http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/07/six-available-accounts-of-mark-driscoll.html
Here at Wenatchee The Hatchet we've looked at multiple narratives recounting the incidents and motivations described by Mark Driscoll and others about his late 2014 resignation from Mars Hill. There's the resignation letter itself, the MH leadership statements from shortly after the resignation was announced, the Robert Morris Gateway narratives (mostly Morris there), there's the Thrive presentation, and most recently the Houston interview. It might be tempting for some readers to assume that all the stories are false. Well, actually, that's not at all necessary. In fact, it's possible to reconstruct a pretty coherent linear narrative from all of the narratives previously presented and discussed.
Based on the Houston interview, Driscoll initiated a review process for himself by telling the board (BoO? BoE? BoE as surrogate) to check whether he was not fit for ministry. On the weekend of his birthday, or his birthday, he met with the board. The board said there was nothing disqualifying him for ministry but they wanted him to participate in a restoration plan. By Driscoll's account he agreed to this and he and Grace explained to their kids what was going to happen. That is all spelled out in the Houston interview.
Now what seems to have happened next was the Monday after the meeting, Driscoll stated he heard a voice. The way he described it at Thrive was he was released from responsibility to serve in ministry at Mars Hill. In the Houston interview the story is more detailed and Driscoll mentioned hearing a voice that said "a trap has been set". There's another transcript that can be consulted now, over here:
http://hillsongchurchwatch.com/2015/07/14/transcript-of-brian-houstons-nice-interview-with-mark-grace-driscoll-2/
In this newer account the Driscolls describe "we're released" (Grace Driscoll) and "a trap has been set and they could not return to ministry. Since the Hillsong focused blog features a much longer transcript that captured more of the statements we'll refer to that some:
so I asked her well what did the Lord say to you because I didn’t want to influence her and so she said, uh, she said we’re” (39:45-42:42)
Grace Driscoll: “We’re released.” (42:43)
Brian Houston: “We can take a moment.” (42:52)
Mark Driscoll: “So, she said well what have you heard so I can hear it. “Well the Lord revealed to me that, you know, a trap has been set there’s no way in which to return to leadership.” And I didn’t know what that meant or what was going on at the time. And um, I said, he said well release too we need to resign. And so, um, you know, this is not what we anticipated, and uh a lot of people thought you know, maybe he’s got another plan, or, we didn’t. We didn’t know what we were doing. And Grace fell to the floor and she was just sobbing uncontrollably and I’ve never seen my wife like that she was devastated. Um, so we prayed and slept on it decided that we would make sure we got this right, and uh.”
Grace Driscoll: “Speak with wise council.”
Mark Driscoll: “Sought the pastors of those we trust and sent in our resignation in on that, it would’ve been that Tuesday, yeah, and resigned.” (42:53-43:57)
Now this comes across as though the Driscolls say they heard God release them from ministry Monday night. They decided to sleep on it and Grace mentioned "wise council" Mark Driscoll mentioned "sought the pastors of those we trust". So if they "slept on it" Monday night, this would have been Tuesday that they sought the council and consideration of other pastors, although if they were sure a voice from God told them they could quit what confirmation they would need or want seems moot.
But that does, in any case, get us to the resignation letter itself.
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
Last week our Board of Overseers met for an extended period of time with Grace and me, thereby concluding the formal review of charges against me.
...That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in 1996. [emphasis added] I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
No mention of any instruction from God there, just the godly counsel. As before, it would seem that if God told the Driscolls they were released that would have been the thing to lead with back on October 14, 2014. And as Wenatchee The Hatchet has discussed at some length in the past, the scriptural precedent for God telling leaders "you're off the job" conspicuously features the likes of King Saul and King Ahab. What was attested by the BoAA at the time was what a surprise the resignation was.
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
Pastor Mark Driscoll's Resignation
By: Mars Hill Church
Posted: Oct 15, 2014
On Tuesday, October 14, Pastor Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as an elder and lead pastor of Mars Hill Church. The Board of Overseers has accepted that resignation [emphasis added] and is moving forward with planning for pastoral transition, recognizing the challenge of such a task in a church that has only known one pastor since its founding. We ask for prayer for the journey ahead.
As is well known, inside and outside of Mars Hill, Pastor Mark has been on a leave of absence for nearly two months while a group of elders investigated a series of formal charges brought against him. This investigation had only recently been concluded, following some 1,000 hours of research, interviewing more than 50 people and preparing 200 pages of information. This process was conducted in accordance with our church Bylaws and with Pastor Mark’s support and cooperation.
While a group of seven elders plus one member of the Board of Overseers was charged with conducting this investigation, the full Board of Overseers is charged with reaching any conclusions and issuing any findings.
...
Finally, Mark Driscoll was not asked to resign; indeed, we were surprised to receive his resignation letter. [emphasis added]
This was not the only statement made about the Driscoll resignation by leaders at Mars Hill, of course:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Alex-Ghioni-Announcement.m4a
starting about 3:45
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. [emphasis added] Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
So both accounts present Driscoll's resignation as a surprise, and the second account presents the decision as having pre-empted the restoration plan that was proposed for him to be able to return to ministry.
In light of the Houston interview the Driscolls may have fit in all the seeking godly counsel Tuesday after they "slept on it" about the voices saying they were released from ministry/a trap was set. This could account for why the BoAA found Mark Driscoll's resignation to be a complete surprise. They weren't expecting it because, per Mark Driscoll's longer account in talking with Houston, he said he asked the Board to investigate him and present him with a result and he'd comply with what they decided. By Mark Driscoll's account he said he agreed to cooperate with the restoration process proposed and told his kids what the plan would be. Then, come Monday, all that changed. Tuesday, it seems, the Driscolls talked to those they considered godly counsel.
Which gets us to Robert Morris and his account.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris: Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added]
So by this account Robert Morris could have been one of the people the Driscolls reached out to on Tuesday, after the Monday voices and their respective messages to Mark and Grace Driscoll. Now it's possible Mark Driscoll opted to not tell Robert Morris "God told me we get to quit" in so many words. Morris may have either not known what Mark Driscoll says God told him, or Morris may not have mentioned it. In any event, the observation here is that Robert Morris' story does not contradict the cumulative Driscollian narrative we can assemble from the multiple accounts--Driscoll wrote that he/they sought counsel and Morris recounted that he and Mark decided together that Mark should step out for a while.
So this presents a story in which Monday voices are heard and Tuesday people are consulted, a letter is drafted, and the resignation is made official. This completely explains the elements from the Thrive presentation:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/05/13/transcript-of-mark-driscolls-speech-at-the-thrive-leadership-conference-2015/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
See Links to Timestamps at the end of this doc. [these omitted here]
...
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN. [emphasis added]We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked.
We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. [emphasis added] So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked. We’d served in that city for 20 years. Founded that church in our living room. And served it for 18 years. (loud applause) Baptized somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (audible amens from crowd).
[8:13]
So, we’re sitting with the kids explaining to them that dad had resigned and that we were going to continue forward and that God had released us very clearly.
CNN was it? When did CNN cover the resignation?
Let's pull that up
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-top-megachurch-pastor-resigns/
October 15, 2014 at 4:33pm.
and RNS also covered the resignation October 15.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
cf HuffPo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/15/mark-driscoll-resigns_n_5991998.html
The story seems to have broken about 3pm October 15. And, of course
https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
http://web.archive.org/web/20141016105922/https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
So threading all the accounts together, Mark Driscoll seems to have drafted the letter Tuesday October 14. It was submitted to the BoAA, who released it to the public and RNS published the resignation letter October 15. In the Thrive presentation Mark Driscoll described that "within minutes" of going to get his kids, CNN was discussing his resignation. It leads us to a remarkable little question that needs some narrative grounding.
Mark and Grace Driscoll told the Fab Five Poppa Daddy agreed to the restoration plan the Board proposed October 10th and/or 11th; and if by Mark and Grace Driscoll's account they heard from God they were released from ministry responsibility and able to quit on Monday, October 13; if the Driscolls consulted people on October 14th and Mark Driscoll wrote and sent his resignation letter that day; then when the media reported the resignation on October 15 there had been at least some time in there for Mark and Grace Driscoll have told their kids that Poppa Daddy had made the decision to quit, right?
If Mark Driscoll's story at the Thrive conference is true and the Houston story account shared by Mark and Grace Driscoll is true then the question to ask is why on earth they waited for their children to find out about Mark Driscoll's resignation the way they did rather than telling their own children Poppa Daddy and Mom heard audibly from God that they were released from ministry at Mars Hill and this meant they could quit, and to tell the kids first? The space between Monday evening and about 3:00pm October 15, 2015 PST gave them at least twenty-four hours, didn't it? No sitting the kids down the afternoon or evening of Tuesday, October 14, 2014 to break the news? Could not the Driscolls have shared the news with their children FIRST and THEN sent off that letter to the BoAA?
Still, if the Driscolls decided the best way for their kids to find out was some other way, okay. Maybe the idea was the resignation letter would get sent off and the BoAA would just, I don't know, sit on it for at least a few days beore releasing it to the press? That might have given the Driscolls time to have told their children some time after October 14. Let's keep in mind
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscolls-resignation-letter-to-mars-hill-church/
Recent months have proven unhealthy for our family—even physically unsafe at times—and we believe the time has now come for the elders to choose new pastoral leadership for Mars Hill. Grace and I pledge our full support in this process and will join you in praying for God’s best for this, His church, in the days and years ahead. Grace and I would also covet your prayers for us as we seek God’s will for the next chapter of our lives. Therefore, consider this written notice of my voluntary termination of employment.
If Mark and Grace Driscoll decided their family was not in a healthy spot and was even physically unsafe at times then that would seem all the more reason to not leave the announcement of Mark Driscoll's resignation wait until October 15 when the media got the story. It would seem like something to have mentioned somewhere between October 13 and the and of October 14. But perhaps Mark and Grace Driscoll had reasons to not mention anything about the resignation and to let things play out. By Mark Driscoll's account at the Thrive conference the way the Driscoll kids learned about the resignation was through social or broadcast media, maybe CNN. Driscoll's Thrive account makes it almost seem as though the way the kids found out about his resignation was through media coverage because he hadn't told them himself yet. Maybe that's not what he meant but that's the impression that comes across to Wenatchee The Hatchet.
So ... waiting anywhere between 24 to 32 hours to let someone else break the news to your children you've made a decision that will alter everything about their social lives as they'd come to know it was ... part of the plan for Mark and Grace Driscoll? It seems weird, but it's just how things come across threading all the narratives of Mark Driscoll's resignation together. The Thrive narrative and the Houston narrative basically overlap and don't really contradict each other so long as we take as given that neither Mark nor Grace Driscoll saw any reason to tell their kids the evening of October 14 what they had decided based on something they claim they heard on what seems to have been October 13.
POSTSCRIPT
We've already discussed the few precedents there are in the biblical narrative literature for God explicitly telling a leader he is released from leadership or no longer bearing the responsibility of a previously divinely appointed role.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-biblical-precedent-for-god-releasing.html
If you want to read a dry but informative survey of the rise and decline of King Saul V. Phillips Long has a great dissertation on that subject.
We've also looked at precedents in Old Testament narrative literature for traps God set for wicked rulers who misappropriated authority and power for themselves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/as-mark-driscolls-recent-spiritual.html
Whether Abimelech seeking kingship by treachery and murder; or King Saul being tormented by a spirit sent by God; or Ahab's prophets being deluded by a spirit of calamity that misled them, we simply cannot take as given that just because the Driscolls say they heard an audible voice telling them they were released from ministry in contradiction of what they just agreed to do was necessarily God, or a god. No matter how many times Mark Driscoll protests otherwise, if Mark and Grace Driscoll did not want to quit being part of Mars Hill they could have stayed on. By Mark Driscoll's account the Board found nothing that disqualified him for ministry and he claimed to Brian Houston he agreed to submit to their restoration plan. Then all of a sudden, as he's lately recounted it, he heard a voice saying "a trap has been set", or something like that.
Let's not forget that even though God was described as commanding Abraham to kill Isaac the Bible also tells us God stopped Abraham from actually doing that. What's fascinating about the Driscoll narratives is they never bothered to say God said anything to either of them until this year on the road talking to people at Thrive or in a video-taped interview with Houston. Even if we assume for the sake of friendly conversation a voice said the Driscolls were released, the cumulative precedent of OT canon does not suggest that being released is a sign of approval, rather it tends to be a sign of substantial divine disapproval and even judgment. So it's not impossible God released them because of some shortcoming and the sticky wicket here is that if we go by what the biblical texts say, when God says someone's no longer on the job, their salvation is frequently an open question at best. Lots of people would consider kings like Saul and Ahab to have not been believers to begin with. So there's that.
Showing posts with label gateway conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gateway conference. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
the Thrive speech in context, first question--who told Mark Driscoll to quit? Comparing the three (wait, four) narratives given since Driscoll's 2014 resignation
Wenatchee The Hatchet could delve into the theological/historical matters of Mark Driscoll's Thrive presentation but that is best saved for some time later.
The first and most rudimentary question that emerges between the Thrive speech, the Gateway performance with Robert Morris, and the resignation letter published at RNS, is who exactly told Mark Driscoll it would be a good idea to quit?
Let's take them in chronological order. First, the published letter from Mark Driscoll to Michael Van Skaik regarding his resignation.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/may-2015-driscoll-said-god-audibly.html
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014
Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in 1996. I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
...
So there's an unspecified number of men and women across the country there in the resignation letter. That's the first account.
Second, the Robert Morris/Mark Driscoll moment at Gateway in October 2014.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris:
Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added]
So according to Robert Morris it was he and Mark Driscoll who decided together Mark Driscoll was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing.
Now on October 19, 2014 Warren Throckmorton published this:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
Driscoll submitted his letter of resignation on Tuesday, Oct. 14 and the BoAA issued a statement on Oct. 15.
Throckmorton went on to quote a statement regarding Driscoll's resignation
...
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. [emphasis added] Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
So according to a statement reported by Warren Throckmorton the day before the Gateway presentation, Mars Hill's Board of Overseers seemed to have had a process, a plan to restore Driscoll to leadership, eventually. The Board of Elders, in agreement with the Board of Overseers, were sad that such a process was lost to them when Mark Driscoll resigned his position and left the church. So Robert Morris' account was he and Driscoll decided it would be good to take a break. Driscoll's own account was he and Grace had consulted a number of godly men and women. Everything up to this point seems to indicate some kind of networked/polling process on Driscoll's part. Remember, by the time Driscoll's resignation had been announced, he'd notified the BoAA he'd gotten godly counsel from men and women across the country. Keep that in mind when we get to the newest account.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked. We’d served in that city for 20 years. Founded that church in our living room. And served it for 18 years. (loud applause) Baptized somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (audible amens from crowd).
First, if you're the legal president and iconic speaker beamed across screens at fifteen sites a week and you resign, odds are pretty high that will be announced as soon as possible. Driscoll's comment that the Board released a statement earlier than the Driscoll's were anticipating seems dubious. To invoke a historical comparison, Richard Nixon could not resign from the presidency of the United States without it being news. Ergo, Mark Driscoll could not quit being president of or a member at Mars Hill without it being news.
Second, this thing about Driscoll saying "it wasn't what we were expecting" merits a comment all its own. It wasn't what they expected but the letter that was sent to Michael Van Skaik and released to RNS showed Mark Driscoll explicitly stating that after he and Grace had sought godly counsel from men and women across the country they decided it was in the best interest of Mars Hill to leave ministry there. Let's go back to that letter again:
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014
Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in 1996. I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
In other words the stories are 1) we sought advice from a group of men and women and concluded it was time to quit for the health of family and MH; 2) MH leadership indicated they found Driscoll to have sin issues and were preparing a restoration plan that, if he'd followed it, would have restored him to ministry but Driscoll opted to resign before that was possible; 3) Robert Morris and Mark agreed between the two of him he should take a break; 4) Mark Driscoll told people at Thrive 2015 God audibly released him from ministry and independently confirmed this release with Grace even though it was not what either anticipated or expected.
These accounts seem ... kinda different from each other at a few points.
The first and most rudimentary question that emerges between the Thrive speech, the Gateway performance with Robert Morris, and the resignation letter published at RNS, is who exactly told Mark Driscoll it would be a good idea to quit?
Let's take them in chronological order. First, the published letter from Mark Driscoll to Michael Van Skaik regarding his resignation.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/may-2015-driscoll-said-god-audibly.html
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014
Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in 1996. I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
...
So there's an unspecified number of men and women across the country there in the resignation letter. That's the first account.
Second, the Robert Morris/Mark Driscoll moment at Gateway in October 2014.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris:
Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added]
So according to Robert Morris it was he and Mark Driscoll who decided together Mark Driscoll was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing.
Now on October 19, 2014 Warren Throckmorton published this:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
Driscoll submitted his letter of resignation on Tuesday, Oct. 14 and the BoAA issued a statement on Oct. 15.
Throckmorton went on to quote a statement regarding Driscoll's resignation
...
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. [emphasis added] Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
So according to a statement reported by Warren Throckmorton the day before the Gateway presentation, Mars Hill's Board of Overseers seemed to have had a process, a plan to restore Driscoll to leadership, eventually. The Board of Elders, in agreement with the Board of Overseers, were sad that such a process was lost to them when Mark Driscoll resigned his position and left the church. So Robert Morris' account was he and Driscoll decided it would be good to take a break. Driscoll's own account was he and Grace had consulted a number of godly men and women. Everything up to this point seems to indicate some kind of networked/polling process on Driscoll's part. Remember, by the time Driscoll's resignation had been announced, he'd notified the BoAA he'd gotten godly counsel from men and women across the country. Keep that in mind when we get to the newest account.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wYBTnRpPHRb8N1nqtgP2FcHcdnBeMIqCYy2SyQCEWBg/edit
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
[6:34]
It finally came to the point where God released my wife and I from our responsibility to ministry. He spoke to us audibly. It wasn’t what we were expecting. It wasn’t what we had agreed to. We were both pretty shocked and the announcement was going to come out that week. [emphasis added] And, uh, our server, our e-mail and things apparently were hacked and there was no way to get anything done without it being a public situation. And so the Board, which are good, godly people in authority, which I appreciate -- they released a statement earlier than we were anticipating, so um, but that meant, and I agree with that decision, I’m not critical of it. But that meant that I hadn’t told my kids that I had resigned and they were in school, taking test, it was a test week, …. we threw some stuff in a bag and ran to school to grab the kids and within minutes it was on TV, I think it was on CNN.
We pulled the kids out of school, and they already knew because of social media -- media moves so fast. So we told them they couldn’t go back to the house for a few days so we jumped in the car and went to a hotel and it was just kind of a emotionally wrecked. We’d served in that city for 20 years. Founded that church in our living room. And served it for 18 years. (loud applause) Baptized somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. (audible amens from crowd).
First, if you're the legal president and iconic speaker beamed across screens at fifteen sites a week and you resign, odds are pretty high that will be announced as soon as possible. Driscoll's comment that the Board released a statement earlier than the Driscoll's were anticipating seems dubious. To invoke a historical comparison, Richard Nixon could not resign from the presidency of the United States without it being news. Ergo, Mark Driscoll could not quit being president of or a member at Mars Hill without it being news.
Second, this thing about Driscoll saying "it wasn't what we were expecting" merits a comment all its own. It wasn't what they expected but the letter that was sent to Michael Van Skaik and released to RNS showed Mark Driscoll explicitly stating that after he and Grace had sought godly counsel from men and women across the country they decided it was in the best interest of Mars Hill to leave ministry there. Let's go back to that letter again:
http://www.religionnews.com/?p=109053
October 14, 2014
Michael Van Skaik
Chairman, Board of Advisors and Accountability
Mars Hill Church
Dear Michael:
...
That is why, after seeking the face and will of God, and seeking godly counsel from men and women across the country, we have concluded it would be best for the health of our family, and for the Mars Hill family, that we step aside from further ministry at the church we helped launch in 1996. I will gladly work with you in the coming days on any details related to our separation.
In other words the stories are 1) we sought advice from a group of men and women and concluded it was time to quit for the health of family and MH; 2) MH leadership indicated they found Driscoll to have sin issues and were preparing a restoration plan that, if he'd followed it, would have restored him to ministry but Driscoll opted to resign before that was possible; 3) Robert Morris and Mark agreed between the two of him he should take a break; 4) Mark Driscoll told people at Thrive 2015 God audibly released him from ministry and independently confirmed this release with Grace even though it was not what either anticipated or expected.
These accounts seem ... kinda different from each other at a few points.
courtesy Throckmorton: Transcript of 10-20-2014 Robert Morris/Mark Driscoll presentation at Gateway
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
Transcript of Robert Morris and Mark Driscoll from the Gateway Leadership + Worship Conference
on the evening of Monday, October 20, 2014, as broadcast live via DayStar Television:
Robert Morris: “Tonight’s been phenomenal. Would you agree? So far uh, we’re just getting started (applause). Part of our heart is that you’re refreshed in the presence of God, when you come. And I hope you, you were refreshed in his presence, uh, tonight. Uhm, I wanna before I uh introduce Steven, our our speaker tonight, I want to introduce you to a friend. A good friend of mine. And I’ve been um speaking with him for several months now. He’s going through uh a a difficulty that most of you’ve probably read about. Um, I know the behind the scenes story. Uh, he was supposed to speak at our conference. Uh, it was publicized that we cancelled him; that’s not true, we did not cancel. I’m speaking of Mark Driscoll. We did not cancel him. He and I decided together uh that he was going to step out of ministry for a season and get some healing. [emphasis added] Uh he asked me, ‘could I come to the conference and just attend’? And I thought that was very big of him. To just come and be ministered to and again I just want to say a couple things, first of all, I want you to know that everything you read on the internet is not true (laughter, applause). And there are some pastors, myself included, and some others that you would know, that we’re speaking into his life and he’s listening. And uh, uh uh most of what you read is not true. Some of it is. He did make some mistakes. Uh here’s what I figure. We’ve got two choices. One is we could crucify him (pause). But since someone’s already been crucified (hollering)for him (applause, hollering). The other choice is we could restore him with a spirit of gentleness considering ourselves, lest we are also tempted (applause). It is very sad that in the church we’re the only army that shoots at our wounded. And I want you to stop it. I really do. Thank you. I’d like for you to show your love for him and for you to just welcome him. Mark would you stand up. This is Mark Driscoll. (Standing ovation, extended applause, hollering, whistling). (murmuring between MD and RM) (more applause, hollering, whistling)”
Mark Driscoll (begins at 2:58): “Thank you Pastor Robert. Uhm. What do you want me to do? If you give a microphone to a preacher who’s been gone for a while, he could go for a long time (laughter). Uhm.”
Robert Morris (3:10): (points to floor): “Trap Door”.
Mark Driscoll (3:11): “Alright Uhm. Very, very - love you and thank you as well, thank you. Uhm. Yah, for me I’m in a season of just uh healin’ up, praying. Uh, asking the Lord Jesus through wise counsel to show me any blindspots where I can grow. And as Pastor Appreciation Month I just wanna say that Jee-Jesus really appreciates you and appreciates your family and uh, if you think of anything, just pray for my family. I think there’s a lot I could say that would make me feel better. I don’t know that it would make me look better, but I don’t think it would make Jesus look better, so I won’t say anything other than uh just pray for my family we’ve had a uh a very trying season and uh um, just trying to figure out how to be a good pastor to my family first. We all know that’s the most important thing and uh, um, (burp) would you mind if I shared a story or two? Uhm, is that okay, like?
Um. I, I’ve cried a lot lately uhm er it’s been a rough season for the family. I guess you could take a seat. Um, (laughter) and um, and for those of you, I would say don’t overlook your family as first ministry. Uhmm. And for me we’re just really appreciate your prayer for our family. We’ve got five kids, three boys, two girls, ages 8 to 17 and uh we’ve moved three times now for safety issues. [there is no explicit time frame describing whether the move was over the course of one or fifteen years] Uhm. People arrested at our home, death threats, uh address posted on-line, all kinds of things and uh more recently it’s gotten very severe.
We came home from break. There was rusty nails all over the driveway. We uh, we uh we had a night where the kids wanted to sleep out in the tent and uh I got a call that um my uh address was posted on-line by the media and um so, we, we, we went out of town for a few days, came back uh the kids said ‘no, we gotta sleep in the tent so I didn’t sleep. But we, we were in the tent all night and uh, woke up in the morning about 6:30or so and huge rocks about the size of baseballs come flying at my kids uh 8, 10 and 12 years of age. Call the police. Flee into the house for their safety. Uh a few days later. I think it was, I don’t remember, the media flies overhead with a helicopter and is trying to flush us out for a story.
And uh that night uh we’re hiding in the house, my 8 year old son comes down and he’s wearing a military jacket, he’s loading up his Air Soft rifle (laughter)and he uh (MD chuckles) he looks at me and he says ‘hey dad is this uh is this jacket bullet proof? (soft laughter) and I just started crying and said, ‘why’s that little buddy?’ and he said, ‘Well it’s bad guys in the helicopter coming to shoot the family, right?’ He didn’t have any concept of, of media coverage, he thought it was bad guys coming to kill his family and he was gonna defend his sister (faint laughter) and so uh praise God he’s finally sleeping in his bed again, but it’s been a while to get him to do that with night terrors and so, there’s just a lot going on for our family, I appreciate Pastor Robert and the team here. I just want to come here to uh sing, to pray, uh to learn, to grow, uh to repent, to heal and uh uh God is surrounding me with some great pastors and friends, and if I could just say anything, it’s ‘every pastor needs a pastor’. And and, uh you pastors, your family needs you to be their pastor. So thank you”. (applause, whistling)
Robert Morris (begins 6:34):
“Thank you, thank you for your graciousness very much and um, um., we’re grateful. Debbie and I’ve been able to spend some time with Mark and Grace and talking with them and uuhh, we were talking the night before he resigned and talking about that and um talking through the situation and you know he uh resigned the church he founded and pastored for 18 years. (draws breath) Uhm, he, he, you know, when I say he made some mistakes, he made some mistakes like he past- he preached ten to twelve years, 50 weeks a year. Sometimes six services a weekend. And uh it’s just not healthy and um, so I’m uh glad that uh he’s saying, ‘help me’. ‘Hel-help me learn uh to do it differently and do it better.” And so I love him very, very much and um I’m I’m glad that he’s here. Uh you’re going to be blessed. Uhm, tonight I was thinking though that uh we invited uh Mark and Steven to be at, a part of our conference and they both got bad media this year. Huh-huh-huh-uh-he, I uh-uh-huh-uhuh I just uh they’re buddies now. So huh-uh (laughter) Uh but uh but it is surprising how, how uh we believe so quickly something that we read, uh about a brother in Christ that we’ve never even met.”
7:55 Robert Morris goes into Steven Furtick’s introduction…
Sunday, October 26, 2014
if the MH situation is as precarious as it seems "beginning again" may just be dying.
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/03/MHCletterMD.png
Second, in recent years, some have used the language of “celebrity pastor” to describe me and some other Christian leaders. In my experience, celebrity pastors eventually get enough speaking and writing opportunities outside the church that their focus on the church is compromised, until eventually they decide to leave and go do other things. Without judging any of those who have done this, let me be clear that my desires are exactly the opposite. I want to be under pastoral authority, in community, and a Bible-teaching pastor who grows as a loving spiritual father at home and in our church home for years to come. I don’t see how I can be both a celebrity and a pastor, and so I am happy to give up the former so that I can focus on the latter. [emphasis added]
But Mark Driscoll hasn't been a pastor for about a week and what happens? He gets on a stage and regales the crowd with stories about his family. It seems that at this point that maybe Mark Driscoll has opted to be a celebrity rather than a pastor. It would seem after ripping on word-faith/prosperity teachers seven years ago and singling out T. D. Jakes, the announcing Jakes a Trinitarian, it would appear that Mark Driscoll has never really been Reformed so much as aligned with whomever has the team that could be convinced to back him. If Mark Driscoll could change his mind about Jakes he could shift to a word-faith team and maybe convince himself he's not really embracing views he considered heretical. A question people may need to wrestle with is whether Mark Driscoll's personality is going to be fit for ministry if he suddenly announce he's become a word-faith egalitarian.
But let's get back to the question--is Mark Driscoll still that local church pastor who's glad to give up celebrity to be a pastor? Let's look back on some other things Driscoll said amid this year's controversies and see whether he's still in the same place now.
https://marshill.com/2014/08/24/an-update-from-pastor-mark
While I’m still young, I suspect when I’m old I’ll be known for many things—some good, and some not so good. But I hope that the longer God leaves me on this earth, the more I’ll be known for one thing—that I loved Jesus and His Church, the Church He promised the gates of Hell would not prevail against. I may be an author, a speaker, and a thought-provoker; but in the deepest recesses of my heart, I’m a local church pastor, and that’s what I want to give the rest of my life for. [emphasis added]
Right, because Mars Hill working with Result Source Inc. to rig a spot for Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list was just the kind of thing that a local church pastor does and his posse is uniformly okay about that? So far most of the primary document evidence about Driscoll's ministry suggests that normal local church pastors don't do any of that stuff and don't see any need to write and publish books because if they're fairly normal Christian pastors they ALREADY HAVE A BOOK to reference or promote from the pulpit on Sundays called ... the Bible. Perhaps Driscoll has missed the big E on the eye chart, to borrow one of his preferred phrases (whether or not he originated it).
And now ... now Mark Driscoll will be remembered as a quitter.
https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
The Board of Overseers seems to have decided that Driscoll was not disqualified from ministry while the Board of Elders announced that Mark Driscoll resigned rather than comply with a restoration plan that indicated he needed time away from ministry. So the leadership of Mars Hill seems split on whether Driscoll had disqualified himself for ministry with the BoO seeming to say "no" and the BoE seeming to say "yes" but without publicly repudiating the statements of the BoO. Regardless, it has seemed, then, that Mark Driscoll has gone and quit rather than comply with a restoration plan in the same way Andrew did in 2012 ... but no one at Mars Hill seems willing to say Mark Driscoll may have qualified himself as a wolf?
Think about it, if Andrew was a wolf for declining to agree to Martian discipline in 2011-2012 and his leaving the church and ending membership was considered grounds for "escalated communication", then why hasn't Mars Hill's Board of Elders done something like this "escalated communication" about both Mark Driscoll and the Board of Overseers?
Well, one possibility is that the Board of Advisors & Accountability has the power to authorize the voluntary dissolution of the corporation known as Mars Hill Church. How do you call out a misrepresentation from the BoO/BoAA if doing so could risk them dissolving the entire church at a stroke? For that matter, given Turner's concerns in 2012 that Mars Hill would be in breach of loan covenants back then, here in 2014 Mars Hill may already be at a point where they need to declare bankruptcy and/or dissolve the corporation.
Driscoll and Turner left amidst controversy and the corporation Driscoll set up may be dying and now is not the time for quitters in the executive elder team that included a man who told quitters to neither ask for nor expect to receive severance pay to get any severance at all. Turner can figure out how to scrounge up some money without Mars Hill. Then again, if Turner's already got his severance package there's no reason Driscoll should necessarily have to get one, and in any case Mars Hill might not be fiscally solvent enough to provide much of a severance package anyway.
Dissolving the corporation may actually be necessary and inevitable, unlike a controversial firing/trial process instigated in 2007. It's unfortunate for Jamie Munson his externally documented legacy as a leader in the history of Mars Hill may end up being documents at Joyful Exiles because with a leadership legacy like that it might be tough to do leadership consulting. With the 50th St corporate headquarters on the market it's just nine years after the building purchase and the grand legacy and vision that Driscoll touted in Confessions of a Reformission Rev in 2006 seems teetering on the edge of an abyss.
If Mars Hill files for bankruptcy or the corporation is dissolved then this could be taken as a providential cue that God never told Mark Driscoll anything at all. Driscoll may have just convinced himself and a whole bunch of other people God told him stuff. Driscoll has made no secret about success being an idol and for the spiritual health of Mark Driscoll he may need this corporation to die so he can see the long-term fruits of his legacy. After all, he was legal president and the founder of the corporation. Mars Hill Church may need to die as the last and best thing that can happen. Driscoll seems to have been able to go his whole ministerial life without having to face the significance of unmitigated failure. To this day he has not addressed the sheer scale of the citation problems in his published works as documented by Warren Throckmorton, Janet Mefferd or Wenatchee The Hatchet. Publishers were busy changing material behind the scenes. If Driscoll wants his intellectual property at this point Mars Hill might benefit from opening up all the books and records to show to what degree the intellectual property of Mark Driscoll was actually generated by the infrastructure of Mars Hill.
Mars Hill, if they feel brave, should avoid giving Mark Driscoll his intellectual property until he's willing to admit the extent of the citation errors in his published works. Mars Hill should also consider issuing a public apology for the passive aggressive way in which they tried to blame plagiarism with Driscoll's name on it (The Trial Study guide) on research assistance.
Then again, if Mark Driscoll wants his intellectual property back Mars Hill may be better off giving it to him. After all, as Warren Throckmorton has managed to comprehensively document, Mark Driscoll's intellectual property has some problems. The evidence accumulated so far suggests to Wenatchee The Hatchet that Driscoll's intellectual property is second-hand and tainted goods. Why bother with Death By Love if you could just go read John Stott's Christ on the Cross?
Driscoll has to date done little more than demonstrate that the few ideas he's shared that were any good weren't even his and that the ideas that were uniquely his weren't much good. He may be a brilliant parrot, able to replicate and recycle the good ideas of others in ways that people can find beneficial but when he set out to draft a marriage manual he seems to have betrayed everything he used to stand for.
And now Mark Driscoll isn't a local church pastor. He isn't a pastor at any church at all, and he's not a member of any church in light of the absence of having a profile on The City. People came for Mark Driscoll and now that he's gone what's worth coming for? To put it another way, after so many years of Mark Driscoll and his team shaping a Mars Hill that depends on Driscoll as a brand, the brand has been shown to be more hype than substance. Driscoll's assurances that he wasn't going anywhere have turned out, it seems, to be wishful thinking. The way in which he has quit, in light of what the BoE has said, makes him seem to be an unscrupulous coward. If Driscoll were to ask for his intellectual property back this would just further highlight whether or not Driscoll will even concede that thanks to the plagiarism controversy he also managed to drag his wife's name into the mess, since it was Grace Driscoll's Chapter 7 of Real Marriage (if she even wrote it) that so prominently featured material so obviously indebted to Dan Allender's work. As Mark Driscoll used to say from the pulpit when you sin against me I want justice but when I sin against you I want mercy. Funny how Mark Driscoll may live that out in a way that could sink his reputation still further. We'll just have to see.
But whatever may happen, Mars Hill has some who are trying to hold on to some possibility for a new beginning.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/24/changesmarshill/
https://marshill.com/2014/10/23/beginning-again
What seems more likely is the death of the corporation through dissolution and bankruptcy.
December 01, 2013
Pastor Mark Driscoll
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. [emphasis added] 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.
Oh, it sure was a big year alright.
It increasingly seems impossible that Mars Hill Church can or should survive and if it fails then that means that the legacy Mark Driscoll built will not only have not outlived Driscoll but couldn't survive with him into middle age. His legacy has also become reversing in his life the things he declared from the pulpit, whether starting a side company in 2011 of the sort he condemned in 2009, or letting Mars Hill have its bylaws rewritten so that a remote God box of executive leaders who never really interact with local leadership call all the shorts about who owns and sells the real estate, Mark Driscoll has turned out to have betrayed pretty much everything he said he stood for in one way or another.
And now Mars Hill Church seems to be on the brink of death and if it dies that will show us something of what Mark Driscoll's legacy as a church planter may really be. He's certainly a celebrity now but a pastor? Hardly. And if by some miracle Mars Hill survives Driscoll won't deserve any credit for abandoning it. He'll still have the legacy of a quitter and the lose-lose scenario he put himself and Mars Hill that reached the point of his resignation will still be what it's been.
Second, in recent years, some have used the language of “celebrity pastor” to describe me and some other Christian leaders. In my experience, celebrity pastors eventually get enough speaking and writing opportunities outside the church that their focus on the church is compromised, until eventually they decide to leave and go do other things. Without judging any of those who have done this, let me be clear that my desires are exactly the opposite. I want to be under pastoral authority, in community, and a Bible-teaching pastor who grows as a loving spiritual father at home and in our church home for years to come. I don’t see how I can be both a celebrity and a pastor, and so I am happy to give up the former so that I can focus on the latter. [emphasis added]
But Mark Driscoll hasn't been a pastor for about a week and what happens? He gets on a stage and regales the crowd with stories about his family. It seems that at this point that maybe Mark Driscoll has opted to be a celebrity rather than a pastor. It would seem after ripping on word-faith/prosperity teachers seven years ago and singling out T. D. Jakes, the announcing Jakes a Trinitarian, it would appear that Mark Driscoll has never really been Reformed so much as aligned with whomever has the team that could be convinced to back him. If Mark Driscoll could change his mind about Jakes he could shift to a word-faith team and maybe convince himself he's not really embracing views he considered heretical. A question people may need to wrestle with is whether Mark Driscoll's personality is going to be fit for ministry if he suddenly announce he's become a word-faith egalitarian.
But let's get back to the question--is Mark Driscoll still that local church pastor who's glad to give up celebrity to be a pastor? Let's look back on some other things Driscoll said amid this year's controversies and see whether he's still in the same place now.
https://marshill.com/2014/08/24/an-update-from-pastor-mark
While I’m still young, I suspect when I’m old I’ll be known for many things—some good, and some not so good. But I hope that the longer God leaves me on this earth, the more I’ll be known for one thing—that I loved Jesus and His Church, the Church He promised the gates of Hell would not prevail against. I may be an author, a speaker, and a thought-provoker; but in the deepest recesses of my heart, I’m a local church pastor, and that’s what I want to give the rest of my life for. [emphasis added]
Right, because Mars Hill working with Result Source Inc. to rig a spot for Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list was just the kind of thing that a local church pastor does and his posse is uniformly okay about that? So far most of the primary document evidence about Driscoll's ministry suggests that normal local church pastors don't do any of that stuff and don't see any need to write and publish books because if they're fairly normal Christian pastors they ALREADY HAVE A BOOK to reference or promote from the pulpit on Sundays called ... the Bible. Perhaps Driscoll has missed the big E on the eye chart, to borrow one of his preferred phrases (whether or not he originated it).
And now ... now Mark Driscoll will be remembered as a quitter.
https://marshill.com/2014/10/15/pastor-mark-driscolls-resignation
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/10/15/exclusive-mark-driscoll-resigns-from-mars-hill-church/
The Board of Overseers seems to have decided that Driscoll was not disqualified from ministry while the Board of Elders announced that Mark Driscoll resigned rather than comply with a restoration plan that indicated he needed time away from ministry. So the leadership of Mars Hill seems split on whether Driscoll had disqualified himself for ministry with the BoO seeming to say "no" and the BoE seeming to say "yes" but without publicly repudiating the statements of the BoO. Regardless, it has seemed, then, that Mark Driscoll has gone and quit rather than comply with a restoration plan in the same way Andrew did in 2012 ... but no one at Mars Hill seems willing to say Mark Driscoll may have qualified himself as a wolf?
Think about it, if Andrew was a wolf for declining to agree to Martian discipline in 2011-2012 and his leaving the church and ending membership was considered grounds for "escalated communication", then why hasn't Mars Hill's Board of Elders done something like this "escalated communication" about both Mark Driscoll and the Board of Overseers?
Well, one possibility is that the Board of Advisors & Accountability has the power to authorize the voluntary dissolution of the corporation known as Mars Hill Church. How do you call out a misrepresentation from the BoO/BoAA if doing so could risk them dissolving the entire church at a stroke? For that matter, given Turner's concerns in 2012 that Mars Hill would be in breach of loan covenants back then, here in 2014 Mars Hill may already be at a point where they need to declare bankruptcy and/or dissolve the corporation.
Driscoll and Turner left amidst controversy and the corporation Driscoll set up may be dying and now is not the time for quitters in the executive elder team that included a man who told quitters to neither ask for nor expect to receive severance pay to get any severance at all. Turner can figure out how to scrounge up some money without Mars Hill. Then again, if Turner's already got his severance package there's no reason Driscoll should necessarily have to get one, and in any case Mars Hill might not be fiscally solvent enough to provide much of a severance package anyway.
Dissolving the corporation may actually be necessary and inevitable, unlike a controversial firing/trial process instigated in 2007. It's unfortunate for Jamie Munson his externally documented legacy as a leader in the history of Mars Hill may end up being documents at Joyful Exiles because with a leadership legacy like that it might be tough to do leadership consulting. With the 50th St corporate headquarters on the market it's just nine years after the building purchase and the grand legacy and vision that Driscoll touted in Confessions of a Reformission Rev in 2006 seems teetering on the edge of an abyss.
If Mars Hill files for bankruptcy or the corporation is dissolved then this could be taken as a providential cue that God never told Mark Driscoll anything at all. Driscoll may have just convinced himself and a whole bunch of other people God told him stuff. Driscoll has made no secret about success being an idol and for the spiritual health of Mark Driscoll he may need this corporation to die so he can see the long-term fruits of his legacy. After all, he was legal president and the founder of the corporation. Mars Hill Church may need to die as the last and best thing that can happen. Driscoll seems to have been able to go his whole ministerial life without having to face the significance of unmitigated failure. To this day he has not addressed the sheer scale of the citation problems in his published works as documented by Warren Throckmorton, Janet Mefferd or Wenatchee The Hatchet. Publishers were busy changing material behind the scenes. If Driscoll wants his intellectual property at this point Mars Hill might benefit from opening up all the books and records to show to what degree the intellectual property of Mark Driscoll was actually generated by the infrastructure of Mars Hill.
Mars Hill, if they feel brave, should avoid giving Mark Driscoll his intellectual property until he's willing to admit the extent of the citation errors in his published works. Mars Hill should also consider issuing a public apology for the passive aggressive way in which they tried to blame plagiarism with Driscoll's name on it (The Trial Study guide) on research assistance.
Then again, if Mark Driscoll wants his intellectual property back Mars Hill may be better off giving it to him. After all, as Warren Throckmorton has managed to comprehensively document, Mark Driscoll's intellectual property has some problems. The evidence accumulated so far suggests to Wenatchee The Hatchet that Driscoll's intellectual property is second-hand and tainted goods. Why bother with Death By Love if you could just go read John Stott's Christ on the Cross?
Driscoll has to date done little more than demonstrate that the few ideas he's shared that were any good weren't even his and that the ideas that were uniquely his weren't much good. He may be a brilliant parrot, able to replicate and recycle the good ideas of others in ways that people can find beneficial but when he set out to draft a marriage manual he seems to have betrayed everything he used to stand for.
And now Mark Driscoll isn't a local church pastor. He isn't a pastor at any church at all, and he's not a member of any church in light of the absence of having a profile on The City. People came for Mark Driscoll and now that he's gone what's worth coming for? To put it another way, after so many years of Mark Driscoll and his team shaping a Mars Hill that depends on Driscoll as a brand, the brand has been shown to be more hype than substance. Driscoll's assurances that he wasn't going anywhere have turned out, it seems, to be wishful thinking. The way in which he has quit, in light of what the BoE has said, makes him seem to be an unscrupulous coward. If Driscoll were to ask for his intellectual property back this would just further highlight whether or not Driscoll will even concede that thanks to the plagiarism controversy he also managed to drag his wife's name into the mess, since it was Grace Driscoll's Chapter 7 of Real Marriage (if she even wrote it) that so prominently featured material so obviously indebted to Dan Allender's work. As Mark Driscoll used to say from the pulpit when you sin against me I want justice but when I sin against you I want mercy. Funny how Mark Driscoll may live that out in a way that could sink his reputation still further. We'll just have to see.
But whatever may happen, Mars Hill has some who are trying to hold on to some possibility for a new beginning.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/24/changesmarshill/
https://marshill.com/2014/10/23/beginning-again
What seems more likely is the death of the corporation through dissolution and bankruptcy.
December 01, 2013
Pastor Mark Driscoll
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. [emphasis added] 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.
Oh, it sure was a big year alright.
It increasingly seems impossible that Mars Hill Church can or should survive and if it fails then that means that the legacy Mark Driscoll built will not only have not outlived Driscoll but couldn't survive with him into middle age. His legacy has also become reversing in his life the things he declared from the pulpit, whether starting a side company in 2011 of the sort he condemned in 2009, or letting Mars Hill have its bylaws rewritten so that a remote God box of executive leaders who never really interact with local leadership call all the shorts about who owns and sells the real estate, Mark Driscoll has turned out to have betrayed pretty much everything he said he stood for in one way or another.
And now Mars Hill Church seems to be on the brink of death and if it dies that will show us something of what Mark Driscoll's legacy as a church planter may really be. He's certainly a celebrity now but a pastor? Hardly. And if by some miracle Mars Hill survives Driscoll won't deserve any credit for abandoning it. He'll still have the legacy of a quitter and the lose-lose scenario he put himself and Mars Hill that reached the point of his resignation will still be what it's been.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Driscoll's stories at Gateway in light of his penchant for historical revisionism
Now Wenatchee The Hatchet is fairly confident that Mark Driscoll's wife and children have faced hardship and emotionally unpleasant experiences living with the man. That's not in question. However, cumulatively the public appearance and the stories Driscoll shared have so far been largely difficult to independently verify. In the case of the rock throwing incident Dori Monson has established a general inability of officials at Woodway to state that anything Driscoll described happened where rock-throwing goes.
Given Mark Driscoll's inability to remember such basic things as whether there were kids at the start of Mars Hill or not, it's not that some of these things couldn't have happened (Monson has suggested some of the incidents could have happened but that based on reports from Woodway they'd have had to have happened elsewhere or more than several months ago). The problem is that by now Mark Driscoll has been shown to have revised his public statements about what things happened and why.
We can't be sure that he's even keeping his own story straight with his earlier versions of the history of Mars Hill these days. The narrative of Real Marriage cast a basic doubt on the veracity of the earlier narrative presented from the pulpit from about, oh, 2002 to 2011. While Driscolls have moved three times in the last fourteen years if Mark Driscoll implied that they moved three times in the recent "season" over safety that seems like an unusually finessed account.
If Dori Monson doubts the veracity of a couple of claims in the Mark Driscoll account at the Gateway conference he's probably not alone. In fact Driscoll's penchant for historical revisionism as documented by Wenatchee The Hatchet can seem so sweeping that sometimes it seems there's a loss for a point of comparison if we're talking about how a person might deploy words as a way to influence the decisions and actions of others. In moments of weakness Wenatchee has wondered about a ... possibility, drawn from the realms of television, such as ... this little angel (not revealed until after the break)
Driscoll at Gateway on the 8-year old son with no concept of "media coverage" in spite of a mom who worked in PR and a dad who had the son on stage
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/20/mark-driscoll-rocks-the-gateway-conference/
from October 20, 2014 statement made by Driscoll at Gateway Conference. The transcript is courtesy of Warren Throckmorton's blog but the paragraph breaks are Wenatchee The Hatchet's.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
...
would you mind if I shared a story or two? Uhm, is that okay, like? Um. I, I’ve cried a lot lately uhm er it’s been a rough season for the family. I guess you could take a seat. Um, (laughter) and um, and for those of you, I would say don’t overlook your family as first ministry. Uhmm. And for me we’re just really appreciate your prayer for our family. We’ve got five kids, three boys, two girls, ages 8 to 17 and uh we’ve moved three times now for safety issues. Uhm. People arrested at our home, death threats, uh address posted on-line, all kinds of things and uh more recently it’s gotten very severe. We came home from break. There was rusty nails all over the driveway.
We uh, we uh we had a night where the kids wanted to sleep out in the tent and uh I got a call that um my uh address was posted on-line by the media and um so, we, we, we went out of town for a few days, came back uh the kids said ‘no, we gotta sleep in the tent so I didn’t sleep. But we, we were in the tent all night and uh, woke up in the morning about 6:30or so and huge rocks about the size of baseballs come flying at my kids uh 8, 10 and 12 years of age. Call the police. Flee into the house for their safety.
Uh a few days later. I think it was, I don’t remember, the media flies overhead with a helicopter and is trying to flush us out for a story. And uh that night uh we’re hiding in the house, my 8 year old son comes down and he’s wearing a military jacket, he’s loading up his Air Soft rifle (laughter)and he uh (MD chuckles) he looks at me and he says ‘hey dad is this uh is this jacket bullet proof? (soft laughter)and I just started crying and said, ‘why’s that little buddy?’ and he said, ‘Well it’s bad guys in the helicopter coming to shoot the family, right?’ He didn’t have any concept of, of media coverage, he thought it was bad guys coming to kill his family and he was gonna defend his sister (faint laughter) and so uh praise God he’s finally sleeping in his bed again, but it’s been a while to get him to do that with night terrors and so, there’s just a lot going on for our family.
I appreciate Pastor Robert and the team here. I just want to come here to uh sing, to pray, uh to learn, to grow, uh to repent, to heal and uh uh God is surrounding me with some great pastors and friends, and if I could just say anything, it’s ‘every pastor needs a pastor’. And and, uh you pastors, your family needs you to be their pastor. ...
Let's consider for a moment the specific claim by Mark Driscoll, that his 8-year old son had no concept of media coverage. The son thought that a helicopter for a news station hovering about the house was, in Mark Driscoll's account, equated with bad guys coming to kill his family.
Considering the number of times Mark Driscoll has touted both his own professional credentials and those of his wife in broadcast media contexts this story being told at all seems to signal a potentially massive parenting fail moment, not least because all of the Driscoll kids were on stage with Mark Driscoll a couple of months ago when he announced his leave of absence.
https://marshill.com/2014/08/24/an-update-from-pastor-mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeZzy7Za0GA
Even if we grant that some 8-year old kids won't understand media coverage let's consider what Mark Driscoll has publicly said about his credentials and those of us wife with respect to media.
Let's start with "A Blog Post for the Brits"
...
I have a degree in communications from one of the top programs in the United States. So does my wife, Grace. We are used to reporters with agendas and selective editing of long interviews. Running into reporters with agendas and being selectively edited so that you are presented as someone that is perhaps not entirely accurate is the risk one takes when trying to get their message out through the media.
Degree from a top program in the country. Ditto the wife. Driscoll said "we" had gotten used to reporters with agendas and selective editing. Let's not forget that at one point Ashley Driscoll had blog content that was showing up at Pastor Mark TV. Back in later 2011. Seeing as the original was taken down the WayBack Machine version may have to suffice. It seems important to Wenatchee The Hatchet to quote from the old post as preserved by the WayBack Machine because Harris' objection highlights something people unfamiliar with Mark Driscoll may need to know. With apologies to Harris if the post was voluntarily removed but this seems important in consideration of the welfare of the Driscoll kids and your point was salient.
We’ve all heard pastors use family anecdotes to illustrate spiritual lessons. The pressure of pastor family branding and temptation to pastor worship is enormous, even in tiny churches. Families crack beneath the pressure or calcify into plastic people with painted smiles and a 35-year supply of C.S. Lewis quotes for their Facebook statuses. There’s a reason PKs have a reputation for going insane.
But this is a whole new level of using your family for spiritual props. This blows the already-big problem of celebrity pastordom to potential Gosselin-Palin proportions. It’s not just Driscoll who’s achieving celebrity or his wife (who had the privilege of not being a minor when she got into all this) but his barely teenage daughter and yes—Driscoll dangles the promise—his other children later, too.
If Driscoll is the one elevating his children to celebrity status, he’s inviting people to invade their privacy. When you use your 14-year-old daughter as a model for how young women should follow Jesus, you lose the ability to plead for grace when she, well, doesn’t follow Jesus quite like everyone thinks she should. If your daughter is blogging about modesty, all her clothing choices are up for debate. If she’s blogging about dating, her offline choices in boys are open for criticism. This is absolutely not right for people to do—I undoubtedly would have needed even more years of therapy if my high school clothing had been open to public criticism—but they will do it. When you turn your children into celebrities you have forfeited your ability to protect them when people treat them…like celebrities.
So when Driscoll wrote this:
Add to this the safety issues posed by technology. I cannot fathom allowing my two teenagers to be on social media for fear of the venom they would receive. When my kids have to report on current events at school, they’ve learned to ask before they click on to news sites, since I never know who is saying what about me where.
It's important to bear in mind that at one point Mark Driscoll not only had Ashley blogging at Pastor Mark TV but was evidently also hinting at the possibility that other Driscoll kids might also eventually do some blogging there, too. That was, fortunately, reconsidered and eliminated but that Driscoll let it be considered at all and that material went up should be a reminder that while Driscoll has made a plea for sympathy on behalf of his family (and they have reason to be concerned) Driscoll has sidestepped altogether his own apparently active role in not only vaunting himself into the public figure role but having made some effort to enlist his kids into the public blogger on Christian issues. The possibility that the 8-year old has no concept of media coverage if his older sister had a brief stint as a blogger seems a bit ... fuzzy.
As for Grace, her credentials have not been touted quite so much as Driscoll's but at least one blogger got the impression that Grace Driscoll, before she took to motherhood, had a promising career in front of her.
http://alternate-readings.blogspot.com/2009/04/howlers-driscolls-on-gender-roles.html
I have it on very good authority that Grace Ann Driscoll is an intelligent and highly capable person who was on her way to a stellar career in the secular job market when she decided to say home and be a mom. So when I listened to the opening remarks in this clip from the Stay at Home Dads Q&A session, I was suffering some cognative dissonance when she made an allusion to 1Tim. 5:8 to support the Driscoll view on gender roles.
...
One thing we can be absolutely certain about. This passage says nothing, zero, about stay at home dads or wives who go to work.
Grace Ann Driscoll is certainly smart enough to understand this. If she had sat down with her English bible and taken the time to read a chapter or so of the context it would have been very plain that the issue here is how to minister to widows in the early church. There is no mention of bread winners or housewives. The two groups involved are widows and family. The only gender roles in this passages are widows and the pressing question is what qualifies a woman to become an official widow in the church, supported by the church.
So I suspect that what goes on in these Q&A sessions after Mark Driscoll's sermon is a sort proof texting of the party line. We have an official MHC position on house husbands and we have our list of proof texts. No one dares to actually do any exegesis. That would be dangerous. You might come up with the wrong answer.
But as impressive as her credentials were Mark Driscoll has not really enlightened us much as to what she actually did. He has, however, made the rather clear claim he worked as a professional journalist in high school and college. We'll get to that, but first, let's see what Driscoll said about his stint as a professional journalist.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/12/02/6-simple-ways-to-write-better-blog-posts
Mark Driscoll
December 2, 2013
I’ve taken on editorial duties at Resurgence, at least for a season. This means I’m reviewing nearly every blog article before we post it and giving content feedback in an effort to help our writers get their message out even further.
I don’t pretend to be the world’s greatest writer. But I did start writing professionally as a journalist in high school, paid my way through high school and college writing articles and editing my college newspaper, got a bachelor’s degree in Communications from the top-notch Edward R. Murrow School of Communication, and have written blogs and articles for everyone from CNN to the W
Washington Post to Fox News.
During his time at Wazoo ...
Radical Reformission
ISBN 0-310-25659-3Mark Driscoll
Zondervan
copyright 2004 by Mars Hill Church
page 14
... So I married Grace, began studying Scripture with the enthusiasm of a glutton at a buffet, and started preparing myself to become a pastor who does not go to jail for doing something stupid. To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats--which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life. [emphasis added]
Keep in mind that when the book was published in 2004 Mark Driscoll was wistfully remembering the bomb threats that came his way after Ashley was born. Age may temper a man, of course, but Driscoll made it impossible to misunderstood the pleasure he took in angering some people enough that they made bomb threats. If Driscoll has come to see that the threats of violence are less easily worn as a badge of honor when family is involved that's merely a part of a larger equation.
A serious question to ask in the wake of the Gateway stories is how it is that an 8-year old child of two parents who got communications degrees; the child of a megachurch pastor who was evidentlye encouraging his children to take blogging roles on Pastor Mark TV; the child of a man who just a few months ago had all his kids hug him on stage; somehow, amidst all that, really believes that a news helicopter showing up above the Driscoll house is "bad guys" who were out to kill the Driscoll family? With the media-savvy couple Driscoll assured us had seen a lot of serpentine interviewers by the time they got to Justin Brierley that story about the 8-year old seems a little ... odd.
Driscoll has a demonstrable history of leaning hard on stories about the Driscoll kids in statements made in front of audiences. Consider this contentious reading of Esther that hangs its closing argument not on an exegetical or historical consideration of the book of Esther so much as on a story of Mark Driscoll talking with Ashley. That particular sermon got a series devoted to it.
The trend for histories of Mars Hill and of Mark Driscoll has shifted in the last seven years from Mark regaling members with how close he was to death to regaling the public with the travails of his family. Unfortunately Mark Driscoll has a history of neglecting his active agency as a public figure and provocateur as having anything at all to do with those travails. If a Driscoll kid at the age of 8 truly believes that a press helicopter would show up to kill his family then Mark Driscoll presents a baffling portrait of family life Wenatchee admits to not understanding.
Driscoll at Gateway, stated they moved three times over safety issues. 3 moves in fourteen years are established by county records but 3 moves in a "season" is fuzzy
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/20/mark-driscoll-rocks-the-gateway-conference/
from October 20, 2014 statement made by Driscoll at Gateway Conference
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
...
would you mind if I shared a story or two? Uhm, is that okay, like? Um. I, I’ve cried a lot lately uhm er it’s been a rough season for the family. I guess you could take a seat. Um, (laughter) and um, and for those of you, I would say don’t overlook your family as first ministry. Uhmm. And for me we’re just really appreciate your prayer for our family. We’ve got five kids, three boys, two girls, ages 8 to 17 and uh we’ve moved three times now for safety issues. [emphasis added] Uhm. People arrested at our home, death threats, uh address posted on-line, all kinds of things and uh more recently it’s gotten very severe.
We came home from break. There was rusty nails all over the driveway. We uh, we uh we had a night where the kids wanted to sleep out in the tent and uh I got a call that um my uh address was posted on-line by the media and um so, we, we, we went out of town for a few days, came back uh the kids said ‘no, we gotta sleep in the tent so I didn’t sleep. But we, we were in the tent all night and uh, woke up in the morning about 6:30or so and huge rocks about the size of baseballs come flying at my kids uh 8, 10 and 12 years of age. Call the police. Flee into the house for their safety. Uh a few days later. I think it was, I don’t remember, the media flies overhead with a helicopter and is trying to flush us out for a story. And uh that night uh we’re hiding in the house, my 8 year old son comes down and he’s wearing a military jacket, he’s loading up his Air Soft rifle (laughter)and he uh (MD chuckles) he looks at me and he says ‘hey dad is this uh is this jacket bullet proof? (soft laughter)and I just started crying and said, ‘why’s that little buddy?’ and he said, ‘Well it’s bad guys in the helicopter coming to shoot the family, right?’ He didn’t have any concept of, of media coverage, he thought it was bad guys coming to kill his family and he was gonna defend his sister (faint laughter) and so uh praise God he’s finally sleeping in his bed again, but it’s been a while to get him to do that with night terrors and so, there’s just a lot going on for our family, I appreciate Pastor Robert and the team here. I just want to come here to uh sing, to pray, uh to learn, to grow, uh to repent, to heal and uh uh God is surrounding me with some great pastors and friends, and if I could just say anything, it’s ‘every pastor needs a pastor’. And and, uh you pastors, your family needs you to be their pastor. ...
The Driscolls have moved around a bit and moving three times out of concern for safety issues might be completely true. Mark Driscoll just didn't mention the time frame in which those three moves happened. An uninformed listener (i.e. literally everyone at that conference) might get the impression that the three moves happened within the recent season. That would be a bit difficult to establish beyond any doubt. If one cast the three moves in terms of the last decade then, well, it's easily proven based on county records. But let's revisit what the first move in the last fourteen years might have involved.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/william-wallace-ii-and-pussified-nation.html
CONFESSIONS OF A REFORMISSION REV
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan
copyright (c) 2006 by Mark Driscoll
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
CHAPTER FIVE: JESUS, WHY AM I GETTING FATTER AND MEANER?
350-1,000 people
At this time, our church also started an unmoderated discussion board on our website, called Midrash, and it was being inundated with postings by emerging-church type feminists and liberals. I went onto the site and posted as William Wallace II, after the great Scottish man portrayed in the movie Braveheart, and attacked those who were posting. It got insane, and thousands of posts were being made each day until it was discovered that it was me raging like a madman under the guise of a movie character. One guy got so mad that he actually showed up at my house to fight me one night around 3 a.m
So as recounted by none other than Mark Driscoll himself in the wake of his rants as William Wallace II someone wanted to go fight him one night around 3 a.m.
So it seems there's evidence enough for at least one incident of a guy looking for a fight. That was back in 2000. Not exactly the post leave-of-absence season.
The Driscolls were at that house in Montlake until about 2003. They moved again in 2005. The next move was ... if memory serves 2012. So there were three moves since 2000 and Driscoll has said they moved three times over safety concerns. Driscoll's antics as William Wallace II may have played a significant role in, even by Mark's account, one incident in which his family was troubled. So the moves for safety would fit the county-documented moves Wenatchee The Hatchet has managed to observe but this would be over a fourteen year period and not the recent season in which Mark Driscoll was on leave and then resigned.
asdf
Driscoll at Gateway, local radio host Dori Monson sate Woodway officials have no reports of any incidents related to Driscolls over last few months
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/20/mark-driscoll-rocks-the-gateway-conference/
from October 20, 2014 statement made by Driscoll at Gateway Conference
Transcript available at Warren Throckmorton's blog but some supplemental paragraphing and punctuation changes for readability supplied by Wenatchee The Hatchet.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Transcript-Robert-Morris-Mark-Driscoll.pdf
... We uh, we uh we had a night where the kids wanted to sleep out in the tent and uh I got a call that um my uh address was posted on-line by the media and um so, we, we, we went out of town for a few days, came back uh the kids said ‘no, we gotta sleep in the tent so I didn’t sleep. But we, we were in the tent all night and uh, woke up in the morning about 6:30or so and huge rocks about the size of baseballs come flying at my kids uh 8, 10 and 12 years of age. Call the police. Flee into the house for their safety. Uh a few days later. I think it was, I don’t remember, the media flies overhead with a helicopter and is trying to flush us out for a story.
And uh that night uh we’re hiding in the house, my 8 year old son comes down and he’s wearing a military jacket, he’s loading up his Air Soft rifle (laughter)and he uh (MD chuckles) he looks at me and he says ‘hey dad is this uh is this jacket bullet proof? (soft laughter)and I just started crying and said, ‘why’s that little buddy?’ and he said, ‘Well it’s bad guys in the helicopter coming to shoot the family, right?’ He didn’t have any concept of, of media coverage, he thought it was bad guys coming to kill his family and he was gonna defend his sister (faint laughter) and so uh praise God he’s finally sleeping in his bed again, but it’s been a while to get him to do that with night terrors and so, there’s just a lot going on for our family.
Local radio host Dori Monson has some doubts about the story involving baseball-sized rocks in particular and discussed his reservations about the story on air yesterday.
http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=9978576&p=1004&n=Dori+Monson
Dori Monson
October 22, 2014 - Hour: 3
starting about minute 30:00
Now if this happened at his Woodway home we called the police today and I, because I was shocked that people threw baseball-sized rocks at his three children (8, 10 and 12 years old). Uh, you know, Mark Driscoll is a public figure and I could not believe--because throwing rocks the size of a baseball at a child, I would think, would be attempted murder. That would kill a kid if it hit them in the head. And so, just, I wanted to confirm the story.
Now, he said they'd moved three times. I will tell you this could have happened in some other jurisdiction and not Woodway but we did, just in the last hour, talk to city officials in Woodway, and what we asked was, "Can you confirm if police were called about people throwing rocks at this guy's children. And they went back a few months in their records, and unless it happened more than a few months ago, or it happened in some other jurisdiction,
but, again, would that have happened and we not hear about it? People throwing baseball sized rocks at the children of a public figure and that story doesn't get reported? It's very strange to me ...
So Monson concedes it is possible the incidents that Mark Driscoll described might have been in some other jurisdiction but that Woodway officials have not backed up any of Mark Driscoll's stories as incidents reported to them at this time. If the incidents happened and happened at another jurisdiction it is possible they could have happened while the Driscolls still lived in King County. Driscoll recounted a list of incedents nearly a year ago at The Resurgence.
http://theresurgence.com/2013/10/26/the-hardest-part-of-ministry
Driscoll moved from King to Snohomish county in 2012. While former members have mentioned an Orange County rental space that wouldn't have counted as moving three times and Driscoll has not mentioned in what time frame the family moved three times. So if the incidents related to nails n a driveway actually happened Monson's account so far would seem to indicate the incident with the nails and the rocks can't have happened in the Snohomish county setting based on Woodway officials who answered questions yesterday.
Christian Post recycles Driscoll's anecdotes as given at the Gateway conference this week, states Driscoll "accused" of using Result Source ... after Driscoll himself admitted it was used?
http://www.christianpost.com/news/former-mars-hill-pastor-mark-driscoll-reports-death-threats-attacks-at-his-home-128559/
... Driscoll went on to describe how his life has changed since the growing controversy surrounding his leadership style became public. The former Mars Hill pastor told the crowd that he has "cried a lot lately." ...
The plagiarism in at least half a dozen books as documented collectively by Janet Mefferd, Warren Throckmorton or Wenatchee The Hatchet isn't a matter of leadership style but of leadership substance. The controversy surrounding the mass layoffs/firings that erupted at Mars Hill with the general period of arrival of Sutton Turner was not even about Driscoll directly but included Driscoll. Result Source ... we'll get to Result Source. In the last year the Christian Post has begun to seem less and less like a journalistic outpost and more like a great way for a person with an old computer to land themselves a malicious toolkit bug. Wenatchee won't bore you with the details about that.
Christian Post article basically recapitulates what Driscoll said at the Gateway conference. There doesn't seem to have been any attempt to vet any of the claims at all. We'll get to some of those anecdotes but there's something that needs to be said.
Driscoll stepped down as pastor of the church he founded in 1996 after a number of troubles came to light over the summer, beginning with accusations of plagiarism. He was also accused of hiring a marketing company to ensure that Real Marriage, a book he co-authored with his wife Grace, made the New York Times best-seller list.
Uh, accused?
The Board of Advisors & Accountability admitted the executive elders had Result Source rig the NYT list for Real Marriage. Driscoll even directly addressed the controversy about Result Source and expressed remorse for having gone along with it in a letter that was originally posted to The City that was leaked to the public. WORLD Magazine broke the story back in March and Warren Throckmorton published the signed contract. For anyone at the Christian Post to claim that Mark Driscoll was simply "accused of hiring a marketing company to ensure that Real Marriage" after Mark Driscoll admitted that RSI was used; World Magazine confirmed it; Throckmorton published the contract with Turner's signature on it; and the BoAA admitted it was used and was technically not illegal forces Wenatchee The Hatchet to wonder what on earth the Christian Post thinks hasn't been confirmed by all the primary participants already. When the BoAA (which included all the executive elders involved in the controversies) justified the actions of Driscoll and Turner while admitting that the contract was used that's not ACCUSED of anything. That's everyone admitting in their own words it happened!
That the Christian Post seems to have taken at face value that all incidents described by Mark Driscoll at the Gateway Conference doesn't look like fact-checking anything at all.
For an interesting cross section of reactions to the stories shared at Gateway
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/22/ive-cried-a-lot-lately-embattled-pastor-mark-driscoll-reveals-terrifying-and-severe-threats-his-family-has-faced/
http://www.charismanews.com/us/45852-after-resigning-mars-hill-pastorate-mark-driscoll-speaks-out
http://archives.religionnews.com/culture/culture-archives/mark-driscoll-speaks-for-first-time-after-resigning-seattle-megachurch#
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2014/10/21/mark-driscoll-surfaces-at-evangelical-conference-ive-cried-a-lot-lately/
There's a local radio host who made a point of asking whether the rock-throwing incident happened and we'll turn to the results of that inquiry shortly.
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