Warren Throckmorton considers the 10th anniversary of 21 Mars Hill elders brought formal charges against Mark Driscoll

As Warren Throckmorton has put it, August 2014 was not a great month for Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

 

https://warrenthrockmorton.substack.com/p/ten-years-ago-twenty-one-former-mars

Ten years ago today, I broke the story of the charges filed against Mark Driscoll by twenty-one of his former Mars Hill Church elders. The month of August was a terrible month for Mars Hill as so many problems were brought to light. Earlier in August, I revealed that the Acts 29 Network had kicked out Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll from membership. Driscoll was one of the early supporters of Acts 29.

Below, I have the first half of the post about those charges which, after investigation, eventually led to Driscoll being disqualified as an elder. He was offered a plan of restoration at Mars Hill Church but instead resigned and started a new church in the Phoenix, AZ area. You can read the first part here and head over to my old blog to finish up. 

... 

It wasn't.  I noticed at the start of August 2014 there had been little word about the Jesus festival Driscoll had proudly told people to save the date for back in 2013.

These days you can't be sure whether links to marshill.com won't lead you to websites you don't want to or shouldn't visit (Jessica Johnson has noted in the past that some wiseacres decided to turn the marshill.com domain links into sites for gambling and, other stuff.  

 

The old link was this.
http://marshill.com/2013/12/31/save-the-date-for-the-jesus-festival

 

But to go read what was posted you'll need to rely on The Wayback Machine.  In stark contrast to 2014 the absence of robots.txt means the links I used to regularly provide can finally be plugged back into The Wayback Machine like so:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20140109163341/http://marshill.com/2013/12/31/save-the-date-for-the-jesus-festival

 

Heaven is going to be a party, and we need to practice for that party.

Over the next few months, we’ll be talking more about our upcoming Jesus Festival, one of the projects we’re raising money for during this year’s Living for a Legacy through Giving campaign.

We’ve never done anything quite like this event, but picture a huge outdoor party with live bands, food trucks, fun stuff for the kids, open-air preaching, baptisms, and a summer night filled with the worship of thousands of brothers and sisters praising Jesus together.

On August 22, we’ll host our first-ever Jesus Festival at Marymoor Park near Seattle.

Everyone at Mars Hill churches far and near is invited for this unique opportunity to grow together and evangelize within the surrounding community. We are asking folks to give generously so that we can pay for this in advance, thereby making it very easy and free to invite non-Christian family and friends.

There’s no better place than the Great Northwest in summertime, so for those out of state, I highly encourage you to consider Seattle and the Jesus Festival as the destination for your summer vacation 2014. It’ll be a huge family reunion you won’t want to miss.

See you this summer!

Well that festival never happened.  Driscoll had said the previous year

https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/01/malachi-at-mh-part-3-it-may-not-be-all.html

December 01, 2013
http://marshill.com/media/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor
http://marshill.com/en/transcript/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor

MALACHI: LIVING FOR A LEGACY
 WHERE IS MY HONOR?
...

Mars Hill, I am convinced, utterly convinced that we are poised for the biggest year we’ve ever had. And we’ve got some great leaders, and I’ve got a great honor today of sharing some of them with you. I want you to see who we’re talking about, and what they’re doing, and where they’re leading. We’ve pulled up their giving. They’re all giving, OK? They’re all serving, they’re all working, they’re all caring, they’re all trying. And you are helping them by giving generously and praying faithfully. 

Well, I have to admit 2014 really was the biggest year Mars Hill ever had, it was the year of its death, because Mark Driscoll quit.  Even false prophets get predictions right once in a while, don't they?  And as John Goldingay put it in his commentary on The Book of Jeremiah, a false prophet isn't someone who doesn't love the Lord, a false prophet is someone who passes off lies he or she really believes as if they are really messages from the Lord. 

Robert Morris has stepped down from pastoring Gateway Church, revisiting his role in Mark Driscoll's 2014 resignation from Mars Hill and a brief survey of his endorsements of post-MH Driscoll books

At some point Mark Driscoll’s admirers in 2024 may have to take stock of the track records of the men who have publicly endorsed him.  It’s a topic I’ve written about in the past.  It can seem as though it's been more than just this year where men who lavished praise on Mark Driscoll in the past have done take-backs or have had skeletons in their closet about their own moral failings in public ministry or as authors.

Warren Throckmorton revisits the demise of Mars Hill on the tenth anniversary of Mark Driscoll's fateful interview with Janet Meffered

https://warrenthrockmorton.substack.com/p/a-decade-ago-janet-mefferd-accused

If Warren Throckmorton publishes a book about Mars Hill I would definitely be interested in reading it.  I have not written about Making Christianity Manly Again much yet but I am afraid I did not come away with a favorable impression of it.  It seemed to be rehashing observations and ideas that were made more cogently and with far more formidable documentation by Jessica Johnson in Biblical Porn.  McKinney's reference to Jesus and John Wayne may be a clue to readers that you'd be better off reading Kristen Kobes du Mez for yourself.  If you want a sociological treatment of Mars Hill as part of the larger New Calvinist movement skip McKinney's book altogether and go read Brad Vermurlen's Reformed Resurgence.  As frustrated as I was by Mike Cosper's sprawling, diffuse, and overstuffed The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill I would sooner recommend you listen to all of that then read McKinney's book.  Actually, now that I recall, you should read Katelyn Beaty's Celebrities for Jesus before you read McKinney's book, too.

McKinney's book had several profoundly aggravating elements to it that I am probably not going to express my frustrations about until 2024 because while it was an exasperating and tedious book I'm not sure it's worth talking about here in 2023.  She did nothing to situate Driscoll's ideas in light of his Charismatic Catholic family members or his conversion to Protestantism and she couldn't even bring herself to quote Doug Wilson except via Kobes du Mez.  That's absurd for a scholar.  It's not like Doug Wilson isn't relentlessly giving away material each November these days as part of his No Quarter November give-aways.  Leaning on the secondary sources of scholars writing about Doug Wilson when you could cite primary sources seems ... unscholarly.  Particularly since Doug Wilson was openly cited as a major influence on Mark Driscoll by Mark Driscoll himself a sociological take on Driscoll that doesn't try to situate him as having his conversion experience in the American Redoubt (see Crawford Gribben's pretty readable overview of the American Redoubt published by Oxford University Press) seems like a bungle. 

Having kept track of other books that touch on topics dealing with Mars Hill by way of geographic region or doctrinal movement it amazes me that Making Christianity Manly Again is as bad as it is.  At the risk of revealing my alma mater, when I went to the little school by the canal I met an older guy who told me that he attended Seattle Pacific University because of its favorable student to teacher ratio.  He liked being able to be taught by professors with thirty or so fellow students rather than being in a room with five hundred people at the UW in a class that was being taught by a teaching assistant because the actual professor was busy working on another peer-reviewed project or seeking tenure-related stuff.  That said, he told me, SPU was not a research school and never would be.  That was the very big opportunity cost of the school being so good at being an actual teaching institution.  I didn't think about that observation he made for decades until Jennifer McKinney's book came out and then the full implications of his observation really struck me this year.  There are and have been capable scholars at the school, but McKinney's book ... I'll probably wait until 2024 to discuss it.  

Meanwhile,  Throckmorton seems well-positioned to write a book about Mars Hill.  I would also, frankly, like some people who were part of Mars Hill who are also not Mark Driscoll to write books if they feel up to it.  I even have Justin Dean's PR Matters.  It was alright, actually.  I would sooner recommend you read that than Making Christianity Manly Again and I never would've imagined writing that after I first finished reading Dean's book but it's true.  :)  

UPDATE

Given how few books there have been on the topic of Mars Hill I suppose there's the old proverb that beggars can't be choosers.  But McKinney's sermon selections turned out to be from series I documented underwent some significant purges so even I wonder whether or not the versions of the sermons she accessed for her book weren't redacted in some way by the time she got the audio.  That Team Driscoll would purge, redact and re:release material is something even the most fastidious scholar couldn't exactly control for.  

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

Warren Throckmorton demonstrates Mark Driscoll recyling material in a new book from an old Mars Hill era book in which women contributors went uncredited (then in that book and now in this one)

I refrained from commenting on how Mark Driscoll has recycled materials in the era of The Trinity Church from the era of Mars Hill Church much in the past because it seemed that even if I pointed out how Good News for Bad Christians was a recycled series from the Mars Hill era series Christians Gone Wild with serious cuts in at least one sermon, people attending Driscoll's newest church might not know or care.  Or at least I refrained for the most part. By now, however, anyone who carefully tracks Mark Driscoll's literary output likely understands just how much recycling he's done over the decades and may already be familiar with controversies about the extent to which his books have relied on a content management system.

Well, it seems that the labors of people who worked within the Mars Hill content management system are still getting re:purposed and re:cycled with Mark Driscoll's most re:cent ministry and Warren Throckmorton has shared details. 

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/12/06/mark-driscoll-claims-credit-for-the-work-of-mars-hill-church-women/

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.

Warren Throckmorton officially asks "Did Mark Driscoll Get Me Kicked Off Patheos?"

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/08/16/did-mark-driscoll-get-me-kicked-off-patheos/

On May 21 2018, I received an email from COO of Patheos Jeremy McGee that I no longer met the “strategic objectives” of Patheos and therefore would be removed as a blogger from the site. Recently I learned from more than one former staff member of The Trinity Church  about a possible reason why I was evicted without a reason given.  If Mark Driscoll’s bragging is correct, Patheos management decided they would rather have Mark Driscoll’s traffic over mine.  According to the story that I have been told from two sources independently, Mark Driscoll told Patheos that he would not bring his substantial social media traffic to Patheos if I was allowed to stay on the site. In effect, he bragged, he got me kicked off the site.

At the time, the “favored advertiser theory” was one which made some sense. Obviously publishing is a business and if an advertiser/blogger promised to bring in lots of ad money and traffic (more than I was bringing in), then a management mainly in it for the profit would have to consider that. I could never get confirmation of the theory or prove who would be vindictive enough to actually pursue that gangster move.

As far as who might consider such a move, I thought of several candidates. Driscoll’s name did come up. After all, he told Tim Gaydos if Tim moved away from Mars Hill and planted his own church, Driscoll would tear it down brick by brick. You can hear that quote from Gaydos in the opener of every Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast episode. However, at the time, I could only speculate. Now, I have more than one reliable source with the same story of Driscoll bragging about getting me kicked of the site.

Not only was I told I had to stop blogging, my blog  was taken down so that all links throughout the web which pointed to my Patheos address no longer work. In effect, there was an effort to silence the writing.

Let it sink in a minute: Mark Driscoll met Patheos’ “strategic objectives” while I did not.   ...

For those unfamiliar with Patheos as a platform, if the theory that Throckmorton's blog was cut loose because he wasn't posting enough or posting often enough is considered, then why has Driscoll's Patheos blog survived even though he hasn't posted anything there since July 2, 2020? Throckmorton has noticed this, too, but I want to point out something else that's equally obvious.

Throckmorton got dropped for whatever reason but Patheos is not an overtly "Christian" site.  Patheos hosts all sorts of perspectives that aren't even necessarily religiously confessional or evangelical.

https://www.patheos.com/nonreligious

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rolltodisbelieve/

https://www.patheos.com/buddhist

https://www.patheos.com/pagan

https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian

So Throckmorton's got some reason to ask what the strategic goals of Patheos were that his blog wasn't fulfilling for it to get 410'd out of existence.  What kinds of strategic goals are still being fulfilled by all the sorts of blogs above but not by, apparently, "just" Warren Throckmorton's blog? If other blogs were 410'd out of being on the same day Throckmorton's was, however, feel free to share links in the comments (moderation always on).

I've been thinking about more stuff to write about Episodes 6 and 7 of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill but I am not feeling hugely inspired to write after having written a fairly hefty amount about the series already.  I can be industrious but it's still a pretty heavy set of topics and getting around to "The Brand" and other aspects of "State of Emergency" I haven't written about yet will take some time to put in order.  

Another thing is I lately discovered IMSLP has some Matiegka scores from the Op. 31 set and that means that score analysis improvements can be made for 1, 2, 5 and 6 in my pending Matiegka's Op. 31 series.  

Warren Throckmorton published a statement from former MHC pastor Andrew Lisi, whose departure from the U District campus was (sort of) documented here around March 2014 (now with better archive.org linkage)

Warren Throckmorton has published the following:

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/07/01/a-former-mars-hill-church-pastor-speaks-out-about-mark-driscoll/

Andrew Lisi was involved at Mars Hill Church from December 2011 to March, 2014. During that time, he was an Executive Pastor, Community Groups Pastor and Biblical Living Pastor at three different campus churches (Downtown, U-District and West Seatte). When Andrew resigned, allegations of pastoral abuse and wrongdoing had started to surface against lead pastor Mark Driscoll.

Andrew recently reached out to me with a letter of concern he wrote to the Executive Elders of Mars Hill Church at the time of his resignation (Dave Bruskas, Sutton Turner, and Mark Driscoll). The letter expressed many of his reasons for leaving. He contacted me in response to the recent reports from former members of The Trinity Church in Phoenix. Andrew sees The Trinity Church reports as history repeating itself. He also hopes to raise awareness about the fact that the investigating board of elders at Mars Hill declared Mark Driscoll to be disqualified from ministry in 2014. Driscoll first agreed to undergo a restoration process but abruptly quit before he started it.   ...

For those who want to read the full March 2, 2014 letter Andrew Lisi wrote, go here

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Andrew-Lisi-Grievance-Letter.pdf