Yep, Mark preached from the Bible all the time. Its what motivated me to go to that church. But after while you didn’t hear about the Bible too much. There was always some reference to scripture, but lalter much of what Mark had to say was about finances. Somewhere near the start of a message and he would excitedly say how popular MH was and how fast its growing…and then give numbers. Eventually it was, “we are the fastest growing church in the country”, but then he would also put down other churches and call out those ministers. It was always to elevate MH. Then you would hear how many downloads his messages were getting each week This is all to say that the bible was taking a second seat to what Mark had to say about MH. But it was also about himself. Every Wed. he would set the day aside to do interviews around the country. He would make a point to share this with us. Then Mark was rarely speaking at MH (main campus). This went for weeks….then months. He was gone more and more. Finally he was gone for good. A friend and I often talk about Mark and the bible themed messages and how we missed all that. We still talk about the Bible and how Mark would go through whole books and chapters. But then how he got away from all that….and it became something else…..something that eventually led to the demise of the whole church (and Mark).

Sadly, MD is far from alone: I gather that ministers of religion (along with CEOs, lawyers and police officers) as a group are ‘over-represented’ in this area, in the view of some researchers. Perhaps it is to be expected in a way, especially when a minister is also in effect running a business …

Thank you for explaining. That is a very true statement. Until I received therapy and healing from my past abuse I definitely wasn’t seeing MD’s narcissism (and I would agree, psychopathic tendencies) clearly.

Thank you for your comment. I don’t want to speak for your new worship pastor but I will say that him and his family are some of our favorite people. I would definitely encourage you to ask him these questions. I am confident he would be happy to sit down and share his story through all of this situation and how they decided to take this new job.

See link: https://julieroys.com/in-laws-mark-driscoll-children-pastor-cultic-church-dividing-families/

Sorry if something was unclear — I did NOT say that MH Elders were not abusive. I actually can’t see how you could have gotten that from my comment. While I don’t have the knowledge of the MH situation that you and Warren do, I agree that the Elders there seem to have been a significant part of the abusive environment.

The distinction I was drawing was with regard to the head pastors in the situations.
Unlike Mars Hill where the head pastor (Driscoll) was leading the abuse, the article on Julie’s website makes it appear that the head pastor and others who resigned at Bethlehem Baptist were victims of the abusive Elders and not perpetrators themselves.

In Mars Hill almost all of the pastors and Elders and other leaders, whatever you want to call them, were guilty of bullying or at least supporting and defending Driscoll’s bullying. Some of them created RepentedPastor.com which is now gone, but at the time was the place for those with a conscience who were in leadership to post a public apology. If they had not done that I would have never gotten interested in the Mars Hill saga. And without that I would never have come here or known that the Professor was the person I needed to take my knowledge of the GFA scam too.

Beyond this I find the standard political crapola on both sides of the political isle to be nauseating. I am neither any kind of fan of the false theology associated with CRT nor am I any fan of those who are actually doing real racism as I have seen it coming from people of every race that there is. But what you stated about MH Elders not being abusive is certainly as false as anything I have seen written on this blog over the 7 years I have been active with it.

Sorry if something was unclear — I did NOT say or imply that MH Elders were not abusive. I actually can’t see how you could have gotten that from my comment. While I don’t have the knowledge of the MH situation that you and Warren do, I agree that the Elders there seem to have been a significant part of the abusive environment.

The distinction I was drawing was with regard to the head pastors in the situations.
Unlike Mars Hill where the head pastor (Driscoll) was leading the abuse, the article on Julie’s website makes it appear that the head pastor and others who resigned at Bethlehem Baptist were victims of the abusive Elders and not perpetrators themselves.