Normally posts don't get republished/recycled here at Wenatchee The Hatchet. Exceptions occur, however, and in this case the exceptional circumstance is that the audio that shall be quoted below is available to download now so that you, dear reader, can compare notes of the transcription to the actual audio.
So without further ado, we'll return to the originally posted content, but this time you can download the audio and listen to Driscoll for yourself at the time markers indicated in the blog post.
http://download.marshill.se/files/misc/20130123_pmd-social-media-content-adress_sd_audio.mp3
Not so long ago Wenatchee The Hatchet was given audio from a January 23, 2013 presentation Mark Driscoll gave about content. The core ideas were content aggregation, content creation, content multiplication, content distribution, and defending content.
In case you're wondering, you didn't misread any of that. This was not a sermon of biblical texts or on a traditional Christian doctrine. The presentation was entirely about marketing content. Actually ... the core of the message could be described as a seminar on propaganda, at least if we assess it's content in Ellulian terms.
Let's take a relatively early part of the presentation, and perhaps those who attended the event can confirm the reliability of the transcript if they have the audio handy. For sake of clarity the blue text indicates a quote from the Driscoll address and red text will indicate quotes from Ellul.
Pastor Mark Driscoll Address
January 23, 2013
14:15
... the hard thing is how to have enough fresh content to keep interest. It becomes very difficult. Like, for me, I've got a weekly podcast/vodcast thing to fill; I've got my own website with a daily blog to fill; I've got Resurgence blogs to fill, I've got Mars Hill blogs to fill; I've got books to fill. I mean I've got Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and I don't even know where other stuff is because I never go on to those places but it's just a constant flow of content. So if you're going to open a communication channel then you have to fill that communication channel and it can get very laborious.
And what did somebody have to say about how once you turn on the faucet you have to leave it on?
PROPAGANDA: THE FORMATION OF MEN'S ATTITUDES
JACQUES ELLUL
Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner
Vintage Books Edition, February 1973
Copyright (c) 195 by Alfred A Knopf Inc.
ISBN 0-394-71874-7
page 46
.. Once again, we note that propaganda should be continuous, should never relax, and must vary its themes with the tide of events.
Driscoll's observation was that once you engage a platform you have to keep generating content for that platform.
Perhaps one of the most ironic commentaries from Driscoll in early 2013 was the following:
22:15
I don't know if you know this but the majority of Christian publishing is owned by non-Christians. Rupert Murdoch bought Zondervan and now he's bought Thomas Nelson (I just finished up my deal with Thomas Nelson). And there's good, godly people working at both of those organizations but they were bought by Rupert Murdoch, who doesn't love Jesus and what's happened then is they've been taken over by Harper Collins which means a lot of the Christian staff, marketing and editorial is getting laid off and then it's moving to non-Christians who are in New York.
23:10
and so we're going to have a real problem and crisis that's forthcoming very quickly in Christian publishing. A very serious problem.
Has a crisis in Christian publishing materialized? Did such a crisis have anything to do with Christian publishers being owned by non-Christians? Or was the closest thing we had to a crisis in Christian publishing the plagiarism and Result Source controversies that swirled up about Mark Driscoll?
We'll move to some remarks Driscoll made about how in the wake of making a deal with Tyndale the stage was set for a new opportunity for content creators within Mars Hill.
24:05
So we've built this (and I've brought myself into that same negotiation. We're all in it together) to provide us a way of getting our content out in as expedient a manner as possible through as many channels as is possible. And this is what Paul, I think, is alluding to in 1 Corinthians 9 when he says "I became all things to all men so that by ALL means, ALL means, I might save as many as possible." And in "all means" what he's saying is, "if there's a way to get the good news of Jesus out, I'm gonna look for that opportunity and I'm gonna take that opportunity." And so these are various opportunities but I would encourage you, you're now part of a system where if you are a content creator, and you build a tribe, and you provide good content there really is no limit (all the way to the New York Times best seller list) for an opportunity for you. I can't guarantee you anything but we can provide you an opportunity. ...
There wasn't any mention that getting to the New York Times best-seller list was obtained with some help from Result Source. The invitation was that within Mars Hill there was an opportunity, though no promise, that if a content creator made good content and built a tribe there was theoretically no limit for an opportunity for that content creator.
In Driscoll's handling a statement from Paul became a defense of using all forms of media to get a message out. Driscoll would go on to describe how uniformity of messaging across every kind of media was something to shoot for.
Since this blog isn't ideally situated for audio clips we'll have to settle for transcription again.
37:20
The key is have one primary content creator, other supportive content creators, and (to as much as possible) have some sort of unified theming through as many platforms as possible to multiply and embed the message. You need fresh content but you don't need fresh message. That make sense? You need fresh content but you don't need, it's not like one huge earth-shattering idea every single day. People can't handle that much, right? ...
38.00
What's the big idea I'm sending out right now? Identity. One big idea and it's a hook and then all the other ideas hang off that big hook. So for the whole 16-week sermon series there's one big hook called identity. All the social media, all the blogs, all the community groups everything's hanging on the hook. And then it's even consistent. So you walk in and you see "I am a saint" and, all of a sudden, the theming is consistent in the building. And so it's just, every medium, how do we communicate this message? And so for 16 weeks it will a concentrated content message on identity in Christ. But then once we're done with the series, let's say somebody gets saved in two years and walks in all of that content's available. [emphasis added]
Having recently reviewed Jacques Ellul's practical definition of propaganda let's revisit it again.
page 9
Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal--the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media. [emphasis added] There is no propaganda so long as one makes use, in a sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls; that is not propaganda.
page 20
To begin with, propaganda must be organized in several ways. To give it the above mentioned characteristics (continuity, duration, combination of different media), an organization is required that controls the mass media, is capable of using them correctly, of calculating the effect of one or another slogan or of replacing one campaign with another. There must be an administrative organization [emphasis added], every modern state is expected to have a Ministry of Propaganda, whatever its actual name may be.
page 61
Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulation and incorporated in an organization. [italics original]
So when Mark Driscoll extolled the integration of theming in sermons, podcasts, vodcasts, church blogs, and even the interior decorating of campuses of Mars Hill what he was describing was a fully integrated use from the top down of every form of mass and social media to communicate a single unified message that would direct church life. That's a man speaking not as a pastor who studies and interprets the Bible and shepherds a flock, that's a man speaking as a propagandist.
Ellul shared more than a few ideas about propaganda and specifically about propaganda in relationship to the church and to Christianity:
page 230
... Propaganda is a total system that one must accept or reject in its entirety.
If the church accepts it, two important consequences follow. First of all, Christianity disseminated by such means is not Christianity. [emphasis added] We have already seen the effect of propaganda on ideology. In fact, what happens as soon as the church avails itself of propaganda is a reduction of Christianity to the level of all other ideologies or secular religions.
This can be seen happening throughout history. Every time a church tried to act through the propaganda devices accepted by an epoch, the truth and authenticity of Christianity were debased. This happened in the fourth, ninth, and seventeenth centuries (of course, this does not mean that no more Christians were left as a result).
In such moments (when acting through propaganda), Christianity ceases to be an overwhelming power and spiritual adventure and becomes institutionalized in all its expressions and compromised in all its actions. It serves everybody as an ideology with the greatest of ease, and tends to be a hoax. In such times there appear innumerable sweetenings and adaptations, which denature Christianity by adjusting it to the milieu.
Thus reduced to nothing more than an ideology, Christianity will be treated as such by the propagandist. [emphasis added] And in the modern world we can repeat in connection with this particular ideology what we have already said on the subject of ideologies in general. What happens is that the church will be able to move the masses and convert thousands of people to its ideology. But this ideology will no longer be Christianity. It will be just another doctrine, though it will still contain (sometimes, but not always) some of the original principles and the Christian vocabulary. [emphasis added]
The other consequence affects the church itself. When it uses propaganda, the church succeeds, just as all other organizations. It reaches the masses, influences collective opinions, leads sociological movements, and even makes many people accept what seems to be Christianity. But in doing that the church becomes a false church. it acquires power and influence that are of this world, and through them integrates itself into this world.
As we watch the election cycle play out there are potentially two ways to read this warning from 1965.
Whether the form of American civic religion has a red-state or blue-state hue once Christianity is made subservient to American political ideological concerns it has ceased to be Christianity and has become an Americanized civic religion used to mobilize voters is one way you could put it.
But another take-away from this warning is that a church that consciously accepts propaganda as a "reality of modern life" and decides to appropriate it stops being Christianity and stops being the church.
As a former member of Mars Hill the application of Ellul's warning could be this, that by embracing the techniques of mass media in the way that he did Mark Driscoll stopped being a pastor a long time ago (if he ever was one to begin with) and became a propagandist. That he could give a presentation in early 2013 about content management to church staff as has been quoted in this post suggests that Mars Hill church by early 2013 was in key respects what Ellul would call a propaganda machine, and its devotees were potentially really Christians but in organizational and social terms they became loyalists to a brand, and that brand was Mark Driscoll.
If Mars Hill Church died it doesn't seem like too big a stretch on the warnings of Jacque Ellul about churches that it died because it had stopped being a church and had become a propaganda machine; once it became a propaganda machine it was no longer a true church and could not articulate a truly Christian witness even if all the usual vocabulary and buzzwords were there. No matter how many times Driscoll's followers would say "It's all about Jesus" it was a Jesus that was a concept mediated and defined by Mark Driscoll.
The Trinity Church in Phoenix is currently a mailbox in a UPS store. There aren't any attending members and yet there's staff. There's no building as yet but there's Mark Driscoll Ministries with sermons and vodcasts and blog posts and audio as much as you could want. This isn't a church, it's a corporation, a propaganda machine whose brand is not necessarily Jesus but fairly certainly Mark Driscoll. After all, the ministry is named after him.
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
former deacons of MH file RICO complaint against officers of Mars Hill Church, Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner, survey of coverage and some notes on how this was percolating since April 2014
Yes, there'd been rumblings and murmurs for a couple of years. It wasn't worth writing about while it was just rumblings and murmurs. Now that an actual complaint has been filed, however, there's something to write about.
In an earlier post we revisited an old Mark Driscoll tweet about forgiveness.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 2013
Well, as of February 29, 2016 a RICO suit has been filed against officers of the non-profit corporation that was Mars Hill.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/02/29/rico-lawsuit-filed-against-former-leaders-of-mars-hill-church/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2016/02/Filed-Complaint.pdf
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mark-driscoll-accused-of-racketeering-at-mars-hill-church/
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Ex-members-in-suit-charge-pattern-of-6861173.php
http://www.ballardnewstribune.com/2016/03/01/news/mark-driscoll-former-mars-hill-leaders-sued-fraud
http://www.religionnews.com/2016/03/01/mark-driscoll-reportedly-sued-to-find-out-where-tithes-went/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/29/lawsuit-controversial-pastor-ran-mars-hill-megachuch-like-a-crime-syndicate.html
For those who may not have seen the headline ...
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/04/mars_hill_church_moves_to_destroy_documents
...
A group of 16 former Mars Hill members delivered a letter to the church earlier today, asking Mars Hill to delay or rescind the implementation of this policy. In the letter, obtained by WORLD, the group’s attorney, Brian Fahling, asked the church to “preserve electronically stored information that may contain evidence.” Fahling wrote that his clients anticipate legal action in which the church, Driscoll, and others in church leadership “will be named as defendants.” The letter lists anticipated litigation in the areas of “RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act], Fraud, Conspiracy, Libel, Slander, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.”
WORLD magazine reported as far back as April 2014 that a RICO suit was being considered. So news coverage from nearly two years ago established that some kind of litigation was being considered. For those who, against all odds, have never come across the upcoming statement before, back in 2014 Mark Driscoll said:
“A lot of the people we were dealing with in this season remain anonymous, and so we don’t know how to reconcile or how to work things out with people because we’re not entirely sure who they are.”
That July 19, 2014 statement post-dated WORLD's coverage by a few months, obviously. Joyful Exiles first appeared in March 2012. If campus leadership at Mars Hill was attempting to contact Wenatchee The Hatchet by certified letter as far back as December 2013 and WtH wasn't even a former staff member or leader, then surely during a season (May 2013) in which the BoAA sent letters to more than 100 former staffers it could have been possible to figure out who would have sent that letter from April 2014.
For those who read the 42 page document a good deal of content relates to Mars Hill Global. For what it's worth, it might be worth noting that back in May 2015 ...
http://investyourgifts.com/mars-hill-global/
...
Unfortunately, Mars Hill’s attorneys have requested that I not blog. I have removed some of the financial information as well as other non-financial information in response to their request.
Now it's certainly possible to not trust what Turner wrote but by his account he was contacted by attorneys for Mars Hill and told to remove financial information related to the topic of Mars Hill Global, apparently. They also requested that Turner not blog.
It may be something to keep in mind about how long things have taken to get to a point where a RICO has been filed, whether or not anything actually comes of the RICO being uncertain.
So maybe for a guy like Mark Driscoll forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself to move on with your life, and maybe forgiveness still provides the liberty of calling the cops if a crime has been committed. Well, in that taxonomy of forgiveness it may be possible to forgive someone but still file a RICO suit against them.
In an earlier post we revisited an old Mark Driscoll tweet about forgiveness.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 2013
Well, as of February 29, 2016 a RICO suit has been filed against officers of the non-profit corporation that was Mars Hill.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/02/29/rico-lawsuit-filed-against-former-leaders-of-mars-hill-church/
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2016/02/Filed-Complaint.pdf
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mark-driscoll-accused-of-racketeering-at-mars-hill-church/
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Ex-members-in-suit-charge-pattern-of-6861173.php
http://www.ballardnewstribune.com/2016/03/01/news/mark-driscoll-former-mars-hill-leaders-sued-fraud
http://www.religionnews.com/2016/03/01/mark-driscoll-reportedly-sued-to-find-out-where-tithes-went/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/29/lawsuit-controversial-pastor-ran-mars-hill-megachuch-like-a-crime-syndicate.html
For those who may not have seen the headline ...
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/04/mars_hill_church_moves_to_destroy_documents
...
A group of 16 former Mars Hill members delivered a letter to the church earlier today, asking Mars Hill to delay or rescind the implementation of this policy. In the letter, obtained by WORLD, the group’s attorney, Brian Fahling, asked the church to “preserve electronically stored information that may contain evidence.” Fahling wrote that his clients anticipate legal action in which the church, Driscoll, and others in church leadership “will be named as defendants.” The letter lists anticipated litigation in the areas of “RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act], Fraud, Conspiracy, Libel, Slander, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.”
WORLD magazine reported as far back as April 2014 that a RICO suit was being considered. So news coverage from nearly two years ago established that some kind of litigation was being considered. For those who, against all odds, have never come across the upcoming statement before, back in 2014 Mark Driscoll said:
“A lot of the people we were dealing with in this season remain anonymous, and so we don’t know how to reconcile or how to work things out with people because we’re not entirely sure who they are.”
That July 19, 2014 statement post-dated WORLD's coverage by a few months, obviously. Joyful Exiles first appeared in March 2012. If campus leadership at Mars Hill was attempting to contact Wenatchee The Hatchet by certified letter as far back as December 2013 and WtH wasn't even a former staff member or leader, then surely during a season (May 2013) in which the BoAA sent letters to more than 100 former staffers it could have been possible to figure out who would have sent that letter from April 2014.
For those who read the 42 page document a good deal of content relates to Mars Hill Global. For what it's worth, it might be worth noting that back in May 2015 ...
http://investyourgifts.com/mars-hill-global/
...
Unfortunately, Mars Hill’s attorneys have requested that I not blog. I have removed some of the financial information as well as other non-financial information in response to their request.
Now it's certainly possible to not trust what Turner wrote but by his account he was contacted by attorneys for Mars Hill and told to remove financial information related to the topic of Mars Hill Global, apparently. They also requested that Turner not blog.
It may be something to keep in mind about how long things have taken to get to a point where a RICO has been filed, whether or not anything actually comes of the RICO being uncertain.
So maybe for a guy like Mark Driscoll forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself to move on with your life, and maybe forgiveness still provides the liberty of calling the cops if a crime has been committed. Well, in that taxonomy of forgiveness it may be possible to forgive someone but still file a RICO suit against them.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Shane Idleman's piece at Christian Post from 2-23-2016 in contrast to an interview with Dave Bruskas from 2-8-2016
Proverbs 27:17 NIV
Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears
is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.
It has been fascinating to read with some regularity in the last year and a half who has been willing to sound off on what took place at Mars Hill. While some have noted that bloggers have deigned to write about things going on who never attended a service or were even a member, it has hardly stopped outlets like the Christian Post from letting people do precisely that. There wasn't necessarily a complaint from those who have talked about "bloggers" when pastors who may have never set foot in Mars Hill decide to do guest pieces for the Christian Post, was there? Perhaps there was.
Well, let's take a relatively recent piece by Shane Idleman for the Christian post. It may be provided as a case study for when a pastor who has no clear or obvious connection to the history of Mars Hill does what many a pastor is tempted to do, sound off in abstractions about a recent event that may or may not have any discernible connection to the soapbox points.
In general I find it impossible to take seriously articles in which numbered lessons are provided that we can learn from some recent event. All too often it can seem that the lessons to be learned were axioms the author was going to lay on the reader anyway regardless of the month's headlines.
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/55246-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-pastor-mark-driscoll-s-return
and a variant ...
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-s-return-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-church-planting-pastors-157938/
...
By Shane Idleman , CP Guest Contributor
February 23, 2016|7:40 am
...
In my case, I was allowed to make the most of my mistakes in the secular world before planting a church at age 41. Mark Driscoll was not afforded this luxury — he entered the pulpit in his 20s and had to work through anger, pride and control (by the way, most church planters struggle with these traits, myself included).
I'm not defending, or criticizing, I don't have enough information to truly speak to the issues on either side [emphasis added], but I want to remind all of us that Christians are fallible and make mistakes. We should consider the total portrait of one's life, character and ministry and evaluate on that basis.
A few poorly chosen statements, angry outbursts or controlling decisions made over the course of many years shouldn't define a person. One's life and character speak volumes as to the sincerity of his or her ministry. We should extend to others the same grace that we desire and be patient with others.
...
http://audio.calvaryabq.org/static/morning/morning_20160208.mp3
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-morning-invasion/id1074069431
Dave Bruskas
01:48:45
...
It was very much like a death and I just want to say, right off the top, I'm so sorry, and I know that what happened at Mars Hill hurt so many people and a lot of people are disillusioned today about church. I know a lot of people left Mars Hill in Albuquerque and some found other churches, which we're really thankful for. There are some great churches in Albuquerque so we're certainly sorry that people aren't at North Church that have left but we're glad that they've found places. But I'm really concerned for the people that have just become disillusioned with church and moved on and I want those folks to know that I am so sorry.
What a lot of people don't know, just reading the internet and looking at other perspectives, is that the heart of the brokenness at Mars Hill was a leadership culture that was broken. And was really about leaders not learning how to do ministry the right way [emphasis added] and in a broken way. It certainly hurt so many people. So I am terribly sorry to people who aren't in church right now, who are wounded and hurt, who are without church. And I'm really sorry for people in Albuquerque that were part of other churches who felt the name of Jesus was being dragged through the mud because of what happened at Mars Hill. ...
So by Dave Bruskas' account the death of Mars Hill was severely damaging to a lot of people to whom he wanted to say sorry. Bruskas also described Mars Hill as dying primarily because its leadership culture was broken. These were people who had not learned how to do ministry the right way and did ministry in a broken way. Now you are free to dissent from Bruskas' account or have doubts about his sincerity but what even Bruskas considers beyond dispute at this point is that Mars Hill died because of a leadership culture that had become so toxic the death of Mars Hill was, as we've all seen, pretty much inescapable.
Ironically, if Idleman wanted to make a point that Christians shouldn't read blogs or indulge "critical" statements about church leaders he may have picked the wrong case study. Bruskas' description of how and why Mars Hill died is surprisingly congruent with Wenatchee The Hatchet's longstanding conviction that while there have been plenty of sincere and faithful Christians at Mars Hill who wanted to be a positive influence within the Puget Sound area the leadership culture had grown too toxic and dangerous for the institution known as Mars Hill Church to end up being a healthy institution or culture.
Compared to Mark and Grace Driscoll in 2016 thus far, at least, Bruskas is willing to admit he was a pastor at Mars Hill.
POSTSCRIPT 03-03-2016
For those who read the 42-page complaint this week, Bruskas is listed among non-party co-conspirators.
Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears
is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.
It has been fascinating to read with some regularity in the last year and a half who has been willing to sound off on what took place at Mars Hill. While some have noted that bloggers have deigned to write about things going on who never attended a service or were even a member, it has hardly stopped outlets like the Christian Post from letting people do precisely that. There wasn't necessarily a complaint from those who have talked about "bloggers" when pastors who may have never set foot in Mars Hill decide to do guest pieces for the Christian Post, was there? Perhaps there was.
Well, let's take a relatively recent piece by Shane Idleman for the Christian post. It may be provided as a case study for when a pastor who has no clear or obvious connection to the history of Mars Hill does what many a pastor is tempted to do, sound off in abstractions about a recent event that may or may not have any discernible connection to the soapbox points.
In general I find it impossible to take seriously articles in which numbered lessons are provided that we can learn from some recent event. All too often it can seem that the lessons to be learned were axioms the author was going to lay on the reader anyway regardless of the month's headlines.
http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/55246-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-pastor-mark-driscoll-s-return
and a variant ...
http://www.christianpost.com/news/mark-driscoll-s-return-5-lessons-we-can-learn-from-church-planting-pastors-157938/
...
By Shane Idleman , CP Guest Contributor
February 23, 2016|7:40 am
...
In my case, I was allowed to make the most of my mistakes in the secular world before planting a church at age 41. Mark Driscoll was not afforded this luxury — he entered the pulpit in his 20s and had to work through anger, pride and control (by the way, most church planters struggle with these traits, myself included).
I'm not defending, or criticizing, I don't have enough information to truly speak to the issues on either side [emphasis added], but I want to remind all of us that Christians are fallible and make mistakes. We should consider the total portrait of one's life, character and ministry and evaluate on that basis.
A few poorly chosen statements, angry outbursts or controlling decisions made over the course of many years shouldn't define a person. One's life and character speak volumes as to the sincerity of his or her ministry. We should extend to others the same grace that we desire and be patient with others.
...
I am deeply saddened by the spiritual condition of many Christians. We love to be armchair quarterbacks and diss pastors and Christian leaders, yet we have no idea of the demands they encounter and the pain they feel. Our sinful tendency is to pull others down. We may think that somehow this makes us look better.
If we are truly concerned about the body of Christ, we will hold our tongue. Self-righteousness has no place here. But I'm not referring to sweeping corruption and deception in the church under the rug. Wisdom is needed here.
and ... sadly not on display. No one who was heeding the advice in the way it seems to have been intended could have, with much integrity, have both written and submitted that piece to the Christian Post for publication. Even if Idleman were someone with whom Driscoll himself had shared a meal at some point that wouldn't obviate the go-to-verse for so many Christians, Proverbs 18:17. As it stands, the foolishness of the entire post announces itself to a person who has any familiarity with Proverbs. If you can't speak to the facts of any of the sides who participated in the history of Mars Hill then it's foolish to decide to use Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll as an occasion to cycle through content that doesn't need a news peg. Those sorts of pious bromides don't need news pegs anyway.
If Idleman missed the stretch of later 2013 to early 2014 perhaps he missed the plagiarism controversy or the Result Source controversy. Or perhaps Idleman wasn't aware of Joyful Exiles or Repentant Pastors or Tripp's comments that were made available for public consideration about Mars Hill having the most abusive ministry culture he'd ever seen. Perhaps he hadn't noticed in 2015 that former executive elder Sutton Turner remarked on how he objected to Result Source but signed it anyway? But, as previously noted, the kind of piece Idleman opted to write is the kind that can be plugged in for any suitable occasion. It isn't necessary to know any of the details or even the generalities of what happened. If anything it's probably preferable to not know much at all so as to have a reason to publish something that, were a person to know more of the situation at hand, might otherwise seem reckless, like grabbing the ears of a dog as you're happening to walk by it.
By contrast, earlier in February 2016 there was a sprawling podcast interview that featured none other than former executive elder of Mars Hill Dave Bruskas. You'll have to skip way out to nearly two hours into the podcast but ...
http://audio.calvaryabq.org/static/morning/morning_20160208.mp3
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-morning-invasion/id1074069431
Dave Bruskas
01:48:45
...
It was very much like a death and I just want to say, right off the top, I'm so sorry, and I know that what happened at Mars Hill hurt so many people and a lot of people are disillusioned today about church. I know a lot of people left Mars Hill in Albuquerque and some found other churches, which we're really thankful for. There are some great churches in Albuquerque so we're certainly sorry that people aren't at North Church that have left but we're glad that they've found places. But I'm really concerned for the people that have just become disillusioned with church and moved on and I want those folks to know that I am so sorry.
What a lot of people don't know, just reading the internet and looking at other perspectives, is that the heart of the brokenness at Mars Hill was a leadership culture that was broken. And was really about leaders not learning how to do ministry the right way [emphasis added] and in a broken way. It certainly hurt so many people. So I am terribly sorry to people who aren't in church right now, who are wounded and hurt, who are without church. And I'm really sorry for people in Albuquerque that were part of other churches who felt the name of Jesus was being dragged through the mud because of what happened at Mars Hill. ...
So by Dave Bruskas' account the death of Mars Hill was severely damaging to a lot of people to whom he wanted to say sorry. Bruskas also described Mars Hill as dying primarily because its leadership culture was broken. These were people who had not learned how to do ministry the right way and did ministry in a broken way. Now you are free to dissent from Bruskas' account or have doubts about his sincerity but what even Bruskas considers beyond dispute at this point is that Mars Hill died because of a leadership culture that had become so toxic the death of Mars Hill was, as we've all seen, pretty much inescapable.
Ironically, if Idleman wanted to make a point that Christians shouldn't read blogs or indulge "critical" statements about church leaders he may have picked the wrong case study. Bruskas' description of how and why Mars Hill died is surprisingly congruent with Wenatchee The Hatchet's longstanding conviction that while there have been plenty of sincere and faithful Christians at Mars Hill who wanted to be a positive influence within the Puget Sound area the leadership culture had grown too toxic and dangerous for the institution known as Mars Hill Church to end up being a healthy institution or culture.
Compared to Mark and Grace Driscoll in 2016 thus far, at least, Bruskas is willing to admit he was a pastor at Mars Hill.
POSTSCRIPT 03-03-2016
For those who read the 42-page complaint this week, Bruskas is listed among non-party co-conspirators.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Driscoll on twitter 2-25-2016 "Forgiveness takes on person. Reconciliation takes two."
I generally have no interest in or use for Twitter. Twitter has been one of those things that people get into and a line from Jane Austen's Emma just sticks with me, where half the people in the world take pleasure in things the other half can't even understand.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/702989451111170048
Forgiveness takes one person. Reconciliation takes two.
2:52 PM - 25 Feb 2016
Sometimes reconciliation takes a few more people than that, of course.
Joyful Exiles has been up since March 2012. Also up since 2012 is Mark Driscoll's October 1, 2007 presentation to some leaders in which he said ... :
http://004f597.netsolhost.com/Vision/10%20Throw%20Them%20Off%20the%20Bus%201.mp3
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/preaching-paul_edits1.mp3
October 1, 2007
... Too many guys spend too much time trying to move stiff-necked obstinate people. I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus (those are the options) but the bus ain't gonna stop. I'm just a, I'm just a guy who is like, "Look, we love ya but this is what we're doin'."
There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus. They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off cuz they want to go somewhere else. There are people who will be on the bus (leaders and helpers and servants, they're awesome). There's also sometimes nice people who just sit on the bus and shut up. They're not helping or hurting. Just let `em ride along. You know what I'm saying? But don't look at the nice people who are just gonna sit on the bus and shut their mouth and think, "I need you to lead the mission." They're never going to. At the most you'll give `em a job to do and they'll serve somewhere and help out in a minimal way. If someone can sit in a place that hasn't been on mission for a really long time they are by definition not a leader and so they're never going to lead. You need to gather a whole new core. [emphasis added]
I'll tell you what, you don't just do this for church planting or replanting, you know what? I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed. This will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail.
So if reconciliation takes two people and it's been about nine years since the 2007 re-org Driscoll can tweet pious bromides about how reconciliation takes two people but reconciliation's easier to do if you're in the same state, assuming a person wants to reconcile.
But to go by other tweets Driscoll has done on forgiveness we can't simply assume reconciliation is seen as "necessary". A key perceived benefit of forgiving someone can be that you free yourself to move on with your life.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346423376484638721
Forgiveness is a gift to your offender...and to yourself, freeing you up to move on with your life.
5:25 PM - 16 Jun 2013
Around that same time Driscoll also tweeted this opaque axiom, possibly intended for Mars Hill insiders since it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the stuff you'd find in his twitter feed from that period.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346724025164263425
Healthy transitions in relays & leadership come down to the handoff. Train up your successor.
Don't chuck the baton & storm off the track.
1:20 PM - 17 Jun 13
Now after the October 2014 resignation of Mark Driscoll it could sure seem to a lot of people that a healthy transition is not exactly what happened or there would still be a Mars Hill today. It seems as though what Mark Driscoll did in resigning could be described as chucking the baton and storming off the track rather than going through a healthy transition and a hand off that allowed the relay to continue. It's tough to know how cogent the analogy is since Driscoll always seemed more baseball than track and field.
But it sure looks to a lot of people like Mark Driscoll chucked the baton and stormed off the track rather than comply with the restoration plan he told Brian Houston he agreed to submit to. Did he? Did the BoE get to finish their investigation? Was there even a report? The fact that there is no longer a Mars Hill raises the question of how healthy the transitions have been. Even if the transitions have been healthy it's hard to shake the sense that in later 2014 Mark still chucked the baton and stormed off the track. For a guy who spent his years at Mars Hill telling people to live for a legacy he seems less than eager to discuss his legacy these days.
Finally ... here's another tweet on forgiveness from 2013. There are more caveats about what forgiveness is and isn't that Driscoll shared over the years. Forgiveness doesn't entail reconciliation, obviously, it can also be a gift you give to yourself so you can move on with your life (which may also not entail any reconciliation). And there's an extra thing, forgiveness doesn't mean you can't avail yourself of law enforcement to punish the person who offended you, too.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 2013
Forgiveness does not, as some say, preclude temporal consequences. Okay, that can be given ... but it's interesting to wonder whether or not this lexicon of what forgiveness is and isn't is easier for a person to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end.
After all, it's easier to be on the "giving end" of a forgiveness that 1) may forgive but severs relationship, 2) "moves on" literally and figuratively, and 3) even invokes the power of law enforcement to punish the sinner after "forgiveness" has been given than to be on the receiving end of that kind of forgiveness.
And for a guy who up until recently said "It's all about Jesus", would Mark Driscoll want Jesus to extend THAT kind of forgiveness to him?
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/702989451111170048
Forgiveness takes one person. Reconciliation takes two.
2:52 PM - 25 Feb 2016
Sometimes reconciliation takes a few more people than that, of course.
Joyful Exiles has been up since March 2012. Also up since 2012 is Mark Driscoll's October 1, 2007 presentation to some leaders in which he said ... :
http://004f597.netsolhost.com/Vision/10%20Throw%20Them%20Off%20the%20Bus%201.mp3
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/preaching-paul_edits1.mp3
October 1, 2007
... Too many guys spend too much time trying to move stiff-necked obstinate people. I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus (those are the options) but the bus ain't gonna stop. I'm just a, I'm just a guy who is like, "Look, we love ya but this is what we're doin'."
There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus. They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off cuz they want to go somewhere else. There are people who will be on the bus (leaders and helpers and servants, they're awesome). There's also sometimes nice people who just sit on the bus and shut up. They're not helping or hurting. Just let `em ride along. You know what I'm saying? But don't look at the nice people who are just gonna sit on the bus and shut their mouth and think, "I need you to lead the mission." They're never going to. At the most you'll give `em a job to do and they'll serve somewhere and help out in a minimal way. If someone can sit in a place that hasn't been on mission for a really long time they are by definition not a leader and so they're never going to lead. You need to gather a whole new core. [emphasis added]
I'll tell you what, you don't just do this for church planting or replanting, you know what? I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed. This will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail.
So if reconciliation takes two people and it's been about nine years since the 2007 re-org Driscoll can tweet pious bromides about how reconciliation takes two people but reconciliation's easier to do if you're in the same state, assuming a person wants to reconcile.
But to go by other tweets Driscoll has done on forgiveness we can't simply assume reconciliation is seen as "necessary". A key perceived benefit of forgiving someone can be that you free yourself to move on with your life.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346423376484638721
Forgiveness is a gift to your offender...and to yourself, freeing you up to move on with your life.
5:25 PM - 16 Jun 2013
Around that same time Driscoll also tweeted this opaque axiom, possibly intended for Mars Hill insiders since it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the stuff you'd find in his twitter feed from that period.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346724025164263425
Healthy transitions in relays & leadership come down to the handoff. Train up your successor.
Don't chuck the baton & storm off the track.
1:20 PM - 17 Jun 13
Now after the October 2014 resignation of Mark Driscoll it could sure seem to a lot of people that a healthy transition is not exactly what happened or there would still be a Mars Hill today. It seems as though what Mark Driscoll did in resigning could be described as chucking the baton and storming off the track rather than going through a healthy transition and a hand off that allowed the relay to continue. It's tough to know how cogent the analogy is since Driscoll always seemed more baseball than track and field.
But it sure looks to a lot of people like Mark Driscoll chucked the baton and stormed off the track rather than comply with the restoration plan he told Brian Houston he agreed to submit to. Did he? Did the BoE get to finish their investigation? Was there even a report? The fact that there is no longer a Mars Hill raises the question of how healthy the transitions have been. Even if the transitions have been healthy it's hard to shake the sense that in later 2014 Mark still chucked the baton and stormed off the track. For a guy who spent his years at Mars Hill telling people to live for a legacy he seems less than eager to discuss his legacy these days.
Finally ... here's another tweet on forgiveness from 2013. There are more caveats about what forgiveness is and isn't that Driscoll shared over the years. Forgiveness doesn't entail reconciliation, obviously, it can also be a gift you give to yourself so you can move on with your life (which may also not entail any reconciliation). And there's an extra thing, forgiveness doesn't mean you can't avail yourself of law enforcement to punish the person who offended you, too.
https://twitter.com/PastorMark/status/346683312452030465
Forgiveness is not covering up sin committed against us. If a crime is committed, you can forgive someone & still call the cops.
10:38 AM - 17 Jun 2013
Forgiveness does not, as some say, preclude temporal consequences. Okay, that can be given ... but it's interesting to wonder whether or not this lexicon of what forgiveness is and isn't is easier for a person to be on the giving end rather than the receiving end.
After all, it's easier to be on the "giving end" of a forgiveness that 1) may forgive but severs relationship, 2) "moves on" literally and figuratively, and 3) even invokes the power of law enforcement to punish the sinner after "forgiveness" has been given than to be on the receiving end of that kind of forgiveness.
And for a guy who up until recently said "It's all about Jesus", would Mark Driscoll want Jesus to extend THAT kind of forgiveness to him?
Ellul on the necessity of vertical stratification in a party for propaganda, some thoughts on Mars Hill as a propaganda culture by means of The City and small groups
PROPAGANDA: THE FORMATION OF MEN'S ATTITUDES
JACQUES ELLUL
Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner
Vintage Books Edition, February 1973
Copyright (c) 195 by Alfred A Knopf Inc.
ISBN 0-394-71874-7
page 216
... propaganda demands vertical liaison among the party's organizations. This vertical liaison permits both homogeneity of propaganda and speed of application; and we have seen that speed of action or reaction is essential to propaganda. Conversely, in view of the effect of propaganda in creating isolated social and local groups, any horizontal liaison inside the party would be disastrous. Those at the base of the party would not understand why one propaganda is made in one place, another elsewhere. On the contrary, the partitioning by propaganda must correspond to a partitioning within the party, and the only liaison system must be vertical.
Ellul wrote that the most amazing instrument of propaganda was the small group. In the small group a homogenous social experience was possible and it was possible to have all the interpersonal life necessary to form a tight bond on the one hand and be a useful instrument for a partisan group on the other. In the earlier years of Mars Hill the idea of small groups or studies, in the wake of Dead Men at least, was that people could join groups that were discussing parts of the Bible members wanted to learn more about. In a few years, however, the small groups became re-organized around discussing whatever Driscoll was preaching, in itself a crucial step toward transforming a small group into a potentially autonomous unit that could discuss scripture in a way calibrated to the needs of the group toward using the small group as a way to reinforce discussion of Mark Driscoll's teaching.
I was in a group that met just early enough in the week (not that Wednesdays were necessarily "early") that at the group I was part of we might at times abandon any pretense of discussing the sermon. The group leader might just say "Eh, we all heard the sermon. How's everybody doing? What's stuff we should pray about?" I liked this group, quite a bit actually.
That was ten years ago, though. In 2007 with the re-org everyone was expected to pick a campus affiliation and stick with it. The City got introduced and affiliation ensured that you only got the information pertinent to your campus affiliation. Access to everything else was eliminated. Under the second era of Midrash (from 2002 to 2007 prior to the re-org) it was open access across all locations during the start of multi-site. When the firings took place this became a problem, apparently--it was too easy for hundreds of people to communicate across the culture. The Midrash got shut down and replaced by The City.
Was it Munson who once said that The City was the ideal top-down communication platform for elders to let Mars Hill know what was going on? Maybe. Fuzzy there.
But what was less fuzzy was that if you had a community group affiliation with Ballard while actually attending Lake City you could discover in 2009 that what the Ballard attenders were talking about was a sermon you hadn't even heard yet. That's the kind of situation I was in. I hadn't stopped attending entirely but I didn't formally renew membership, either. By accident of circumstance I was discovering that while I'd hear about layoffs about once every 12 to 18 months from the Ballard side of things I'd hear from the Lake City side that things were so financially stable "we" were subsidizing Ballard at times to help them out because they had some troubles.
From a donor cultivation perspective it seemed there was a potentially clear explanation for this--the people who were faithful attenders that actually had money perhaps switched to Lake City while Ballard got the less committed visitors who were there for the Mark Driscoll show. That's how it seemed circa 2009.
But with some help from Ellul it's now possible to look back and say that what was happening to me could be described as a "horizontal liaison". Mars Hill had committed to meteoric growth and to top-down information partitioning to go by how they ran The City. Having been at Mars Hill since later 1998 and not interested in burning bridges I'd managed to cultivate a network of people I knew across a good number of the campus sites. By later 2013 the leadership of Mars hill was certain who blogged at Wenatchee The Hatchet. What they apparently didn't know was how many sources were leaking content from The City to Wenatchee The Hatchet; who they were; and how it was done. It was reported that at least one person within the leadership culture of MH was willing to speculate a hack. That was never the case. Sources volunteered content. What wasn't volunteered, by and large, was information I could look up myself because my City access wasn't revoked until the spring of 2012. How on earth did Wenatchee The Hatchet have City access? Recruited for beta-testing in the pre-launch phase, that's how.
In the kind of leadership culture that evolved at Mars Hill Mark seemed to be concerned with who was going to lead the mission. The nice people who just sat on the bus and shut up and didn't do anything (as Mark defined "anything") could just be allowed to ride along. They wouldn't get thrown off the bus because they weren't even pretending to have an interest in driving the bus. They weren't opposing the bus, either, so there was no need to run them over with the bus. And because they just sat on the bus and maybe helped out in a limited way it didn't occur to the leaders that maybe an impossible-to-fully-identify group of people just sitting on the bus could, if you will, take detailed notes about what the bus driver was saying about where the route was going and share that.
At a social media presentation Driscoll gave in 2013 he mentioned that a lot of the traffic to Mars Hill sites could fit into the "long tail", older stuff Mark had said or written that people were still looking up. As Wenatchee The Hatchet began to carefully document historical revisions to the story of Mars Hill (and mined Driscoll's sermons for history of real estate acquisitions and leadership appointments or lessons on spiritual warfare that figuratively and literally demonized dissent against executive leadership) stuff began to get pulled from the Mars Hill media library.
But by the time that started to happen other avenues of "horizontal liaison" were possible. People within Mars Hill began to figure out that they could not only communicate across the campuses within but also share information with people considered outside Mars Hill.
The beginning of conflicting and irreconcilable accounts from the top down may have started as far back as the 2007 trials. Longtime readers may recall Wenatchee The Hatchet published an email from an executive pastor sent prior to the trials that explained a "reconciliation process" had been completed. Later in 2007 there was the order to shun, so much for reconciliation process.
Which ... thematically ... could get us to something recent on Twitter.
JACQUES ELLUL
Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner
Vintage Books Edition, February 1973
Copyright (c) 195 by Alfred A Knopf Inc.
ISBN 0-394-71874-7
page 216
... propaganda demands vertical liaison among the party's organizations. This vertical liaison permits both homogeneity of propaganda and speed of application; and we have seen that speed of action or reaction is essential to propaganda. Conversely, in view of the effect of propaganda in creating isolated social and local groups, any horizontal liaison inside the party would be disastrous. Those at the base of the party would not understand why one propaganda is made in one place, another elsewhere. On the contrary, the partitioning by propaganda must correspond to a partitioning within the party, and the only liaison system must be vertical.
Ellul wrote that the most amazing instrument of propaganda was the small group. In the small group a homogenous social experience was possible and it was possible to have all the interpersonal life necessary to form a tight bond on the one hand and be a useful instrument for a partisan group on the other. In the earlier years of Mars Hill the idea of small groups or studies, in the wake of Dead Men at least, was that people could join groups that were discussing parts of the Bible members wanted to learn more about. In a few years, however, the small groups became re-organized around discussing whatever Driscoll was preaching, in itself a crucial step toward transforming a small group into a potentially autonomous unit that could discuss scripture in a way calibrated to the needs of the group toward using the small group as a way to reinforce discussion of Mark Driscoll's teaching.
I was in a group that met just early enough in the week (not that Wednesdays were necessarily "early") that at the group I was part of we might at times abandon any pretense of discussing the sermon. The group leader might just say "Eh, we all heard the sermon. How's everybody doing? What's stuff we should pray about?" I liked this group, quite a bit actually.
That was ten years ago, though. In 2007 with the re-org everyone was expected to pick a campus affiliation and stick with it. The City got introduced and affiliation ensured that you only got the information pertinent to your campus affiliation. Access to everything else was eliminated. Under the second era of Midrash (from 2002 to 2007 prior to the re-org) it was open access across all locations during the start of multi-site. When the firings took place this became a problem, apparently--it was too easy for hundreds of people to communicate across the culture. The Midrash got shut down and replaced by The City.
Was it Munson who once said that The City was the ideal top-down communication platform for elders to let Mars Hill know what was going on? Maybe. Fuzzy there.
But what was less fuzzy was that if you had a community group affiliation with Ballard while actually attending Lake City you could discover in 2009 that what the Ballard attenders were talking about was a sermon you hadn't even heard yet. That's the kind of situation I was in. I hadn't stopped attending entirely but I didn't formally renew membership, either. By accident of circumstance I was discovering that while I'd hear about layoffs about once every 12 to 18 months from the Ballard side of things I'd hear from the Lake City side that things were so financially stable "we" were subsidizing Ballard at times to help them out because they had some troubles.
From a donor cultivation perspective it seemed there was a potentially clear explanation for this--the people who were faithful attenders that actually had money perhaps switched to Lake City while Ballard got the less committed visitors who were there for the Mark Driscoll show. That's how it seemed circa 2009.
But with some help from Ellul it's now possible to look back and say that what was happening to me could be described as a "horizontal liaison". Mars Hill had committed to meteoric growth and to top-down information partitioning to go by how they ran The City. Having been at Mars Hill since later 1998 and not interested in burning bridges I'd managed to cultivate a network of people I knew across a good number of the campus sites. By later 2013 the leadership of Mars hill was certain who blogged at Wenatchee The Hatchet. What they apparently didn't know was how many sources were leaking content from The City to Wenatchee The Hatchet; who they were; and how it was done. It was reported that at least one person within the leadership culture of MH was willing to speculate a hack. That was never the case. Sources volunteered content. What wasn't volunteered, by and large, was information I could look up myself because my City access wasn't revoked until the spring of 2012. How on earth did Wenatchee The Hatchet have City access? Recruited for beta-testing in the pre-launch phase, that's how.
In the kind of leadership culture that evolved at Mars Hill Mark seemed to be concerned with who was going to lead the mission. The nice people who just sat on the bus and shut up and didn't do anything (as Mark defined "anything") could just be allowed to ride along. They wouldn't get thrown off the bus because they weren't even pretending to have an interest in driving the bus. They weren't opposing the bus, either, so there was no need to run them over with the bus. And because they just sat on the bus and maybe helped out in a limited way it didn't occur to the leaders that maybe an impossible-to-fully-identify group of people just sitting on the bus could, if you will, take detailed notes about what the bus driver was saying about where the route was going and share that.
At a social media presentation Driscoll gave in 2013 he mentioned that a lot of the traffic to Mars Hill sites could fit into the "long tail", older stuff Mark had said or written that people were still looking up. As Wenatchee The Hatchet began to carefully document historical revisions to the story of Mars Hill (and mined Driscoll's sermons for history of real estate acquisitions and leadership appointments or lessons on spiritual warfare that figuratively and literally demonized dissent against executive leadership) stuff began to get pulled from the Mars Hill media library.
But by the time that started to happen other avenues of "horizontal liaison" were possible. People within Mars Hill began to figure out that they could not only communicate across the campuses within but also share information with people considered outside Mars Hill.
The beginning of conflicting and irreconcilable accounts from the top down may have started as far back as the 2007 trials. Longtime readers may recall Wenatchee The Hatchet published an email from an executive pastor sent prior to the trials that explained a "reconciliation process" had been completed. Later in 2007 there was the order to shun, so much for reconciliation process.
Which ... thematically ... could get us to something recent on Twitter.
Friday, February 26, 2016
at Get Religion Julian Duin observes that the Daily Beast feature is the best of the lot
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/2/22/mark-driscoll-redux-believe-it-or-not-this-daily-beast-feature-is-best-of-the-lot
Now to the Daily Beast story. While I wouldn’t call this first-person news feature the most objective, balanced reporting on the planet (That “a macho, vengeful God” reference? Get serious), the reporter did more shoe leather reporting than other outlets in getting quotes from former followers in Seattle. She combed through former members’ blogs, interviewed folks who used to attend Mars Hill and contacted some of the church leaders listed on Driscoll’s new Phoenix church site
Of mainstream coverage summarizing what has happened, yes, it's the best overall one so far. So far the best coverage done by secular publications has, easily, been The Stranger.
Of course here at Wenatchee The Hatchet some effort has been taken to document things as they happen but, you know ... blogs. They don't count in the same way as a publishing platform the way a magazine does.
Terry Mattingly has a piece from back in 2014 that seems worth quoting:
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2014/8/so-who-is-in-charge-of-judging-mark-driscoll-other-than-the-new-york-times
...
In other words, if Mars Hill is a kind of mini-denomination of its own, who has the legal, as well as the doctrinal, right to investigate and then pass judgment on its founder? You can see hints at this confusion at several points in the Times report.
Since Driscoll would go on to resign in October 2014 the answer as to who had the legal and doctrinal right to investigate and then pass judgment on the founder was, ultimately, just Mark Driscoll. We'll potentially never know what the Board of Elders appointed to assess Driscoll may have ever decided because it's not even entirely clear they ever even completed their investigation. The Board of Overseers or the Board of Advisors and Accountability weren't the same as the BoE. It seems a bit optimistic to hope that Matt Rogers (who was on both the BoAA and the BoE in the final formal year of Mars Hill) would talk to Julia Duin about what was going on.
Kerry Dodd hasn't stopped listing himself as the president of Mars Hill just yet ... .
Now to the Daily Beast story. While I wouldn’t call this first-person news feature the most objective, balanced reporting on the planet (That “a macho, vengeful God” reference? Get serious), the reporter did more shoe leather reporting than other outlets in getting quotes from former followers in Seattle. She combed through former members’ blogs, interviewed folks who used to attend Mars Hill and contacted some of the church leaders listed on Driscoll’s new Phoenix church site
Of mainstream coverage summarizing what has happened, yes, it's the best overall one so far. So far the best coverage done by secular publications has, easily, been The Stranger.
Of course here at Wenatchee The Hatchet some effort has been taken to document things as they happen but, you know ... blogs. They don't count in the same way as a publishing platform the way a magazine does.
Terry Mattingly has a piece from back in 2014 that seems worth quoting:
http://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2014/8/so-who-is-in-charge-of-judging-mark-driscoll-other-than-the-new-york-times
...
In other words, if Mars Hill is a kind of mini-denomination of its own, who has the legal, as well as the doctrinal, right to investigate and then pass judgment on its founder? You can see hints at this confusion at several points in the Times report.
Since Driscoll would go on to resign in October 2014 the answer as to who had the legal and doctrinal right to investigate and then pass judgment on the founder was, ultimately, just Mark Driscoll. We'll potentially never know what the Board of Elders appointed to assess Driscoll may have ever decided because it's not even entirely clear they ever even completed their investigation. The Board of Overseers or the Board of Advisors and Accountability weren't the same as the BoE. It seems a bit optimistic to hope that Matt Rogers (who was on both the BoAA and the BoE in the final formal year of Mars Hill) would talk to Julia Duin about what was going on.
Kerry Dodd hasn't stopped listing himself as the president of Mars Hill just yet ... .
transitions, Caleb Walters lists his role with Mars Hill in the past tense while Kerry Dodd is still president, at least in LinkedIn terms
The inactive date for the corporation formerly known as Mars Hill is still pending.
although Caleb Walters does ...https://www.linkedin.com/in/
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/
I would have thought now that we're on the eve of March it'd be otherwise
but Kerry Dodd's not listing himself as a past-tense person at MH either
https://www.linkedin.com/in/
I would have thought now that we're on the eve of March it'd be otherwise
but Kerry Dodd's not listing himself as a past-tense person at MH either
https://www.linkedin.com/in/
President and General Manager
Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc.
- Keen management to daily operations to guarantee proper handling of all legal affairs and creditor obligations
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
although Caleb Walters does ...https://www.linkedin.com/in/
Chief Operating Officer | COO
Mars Hill Church
– (1 year 3 months)
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Ellul on the shift an individual makes from adhering to propaganda to embracing the propaganda of the "enemy" in the face of doubts--a possible explanation of what the "cage phase" is.
Long ago when I was reading Internet Monk I remember coming across a memorable phrase, "cage phase". Reading Ellul recently has, perhaps, provided an illuminating potential way of describing the emotional/personal dynamics of this "cage phase" in terms of a person's relationship to competing propagandas. Ellul warned way back in 1965 that it's foolish to think that propaganda for Team A will be canceled out by propaganda from Team B because as socal manipulation propaganda's effects can be cumulative. A person overwhelmed by mass media messaging can reach a saturation point where one of two decisions become psychologically likely. The first is to check out in resignation and the second is to pick a propaganda that you embrace whole hog while rejecting the others. If, over time you have doubts about the team you picked well ...
PROPAGANDA: THE FORMATION OF MEN'S ATTITUDES
JACQUES ELLUL
Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner
Vintage Books Edition, February 1973
Copyright (c) 195 by Alfred A Knopf Inc.
ISBN 0-394-71874-7
page 190
Moreover it is possible to provide successive stages for the individual. While he is still a solid member of a group, propaganda can introduce a factor of ambiguity, of doubt, of suspicion. But the individual finds it very difficult to remain long in such a situation. Ambiguity is painful to him, and he seeks to escape it. But he cannot escape it by returning to his previous certainties and total blind allegiance to his former group. This is impossible because the doubt introduced can no longer be assuaged while the individual remains in the original context of values and truths. It is then, by going over to the enemy group, by compliance with what provoked the ambiguity, that man escapes that ambiguity. He then will enter into an absolute allegiance to the truth of the enemy group. His compliance will be all the more radical, his fusion with it all the more irrational, because it is a flight from yesterday's truth and because it will have to protect him against any return to, memory of, or nostalgia for the former allegiance. There is no greater enemy of Christianity or Communism than he who was once an absolute believer.
Anyone get the impression that this could describe just about any "cage phase" embrace of just about anything? It sures seems applicable.
and it doesn't just so happen ..
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/how-ex-communists-shaped-american-conservatism/426849/
Of course there's another potential application of this observation. It's not just that someone who was once some kind of Christian or communist might be a sworn adversary of those beliefs. Ellul's proposal could apply to any ideology that could be disseminated by way of propaganda.
For the sake of a thought experiment let's take Mars Hill. If someone were inside Mars Hill and perceived it's core to be complementarianism because young guys found a sense of purpose then if the seed of doubt were arguments for egalitarianism or feminism then, in Ellul's proposed possible rejection of propaganda, the person who bailed on Mars Hill might embrace egalitarianism and feminism not necessarily "just" because the person sincerely embraced that because of the dynamics of propaganda and the way a human acclimates to propagandistic dynamics.
If while within a setting like Mars Hill a person got the impression that the "enemy" was a high church liturgical approach or Orthodoxy or Catholicism then in the process of eliminating ambiguity a person could embrace the "enemy" and go for Orthodoxy or Catholicism. If someone inside a setting like Mars Hill where many a lad embraced some variant of libertarian economic ideas and market idealism a person might embrace progressive economics and politics as an abjection of what was once perceived to be the central cultural "point" of Mars Hill.
The collapse of Mars Hill, if you will, as a propagandistic apparatus, could well have left people in Seattle more progressive than they otherwise would be in the sense that those who discovered that Driscoll's blue collar shtick was potentially just that, might either reject that or ... paradoxically embrace progressive ideals by doubling down on what they believe to be a "real" working class ethos that would contrast with what seemed to be a ploy on the part of Driscoll's years of talking about guys swinging hammers for a living.
Changing your convictions through an intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual struggle is certainly valuable--but Ellul's writing could be a useful caution that merely shifting from one hard and fast position to another is not a sign that you have stopped "drinking the kool-aid", it might be a sign that you're drinking more sugar-water than ever but for a different team.
Anyone who leaves a cultural setting like Mars Hill was may have already gone through a "cage phase" or two.
I know there are those who might think it's too abstract and too esoteric to discuss the history of Mars Hill as if it were a propaganda machine and perhaps it's off-putting to describe Driscoll's public career in terms of propagandistic methodologies rather than attempting to analyze his ideas in psychological terms or trying to discern his motives. His motives are not something that can be too easily surmised. The resignation of 2014, when all the stories shared about it by Driscoll and others, seems too opaque and too impulsive to bother attempting to explain even on its own terms
On the other hand, discussing Mark Driscoll's persona in terms of propaganda may be a useful approach. Why? Because apart from whomever he's had meals with in the Phoenix pastor scene the most common way people are going to have contact with Driscoll is by way of technology, by means of the mass and social media platforms that Ellul described as inherent in propaganda. A "regular" person may be as connected to Mark Driscoll as he or she would be to, say, Taylor Swift or George Clooney, which is to say not in the way that a real friend would be. To borrow a polemic evangelicals have used about certain types of entertainers ... there's a pseudo-intimacy, an illusion of intimacy and personal connection that can happen in propaganda. It's not necessarily "Big Brother", it could also be an illusory sense of connection to a popular musician or movie star. Or ... some other kind of star, perhaps.
So many people have tried to get at what they felt the mentality of the scene was it can be easy to miss that a lot of the scene was mediated by mass and social media. Remember that at its peak most people who called Mars Hill their church home were hearing a sermon mediated by a disc that Driscoll preached a week or so earlier that got filmed and re-mastered for distribution at the sites. In church service terms that's like watching an episode of Blues Clues on a Friday when the episode first aired on a Monday within the same week. But for those who called Mars Hill home they sincerely thought of Mark Driscoll as their pastor.
So in keeping with the thematic arc of this post it's not too huge a surprise that many people who left Mars Hill gravitated toward higher liturgical traditions, perhaps in part because church mediated by screens really isn't church in quite the same way that a church service where the pastor or priest presents eucharist.
By now it's probably clear to those who have trudged through these posts inspired by Ellul that any megachurch could be described, almost by definition, as fitting the working definition of a propaganda machine as outlined by Ellul. It's not that liturgical churches can't participate in propaganda, that's hardly true at all. On the ther hand, if a church chooses to forsake propaganda a church that isn't a megachurch will have an easier time of it by dint of not being defined in practice by using the tools of propaganda.
PROPAGANDA: THE FORMATION OF MEN'S ATTITUDES
JACQUES ELLUL
Translated from the French by Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner
Vintage Books Edition, February 1973
Copyright (c) 195 by Alfred A Knopf Inc.
ISBN 0-394-71874-7
page 190
Moreover it is possible to provide successive stages for the individual. While he is still a solid member of a group, propaganda can introduce a factor of ambiguity, of doubt, of suspicion. But the individual finds it very difficult to remain long in such a situation. Ambiguity is painful to him, and he seeks to escape it. But he cannot escape it by returning to his previous certainties and total blind allegiance to his former group. This is impossible because the doubt introduced can no longer be assuaged while the individual remains in the original context of values and truths. It is then, by going over to the enemy group, by compliance with what provoked the ambiguity, that man escapes that ambiguity. He then will enter into an absolute allegiance to the truth of the enemy group. His compliance will be all the more radical, his fusion with it all the more irrational, because it is a flight from yesterday's truth and because it will have to protect him against any return to, memory of, or nostalgia for the former allegiance. There is no greater enemy of Christianity or Communism than he who was once an absolute believer.
Anyone get the impression that this could describe just about any "cage phase" embrace of just about anything? It sures seems applicable.
and it doesn't just so happen ..
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/how-ex-communists-shaped-american-conservatism/426849/
Of course there's another potential application of this observation. It's not just that someone who was once some kind of Christian or communist might be a sworn adversary of those beliefs. Ellul's proposal could apply to any ideology that could be disseminated by way of propaganda.
For the sake of a thought experiment let's take Mars Hill. If someone were inside Mars Hill and perceived it's core to be complementarianism because young guys found a sense of purpose then if the seed of doubt were arguments for egalitarianism or feminism then, in Ellul's proposed possible rejection of propaganda, the person who bailed on Mars Hill might embrace egalitarianism and feminism not necessarily "just" because the person sincerely embraced that because of the dynamics of propaganda and the way a human acclimates to propagandistic dynamics.
If while within a setting like Mars Hill a person got the impression that the "enemy" was a high church liturgical approach or Orthodoxy or Catholicism then in the process of eliminating ambiguity a person could embrace the "enemy" and go for Orthodoxy or Catholicism. If someone inside a setting like Mars Hill where many a lad embraced some variant of libertarian economic ideas and market idealism a person might embrace progressive economics and politics as an abjection of what was once perceived to be the central cultural "point" of Mars Hill.
The collapse of Mars Hill, if you will, as a propagandistic apparatus, could well have left people in Seattle more progressive than they otherwise would be in the sense that those who discovered that Driscoll's blue collar shtick was potentially just that, might either reject that or ... paradoxically embrace progressive ideals by doubling down on what they believe to be a "real" working class ethos that would contrast with what seemed to be a ploy on the part of Driscoll's years of talking about guys swinging hammers for a living.
Changing your convictions through an intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual struggle is certainly valuable--but Ellul's writing could be a useful caution that merely shifting from one hard and fast position to another is not a sign that you have stopped "drinking the kool-aid", it might be a sign that you're drinking more sugar-water than ever but for a different team.
Anyone who leaves a cultural setting like Mars Hill was may have already gone through a "cage phase" or two.
I know there are those who might think it's too abstract and too esoteric to discuss the history of Mars Hill as if it were a propaganda machine and perhaps it's off-putting to describe Driscoll's public career in terms of propagandistic methodologies rather than attempting to analyze his ideas in psychological terms or trying to discern his motives. His motives are not something that can be too easily surmised. The resignation of 2014, when all the stories shared about it by Driscoll and others, seems too opaque and too impulsive to bother attempting to explain even on its own terms
On the other hand, discussing Mark Driscoll's persona in terms of propaganda may be a useful approach. Why? Because apart from whomever he's had meals with in the Phoenix pastor scene the most common way people are going to have contact with Driscoll is by way of technology, by means of the mass and social media platforms that Ellul described as inherent in propaganda. A "regular" person may be as connected to Mark Driscoll as he or she would be to, say, Taylor Swift or George Clooney, which is to say not in the way that a real friend would be. To borrow a polemic evangelicals have used about certain types of entertainers ... there's a pseudo-intimacy, an illusion of intimacy and personal connection that can happen in propaganda. It's not necessarily "Big Brother", it could also be an illusory sense of connection to a popular musician or movie star. Or ... some other kind of star, perhaps.
So many people have tried to get at what they felt the mentality of the scene was it can be easy to miss that a lot of the scene was mediated by mass and social media. Remember that at its peak most people who called Mars Hill their church home were hearing a sermon mediated by a disc that Driscoll preached a week or so earlier that got filmed and re-mastered for distribution at the sites. In church service terms that's like watching an episode of Blues Clues on a Friday when the episode first aired on a Monday within the same week. But for those who called Mars Hill home they sincerely thought of Mark Driscoll as their pastor.
So in keeping with the thematic arc of this post it's not too huge a surprise that many people who left Mars Hill gravitated toward higher liturgical traditions, perhaps in part because church mediated by screens really isn't church in quite the same way that a church service where the pastor or priest presents eucharist.
By now it's probably clear to those who have trudged through these posts inspired by Ellul that any megachurch could be described, almost by definition, as fitting the working definition of a propaganda machine as outlined by Ellul. It's not that liturgical churches can't participate in propaganda, that's hardly true at all. On the ther hand, if a church chooses to forsake propaganda a church that isn't a megachurch will have an easier time of it by dint of not being defined in practice by using the tools of propaganda.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Driscoll shared a story about how his house was hit by a falling tree, which house? The one he told Russ Bowen was "wrong address, I don't know"?
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Mars-Hill-pastor-terminated--273144811.html
By KOMO Staff |Thursday, August 28th 2014
Driscoll's reaction to Russ Bowen's enquiry sounded like "Sorry, bro. Wrong address. I don't know."
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
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/courtesy-throckmorton-thrive-transcript.html
Transcript | Mark Driscoll | Thrive 2015-05-01
See Links to Timestamps at the end of this doc.
[4:04]
Things really escalated when the media showed up and blocked the driveway to the house, seeking an interview and brought a helicopter overhead to flush me out for an interview. My kids had been outside playing and, uh, all of a sudden we heard this helicopter over the yard and so we pulled the family into the house and tried to figure out how to not be in front of a window because we didn’t want to be on the news and didn’t know what was going on, to be honest with you.
That night my oldest son, he was 8 at the time, he came to me downstairs, my wife Grace was cooking dinner and uh, he had on this jacket, it was a military jacket with patches down the side. He had his AirSoft gun and I said “What are you doing little buddy?” He’s nine now. And he said, “Dad is this jacket bullet-proof?” (crown groans) And I said, “Why’s that little buddy?” And he said, “Well, if the bad guys come, I want to be able to protect the family.” [4:59]
I didn’t know that he – he didn’t know it was a news crew. The only thing he’d ever seen were the uh, um, the bad guy movies where they come in helicopters and shoot everybody. It took months. He would have night terrors. He wouldn’t sleep in his room. He wouldn’t take a shower, get dressed in his bedroom by himself. Something we’re trying to encourage him through. Just real fear came into him. The kids wanted to sleep outside in a tent one night. We told them no, because as soon as we had the tent set up and were going out to sleep in the tent, the media posted the address to my house as a new story which I felt like we were in danger again so I grabbed the kids and left for the night and went to a hotel for a couple days. Then came back and I preached what would be my last sermon -- I didn’t know it would be my last. The New York Times was there. It was a big media situation.
So, the kids were like, “Dad, we just want to sleep in a tent in our house.” So we slept in a tent. I didn’t really sleep, but the kids -- the younger kids slept. Woke up in the morning and somebody on the other side of the fence was throwing large rocks at my kids at about 6:30 in the morning. And at first, I didn’t know what it was and then the dog thought we were playing fetch and started picking up these rocks and it dawned on me, like rocks are flying at my kids in the yard. So we filed a police report and went away for a little bit. Came back and there was a bucket of nails all over the driveway. Picked those up um. ...
First thing, for those who don't recall local radio host Dori Monson was not able to confirm the rock-throwing incident took place after consulting Woodway authorities.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/driscoll-at-gateway-local-radio-host.html
a commenter later added an update that something happened of some kind.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/driscoll-at-gateway-local-radio-host.html?showComment=1414700809125#c211062062817007664
Throckmorton was able to follow up
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/Driscoll082514policereport.png
But the confirmation of a rock-throwing incident at the house in Woodway, if true, highlights that Driscoll wasn't giving Russ Bowen an honest answer in 2014.
Now keep in mind somebody how sounded astonishingly like Mark Driscoll told Russ Bowen "wrong address" when Bowen tried to ask a few questions. And a dog got released. That was in August 2014. By May 2015 somehow things changed. Driscoll was sharing a story about a helicopter overhead trying to flush him out for an interview. What wasn't the house in 2014 was the house after all in 2015.
So there's already a conundrum Mark Driscoll created for himself in how he replied to Russ Bowen. If the rock incident happened at the Woodway house then Driscoll couldn't honestly have told Bowen "wrong address".
Last year there was a substantial windstorm in the Puget Sound area and one of the areas effected by that storm (August 2015) was Woodway.
This might have been the reference Driscoll made in his recent presentation in Wenatchee.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/02/22/brief-note-mark-driscoll-on-becoming-a-godly-man/
February 22, 2016 by Warren Throckmorton
Yesterday, Mark Driscoll spoke at Grace City Church, an Acts 29 church in Wenatchee, WA pastored by Josh McPherson. McPherson, who is Acts 29’s Network Coordinator for the Pacific Northwest, must really believe in Driscoll’s comeback because I suspect he is hearing some noise about it.
...
http://www.gracecitychurch.com/sermon/becoming-a-godly-man/
10.00
...
I put my house on the market. I'm thinking, "Okay, my house will sell." I gotta go down and I'm--we can't get the kids into school. The school's are already full. We're there too late because the school districts are different between the northwest and the southwest. We're renting a place temporarily. All my stuff, all our stuff, is up in our place in Seattle. Our house is on the market. Our house is not selling. ...
10.35
and I was in Arizona trying to figure out what the next season of life looks like with elementary, junior high, high school, college and my phone alarm starts going off and I assume somebody broke in or whatever. So I send my realtor over. My realtor calls me and his voice is trembling and he sends me this photo. He said, "I'm standing at your house and here it is." [audience reaction of dismay, apparently at a photo] Yeah,that--that's my house. Or WAS my house. And a 200-foot tree fell on my house and crushed our bedroom. Our bed is under that rubble. If my wife and I were taking a nap at 1 o'clock on a Saturday we'd be dead.
So I flew up late at night. I go to the property all the power's out. I'm there with a flashlight. It's pouring down rain and I'm going through the rubble that is our home and I'm glad that nobody in my family died. And I'm thinking, "How--this is all my equity. This is what I was going to use to relocate and provide for my family. And, and here it is." And now I live in another state so how am I supposed to fix this?
...
11.55
I remember sitting at the house, actually, outside in the rain looking at what used to be my house. I'm like, "Okay, Lord, this family is my responsibility." My stuff is in this house. My family is in another state. We don't have a permanent place to live. I can't find a school for my children. All of our equity and wealth is in a destroyed home and I'm unemployed. ...
13.05
And I remember just standing there in the rain just like, "Father, Dad, I need help now. I need wisdom. I need provision. I need a path forward. I accept responsibility for the well-being of my family. But how to proceed forward, Dad, I'm not entirely clear on. I could really use your help." And God's a good father and he has answered that prayer and He's taken care of our family. And, actually, the good news is we closed this house last week and it got fixed and somebody bought it who was willing to take that off our hands and allow us to move forward with our lives.
Well, though it seemed a bit unclear bordering on unlikely yesterday, reviewing weather coverage in the last year easily yields the following:
http://mltnews.com/windstorm-2015-blown-away-in-mountlake-terrace/
August 30, 2015
Snohomish County PUD continues to make progress in restoring power to residents in Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Edmonds and Woodway. PUD reports that 55,000 households remain without power. Crews will continue work throughout the night.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/100000-still-without-power-after-windstorm-2/
http://lynnwoodtoday.com/windstorm-2015-blown-away-in-lynnwood/
http://katu.com/news/local/seattle-crews-clean-up-take-on-power-outages-after-strong-windstorm
So that a storm caused damage across Woodway is easily established for late August 2015.
But there's a possibility that the house didn't really formally belong to Driscoll, after all. Didn't the house get gifted to the Downs Family Revocable Living Trust by Future Hope Revocable Living Trust in 2013?
So if the Downs Family Revocable Living Trust financial instrument had Melanie Thompson designated as its trustee how was this house at Woodway Mark Driscoll's house? Some say the potential use of a revocable living trust is to obscure who the real owner of a piece of real estate is so "perhaps" the Woodway house was always Mark Driscoll's house, it's just it wouldn't seem to be the case on paper.
So maybe Driscoll wasn't exactly lying to Russ Bowen ... but then if he wasn't misrepresenting the strictly factually accurate situation then the circumstances in which the Woodway house that wasn't Mark's when Bowen came to visit has apparently been the Driscoll house in Mark's stories on the road two calendar years in a row.
It seems as though there's a risk in sharing stories in 2015 and 2016 about that house in Woodway.
If it wasn't Driscoll's house in 2014 then he wasn't exactly lying to Russ Bowen on camera but if it really was Driscoll's house then even if some kind of paper arrangement ensured the real estate formally belonged to the Downs Family Revocable Living Trust but it was really ultimately Mark Driscoll's home then Driscoll lied to Bowen by implying there was a wrong address or misunderstanding in 2014. By 2015 Driscoll had tales on the road of how the media published the address to his house and sent a chopper to fly over the place and here in 2016 Driscoll's shared a story about how a big tree fell on the house and would have killed him and Grace had they been in the bedroom that was once theirs.
Fortunately nobody died. Unfortunately Mark Driscoll, in sharing this more recent bit of news about the real estate, presented what seemed to be the Woodway house as his house in a way that still suggests he was not being honest with Russ Bowen back in 2014.
Since it would appear by the measurement of Mark Driscoll's own teaching on the subject he could be said to have lied to Russ Bowen ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20131126034330/http://marshill.com/2013/11/23/we-even-lie-about-our-lying
...
If you’ve read this far, I’m certain the Holy Spirit has convicted you of lying somewhere, sometime in your life. I’m guilty.
Of lying? Of being a liar? Was Mark Driscoll really admitting that much? In his discourse on deception he stopped short of saying that Mr. Spock implying something was lying and there may well be those who think Driscoll's response to Russ Bowen was by some technicality not a dishonest answer. Or perhaps it could be suggested that to protect the kids a dad might lie. There's casuistry within the Judeo-Christian tradition on those kinds of issues.
But for as emphatically as Driscoll said "wrong address" in 2014, some of his most poignant and pointed appeals for sympathy have centered around the condition and location of the house he wouldn't confirm to Russ Bowen of KOMO news was his. If the house wasn't the Driscoll house then it wasn't honest to say so and if it was the Driscoll house it wasn't honest to even imply otherwise. Driscoll could have relied on the old standby of so many who have refused to talk to members of the press "no comment".
Since Mark Driscoll registered practically every sermon he ever preached going as far back as 2001 under his own name rather than that of Mars Hill; and since Driscoll registered the copyright to himself or a corporate stand-in for nearly all of his books that are all still in print and getting translated into a variety of languages it's just a teensy bit difficult to believe that "all" the wealth and equity of the Driscoll clan was in that house in Woodway. For what purpose was the On Mission LLC set up years earlier if "all" of the Driscoll wealth was loaded into that one house in Woodway?
On Mission LLC still exists as an entity in good standing in Colorado, doesn't it?
https://www.sos.state.co.us/biz/BusinessEntityDetail.do?quitButtonDestination=BusinessEntityResults&nameTyp=ENT&entityId2=20111058965&srchTyp=ENTITY&fileId=20111058965&masterFileId=20111058965
It may make for a more dramatic narrative to say "all" the wealth of Mark Driscoll's family was in that house in Woodway (if that's the house Driscoll was referring to in his recent sermon), but not counting the intellectual property Driscoll has in sermons going back to 2001 on or all of his published books would seem to be skipping over the most valuable part of Mark Driscoll's assets. Without those there'd be no 1 Corinthians series of 33 sermons from 2006 to bring back online at Mark Driscoll Ministries, would there?
POSTSCRIPT 02-24-2016 06.45pm
Remember a link that assessed Driscoll's value as around 2.5 million?
http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/authors/mark-driscoll-net-worth/
plug in the parcel # 00704300000600 into ...
https://www.snoco.org/proptax/(hh4pdxz2hm5ifmalbt15gzfr)/search.aspx
and for 2015 Taxable Value Regular was ...
$1,297,400
So perhaps like a Calvinist (if Driscoll would still call himself one) "all" doesn't seem to literally mean "all".
If "The Bible has nothing good to say about young men" why didn't Mark Driscoll notice that back in 2007 when he made Jamie Munson legal president of Mars Hill?
http://www.gracecitychurch.com/sermon/becoming-a-godly-man/
from Mark Driscoll sermon preached recently
27.30
The bible has nothing good to say about young men.
Now, sure, people have contested the reliability of this sweeping assertion. Driscoll mentioned that "young men" meant anyone under 40. So by the account of the synoptics Jesus died as a "young men" and he was sinless. So there's one young man in the Bible there. There's the advice to Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because of his youth, a verse that Driscoll seemed more swift to remember and quote circa 2000.
But let's consider all this from another angle. Mark Driscoll made a young man who was a convert to Christianity of the Driscollian kind into the legal president of Mars Hill back in 2007. Jamie Munson was made president of Mars Hill back then and let's recall that when the termination and trial process got rolling Munson mentioned that grounds for immediate dismissal included not trusting or respecting the spiritual authority of executive leaders (e.g. guys like Jamie Munson or Mark Driscoll). Driscoll was, what 37 or 38 in 2007? He, too, fit the definition of "young man".
So if we take this axiom seriously that the Bible has nothing good to say about young men then when Munson claimed that a total lack of trust for executive leadership was an issue perhaps it could be said in defense of Meyer and Petry that "if" Driscoll's axiom is right and that the Bible's got nothing good to say about young guys then why SHOULD Meyer have trusted Munson or Driscoll's judgments regarding the 2007 by-laws? Driscoll's axiom this year might suggest that the distrust from a previous decade is vindicated by Mark Driscoll's own axiom.
Given that there is no Mars Hill, and given that in the throng of praise for Sutton Turner a recurring thread from former MH employees was to praise his willingness to make tough decisions that saved Mars Hill from barreling over a fiscal cliff ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/11/reviewing-recommendations-of-mars-hill.html
it would seem that Driscoll's sweeping axiom about how the Bible's got nothing good to say about young men simply raises the question of why anyone thought he, as a young man, was ever suitable for ministry. SOMEBODY thought he was. He surely thought he was and even claimed God told him to start planting churches.
Driscoll celebrated making Munson president in a presentation he gave in 2008. It was in a Q&A session you probably better not bank too much on finding over here. It used to be ....
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
2.28.2008
"Jamie Munson is head of the elder board. Jamie Munson is executive pastor. He is legal president of the organization. And for me, to be honest, it was the most freeing, liberating thing I could have dreamed of because now I don't have all that conflict of interest. I can be friends with someone but I don't have to fire them, do their performance review, and decide how much they get paid. It's just too conflicting for me."
See, Driscoll once claimed one of his big mistakes was submitting himself to elders who were young and new and green even though he was the spring chicken of that set on the one hand and, on the other ... it made it all the more inexplicable why he put Munson in charge of Mars Hill if it was a mistake to load the leadership up with guys under 40.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-driscoll-made-mistake-of-being-under.html
Driscoll made a point of saying when Munson resigned that Munson was always above reproach. Driscoll made Munson president by his own account. Was Driscoll going to second-guess his own judgment in making a guy as young as Munson president of Mars Hill?
from Mark Driscoll sermon preached recently
27.30
The bible has nothing good to say about young men.
Now, sure, people have contested the reliability of this sweeping assertion. Driscoll mentioned that "young men" meant anyone under 40. So by the account of the synoptics Jesus died as a "young men" and he was sinless. So there's one young man in the Bible there. There's the advice to Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because of his youth, a verse that Driscoll seemed more swift to remember and quote circa 2000.
But let's consider all this from another angle. Mark Driscoll made a young man who was a convert to Christianity of the Driscollian kind into the legal president of Mars Hill back in 2007. Jamie Munson was made president of Mars Hill back then and let's recall that when the termination and trial process got rolling Munson mentioned that grounds for immediate dismissal included not trusting or respecting the spiritual authority of executive leaders (e.g. guys like Jamie Munson or Mark Driscoll). Driscoll was, what 37 or 38 in 2007? He, too, fit the definition of "young man".
So if we take this axiom seriously that the Bible has nothing good to say about young men then when Munson claimed that a total lack of trust for executive leadership was an issue perhaps it could be said in defense of Meyer and Petry that "if" Driscoll's axiom is right and that the Bible's got nothing good to say about young guys then why SHOULD Meyer have trusted Munson or Driscoll's judgments regarding the 2007 by-laws? Driscoll's axiom this year might suggest that the distrust from a previous decade is vindicated by Mark Driscoll's own axiom.
Given that there is no Mars Hill, and given that in the throng of praise for Sutton Turner a recurring thread from former MH employees was to praise his willingness to make tough decisions that saved Mars Hill from barreling over a fiscal cliff ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/11/reviewing-recommendations-of-mars-hill.html
it would seem that Driscoll's sweeping axiom about how the Bible's got nothing good to say about young men simply raises the question of why anyone thought he, as a young man, was ever suitable for ministry. SOMEBODY thought he was. He surely thought he was and even claimed God told him to start planting churches.
Driscoll celebrated making Munson president in a presentation he gave in 2008. It was in a Q&A session you probably better not bank too much on finding over here. It used to be ....
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
2.28.2008
"Jamie Munson is head of the elder board. Jamie Munson is executive pastor. He is legal president of the organization. And for me, to be honest, it was the most freeing, liberating thing I could have dreamed of because now I don't have all that conflict of interest. I can be friends with someone but I don't have to fire them, do their performance review, and decide how much they get paid. It's just too conflicting for me."
See, Driscoll once claimed one of his big mistakes was submitting himself to elders who were young and new and green even though he was the spring chicken of that set on the one hand and, on the other ... it made it all the more inexplicable why he put Munson in charge of Mars Hill if it was a mistake to load the leadership up with guys under 40.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-driscoll-made-mistake-of-being-under.html
Driscoll made a point of saying when Munson resigned that Munson was always above reproach. Driscoll made Munson president by his own account. Was Driscoll going to second-guess his own judgment in making a guy as young as Munson president of Mars Hill?
Monday, February 22, 2016
Driscoll mentions re-release of a 1 Corinthians series, 33 sermons that he describes as originally preached in 2007 that were, in fact, preached in 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=111Q2_qLNXI
Mark Driscoll Feb 22 newsletter 2016
6:23
I had a job as a concierge and a belhop at a hotel when I was younger and I kinda had this view of God as a concierge and a belhop. You tell him what you want and he goes and does it and if he doesn't do it, well, then he's not very good at his job.
Is he sure he doesn't still have that view?
But that's not necessarily what we're going to look at here. Driscoll mentioned there's 33 sermons coming back, the 1 Corinthians series that describes as dating from 2007.
Uh ... 2007? Had to listen to it a few times to be sure he really mentioned that year.
Let's go back and consider what sermons were preached in 2007 by Mark Driscoll.
There was Redeeming Ruth (January to February 2007); there was Nehemiah (February to September 2007) with some Titus (July 2007) and The Rebel's Guide to Joy (a Phillipians series from October 2007 to December 2007).
There was no 1 Corinthians series.
That was all in 2006, January to September 2006.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111124144847/http://marshill.com/media/ajax_featured?collection=sermons
https://web.archive.org/web/20111201213025/http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians?
Acts 18:1-18 | Pastor Mark Driscoll
Part 1 | January 08, 2006
https://web.archive.org/web/20111202210657/http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians?escape=false&page=4
1 Corinthians 16:1-24 | Pastor Mark Driscoll
Part 33 | September 24, 2006
You can see for yourself since, at least for the time being, robots.txt isn't getting in the way.
I would have thought that the guy could remember the dates for his own sermons. It'll be interesting to learn how much content remains from the series, since it was in the 1 Corinthians sermon series from 2006 that discussions about sweet real estate acquisitions came up.
Mark Driscoll Feb 22 newsletter 2016
6:23
I had a job as a concierge and a belhop at a hotel when I was younger and I kinda had this view of God as a concierge and a belhop. You tell him what you want and he goes and does it and if he doesn't do it, well, then he's not very good at his job.
Is he sure he doesn't still have that view?
But that's not necessarily what we're going to look at here. Driscoll mentioned there's 33 sermons coming back, the 1 Corinthians series that describes as dating from 2007.
Uh ... 2007? Had to listen to it a few times to be sure he really mentioned that year.
Let's go back and consider what sermons were preached in 2007 by Mark Driscoll.
There was Redeeming Ruth (January to February 2007); there was Nehemiah (February to September 2007) with some Titus (July 2007) and The Rebel's Guide to Joy (a Phillipians series from October 2007 to December 2007).
There was no 1 Corinthians series.
That was all in 2006, January to September 2006.
https://web.archive.org/web/20111124144847/http://marshill.com/media/ajax_featured?collection=sermons
https://web.archive.org/web/20111201213025/http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians?
Acts 18:1-18 | Pastor Mark Driscoll
Part 1 | January 08, 2006
https://web.archive.org/web/20111202210657/http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians?escape=false&page=4
1 Corinthians 16:1-24 | Pastor Mark Driscoll
Part 33 | September 24, 2006
You can see for yourself since, at least for the time being, robots.txt isn't getting in the way.
I would have thought that the guy could remember the dates for his own sermons. It'll be interesting to learn how much content remains from the series, since it was in the 1 Corinthians sermon series from 2006 that discussions about sweet real estate acquisitions came up.
Jonna Petry publishes brief addendum to "My Story", states that Driscoll has not reached out to the Petry family since Joyful Exiles began.
http://joyfulexiles.com/2016/02/22/a-brief-addendum-to-my-story-a-warning-and-a-prayer/
...
Recently Mark and his supporters report that Mark has made amends with those he hurt. For the record, Mark has not contacted us or anyone we know regarding his egregious actions. Countless people and families have been harmed, an entire church of thousands, not to mention the damage done to the witness of the gospel in this city.
...
There hasn't been any persuasive plausibility to the "we're not entirely sure who they are" claim Driscoll made back in 2014. If Sutton Turner could invite me (if by proxy) to a Vision Breakfast there's no particularly clear reason why the executive leadership of Mars Hill, up to and including Mark Driscoll, wouldn't have an idea who Paul Petry is. Driscoll couldn't tell people on the road that a conflict from years ago came to light and still be an honest man if it was true that 'we're not entirely sure who they are", can he?
http://www.gracecitychurch.com/sermon/becoming-a-godly-man/
Driscoll preached recently on men and godliness. He talked a bit about how the man is the head in the marriage covenant as the head of the household. Mars Hill was once a church in which the elders had a covenant relationship (so it was said) with the body that was the church. Driscoll was the president and that would imply headship over the body that was Mars Hill.
If Driscoll wants to keep running with these kinds of metaphors then Driscoll can be seen as a head that decided to leave its associated body, a disembodied head rolling along from state to state doing speaking engagements.
POSTSCRIPT 10.30pm
If Driscoll's still holding the line on how headship means who a man's children date is his responsibility and even maybe the grandkids ... that does invite a question as to why, when the plagiarism controversy erupted, Mars Hill PR thought there was any reason at all to mention some people helped with the assembly of the Trial study guide materials. If it was just Mark Driscoll's name on that intro it was Mark Driscoll's responsibility as head.
About ten minutes in Driscoll talked about putting his house on the market. Which house? The one in Woodway? He hasn't technically owned that since it was gifted to Melanie Thompson back in 2013. Now, to be sure ... the taxpayer on that real estate has changed.
parcel # 00704300000600
https://www.snoco.org/proptax/(hh4pdxz2hm5ifmalbt15gzfr)/search.aspx
it's no longer Thompson listed, even if the Downs Family Revocable Living Trust still owns the property. The taxpayer changed 2/16/2016
But remember how Mark Driscoll was approached by Russ Bowen at that house and claimed it was a wrong address? watch the video at about 0:50
http://komonews.com/news/local/mars-hill-pastor-let-go-after-criticizing-church-leader
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/01/so-jimmy-witcher-shared-story-about.html
Okay, so maybe Driscoll lied to Bowen about whether it was the Driscoll house in 2014 before regaling folks at Thrive with tales of the chopper flying above the house and scaring the youngest Driscoll kid. But then technically the house wasn't owned by a financial instrument set up by Mark Driscoll.
In which case that can't be the house that was recently sold, can it? Unless Driscoll referred to the Woodway house "as if" it were his house even though he hasn't formally/legally owned it on paper since 2013. Unless, of course, there's a possibility that the ownership on paper was just that and that the Driscolls and the Fab Five lived in the Woodway house through 2014 in spite of the on paper ownership. Some have proposed that the advantage of having real estate owned in a trust is that it can conceal who really owns/lives at the real estate.
But it certainly wasn't the old real estate at Montlake.
http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=5605000595
The Driscolls sold that back in December 2014 not long after Driscoll resigned.
On the other hand ... Driscoll was preaching at a church in Wenatchee and the Driscolls had a piece of property in Chelan. Perhaps that's the real estate that sold? For those who may not already know, the most widely read post in the history of Wenatchee the Hatchet was a memo that advised Driscoll get a raise to 650k compensation in addition to the 200k housing allowance he already had.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/sutton-turner-memo-recommended-raise.html
So where ever that old house was it might have been just enough of an operational expense it had to go on the market.
Thing is, it doesn't seem like it was necessarily the house in Woodway or the one on Montlake in Seattle.
Maybe the house in Chelan sold? That the Driscolls had a house in Chelan was something mentioned from time to time but not something that seemed worth nailing down in the wake of the more newsworthy development of a resignation.
If it was the Woodway house can someone confirm via a headline that the house got hit by a tree?
because ... it's listed as delisted since 9/2015
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/22300-Woodway-Park-Rd_Woodway_WA_98020_M11949-95685
...
Recently Mark and his supporters report that Mark has made amends with those he hurt. For the record, Mark has not contacted us or anyone we know regarding his egregious actions. Countless people and families have been harmed, an entire church of thousands, not to mention the damage done to the witness of the gospel in this city.
...
There hasn't been any persuasive plausibility to the "we're not entirely sure who they are" claim Driscoll made back in 2014. If Sutton Turner could invite me (if by proxy) to a Vision Breakfast there's no particularly clear reason why the executive leadership of Mars Hill, up to and including Mark Driscoll, wouldn't have an idea who Paul Petry is. Driscoll couldn't tell people on the road that a conflict from years ago came to light and still be an honest man if it was true that 'we're not entirely sure who they are", can he?
http://www.gracecitychurch.com/sermon/becoming-a-godly-man/
Driscoll preached recently on men and godliness. He talked a bit about how the man is the head in the marriage covenant as the head of the household. Mars Hill was once a church in which the elders had a covenant relationship (so it was said) with the body that was the church. Driscoll was the president and that would imply headship over the body that was Mars Hill.
If Driscoll wants to keep running with these kinds of metaphors then Driscoll can be seen as a head that decided to leave its associated body, a disembodied head rolling along from state to state doing speaking engagements.
POSTSCRIPT 10.30pm
If Driscoll's still holding the line on how headship means who a man's children date is his responsibility and even maybe the grandkids ... that does invite a question as to why, when the plagiarism controversy erupted, Mars Hill PR thought there was any reason at all to mention some people helped with the assembly of the Trial study guide materials. If it was just Mark Driscoll's name on that intro it was Mark Driscoll's responsibility as head.
About ten minutes in Driscoll talked about putting his house on the market. Which house? The one in Woodway? He hasn't technically owned that since it was gifted to Melanie Thompson back in 2013. Now, to be sure ... the taxpayer on that real estate has changed.
parcel # 00704300000600
https://www.snoco.org/proptax/(hh4pdxz2hm5ifmalbt15gzfr)/search.aspx
it's no longer Thompson listed, even if the Downs Family Revocable Living Trust still owns the property. The taxpayer changed 2/16/2016
But remember how Mark Driscoll was approached by Russ Bowen at that house and claimed it was a wrong address? watch the video at about 0:50
http://komonews.com/news/local/mars-hill-pastor-let-go-after-criticizing-church-leader
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/01/so-jimmy-witcher-shared-story-about.html
Okay, so maybe Driscoll lied to Bowen about whether it was the Driscoll house in 2014 before regaling folks at Thrive with tales of the chopper flying above the house and scaring the youngest Driscoll kid. But then technically the house wasn't owned by a financial instrument set up by Mark Driscoll.
In which case that can't be the house that was recently sold, can it? Unless Driscoll referred to the Woodway house "as if" it were his house even though he hasn't formally/legally owned it on paper since 2013. Unless, of course, there's a possibility that the ownership on paper was just that and that the Driscolls and the Fab Five lived in the Woodway house through 2014 in spite of the on paper ownership. Some have proposed that the advantage of having real estate owned in a trust is that it can conceal who really owns/lives at the real estate.
But it certainly wasn't the old real estate at Montlake.
http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=5605000595
The Driscolls sold that back in December 2014 not long after Driscoll resigned.
On the other hand ... Driscoll was preaching at a church in Wenatchee and the Driscolls had a piece of property in Chelan. Perhaps that's the real estate that sold? For those who may not already know, the most widely read post in the history of Wenatchee the Hatchet was a memo that advised Driscoll get a raise to 650k compensation in addition to the 200k housing allowance he already had.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/sutton-turner-memo-recommended-raise.html
So where ever that old house was it might have been just enough of an operational expense it had to go on the market.
Thing is, it doesn't seem like it was necessarily the house in Woodway or the one on Montlake in Seattle.
Maybe the house in Chelan sold? That the Driscolls had a house in Chelan was something mentioned from time to time but not something that seemed worth nailing down in the wake of the more newsworthy development of a resignation.
If it was the Woodway house can someone confirm via a headline that the house got hit by a tree?
because ... it's listed as delisted since 9/2015
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/22300-Woodway-Park-Rd_Woodway_WA_98020_M11949-95685
Throckmorton: Driscoll gives presentation at Grace City Church in Wenatchee, an Acts 29 affiliate, which is a reminder that Acts 29 leadership ejected Mars Hill and requested Mark Driscoll get help to address sin in his life
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/02/22/brief-note-mark-driscoll-on-becoming-a-godly-man/#comment-2529855281
What's been fascinating is that Acts 29 seems to have gone silent about having ever publicly addressed the issue of Mark Driscoll's conduct as pastor at Mars Hill Church. This in spite of the fact that what they had to say in 2014 was easy to document. Now? Scarcely a trace. Well, we'll have to revisit some material
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/acts-29-removes-mars-hill-asks-mark-driscoll-matt-chandler.html
8/8/2014 reporting by Ruth Moon
...
Hoping that "the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored," the Acts 29 church planting network founded by Mark Driscoll has removed the Seattle pastor and his Mars Hill megachurch from membership.
Well that online statement mentioned by Moon is gone. However ... the brief statement can be accessed by way of ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140810083820/http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/a-message-from-the-board-of-acts-29-concerning-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church/
There's a bit more on an expanded form of the announcement over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/acts-29-network-removes-co-founder-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church-from-membership/
Mark,
As the Board of Acts 29, we are grateful to God for the leadership, courage, and generosity of both you and Mars Hill in not only founding the network but also sustaining it through the transition to this board three years ago. The very act of giving away your authority over the network was one of humility and grace, and for that we are grateful.
Over the past three years, our board and network have been the recipients of countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you and what we consider ungodly and disqualifying behavior. We have both publicly and internally tried to support and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when multiple pastors in our network confirmed this behavior. In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter. But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming. [emphasis added]
We now have to take another course of action. Based on the totality of the circumstances, we are now asking you to please step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help. Consequently, we also feel that we have no alternative but to remove you and Mars Hill from membership in Acts 29. Because you are the founder of Acts 29 and a member, we are naturally associated with you and feel that this association discredits the network and is a major distraction.
We tell you this out of love for you, Mars Hill, Acts 29, and most significantly, the cause of Christ, and we would be irresponsible and deeply unloving not to do so in a clear and unequivocal manner. Again, we want you to know that we are eternally thankful for what you as a man and Mars Hill as a church have meant to our network. However, that cannot dissuade us from action. Instead, it gives added significance and importance to our decision.
We hope and pray that you see this decision as the action of men who love you deeply and want you to walk in the light—for your good, the good of your family, and the honor of your Savior. Shortly after sending this, we will be informing the members of Acts 29, your Board of Advisors and Accountability, and your elders, as well as putting out a public statement on the Acts 29 website. It brings us no joy to move forward in this direction, and we trust that the Lord will be at work in all of this. [emphasis added]
In sorrow and with hope,
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
So if the executive level leadership of Acts 29 said "X" couldn't it be construed that McPherson has said "not X" by featuring Driscoll at Grace City Church in Wenatchee?
There's two core questions here.
1) why has Acts 29 become so coy about what they were once so publicly firm about in 2014?
2) if Acts 29 leadership hasn't changed their mind and Acts 29 associates were informed of the reasons to consider Mark Driscoll no longer fit for ministry why did Josh McPherson or associates extend a speaking engagement to Mark Driscoll?
What's been fascinating is that Acts 29 seems to have gone silent about having ever publicly addressed the issue of Mark Driscoll's conduct as pastor at Mars Hill Church. This in spite of the fact that what they had to say in 2014 was easy to document. Now? Scarcely a trace. Well, we'll have to revisit some material
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/acts-29-removes-mars-hill-asks-mark-driscoll-matt-chandler.html
8/8/2014 reporting by Ruth Moon
...
Hoping that "the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored," the Acts 29 church planting network founded by Mark Driscoll has removed the Seattle pastor and his Mars Hill megachurch from membership.
“It is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark and Mars Hill in our network,” said Acts 29 in an online statement signed by Matt Chandler and other board members of the network of 500 churches.
Acts 29 came to the drastic decision "with deep sorrow," according to the statement. "In taking this action, our prayer is that it will encourage the leadership of Mars Hill to respond in a distinctive and godly manner so that the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored."
Well that online statement mentioned by Moon is gone. However ... the brief statement can be accessed by way of ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140810083820/http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/a-message-from-the-board-of-acts-29-concerning-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church/
A Message from the Board of Acts 29 concerning Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church
It is with deep sorrow that the Acts 29 Network announces its decision to remove Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from membership in the network. Mark and the Elders of Mars Hill have been informed of the decision, along with the reasons for removal. It is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark and Mars Hill in our network. [emphasis added] In taking this action, our prayer is that it will encourage the leadership of Mars Hill to respond in a distinctive and godly manner so that the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored.
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
There's a bit more on an expanded form of the announcement over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/acts-29-network-removes-co-founder-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church-from-membership/
Mark,
As the Board of Acts 29, we are grateful to God for the leadership, courage, and generosity of both you and Mars Hill in not only founding the network but also sustaining it through the transition to this board three years ago. The very act of giving away your authority over the network was one of humility and grace, and for that we are grateful.
Over the past three years, our board and network have been the recipients of countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you and what we consider ungodly and disqualifying behavior. We have both publicly and internally tried to support and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when multiple pastors in our network confirmed this behavior. In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter. But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming. [emphasis added]
We now have to take another course of action. Based on the totality of the circumstances, we are now asking you to please step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help. Consequently, we also feel that we have no alternative but to remove you and Mars Hill from membership in Acts 29. Because you are the founder of Acts 29 and a member, we are naturally associated with you and feel that this association discredits the network and is a major distraction.
We tell you this out of love for you, Mars Hill, Acts 29, and most significantly, the cause of Christ, and we would be irresponsible and deeply unloving not to do so in a clear and unequivocal manner. Again, we want you to know that we are eternally thankful for what you as a man and Mars Hill as a church have meant to our network. However, that cannot dissuade us from action. Instead, it gives added significance and importance to our decision.
We hope and pray that you see this decision as the action of men who love you deeply and want you to walk in the light—for your good, the good of your family, and the honor of your Savior. Shortly after sending this, we will be informing the members of Acts 29, your Board of Advisors and Accountability, and your elders, as well as putting out a public statement on the Acts 29 website. It brings us no joy to move forward in this direction, and we trust that the Lord will be at work in all of this. [emphasis added]
In sorrow and with hope,
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
So if the executive level leadership of Acts 29 said "X" couldn't it be construed that McPherson has said "not X" by featuring Driscoll at Grace City Church in Wenatchee?
There's two core questions here.
1) why has Acts 29 become so coy about what they were once so publicly firm about in 2014?
2) if Acts 29 leadership hasn't changed their mind and Acts 29 associates were informed of the reasons to consider Mark Driscoll no longer fit for ministry why did Josh McPherson or associates extend a speaking engagement to Mark Driscoll?
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