Seven years ago today, popular Christian Bible teacher and counselor Paul David Tripp resigned from the Mars Hill Church Board of Advisors and Accountability. Based in Seattle with Mark Driscoll at the helm, the church’s history has gotten renewed interest recently due to vocal former members at Driscoll’s current church in Phoenix and a Christianity Today podcast series examing the rise and fall (in 2014) of the church. Here is the brief post from that day on this blog:
Paul Tripp has resigned from the Mars Hill Church Board of Advisors and Accountability.
Tripp, one of the newest board members and popular conference speaker, was unavailable this morning, but in response to my question about Tripp’s membership on the Mars Hill Church BOAA, Steve Sarkisian, Vice President of Paul Tripp Ministries, told me, “Paul resigned from the board.”
No reason was given for the departure.
Paul Tripp was appointed to the Board in November, 2013.
I will add more information as it becomes available.
More information did become available.
On August 1, the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability came out with a statement saying Tripp agreed to work as a consultant with no indication of trouble between Tripp and the board. However, later on August 12, Tripp disclosed that he did not believe the church structure of having a board of non-local advisors (such as exists now at Mark Driscoll’s The Trinity Church) is workable or helpful. He believed then that local oversight is needed.
The church at the time did not have true elder rule in that there was an executive board of elders made up of Driscoll, Sutton Turner, and Dave Bruskas. The other governing board was made up of advisors, such as Tripp, who did not attend Mars Hill and met infrequently.
Then later that month, we learned that Tripp believed that Mars Hill Church was
the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.
This statement came in a conversation with nine elders who still worked at Mars Hill and were getting advice from Tripp about how to effect change at the church. The elders decided to take what they called then “a bold stand” and call on Mark Driscoll to take time off and enter an elder directed plan of restoration. This was before the investigation into the formal charges against Driscoll came to the same conclusion. Eventually, Driscoll resigned instead of entering that process.
To read the Postcards from Phoenix series, click here
To read all Mars Hill Church posts, click here
Not an evangelical, never heard of Mars Hill before Monday but sped through the entire CT podcast in two days because, as OrthoAnabaptist says, this story has so many facets to it. From a non-religious perspective this seems like a tale of thwarted ambition in the sense that had Mr. Driscoll been born in a different neighborhood of Seattle he might have used his prodigious talents to some other end. (Yes, I know…crassly materialistic of me). As it was he used his charisma to vault past the gatekeepers. In a rigidly stratified society that’s how the exceptional emerge from below: sheer charisma. It didn’t hurt that the gatekeepers were a group of unctuous old white men itching to be taken down by a young punk. The problem is: you can’t be James Dean forever. Angry young men must go through the wilderness of middle age before they emerge as angry old men. Them’s the rules.
I’ve been gobbling up the CT podcast… maybe it’s a perverse voyeurism, I don’t know… but the story is compelling and one big reason is; it speaks so poignantly to the times we live in and have come through… the show’s header/opening has this person saying something about “people wanting a narcissist as their pastor”(approx.) I think there’s a direct connection with that spirit of the 21st century white evangelical age and their falling for trump…and others like him. And so even though the docu-podcast is about Mark D, it’s really more about the pathologies, the corruptions, the misguided loves, the twisted theology of many american evangelicals…
And for me, an in-body-but-not-spirit attendee of a church which fits squarely in the white, conservative, suburban/rural paradigm that gravitates towards people like Mark D – this story holds a mirror up to me (particularly my younger self) We/I do tend to fall for funny, charismatic, confident, charming speakers… We like being associated with a guy who’s made a name for himself, whether in a big national way or smaller local way (my current pastor… is a minor celebrity in the christian entertainment world…!!! and I was not there when he was chosen, but I’ve gotten the distinct feeling that one of the reasons he was chosen WAS because of his prior fame!) I’ll grant him this; He doesn’t seem as crass or arrogant as MD, but listening to this has caused some warning bells to start ringing…
Where this all ends, I don’t know, but I hope more people gain wisdom from this and stop falling for these guys… and start changing their inner hankerings and begin to look for something better in their leaders/pastors… (and stop blaming the Church’s ills on a supposed nefarious cabal of academics and leftists and CRTism…)
On other important news: here comes the lawsuit against RZIM, that other scam from India. Warren has covered some of that scandal and now it is headed back to court. I suspect they will settle out of court just like GFA did. https://julieroys.com/lawsuit-rzim-cover-up-abuse-donors/
FYI, Episode 6 (“The Brand”) of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is up at Christianity Today.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/rise-fall-mars-hill-podcast-mark-driscoll-brand.html
Thank you Dr. Throckmorton for further documenting the larger narrative revealing Mark Driscoll’s abusive behavior.
“the church structure of having a board of non-local advisors (such as exists now at Mark Driscoll’s The Trinity Church)”
who are the “non-local advisors” for Trinity Church? Did you manage to get more names than were on the org chart you published earlier?
“Then later that month, we learned that Tripp believed that Mars Hill Church was ‘the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I’ve ever been involved with.'”
So then, as now.
Except that now it’s arguably worse, because MD has had ample time to learn from his past “mistakes” and perfect his organisational model to make sure there’s no possible way anyone can oust him from his position as capo dei capi.