on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast finally being over

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

After dozens of sprawling and frustrating hours the thing finally ended.  

Keith Evans via Heidelblog on the appeal of wolfish leaders (Doug Wilson and Mark Driscoll in particular as examples of trends)

R. Scott Clark at Heidelblog republished a piece by Keith Evans recently that discussed Mike Cosper's The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and the appeal of wolfish leaders in churches.

https://gentlereformation.com/2022/08/23/wolfish-benefits/

https://heidelblog.net/2022/09/wolfish-benefits/

Evans published his piece on August 23, 2022 which meant he could not have heard the entire series as Mike Cosper and company dropped their Dan Allender episode in the series ...

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

... on August 26, 2022 and there's assuredly one last wrap-up "where are they now" episode coming along.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/bonus-episode-conversation-with-dan-allender.html

I thought the CT series was going to actually be done with Episode 12 ("Aftermath") and yet here we are nearly a year later and the truly final episode has not yet hit.  So it goes.  

the theme at Mark Driscoll's twitter feed this week is fear (update 9-4-22, toward a proposal that the Driscolls now use forgiveness teaching as a form of apotropaic magic)

Although he's known to block any number of people on Twitter from viewing or responding to his tweets, the fact that Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't even on Twitter and never plans to be means, paradoxically, that it's never been that hard to keep tabs on his tweets.

For whatever reason, since the August 26, 2022 Mike Cosper interview with Dan Allender in The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill series came along ...

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/bonus-episode-conversation-with-dan-allender.html

...Mark Driscoll's tweets are full of talk about fear.

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1563601993246990336
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
Fear will come upon you, but you can't let it in you.
11:59 AM · Aug 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1563964381196652545
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
There’s always something to fear. You can look out in fear or look up in faith.
11:59 AM · Aug 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1564327027188056066
Pastor Mark Driscoll
@PastorMark
Faith and fear can't coexist.
12:00 PM · Aug 29, 2022·

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1564689660672184323
Sometimes fear does more damage to you than the person or thing you're afraid of.
12:01 PM · Aug 30, 2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1565052048160264193
When the spirit of fear oppress you it turns into false prophecy over your life.
12:01 PM · Aug 31, 2022

Other people can do the screencap thing if they like.  

POSTSCRIPT ... 9-1-2022

Still running with the theme as of 

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1565414436038479872

You need to stop worrying about the outcome and instead worship through the process.

12:01 PM · Sep 1, 2022

POSTSCRIPT 9-4-2022

https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/1566501851457019904

Forgiving others allows us to move on into the destiny that God has for us.

12:02 PM · Sep 4, 2022

In his post Mars Hill writings Driscoll has leaned heavily on a teaching that says we(you) need to forgive people in order to be free of demonic influence and that if you don't forgive you are saying you want Satan instead of Jesus to reign in your life. It's an idea he had back in 2008, too, for that matter but within a post-Mars Hill context via Win Your War and tweets there's a different element to it.  Some Christians approach spiritual warfare as a set of instructions about how Christians corporately and publicly give witness to the reign of Christ as having already conquered the powers and principalities.  This shows up in books by Esther Acolatse, Daniel K Darko, Robert Ewusie Moses and other pastors and theologians from Ghana and Kenya.  Acolatse has noted that in some African church movements there is a tendency for Christians to treat spiritual warfare as a kind of medicinal individual one-shot deal. Another way to put it, since I've seen this pattern in my life back in my Pentecostal days is that there are a lot of Christians who regard spiritual warfare instructions in Ephesians 6 not as instructions for how Christian communities bear public witness to Christ together so much as a kind of anti-magic that is paradoxically magical.  

In Driscoll's post-Mars Hill variant on teaching about the need for Christians to forgive it's hard for me to shake a sense that he prescribes forgiveness as a blanket "You need to forgive them so Satan doesn't have a ground to attack you".  Yet to go by Mark and Grace Driscoll's statements in Win Your War and comments from people who have left The Trinity Church the Driscolls seem to still experience what they regard as spiritual attacks. As I've discussed in the past looking at Judges 9 and the afflicting spirit the Lord sent to King Saul in the Hebrew Bible we don't even find "demons" as conventionally understood from medieval European Christian diabology moving forward--instead we find the Lord occasionally sent spirits to afflict corrupt, self-serving and wicked leaders to torment them or deceive their prophets.  

This is a commonplace element in the Hebrew Bible when it comes to leaders being afflicted by the Lord for abuse or misappropriation of power but in the Driscolls' writings they chalk up any spiritual attacks they face to "intense seasons of ministry". The possibility that they opened themselves up to spiritual torment because of their abuses and injustices has,  to the best of my knowledge, literally never come up once in their twenty years of being public ministry figures together.  If Mark doesn't publicly confess he wronged people and leans on a forgiveness doctrine that functionally works as apotropaic magic the purpose of forgiveness may no longer even be about relational reconciliation or repentance at all in any Christian sense of the term, but a kind of protective spell-casting that is expected to protect the person who prays from being attacked).  

some thoughts on the Cosper interview with Allender, this is one of the episodes I think is both focused and helpful even if I remain ambivalent about the series overall

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/bonus-episode-conversation-with-dan-allender.html

Yes, by implication I've suggested that some of the CT episodes of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill were neither focused nor helpful across the series as a whole by giving this post the title it has.  The new Allender episode, however, is one of the strongest in the entire series because it is shorter than average and by dint of having one subject who is recognized as an expert in counseling within evangelicalism the episode stays remarkably on focus.

catching up with The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Church--Allender states he wasn't aware Driscoll plagiarized him because he doesn't read the man's books; Sealy Yates told him it was plagiarism for sure; Driscoll has to date never apologized to Allender for what he did

I would have thought things would be done at "Aftermath" but there seem to be half again as many bonus episodes as the series itself ran.

Sutton Turner posts notes from the 2014 elder investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll, discusses his discussions with Cosper, and mentions conversation with Throckmorton in January 2022 posts

If you listened to Cosper's The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill there wasn't much new in the January 7, 2022 post.  

https://suttonturner.com/blog/f/rise-fall-of-mars-hill-podcast—my-participation

Or at least, for me, there wasn't much new but then, you know, I have chronicled a lot of stuff about the former Mars Hill over the years.

But this post ... there's a lot of material to it, notes from the investigation of 2014.  

https://suttonturner.com/blog/f/investigating-the-formal-charges-mark-driscollmars-hill-church

Warren Throckmorton has noted the post and has left it at that for now.
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2022/01/13/sutton-turner-releases-notes-from-the-2014-mark-driscoll-elder-investigation/

a couple of recent thinkpieces on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill from Carey Nieuwhof and former MH pastor Matt Johnson at Mbird

The Carey Nieuwhof piece is ... a bit boilerplate ... but then most of the thinkpiece responses to the Mike Cosper podcast have tended to be a bit boilerplate.  Exemplifying what Samuel D James exemplified as "the take trap" is common.

https://careynieuwhof.com/some-reflections-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

His readers pointed out that ... he still kinda has to explain Episode 328, why he decided to give Driscoll a platform in which Driscoll said stuff.

https://careynieuwhof.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/CNLP_328-%E2%80%93With_Mark-Driscoll.pdf

Stuff, as it turned out, that was not only easy to comprehensively debunk but to comprehensively debunk based on a combination of Mark Driscoll's own previous accounts and the accounts of other executive elders from 2020, with a few other accounts for good measure.  Thus ...

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/2020%20interviews%20on%20the%20late%20Ma

rs%20Hill

In other words, Nieuwhof has to account for, at some point, why he personally gave Driscoll time to tell his story having not done much diligence about what had happened previously.  I have wondered why Episode 328 got taken down and the reasons for that have not been explained.

Matt Johnson's piece is less of the usual boilerplate takes I've seen about The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill for the simple and obvious reason that Matt and his family were there for 17 years.

https://mbird.com/religion/church/17-years-at-mars-hill-life-after-disillusionment/

R Scott Clark visits the role of the PCA in formative years for Acts 29 and Mars Hill--there's still a pretty live question whether or not A29 and Spanish River were a tangential "accidental" role in the history of MH

https://heidelblog.net/2021/12/an-overlooked-aspect-of-the-story-pca-influence-on-acts-29-and-mars-hill/

https://presbycast.libsyn.com/deconstructing-2021-and-big-eva-media-wdg-hart

I have felt pretty alone in attempting to discuss the early Acts 29, David Nicholas, Mark Driscoll and what seemed to be a PCA connection (that last part was just not on my radar because I'm just me and only have so much energy and attention). 

I'd hazard a guess that from Driscoll's side of things his earlier influences were John MacArthur and Doug Wilson (clearly if the men served on a panel together representing a rightwing perspective on censorship and the arts in 1992 ... ). David Nicholas didn't seem to come along until a few years into the life of Mars Hill. Cosper seems to have shortchanged us by not saying just how many people he talked to who had accounts of how and why Nicholas and Driscoll parted ways within Acts 29.  What is clearer is Nicholas founded and bankrolled Acts 29 and Mark Driscoll kinda was there to take it over.

Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson were part of a panel debating censorship in the arts covered by WSU paper on 10-27-1992; revisiting Mark Driscoll's 2013 claim that he edited his college newspaper compared to his 2004 claim to have been an opinions editor

chris e comment at a recent post on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill on the topic of how far back Mark Driscoll was influenced by or associated with Doug Wilson.

I've looked at the connections between Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson over the years and it has seemed that people not already familiar with Mars Hill via participation may have not yet grasped the degree of influence Wilson may have had on Driscoll and this despite the fact that Driscoll openly said Wilson was a significant influence on him.  For a long-form review go to these:

was the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast a mistake? Someone apparently has said "yes" to which R Scott Clark says "no"--some concerns about Cosper's two jumbled arguments regarding Driscoll's theology/character and celebrity

  https://heidelblog.net/2021/12/was-the-rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill-podcast-series-a-mistake/

...

The podcast series is not failure porn nor is too harsh. If anything it is too soft on Driscoll. Jason wants the church as an institution to deal with Driscoll but his argument assumes something that it must prove: that Mars Hill was a church. I think not. On sociological terms we we should describe Mars Hill (and its satellites) as a congregation but not church. It lacked the marks of the true church (see Belgic Confession, art. 29). It was not disciplined. Kim Riddlebarger has argued that Driscoll did not even have elders to whom he was accountable. Did Driscoll preach the pure gospel? Sometimes, perhaps but not consistently. Were the sacraments purely administered? No. Even Driscoll’s current congregation (more on this below) lacks the marks as defined by the Reformed churches. Mars Hill tried to discipline him and he defied them. Which ecclesiastical body would discipline him now? It certainly would not be his current congregation which is controlled by Driscoll and family members. He is not accountable to anyone but he continues to pose a danger to many.

Further, Mark did not merely sin as a private person. He abused the sheep and he often did it publicly. He made himself a pastor, though he was by his own admission, unqualified and then proceeded to use his position as well as those around and under him. According to a group from his current congregation, he continues to do these very same things in Scottsdale, AZ. As our Lord Jesus said, “to whom much was given, much from him  will be required” (Luke 12:48). It is not too much to say that he is a false teacher and to be marked out as such. In this respect the podcast series and the several critiques published here and elsewhere perform a valuable service: warning vulnerable sheep about dangerous figures in the church. ...

I don't know if I'd say it was a mistake but I find myself having come to the twelfth episode profoundly ambivalent about the series. I think Clark is right to say that, if anything, Cosper went easy on Driscoll yet there's something else that's been nagging at me.  A friend of mine from the Mars Hill years who has been listening to the series has mentioned that it seems as though Cosper has made two distinct criticisms of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll: 1) Mark Driscoll was/is a conservative/reactionary type in his theology and 2) Mark Driscoll was a celebrity and corrupted by celebrity. But the thing about those two distinct lines of critique is ...

Brad Vermurlen's Reformed Resurgence, another book I recommend as providing some background on the rise and fall of Mars Hill

Many years ago Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, wrote about the coming evangelical collapse. 

https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

https://imonk.blog/2009/01/27/my-prediction-the-coming-evangelical-collapse-1/

https://imonk.blog/2009/01/28/the-coming-evangelical-collapse-2-what-will-be-left/

https://imonk.blog/2009/01/29/the-coming-evangelical-collapse-3-good-or-bad/

 

Now, Brad Vermurlen has a book out that builds a case that in order to understand the rise of New Calvinism, real or perceived, we can’t  begin to properly understand that “Reformed resurgence” without understanding a dissolution of American Evangelicalism as a field rather than as any coherent, identifiable set of beliefs or practices.  Field theory doesn’t seem hugely difficult for me to understand but over at Mere Orthodoxy there were some jokes about how abstract the concept of relative growth of subcultures within a larger dissolving culture seemed to be.

 

https://mereorthodoxy.com/reformed-resurgence-with-brad-vermurlen/

"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. 

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill--"The Tempest"--some observations and thoughts

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

 

There's an awful lot of material in 2.5 hours of podcast and at the moment I'm sharing a few things that jumped out for me.

new episodes of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill have gone up and these are probably the more useful ones that get at something more like a cohesive chronological narrative

Although there was not a lot that was particularly new to me in the "Boca Raton" episode it was nice to hear that Cosper spoke with David Nicholas' widow and Rick McKinley down in Portland.

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

Nicholas' widow saying Mark always had to be the alpha male in the room is not the least bit surprising to anyone who ever met Mark Driscoll.  Cosper said there were as many stories about how and why David Nicholas stopped being part of Acts 29 as there were people to tell them but that invites the obvious and never-answered question of how many sources Mike Cosper spoke with about the departure of David Nicholas from Acts 29, despite having founded, named and funded the network.

But what becomes apparent from the episode was that the Mark Driscoll who eventually took sole credit for start Acts 29 didn't found it any way.  By Confessions of a Reformission Rev in 2006 Driscoll was described as sole founder of Acts 29 on the back cover.  What scant information and statements have since come to light between then and now suggest that it is more probable that Mark Driscoll took over Acts 29 after David Nicholas and others, perhaps, did all the substantial work of founding the church planting network and making it viable. 

As for the newest episode, the gigantic 2.5 hour "The Tempest"
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/tempest-mars-hill-driscoll.html

It will take time to get around to writing about all of that stuff and it might take a while.  Ironically these two recent episodes are probably closer to actual historical accounts than anything else in the entire podcast series.  If you haven't listened so far and want to hear podcast episodes that give you a coherent chronological account of formative years in Mars Hill history when Driscoll needed David Nicholas' support and then didn't; and to then hear a lengthy account of the disastrous final two years of the late Mars Hill these newest episodes would be the ones to listen to.  That's all I've got for now but I may have other things to write later.  I will say that of "The Tempest" it would be hard to say that very much of anyone at all comes across well, which is part of what made the episode interesting.  

Mark Driscoll as King Jehu rather than King David, a Jacques Ellul-inspired reading of the man’s self-confessed vices and ministry history

I have revisited the various accounts Mark Driscoll has given over the course of his life on the topics of his conversion to some form of evangelical Protestant Christianity and his calling to ministry over the years.  One of the things that has stood out to me is how stable his accounts tended to be on both topics during the Mars Hill years, with significant variations and changes in emphases emerging after his 2014 resignation.  I have also looked at different accounts of that resignation, and at different accounts of Driscoll’s resignation in light of statements made for the record about that event from Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas in on record interviews in 2020. Some time ago I wrote:

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-recent-exchange-between-warren.html

 

If in Driscoll’s understanding of church governance and ecclesiology leadership is from the throne down and not the pew up, and if Justin Dean’s account is accurate that the Mars Hill Church governing board offered Mark Driscoll a restoration plan in which he would stop being in a managerial role and would preach, then the most plausible explanation for why Mark Driscoll resigned that takes all of his accounts as factual, face-value accounts is this: he decided that a church as a corporate entity in which he was not seated on the throne (as president and CEO) was not a church in which he would be a member. 

 

All of that is by way of introduction. I know we are down to the last two episodes of the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, not counting any possible bonus episodes that may emerge. I know that it has been popular among Christian bloggers, if from time to time, to compare Mark Driscoll to King David.  I find such comparisons to reflect a poverty of imagination regarding biblical literature.  If we’re going to compare Mark Driscoll to a king in the biblical literature who received a clear call and then was “released” (per Grace Driscoll’s remarks to Brian Houston in 2015) then it’s more probable that Mark Driscoll would be a King Saul figure than a King David figure?  Why?  David was never “released” from his leadership role the way King Saul and Eli were told by the prophet Samuel that they were dismissed from their leadership roles. Where Eli accepted the Lord’s dismissal of his household from leadership Saul did not accept the dismissal and tenaciously clung to power.

 

Yet, for all those potentially fascinating parallels there is still another figure among the kings of Samaria to whom Mark Driscoll might profitably be compared.  Jehu has a claim to being a potential parallel, if we’re going to entertain biblical parallels of rulers with whom Mark Driscoll might be compared.  So today I mean to consider Driscoll’s life in public ministry to Jehu with help from the work of Jacques Ellul.

 

A friend of mine once pointed out that Mark Driscoll often repeated the story that God told him to marry Grace, teach young men, plant churches and teach the Bible.   None of those things actually required that Mark Driscoll sought out starting a church.  Certainly there was nothing about that calling, if we assume it took place (and I’m well aware not everyone will) that requires us to suppose that what Mark Driscoll subsequently has done since 1990 should be construed as having always … or even ever … been the will of God.  It is here I want to make reference to Ellul’s work:

 

The Politics of God and the Politics of Man

Jacques Ellul

Copyright © 1972 by Editions de la Table Rondo and Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-798-2

ISBN 0-8028-1442-5

Translated from the French Politique de Dieu, politiques de l’homme, Nouvelle alliance, Editions Universitaires, Paris, 1966

 

Pages 98-99

… Now this employment of an intermediary has a result one might expect. The message is changed. In the same way the Word spoken by God in Christ is undoubtedly modified by the church, and not for the better,. What Elisha says to the young man is this: “Lead Jehu to an inner chamber, anoint him with the oil of kingship, and say to him, `Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel,’ then flee, do not tarry.” There is nothing more, no address. The message to Jehu is both radical and also very terse. But this is not the way the young man delivers it. Instead, fleeing at once, he gives an address (as the church often does), and he adds his own invention: “You shall strike down the house of Ahab … I will avenge on Jezebel the blood of the prophets … the whole house of Ahab will perish, every male, bond or free. … The dogs shall eat Jezebel … .” In sum, the young man outlines a program of action for Jehu, which is something Elisha does not do. Now the young man is undoubtedly using prophecies of Elijah (1 Kings 21:19-24), but Elisha does not tell him to do this.  It is on this false transmission that the whole career of Jehu is based. We are usually struck by the fierce and bloodthirsty character of Jehu, and this is clear enough. But another and no less decisive element should not be missed, namely that all Jehu’s work is done in a situation of ambiguity and misunderstanding.

 

He is anointed by God, but in the long run he does nothing but evil wherever he goes. He fulfils prophecies but he is condemned for so doing. He is a man of God, but he uses all the methods of the devil. [emphasis added]

 

We are faced again by a question we have investigated already, that of the coincidence between God’s design and man’s, that of God’s employment of what is bad in man to bring about what he himself wills. Here, for example, there is undoubtedly coincidence between the anointing of Jehu and the existence of a conspiracy among the generals of Joram’s army. In fact, the conspiracy probably existed already. This would explain the immediate support of the generals and their siding with Jehu.

 

The situation was indeed favorable for a coup d’etat. The army was in the field, the king was wounded and had withdrawn, and the generals had a free hand. Probably Jehu already wanted to seize power and the decision of God passed on by the young man seemed to him to be a sign for action. There is also an obvious coincidence between the work that Jehu is commissioned to do and the glimpses we catch of his temperament. He is clearly a bloodthirsty man, and this not merely by reason of his trade. He is at home in massacres, and we thus see God choosing as the agent of his judgment a man whose temperament corresponds to what is asked of him. …

 

Given that Hebrew narrative can be laconic we might take caution here. Perhaps Ellul assumes the young man added a great deal that was not in Elisha’s statement. Or perhaps the young man conveyed something of Elijah’s warnings that were preserved in Elisha’s community that Elisha did not need to add.  Still, Ellul’s proposal that a rambunctious young prophet interposed a great deal upon Elisha’s instruction is thematically interesting—either way the young man transformed Elisha’s simple command into a pretext for setting a violent and activist agenda. Jehu was a man of violence and treachery who was given the task to depose the Omride dynasty and this Jehu did! 

 

But how Jehu deposed the Omride dynasty is what interested Ellul:

 

Page 101

… Undoubtedly, Jehu is the man who executes what God has previously announced. In some sense he is the one who manages the important acts which accomplish the condemnation. But in the last resort he does it all in his own interests. [emphasis added] He takes part in the fulfillment of the prophecy, but he does so, one might say, within the order of political logic. The prophecy intimates this unfolding of political logic. Ahab triggers the movement. Jehu, the champion of Yahweh, uses the same weapons as Ahab, the weapons of politics and violence. …

 

Page 103

We see here another aspect of Jehu. He is cunning. He sets traps for men, as he will do later for the worshipers of Baal. Indeed, in the story of the massacre of the priests of Baal he goes further and lies openly: “ Ahab served Baal little; but Jehu will serve him much. … I have a great sacrifice to offer Baal” (10:18f.). It is on the basis of this promise and this profession of faith that he gathers together the priests and worshipers of Baal to destroy them. Here Jehu is shown to be a liar. …

 

Pages 112-113

The real question in the case of Jehu is that of the heart. Like Abraham, one may say, Jehu is set outside the morality which God established. But Jehu is not Abraham. In fact Jehu is a man who, faithful to God and knowing his will, commandeers this will and makes it his own. He identifies his own cause with God’s design. He thus sets out to shape history in the name of God  but also in the place of God. No doubt he does everything exactly as prophesied. No doubt he achieves what the Lord intends. But it is now his own affair. He has substituted his own will for God’s. It is he who does it, he does not let the Lord act through him. He puts a screen between history and the Lord of history. For man can always erect this barrier and achieve his own purpose. What was God’s purpose has become purely and simply the autonomous will of jehu. He seizes control of the prophecy. He makes it his own cause, confident that he is in the line of God’s will.  He himself has decided to fulfill the prophecy. [emphasis added] …

 

Wanting to put into effect God’s decision, he pays no attention to the great statement that it is not of him that wills nor of him that runs. Jehu is one of those in the Bible who want to fulfill and accomplish of themselves what God has said.  Thus Abraham wants to fulfill the promise of posterity by his own decision and at his own time, i.e., the means of Hagar. This is the whole problem. …

 

Page 115

… Jehu uses prophecy in the interests of politics while pretending to use politics in the interest of prophecy. …

 

Why mention so much about Jehu by way of Ellul?  Because Mark Driscoll once preached through the book of Ruth and mentioned something about himself he heard from Grace Driscoll: 

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/09/back-in-2007-ruth-sermon-series-mark.html

http://marshill.se/marshill/media/redeemingruth/gods-hand-in-our-suffering
http://download.marshill.se/files/2007/01/07/20070107_gods-hand-in-our-suffering_sd_audio.mp3

Mark Driscoll

Ruth 1:1-1:22

January 07, 2007

01:00:20
...Elimelech is the guy--everything falls apart. It looks dark, it looks bad. He takes a poll he makes a plan. He decides Moab has a lower cost of living. Moab has more vocational opportunity. Moab has food on the table. I will make a plan, I will be the sovereign. I will take care of everything. Trust me. I know what I'm doing. He leads well. He plans well. He tries to be the sovereign (they're all going to die anyways). I am Elimelech.

I asked my wife, "Which one am I?" ... She didn't even breath, didn't even take a breath, "Oh, you're Elimelech." And his name means what? MY GOD IS KING! That was me. If you asked me, Jesus, sovereign, lord, king, God! And if I ever need Him I'll call him but I don't think I do because I've got all this taken care of.
...

And how many of you are Naomi-ish? You’re a bitter, moody, cranky, self-righteous, finger-pointing, brutally honest, frustrating person that God loves deeply, for no apparent reason. You want to know me? Here’s how I work. I start with Elimelech. If that doesn’t work, I go to Naomi. That’s me. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll make a plan. I’ll lead well. I’ll take care of everything. Give me the variables. I got it all figured out. It didn’t work? Well, God, did you not get the memo? I knew exactly what needed to be done! [emphases added] I’m not sure who to call to tattle.” And if we’re honest, we find ourselves at varying seasons in our lives identifying with each character in the story.

 

So by Driscoll’s own account he starts with Elimelech and if things don’t work out he goes to Naomi. He played it all for laughs in the 2007 sermon but you can potentially hear past the jokes that he confessed to being a Jehu, the kind of man who conflated whatever he thought he heard from God with his own personal agendas and desires.  What Mike Cosper has continually circled around in his podcast is why no one sense that this Mark Driscoll guy was a Jehu rather than a David. How did people not pick up that Mark Driscoll was a guy who, in his own accounting, had made an idol of victory?

 

http://download.marshill.se/files/2006/06/18/20060618_resisting-idols-like-jesus_sd_audio.mp3

http://download.marshill.com/files/2006/06/18/20060618_resisting-idols-like-jesus_en_transcript.pdf.

RESISTING IDOLS LIKE JESUSPart 22 of 1st Corinthians

Pastor Mark Driscoll | 1 Corinthians 10:1-14 | June 18, 2006

...
Here’s the tricky part: Figuring out what your idols are. Let me give you an example. Let’s say for example, you define for yourself a little Hell. For you, Hell is being poor. For you, your definition of Hell is being ugly. For you, your definition of Hell is being fat. For you, your definition of Hell is being unloved. For you, your definition of Hell is being unappreciated. That fear of that Hell then compels you to choose for yourself a false savior god to save you from that Hell. And then you worship that false savior god in an effort to save yourself from your self-described Hell. So, some of you are single. Many of you are unmarried. For you, Hell is being unmarried and your savior will be a spouse. And so you keep looking for someone to worship, to give yourself to so that they will save you. For some of you, you are lonely and your Hell is loneliness, and so you choose for yourself a savior, a friend, a group of friends or a pet because you’ve tried the friends and they’re not dependable. And you worship that pet. You worship that friend. You worship that group of friends. You will do anything for them because they are your functional savior, saving you from your Hell. That is, by definition, idolatry. It is having created people and created things in the place of the creator God for ultimate allegiance, value and worth.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get incredibly personal. This will get painfully uncomfortable if I do my job well. I’m going to ask you some probing questions. We’re going to try to get to the root of your idols and mine and I am guilty. I was sitting at breakfast this morning. My wife said, “So what is your idol?” I was like, “Hey, I’m eating breakfast! Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about that.” I’m the pastor. I preach. I don’t get preached at. Eating bacon. Don’t ruin it. You know, it’s going good., And I told her, I said, “Honey, I think for me, my idol is victory.” Man, I am an old jock. More old than jock, lately, but I – I’m a guy who is highly competitive. Every year, I want the church to grow. I want my knowledge to grow. I want my influence to grow. I want our staff to grow. I want our church plants to grow. I want everything – because I want to win. I don’t want to just be where I’m at. I don’t want anything to be where it’s at. And so for me it is success and drivenness and it is productivity and it is victory that drives me constantly. I – that’s my own little idol and it works well in a church because no one would ever yell at you for being a Christian who produces results. So I found the perfect place to hide. 

And I was thinking about it this week. What if the church stopped growing? What if we shrunk? What if everything fell apart? What if half the staff left? Would I still worship Jesus or would I be a total despairing mess? I don’t know. By God’s grace, I won’t have to find out, but you never know. [emphasis added] So we’re going to look for your idols, too. Some questions. Think about it. Be honest with me. What are you most afraid of? What is your greatest fear? See, that probably tells you what your idol is. Sometimes your idol is the thing that you’re scared of not having, not being, not doing. What are you scared of? You scared that you’ll be alone? Are you scared that no one will ever love you? Are you scared that you will be found out that you’re not all that smart? Are you scared that you’ll be stuck in the same dead-end job forever? What are you afraid of?

And to this an Ellulian observation of the kind of man Mark Driscoll admitted himself to be would be to suggest that here is another Jehu.

 

Page 117

… As John says of himself: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30) Jehu, however, is a man who interposes himself while pretending to be accomplishing the purpose of God. …

 

Page 118

[Jehu] … is a type of the man who is unfaithful even in his faithfulness. He is both approved by God and also rejected by him. To be sure, he is always loved by God in spite of his lies, assassinations, and treacheries. But he is also rejected by God because of his commandeering of the Word and the harshness of his loyalty. [emphases added] The real tragedy, however, is that he is finally the reason for the rejection of the whole people, and the reference is very plainly to him in the extraordinary saying which Hosea speaks to Israel, “I have given you kings (a king) in my anger, and I have taken them away (will take him away in my wrath” (Hosea 13:11) …

 

Even if we suppose that Mark Driscoll had a sincere conversion experience and a genuine sense of calling to some kind of ministry literally none of that precludes interpreting his decades of pursuit of public ministry as partaking in the spirit of Jehu. Even if Mark Driscoll had a sincere conversion and calling process Jacques Ellul’s observation about Jehu was that Jehu ultimately regarded the word of the Lord as a pretext to do what he wanted to do. Deception and crushing enemies was just part of ruling.  Gaining and consolidating power through abuse and deceit was just part of Jehu’s deal.   Even when deceit isn’t involved there is, I suggest, a pragmatic streak in Jehu that may have been revealed decades ago when Mark Driscoll was talking to someone writing for Mother Jones.

 

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/07/looking-at-mother-jones-feature-that.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/07/generation/

…

“There are gays all over our church and I don’t need to yell at them like the religious right,” Driscoll says. “You can be a gay or punk and we’ll treat you like everybody else. Even if you never become a Christian, we’re still friends.”
 
Mars Hill is all about acceptance. Compared to the religious right’s favorite son Ralph Reed, a vision of fundamentalist zeal in a blue suit, Driscoll seems downright countercultural. He’s unabashed about using the pulpit to discuss sex. “I speak very frankly about the reasons God made our bodies to experience orgasm, the Bible’s approval of oral sex between a husband and wife,” he says. “Once you’re married and as long as you remain monogamous, God tells his children to be unblushingly erotic and passionate.”
 
He offers classes at church on topics such as “evangelical feminism” (“the Bible is clear that men and women are both created by God in His image and likeness and totally equal in every way,” he says) and disavows any link with conservative politics. “I used to think it was part of Christianity to be conservative,” he says. “I was further right than Falwell and Limbaugh.” Now he says he doesn’t even vote. What changed? “It got boring,” he says with a shrug. “And I realized that politics didn’t change anything, that in the meantime, people were still starving.”  [emphases added]

 

Time has shown that Mark Driscoll may have just been saying what he believed was strategically necessary to ensure his church plant survived. Driscoll more and more, as time goes by, seems like he has been a Jehu rather than a David from the beginning.

Episodes 9 and 10 of the CT series have dropped but no comments about them beyond a few brief remarks for the time being

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/bobby-knight-problem.html

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/red-sky-morning-mars-hill-driscoll.html

So episodes 9 and 10 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill have dropped.  Episode 9 seemed simultaneously diffuse and focused, maybe too focused, on coach Bob Knight as a parallel to Mark Driscoll.  That Rose Madrid Sweatman and Paul Chapman were on record about the didn't-happen protest was ... sort of interesting but it reminded me of what a non-starter that attempt was and how, within Mars Hill, the thing was regarded as less than nothing even in terms of public relations.  

Len Oakes on the role of charismatic rituals initiated by self-designated prophets to form social cohesion

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/mars-hill-mark-driscoll-podcast-jacks-raging-bile.html

https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/486/prophetic-charisma/

Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities

Len Oakes

ISBN 9780815603986 paperback

ISBN 9780815627005 hardcover

ISBN 9780815603993 ebook

From Chapter 8: The Charismatic Moment

page 145 (or 146)

Charismatic rituals are the prophet's main creative achievement. At one and the same time the ritual satisfies the leader's narcissistic needs and transforms the followers; the former, by re-creating a world within which the leader is omnipotent, and the latter, by emotionally revitalizing all who participate in it. The rituals lay an emotional and spiritual base for the community. hence an important task, perhaps the most important task, for the prophet during this time is the construction of charismatic rituals. They are his or her framework for the exploration of love and truth. Each is a set of guidelines that allows people to come together and celebrate the mystery that lies between them. 

Hat tip to reader chris for highlighting this book!

on the Christianity Today podcast mini-episode questioning the origin myths of Mars Hill, a long-form review of Mark Driscoll's stories of conversion and calling from 1992-2019, the most significant revisions have been post-MHC accounts

PART ONE: MARK DRISCOLL’S ACCOUNTS OF HIS CONVERSION PROCESS AND CALLING

 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

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

 

A sixteen minute podcast episode that is called “Questioning the Origin Myth” may do too much and too little and this particular mini-episode has gnawed at my thoughts since it was released.  It attempts to do too much by overtly questioning the alleged origin myths surrounding the founding of Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll’s accounts of his conversion to Christianity and his calling to ministry.  Yet it simultaneously does too little in that a podcast, let alone such a short podcast episode, cannot possibly cover the sheer mass of written and preached material Mark Driscoll has published recounting his conversion process, his calling to ministry, and founding of Mars Hill Church stories.  That there is a core set of founding myths is easily established but Cosper didn’t really successfully make a case that Driscoll or others significantly changed the stories that became the founding myths of the former Mars Hill Church.

 

If anything, a review of a variety of published materials, chiefly from Mark Driscoll’s writings spanning from the early 1990s through to the present suggests that Mark Driscoll’s overall set of origin stories has stayed robustly on message.  If there are cracks in some proverbial façade they show up in what kind of man Mark Driscoll claimed he was planning to be before he had his conversion process.

 

Notice I keep referring to his “conversion process”. Cumulatively I do not think he had what could be called an evangelical moment-of-crisis conversion experience, nor do I think he really needed one but within the context of evangelicalism and its literary and homiletic conventions Mark Driscoll probably thought and maybe even more strongly felt that he needed to have a narrative of some time with a robust contrast between the before and after of his process of conversion to what he thinks of as evangelical Christianity. 

 

Rather than assume, as could be done, that Mark Driscoll’s accounts of his conversion and c calling experiences were changed, we should go through the accounts and consider them as literary and homiletic works.  Driscoll has demonstrated that he has always been acutely sensitive to questions of status and perception. He is also, if you appreciate this figure of speech, always closing a sale. Generally Mark Driscoll has not published a story about how he came to faith or felt called to plant a church without that story explicitly serving as a self-authenticating witness of Mark Driscoll’s self-perceived fitness for ministry.

 

Cosper has some reason to wonder about the degree to which Driscoll changed key elements in the story of conversion and calling that shaped the foundation narratives associated with mars Hill.  On the other hand, that Mark Driscoll kept changing his accounts of conversion and calling does not in itself suggest that Driscoll necessarily made drastic changes.  Mike Cosper was himself a pastor, right? Don’t pastors tailor stories to fit into the over-arching point of a sermon?  This seems to be, pretty clearly I believe, what Driscoll has habitually done with his biography. There are reasons to wonder whether strategic changes or omissions occurred.

 

But before we ask whether or not it seems that Mark Driscoll changed his story we should  never forget that because he’s always pitching his idea of the gospel or making a homiletic point that the given point will suggest possible reasons for the inclusion or omission of biographical details. Too much of the journalism and social media commentary and blogging I have seen that discusses Mark Driscoll rushes to assess whether he’s really a Calvinist or a charismatic or how he fits into a taxonomy of doctrinal or political categories rather than do the more laborious work of trawling through the primary source statements Mark Driscoll has poured out on the page and in sermons. 

 

So let’s start with the earliest published account of Mark Driscoll’s conversion process that seems to be available, an op ed he wrote for The Daily Evergreen when he was attending Washington State University.

 

thoughts on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill by episode 9: it isn't really a history and responses to it have often fit what Samuel D James has described and exemplified in his responses as "the take trap"

The series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill has hit Episode 9. 9https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/

I am taking a break from listening to the series, however, to take stock of some of the reactions I’ve seen and the gamut I’ve seen so far suggests that reactions tend to be of a wagon-circling variety across doctrinal and political spectrums.

a history of Mars Hill Fellowship by way of articles of incorporation and annual reports 1995-2007

One of the things the podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill has reminded me of is how few people from the earliest stages of Mars Hill history have said anything on record.  A reason for this absence may partly be because people from Antioch Bible Church and Spanish River Church such as Ken Hutcherson and David Nicholas died years ago.  Conspicuous by their absence from the podcast are the three co-founding leaders of Mars Hill Mark Driscoll, Mike Gunn and Lief Moi.

But ... now that in the wake of the dissolution of the corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church the original articles of incorporation and annual reports have been made available through the State of Washington and so, absent more comments (or any) from people from the earlier years as of the eve of October 2021 it may be as well to document a history of Mars Hill through filed documents.   Thus ...