Dee Holmes conducted a one-woman protest yesterday and today at The Trinity Church in Scottsdale, AZ. She took up a presence on the sidewalk in front of the church and loudly raised the issues of no elders, no accountability in finances and the fact that police were called to keep a family off church premises after a teen boy in the family and Driscoll’s teen daughter shared a consensual kiss.
This tweet from Dee makes me wonder how much in the dark The Trinity Church members are. This man comes out in response to Dee and says the church has elders. That, of course, is either a brand new development or was carefully hidden from former staff who never heard of them and don’t know who they are.
The sound is not so hot on this, but by memory he said “two elders.” Hope this helps. pic.twitter.com/SAOoDYRnIF
— Dee *Professional Cat Herder* Holmes (@mmmirele) May 3, 2021
As noted in this post, the nonprofit board of directors are not elders at least in the sense that Driscoll teaches in his book on Doctrine. In this flow chart provided to staff, there is no place for or mention of elders:
It seems entirely likely that members don’t know how the church is organized or funded. They haven’t seen financial statements or bylaws and have no idea what kind of organization they attend. That all may work out unless and until they have an issue or concern — like the family who objected to how their teen was treated after the infamous kiss.
Who are the Elders?
Ye shall know them by the bilirubin brown of their noses.
Thanks, Dee, for the video. It brings back the memories. The heat is coming back to the Valley which makes standing out in the sun a bit less than total fun. Stay cool while protesting, wherever you end up. By the way, Wayne Grutem also signed the document I mentioned in the last post in this series, along with Driscoll, so you have protested two of the signers. So greetings from Pinetop.
It was in the mid-90s on Saturday. I can’t imagine that Driscoll can have much of a Saturday outdoor circus in the summer, given how insanely hot it is in the late afternoon. I once protested in 110 F heat and made myself sick. Luckily I was very close to home and was able to drive back and get a cold shower. Scottsdale is too far away for that. I’ll probably have to stick to Sunday morning.
Third possibility: He’s lying.
Fourth possibility: He doesn’t know what an Elder is supposed to be, and he’s thinking the people on the boxes below Driscoll in the church org chart qualify.
Tip o’ the cap to Dee. Loved how she stood her ground in the video Warren posted to Twitter showing the guy leaving the parking lot telling Dee to ‘get a life,’ or some such. OF COURSE a Driscoll congregant would lead the exchange with asking Dee if she voted for Trump and ended it with telling her to get a life.
In a derivation of the wisdom of Sun Tzu: get your opponent talking and they will defeat themselves.
Thank you, Dee Holmes, for your efforts to inform the congregation at Trinity of how much they don’t know about their church or their pastor. Mark Driscoll is, even if he has suddenly appointed elders, essentially a one man show. He can’t stand to be anything else.
Any elders will be in some way beholden to him and useless in keeping him in line–as is perfectly clear from the episode of his teenage daughter’s kissing a boy from the church. Driscoll’s action was obviously waaaaay overblown, but went unchecked by anybody from the government of the church. I can’t see Mark Driscoll’s time at Trinity ending any better than it did at Mars Hill.
Thank you for keeping readers educated. And many thanks to Dee Holmes for shining light onto darkness.
honestly, i don’t think it would matter if he had 20 elders……they would all be yes men who would agree with Mr. Driscoll on anything, and if they disagreed with him, Mr. Mark would get rid of them. Isn’t that how he operated in Seattle ?
Not exactly. He had to submit to an investigation of former elders when they pressed charges against him. The bylaws required it. He quit before he submitted to their judgment that he was disqualified and needed to be in a restoration plan.
It looks like Mars Hill appointed this first set of rules when the church was small and very young and Driscoll was still finding his feet as pastor, so it was all in place before the structure became an annoyance to him.