a new era, a new capital campaign, a new building acquisition, and remembering what happened back in 2006 when Mars Hill acquired one of its biggest boondoggles.

https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/6/20/mark-driscolls-safe-space-in-arizona-2zxze

Mark Driscoll’s Safe Space: How The Embattled Pastor Built A New Church

Chris Moody  October 2, 2023

…

Meanwhile, Chase’s older brother, Landon Chase, became engaged to one of Driscoll’s daughters. But as Landon Chase spent more time with Driscoll, he began to grow distant from his family, Luke Chase said. It was around this time that people in the church began commenting to Luke Chase about his parents, who would soon join the Driscolls as in-laws. According to Chase, church leaders urged him to stop speaking to his parents. They told the impressionable teenager that his parents were “toxic” and that he should cut them out of their lives. (A few years later, in 2022, Driscoll delivered a sermon entitled “When to sever ties with toxic family members?” that explored the topic.)

 

Before Landon Chase and Ashley Driscoll married, the Driscolls invited the Chase family to their home for dinner. During the meal, Driscoll announced that he wanted to offer Landon a full-time job at Trinity Church, which would pull him away from the nonprofit that he helped found with his family. It came as a shock to his parents, who had relocated the family to start the organization with Landon. A few minutes later, Driscoll started making negative comments about the Chase family. According to Luke, Driscoll stood up over Pauline Chase and began berating her. He told her she was a terrible mother and person until she was brought to tears. 

 

“He tore my parents to shreds,” Luke Chase said. “Mark wanted to be the alpha parent and cut my parents out of the equation.” 

 

The Chase family was left in shock. Doug Chase later demanded that Driscoll apologize to his wife, and he refused. 

 

Luke Chase left the church shortly after that. At the time he spoke to Religion Unplugged, he said that his brother Landon Chase who formerly served in the church as its “Pastor of Fun” had not spoken to him or his parents for more than a year. The only way they were allowed to contact him was through a P.O. Box, where they could send letters, Luke Chase said. For a long time, they did not know where he lived. Luke Chase said they began talking again late in 2022. Landon Chase, who now works in real estate, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

“I used to feel angry,” he said. “Now I just feel disappointment and sadness for everyone who's still there.” 

 

Mark Driscoll positioning himself as someone who can say that he, unlike your parents, hasn’t sold out to the American Dream was something he was doing back in the 1990s, as documented by Mother Jones.  The irony of Mark Driscoll rolling out literally therapeutic jargon from Murray Bowen in the last five years in books such as Leave and Cleave: A 21-day Family Systems Journal or Fix Your Family System: Breaking Toxic Patterns Through Biblical Wisdom would be hard to overstate.  This is the same Mark Driscoll who told Mother Jones he was a very confrontational guy and not some pansy-ass therapist but that was back in the 20^th century.

 

Interestingly, while the article by Moody referred to Chase as working in real estate, according to the RealFaith website, Landon Chase became CEO of the ministry in 2022.

 

https://realfaith.com/who-we-are/

CEO, Leadership Team

Pastor Landon & Ashley Chase

Built for ministry. Driven by purpose.
Fueled by the gospel.

 

Landon and Ashley Chase are a husband-and-wife team with a passion for helping people discover God’s purpose and walk it out with conviction.

 

Ashley co-founded RealFaith in 2016 with her dad, Pastor Mark, and has been a key voice ever since—writing, speaking, and co-authoring Pray Like Jesus to help families grow in their faith.

 

Landon became CEO in 2022, bringing entrepreneurial grit and bold vision. With a business degree from Point Loma and a track record of growth, he’s led RealFaith to expand into over 150 nations and sustained 75% year-over-year growth—all while staying grounded in Bible teaching and spiritual authority.

 

Together, they’re raising their son Indy, staying rooted in their local church, and equipping families to follow Jesus in everyday life.

 

Whatever Chase’s achievements in real estate have been, they go unmentioned.    As it stands there is a capital campaign in the works

https://www.trinitychurch.com/legacy

 

4. What is the commitment of Pastor Mark and Grace to the future of Trinity?

Our church family was started by the Driscoll family who all serve together. The family feels called to Trinity Church by God, loves the church, and feels very loved by the church. At the 2025 annual Board of Directors Meeting Pastor Mark asked to sign a 10-year commitment and did so to ensure that everyone knows he is fully committed to Trinity Church and plans to preach there for the rest of his life. 

 

Well, where are the members of the Board of Directors listed? Who are those people? Driscoll asked the Board to sign a 10-year commitment? Why?  Isn't he and his whole family committed?  Then again, this is the same guy who told people in Seattle "6 Reasons Why I'm Not Going Anywhere" in 2010. Then 2013-2014 happened.  So ... maybe he needs to sign a document that requires him to stick around for ten years because, well, Seattle happened.  Okay, fair enough. If even Mark Driscoll knows he has to sign a ten-year commitment document ... well ... hey ... publish that. 

If the capital campaign of circa 2005 from the Mars Hill years era 20 years ago is any indication then the last thing you should do is give to a new capital campaign where the people who just bought the building plan to submit permits to the city.  I mean, sure, Seattle is Seattle and Arizona is another state. A good chunk of men and women I knew twenty years ago in Mars Hill would not seriously dream of living in this city now. 

Still, go back and read Confessions of a Reformission Rev from 2006 and read about that building purchase he touted at the end; consider that that facility never actually became what Mark Driscoll said it would become, the permits situation didn’t change; I had learned privately that a local business owner in the region urged the Mars Hill elders to not buy the property that became the Mars Hill corporate headquarters because it was only zoned for industrial use but the Mars Hill leaders went and bought it anyway.  As one told me, the surmise was that the real estate market was great and, at worst, the property could get flipped.  Then the 2008 housing bubble hit and Mars Hill ended up being stuck with that boondoggle until its death.

 

It could be that the Driscoll clan has become more savvy and competent about real estate acquisitions in the last twenty years. That’s entirely possible. But before people in Arizona dig deep to give to the new capital campaign they should consider that there was a capital campaign decades ago for a building that didn’t pan out. 

Warren Throckmorton notes Mark Driscoll now asking for 650k--revisiting Re:Sound and MH Global as precedents for whatever Driscoll's fundraising for, and noting a delicate irony in his lambasting the Meta turn of Facebook as a satanic counterfeit when his celebrity was founded on media leveraging

Recently Warren Throckmorton noted that Mark Driscoll has asked for $200,000.00

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/12/07/after-a-year-of-trials-mark-driscoll-needs-200000-to-finish-strong/

and yet more recently asked for $650,000.00

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/12/10/stop-the-presses-mark-driscoll-needs-650000-more/

 

According to the following the reasons for the fundraising ask are as follows:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211210040745/https://mailchi.mp/59b961cbdfb7/an-exciting-way-to-finish-2021?e=86d2476eea

 

Our goal is to raise $650,000 beyond our regular budget needs in the final month of 2021. We have a $150,000 matching fund that doubles your gift between now and year-end, and your generous worship gift will help us with the following:

 

1. Upgrade our outdated soundboard that is too small for our growing number of volunteer musicians

2. Add more lighting and cameras so that we can improve the worship experience in the main room and also capture the worship and baptisms (over 400 in 2021!) in audio and video format to share online to minister to the more than 100 million people who are receiving Bible teaching through Real Faith from Trinity Church

3. Reset our stage, audio tuning, and audio treatment to best use our current main room for worship, thereby allowing us to add additional future worship nights

4. Set up our new Trinity Church worship studio with 3,200 square feet of office, meeting, songwriting, recording, and practice space that is in addition to our current studio space

5. Add more worship interns and part-time trainees we are developing as worship leaders

6. Purchase a mobile sound system for the Versus worship team in Sonora, Mexico. This is a band of young leaders, mainly pastor’s kids, who are holding outdoor and indoor worship events in conjunction with a network of pastors we have supported for years. They share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the next generation and need gear for this ministry which they all volunteer in

7. Our epic final worship event of the year with 4 services on December 23-24 with a choir, orchestra, and huge party to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in Scottsdale and capture it all in audio and video to send out online to the nations

"Aftermath" and the problem of Mark Driscoll's law-gospel dyad: there's no gospel beyond scripts of adulthood explicated by Driscoll exemplar rather than christus exemplar

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/mars-hill-podcast-driscoll-finale-aftermath.html

Now that Mike Cosper has finished episode 12 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill he brings things to a head with a question, what was the actual “good news” of Mark Driscoll’s idea of “the Gospel?”  In the episode “Aftermath” he surveys the fate of churches that were relaunched in the wake of the corporate dissolution of Mars Hill after Mark Driscoll resigned. He also interviewed a number of women and men about some disastrous experiences they had at the hands of Mars Hill “biblical living” counselors. If you weren’t subjected to that or subjected yourself to that while at Mars Hill you wouldn’t have known the nomenclature but that’s what it was. 

about those glowing reviews of Driscoll's e-book, three of them have bylines that seem to be the names of men who are on staff at The Trinity Church

Praising the boss's newest e-book might not be a big surprise in this day and age but it should be a surprise that such reviews seem to be part and parcel of a roll-out promoting something like Christian Theology vs. Critical Theory.  When the glowing reviews are predominantly signed by men where their bylines match up with men on staff right now at The Trinity Church we don't seem to be getting reviews from people who don't have a vested personal interest in their boss and/or father-in-law selling a lot of copies.

Episode 5 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill - What We Do To Women has dropped. Julia Duin asks why CT has taken up this project and some observations on how Mark Driscoll's ideas of chivalrous defense of the honor and purity of his wife were linked to boasting of threatening strangers with assault and blocking people from contacting her

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/july/mars-hill-elders-letter-mark-driscoll-pastor-resign-trinity.html

https://julieroys.com/mark-driscoll-unfit-former-mars-hill-elders/

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2021/7/26/covering-mark-driscoll-and-life-after-mars-hill-why-isnt-this-a-mainstream-news-story

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/mars-hill-mark-driscoll-podcast-things-we-do-women.html

Something I hope Cosper can get to in the podcast series is the history of Mars Hill attempts to start a Bible college, a publishing company, and a music label.  Since Tim Smith has already been going on record discussing the failed attempts at starting a music label is an element of Mars Hill history I've tried to chronicle but which is ideally a topic to be taken up by people closer to the scene (I'd left around 2008-2009).  Why that matters is because Driscoll claimed he never imagined Mars Hill would get so big in 2014 yet almost anyone from the earlier years could cite that starting a music label was always part of his vision.  The "Gosh, I just never imagined it would get this big" is basically a lie anytime Driscoll has said it.  Repeated references to how behind the scenes Mark wanted people to marry and pump out babies so that within a generation or two "we" would have taken over the city of Seattle belies the "we never thought it would go this big".  Driscoll's joke about having started a fertility cult wasn't funny to me circa 2005 and it's still not funny to me.

Which roundaboutly gets me to the latest episode, which I may have to write about more after I have time to collect my thoughts and consult my resources.  I do have some initial thoughts ...

Julie Roys has part 1 of a conversation with Chad Freese and Benjamin Eneas regarding The Trinity Church

This is part 1.  Part 2 apparently drops in a few days.
https://julieroys.com/podcast/inside-the-driscoll-cult/

Part 2 is apparently going to drop in a few days.  For now a link suffices.  

Sarah Einselen at The Roys Report--Mike Brisk (who manages Robert Morris' office at Gateway) stated Morris doesn't provide oversight for Driscoll's church and hasn't for some time

https://julieroys.com/megachurch-pastors-mark-driscoll-stop-abuse/

…

Robert Morris also was the first to give Driscoll a platform after Driscoll resigned in 2014 from Mars Hill Church in Seattle for a pattern of “arrogance” and abusive leadership. Just days after Driscoll’s resignation, Morris welcomed Driscoll to speak at a Gateway Church conference, urging attendees not to believe everything they read on the internet.

 

Morris stated at the time that Driscoll was “going through a difficulty that most of you have probably read about.” Morris then claimed that not everything on the internet is true and added, “There are some pastors, myself included, and some others that you would know, that were speaking into his life — and he’s listening.”

Jimmy Evans is named as a director of Trinity Church on the church’s articles of incorporation. Also named as a director is Randal Taylor, who’s a chief strategist at a leading Christian marketing firm, Dunham and Company.

 

As recently as this past February, Morris, Evans, and Taylor were named on the website as providing “wise counsel,” but now their names have been removed.

…

However, Mike Brisky, who manages Morris’s office at Gateway Church in Dallas, Texas, told The Roys Report that Morris doesn’t provide oversight for Driscoll’s church, and hasn’t for some time.

“For over a year, Pastor Robert has not had any official position of oversight with Trinity Church but is available if counsel is sought by the church leaders,” Briskey said.

Brisky couldn’t say when Morris’s official position of oversight ended and didn’t answer how Morris planned to address the concerns raised in Freese’s open letter.

Brisky also didn’t specify whether Morris’s availability for counsel extended to all church leadership, including volunteers like Freese. (Freese said in his open letter he had felt led to fulfill the director of security role as a full-time volunteer.)

Perhaps a way to reformulate the question in light of what role the Board of Overseers had at Mars Hill Church in 2013-2014 (part of the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability) seemed to be as documented here and more generally here, it's never been clear that any formal oversight board actually did oversight of Mark Driscoll.  Let's not forget the MHC BOAA's initial response to news that Result Source was used to secure a #1 spot 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

Chad Freese mentioned Driscoll claimed to have tripled his litigation fund to approximately $10 million, which naturally invites a question as to why Driscoll would have one (revisiting that civil RICO suit)

Something else that was published at the deardriscoll.com site deserves some mention.  Phoenix Preacher has highlighted it this week.  The relevant passage is worth quoting in full direct from the source.

Mark Driscoll's spectrums of trust past and present (2011 and 2021), and the barnyard animals of ministry from Confessions of a Reformission Rev, 2006

Julie Roys has lately reported that there is a “spectrum of trust” code at The Trinity Church (as attested by former volunteer security director of the church Chad Freese):

https://julieroys.com/mark-driscoll-cult-like-actions-24-7-surveillance-loyalty/

…

On April 7, Freese said Mark Driscoll pulled the entire staff into a “training session.” Driscoll then reportedly drew his “spectrum of trust” on a dry-erase board, rating people’s loyalty from 0 to 10 to determine their access to Driscoll’s family.

 

Freese said Anderson then said that Freese’s security team was at a “level nine.” But because Freese and his wife had appeared in a picture posted on social media with former worship pastor, Dustin Blatnik, who reportedly had been fired by Trinity, Freese and his wife were a “level 8.”

 

Freese said that was the “tipping point,” and he officially resigned the following week.

 

Freese said what bothered him even more than the loyalty scale, though, was the slandering of the Manueles by Driscoll and other pastors.

… 

Warren Throckmorton has also noted the spectrum of trust.

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/05/10/mark-driscolls-cult-like-actions-julie-roys-enters-the-chat/

…

As extensive as Roys’ report is, there are more stories to tell. She mentions shunning, but there are more stories of families being shunned because they are not sufficiently loyal to Mark Driscoll. Roys introduces us to the very culty phrase “spectrum of trust.” The higher you are on the spectrum of trust, the more the Driscolls trust you and the more access to them you have. Sadly, if you not high on that spectrum, you may drag your family members down a notch or two. Ranking people in terms of their loyalty to the dear leader is a characteristic of a mind control group. An extension of that is shunning family members over loyalty to the dear leader.

…

That is certainly possible but rather than confirm or contest the statement about The Trinity Church being a mind control group I want, instead, to highlight that for those of us who were at Mars Hill or even those of us who left Mars Hill but kept tabs on Mark Driscoll’s prolific blogging at The Gospel Coalition and the Acts 29 blogs that the idea of a “spectrum of trust” isn’t the least bit new.

I read Driscoll’s numbered ranking 0-10 concept for enemies and friends back in 2011. Of course, the relevant posts were purged from both the Gospel Coalition website and the Acts 29 website so the material is only accessible via archive access or, barring that, material that was preserved at Wenatchee The Hatchet.  Because the blog posts were not necessarily preserved even by The Wayback Machine we’ll have to make do with what I preserved back in June of 2011 for the actual numbered ranking system itself. 

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2011/06/friend-is-useful-at-all-times-and.html

Warren Throckmorton has started a postcards from Phoenix series about The Trinity Church, the first from former security director/volunteer Chad Freese on whether a PI was consulted and addressing at whose initiative the consultation was made, reviewing Driscoll's history of firing elders at MHC in `07 where everything seemed mediated by proxies

I would have leaned toward postcards from Scottsdale since that's the location but for the time being "postcards from Phoenix" is the theme.

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/05/26/postcards-from-phoenix-who-suggested-the-trinity-church-hire-a-private-investigator/

One of the recent questions that emerged was who allegedly arranged for a private investigator to tail someone who was formerly affiliated with the church.  

... 

The first one is complex in that it was triggered by a report from an anonymous witness to a recent spirited conversation between Grace Driscoll and another woman after women’s Bible study group. The argument was centered around a woman leaving the church amidst the current upheaval and controversies at The Trinity Church.

As a part of the argument, Grace Driscoll reportedly alleged that former director of security Chad Freese hired the private investigator who surveilled the Manuele family (see here and here for details). The implication was that the church shouldn’t be held responsible for this since Freese did it. This caught my attention for a couple of reasons. One, it demonstrates that recent news reporting is being followed widely in the church. Two, I wondered if there was any truth to the allegation that Chad Freese both instigated the hiring of the PI and then later complained about it.

One of the things that springs to mind about this report is that while it is a report that might need future corroboration or disconfirmation as may happen, there is something that should be kept in mind from Mars Hill history.  The report above states that there was a spirited conversation between Grace Driscoll and another woman after a study group in which Driscoll reportedly alleged that the former director of security at The Trinity Church Chad Freese hired the private investigator who surveilled a family.  

Julie Roys has also noticed that Ashley Chase is listed as director of Real Faith (Mark Driscoll Ministries) but is listed nowhere on the ministry's 990 form

Back on April 30, 2021 I noticed that Ashley Chase was nowhere to be found on the 990 of Real Faith.

Julie Roys has more coverage of disclosures related to what isn't disclosed about or within The Trinity Church.

https://julieroys.com/driscoll-honeymoon-church-funds-interns-gift-cards/

Driscoll’s daughter, Ashley Chase, is the director of Real Faith. Yet, on Trinity’s website Chase is listed in her capacity as Real Faith director as a staff member of the church. Chase also is not listed on the latest IRS 990 for Real Faith, even though the IRS requires nonprofits to report compensation paid to anyone related to a board member.

So I'm glad to see I wasn't the only person who noticed that!

For folks unfamiliar with the history of financial opacity at Mars Hill, the most read and most viewed single post in the history of Wenatchee The Hatchet was the one about Mark Driscoll's personal financial compensation package. 

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/sutton-turner-memo-recommended-raise.html

another popular post was 

Apparently Mark Driscoll now says of Mars Hill "We're not a wealthy church".

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/03/apparently-mark-driscoll-now-says-of.html

Reference is made to materials from the Mars Hill years in which Sutton Turner expressed behind the scenes objections to practices he regarded as below board.  

If you want to read about the history of Mars Hill real estate acquisitions there's a tag for that.  There are a bunch of other things reported that will be of interest to people who were at Mars Hill and may have wondered (but did we really?) if history was going to repeat itself at The Trinity Church.  That the family business is a family business isn't a surprise.  At some point in the future we'll probably have to do a series on Win Your War.

Julie Roys has coverage of a new report about Mark Driscoll's The Trinity Church, on-site surveillance and dealing with members--revisiting Mars Hill era claims from Driscoll to "see things" and to be able to pray that God would kill sinners for him as background for his leadership approaches

So many years after the demise of Mars Hill I was hoping this range of topics could have been fully retired from Wenatchee The Hatchet but things just keep happening:

https://wonderingeagle.wordpress.com/2021/04/28/a-family-is-allegedly-driven-from-mark-driscolls-the-trinity-church-in-scottsdale-arizona/

https://julieroys.com/mark-driscoll-cult-like-actions-24-7-surveillance-loyalty/

Warren Throckmorton on the elderless church of Mark Driscoll in AZ parts 2 and 3 (also 4), revisiting how neither a board of directors nor a board of advisors & accountability seemed to have restrained consolidation of powers in the Mars Hill years

Warren Throckmorton now has a multi-part series on how Mark Driscoll's newest church, The Trinity Church, has no elders and a board that seems to simply exist.

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/04/26/mark-driscolls-elderless-church/

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/04/28/mark-driscolls-elderless-church-part-two/

That there is a board of directors that includes men who don't attend the church may remind long-time readers who know the history of Mars Hill of the Board of Advisors and Accountability that had a Board of Overseers. 

Throckmorton has noted that Mark Driscoll Ministries is doing business as Real Faith.

https://www.guidestar.org/profile/47-2485096

https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2020/472/485/2020-472485096-17362425-9.pdf

The board members on Mark Driscoll Ministries are 

(1) MARK DRISCOLL, PRESIDENT

(2) RANDAL TAYLOR, SECRETARY (TREASURER)

(3) BRANDON THOMAS, BOARD MEMBER

(4) JOSH MCPHERSON, BOARD MEMBER

For the last of these names that's a name that has, in fact, shown up a handful of times here at this blog.

Throckmorton linked to some audio that Driscoll preached at McPherson's church that went away after a while but a transcript is at the following link:

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/09/mark-driscoll-posts-excerpt-of-his.html

There was also a listing for Josh McPherson as a Mars Hill pastor for a while, back around September 2014.

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/so-is-there-mars-hill-wenatchee-in.html

Now for Throckmorton's part three "Where's the Board?"

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/04/30/mark-driscolls-elderless-church-part-three-wheres-the-board/

Warren Throckmorton has an update on the elderless The Trinity Church that Mark Driscoll is President and CEO of; revisiting the post-MHC resignation role of some board members of TTC and Driscoll on governance as "throne down not pew up"

Warren Throckmorton has noted that The Trinity Church seems to be an elderless church.  There are pastors but they aren't listed as elders.  If Throckmorton's account tells us anything it's that former members of The Trinity Church have indicated that the church does not have elders.  

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/04/26/mark-driscolls-elderless-church/

...
During the past couple of weeks, several former members of The Trinity Church in Scottsdale have contacted me to talk about about aspects of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. They contacted me due to my coverage of Mars Hill from late 2013 until 2015. They tell stories remarkably similar to those I heard from former Mars Hill members during that span of time. There is one major difference. In the current church, there are no elders who are putting on any brakes. There are no elders to whom appeals can be made. Several former members and staffers have told me that The Trinity Church does not have elders. 

Some things do sound the same. Non-disclosure agreements are again being used. Money is again conditioned on silence. People are describing abrupt decisions about membership without due process. Friends and family who are considered disloyal to the church are being shunned. At some point, these stories may be told. For now, according to former members and staff,  the pastors who are there in addition to Driscoll are not elders in the decision making sense of the office. If elders hold you accountable in one place, eliminate them in the next place.
...

If that means "friends and family of Mark Driscoll" who are considered disloyal to Mark Driscoll then that may be the case but is also, at the moment, impossible to verify. At some point those stories may be told but to go by the history of Mars Hill Church the likelihood is low.  Few people I can think of off the top of my head have ever opted to go on record about unpleasant experiences they had at Mars Hill.  They don't have to, of course.  Nobody should feel compelled or coerced into going on the record about unpleasant experiences.  So perhaps stories may be shared but let's not presume upon that.