Blog Theme: Mars Hill Church – Interview with Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner, Part One

In the category of unlikely interviews, this one is near the top of the list. Today, I publish the first part of an interview with Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas. Turner, Bruskas and Mark Driscoll made up the three executive elders of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. Driscoll was also the president of the corporation and clearly in charge. Turner was the financial guy and Bruskas occupied the number two spot. Given amount of leaked information I was reporting on Mars Hill, I imagine I was public enemy number one for this trio in 2014.

Nonetheless, after the church closed, neither Turner nor Bruskas were hostile when I contacted them. Over the years, they have talked more about how they have reached out to Mars Hill people and tried to mend fences. I don’t know all about it, but I don’t need to.

I do know that they have a perspective that I never was able to get while I reported on Mars Hill. Almost everything they have told me vindicated the reporting I did. But with that out of the way, I wanted to know how it was to try to function in what Paul Tripp called, “…without a doubt, the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.” They did not evade their own responsibility as you will hear.

So I hope you will hear them out in both parts of the interview (part two coming Thursday). In part one, we discuss Dave Kraft’s first charges, the Strange Fire Conference, “big brother” James MacDonald, the Janet Mefferd interview, the Result Source Bestseller scheme, Driscoll’s content management system and Driscoll as “The Brand.”:

For all posts on Mars Hill Church, click here.

For all posts on Mark Driscoll, click here.

To watch all interviews reflecting on 15 years of blogging, click here.

9 thoughts on “Blog Theme: Mars Hill Church – Interview with Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner, Part One”

  1. would have loved more discussion and responsibility for the “spin” [which is basically a cozy euphamism for lying]
    Who tolerated that? Was that church staff or an external company, etc…?
    How does aiding and abetting lying not disqualify whoever allowed it / directed it to continue in ministry themselves?
    The people leaking the documents were apparently able to tell the difference between right and wrong. Why couldn’t the executive staff?

    1. The disadvantage of breaking it up in two parts is that feeling of incompleteness. There is more of that coming in part two.

  2. would have loved more discussion and responsibility for the “spin” [which is basically a cozy euphamism for lying]
    Who tolerated that? Was that church staff or an external company, etc…?
    How does aiding and abetting lying not disqualify whoever allowed it / directed it to continue in ministry themselves?
    The people leaking the documents were apparently able to tell the difference between right and wrong. Why couldn’t the executive staff?

  4. It didn’t realize Bruskas was at TVC…dunno what I think about that yet (need to finish the videos lol)

  5. It didn’t realize Bruskas was at TVC…dunno what I think about that yet (need to finish the videos lol)

  6. It looks like youtube is having some issues. I can’t get the video to play (along with a bunch of unrelated ones as well).

    Looks like it might just be issues with recent uploads.

      1. yes, but it is definitely something wrong with the browser I’m using.

        I can get to it from running a separate instance of the browser.

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