com/disgraced-pastor-mark-driscoll-to-speak-at-larry-osbornes-conference-on-healthy-thriving-ministries-sponsors-drop/
...
Wenatchee the Hatchet published the raw text of Mark Driscoll's "Using Your Penis", published under the pseudonym William Wallace II, on July 29, 2014. Somebody kept a text file of the whole thing for years and gave it to Wenatchee The Hatchet. Eventually an html file was provided and a jpeg of that was added.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-raw-text-no-pun-intended-of-william.html
There was an interesting trajectory comparing Mark Driscoll in his William Wallace II days to his WSU Evergreen op ed days.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/real-marriage-in-january-2012-and.html
To get into the full extent of Driscoll's writings about Song of Songs and what Jessica Johnson has called "biblical porn" you can read through an extensive amount of material over here:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/mark%20driscoll%20and%20the%20influence%20of%20porn
As Roys has reported, James MacDonald got himself in some trouble, and also gave some assistance to Driscoll, which we've discussed a bit here. Where the man is of note for Wenatchee The Hatchet is because MacDonald was with Mark Driscoll when Mark Driscoll decided to crash the Strange Fire conference.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
Darrin Patrick ... he was the guy of whom Mark Driscoll said "He's my pastor, you know?" back in 2008. That's a theme we'll have to come back to later in light of Mark Driscoll saying that there are guys with father wounds who surround themselves with older brother figures rather than father figures because if we go back and look at Mark Driscoll having Jamie Munson being executive pastor and president of the corporation that was once known as Mars Hill a person could be forgiven for having an impression that Mark Driscoll didn't necessarily even want "older brother" figures keeping him accountable if "younger brother" figures could work. Darrin Patrick was born the month after Driscoll was, after all.
Larry Osborne has stuck by Mark Driscoll. MacDonald may or may not still be connected and it may or may not be that Patrick and Driscoll have stayed in touch. For that matter it's not known whether Driscoll and Munson have spoken in years. There could be any number of leaders from the Mars Hill days with whom Driscoll hasn't said much of anything. Based on what Roys has reported Dave Bruskas has said to her, it could be there are any number of people with whom Driscoll is not observably in restored relationship, or relationship of any sort.
When the last time was that Mark Driscoll talked to the co-founders of Mars Hill Church would only be knowable, perhaps, to Mark Driscoll, Mike Gunn and Lief Moi.
What's noteworthy about Osborne is not just his persistence on the MHC BOAA but that he was on the BOAA during the period in which it presented an explanation of the use of ResultSource to secure a No. 1 place on the New York Times bestseller list for Real Marriage.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140311063444/http://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability
...
Result Source
In 2011, outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source to market the Real Marriage book and attain placement on the New York Times Bestseller list. While not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again. The true cost of this endeavor was much less than what has been reported, and to be clear, all of the books purchased through this campaign have been given away or sold through normal channels. All monies from the sale of Pastor Mark’s books at Mars Hill bookstores have always gone to the church and Pastor Mark did not profit from the Real Marriage books sold either at the church or through the Result Source marketing campaign.
...
It wasn't illegal or unethical but it was unwise.
Osborne was part of the BoAA at the time the statement was provided. All of that may be necessary to keep in mind when Roys quotes Bruskas regarding Mark Driscoll in the present:
...
In terms of connections to Leadership Network Driscoll's connection may go as far back as the late 1990s even if he may not have been personally interacting with Osborne much in those days.
Driscoll and Osborne discussed governance and how power goes from the throne down not the pew up. We looked at some length at that philosophy regarding power and looked at the governing document of the former Mars Hill Church. In sum, Mark Driscoll had either complete formal corporate power over the church he was a member of or, should he have resigned his leadership role, he'd not be a member of Mars Hill Church.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-recent-exchange-between-warren.html
When Driscoll talks in more recent days about how there are guys with father wounds who want older brother figures and to not have to be accountable to real father figures Driscoll has, for those who wade deeply into the history of the governance of Mars Hill Church in corporate terms, arguably been the best case study of such a weakness regarding accountability. Driscoll claimed that he agreed to the restoration plan the board came up with but then received some kind of oracle saying he was "released". Despite the fact that Driscoll had said he wouldn't leave and wasn't going anywhere, by late 2014 he was "released" but he did not share this account until 2015. Osborne, who was part of the BOAA possibly as far as its dissolution, could at least be in a position to clarify to Roys for the record if Mark Driscoll's account of agreeing with the restoration plan proposed by the board is accurate.
Osborne's policy, by way of solidarity with the MHC BOAA during the plagiarism controversy of late 2013 and the Result Source controversy of early 2014 was to stand by his man. That Driscoll went back and fixed citation errors in his books could be commended if Mark Driscoll could admit that there were so many citation errors in his books that they needed to be corrected. Adding a note of thanks in Real Marriage regarding the debt Mark and Grace Driscoll have had to the work of Dan Allender, for instance, raises a new problem--if Grace Driscoll (or, if applicable, a ghostwriter) claimed that there were basically no resources at Mars Hill to help victims of sexual abuse then if Dan Allender's work was known and used by Mark and Grace Driscoll then how, exactly, can it be true to say that Mars Hill had no resources? It's possible to argue, based on statements made by former biblical living pastor James Noriega that there was a philosophy within Mars Hill leadership that aspired to have it so that no one would ever need to make use of resources that were not specifically developed within Mars Hill, but that's not the same thing as saying there were no resources when Grace Driscoll shared with her husband she had been abused.
Nor can we just ignore that Mark Driscoll claimed that he and Grace were both virgins when they met in an interview with Christianity Today despite the fact that both attested they were not virgins in the text of Real Marriage itself.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/januaryweb-only/mark-driscoll-sex-marriage.html
M: No, and for us, we sinned, quite frankly. We were virgins when we met and were sleeping together as high-school boyfriend and girlfriend. Then Grace came back to Christ, and I came to Christ in college, so we had to stop sinning sexually. I'd say if we both could go back and rewrite history and change one thing, that would probably be the thing we would change. [emphasis added] But we did repent and met with our pastor. And then we did get married, between our junior and senior years of college
Real Marriage
Mark and Grace Driscoll
Copyright (c) 2012 by On Mission, LLC
Thomas Nelson
ISBN 978-1-4002-0383-3
ISBN 978-1-4041-8352-0 (IE)
Mark Driscoll would at times in his Mars Hill days say "We broke some rules, but God is faithful." In the wake of the controversies surrounding his leadership style and decisions made on behalf of his brand name recognition in contrast to the reputational welfare of what used to be Mars Hill Church, it can seem as though Mark Driscoll presents a cumulative story in which he's allowed to break rules and there is "grace" for him that has not, was not, and presently unlikely to be extended to others within his orbit. One of Mark Driscoll's complaints in Real Marriage was that sometimes there would be Christian counselors but they would turn out to have marriages as bad as the one Mark felt he had so they weren't qualified to help. Yet year after year Mark Driscoll counseled married couples and that gets at one of the core difficulties with Driscoll continuing in ministry that isn't really a thing you can reduce down to a zippy single sentence observation--you can "say" that Mark Driscoll's trouble has been that he operates on the basis of double standardized tests where he receives grace and people who cross him get put in the woodchipper, but it's the sum of the life that has to be observed first.
Yet a man who can't consistently establish for the record whether or not he was a virgin when he started dating the woman who would become his wife is someone who we should not trust simply because he says God told him he was supposed to be a pastor or that he's been "released" from ministry at Mars Hill Church. The trouble with that claim is that even if we take it at face value, the most prominent case of a man being appointed by God to be a leader of God's people who was then "released" from that leadership role would be someone like King Saul.
POSTSCRIPT
10-30-2019
9.22pm
Should Roys want to compare notes on what she's found on the James MacDonald side with what Wenatchee The Hatchet has been documenting on the Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll side, comparing notes would be interesting. Osborne seems to be more significant a figure in the history of Mars Hill than any of us were able to grasp at the time and Osborne's continued support of Driscoll does raise a number of questions as to how much Osborne knows about the 2007 period or about the accuracy of Mark Driscoll's account to Brian Houston that Mark agreed to submit to the restoration plan but was then "released" according to some kind of oracle experience. Documents from the time of Driscoll's 2014 resignation indicate surprise and disappointment on the part of the boards of Mars Hill. Was Osborne surprised? If not, why not?
With the Result Source contract having been signed by Sutton Turner years ago Osborne, as a former member of the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability, could perhaps field a statement to Roys about what his thoughts on that decision were. Turner has stated for the record he had issues with the plan but decided to sign the contract because if he didn't someone else would. That invites a question as to who that someone else could have or would have been but that's arguably also moot.
One thing that becomes clearer is that if Mark Driscoll were to decide to make a complete break with everything to do with his past with Mars Hill a break from Osborne might, eventually, be necessary. Osborne's role on the MHC BOAA in its final years was too readily documented for both men to completely avoid the questions that can come up about Result Source, the plagiarism controversy and how and why they believe or believed Mark Driscoll was not found unqualified to serve in pastoral ministry on the basis of either of those controversies.
This has come up recently and while Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't necessarily writing much about what's been going on at The Village Church (connections being Matt Chandler and Dave Bruskas) it doesn't mean I don't keep any tabs on those kinds of developments. Tim Smith did end up listed on staff at Door of Hope in Portland, for instance, after what used to be Mars Hill Portland shuttered.
Of former MHC associated leadership James MacDonald was a bit more newsworthy in the last year on account of, among a number of things, reporting done by Julie Roys. The latest bit of news connecting to Driscoll is Roys has reported that Driscoll is scheduled as a speaker at a Larry Osborne connected conference on healthy, thriving ministries, and some named sponsors are no longer sponsors or have not yet made decisions.
What is of significance with respect to both Driscoll and Osborne is the degree to which I've documented Mark Driscoll saying that a meeting with Osborne proved fateful for inspiring him to reorganize Mars Hill, something he announced in the closing chapters of Confessions of a Reformission Rev which was undertaken in the period from roughly 2006 to 2007. Along the way there were substantial revisions to the governing documents that consolidated and centralized power from a two-dozen elder board to anywhere between three to five executive elders who were given the power to decide to acquire real estate, for instance.
I reviewed some history between Mark Driscoll and Larry Osborne in the following series of posts.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/osborne%20driscoll%20talk
Something that is worth mentioning is that, you'll need to plug this into the Wayback Machine or find a corrresponding link at marshill.se, Osborne was listed as a member of the Mars Hill BoAA in 2013. This notice was made around the time of the fateful late 2013 interview with Janet Mefferd in which Mefferd accused Mark Driscoll of being a plagiarist on air and shortly thereafter provided documentation establishing the credibility of the accusation. Eventually Warren Throckmorton would chronicle the ways in which books spanning what was up until 2013 Mark Driscoll's catalog of books turned out to have citation errors. Those citation errors have since been fixed in second editions and some books are in the process of revision, most notably Doctrine, which Mark Driscoll said he's rewriting this year.
Osborne and MacDonald were both on the BoAA during the plagiarism controversy of late 2013
http://marshill.com/2013/11/23/dr-paul-tripp-joins-mars-hill-s-board-of-advisors-and-accountability
...
Paul Tripp
Michael Van Skaik
James MacDonald
Larry Osborne
Mark Driscoll
Dave Bruskas
Sutton Turner
...
According to the Wayback Machine, as far back as May 2012 the following were listed as part of a committee that would investigate allegations against Mark Driscoll.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120531232846/http://marshill.com/governance
...
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.
...
Jamie Munson doesn't seem to be listing anything of his executive elder days with Mars Hill in his resume lately. If you didn't know from being at Mars Hill from about 2000 to 2013 that Jamie Munson was one of the fixtures of Mars Hill leadership you might not be able to guess he had anything to do with any ministry Mark Driscoll was ever connected to this year.
Dave Bruskas is quoted by Roys in her recent coverage.
https://julieroys.com/disgraced-pastor-mark-driscoll-to-speak-at-larry-osbornes-conference-on-healthy-thriving-ministries-sponsors-drop/
...
Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill in 2014 after an internal investigation at the church found Driscoll guilty of “arrogance, responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading . . . in a domineering manner.” But prior to his resignation, Driscoll had already publicly been accused of plagiarism. His church had also admitted that it had used more than $210,000 of church funds to buy Driscoll’s 2013 book, Real Marriage, to put the book at the top the New York Times best-seller’s list.
Driscoll, known by some as the “cussing pastor,” was also known for degrading talk about women and vulgarity. (He once said women were created to be “homes” for men’s penises and that oral sex was biblical.) And in 2016, several former members brought a class-action suit against Driscoll, accusing him of running Mars Hill like an organized crime syndicate—systematically soliciting donations for one purpose, but then using them for another. (This suit was later dismissed because the plaintiffs said they didn’t have the money to pursue the suit.)
Yesterday, I talked with Dave Bruskas, one of three former executive elders at Mars Hill, who now serves as campus pastor at The Village Church Fort Worth. Bruskas said Driscoll refused to go through the restoration plan that Mars Hill had suggested in 2014. And to Bruskas’ knowledge, Driscoll has not gone through any restoration plan since. In addition, Bruskas said that he knows people whom Driscoll has hurt who are not reconciled with him.
...
Let's take a digression on the penis homes material. There may be those in 2019 who might be skeptical that Mark Driscoll could have written that a penis needs a home and that he would have ever described a woman as a fit home for a penis. Wenatchee the Hatchet published the raw text of Mark Driscoll's "Using Your Penis", published under the pseudonym William Wallace II, on July 29, 2014. Somebody kept a text file of the whole thing for years and gave it to Wenatchee The Hatchet. Eventually an html file was provided and a jpeg of that was added.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-raw-text-no-pun-intended-of-william.html
There was an interesting trajectory comparing Mark Driscoll in his William Wallace II days to his WSU Evergreen op ed days.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/real-marriage-in-january-2012-and.html
To get into the full extent of Driscoll's writings about Song of Songs and what Jessica Johnson has called "biblical porn" you can read through an extensive amount of material over here:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/mark%20driscoll%20and%20the%20influence%20of%20porn
As Roys has reported, James MacDonald got himself in some trouble, and also gave some assistance to Driscoll, which we've discussed a bit here. Where the man is of note for Wenatchee The Hatchet is because MacDonald was with Mark Driscoll when Mark Driscoll decided to crash the Strange Fire conference.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html
Darrin Patrick ... he was the guy of whom Mark Driscoll said "He's my pastor, you know?" back in 2008. That's a theme we'll have to come back to later in light of Mark Driscoll saying that there are guys with father wounds who surround themselves with older brother figures rather than father figures because if we go back and look at Mark Driscoll having Jamie Munson being executive pastor and president of the corporation that was once known as Mars Hill a person could be forgiven for having an impression that Mark Driscoll didn't necessarily even want "older brother" figures keeping him accountable if "younger brother" figures could work. Darrin Patrick was born the month after Driscoll was, after all.
Larry Osborne has stuck by Mark Driscoll. MacDonald may or may not still be connected and it may or may not be that Patrick and Driscoll have stayed in touch. For that matter it's not known whether Driscoll and Munson have spoken in years. There could be any number of leaders from the Mars Hill days with whom Driscoll hasn't said much of anything. Based on what Roys has reported Dave Bruskas has said to her, it could be there are any number of people with whom Driscoll is not observably in restored relationship, or relationship of any sort.
When the last time was that Mark Driscoll talked to the co-founders of Mars Hill Church would only be knowable, perhaps, to Mark Driscoll, Mike Gunn and Lief Moi.
What's noteworthy about Osborne is not just his persistence on the MHC BOAA but that he was on the BOAA during the period in which it presented an explanation of the use of ResultSource to secure a No. 1 place on the New York Times bestseller list for Real Marriage.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140311063444/http://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability
...
Result Source
In 2011, outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source to market the Real Marriage book and attain placement on the New York Times Bestseller list. While not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again. The true cost of this endeavor was much less than what has been reported, and to be clear, all of the books purchased through this campaign have been given away or sold through normal channels. All monies from the sale of Pastor Mark’s books at Mars Hill bookstores have always gone to the church and Pastor Mark did not profit from the Real Marriage books sold either at the church or through the Result Source marketing campaign.
...
It wasn't illegal or unethical but it was unwise.
Osborne was part of the BoAA at the time the statement was provided. All of that may be necessary to keep in mind when Roys quotes Bruskas regarding Mark Driscoll in the present:
...
I asked Bruskas if he believed Driscoll was fit to serve in ministry and he replied, “Do I believe Mark is permanently disqualified, no—but presently, yes. If he hasn’t gone through a restoration process, then he should not be serving.”
Bruskas added that he’s heard Driscoll confess and express remorse for the things he did at Mars Hill. Yet to date, Bruskas says he hasn’t seen evidence of repentance and change. When asked what he thinks about Larry Osborne’s continued partnership with Driscoll, Bruskas said, “That’s perplexing to me.”...
In terms of connections to Leadership Network Driscoll's connection may go as far back as the late 1990s even if he may not have been personally interacting with Osborne much in those days.
Driscoll and Osborne discussed governance and how power goes from the throne down not the pew up. We looked at some length at that philosophy regarding power and looked at the governing document of the former Mars Hill Church. In sum, Mark Driscoll had either complete formal corporate power over the church he was a member of or, should he have resigned his leadership role, he'd not be a member of Mars Hill Church.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-recent-exchange-between-warren.html
When Driscoll talks in more recent days about how there are guys with father wounds who want older brother figures and to not have to be accountable to real father figures Driscoll has, for those who wade deeply into the history of the governance of Mars Hill Church in corporate terms, arguably been the best case study of such a weakness regarding accountability. Driscoll claimed that he agreed to the restoration plan the board came up with but then received some kind of oracle saying he was "released". Despite the fact that Driscoll had said he wouldn't leave and wasn't going anywhere, by late 2014 he was "released" but he did not share this account until 2015. Osborne, who was part of the BOAA possibly as far as its dissolution, could at least be in a position to clarify to Roys for the record if Mark Driscoll's account of agreeing with the restoration plan proposed by the board is accurate.
Osborne's policy, by way of solidarity with the MHC BOAA during the plagiarism controversy of late 2013 and the Result Source controversy of early 2014 was to stand by his man. That Driscoll went back and fixed citation errors in his books could be commended if Mark Driscoll could admit that there were so many citation errors in his books that they needed to be corrected. Adding a note of thanks in Real Marriage regarding the debt Mark and Grace Driscoll have had to the work of Dan Allender, for instance, raises a new problem--if Grace Driscoll (or, if applicable, a ghostwriter) claimed that there were basically no resources at Mars Hill to help victims of sexual abuse then if Dan Allender's work was known and used by Mark and Grace Driscoll then how, exactly, can it be true to say that Mars Hill had no resources? It's possible to argue, based on statements made by former biblical living pastor James Noriega that there was a philosophy within Mars Hill leadership that aspired to have it so that no one would ever need to make use of resources that were not specifically developed within Mars Hill, but that's not the same thing as saying there were no resources when Grace Driscoll shared with her husband she had been abused.
Nor can we just ignore that Mark Driscoll claimed that he and Grace were both virgins when they met in an interview with Christianity Today despite the fact that both attested they were not virgins in the text of Real Marriage itself.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/januaryweb-only/mark-driscoll-sex-marriage.html
Interview by Katelyn Beaty and Marlena Graves/ January 5, 2012
...
Is there tension in teaching sexual purity before marriage while encouraging frequent and wonderful sex within marriage?M: No, and for us, we sinned, quite frankly. We were virgins when we met and were sleeping together as high-school boyfriend and girlfriend. Then Grace came back to Christ, and I came to Christ in college, so we had to stop sinning sexually. I'd say if we both could go back and rewrite history and change one thing, that would probably be the thing we would change. [emphasis added] But we did repent and met with our pastor. And then we did get married, between our junior and senior years of college
Real Marriage
Mark and Grace Driscoll
Copyright (c) 2012 by On Mission, LLC
Thomas Nelson
ISBN 978-1-4002-0383-3
ISBN 978-1-4041-8352-0 (IE)
Page 7
Neither Grace nor I was a virgin when we met, and before long we were dating and sleeping together, which continued even after she went off to college while I was finishing high school.
Now it's possible that after giving so many interviews a person can forget something as basic as whether or not one was a virgin at the time of meeting the person who would become one's spouse but the conditions under which such forgetfulness seem most probable involve significant breakdown of mental acuity and function. Another possibility is that answering interview questions can become a kind of performance art in which the answer is tailored to the recipient, although some might say that risks being deceptive, depending on what answer is given.Mark Driscoll would at times in his Mars Hill days say "We broke some rules, but God is faithful." In the wake of the controversies surrounding his leadership style and decisions made on behalf of his brand name recognition in contrast to the reputational welfare of what used to be Mars Hill Church, it can seem as though Mark Driscoll presents a cumulative story in which he's allowed to break rules and there is "grace" for him that has not, was not, and presently unlikely to be extended to others within his orbit. One of Mark Driscoll's complaints in Real Marriage was that sometimes there would be Christian counselors but they would turn out to have marriages as bad as the one Mark felt he had so they weren't qualified to help. Yet year after year Mark Driscoll counseled married couples and that gets at one of the core difficulties with Driscoll continuing in ministry that isn't really a thing you can reduce down to a zippy single sentence observation--you can "say" that Mark Driscoll's trouble has been that he operates on the basis of double standardized tests where he receives grace and people who cross him get put in the woodchipper, but it's the sum of the life that has to be observed first.
Yet a man who can't consistently establish for the record whether or not he was a virgin when he started dating the woman who would become his wife is someone who we should not trust simply because he says God told him he was supposed to be a pastor or that he's been "released" from ministry at Mars Hill Church. The trouble with that claim is that even if we take it at face value, the most prominent case of a man being appointed by God to be a leader of God's people who was then "released" from that leadership role would be someone like King Saul.
POSTSCRIPT
10-30-2019
9.22pm
Should Roys want to compare notes on what she's found on the James MacDonald side with what Wenatchee The Hatchet has been documenting on the Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll side, comparing notes would be interesting. Osborne seems to be more significant a figure in the history of Mars Hill than any of us were able to grasp at the time and Osborne's continued support of Driscoll does raise a number of questions as to how much Osborne knows about the 2007 period or about the accuracy of Mark Driscoll's account to Brian Houston that Mark agreed to submit to the restoration plan but was then "released" according to some kind of oracle experience. Documents from the time of Driscoll's 2014 resignation indicate surprise and disappointment on the part of the boards of Mars Hill. Was Osborne surprised? If not, why not?
With the Result Source contract having been signed by Sutton Turner years ago Osborne, as a former member of the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability, could perhaps field a statement to Roys about what his thoughts on that decision were. Turner has stated for the record he had issues with the plan but decided to sign the contract because if he didn't someone else would. That invites a question as to who that someone else could have or would have been but that's arguably also moot.
One thing that becomes clearer is that if Mark Driscoll were to decide to make a complete break with everything to do with his past with Mars Hill a break from Osborne might, eventually, be necessary. Osborne's role on the MHC BOAA in its final years was too readily documented for both men to completely avoid the questions that can come up about Result Source, the plagiarism controversy and how and why they believe or believed Mark Driscoll was not found unqualified to serve in pastoral ministry on the basis of either of those controversies.
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