Ten Years Ago Twenty-One Former Mars Hill Church Pastors Brought Formal Charges Against Mark Driscoll
August 2014 wasn't a good month for the Seattle megachurch
Ten years ago today, I broke the story of the charges filed against Mark Driscoll by twenty-one of his former Mars Hill Church elders. The month of August was a terrible month for Mars Hill as so many problems were brought to light. Earlier in August, I revealed that the Acts 29 Network had kicked out Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll from membership. Driscoll was one of the early supporters of Acts 29.
Below, I have the first half of the post about those charges which, after investigation, eventually led to Driscoll being disqualified as an elder. He was offered a plan of restoration at Mars Hill Church but instead resigned and started a new church in the Phoenix, AZ area. You can read the first part here and head over to my old blog to finish up.
Some of these same elders came together for a 2021 open letter published in Christianity Today calling on Driscoll to step away from ministry. I published a series of articles titled Postcards from Phoenix in 2021 detailing some of the same concerns from former members of Driscoll’s current church. History, as they say, repeats itself.
They who have ears to hear, let them hear.
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August 21, 2014
On the heels of what was arguably the worst week in the history of Mars Hill Church, twenty-one former Mars Hill Church pastors brought charges late last week against lead pastor Mark Driscoll. Accompanied by a cover letter, briefs on workplace bullying and a summary of the powers of Mars Hill elders, the charges are being leveled by well-respected former pastors and are in the possession of the Mars Hill leadership. These documents greatly expand on charges brought by former pastor Dave Kraft. Those charges were dismissed by the Board of Advisors and Accountability. The cover letter states:
We have submitted to the Mars Hill board of advisors and accountability the attached formal charges of Mark’s disqualification from the pastoral office. We have signed these charges and intend to stand as witnesses. There are additional witnesses whose names have been withheld for their protection, but who also intend to testify in an investigation of these charges.
The link to the charges is above, but I want to point out that the pastors are concentrating on disqualifying actions since 2010. A rumor flying around Mars Hill Church is that Driscoll’s dismissal by the Acts 29 Network was due to offenses prior to the last three years. In this recent letter, the former pastors make a point to stress the current nature of their concerns:
While the primary evidences for these charges are the personal experiences and testimonies of the signers and witnesses, we want to make it clear that these experiences are tied to many concrete events. The following is a small selection of examples that illustrate a pattern of disqualifying behavior. The signers of these charges and the additional witnesses are prepared to provide details for these examples along with many more examples when interviewed as part of the investigation of these charges.
Please note the recency of the events below. We have selected more recent examples to challenge a prevalent impression that while Pastor Mark may have sinned in these ways in the distant past, he has been a changed man in more recent years. To the contrary, we know of recent evidence that strongly indicates disqualifying patterns having continued into recent times. Dave Kraft’s formal charges were submitted in May 2013. At that time, several of the examples listed below were current.
Some of the charges are as follows:
October 2011—Mark said in a meeting that he did not want a certain staff elder (who was not slim) to take on a certain prominent leadership role because “his fat ass is not the image we want for our church.”
Read the rest here.
Read all of the posts about Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll in 2014.
Mike Cosper’s podcast series Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Church is here.
Another great blog on Mars Hill is Wenatchee the Hatchet
Driscoll has continued his pillaging and toxic culture in Arizona. I understand he eliminated all elders and hence, any accountability for what he does as pastor. This is an abusive model for church governance- and I suspect a very high burnout/turnover rate at Trinity. He is still an uncontrolled narcissist and sociopath pretending to be a Shepard of the flock.
and ten years later, he appears to be thriving as pastor of a church in scottsdale, Az. I hope he learned something from all the notoriety he received.