Trinity Church

Covering Mark Driscoll and life after Mars Hill: Why isn't this a mainstream news story?

Covering Mark Driscoll and life after Mars Hill: Why isn't this a mainstream news story?

It’s been nearly seven years since Mars Hill Church, the fabulously successful multi-campus evangelical flock in Seattle, imploded when its pastor, Mark Driscoll, resigned. The church’s nearly 13,000-person Sunday attendance totals quickly dissolved, its headquarters and branch campuses were closed or sold.

I moved to the Seattle suburbs the following summer and had a long conversation with one of the church’s leaders. I’ve rarely turned down a chance to do a story, but it was clear that covering this mess would take up more time and emotional energy than I had time for.

Dodging a lawsuit that accused him of misappropriating $30 million worth of members’ tithes, Driscoll ended up moving to Scottsdale, Ariz., (whose sunny clime is like Shangri-la to many rain-drenched Seattleites) and starting a new church plant in 2016 called Trinity Church.

Recently, a number of stories have come out about Driscoll’s heavy-handed leadership and dysfunctional pastoring at Trinity that sounded all too similar to what went down in Seattle. The latest just came out Monday in Christianity Today:

Nearly 40 elders who served with Mark Driscoll during the final years of Mars Hill Church are publicly calling for him to step down from his current pastoral position and seek reconciliation with those he has hurt.

“We are troubled that he continues to be unrepentant despite the fact that these sins have been previously investigated, verified, and brought to his attention by his fellow Elders, prior to his abrupt resignation” from Mars Hill, they wrote in a statement released today to CT. “Accordingly, we believe that Mark is presently unfit for serving the church in the office of pastor.”

Christianity Today is one of two outlets that have been following the Mars Hill story a lot recently and I’ll get to CT’s podcast series in a moment.

But first I should first mention investigative journalist Julie Roys’ two podcasts. She’s been following the Mars-Hill-in-Arizona beat for some time, but her latest is an act of war. From the transcript of Inside the Driscoll Cult Part 1:

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.


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News? Religious communities build new sanctuaries, and repair old ones, for lots of reasons

News? Religious communities build new sanctuaries, and repair old ones, for lots of reasons

There were a lot of different subjects swirling around during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, so I don’t know exactly where to start. (Click here to tune that in or head over to iTunes.)

On one level, host Todd Wilken and I talked about church buildings and sacred architecture. You know, the whole idea that church architecture is theology expressed in (List A) stone, timber, brick, stucco, copper, iron and glass.

Ah, but is the theology different if the materials being used are (List B) sheetrock, galvanized steel, plastic, concrete, rubber and plywood?

What if you built a Byzantine, Orthodox sanctuary out of the materials in List B and accepted the American construction-industry norms that a building will last about 40-50 years? Contrast that with a church built with List A materials, using many techniques that have been around for centuries and are meant to produce churches that last 1,000 years or more.

These two churches would look very similar. The provocative issue raised by church designer and art historian Andrew Gould — of New World Byzantine Studios, in Charleston, S.C. — is whether one of these two churches displays a “sacred ethos” that will resonate with the teachings of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, while the other may be both modern and more temporary.

Here’s another question along those same lines: Why did farmers, merchants and peasants in places like Greece, Russia, Serbia and Romania for many centuries insist on building churches that would last for generation after generation of believers? Also, why are the faithful in many modern, prosperous American communities tempted to build churches that may start to fall apart after a few decades?

Here’s the end of my “On Religion” column about Gould and his work, based on a lecture he gave at my own Orthodox home parish in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — which is poised to build a much-needed new sanctuary.

“If you build something that looks like a Byzantine church, but it isn’t really built like a Byzantine church, then it isn’t going to look and sound and function like a Byzantine church — generation after generation,” said Gould.

“The goal in most architecture today is to create the appearance of something, not the reality. ... When you build one of these churches, you want the real thing. You want reality. You want a church that’s going to last.”

Now, is this a very newsworthy subject?

Maybe not. But some of these issues can be spotted looming over big headlines some big stories in places like New York City.


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No chat about afterlife inside death cafés?

We’ve been doing death, so to speak, at my house the last few weeks — working through the aftermath, talking about grief, that sort of thing. So I immediately was drawn to an Associated Press piece highlighting end-of-life discussions taking place in informal settings throughout the U.S. and in major cities worldwide.


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