February 2012
3 posts
Doctrine: Chapter 1, part 1
A centerpiece of Pastor’s Mark’s enterprise is the book “Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe”.
This book was written by Pastor Mark and Gerry Breshears, and is required reading for those in the Mars Hill membership process. As this is a 464 page book, we’ll be fact checking one chapter at a time.
We’ll start with Chapter 1: “Trinity: God...
The Strange Case of The Disappearing Elders
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often...
The Stranger's Mars Hill exposé
Today’s issue of the Stranger had an excellently written exposé on the increasingly cult-like behavior going on at Mars Hill Church.
Latest feature: Brendan Kiley writes how another former member was harassed and persecuted for leaving the church.
As more and more of these stories leak and the public learns about the abuse going on in our neighborhood, we can only hope the church takes...
January 2012
11 posts
The Wartburg Watch
The Wartburg Watch is having a current series on Mars Hill and their concerns with the church. There are a series of excellent articles including:
-Dissecting Pastor Mark’s reaction to his interview with Justin Brierley (the British podcast)
-Breaking down why people leave Mars Hill (and similar legalistic churches)
-A fascinating post about a missionary in Haiti’s experience with...
Bigotry is Wrong, Even for Pastors
SCALE OF WORTH
Pastor Mark once gave us a peek inside his head when he described his “Evangelical Continuum.” This goes from +10 to -10. Brand new Christians are at 0. As you go up the scale, you reach the ranks of deacon, elder, and top out as lead pastor at +10.
What of the opposite direction? Pastor Mark puts Mormons at -5. Atheists are only a -8. But what could be lower on Pastor Mark’s scale...
Resource for Those Leaving Mars Hill
There’s an excellent resource for those leaving Mars Hill church at http://marshillrefuge.blogspot.com/p/our-story.html
Ted Bundy is Not a Prop
MEAN STREETS?
To establish his toughness, Pastor Mark describes his childhood in SeaTac, WA:
“I grew up off Pac Highway, where Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer picked up all the prostitutes, because that’s where they all were – at the end of my street.”[1]
Pastor Mark is inaccurate in stating that Bundy picked up any prostitutes in SeaTac. In fact, none of Bundy’s nine...
Pastor Mark Lies in Interview
Pastor Mark recently gave an interview with the British radio show “Unbelievable,” hosted by Justin Brierley[1]. Stay tuned for a more detailed post on this interview coming soon. For now, I want to focus on one part of this hour long interview (transcription is my own):
Brierley: You have said, something that you said, that was perceived as being slightly controversial was on the back of...
Why Men Must Reject Mars Hill’s Authoritarian...
BEYOND BULLYING
To no one’s surprise (but everyone’s disgust), Mark Driscoll made an infamous status update last summer asking followers to describe “the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader” they’d ever witnessed. I won’t beat this dead horse too much, as I’m sure most of you are well aware of it.
As the kids say, it went viral. Being the media-savvy movement it is, I have...
Not The Whole Story
Stephen E. Ambrose was one of America’s most prominent historians and a best-selling author.
Joe Paterno won more college football games than any coach, and retired as an institution at Penn State.
Martin Luther was one of the most brilliant men in the history of Protestantism, and his teachings are admired by scholars.
All sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But these aren’t their...
Fox News Has a New Writer!
This isn’t really fact checking, just wanted to call attention to Pastor Mark becoming a (presumably) paid contributor to Fox News.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/03/what-bible-really-says-about-sex/
For now it appears he is just trying to sell more books, have to wait and see if this is a regular thing or just another part of the celebrity for the self proclaimed “nobody...
Is Jesus in the Way? Laugh it Off
DRISCOLL’S JESUS PROBLEM
In the Star Wars universe, there is a lot of material (much of it contradictory), so the creators have established different classifications for canon. The highest level is described: “G-canon is absolute canon; the movies (their most recent release), the scripts, the novelizations of the movies, the radio plays, and any statements by George Lucas himself. G-canon...
Can't Find a Quote? Make One Up!
Pastor Mark made the claim that (based on a quote from the Christian author NT Wright), “…those who do not hold to the fact that we come from God, we exist for relationship with God, and when we die we go to be with God, the end result is always suicide historically.”[1]
This is an alarming claim. Pastor Mark tries to back it up with three quotes from three people. The first...
Flunked: Mark Driscoll and "Expelled"
PASTOR MARK FORGETS HIS OWN LIFE STORY
Pastor Mark claims evangelical Christian professors are persecuted. He states: “There are two kinds of persecution, friends. There is covert and overt. The covert is the kind of persecution that we tend to face in the West. They don’t kill you, they just fire you. If you’re a professor who’s an evangelical Christian at a state university, you just don’t get...
December 2011
8 posts
Not Like Nehemiah
In 2007, Pastor Mark did a series on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. I imagine that Pastor Mark sees a bit of himself in Nehemiah: both believe they were called by God, both went into a city to build up a church, and both used the church to make themselves into celebrities and start franchising.
Wait, that last one doesn’t sound right…
You’ve probably heard the Mars Hill origin...
Only Single Issue Voters Allowed
Does Pastor Mark allow a plurality of political beliefs? Based on his decision to build his church in Seattle, a traditionally liberal hub, wouldn’t he allow for both liberals and conservatives to have a place to worship? No, either you vote Republican or are you are going to hell.
Pastors in the United States are not allowed to directly engage in political campaign activity, if they want...
So There Are Degrees of Heaven Now, I Guess?
A point of contention between Protestant Christians and Latter Day Saints is the concept of heaven having degrees.
According to Wikipedia, The Latter Day Saints base their concept of degrees in heaven mostly on the alleged visions of Joseph Smith. “Joseph Smith, Jr. described the afterlife based primarily upon a vision he claimed to have received together with Sidney Rigdon, at Hiram, Ohio,...
Did Not Do The Research
In a recent sermon Pastor Mark declared ” My job is to tell you the truth.”
Earlier in the sermon he stated ” There was a second-century painting in a, I think it was in a cave; it was like a grotto. And it showed what non-Christians thought of Jesus and crucifixion. It had the body of a jackass with the head of Jesus, and then it had a guy worshiping, and it says, “Alexamenos...
Million-Dollar Driscoll?
What is Pastor Mark’s annual income? This is one segment of his life in which he is strangely quiet.
In reviewing the online resources available from Mars Hill, I was not able to find any mention of Pastor Mark’s annual income. This is a gaping oversight, as keep in mind that Pastor Mark does not keep many aspects of his personal life closed.
For example, in the recent “Real...
“I See Things”
Sociologist Max Weber defines charismatic authority as: “A certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis...
Green Light for Young Earthers
Anyone who has taken an introductory class in natural sciences or anthropology has heard the following settled facts:
The earth is 4.54 billion years old. Anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Humans reached full behavioral modernity 90 to 50 thousand years ago.[1]
This does not fit with Pastor Mark’s message and therefore is muddled, concealed, and lied...
Washington or Idaho?
I’ve spent some time lately combing Mark Driscoll’s many Youtube videos. The sense of authority he projects on his church audiences is obvious, though many of us from the outside are aware of how easily his claims about society, the world, science, and etc. can be shown false through simple fact-checking. And despite characterizing himself as a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is...