Keep attending Trinity if you like, but there is no shortage of “good preachers” out there or pastors who teach straight through the books of the Bible. I stick with Episcopal or other liturgical churches where complete passages from Psalms, the Old Testament, from the Epistles and gospels are read every Sunday; those readings cycle through the entire Bible. The pastor then preaches a sermon tying 2 or more of those passages together. None of my pastors has authorized spending $740,000 on a media studio or is spending time building his own “platform”.

This info is all over the web. I started reading about it in the summer of 2014. Save your criticism for those so not well informed over 7 years. I suppose that you would criticize the O.T. prophets for speaking so plainly of what their contemporaries were doing.

I’m not “judging” anyone; I’m simply pointing out the facts about Driscoll and his behaviour, which is now well documented going back more than two decades.

People DO EXIST who are not internet savvy due to preference, disability, poverty, recent immigration or advanced age. In other cases, Internet connection/availability can be spotty and difficult to obtain in rural areas. You shouldn’t be judging people because they haven’t extensively researched Mark Driscoll via the internet. If people are unaware of the controversies and problems surrounding Mark Driscoll, why not just provide them with information without judging them?

You say that you “suspect that most of the attendees (of Trinity Church)…” then go on to make assumptions about these attendees and slander their character. I don’t attend Trinity Church, and I don’t know anyone who does. But you are making judgments against an entire congregation of people, presuming that all of this unfavorable information about Mark Driscoll is known to the Trinity congregation. You also presume that the Trinity congregation knows about this unfavorable information AND they concurrently and willfully continue to serve under Driscoll’s pastoral leadership because they are unrepentantly carnal. Clearly, multiple presumptions have been made by you. You are judging an entire group of people with a broad brush stroke, and this is not biblical. By the way, some members and former members of Trinity Church are already speaking out against Driscoll and the church leadership. Perhaps you haven’t given them the benefit of time and experience.

My guess is that “Let there be truth” was not aware of the severity of the issues surrounding Driscoll and is now just waking up to them. At the same time, she feels judged because she is a member/attendee of the Trinity congregation and from her perspective as a rank-and-file attendee (and not an insider or known to the Driscolls) she found the church and its ministries to be positive. It is arguably true that this is going to be the case in many large churches, where many attendees exist on the periphery of the church and as such do not have the same experience as those who are more involved with the church.

There is a bigger problem here. What does it say about the situation if the person who preaches so well has issues which disqualified him from ministry at a former church? Now we learn these issues are still active. Doesn’t it feel like pretend church? You all pretend the Bible is effective to correct character and make change but it isn’t actually doing that? Re-read your comments. That is what I get out of your contributions here. What then does pastoral character matter? Just hire an actor to preach sermons and a staff to create an entertaining program. Why pretend it is all real and effective? Just entertain people and let those who are harmed go away, maybe to give up on faith altogether. You could hire people to be baptized and give testimonies. If the main event doesn’t have to be real, then why does any of it have to be real?

Sigh. You should come and witness it and then make an assessment about who we are as Christians. Although I get accused of being a Driscoll apologist, I mainly come in here to defend the smearing of an entire congregation of hundreds, maybe thousands of people. I try to delineate between what sins Driscoll may be guilty of with what the average churchgoer experiences, since these things are happening behind the scenes and people are not researching their pastor online and if I wasn’t online and had some connections to this comment platform, I would have absolutely no idea any of this was going on. People are busy raising their families and working and come to church on Sunday and hear a great Bible-based sermon. It really aggravates people, but there must be a reason that Driscoll keeps growing churches. The fact is is that he is a smart, knowledgeable, articulate gifted Bible preacher. People are sincere Christ followers and give an F about what is real. Ultimately, it is true that they/we may become disillusioned in time if it turns out Driscoll is not living what he preaches, but please stop slandering an innocent congregation.

Thanks for contributing…

That is a good question. I wish I had a simple answer. We believed, much like you, that what seemed like solid Bible teaching and what we thought was a repentant heart excused past abusive behavior. It was when we learned more last summer in the interviews with Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskus and started seeing similar patterns emerge that we knew it was time to leave. However, we have very close ties to the family so it made it a bit more complicated. I ask myself often how we ignored/missed and often defended/excused abusive behavior. My heart breaks for the abuse my family has endured and for the many other families that have been abused by this toxic church culture.