Along with every other evangelical leader I know, I’ve been listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, the excellent podcast series from Mike Cosper at Christianity Today. It’s high quality journalism, well-researched, well-sourced, clear but generally avoiding being a hatchet job. It’s honest to recognise that it wasn’t all bad and in a polarizing age that’s rare. And it wasn’t. I met a leader in Latvia who started listening to Mark Driscoll from around 2005 or so and it changed his life.

He told me how he was introduced ten years or so ago to the preaching of Mark Driscoll. Oh oh. I know some of you are thinking that. He is after all one of the most polarising figures in recent evangelicalism. Hang in there with me though. He began to share how his teaching began to shake him out of his lethargy and passivity, how he began to take on responsibility for his family, for their spiritual life and how he stopped abdicating out of decisions.

I turned to his wife and wondered what this intelligent, capable woman thought when her husband was first converted and then began talking about his responsibility as ‘head of the household’? “I thought it was great” was her immediate and unhesitating response. “He started caring, he started being involved, he stopped saying ‘whatever you think’ or ‘whatever you want’ to everything.”

She went on to share how she felt the weight and burden of running the family was lifted and she felt they were more of a team when her husband finally decided to lead. She was so incredibly positive about the benefits as a result of the change in her husband, that I was surprised.

Like luggage

That story is one of thousands like it. The ranting preacher from Seattle changed lives. It wasn’t all bad. But as the podcast makes abundantly clear, it was also very deeply flawed and it doesn’t duck from shining a light on those issues. And those fault-lines and flaws in the character and ministry of Mark Driscoll became, over time, one and the same as the ministry of Mars Hill the church.

Wisdom is always perfect in hindsight but wisdom for the present and future demands that we reflect on the lessons from the past. When an issue becomes so public then some of that reflection also needs to be done in public, which is what the podcast is all about. But there may be a need for some reflection closer to home.

Newfrontiers, the movement I’ve been a part of the last twenty years, was largely very positive and affirming of Mark until it was obvious they couldn’t be any more. In 2008 Mark headlined our leadership conference, Together on a Mission, in Brighton, UK. It was a significant moment for us as a movement because in his final session Mark made an unexpected challenge about the future leadership of our movement. As Terry Virgo said,

He stimulated and challenged us about the pace of growth amongst us and it was so healthy to get a spiritual ‘kick up the backside’ from a guy who himself is planting churches at a phenomenal rate as well as building a great church in Seattle.

The challenge was ultimately accepted although Driscoll’s answers were rejected for something bolder and better. But overall the response was warm and positive and Mark was positive about us. We doubtless, at the time, patted ourselves on the back about that. In 2009 there was still a growing friendship & relationship with Mark, with numbers of Newfrontiers pastors going on pilgrimage to Seattle to learn more. Some leaders from Newfrontiers were also invited to speak to Mars Hill leaders. In August 2009 Terry Virgo relates,

Next day we were taken to a superb hotel in the magnificent Washington countryside to be with Mark and Grace Driscoll plus forty elders of Mars Hill and their wives. I enjoyed taking five sessions over the next four days, was very warmly received and was encouraged to see several being healed after the final session. It was great not only to strengthen my friendship with Mark but also to get to know several of his elders, have lengthy conversations with them as well as have some lively Q & A times.

I don’t think that the two-way street ever really developed beyond that but over the next few years the tone remained appreciative and positive. Several years later we were still likely to give him the benefit of the doubt whenever Driscoll opened his mouth to switch feet and some defended his colourful use of language. But around 2013 it was becoming clearer that our critical faculties hadn’t been entirely neglected.

Andrew Wilson rejected the Prophet, Priest, King framing of leadership that Driscoll (and others) advocated. Based on all the good that they saw there was a desire to be generous but books and videos were not just swallowed whole. But even so, I think it is fair to say that Matthew Hosier describes well the appreciation that some in our ranks had for Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill between 2007-2013.

I first came across Mark Driscoll when an American friend gave me a copy of ‘The Radical Reformission’ soon after it was published (September 2004). I read it and lapped it up, recording in my notes, “I dislike the title, but everything else about the book is fantastic.” Here was someone articulating so much of what I felt but wasn’t always so good at expressing in terms of how the church should be doing mission in postmodern culture. I had never heard of Driscoll before, and he wasn’t a name any of my British friends were dropping, but within a few months of reading that book ‘Pastor Mark’ was suddenly everywhere, becoming one of the most influential voices in the church circles in which I moved. In 2009 I had the privilege of visiting Mars Hill with a group of British and South African pastors, and while conscious of some differences of emphasis between us, was truly blessed by experiencing that church. I felt Driscoll and his key leaders were men of integrity, generosity and – this may surprise some – humility. Since then, my sense of ‘some differences’ has grown, much of which would be summarised in Andrew’s review of Driscoll’s most recent book, but my appreciation for many aspects of his ministry remains.

Musings on Mandela and Driscoll

But as time went on the flaws became more and more evident. Here’s Matthew Hosier again, writing after the news that Mark and Mars Hill had been removed from Acts 29.

There was a torrential storm here this evening. Rain like rain can only be in the mountains, with thunder and lightening. A storm has been coming Mars Hill’s way sometime. In my own church is a guy who got recruited, trained and then spat out by the Mars Hill machine. What at first seemed only malicious rumours became a torrent of accusations too persistent to ignore. A wise American friend told me a year or two back that he feared for Driscoll and what was coming. Now the storm has made landfall.

It is time to weep, not to gloat. I’m not ashamed to name the ways in which Driscoll has helped me – how he gave me a greater confidence in the power of the gospel, a greater clarity about how the church speaks to contemporary culture, how his blue-collared-Christian-muscularity was confidence inspiring. So I weep – for Mark and his church and his influence and for the people he recruited, trained and then spat out. I weep that he was never effectively discipled – or was never willing to submit to such discipleship – and that as a consequence his character failed to match his gift.

A Time To Weep

Within 3 months (!) Mars Hill Church Seattle was no more. The speed of the collapse remains frankly astonishing. But the reckoning was well underway. In November 2014, to his credit Andrew Wilson was hitting on some of the lessons that are now apparent through the podcast and asking back then, ‘how did I miss it?’. His post Post-Driscollusionment, was one of the few public statements I could find that reflected on our connection to Driscoll. Wilson made three initial observations.

1. Ministry success is much more difficult to appraise than we think.
2. When I want to believe something a speaker says, because it will make my life more comfortable or more fun, I don’t run it through the same biblical checks and balances that I use when I don’t want to believe it. 
3. We need to watch our lives and our doctrine, rather than implicitly prioritising one ahead of the other. 

Under the second point Andrew realises there were things said in 2008 that should have been critiqued but weren’t, “Several things Mark said when he came to our Together on a Mission conference should have bothered me instantly, but they didn’t, because I actually quite liked the sound of them.”

In other words, he and pretty much every other leader in Newfrontiers, either missed it, gave it a pass, or didn’t discuss it in any public way worth mentioning. It was there for us all to hear. We could have been more discerning or brave, but we may have been neither. The question for us to answer is why?