Pastors who give Mark Driscoll a platform are adding to the abuse of those of us who were abusively treated by Mars Hill Church.
Dan Kellogg, from Gold Creek Community Church, said that he had done his homework on Driscoll before he invited him to speak at his church recently. I am not sure what homework he did, but Dan Kellogg contacted none of the abused ex-members or pastors. Driscoll spoke of how he is learning to forgive those who hurt him. He did not speak of the hundreds of families hurt by his abuse.
Robert Morris, who gave Driscoll his first public appearance where Driscoll skillfully made the audience feel sorry for him, said that he knows the “behind the scenes story“, yet failed to speak to any of his accusers or those shunned by Driscoll’s abusive church.
Ray Johnston, of Bayside Church, gave Driscoll a platform where he was able to again repeat the lie that he moved from one house to another because of fear – the second to the last move being simply across the street from his previous home.
Now we see Driscoll about to be hosted by John and Debbie Lindell from James River Church. The church was informed that Mark Driscoll would be preaching this Sunday as if the collapse of the most abusive church in recent history had not occurred.
Brian Houston of Hillsong also is giving Mark Driscoll a platform. He plans to interview both Mark and Grace Driscoll to “learn from their mistakes.” Never mind that Driscoll has yet to confess his sins to hundreds of members that he abused, including Paul Petry and Bent Meyer.
Sadly, these men are simply adding to the abuse that so many Mars Hill members endured. I am sure they mean well. But every time Mark Driscoll is given a platform while he is still non-repentant and not reconciled, these church leaders are acting without any regard to the reality that Mark Driscoll resigned without repentance and left a trail of brokenness in his path. Mark Driscoll boasted that before he was done, he would leave a “mountain” of dead bodies behind his Mars Hill bus. He made good on that boast and has never repented or shown the least bit of contrition or remorse – at least not to those who were ruthlessly dealt with by him.
Most of us ex-members would delight to see true repentance from Mark Driscoll. This would surely begin by joining the vast majority of the elders who have repented of their ruthless treatment of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer in 2007. They have repented from subjecting Paul Petry and his family to an unfair trial and public shunning. That shunning was never lifted, and none of the leaders of the Mars Hill Church-spawned church “plants” have repudiated such horrendous treatment of the beloved former elders.
I implore pastors who are keen to see Mark Driscoll return to the ministry. Until he deals with his abusive past, you are simply propping up an abusive man, and in so doing you add to the abuse.
The Gospel is about reconciliation. It ought to be that only after Mark Driscoll has genuinely reconciled with those that he has abused, that pastors who claim to love the Gospel begin to allow him a voice.
Otherwise those that give him a voice are pretending that there are no bodies under the Mars Hill bus and risk harming already bruised and shattered people.
Musings from under the bus. 
Hello Rob,
Heck of a brand new beginning of Driscoll’s new ministry; Go around and play the victim card to other narcissist venue ministries that lift other unrepentant men up as gods while forgetting Christ all together.
Most of the people you mention are wolves themselves; From Morris to Houston to Hybels to Warren. All of them have known unrepentant skeletons from serial lying, pedophilia cover-ups, to abusive nature against the individual, twisting of scripture, ant-semitism etc. The common threads among them are they are control freaks, low accountability that follow Peter Drucker as their Lord instead of Yeshua (Jesus).
The idea of a Christian living a penitent life in Christ is only for the sheep in their world view and that they have some unwritten unbiblical dispensation from that model as Druckerites who are trying to create a “social order” by amassing power by numbers. Something that Christ never said we are to do. And these wolves run the gambit in the evangelical world from the Calvinist to the Charismatic.
One of our mandates is to expose the wolves. And that is Biblical.
Ephesians 5:11-13
11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; 12 for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. (NASB)
And we are to lift up the oppressed and help heal the victims of these wolves.
Psalms 82:3-4
3 Vindicate the weak and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and needy;
Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. (NASB)
Bless you Rob.
Frank
Exiled sheep and recovering Pentecostal
Sheepville, NY
My abuser wasn’t famous like MD, but he acted in exactly the same way. He talked about how much time he and his wife spent dealing with the “words of iniquity spoken over them”, but he went ballistic when I asked if he’d spent any time repenting of his own ‘words’.
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