Super Blue Blood Moon-NASA
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals
As we approach August, I wanted to tell you all know that things will be a bit crazy for the coming month. My daughter is being married in Duke Chapel on August 14th. In the last week of the month, we will finally be able to take our rail trip to Switzerland which was canceled last year due to COVID. Thankfully, we have found folks to live at our house to care for the pugs as well as to look in on my 92-year-old mother. Next week, she will probably be admitted to the hospital to take care of some issues she’s experiencing. She wants to get better to dance at my daughter’s wedding. I will do my very best to keep up with the blog and interesting news. Yesterday, I had a procedure yesterday on my back and the sedation hit me pretty hard. It usually doesn’t so we decided to go to the beach for a couple of days to rest up. I have listened to these podcasts that I’m suggesting. I have recently been getting more into podcasts while I’m working around the house. I can assure you that you will find these interesting.
The Rise and Fall of Mark Driscoll produced by Christianity Today.
There are five episodes that can be found at this link. There are more to come.
This has been getting quite a lot of play on social media. I have some disagreements with their assessments. The one that might be good to think about is this. Do you think that because so many people got saved and baptized at Marks Hill, Seattle, that the good outweighs the bad?
Inside the Driscoll “Cult” Part I
I have really enjoyed listening to this discussion. Here is a link to The Roys Report podcast :
The cultic activities of Mark Driscoll and The Trinity Church have escalated to a whole new level. As Julie’s guests describe on this edition of The Roys Report, Driscoll is now sending cease and desist letters, threatening to sue whistleblowers. And the threat is not in vain. Driscoll reportedly has amassed a $10 million dollar litigation fund to sue whistleblowers into oblivion.
Despite this, two men cannot remain silent. And on this edition of The Roys Report, they’ll tell you the stories Mark Driscoll doesn’t want you to hear.
You’ll hear about a couple who reported their concerns about a staff member violating child safety protocols, who were then abruptly kicked out of the church the same day. You’ll hear about Mark’s abusive behavior towards his staff behind closed doors—and the “yes men” who take it. And you’ll hear about the paranoid claims Driscoll makes about his days at Mars Hill, claiming people were trying to kill him and members of his family, and that’s why they all have PTSD.
Inside the Driscoll “Cult” Part II -Roys Report
Here is a link to this podcast.
On this edition of The Roys Report, Chad Freese, the former head of security at The Trinity Church, and his former colleague, Ben Eneas, reveal more details about the cult of personality and family business that Driscoll has cultivated.
In a bizarre example, Chad and Ben share how staff members, and even church parishioners, are covertly rated on their loyalty to Mark Driscoll. They also give a behind-the-scenes look at the Christian executive who runs the business operations at the church—and the crazy things he instructs church staff to do.
Two families are divided due to the marriages of their children. (Roys Report)
The next two articles are not podcasts but they give more in-depth looks at the apparently bizarre behavior of Mark and Grace Driscoll. I used to leave Grace Driscoll out of my discussions due to my concern that she needed to support her husband due to their children. As the kids are growing up, I now believe that Grace is behind her husband 100%. So I now add her name into posts about hubby.
In-Laws of Mark Driscoll’s Children & Key Pastor: ‘Cultic’ Church Is Dividing Families
Todd and Janna Davis used to be close with their daughter and son-in-law, Lanna and Brandon Andersen, and the family’s four children.But that was before Brandon Andersen became Mark Driscoll’s right-hand man and campus pastor at Driscoll’s new church in Scottsdale, Arizona—The Trinity Church.
…Now, like many who don’t rate high enough on Driscoll’s loyalty rating scale, the couple says they’ve been deemed “toxic” and “unsafe.”
Likewise, Doug and Pauline Chase are estranged from their son and daughter-in-law. Their son, Landon Chase is a Trinity pastor who’s married to Mark and Grace Driscoll’s oldest child, Ashley.
Mark Driscoll’s Demand for Loyalty Divides Daughter-in-Law’s Family
In 2007, when Jolie Monea first considered attending Mars Hill Church—Mark Driscoll’s former church in Seattle—her friends “heavily warned” against it. They said Driscoll was “misogynistic” and his sermons would be triggering. But Monea recalls thinking, “We have five kids. They have five kids—how bad could it be? Like, he’s a dad.”
Now 14 years later, Monea’s daughter, Chloe, is married to Mark and Grace Driscoll’s son, Zac Driscoll. And Monea has a drastically different perspective.
She says Mark Driscoll’s cult-like demand for loyalty has driven a wedge in her family. Simply because Monea associated with a family that had been kicked out of Driscoll’s new church, The Trinity Church, her daughter and son-in-law severed their relationships with Monea, her husband, and their four other kids.
I’m sure these stories and podcasts will be deeply disturbing. So, take it in stride. I cannot imagine being a member of Mark Driscoll’s church.
Also, I want to thank Dee Homes who faithfully protest outside his church on Sundays.
Yup… real Christ like behavior…..sighh… I am sooo glad work in the heathen, secular world….
“Do you think that because so many people got saved and baptized at Mars Hill, Seattle, that the good outweighs the bad?” (Dee)
An SBC-YRR church planter near me posted “Baptizing next Sunday! Sign up on Facebook!” This was the same “pastor” who essentially mocked communion by saying “I bought the cheapest grape juice and crackers I could find at WalMart. Grab some on the way out!” (“Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!” shouts the carnival barker)
Another cool mega-preacher in my area baptized 400 one Sunday a few years ago using inflatable swimming pools on the church parking lot. It was a real party atmosphere. (sidenote: he was removed from the pulpit shortly after that extravaganza due to moral failure)
Call me and ole fogey, but there’s something about these techniques that seem insincere and irreverent.
“Do you think that because so many people got saved & baptized at Marks Hill, Seattle, that the good outweighs the bad?”
God used a donkey (Numbers 22), however, I’d never follow a donkey around, etc. Also, no need to banish donkeys. They can return to pasture, or whatever. See the donkey for what it is & move on. Sticking with God, the real deal, the whole point. The donkey part is irrelevant. No golden donkeys.
“Do you think that because so many people got saved and baptized at Mars Hill, Seattle, that the good outweighs the bad?” (Dee)
When the bad outweighs the good:
“In ‘that day’ many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we preach in your name … and do many great things in your name?’ Then I shall tell them plainly, ‘I have never known you. Go away from me, you have worked on the side of evil!’” (Matthew 7:22-23)
There is also this podcast series:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/who-killed-mars-hill-church-mark-driscoll-rise-fall.html
Excellent. Thx! Jesus always cut to the chase.
Congratulations of joy on your daughter’s wedding, Dee! So very happy for you!
So sorry for the pain you’re experiencing. Rotten. The Switzerland train trip is a great thing to dream about.
I really want to hear details!
It’s taken a few weeks to catch up the swamp of podcasting happening about MHC lately because I am not a podcast listener under normal circumstances. I did listen to ep 5 and it felt like it just scratched the surface of a lot of material that didn’t fit in perhaps as much because quoting Driscoll’s writing isn’t as podcast-fit as audio clips.
Cosper’s proposal that the “how dare you rant” won Mark a book deal and that all five performances were probably scripted out or planned word for word seems plausible. I had bailed on MHC by 2009 but I heard the clip and it did seem stagey. Anyway … now that I’ve sort of caught up to podcast stuff I have provided supplemental reading to the count of 10,000 words.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2021/07/supplemental-reading-for-those-who.html
Yay for weddings and dancing grandmas! Tell her to leave the high heels at home. My husband’s grandma broke her hip while dancing at our wedding because she forgot to change into flats after the photos.
Yes, Dee, elastigirl stated how we all feel. Joy for you. Prayers for the pain. And Godspeed on your Suisse séjour. God bless!
WenatcheeTheHatchet,
The line that comes to mind as I read your blog material is, “When people tell you what they are, believe them.”
Dee,
I prayed just now for a quick recovery, that the back pain will pass and you can enjoy your time at the beach … as well as the upcoming wedding and your mother’s dance performance there, after they tune her up at the hospital.
Anticipating a train ride through Switzerland beats thinking about Driscoll!
Jeffrey Chalmers,
problem is these days the ‘cultic’ and bizarre goings-on in the ‘Christian’ world draw more attention to the ‘crazies’ than to Our Lord Himself,
and the result is that the young walk away
I think the ‘yes men’ and those who ‘just want to be entertained’ at Church need a good swift kick in the rear for their part in the discouragement of the young who walk away from that which they perceive to be unChrist-like. People reap what they sow. The praise and pandering to a narcissistic autocratic bully is a form of idolatry, which increases the destructive tendencies of the bully.
Personality cults and idolatry play no part in the Christian world where the model is ‘the servant-leader’ whose humility is real and is able to draw people to Christ.
The church culture that Driscoll created while at Mars Hill/Acts 29 is still alive and well through thousands of Driscollites. His rotten legacy lives on through them. Do the saved and baptized number at Mars Hill outweigh the number of these bad-boys and their impact in pulpits around America? Do those ‘perhaps’ ushered into Heaven by Driscoll outnumber the sons of Hell he unleashed on the church?
Wild Honey,
That’s awful! I hope she recovered. Broken hips are tough on the elderly.
Max,
You are so kind! Yeah, Driscoll is a drag. I thought he would sink into oblivion. I was totally wrong.
christiane,
Well said
Max,
Max, you hit the nail on the head with this verse…
i have heard “bad boy” behavior justified for years like this, but always thought about this verse and similar ones…. yet so many that justify “bad boy” behavior claim they are so “biblical”
In fact, I will go as far as saying that the more a “ preacher/org” claims they are “biblically based” the more they are “selectively” “biblically based”
Just look at how many “featured” individuals on TWW should not be in their position of leadership if the “biblical qualifications” of a leader were followed!!!
So was I. I did not expect that he’d be able to add to his followers using COVID-19 and opening up when other churches were holding services online. I didn’t feel comfortable protesting until I was vaccinated and even now, it’s still “mask up” time, because even if I get a mild illness, I surely do not want to bring it home to my elderly mother, who has COPD.
And then there’s the heat! Last Sunday was a gift–72 degrees, overcast, threatening rain. In Scottsdale. In JULY. Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be low 90s and sunny by church time. Not great conditions, but I’m prepared.
Just a reminder to people–this is not about doctrine, just like Scientology was not about doctrine. It is about behavior. No pastor should be siccing the cops on an “enemy family”. No pastor should be spending money on a PI to tail said family. No pastor should be spending big bucks to have cease and desist letters sent to former attendees. Oh yeah, Mark’s outfit HAS NO MEMBERS. That’s probably how he justifies using the cops, the PI and the legal system against his enemies. Typical.
I posted this over at Warren’s blog, but it’s appropriate here as well. Driscoll has gotten quite rich off the churchy business.
Tying a couple of recent TWW topics together, Driscoll is still listed as a 9Marx author:
https://www.9marks.org/by-author/mark-driscoll/
And a Desiring God author:
https://www.desiringgod.org/authors/mark-driscoll
And a TGC author (but they apparently pulled all of his material):
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/mark-driscoll/
Driscoll and others have established on the record he had a number of jobs besides being a preacher. I quoted this blog post from someone who knew Mark before he was better-known
http://alternate-readings.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-does-mark-driscoll-hate-most.html
“When I first met Driscoll he was clerking in a bookstore in Greenwood (North Seattle). I had heard about him. … ”
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/10/mark-driscoll-in-2001-sermon-on.html
Driscoll shared in a sermon how when he was in high school he did longshore work and claimed to have falsified his birthdate to get work. He has also claimed to have worked as a professional journalist but as best I can tell having a stipend for writing op-eds for the WSU college newspaper was not exactly being a professional journalist.
So Mark’s job history has been pretty well-attested as including more than preaching for decades.
Driscoll ain’t the only one who’s gotten rich off of the Jeezus Racket.
The list is almost as long as an FBI list of prohibition gangsters.
… of a cult of personality + following.
Apropos quotes & article from @ruthbenghiat (we can ignore the political stuff while she has a good take on the personality cult):
“Yet cults of personality can flourish in a variety of … contexts, as long as there is a charismatic leader and a coherent media strategy.”
“They are about an emotional tie that is forged between the leader and his followers. For this reason, they can be hard to grasp for those not making the connection.”
“these men have mastered the double appeal that is essential to cults of personality. They advertise their wealth and glamour, but connect with people as populists, using language full of earthy sayings, insults, coarse and broad humor”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trumps-cult-of-per_b_8992650
“these men have mastered the double appeal that is essential to cults of personality. They advertise their wealth and glamour, but connect with people as populists, using language full of earthy sayings, insults, coarse and broad humor” @ruthbenghiat
the double appeal: elite so send me your money, but like you with “earthy” talk
Good. Then he has work experience to get another job other than ministry when he ‘finally’ quits the pastor charade … but probably wouldn’t pay as well.
A bad penny always turns up.
As I’ve said before, actors would have no stage if it weren’t for an audience willing to buy tickets to the show. Driscoll is in the pulpit because of gullible folks in the pew.
“The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love to have it so! But what will you do when the end comes?” (Jeremiah 5:31)
While I have compassion for Dee’s upcoming, challenging situations, it just those “life issues”, and her willingness to express them, and work through them on this blog, that gives her more credibility…. and why(conjecture here) Max and I, and others, are “troubled” by churches run by 20 something “boys”….. that do not even have the compassion to visit those in hospitals…
Honestly, openly, living through the “challenges of life”, gives one valuable perspectives….. I have nothing against youth, in fact it is fundamental to challenge the “status quo”, just that it needs to balanced with hard earned scars and burn marks of a life fully lived….
Spoken at a graduation ceremony: “This is your dumbest day of the rest of your life. Each day you’ll mature and become wiser. Go for it.”
Lived life.
Driscoll used to claim via joke that sometimes he wished he could be a bread delivery truck driver. A friend of mine I met at MHC who left in 2007 and resigned his eldership candidacy because of what he saw there once told me, “You know, it’s not too late for Mark to go actually be that bread delivery truck driver he joked he wanted to be.”
*drily* but he got rich from preaching. I am not jumping all over you WTH but we can’t minimize that the guy’s job for half his life and 25 of the 32 years of his adult life has been preaching.
I did a lot of things before I lucked into technology at the end of the 1990s. Waitressing, childcare, library work, lawyer, bookstore manager, various temp jobs, before I went to work at the evil too big to fail financial institution. Mark started Mars Hill Church when he was 26 years old, in 1996. By comparison, I was in my late 30s when I lucked into the financial institution at the end of the 1990s. He’s spent more time as a preacher than I’ve spent at the financial institution, and he’s a decade younger than me.
In other words, most of Mark’s work life has been as a church pastor. Me? It’s only been in the last third or so of my life that I’ve been in technology. I am holding to the position that his primary work for the last quarter century has been preaching, and that is where his wealth has come from.
He’s a preacher, he’s been a preacher since Clinton’s second term, let’s not minimize that.
Churches with pastors in their 20s-30s with an “elder” team in their 20s-30s have accidents waiting to happen. Much of the SBC now is run by the youth group!!
Lots of Wartburgers (if not all of them) hope he gets his dream job soon.
Gosh, I forgot being the girl in the booth at the carwash, beer pourer at the pizza parlor because I was the only person over 18, and service desk person at two department stores. This is what happens when you have a 45 year work history.
My varied work experience included a stint during college years working at a meat-packing company. Believe me, you don’t want to know what goes in bologna! (I guess this thread sorta goes with the piece on Driscoll – he’s full of baloney)
Great research!
Side note, I know, but I recently finished reading ‘Running With Sherman’ (an impulse purchase at REI); Sherman is a terribly neglected donkey who gets a 2nd chance at life. I didn’t know there were donkey-human races in the mountains of CO and other places! But the book makes it clear that donkeys are very opinionated creatures, though interesting stories about how good some of them have been with an autistic child.
readingalong,
LOL. Thx!
Researcher, scholar, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University @ruthbenghiat notes, about the “bad boy” antics:
“Here’s the trick to cults of personality: the leader has to embody the people but also stand above them. He must appear ordinary, to allow people to relate to him. And yet he must also be seen as extraordinary, so that people will grant him permission to be the arbiter of their individual and … [group] destiny.”
“For instance, they’re not about likeability. Leaders with cults of personality are usually aggressive. They keep audiences on edge with their outbursts and unpredictability. They create a bond that goes beyond agreeing with ideas and policies: people simply want a part of this person.”
“They advertise their wealth and glamour, but connect with people as populists, using language full of earthy sayings, insults, coarse and broad humor…”
———-
IOW, the I’m-great-leader: “Follow the Great One here [not Jesus] for your best chance in the afterglow, the shadow of My Greatness.”
revisiting the influence of Doug Wilson on Driscoll by way of a few notes on a fun little new book by Crawford Gribben on survivalism and theonomy in the PNW. I dare say it’s a must-read for anyone who wants to try to understand Mars Hill as part of a larger cultural pattern, even if Driscoll openly poured contempt on theonomy in his 2006 book.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-crawford-gribben-inspired-proposal.html
Thx for the dots and connections. Systems.
Rupert Murdoch now owns Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, so there’s that.
Ava Aaronson,
Very interesting….
Ava Aaronson,
???
He’s no preacher. Him and his family run a con job cult. And a lot of the cash came from Mars Hill.
No one can stop those that enable his psychopathy. I feel bad for families that get sucked into his clown show.
I’ve seen time and again and again and again how so much money is made and squandered in religion and have grown to intensely dislike church.
In Canada, the RC Church has been playing games with what they promised to pay indigenous residential school survivors while building a 25 million dollar cathedral in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. And they commited to fund raising money from their congregations. Like they have no cash? These organizations don’t pay taxes!
Mark Driscoll wears his red flag like a cape, but other church organizations cloak their rot in “righteousness”.
Even my wife (who is a very devout Christian) has ceased tithing. She’s giving it directly to charity now. Not sure she’ll be going back to church when as restrictions lift.
There’s a reason the North American demographic is shifting away from religion, it takes so much but gives so little back.
Jesus really has left the building, and it seems he’s gone into hiding.
Maybe he’s in a “witness” protection program.
It’s time for me to take a hiatus on reading about this stuff.
Too negative and there seems to be no solution in sight.
Muslin, fka Dee Holmes,
I’m not minimizing Driscoll’s decades as a preacher, but I was at Mars Hill for about nine years and have observed Driscoll and his defenders for about 22 years and broad claims that can be easily contested don’t inspire Driscoll defenders to rethink their loyalties. If you say he’s been a preacher his whole adult life that’s an easily disprovable claim and as Driscoll defenders commenting at Throckmorton’s blog continue to show, pedantic and hair-splitting technicalities are part of how they stay committed. Someone will say the BoAA absolved Driscoll and then quote Throckmorton as proof but ignore that Throckmorton also published that Tripp resigned from the BoAA saying it was incapable of doing what it was supposed to do as well as publishing Tripp’s comment that Mars Hill was the most coercive ministry culture he’d ever seen.
I have been proposing that even to say Driscoll has been a preacher risks presuming that a clear historical account of how and why anyone found him fit for ministry besides himself. He half-joked that he ordained himself. if 41 former elders say he’s unfit and he finds a single fanboy podcast listener who claimed to have a vision Mark was starting a church with his family Mark reveals thereby that he has a spectacular double standard where 41 of his former co-pastors testifying against his fitness for ministry is nothing compared to he and his wife claiming God released them and hearing from some random fanboy that it was time to start over. Driscoll continually reveals that he wields standards to judge others he ostentatiously feels no obligation to adhere to himself. But it’s not enough to just “say” that, proving it through primary document statements can help people potentially see that the greatest witness against Mark Driscoll’s credibility over the last twenty-six years has ultimately been himself.
Would it be better if I say that Mark Driscoll has been grifting in the religious racket for longer (26 years) than I’ve been working at the evil too big to fail bank (23 years). Ironically, my employer has a number of government agencies overseeing its activities, as opposed to Driscoll’s nearly complete lack of supervision.
No accountability = total control = total disregard for the way church is supposed to operate = accident waiting to happen
“Residential Schools” like the archaeological dig sites for mass graves?
(facepalm) Talk about clueless…
Like fundraising to rebuild St Peter’s in Rome some 500 years ago?
Is Selling Indulgences back on the table or something?
“You cross land and sea to make one convert, and when you du you make him twice the Child of Hell as yourself!”
— some Rabbi from Nazareth
That dynamic explains the Celebrity appeal and approach of both Mark Driscoll and Donald Trump.
And there’s not much distance between the religious and political versions of that dynamic. A follower can easily switch between the religious and political or merge them into one.
“Everything You Never Wanted to Learn About Mark Driscoll”
Yeah, like, I wish I had never learned about Mark Driscoll! … or John Piper … or the New Calvinist movement! But they are here and we have to deal with them or ignore them … IMO, the Church of the Living God can’t afford to do the latter.
That’s them.
I don’t know about indulgences but the fundraising hasn’t done much. Says a lot about what the congregations think about it.
The Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians apologized for their part and paid compensation (hence they are not currently in the news).
But whether we’re talking Mark Driscoll or Pope Francis, church leaders are universally failing. And they are taking their organizations with them.
Is christianity going to vanish? No. There’s always going to be true believers but it may turn into a shadow of itself. Fragmented organizations with no relevance. Grandpa’s or grandma’s thing.
Already, many mainline Lutheran and Anglican churches are going up for sale in our area.
Mega churches shouldn’t be so smug either, how many former attendees will be back now they’ve had a taste of freedom from church? How many will stay home Sunday and save 10%?
You may have Jesus without church but new followers will be thin on the ground.
A whole lot of personal Jesus’s – as if sectarian differences between organizations wasn’t fun enough.
Both of them give the mob what they want.
A scapegoat for their ills (real or imagined).
“Country in depression,
Nation in despair
One man seeking reasons everywhere
Growing hate and anger,
The Führer’s orders were precise:
Who was to be blamed and pay the price?”
— Sabaton, “Final Solution”
Ever since the terms “The Cabal” and “The Deep State” surfaced, I pegged them as the latest Code Words for “The JOOZ”.
There isn’t anything the Devil hates worse than Women and Jews.
Woman, because it was her genome that the Almighty chose to bring himself into this world, and the Jews because they were the vehicle he used to produce the least damaged ovum from the Fall.
He’d have done a lot less damage if he had.
During my time in-country (roughly the mid-1970s) the most common way of referring to God was “The LORD”. “Common” as in I hardly remember anything else, especially in the early 70s.
Almost like the “Lord, Lord, Lord” referenced above.
Some even pronounced it in ALL-CAPS with Multiple “O”s, which sounded more ridiculous than anything else.
“Do you think that because so many people got saved and baptized at Marks Hill, Seattle, that the good outweighs the bad?”
An interesting question. I wonder if it is the wrong question, though. If you say yes, that might lead to a utilitarianism that says we should do bad so that good comes. If you say no, that runs the risk of questioning God’s providence and ability to bring good from evil.
Honestly, I’m not sure how to answer. I guess I can be glad for any good that resulted in spite of Driscoll while noting that just because God can draw straight lines with crooked pencils, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to make the pencils as straight as we can.
I do think that the podcast is too quick to say some good came of Mars Hill.