37. Mark Driscoll: Is He Qualified To Lead?

I have been contemplating a particular potential post for this blog for quite some time, and I was actually going to call it this title here, but someone else beat me to it. The following is taken from another site and hit the topic from a more comprehensive and somewhat different angle than I was going to. But that’s okay because I still have an alternative title in the wings with which to address the issues/Scriptures and Driscoll from the approach I had been thinking of.

Anyway, I have abridged this article as much as I could but still it is long because the author covers so many significant and grievous points regarding: Driscoll’s lack of solid biblical exegesis, his chauvinism and/or misogyny, his obsession with sex and especially smut, his flaunting of such, his efforts to come off as a macho he-man, non-chickified dude (and creating Christ in his own image), his immaturity, etc…

I have run into some macho and apparently hierarchical (chauvinistic) types here and on other sites who apparently think I have no sense of humor which, according to them, explains why some of the Driscoll quotes below offended me… Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that. Actually, I find it quite shocking and terribly disheartening that any man would find any of this funny. I would like to ask these men (and others like them), “Would you consider Driscoll quite as cute and entertaining if he were saying these things about your mother? your sister? your girlfriend? your wife? your daughter? Would it be so harmless and even humorous then?

All of the following is from Cathy Michel’s article, Mark Driscoll: Is He Qualified to Lead?

Mark Driscoll: Is He Qualified To Lead?

Friday, January 16, 2009 Guest Blogger: Cathy Mickels lives in Seattle and is the co-author of Spiritual Junk Food: The Dumbing Down of Christian Youth

Summary and Introduction

This memo is written to Christian leaders detailing my concerns regarding the ministry of Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. His church has grown to 6,000 members in 11 years and is also described as one of the fastest growing, innovative churches in America.

Because this ministry is characterized by so many examples of the trivialization of Scripture, crudeness, foolish talk and vulgarity it will be a challenge to keep my correspondence as brief as possible.

Research leads me to concur with Pastor John MacArthur, who has also said, “I have a great concern about him. [Mark Driscoll.]”

…Since Mark Driscoll has proven time and time again that he handles God’s Word carelessly, why is Mark Driscoll a highlighted speaker at The Gospel Coalition’s 2009 National Convention? It is all the more disturbing knowing Driscoll will be speaking on “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.” Why are evangelical leaders, such as John Piper, willing to overlook his crudity and excuse the fact that at the expense of God’s Word, Mark Driscoll distorts and twists Scripture as if it were material for a stand-up comedian? http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/about

…Throughout the history of the church, vulgarity and playing fast and loose with Scripture would have immediately been identified as falsehood, error, or a serious character flaw. However, for some reason, today many in the Church are compromising and excusing ungodly behavior coming from the pulpit…

I submit that this ministry attacks the integrity of Scripture, the character of Christ, and feeds the sensual, worldly heart of man. Therefore, out of love for Mark Driscoll and the Body of Christ, there needs to be close examination and scrutiny of this ministry. 3

Rewriting Scripture from a secular script

In Genesis 3… in the story of Adam and Eve, Driscoll throws out a suggestive, sensual idea about Eve that I guess Mark thinks will amuse his male audience. He says “…God creates a perfect woman who is beautiful, sinless, and naked,- the same kind of woman every guy ever since has been looking for.” (The Radical Reformission, pg.28.)

…[Driscoll] undermines the seriousness of the messages of Jeremiah, a prophet of God, by describing him as someone “who cries like a newly crowned beauty queen all the time.” He laughs at Noah for getting drunk and ending up naked in his tent, and then compares him to “some redneck on vacation.” Why would Driscoll find amusement or pleasure in seeing Noah’s dignity reduced or undermined?…

Perverting the character of Christ

Scripture states, “….out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”, which makes it puzzling to hear or read what flippantly comes out of the mouth of Mark Driscoll. For the sake of a laugh, it appears nothing is off limits.

[The following paragraph is in regards to Song of Solomon 2:3, “I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste,” which Mark declares must be about a woman giving oral sex to a man:]

… At the expense of the reputation of Christ, Driscoll flippantly joked regarding those who differ with him on the interpretation of this book. Driscoll asserted, [that some say] “ ‘Well the allegorical interpretation, it’s not between a husband and a wife, Song of Solomon, love and romance and intimacy; what it is, it’s about us and Jesus.’ Really?… I hope not…If I get to heaven and this goes down, I don’t know what I’m gonna do…. I mean it’s gonna be a bad day. Right? I mean seriously…’You dudes know what I’m talking about… You’re like, “No, I’m not doing that… You know I’m not doing that… I love Him [Jesus] but not like that.” What was the response of the congregants? They laughed. (Excerpts from Driscoll’s first sermon on the Song of Solomon series called, “The Peasant Princess” – start at 27:15)

This lack of respect can also be seen in Driscoll’s irreverent account of Jesus’ family in his book Vintage Jesus. He writes, “Jesus’ mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was often mocked for claiming she conceived by the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted the crazy story to cover the fact she was knocking boots with some guy in the back seat of a car at the prom.

In a Christianity Today article titled, “A Jesus for Real Men,” Driscoll is quoted as saying that “real men” avoid the church because it projects a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ.” However, according to Driscoll, “real men” – like Jesus, Paul, and John the Baptists- are “dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes.” The article states this is the sort of Christ men are drawn to- what Driscoll calls “Ultimate Fighting Jesus.” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/27.48.html

But, Jesus is not a dude, He is a King. In the words of A.W. Tozer, Christ is being “courted with a familiarity that reveals a total ignorance of who He is. It is not the reverent intimacy of the adoring saint but the impudent familiarity of a carnal lover.” Mark Driscoll may think these images and descriptions of Christ play well in edgy Seattle, but they are a figment of his imagination, not the Word of God.

“If then I am the Father, Where is my honor? And if I am the master, ‘Where is My reverence?’ says the Lord of Host.”
Malachi 1:6

Feeding the sensual tastes of man

The mind is the battleground, but in the case of Mark Driscoll, instead of protecting the mind against the crudity and vulgarity of the world, he intentionally uses it. For example, Driscoll appears to have discovered early on that sex sells and that he could use it to draw a crowd. He writes, “I assumed the students and singles were all pretty horny, so I went out on a limb and preached through the Song of Songs. ….Each week I extolled the virtues of marriage, foreplay, oral sex, sacred stripping, and sex outdoors, just as the book teaches…This helped us a lot because apparently a pastor using words like ‘penis’ and ‘oral sex’ is unusual, and before you could say “aluminum pole in the bedroom,” attendance began to climb steadily to more than two hundred people a week.” Even the title of his new book, Porn-Again Christian, is case in point of distorting the words of Christ in order to grab the attention of guys to read it.

It is also curious that in spite of Mark Driscoll’s acknowledgement that many of the young men at Mars Hill struggle with pornography, Mark would intentionally and frequently plant himself in a barbershop filled with pornography. In his own words, Mark describes his barbershop as “providing the finest selection of waiting area pornography in our city.” But, isn’t the word “finest” a rather odd way of describing perverted material?

…Similarly, Mark’s response to a phone call he received in the middle of the night from a young man also raises questions regarding his choice of words and judgment. Driscoll writes that [some college guy called him, crying. He tried to pretend like he cared]. Mark blurted out, “What have you done?” When the caller confessed he had watched porno and masturbated, Driscoll actually asked the upset caller, “Was it good porno?…” …According to Driscoll, the caller was still left unclear about what he was suppose to do, so in Driscoll style, he told the caller, “…..A naked lady is good to look at, so get a job, get a wife, ask her to get naked, and look at her instead.” What message is Mark Driscoll sending to unmarried, young men by his crude, disrespectful remarks about women?

In another one of Driscoll’s church stories, he tells about a time of exhaustion when he snapped at the young men at his church. Describing them as a chronic masturbator, a porn addict, banging weak-willed girls like a screen door in a stiff breeze, etc., Mark says he cussed out a poor guy, losing his mind to the point that he thinks he actually cuffed him upside the head. In a follow-up meeting, he preached to the young men about manhood, but then, in my opinion, he snapped again.

According to Mark, his explanation for getting their act together was “….because you can’t charge hell with your pants around your ankles, a bottle of lotion in one hand, and a kleenex in the other.” He concluded the meeting by handing “each man two stones and told them that on this day God was giving them their balls back to get the courage to do kingdom work.” As a result, Mars Hill began having “boot camps” for men, teaching them how to get a wife, have sex with that wife, ….buy a house…study the Bible…and brew decent beer.”

In fact, regarding Mars Hill’s worship leader, Mark describes him as a manly man, who brews his own beer. Mark says he was impressed with his worship leader because “most of the worship dudes I have heard are not very dudely…they seem to be….exceedingly chickified from …..singing prom songs to Jesus.”

…Why would he detail the story about the attractive woman at the airport who offered him what Driscoll describes as her “impressive” “sexual favors”? It is also curious why Mark would use the language he does to describe this woman, whom Mark says was “Hot….like hell.” (Confessions of a Reformission Rev, pg. 128.)

Instead of a pastor spiritually lifting the Body of Christ up to a higher standard, Mark is dragging the Church through the gutter. As the prophet Jeremiah lamented, my people “… were not at all ashamed, Nor did they know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15, 8:12)

The far-reaching influence of Mark Driscoll

…Apparently, whether it is sex or bragging about how “tough” it was for him to preach on Lake Washington with frat guys “mooning my [his] church” with “a backdrop of their hairy heinies,” or describing the “well-endowed young women passing by on a boat, lifting up their shirts,” or detailing his gross account of “messing my[his] pants while preaching with the stomach flu,” Driscoll seems to go to any length to create interest in his books and his ministry. …This is the language and conduct of a child, not a man ready for the pulpit. (Confessions of a Reformission Rev, pg. 88, and 176-177).

…[An] Anglican director… says, “…[Driscoll has] made conservative Christianity almost sexy, which is a most astonishing thing.” I also noticed on Driscoll’s Acts 29 website the comment that even church planting can be “sexy.”

Conclusion

…[MacArthur noted] Driscoll has an “infatuation with the vulgar aspects of contemporary society…”

…It is a mockery of the Christian faith to have Mark Driscoll speak on the topic of “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.”

According to MacArthur Study Bible, rightly dividing the word of truth means “cutting it straight – a reference to the exactness demanded by such trades as carpentry, masonry….Precision and accuracy are required in biblical interpretation …” Why?… Because when we are handling the holy Word of God, nothing less is acceptable.

What comes out of the mouth of Mark Driscoll, and how he handles Scripture is not only shameful, but also an embarrassment to the Body of Christ. Regardless of Mark Driscoll’s ability to deliver a serious presentation of the gospel message, and draw people in off the streets of Seattle, something is spiritually unhealthy and wrong with this ministry. Based on the concerns raised by others and the questions raised in this memo, it is all the more confusing that evangelical leaders are excusing the conduct and teachings of Mark Driscoll.

It is the opinion of this writer that there needs to be a close examination of this ministry. Mark Driscoll is undermining biblical and historical Christianity, and lacks the wisdom, discernment and maturity to lead. If the church cannot see it, we are further down the downgrade than we think.

“Likewise urge the young men to be sensible; in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.” Titus 2:6

Further viewing/reading (viewer warning advisory):

Mark Driscoll on “Biblical Oral Sex” (YouTube)
Mark Driscoll on “Masturbation as Birth Control (YouTube)

http://thechristianworldview.com/tcwblog/archives/1640

pulled 6/29/09

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36. Mark Driscoll, Who Do You Say That I Am?

This is who Jesus says I am… This is who the Bible says I am… What say you?

…And, are half of His precious human creation to continue to be harassed, demeaned and oppressed by you and the men you train?

I pray to God that you and “your men” fall on your knees, repent hard and heavy, and answer, “No more. The abuse of God’s precious women stops here, and it stops now, in the name of Christ, Amen!”

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30. Driscoll’s Questionable Words & Behaviors, Lollytruly’s Blog

The following is from lollytruly’s blogspot. It highlights some of the specifics regarding Driscoll’s behavior and words which many, like myself, take to be abusive and non-representative of the character and heart of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The following also fleshes out the sad reality that those who point out abuse in an abusive system become THE problem, while the issue of the abuse and the abuser are swept under the carpet.

http://lollytruly.blogspot.com/search?q=mark+driscoll

Friday, February 20, 2009

…My head is beginning to feel peaceful again after the Mark Driscoll stuff a couple days ago. Crying painfully helps you heal if you process everything while you’re doing it. That’s another fun fact I’ve learned in therapy, that weeping mends you and you have to go there if you’re going to heal from it. I don’t mean for that to be TMI but I think being open can be really good. Makes me think of this quote – “It is important to tell our secrets too because … it makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.” — Frederick Buechner
http://lollytruly.blogspot.com/2009/02/dave-eggers-karl-rove-together-again.html

5/30/09

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

it’s not a dead horse and it’s worth beating. let’s not lose hope

Here is a letter from a little over two years ago, written by Shari MacDonald Strong whom I subsequently made friends with because of her character, insight and gentleness. In this she writes about the protest of Mars Hill in Seattle on Dec 3.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Why On Earth Would I Want to Picket a Church? More on the Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill Seattle Action

To: Mark Driscoll
Mars Hill Elders and Deacons
Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Seattle Times

As a Christian woman who is planning to participate in the planned December 3 protest at Mars Hill, I wanted to write to explain my reasons for wanting to do so and to share my concerns about some of Mr. Driscoll’s recent teachings and writings.

Let me start by saying, I appreciate Mr. Driscoll’s recent blog post, in which he amends his previous blog entry about the Ted Haggard affair and about the dangers of pastor’s wives “letting themselves go.” In particular, I am grateful for the gentle tone of the post. I believe that if this were the tone that he was known for, there would not be this current firestorm of emotion around his teachings.

It was the Ted Haggard post that brought Mr. Driscoll’s teachings most recently to my attention. However, I live on the West coast and have heard of him before. I know both that Mark Driscoll is a very powerful man and that many, many people – a large percentage of which are women – have left Mars Hill Church and sometimes the larger church as a result of Mr. Driscoll’s teachings. I also have heard that many people have sought therapy after leaving Mars Hill, as a result of the damage done by his teachings. That last statement, of course, is based on hearsay, so I went online to read some of Mr. Driscoll’s writings and to listen to some sermons. In addition to the comments about women “letting themselves go,” here is some of what I encountered (in random order):

• Derogatory comments made regularly and consistently about people who disagree with Mr. Driscoll’s theology, labeling them not only wrong or liberal, but “wussified,” “#######,” “chickified,” and “effeminate” (e.g., “if the Christ you serve is just a really nice guy – I hate to tell you, but you serve a weak, effeminate, ####### Christ”).

• Stating/implying that men are the only demographic that matters:
The question is: “If you want to be innovative, how do you get young men?” All this nonsense about how to grow the church – one issue: young men. That’s it – that’s the whole thing. They’re going to get married, make money, make babies, build companies, buy real estate; they’re going to make the culture of the future. If you get the young men you win the war – you get everything; you get the families, the women, the children, the money the business: you get everything. If you don’t get the young men you get nothing.

• Calling strong women who disagree with his interpretation of Scripture “godless” and saying the Bible has “a low opinion” of them:
If it’s a godly woman who has a godly agenda who has something godly to say, then she can speak. If she’s an ungodly woman with a godless feminist agenda that she borrowed from the serpent, like her mother Eve in Genesis 3, and she’s on some tirade mission to represent all women, which is what sometimes happens, women nominate themselves to represent all women…But there are women who will rise up like that, saying “I speak for all women. I champion women’s rights. I champion women’s causes” (sarcastically). We say, that’s not a problem if it’s in accordance with the rights and liberties and dignities that are afforded to a woman in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t have a low view of women. It just has a low view of some women.”

• “…women who don’t respect godly authority are demonic.”

• Rather than Mr. Driscoll simply saying that he disagrees with the lifestyles of young men who work in coffee shops and suggesting an alternative or challenging them, he makes fun of them. He uses shame to get men to do what he wants, calling them “chickified,” “limp-wristed,” “#####,” “#######.”

• More mocking of women who disagree with him, painting women who have opinions as “hot-headed” and “emotional,” and more implications that God doesn’t like these women:
“some women think they can do everything on their own” and that if men sit by idly like cowards because they don’t want to get into with with their hot-headed, emotional, wives, eventually the women will take over the church, and then the church will go to hell.”

• Undermining women’s efforts to hold him accountable for his words, implying that the raising of theological questions by a woman is the same thing as them calling the Bible “ridiculous,” and calling the squelching of a woman’s intellect and voice “sexy”:“Does it say, “Ladies, don’t have any questions”? Does it say that? No. Does it say, “Ladies, don’t disagree.” No. Does it say, “Ladies, don’t think for yourself.” When you disagree, when you’re super-theological, when you’re all fired up, the first thing you don’t do is start yellin’ at the pastor and yellin’ at the church, firin’ nasty e-mails, and declarin’ war and puttin’ together a, a, little group of, you know, feminist women with guns who are gonna make a difference.”
If you’re married, you go talk to who? Your husband. You say, “Sweetheart, I was readin’ The Bible, I think it’s ridiculous.” And he would say, “We should probably talk.” “Honey I was readin’ the Bible, I don’t understand.” He should say, “Let’s, let’s study that together. Let’s take some time, and study — together. Now some of you will protest and say, “THAT is SEXIST!” As a married man, I will tell you, it is sexy. That’s what it is. There is nothin’ hotter than a wife with a great new testament, commentaries, concordances, and questions. That is theological foreplay. It’s awesome. Because now you’re connecting at the level of then heart and the soul and god is honoring of that.”

There is more, but I believe I’ve more than made my point. Frankly, I am upset, I am concerned, I am angry, and I am embarrassed to belong to the same religion as Mark Driscoll. I am deeply offended – not by God, but by Mark Driscoll. If I believed that Mr. Driscoll’s words and attitude were reflective of the God of Christianity, I would walk away from Christianity altogether. I read at least one report of a former Mars Hill member who has. Unfortunately, as the Christian religion writer for the Seattle Times, in addition to his other roles, Mark does for many represent the face of Christianity. As that representative, he is showing the world a religion that is mean-spirited and unkind, one that depends upon mockery and shame, ######### and disrespect, smugness and name-calling to make its points.

…Again, I appreciate Mr. Driscoll’s clarifying blog post about the Haggard situation, although I wish he had said “I’m sorry, I was wrong” instead of simply saying he’d been “misconstrued.” Mr. Driscoll should apologize publicly for all the things referenced above, for the mean, flippant attitude with which he is attempting to deliver the gospel.

In the original, offending blog post, Mr. Driscoll wrote: “At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness…” If he realized that the post would make him “more despised,” then why say something he already has recognized as being despicable? …
Yet Mark Driscoll continues to deliver messages filled with meanness and sarcasm and mockery of those who have different opinions or theological positions, and the congregation laughs whenever he does this. Who is holding him accountable? Who, among the Acts 29 community and/or Mars Hill, is talking with him about this, saying: “Mark, you can’t be this mean. This has to stop”?

I realize that I am exactly the type of strong-willed, opinionated woman that Mark Driscoll believes to be “an ungodly woman with a godless feminist agenda that she borrowed from the serpent, like her mother Eve in Genesis 3.” I do have an opinion about this matter (though I don’t have that pushup bra he accused all feminists of having), and I feel it is my responsibility to stand up and say something. Mr. Driscoll will likely see this letter as fitting his example of those “super-theological,” “fired up” “feminist women with guns who are gonna make a difference.” I admit, I do hope to make some difference in this situation (no gun, though); unfortunately, I don’t really expect this letter to change his heart.

I am, however, appealing to those surrounding him: Please listen. Please understand that Mark Driscoll’s teachings and his harsh, unkind, mocking words are hurting women and hurting the church. Please set up some form of accountability (or, if one exists, a stronger form of accountability). Ask him to get some therapy. … Listen to his sermons with a discerning ear and hold him accountable for what he’s teaching; if the tone of the above comments continues, remove him from leadership. Ask him to apologize, publicly. Most importantly of all, please set up some kind of information-seeking group within the church to hear the stories of people who have been hurt by Mr. Driscoll and his teachings – and be willing to act upon what you learn.

You have the power to do something about this. All I have is the power to write this letter. And to stand outside the church, holding a sign. Which is why I still plan to attend the protest on December 3. This isn’t an attempt to be divisive and it isn’t an attempt to persecute anyone, as some Mars Hill members have claimed. It’s simply an attempt to say: “Somebody please do something. Please stop this.” The question is: Are you listening?

Sincerely,

Shari MacDonald Strong

Posted by stephy at 9:03 AM 44 comments

Comments to Shari’s letter:

February 17, 2009 1:05 PM

A. [to another commenter] This is not a matter of scriptural interpretation. It’s a matter of your fellow sister in Christ feeling spiritually abused. We can be skeptical and hard-headed (i.e. “Let’s not fight and argue about who killed who”–monty python), or we can honor the fact that Shari spoke passionately into the chaos while others sat idly by and accepted Marks words at face value because he has a degree and a pulpit.

February 17, 2009 1:31 PM

Shari

B. How sad that so few people feel safe enough within the evangelical church to stand up and say that something abusive or unkind is transpiring, and how sad that this is the nearly universal response when they do.

Powerful men never fail to have their defenders. Let me tell you how many Acts 29 folks, Driscoll fans, Christian leaders, or others contacted me after this letter was posted widely on the internet, to find out more about how Mark Driscoll was hurting women and whether or not something should be done about it: zero.

If Mark Driscoll (and pastors like him, and I’ve known many) hadn’t driven me away from the evangelical church, responses like this (and a widespread lack of caring about fair/respectful treatment of women within the church) would have.

The evangelical church is perfectly capable of greater kindness and understanding. But until people actually give a crap about the people who get hurt (women, in particular) and want to know more about how and why they’re hurting, it will remain the same sort of self-satisfied, lifeless social club that Jesus had hoped to transform.

February 17, 2009 6:25 PM

Shari

…C. Thanks so much for your words, L. The fact that anyone would read Driscoll’s words and would not only not renounce them, but would instead point the finger at someone who is raising a red flag of warning, utterly dumbfounds me. The fact that an entire city, and the larger evangelical community, has little concern about the damage Driscoll is doing in the name of Jesus, breaks my heart.

February 17, 2009 7:03 PM

D.  Dear Shari MacD,

…I like what you said about addressing abusive behavior, and how so many people are afraid to stand up and fight against it. I believe that this because it’s been masked as being OK, simply because it’s being delivered by a man who’s been “called” to preach. (Or have been given a pulpit, like David said.)

We (read: women) are not brought up in our society to question men. I spent a lot of years letting male pastors tell me how to live, and it hasn’t done me much good.

If the percentages are anywhere near accurate, there are a shit ton of women who are living in abusive marriages, and sitting in his congregation every week, slowly going crazier and crazier, with no one to call out to that is stronger than the sadistic, mysogynistic God that Driscoll idealizes. The tragedy in all of this is that, while “young men” are given priority and cuts in line, women continue to live in the belief that what Driscoll says, goes.

But Driscoll’s god is a flimsy imitation of the one who honors the woman, the mother, the sister, as much as he wants to [supposedly] bestow all the power and glory upon the heads of young, middle class men.

February 17, 2009 9:45 PM

Shari

E. Thank you, M. I don’t think you wish me ill, and I appreciate you saying so. It just makes me incredibly sad and discouraged that the most common response in the church (in my experience, and in many others’) to those of us who point out areas or patterns of unhealthy/abusive/hurtful behavior, is to place the blame on us for speaking up.

The fact is, Mark Driscoll has harmed a lot of people, and he is delivering hate speech from one of the biggest and most influential pulpits on the west coast. (If you simply go online and listen to his podcasts, you’ll find evidence of this in abundance.) The reality is, a lot of people have gone to Mark Driscoll in exactly the scriptural manner you describe, and it hasn’t helped a bit, because he doesn’t listen, and he just keeps getting nastier. (I know one woman who went with her husband to talk with Mark Driscoll about some of his teachings. When she gently but firmly challenged him on a point, Mark Driscoll refused to speak with her, turned to her husband and said something to the effect of, “If you don’t shut your wife up, I will.” This is typical behavior for him.)

My letter was from two years ago. I believed then that a protest (which I wasn’t organizing, but did support) was the right thing to do because something needed to be done, and the Christians around Mark Driscoll weren’t doing anything to support those who had been hurt, to deal with Driscoll’s behavior, or even to find out more about what was happening and whether action of any kind needed to be taken. My letter was, as I explained at the time, not a personal attack; it was simply an attempt to get people to notice what has been happening at Mars Hill, to look into things more closely, and to hold Mark Driscoll accountable for his words and actions. Why did I think it was the Christian thing to do? Because Jesus was a defender of the harmed, the persecuted, the weak, the maligned, the attacked. Who has been more harmed, persecuted, weakened, maligned, or attacked in the church than women — and especially women who have tried to have a voice?

I honestly don’t care what Mark Driscoll believes, except to the degree that he thinks those beliefs give him the right to mock, disparage, shame, and humiliate people — including, but not limited to, people like me. Ideally, it would be the people around him who would be gently challenging him to be a loving person, and to be his best self. Sadly, I stopped holding my breath for that to happen a long time ago.

Again, I appreciate the clarification. And I just want you to please consider that, when someone stands up to authority — in the church, and elsewhere — it may just be for a good reason. And it is certainly fine to question that person’s position — but I would hope that you would question the other side just as much. As you said, you don’t know me and you don’t know Mark Driscoll. The question then is, why (of the two of us) is he the one who got the benefit of the doubt? I don’t suggest that you answer that question here, or for me. But it is a question that I wish all the people who’ve defended Mark Driscoll, and/or have turned a deaf ear to those of us who are concerned, would ask themselves.

February 18, 2009 9:44 AM

…F. Why can’t we just take a sermon at face value and agree to disagree? Is this Driscoll guy being any more chauvinistic than the apostle Paul? And who cares? Why can’t we just disagree and be independent thinkers? Why do we have to call it abuse and check ourselves into therapy? Maybe because we’re making our pastors out to be gods.

If you think Driscoll is a douche, than stop giving him your money and leave!!!

Self-victimization is a children’s tool. We need to grow up.

February 18, 2009 10:08 AM

Shari

G. P.S. Why can’t we take a sermon at face value and agree to disagree? Spoken like a middle-class privileged white man in a society ruled by middle-class privileged white men who never get made fun of from the pulpit by middle-class privileged white men in power. If you were the one being mocked, shamed, and disparaged by “spiritual authority” on a regular basis — or if you actually cared for a moment about someone who was — you might just feel differently.

February 18, 2009 11:15 AM

H. You’re far more brave than I am on confronting spiritual abuse. I don’t know what I told you about the church I grew up in, but there was a HUGE divide created by our (then) Pastor, Richard Frazier, similar to this Driscoll kerfuffle. My father was one of the first to speak out against Richard Frazier and because of that was alienated for a long time in the church community and even had his life threatened at gunpoint (true story) by one of Frazier’s supporters. God-like? No. Thug-like? Yes.

The long and the short of it was many people (including my family) believed Frazier was spiritually abusing the congregation, which, I think goes without saying, involved a lot of emotional abuse. And as emotional abuse goes, some yearn for it because it is all they know while others want better. (Plato’s allegory of The Cave?) My father is a very calm man and was wanting so much to ignite discussion and not the screaming mess that came about prior to Frazier finally being run out of town. We’re still healing as a spiritual family… I think it’s commendable that Shari speak up about Mars Hill. There’s a lot of abusive leaders in the church that need to be called out.

February 18, 2009 5:34 PM

Shari

…I. …All you did was position chauvinism as biblical and defend people who hurt others and who refuse to acknowledge that pain or change their behavior — yet you were more than happy to rail at me for raising a red flag and to, essentially, call me a childish whiner. You can’t bait people with comments like yours and then shame them for getting pissed off.

For the record, getting angry about people mistreating other people isn’t throwing a tantrum. It’s just being a decent human being.

May 30, 2009

I don’t know that anyone will follow a comment here this late in the game, but I just came upon this…

In abusive systems, or in the minds of those who are threatened by even acknowledging the reality of the abuse and thus the moral responsibility to actually DO something about it, the one who points out the red flag, the one who, like Shari, says, “Hey, the emperor has no clothes,” becomes THE problem, THE enemy, THE issue.

And Shari, you are so right, you, or anyone else who dares to speak out, becomes the target at a carnival (and it is a madhouse– like a carnival’s house of mirrors, that which is reflected back at you, that which comes at you–when you do speak out).

So, for what it’s worth, I have a site about Mars Hill and what I consider to be church/spiritual abuse coming from that system and from Driscoll.

freedom4captives.wordpress.com

I am copying part of Shari’s letter and some of the comments here to my blog, not using the commenter’s names. But since Shari’s letter is public, I am using her name.

For freedom, truth and love!

Freedom

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8092454655191120011&postID=7836966978931762613&page=1

5/30/09

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27. Whether Bill Gothard or Mark Driscoll, Similar Patterns of Stringent Authoritarianism & Spiritual Abuse

As you go through this article, see if you can find any similarities between Gothard’s characteristics and tactics and those of Driscoll’s.

The Blinding and Binding Teachings of Bill Gothard

Book review by Paul Sue

A Matter of Basic Principles: Bill Gothard & the Christian Life by Don Veinot, Joy Veinot, Ron Henzel. 21st Century Press, 2002.

It’s probably safe to say that most Christians in North America have heard of or have even attended one of Gothard’s seminars. Because of the popularity and mass appeal of Gothard’s ministry, attempting to question it or criticize it is to face the wrath and anathema of the legion of loyal (blindly loyal in some cases) fans. Gothardites get angry and defensive when you question their beloved leader’s teachings or integrity, as if he is somehow beyond reproach or accountability. To such die-hard supporters, this book will, I’m sad to say, do little to sway them from their steadfast adherence to Gothardism: a case of the blind leading the blind (though you still should encourage them to read this excellent book and pray for them!).

However, for those who are open-minded, willing to study the Scriptures for themselves, and willing to engage in calm discussion without resorting to name calling and angry rhetoric, this book can help them find true freedom in Christ. It is fairly written, well-researched (includes meeting with Gothard on a number of occasions), carefully reasoned, and endorsed by well known seminary professors, apologists, cult researchers and pastors. The authors have demonstrated charity and forbearance towards Mr. Gothard and his staff, both in personal meetings and in their correspondence. Gothard on the other hand, has broken promises, resorted to stonewalling, spread misinformation, threatened lawsuits, and generally not acted in a biblical and loving manner.

The authors are with Midwest Christian Outreach, “a non-denominational, evangelical organization that exists to intelligently present and compassionately defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ, especially to those who consciously reject it due to false beliefs, and to challenge and equip believing Christians to do the same.”

The book begins with a brief overview of the historical developments of the American religious milieu to set the background for the genesis of Gothard’s Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (now IBLP, Institute in Basic Life Principles). The authors do praise Gothard’s early and humble efforts to reach the troubled youth of the turbulent 60’s. Parents obviously appreciated Gothard’s teachings as an antidote to the rebellious anti-authoritarian attitudes of the hippie culture, and soon his seminar attendance swelled, and unfortunately, so did Gothard’s head. Already in his early days of ministry, he was accused of “spiritual pride” (p. 42), though at the time he was humble enough to confess it.

However, as his ministry continued to grow, problems began to emerge as well. In the mid-70’s, Bill Gothard’s brother (who was at the time the vice-president of the ministry), was involved in sexual misconduct with several ministry employees, though Bill chose not to deal with it. The scandal finally came out into the open in 1980. Dr. Samuel Schultz, professor of OT at Wheaton College and board member since 1965, resigned, stating:

In May 1980 we were shocked to learn of gross immorality that had prevailed for years among the staff under Bill’s supervision as president. Bill failed to share this information with the board nor did he seek their counsel. By the end of that year it became apparent that Bill continued his authoritarian style of leadership, dismissing those on the board as well as staff who disagreed with him. Consequently I found it necessary to resign.

Earlier, Gothard himself had indecent contact with some of his female staff, and “admitted in staff meetings that these actions were ‘moral failures’ on his part.” (p. 54). I think the biblical term is “sin”, not just “moral failures”. However, the authors are not trying to be sensationalistic, but rather, simply pointing out Bill’s style of leadership, especially his reluctance to deal with matters in a timely and biblical fashion, his dogmatism and authoritarianism, his lack of integrity, and his increasing tendency towards a legalistic reading of the Bible. With respect to the latter point, Bill Gothard’s penchant for taking passages out of context, and his misunderstanding of basic hermeneutical principles have resulted in an assortment of bizarre and aberrational teachings that have alarmed many in the evangelical community. Dr. Ronald Allen, Professor of Bible Exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, attended a Gothard seminar in 1973 and wrote of his experience:

In this seminar, I was regularly assaulted by the misuse of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament, on a level that I have never experienced in a public ministry before that time (or since). (p. 64)

Dr. Allen has tried unsuccessfully for over 20 years to meet Bill Gothard:

Although Dr. Allen extended to Gothard for over twenty years the offer to meet anywhere at anytime at his own expense if necessary, including lunch or dinner, no meeting was forthcoming. Bill Gothard steadfastly refused to meet with Dr. Allen … (p. 66)

This reflects Bill Gothard’s staunch refusal to be corrected or to be held accountable, his consistent trademark throughout his career. Instead of answering his critics’ concerns, he insinuates that his opponents don’t have the special insight into Scripture that he has (see page 100). The authors are correct that Gothard has created an “Evangelical Talmud” for Christians, claiming his novel interpretations as binding Biblical commands:

Of course, we are all guilty of misapplying Scripture from time to time. We are taking that into account. The concern we and others have is that, with Gothard, abuse of Scripture happens so frequently and seems to have gotten much worse in recent years. The elevation of his personal opinions to the status of scriptural authority extends into medical advice (Cabbage Patch dolls interfering with the birth of children), adoption (tracing family lineage to bind ancestral demons), and other mystical elements (hedge of thorns, umbrella of authority/protection, sins of the father). (p. 102)

If it was just a matter of academic exercise that we disagree with Gothard’s teachings, one might choose to discount the criticisms. However, harmful teachings can dramatically affect lives, families and churches; in the case of Gothard’s teachings, they have been the cause of much personal trauma, the cause of family breakups, and the source of church divisions. The book gives several examples, including the case of a pastor who Bill wooed away to supposedly begin a new ministry (the story is told on pages 211-223). In the end, “after all of the broken commitments and disillusionment with the ungodly way IBLP was administered” (p. 223), the pastor resigned, having still not received the balance of the money that was owing to him. Oh yeah, did we mentioned the lack of financial integrity of Gothard’s ministry?

In Chapter 8, the authors tell another story, this time of a devoted Gothardite couple, who volunteered to help out with a log cabin program for juvenile delinquents that Gothard was planning. Soon enough, problems arose: it turned out that Gothard’s ministry had failed to comply with state building code regulations. Instead of acknowledging the problem, Gothard adopts his usual strategy of shifting blame, obfuscating the issues, slandering his critics, and accusations of rebelling and fault finding (see the excellent list of Gothard’s conflict resolution style on pages 232-234). How hypocritical for a ministry that preaches “obeying authority” so much, to ignore the authority of the laws of the land! In the end, the couple ended up paying additional expenses out of their own pocket in order to fix the problems due to IBLP’s negligence. In an incredible act of arrogance, dishonesty, and mean-spiritedness, Gothard’s staff “went under the cover of darkness to remove Institute property from the premises. Subsequently, they sent a letter … demanding to the [couple’s] attorney demanding reimbursement for lost income and expenses related to the property.” (pp. 245-246).

Gothard has attempted to bring his legalistic teachings into all areas of life. Indeed, one can now submit all aspects of one’s life under the umbrella of Bill Gothard’s absolute authority: use of cosmetics, clothing, beards, sleep schedules, homeschooling, courtship and marriage, and even medical advice (see Chapter 10, Bill Gothard – Medicine Man).

What emerges as one reads the book, is the unbendable, unquestionable authority that Gothard wields over his staff and his dutiful followers. The total lack of accountability and resistance to correction also characterizes Gothard’s “ministry”. Ironically, in light of what he teaches, Mr. Gothard does not exhibit a teachable spirit; one notes a total lack of references to other books and scholars in his published materials. While this may give an impression of spirituality (“we let the Bible speak for itself”) that appeals to certain minds that are distrustful of biblical scholarship, it actually reflects a “Lone Ranger we know-it-all” attitude. Even when it comes to scripture verses, Gothard seems to use the KJV only, even when other translations could help clarify the meaning.

Furthermore, Gothard has a simplistic and reductionistic approach to the Christian life. He has managed to reduce biblical discipleship into a number of “non-optional” life principles. It is striking that Gothard’s teachings are totally devoid or deficient of grace. His perspective on the Bible is legalistic and moralistic, not the Christo-centric or cruciformic viewpoint that Paul expounds. There is little teaching of the empowering presence of the Spirit to enable us to live godly lives. This is a very significant point: grace, Christ, the Spirit and the cross figure very little in Gothard’s scheme for Christian living. Gothard perhaps needs to take note of Paul’s polemics with the Galatian Judaizers.

We have already made mention of Gothard’s inconsistent and incoherent approach to biblical interpretation. He is guilty of consistently taking verses out of context and prooftexting. He totally disregards the redemptive-historical dimension of Scripture, and reads the Bible “flatly” instead, thereby making all manner of incorrect applications from OT texts. (It is instructive to note how Gothard prefers citing the OT over the NT.) Instead of trying to understand a text in its historical, literary and theological contexts, he searches for aphorisms – and he finds them everywhere!

People will say that we shouldn’t criticize a ministry that seems so successful and has “God’s blessing” on it. First of all, a ministry’s success is not measured according to the world’s standards (i.e. numbers, finances, and glowing testimonies). Secondly, it is presumptuous for us to claim “God’s blessing” on any ministry – we’re not God! We shall all have to await His assessment at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Our goal now is to be faithful to the Word and accountable to one another. Lastly, we are called to be discerning and not to just blindly accept any teaching that comes our way. Even the apostle Paul’s message was scrutinized by the Bereans – and they were commended for doing so (Acts 17:10-12); surely Gothard is not putting himself above the apostle Paul, is he? Questioning or criticizing Gothard’s teachings does not mean we are judging him as a person.

In the book’s Epilogue, the authors explore the issue of leaving an authoritarian or spiritually abusive group and the attendant difficulties involved. They note that:

[p]eople who find themselves in this deep become afraid to point out even serious problems they find along the way. If they recognize some signs of spiritual abuse, hypocrisy, or oppression, their minds tend to reject this input out of fear of reprisal or condemnation for presuming to judge the leader or leaders supposedly anointed or specially anointed by God. They will blame the victim; indeed, they will blame themselves before they will dare to find fault with such a ‘godly’ man as the leader or leaders. This is very common with authoritarian groups.” (p. 315)

Furthermore, Gothard’s strategy is to ignore your questions and concerns and counterattack instead:

Critical questions are not answered in a reasoned fashion. Rather, the response is crafted in such a way as to suggest that questioning itself indicates a rebellious spirit. To question “God’s appointed man” is tantamount to questioning God. This mindset is very difficult to overcome. (p. 316)

The authors go on to list other reasons why people refuse to leave an authoritarian or abusive group, even when the evidence is overwhelming:

• they’ve invested too much (time, money, effort, emotion) in the group and are afraid to leave
• fear of ridicule from others; fear that if they were wrong about the group, then they have wasted their lives (p. 321)
• fear of catastrophic events if they were to leave the protective umbrella of the group; they’ve been brainwashed into believing that the chain of authority to God goes through their leader (the “fortress/remnant” mentality)
• the people in the group seem so nice
• afraid of being shunned by family and friends, most of whom are in the group (usually people who join authoritarian groups tend to be isolationists)
• afraid of being cut off from God

This book is an important read for all Christians, serving as an warning against legalism, authoritarianism and blind submission to fallible leaders. Furthermore, the book underscores the pressing need for all Christians to be more discerning in an age of biblical illiteracy, theological confusion, and false substitutes for the biblical gospel. It’s not entirely Gothard’s fault though. Church leaders have failed to train Christians to be discerning, by giving them the tools to help them understand the Scriptures for themselves. As I’ve stated elsewhere many times, present church structures help facilitate an unhealthy view of authority and spiritual dependence.

Then too, Christians themselves are partly to blame:

• fascination with novelty (WWJD, Prayer of Jabez or whatever is the latest bestseller or fad)
• laziness (why study the Bible when you can just follow a few “basic life principles”)
• superstition (Cabbage Patch dolls are evil; Proctor & Gamble are satanic)
• sentimentalism (more influenced by Touched By An Angel and Chicken Soup for the Soul than Paul or John)
• moralism (“let’s clean up our nation for God!”)
• desire for a strong authority figure to give moral guidance and sense of security in our wicked society
• attraction to the personality cult (looking for charisma not Christ)

Until churches take seriously the task of equipping their Christians to study the Bible for themselves, and gain a deeper understanding and ability to discern truth from error, they will continue to fall prey to false teaching.

As I put the book down and paused to reflect on what I’ve read, Gothard seems so cartoonish that I felt like laughing – until I recalled the damaged lives and divided families and churches; then I felt like weeping instead.

Note: More information on Bill Gothard is available on Midwest Christian Outreach’s website. There is even an Internet discussion forum dedicated to discussing the teachings of Bill Gothard. For a list of other links on Bill Gothard, please click here.

Here’s another book review and two related articles on Bill Gothard:

• Exegeting Bill Gothard by Rich Poll, Apologia Report
• Who Speaks for the Church? by Eric Landry
• A Response to “Who Speaks for the Church?” by Ron Henzel and Don Veinot

http://www.batteredsheep.com/gothard.html

pulled 5/18/09

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21. New York Times, Who Would Jesus Smack Down? By Molly Worthen

This article has received A LOT of attention, and since I’ve referred to it in previous posts, I thought it only fitting I should include it in its entirety.

Who Would Jesus Smack Down?
Published Jan 6, 2009

Mark Driscoll’s sermons are mostly too racy to post on GodTube, the evangelical Christian “family friendly” video-posting Web site. With titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” his clips do not stand a chance against the site’s content filters. No matter: YouTube is where Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, would rather be. Unsuspecting sinners who type in popular keywords may suddenly find themselves face to face with a husky-voiced preacher in a black skateboarder’s jacket and skull T-shirt. An “Under 17 Requires Adult Permission” warning flashes before the video cuts to evening services at Mars Hill, where an anonymous audience member has just text-messaged a question to the screen onstage: “Pastor Mark, is masturbation a valid form of birth control?”

Driscoll doesn’t miss a beat: “I had one guy quote Ecclesiastes 9:10, which says, ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ ” The audience bursts out laughing. Next Pastor Mark is warning them about lust and exalting the confines of marriage, one hand jammed in his jeans pocket while the other waves his Bible. Even the skeptical viewer must admit that whatever Driscoll’s opinion of certain recreational activities, he has the coolest style and foulest mouth of any preacher you’ve ever seen.

Mark Driscoll is American evangelicalism’s bête noire. In little more than a decade, his ministry has grown from a living-room Bible study to a megachurch that draws about 7,600 visitors to seven campuses around Seattle each Sunday, and his books, blogs and podcasts have made him one of the most admired — and reviled — figures among evangelicals nationwide. Conservatives call Driscoll “the cussing pastor” and wish that he’d trade in his fashionably distressed jeans and taste for indie rock for a suit and tie and placid choral arrangements. Liberals wince at his hellfire theology and insistence that women submit to their husbands. But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

At a time when the once-vaunted unity of the religious right has eroded and the mainstream media is proclaiming an “evangelical crackup,” Driscoll represents a movement to revamp the style and substance of evangelicalism. With his taste for vintage baseball caps and omnipresence on Facebook and iTunes, Driscoll, who is 38, is on the cutting edge of American pop culture. Yet his message seems radically unfashionable, even un-American: you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time. Yet a significant number of young people in Seattle — and nationwide — say this is exactly what they want to hear. Calvinism has somehow become cool, and just as startling, this generally bookish creed has fused with a macho ethos. At Mars Hill, members say their favorite movie isn’t “Amazing Grace” or “The Chronicles of Narnia” — it’s “Fight Club.”

Mars Hill Church is the furthest thing from a Puritan meetinghouse. This is Seattle, and Mars Hill epitomizes the city that spawned it. Headquartered in a converted marine supply store, the church is a boxy gray building near the diesel-infused din of the Ballard Bridge. In the lobby one Sunday not long ago, college kids in jeans — some sporting nose rings or kitchen-sink dye jobs — lounged on ottomans and thumbed text messages to their friends. The front desk, black and slick, looked as if it ought to offer lattes rather than Bibles and membership pamphlets. Buzz-cut and tattooed security guards mumbled into their headpieces and directed the crowd toward the auditorium, where the worship band was warming up for an hour of hymns with Bruce Springsteens’s “Born to Run.”

On that Sunday, Driscoll preached for an hour and 10 minutes — nearly three times longer than most pastors. As hip as he looks, his message brooks no compromise with Seattle’s permissive culture. New members can keep their taste in music, their retro T-shirts and their intimidating facial hair, but they had better abandon their feminism, premarital sex and any “modern” interpretations of the Bible. Driscoll is adamantly not the “weepy worship dude” he associates with liberal and mainstream evangelical churches, “singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”

The oldest of five, son of a union drywaller, Driscoll was raised Roman Catholic in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Seattle. In high school, he met a pretty blond pastor’s daughter named — providentially — Grace. She gave him his first Bible. He read voraciously and was born again at 19. “God talked to me,” Driscoll says. “He told me to marry Grace, preach the Bible, to plant churches and train men.” He married Grace (with whom he now has five children) and, at 25, founded Mars Hill.

God called Driscoll to preach to men — particularly young men — to save them from an American Protestantism that has emasculated Christ and driven men from church pews with praise music that sounds more like boy-band ballads crooned to Jesus than “Onward Christian Soldiers.” What bothers Driscoll — and the growing number of evangelical pastors who agree with him — is not the trope of Jesus-as-lover. After all, St. Paul tells us that the Church is the bride of Christ. What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”

This reaction to the “feminization” of the church is not new. “The Lord save us,” declared the evangelist Billy Sunday in 1916, “from off-handed, flabby-cheeked . . . effeminate, ossified, three-carat Christianity.” In 1990 a group of pastors founded the Promise Keepers ministry dedicated to “igniting and uniting men” who were failing their families and abandoning the church. In recent years, mainstream megachurches — the mammoth pacesetters of American evangelicalism that package Christianity for mass consumption — have been criticized for replacing hard-edged Gospel with feminized pablum. According to Ed Stetzer, the director of LifeWay Research, a Southern Baptist religious polling organization, Mars Hill is “a reaction to the atheological, consumer-driven nature of the modern evangelical machine.”

The “modern evangelical machine” is a product of the 1970s and ’80s, when a new generation of business-savvy pastors developed strategies to reach unbelievers turned off by traditional worship and evangelization. Their approach was “seeker sensitive”: upon learning that many people didn’t go in for stained glass and steeples, these pastors made their churches look like shopping malls. Complex theology intimidated the curious, and talk of damnation alienated potential converts — so they played down doctrine in favor of upbeat, practical teachings on the Christian life.

These megachurches, like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston and Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, have come to symbolize American evangelicalism. By any quantitative measure they are wildly successful, and their values and methods have diffused into the evangelical bloodstream. Yet some megachurches have begun to admit what critics maintained all along: numbers are not everything. In the fall of 2007, leaders of Willow Creek sent shockwaves through the evangelical world when they announced the results of a study in which churchgoers reported feeling stagnant in their faith and frustrated with slick, program-driven pastors. “As an evangelical, I would say this tells us something,” Stetzer says. “The center is not holding.”

Mars Hill has not entirely dispensed with megachurch marketing tactics. Its success in one of the most liberal and least-churched cities in America depends on being sensitive to the body-pierced and latte-drinking seekers of Seattle. Ultimately, however, Driscoll’s theology means that his congregants’ salvation is not in his hands. It’s not in their own hands, either — this is the heart of Calvinism.
Human beings are totally corrupted by original sin and predestined for heaven or hell, no matter their earthly conduct. We all deserve eternal damnation, but God, in his inscrutable mercy, has granted the grace of salvation to an elect few. While John Calvin’s 16th-century doctrines have deep roots in Christian tradition, they strike many modern evangelicals as nonsensical and even un-Christian. If predestination is true, they argue, then there is no point in missions to the unsaved or in leading a godly life. And some babies who die in infancy — if God placed them among the reprobate — go straight to hell with the rest of the damned, to “glorify his name by their own destruction,” as Calvin wrote. Since the early 19th century, most evangelicals have preferred a theology that stresses the believer’s free decision to accept God’s grace. To be born again is a choice God wants you to make; if you so choose, Jesus will be your personal friend.

Yet Driscoll is not an isolated eccentric. Over the past two decades, preachers in places as far-flung as Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., in denominations ranging from Baptist to Pentecostal, are pushing “this new, aggressive, mission-minded Calvinism that really believes Calvinism is a transcript of the Gospel,” according to Roger Olson, a professor of theology at Baylor University. They have harnessed the Internet to recruit new believers, especially young people. Any curious seeker can find his way into a world of sermon podcasts and treatises by the Protestant Reformers and English Puritans, whose abstruse writings, though far from best-selling, are enjoying something of a renaissance. New converts stay in touch via blogs and Facebook groups with names like “John Calvin Is My Homeboy” and “Calvinism: The Group That Chooses You.”

New Calvinists are still relatively few in number, but that doesn’t bother them: being a persecuted minority proves you are among the elect. They are not “the next big thing” but a protest movement, defying an evangelical mainstream that, they believe, has gone soft on sin and has watered down the Gospel into a glorified self-help program. In part, Calvinism appeals because — like Mars Hill’s music and Driscoll’s frank sermons — the message is raw and disconcerting: seeker insensitive.

Most people who attend Mars Hill do not see themselves as theological radicals. Mark Driscoll is just “Pastor Mark,” not the New Calvinist warrior demonized on evangelical and liberal blogs. Yet while some initially come for mundane reasons — their friends attend; they like the music — the Calvinist theology is often the glue that keeps them in their seats. They call the preaching “authentic” and “true to life.” Traditional evangelical theology falls apart in the face of real tragedy, says the 20-year-old Brett Harris, who runs an evangelical teen blog with his twin brother, Alex. Reducing God to a projection of our own wishes trivializes divine sovereignty and fails to explain how both good and evil have a place in the divine plan. “There are plenty of comfortable people who can say, ‘God’s on my side,’ ” Harris says. “But they couldn’t turn around and say, ‘God gave me cancer.’ ”

Though they believe that God has already mapped out their lives, Calvinists have always been activists. Ye shall know the elect by their fruits, not by their passive acceptance of fate. When it comes to wrestling with life’s challenges, however, they reject the “positive thinking” ethos that Norman Vincent Peale made famous in the 1950s. That philosophy still dominates the Christian self-help market in books like “Your Best Life Now” by Joel Osteen, which promises readers that everything from a Hawaiian vacation house to a beauty-pageant crown is within their grasp if only they “develop a can-do attitude.” Marianne Esterly, a women’s counselor at Mars Hill, says she tries to help women resist the desperation that can come with forgetting that man’s chief end is to glorify God, not to obsess over earthly problems. “They worship the trauma, or the anorexia, and that’s not what they’re designed to worship,” she says. “Christian self-help doesn’t work. We can’t do anything. It’s all the work of Christ.”

Calvinism is a theology predicated on paradox: God has predestined every human being’s actions, yet we are still to blame for our sins; we are totally depraved, yet held to the impossible standard of divine law. These teachings do not jibe with Enlightenment ideas about human capacity, yet they have appealed to a wide range of modern intellectuals, especially those who stressed the dangers of human hubris in the wake of World War I.

Driscoll found his way into this tradition largely on his own. He recently earned a master’s degree through an independent-study program he arranged at a seminary in Portland, Ore. Years ago, paperback reprints of old Puritan treatises in the corner of a local bookstore piqued his interest in Reformation theology. He came to admire Martin Luther, the vulgar, beer-swilling theological rebel who sparked the Reformation. “I found him to be something of a mentor,” Driscoll says. “I didn’t have all the baggage he did. But you can see him with a quill in one hand and a drink in the other. He married a brewer and renegade nun. His story is kind of indie rock.”

Driscoll disdains the prohibitions of traditional evangelical Christianity. Taboos on alcohol, smoking, swearing and violent movies have done much to shape American Protestant culture — a culture that he has called the domain of “chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists.” Moreover, the Bible tells him that to seek salvation by self-righteous clean living is to behave like a Pharisee. Unlike fundamentalists who isolate themselves, creating “a separate culture where you live in a Christian cul-de-sac,” as one spiky-haired member named Andrew Pack puts it, Mars Hillians pride themselves on friendships with non-Christians. They tend to be cultural activists who play in rock bands and care about the arts, living out a long Reformed tradition that asserts Christ’s mandate over every corner of creation.

Like many New Calvinists, Driscoll advocates traditional gender roles, called “complementarianism” in theological parlance. Men and women are “equal spiritually, and it’s a difference of functionality, not intrinsic worth,” says Danielle Blazer, a 34-year-old Mars Hill member. Women may work outside the home, but they must submit to their husbands, and they are forbidden from taking on preaching roles in the church.

“It’s only since women have been in church leadership that this backlash has come,” says the Seattle pastor Katie Ladd, a liberal Methodist who holds that declaring Jesus a “masculine dude” subverts the transformative message of the Gospel. But New Calvinists argue that traditional gender roles are true to the Bible, especially the letters of Paul. Moreover, embedded in the notion of Adam as the “federal head” of the human race is the idea of man as head of the home.

Nowhere is the connection between Driscoll’s hypermasculinity and his Calvinist theology clearer than in his refusal to tolerate opposition at Mars Hill. The Reformed tradition’s resistance to compromise and emphasis on the purity of the worshipping community has always contained the seeds of authoritarianism: John Calvin had heretics burned at the stake and made a man who casually criticized him at a dinner party march through the streets of Geneva, kneeling at every intersection to beg forgiveness. Mars Hill is not 16th-century Geneva, but Driscoll has little patience for dissent. In 2007, two elders protested a plan to reorganize the church that, according to critics, consolidated power in the hands of Driscoll and his closest aides. Driscoll told the congregation that he asked advice on how to handle stubborn subordinates from a “mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighter, good guy” who attends Mars Hill. “His answer was brilliant,” Driscoll reported. “He said, ‘I break their nose.’ ” When one of the renegade elders refused to repent, the church leadership ordered members to shun him. One member complained on an online message board and instantly found his membership privileges suspended. “They are sinning through questioning,” Driscoll preached. John Calvin couldn’t have said it better himself.

Most members, however, didn’t join Mars Hill in order to ask questions. Damon Conklin, who is 41 and runs a tattoo parlor, says he joined Mars Hill because Driscoll made his life make sense — and didn’t ask him to pretend to be someone he wasn’t. “I decided to stop smoking crack and drinking every day,” Conklin says. “I had to find some kind of God in order to do that.” He hated the churches he visited: “I would show up looking as mean as possible, with my Afro blown out, wearing a wife-beater, and then I’d say, ‘Why don’t they like me?’ Then I went to Mars Hill, and I believed Mark.”

Driscoll’s theology “changed how I view women,” Conklin says. He quit going to strip clubs and now refuses to tattoo others with his old specialty, pinup girls (though he still wears two on one arm, souvenirs from earlier, godless days). Mars Hill counts four of the city’s top tattoo artists among its members (and many of their clientele — that afternoon, Conklin was expecting a fellow church member who wanted a portrait of Christ enthroned across his back). While other churches left people like Conklin feeling alienated, Mars Hill has made them its missionaries. “Some people say, ‘You’re pretty cool and you’re a Christian, so I guess I can’t hate all of them anymore,’ ” he says. “I understand where they’re coming from.”

Mars Hill — with its conservative social teachings embedded in guitar solos and drum riffs, its megachurch presence in the heart of bohemian skepticism — thrives on paradox. Critics on the left and right alike predict that this delicate balance of opposites cannot last. Some are skeptical of a church so bent on staying perpetually “hip”: members have only recently begun to marry and have children, but surely those children will grow up, grow too cool for their cool church and rebel. Others say that Driscoll’s ego and taste for controversy will be Mars Hill’s Achilles’ heel. Lately he has made a concerted effort to tone down his language, and he insists that he has delegated much authority, but the heart of his message has not changed. Driscoll is still the one who gazes down upon Mars Hill’s seven congregations most Sundays, his sermons broadcast from the main campus to jumbo-size projection screens around the city. At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage — until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll’s face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

c. 2009, Molly Worthen, New York Times

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17. Ex-Member MHC, Spiritual Abuse & Mark’s Rise to Fame & Power

The following is an account from Conversations At the Edge by a Former Mars Hill Member. It is sadly very telling and very indicative of the kinds of abuse reported repeatedly by members and mostly former members of MHC.

109 11/11/06 4:57 PM Comment Link

I am also an “ex” member of Mars Hill church. I have been so harmed by this church and by Mark; I have been trying to reach out and get help for how spiritually crippled I have become, so I posted the below letter yesterday on Steve Camp’s blog. Please, please remember me in your prayers. I am obese, and have suffered such shame and humiliation at Mars Hill, that it’s a wonder I have the courage to leave my house at all now. Whoever wrote above that the church is WAY focused on the physical beauty of women is SPOT ON. What is so discouraging to me is that it wasn’t just the church leadership who treated me like a leper (including, btw, Mark’s wife, who is very beautiful), but many of the congregation as well – this is what alarms me, as I realize more and more how many “little Driscolls” are now being raised up there (and sadly, as the other ex member posted, the worst of them are women!). I have tried attending 6 small groups for the church and at every single one was very blatantly shunned for my “gluttony.” The arrogance and rudeness of the leadership is shocking. Ironically, Mark himself was always quite kind to me, way back in the day when the church was young.
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Dear Steve,

Thank you for this post about Mark Driscoll. You raise important points while maintaining a position of grace, which is very instructive to me in my current situation.

I have been a member at Mars Hill church from almost the beginning, and it is time to say my goodbye. I am concerned about several things. Mark has more power than any one pastor should be given. I love him, however over the years I have watched my church evolve into the Church of Mark. Though Mark would never intend this, the church is no longer focused on Jesus of the Bible. It is focused on Mark’s Jesus, Mark’s anecdotes, Mark’s wife, Mark’s children, Mark’s truth.

He has stated several times from the pulpit and on the Member’s forum that though he is not opposed per se to having another pastor preach regularly at Mars Hill, he just has never met another pastor who could fill his shoes. Likewise, a few years ago he told us that he believes himself to be a chosen “apostle.” I believe this is very dangerous: both to a pastor and to a congregation. This thinking inevitably inspires a leader who is larger than life, a Super-Pastor, the vessel of all Truth – while creating a congregation who are unable to think without that pastor’s guidance. In this way, the pastor eventually transcends the congregation’s regard for the Holy Spirit in ministering.

Mark used to regularly, publicly confess to struggling with humility, grace, and legalistic perfectionism. The past few years, I have slowly watched him losing the battle. It grieves me more than I can say. This week, as you are probably aware, Mark’s official response to the Haggard situation was to point out adultery can happen when a pastor’s wife does not keep up her physical appearance and sexual availability. Perhaps this idea has merit and can be explored, but to broach this as a public response to the current scandal displays a woeful and whimsical lack of grace and tact.

Also this last week, Mars Hill laid off several employees due to financial troubles which Mark sternly attributes to an unfaithful congregation. I will not air the dirty laundry in more detail, but I decided once and for all to leave my church when we were informed that they will be releasing a list of members who are not “faithful” givers, in order that they be rebuked within their community groups and come to repentance. A problem with that is that many of us give in cash, myself included, because we do not believe in getting credit from any man or group for our tithes. Also, many who are unable to give substantially give instead in service. Whether they need to come to repentance or not, this issue should remain between Jesus and the believer.

I believe these things are happening because Mark feels extremely empowered by his emerging renown. He is increasingly presenting himself in an unconventional and controversial way in order to further his name. Though he intends to further Christ’s name, the one who is getting the attention here is Mark. Ultimately this is at the expense and detriment of his church body, and it has intensified into a steady crescendo the more famous he becomes.

I believe I can answer your question about what Mark would say if a member were to approach him and say “I don’t like your church, therefore I am going to start my own.” He would say, “Get out, we don’t want your kind here, because we only want those who love Jesus.” In other words, all of us as members know that the ultimate blasphemy is to disagree with Mark. I have seen so many members ousted for simply asking questions, weighing his theology, and inquiring about his often-harsh deliveries — they have been ousted for “not loving Jesus.” We know better than to question Mark, ever. Any question is considered “causing division.” This is unfortunate, given that Mark will no longer talk to members. Years ago, Mark would clear out an afternoon to address the concerns of any one of his flock. Now, even his old friends cannot reach him. Everything is intercepted by assistants and never gets to him. He has become like Elvis: sheltered, a myth, legendary, the King of modern Christendom.

I will close by saying that Mark’s condemnation of any truth but his own has left me spiritually crippled. I now realize that Mark’s Truth, instead of feeding me, has eaten me from the inside out. When there is no room for any reality but one very strong leader’s, when your only choice is to follow him completely, all or nothing, you begin to hear only his voice. After a few years of being required, as a member, to take Mark’s word for everything, I cannot open my Bible. I cannot open it without automatically thinking “I need Mark to tell me what this means.” I cannot open it without seeing a Jesus there who is angry, harsh, who wants to punish me because I don’t love Him enough. The grace and love that I once rejoiced in has slowly been replaced by a solid conviction of condemnation, of never bearing enough fruit to possibly be acceptable to Jesus.

Mark is not a bad man. He is actually a very kind person – in person. But when he gets on that stage, Mark the hipster, the pied piper of all Truth, takes over. Please pray for him, for the congregation of my church, and finally for me. I love Mark as my brother, but I have been very profoundly injured by him. I do believe that God has the power and desire to heal me from the damage that Mark has inadvertently done to me, and I pray for that day to come soon.

http://conversationattheedge.com/2006/11/09/mark-driscoll-and-women/#comment-3499
pulled 2/9/09

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3. Our Experience of MHC Community Group

On Feb 5, two days prior to sending that email out to our friends (post #2), I had journalled about our experience at an MHC Community Group:

Concerns re: Mars Hill Community Groups

Last night we went to our first Mars Hill (church) Community Group. What I appreciated about the group is their warm reception and their apparently very deep commitment to Christ and his Word. This was most refreshing, especially when seen from a group of young people. But I did have some concerns:

1. The group is all 20 somethings (maybe an early 30 here or there)

2. There was much voicing of the Calvinist view as if that is the only biblical view. “I have nothing in me that would have ever even chosen him on my own…” “We’re completely depraved; God hates the unregenerate…” I am not Calvinist, nor do I want to be. Calvinism (salvation is completely dependent upon God’s Sovereignty; if he hasn’t chosen you, you have no choice to choose him and ‘yous goin to hell!’) and Armenianism (if we don’t get these people saved, God can’t do anything to bring them in; it’s all man’s free will) are two extremes to which I’ve given a lot of thought and study over 30 years of being a Christian, and I choose to hold both in tension, as Scripture seems to. God has granted us free will to choose him or not, AND He has chosen us. It’s one of those mysteries, like the Trinity, which cannot be completely explained. Either extreme, hyper-Calvinism or hyper-Armenianism is unbalanced and leaves off many Scriptures which speak to the opposite view

3. There appeared to be a bit of religious spirit, people hesitant to truly admit their struggles because they apparently all want to be seen as walking in obedience to the Lord. I say this because I noticed that several members skirted the issue when asked for a personal response to the Scripture or the question, instead they gave impersonal theological responses. And in my small prayer group of three of us women afterwards, there seemed to be much hesitancy around admitting their struggles and heart’s desires and if anything like that snuck out of their hearts into what they communicated, they quickly glossed it over with, “But I’m surrendering that to the Lord…” or “But those are just human desires…” It was very disturbing to me. It did not feel safe. It did not feel healthy.

4. The prayer groups were separated out by gender! The women were expected to only pray with women and the men with men. This might be refreshing occasionally, but if this is the norm, I wonder why? And I wonder, what are they afraid of? Too much intimacy between men and women? That seems a bit paranoid. In the New Testament I see men and women praying together as the norm. Probably in the Jewish Synagogues where Christian Jews first gathered together for big worship services they were separated out by gender, but not in the house churches!

5. There was a lot of talk about how bad we are, how sinful, how selfish… and although that is true apart from Christ, as Christians in communion with Jesus we do not need to wallow in that and that is not how God sees us in Christ. According to Scripture, although our hearts were once “deceitfully wicked,” he has now given us “new hearts.” I got the feeling it was more holy to talk trash about ourselves and the human condition, apparently forgetting completely that man, born again or not, still carries the imageo dei (admittedly, extremely marred in our fallenness, but NOT obliterated entirely!). One young man went on about how God had the right to just totally obliterate all of us at the snap of his fingers, even now, “that’s it, I’m through with all of you,” he voiced for God. I reminded him, “But he’s engraved us upon the palms of his hands.” What I meant of course is that because Jesus has taken on humanity, permanently, in his physical (and now spiritual) body, God can never do that because he’s taken his own into him; Christ has become a permanent part of humanity and those who are his, that portion of humanity, has become a permanent part of him. But my deeper meaning went over this man’s head. He clearly didn’t get it and stared at me blankly.

6. These are all much younger Christians, which is fine, but we would like to have some who are more seasoned Christians, who have moderated the extremes through trial and error in their walk with God (not trial and error re his clearly revealed absolutes). I wonder if there are not many seasoned Christians at Mars Hill and that is why they swallow so completely EVERYTHING Mark teaches as if HIS words are the gospel?

On the other hand, it felt really nice to fellowship with other very committed and biblically literate or at least biblically devoted Christians.

So Lord, with all of this laid out before you, I need your discernment, your comfort and your guidance.

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