In
recent weeks, many of Mark Driscoll’s sermons have disappeared from the Mars
Hill Church website. On March 19, Wenatchee the Hatchet pointed out the
disappearance of all preaching content before 2008.
Then on Saturday, WtH noted that the spiritual warfare series is now missing.
Some
of these pages figure prominently in various controversies involving Driscoll.
For instance, the page on Driscoll’s study guide on Peter is now missing.
According to a message once posted on that page,
the guide was to be returned to the site after plagiarized sections were
properly sourced. Nothing is there now.
He
once disclosed that he had
the ability to visualize the sins of others in graphic detail. He claimed to
get those visions from God. Those sermons are now missing.
During
a 2007 sermon, Driscoll
famously wished he could “go Old Testament” on a couple of elders. He also told
the story about the fight trainer who kept his fighters in line by busting
their noses. He did not disguise his anger at elders who disagreed with his
direction during those messages. Those sermons are now gone.
On
March 14, Driscoll issued a conciliatory sounding letter
to his congregation. Now Mars Hill appears to be attempting to cover up some of
the issues for which Driscoll claims to be sorry.
Many
people have this material archived so I don’t know what Mars Hill Church hopes
to accomplish. However, this does seem like standard operating procedure when
troubling content comes to light. As I documented here, the
scrubbers at Mars Hill have been busy for a long time.
As
an aside, a week has come and gone since twenty former Mars Hill pastors
asked Mars Hill leaders for mediation. No response has come.
UPDATE3: Christian News Service removed the Lyall Mercer article from the CNS website.
On the other hand, Charisma “News Service” removed all comments and closed the section. Apparently, they really don’t want their readers to know the truth about that article. Honestly, I am pretty surprised about the decision to go with deception over truth.
UPDATE1: Some of the mystery is solved. Russ Jones at Christian News Service wrote with the following information about the article on his site:
This was a PAID news release by Australian-based Mercer PR sent out at 9:30am CST. The owners name is Lyall Mercer.
So apparently Bill Roberts simply took the news release, tweaked it ever so slightly and put his byline on it. The American Copy Editors Society’s book on plagiarism, Telling the Truth and Nothing But addresses this situation on page 12:
UPDATE2: Charisma News let me know that they have changed the byline to Russ Jones (now Charisma changed the byline to “Charisma News Staff“). As we now know, that’s closer but still not right. I think Charisma should just remove the article and apologize for it. At the least, they should change the by-line to Lyall Mercer so readers are aware of the self-serving nature of the piece. (Original post resumes below)
Who really wrote this puffpiece on how beleaguered Mark Driscoll is being attacked by “the enemy within” (AKA Janet Mefferd and the former members and leaders of Mars Hill Church). Is it Bill Roberts or Russ Jones or did Lyall Mercer really write it?
I think the order was CNS first, then Charisma but maybe not. In any case, I wrote both places to ask. Whoever wrote it, it comes across as an advertisement for Lyall Mercer’s curious views on church PR. Remember pastors — who need to be pastors and not celebrities — that the first thing to do when people call you to accountability is to call the PR person to make sure your apologetic messaging will respond strategically to the nasty messengers who bring the facts.
Note to CharismaNews, it certainly isn’t news. A news story would have included commentary from Janet Mefferd and some of the former pastors and members who are going public with their concerns and experiences while at Mars Hill.
Probably the best thing for both places to do is to take the article down and start over with some real journalism.
1. Twenty (20) former Mars Hill pastors seek outside mediation with Mark Driscoll and church leadership. LINK.
According to former Mars Hill pastors Dave Kraft and Kyle Firstenberg, the pastors want to bring in specialists in conflict resolution to facilitate the process.
Dr Throckmorton obtained the following statement from Dave Kraft's website
1. I would (as would countless other former leaders from MHC) like to see Pastor Mark Driscoll publicly acknowledge that he has seen the charges, that they are true and that he will take whatever time and attention is needed to intentionally deal with the charges, which may entail a short sabbatical from work to focus on this.
2. I would like to see Pastor Mark publicly state that he is sorry, that he has sinned, that he will deal with his past sin and make himself accountable in so doing to an unbiased group of leaders who will hold his feet to the fire on this.
2. Mark Driscoll pitches his new project: partnering with Corban University and Western Seminary to offer courses on the Bible at Mars Hill. LINK
TWW hopes that they will first teach the folks how to properly "cite" material for their papers.
3. Former Mars Hill elder Rob Smith starts a group to exonerate fired elders Bent Meyer and Paul Petry LINK and LINK
You can read Bent Meyer's story here and Paul Petry's story here. 4. Another Mars Hill member, Bryan Zug, tells current members to evacuate Mars Hill LINK and LINK
Mars Hill will not be a healthy Gospel Community for at least 2-3 years. It’s time to evacuate it in an orderly manner
5. Wenatchee the Hatchet reports that almost all of the sermons preached by Mark Driscoll before 2008 have been "driscollized" from the website.LINK
The question is why?
If Mark Driscoll wants to apologize for angry stuff he's said and done in the past obliterating the extensive audio and video evidence for what his preaching has been like over about seventeen years hardly seems like a persuasive way to get that job done. If anything it seems dishonest and cowardly to erase any trace of practically the man's entire pastoral career.
If this is supposed to be a sign of getting rid of material from Mark Driscoll's angry young prophet phase 1) Driscoll wasn't exactly a spring chicken even in 2008 and 2) obliterating 70% of Driscoll's preached content over the course of a week is quite a purge, possibly the single largest purge of media content from Mars Hill Church websites in its history.
6. Former Pastor Dave Kraft explains the charges against Mark Driscoll and gets some deserved pushback from former Mars Hill deacon, Rob Smith. LINK
At Dr Throckmorton's website we read about Kraft's charges.
Mark Driscoll’s sin(s) (for many of us who know him and have worked with him) are about clear violations of I Timothy 3, Titus 1 and I Peter 5.
1. Not being self-controlled and disciplined
2. Being domineering
3. Being verbally violent
4. Being arrogant
5. Being quick-tempered
Here is Kraft's description of the two types of people who are criticizing Mark Driscoll.
Here is a feeding frenzy in the media regarding Mars Hill Church. Those with something to say (and who are saying it) probably fit into two main camps.
I didn’t think I would ever write this post, but I am. In a letter to Mars Hill that appears to have been leaked to Reddit, Mark Driscoll is apologizing for some of his behavior and committing to giving up being a celebrity in order to be a better pastor.
The chatter that has started online is understandable. I get it. It can be hard to know when someone is sincere, and it’s easy to be cynical. It’s also easy to believe the worst about someone. As someone who has been quite critical of Mark, I’m tempted to react that way too.
But, that would be wrong.
When someone engages in hurtful, even abusive behavior, the goal should always be for a person to come to repentance. Our hopes and our commitment should always be on the side of healing, restoration, and forgiveness.
Sure, there are some things in the letter that I could critique. Yes, my instinct is to be cynical and I would have good reason for that reaction. But maybe, just maybe, Mark has now taken the first steps in the right direction.
I think we must refrain from the former (for now) in hopes that the latter is true. In this case, I think that love offers the benefit of the doubt.
If this letter is validated as authentic, I believe the most God-honoring thing to do would be to pray for and support Mark as he attempts to change his life and hopefully heal damaged relationships. I don’t say this lightly– I believe Mark’s behavior has been outright abusive, and I have consistently spoken out against his behaviors very publicly because this was the right thing to do. Along those same lines, if Mark is now showing that he intends to begin a process of repenting, it is equally right for me to speak out and say that this is a beautiful first step, and that he has both my support and prayers.
If we’re actually going to take this “following Jesus” thing seriously, we must always root for and encourage lives to be changed and restored– even when that is someone we don’t particularly like. Especially when it is someone we don’t particularly like.
This isn’t easy for me. I don’t expect it would be easy for you either. But, I hope you’ll at least consider joining me as we both step out of our comfort zones to actually put into practice one of the core aspects of the message of Jesus: enemy love.
Yes, I will always stand against oppression and abuse, and if Mark isn’t being sincere, I’ll publicly speak out against his behavior for years to come. However, you will also always find me standing on the side of healing, restoration, and peacemaking– because that’s what it looks like to follow Jesus. Following Jesus is uncomfortable. But I am committed to living that way, consequences be damned. I hope you will join me in praying that Mark’s heart will continue to soften, that his behavior will change, and that lives will be healed– including his own. Here’s the full text that leaked to Reddit (via Matthew Paul Turner):
Pastor's church responds after he allegedly buys his way onto NYT bestseller list
'Outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source,' Mars Hill Church said of Pastor Mark Driscoll's decision to pay a marketing company to ensure his book was a bestseller. 'While not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again.'
By Husna Haq / March 12, 2014
Pastor Mark Driscoll wrote 'Real Marriage' with his wife, Grace.
As we reported, Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle reportedly paid marketing company ResultSource more than $200,000 to artificially place his book, “Real Marriage,” on the elite bestseller list. World Magazine reporter Warren Cole Smith, who broke the story, called it “distasteful if not immoral” and pushed the pastor for an explanation.
On Friday, Mars Hill Church responded to the negative coverage.
“In 2011, outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source to market the Real Marriage book and attain placement on the New York Times Bestseller list. While not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again,” the Church said in a statement posted on its website.
It continued, “All monies from the sale of Pastor Mark’s books at Mars Hill bookstores have always gone to the church and Pastor Mark did not profit from the Real Marriage books sold either at the church or through the Result Source marketing campaign.”
The church also said the “true cost” of the marketing campaign was “much less” than what was reported in World Magazine – about $210,000. However, it didn’t say what the actual cost was.
While Driscoll has remained mum on the subject, an article in the Christian Post reports that his recent Sunday sermon struck an apologetic tone.
"I love you (the church) very much and I want to do the best job that I can, and I'm devastated when I don't," said Driscoll during a sermon about the power of "the tongue." "Jesus gave His best and you deserve the best."
But while the church’s statement and Driscoll’s sermon appears apologetic, a post on the religious site patheos.com suggests a significant change of message following the intense interest Driscoll’s book garnered.
As Patheos reported, when the bestselling scheme was first reported on March 5, Mars Hill Church defended the practice. In World Magazine’s article, the church’s communication director Justin Dean made this statement:
“Mars Hill has made marketing investments for book releases and sermon series, along with album releases, events, and church plants, much like many other churches, authors, and publishers who want to reach a large audience. We will explore any opportunity that helps us to get that message out, while striving to remain above reproach in the process. Whether we’re talking about technology, music, marketing, or whatever, we want to tell lots of people about Jesus by every means available. That’s what we’re all about and have been since 1996.”
As Patheos wrote, the initial statement and the one published after the news exploded in the blogosphere represent very different reactions, describing the use of ResultSource as “an opportunity,” and two days later, “an unwise strategy,” for example.
“[O]n this point, they have increased the confusion and left important questions unanswered,” writes Patheos poster Warren Throckmorton.
And while questions remain in this particular instance of publishing foul play, we can’t help but hope that for those considering such practices it rings a warning bell – and perhaps, for phony marketing campaigns, a death knell.
Can Megachurches Deal With Mega Money in a Christian Way?
Mars Hill Church spent $210,000 getting its pastor's book to the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Where is the line between a pastor promoting his own career and promoting the ministry of his church?
Pastor Mark Driscoll preaches at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. (AP)
By any measure, pastor Mark Driscoll is wildly successful in the contemporary evangelical world. Mars Hill Church, which he co-founded in 1996, in Seattle, now boasts 15 locations from Seattle to Albuquerque. More than 13,000 people worship at a Mars Hill Church every week, often watching Driscoll’s hour-long sermons on large screens at the front of the sanctuary. Online, his sermons are heard about 15 million times each year. On top of all that, his 2011 book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together was a No. 1 New York Times best-seller.
Alas: Last week, Warren Cole Smith of the conservative Christian magazine Worldreported that Mars Hill had paid at least $210,000 to a California consulting company to boost Real Marriage onto best-seller lists. The company, ResultSource, uses a variety of tactics to circumvent the systems intended to prevent bulk sales from influencing the lists. (Driscoll is not the only prominent pastor to be accused of boosting his own book sales using ethically gray techniques. In February, North Carolina megachurch pastor Steven Furtick was accused of a similar list-topping scheme.)
Even for a large church with a popular pastor, however, $210,000 is an astronomical amount to spend on marketing. “It certainly looks like a massive misuse of money,” theologian, pastor, and author Carl Trueman told me. “But when you have a church culture where one man is absolutely central to everything the church does publicly, then it’s really difficult to draw that line between the church’s mission and the man’s mission, and money spent on the mission and money spent on the man.”
The troubling fuzziness of those lines has significance far beyond Mars Hill.
As Smith’s meticulously reported story uncovered, ResultSource’s work for Mars Hill included arranging for a “network of book buyers” to purchase copies of the books at multiple locations across the country, and distributing at least 11,000 copies to 6,000 names and addresses supplied by the church. However ethically shady, the scheme is legal—and effective. Real Marriage hit No. 1 on the New York Times’s “Advice and How-To” list on January 22, 2012, and promptly dropped off the list the next week. But one week is enough to let Driscoll call himself a “No. 1 New York Times best-selling author” for the rest of his life.
The revelation prompted some soul-searching in the publishing world. The LA Times, for example, asked “Can bestseller lists be bought?” But the questions raised for the evangelical world may be even more significant. How much information do church members deserve to know about their church’s financial decisions? Are the rules different for large churches? Where is the line between a pastor promoting his own career and promoting the ministry of his church?
A church spokesman told Smith that Mars Hill invests in marketing because it wants to reach a large audience, and “we want to tell lots of people about Jesus by every means available.” But that defense didn’t stick for long. On Friday, the church posted a statement on its website calling its work with ResultSource an “unwise” one-time error, and emphasizing that all profits from Driscoll’s book sales have always gone to the church. By Saturday, the church had edited Driscoll’s online biography to remove a description of Real Marriage as a “No. 1 New York Times best-selling” book. (Mars Hill declined to answer questions for this story.)
In his sermon on Sunday, Driscoll took a conciliatory tone, obliquely addressing the controversy. “I want to do the best job that I can, and I’m devastated when I don’t,” he said from the stage at Mars Hill. But Driscoll is one of the most divisive figures in contemporary evangelicalism, and his critics seem unlikely to be mollified by a single humble sermon. Just within the last few months, he has been accused by other Christians of plagiarism, of failing to give creditto his research assistants, and of pressuring departing staff members to sign onerous non-disclosure agreements. With a dissent-averse leadership style, he is faced with a growing community of disgruntled ex-members and -leaders. (I spoke with four of them for this story, and have talked to others in the past.)
Those who claim Driscoll is strategically shrinking the number of people he is accountable to are closely watching recent leadership changes at Mars Hill. His inner circle now consists of two executive elders who are close allies; they and Driscoll sit on the seven-man board that sets salaries and appoints elders.
The church may have stamped out its latest fire, but there are other serious issues on the horizon. For example, Mars Hill does not publicly report Driscoll’s annual salary. In a current climate of acrimony and scrutiny, that number could become a matter of controversy, depending on how high it is. (Mars Hill’s most recent annual report lists $12,515,894 in spending on personnel, but does not provide a breakdown of individual salaries. The church has been a member of the the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a respected accreditation agency, since 2012. The ECFA’s president, Dan Busby, sent me a statement confirming the church’s good standing in light of the fact that it terminated the ResultSource contract before applying for ECFA membership; Busby called participation in schemes such as ResultSource's “unethical and deceptive.”)
Kyle Firstenberg, who served as a salaried executive pastor at the church's Orange County site until 2012, told me that Mars Hill’s finances are “not anything close to transparent.” If members asked him questions about the church’s finances, he was authorized to provide general information about the individual branch’s budget, but not the church as a whole. Generally speaking, churches do not always disclose every budget item to their members, but transparency is the rule of thumb; at both of the churches I have been a member of, detailed financial reports, including the pastor’s salary, were presented to all members at annual meetings. “Mars Hill is very shrouded in how they spend and what they spend,” Firstenberg said.
The broader issue, and one that disturbs many thoughtful evangelicals, is the fact that “celebrity pastors” like Driscoll seem to be increasingly influential with believers. This rise in power often means their accountability—a sacrosanct principle in this corner of Christianity—correspondingly diminishes. Within the last few years, celebrity pastors have been the target of panel discussions, magazine articles, countless blog posts, and at least one satirical Twitter account. A March cartoon in Leadership Journal, a magazine for evangelical church leaders, depicted a pastor in the pulpit basking in the glow of paparazzi flashbulbs.
Trueman, who is chair of the church history department at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and the pastor of an Orthodox Presbyterian church, has been an outspoken critic of “celebrity pastors” in the past. He calls the recent Driscoll scandal “ghastly,” and thinks it is a symptom of a larger trend. “In the last few years I’ve become much more concerned about an almost cult-like quality that some of these guys have taken on,” he said. “When you’re dealing with a big powerful person who attracts a lot of money and keeps the whole show on the road, it’s very difficult to hold him to the standard of behavior that you’d hold ordinary people to.”
Mars Hill Defends How Mark Driscoll's 'Real Marriage' Became a Bestseller
'Unwise' but not 'uncommon or illegal,' $200,000 campaign helped marriage book briefly top New York Times list.
Kate Tracy
[ posted 3/7/2014 10:15PM ]
Mars Hill
Mars Hill Church founder Mark Driscoll
Recent reports telling how Mark Driscoll's book reached the top of a bestseller list have left Mars Hill Church calling the campaign "unwise," but not "uncommon or illegal."
Driscoll has recently faced scrutiny for citation errors in a study guide. Now, his book Real Marriage, which Driscoll coauthored with his wife, Grace, is receiving intense attention concerning how it became a New York Times No. 1 bestseller.
In 2011 and 2012, Mars Hill reportedly paid a marketing company ResultSource Inc. (RSI) $210,000 in a contract designed to boost the book to the bestseller list. In a 2011 document, the deal's main purpose was:
