Mark Driscoll – Page 43 – Warren Throckmorton

Mars Hill Church Executive Elder Dave Bruskas on Mark Driscoll, NYTs Best-Seller List, Strange Fire and More

I suspect different people will key in on different aspects of this video featuring recent remarks from Dave Bruskas. Bruskas led the Albuquerque NM City on a Hill church into an alliance with Mars Hill and then left Albuquerque in July 2011 to become an executive elder at Mars Hill Church. He is now slated to return as preaching pastor for the newly renamed North Church. Bruskas spoke on December 3, 2014 to a member’s meeting at the church. The questions were pre-selected with public questions not taken from the crowd. Yesterday, I posted a brief segment where Bruskas said Driscoll’s resignation was not the most redemptive outcome. The following segment deals with Bruskas regrets following a question from lead pastor Donovan Medina. A transcript of the video is at the link.

Click here for a transcript.

At about 1:15, in response to Medina’s question, Bruskas said the Board of Overseers (Jon Phelps, Larry Osborne, Michael Van Skaik, and Matt Rogers) found three areas of “persistent sin” via the examination of charges against Mark Driscoll: arrogance, domineering leadership and harsh words. While these were the three areas identified by the Board of Elders’ investigation, the BoO did not use the term “persistent sin” in their communication to the congregation. Rather, it was the elders later who used the term “persistent sin” in their verbal report to the various Mars Hill locations. The elders wanted Driscoll to step down and enter an elder-directed restoration process, whereas, in contrast, the BoOsaid they didn’t ask Driscoll to resign, and said that he wasn’t disqualified.

Bruskas admitted that the problems were “painfully entrenched in our culture.” He acknowledged that many leaders felt Mars Hill was special; now he sees that “God’s grace was on us in spite of us.” Bruskas didn’t believe he personally had used harsh words as Driscoll did.

For himself the three things he felt grieved about were the New York Times best-seller scam, the Strange Fire conference, and the performance driven culture of ministry.

Bruskas said he was a new executive elder in 2011 who was informed about the ResultSource contract by Jamie Munson in a car ride to work one morning. He asked if the approach had integrity and was financially feasible. Bruskas said Munson answered yes to both. After that, according to Bruskas, he didn’t ask any more questions.

Bruskas disclosed to friends that he was going to take the #2 position at Mars Hill in July 2011. That was about a month after Mark and Grace Driscoll and their agent Sealy Yates met at Thomas Nelson to discuss the ResultSource approach to scamming the best-seller list. This June 27, 2011 note from Sealy Yates to Kevin Small was included in a Mars Hill memo on the ResultSource-Real Marriage campaign.

The question is who was Jamie Munson working with? Munson has not responded to email questions on this topic. Bruskas is correct that he was a relatively new member of the executive elders. I wonder when it became clear what was actually happening with ResultSource. For instance, I wonder if he ever saw this memo. To his credit, he now believes the scheme was clearly wrong.

The second thing that grieves Bruskas is the Strange Fire incident. He said he would apologize to John MacArthur and believes he should have said something at the time. It has been over a year since that incident took place. If I had been in the Albuquerque audience, I would have asked him about the famous Driscoll tweet that security confiscated his books. I would like to hear Bruskas’ view of that tweet.

Last, Bruskas said he was sorry for being complicit with a “highly performance driven culture.” Perhaps he is referring to the actions described in this 2012 memo. In it, Bruskas took the lead in informing campus pastors that they couldn’t advocate for the staff they had to lay off due to financial pressures. The pastors were supposed to get in line. At the time, Driscoll, Bruskas and Turner had gotten significant pay increases while about 40% of the staff faced layoffs.

According to those present, nothing was asked about the Global Fund, the severance packages, Driscoll’s plagiarism, and accountability for the current sitting Board of Advisors and Accountability.

Consider this an open request for an interview to really clear the air and answer questions about Mars Hill’s unfinished business.

See also, part one of this video in which Bruskas tells the congregation that Driscoll’s resignation wasn’t the most redemptive outcome.

The Atlantic on the Art of Whistle-blowing

Writing on a topic of interest to my readers these days, Kate Kenny says whistle-blowing depends more on public interest than the importance of the content.
From my experience over the years, I lean toward agreement.
Over and above Seattle and other Mars Hill cities, many people are obviously interested in what happens with the church and Mark Driscoll. The interest has been strong and consistent. However, when I posted evidence that David Jeremiah and Les and Leslie Parrott used the same book list scamming approach (Kevin Small’s company ResultSource) as Mark Driscoll, the response was tepid. In fact, Jeremiah and the Parrotts make Driscoll look like an amateur. Those authors have used Kevin Small’s genius for multiple trips up the NYT ladder. However, that news has been a snooze compared to the latest dispatch from Mars.
In any case, this article helpfully reviews some factors that whistle-blowers consider when deciding whether to step forward or not.

Some Questions for Soma Church from Soma Members About the Mars Hill Bellevue Replant

In recent days, several members of Soma churches have written me with questions they have posed to either their local pastors or to the leaders at Soma Tacoma. The questions relate to the relationship between Soma and Mars Hill now and after the transition to independent churches. I don’t know the answers to these questions and have posed them to my contacts at Soma with no answer as yet. The members who wrote have not gotten answers either.
I am posting them here because I think if several people are asking, then many more would like to know. I also think some readers might know the answers and might then step forward either on the blog or via email. I have combined some similar questions into one category. Here they are:

1. Mars Hill Global Fund: Do you believe Soma has an obligation to get clarity on where the money went, and making sure what’s left gets to the right people?

2. Is Soma going to have any role in funding any Mars Hill severance pay? Will tithes from local Soma churches have any part in fulfilling Bellevue’s obligations?

3. Do you think MHC/Bellevue Church as part of Soma should have the existing leadership removed of their authority as elders and leaders? (Jeff Vanderstelt said they’d step down, now not the case) Do you think these leaders, if they knew of abusive climate but did nothing, should be disqualified?

4. What is you policy on shunning? Is this practice condemned at Soma?

5. Will former MHC leadership assume leadership positions in Soma Tacoma with national governance roles once Bellevue Church is brought into the Soma network?

6. If any of the former leaders at Bellevue are brought into the RICO lawsuit, will Soma help pay for their legal defense?

7. Has Soma checked in with Acts 29 for spiritual counsel? Has anyone from Soma discussed the move with former Mars Hill elders or Paul Tripp?

8. Will Soma benefit from the Mars Hill seed money?

Leadership Journal Seeks Lessons on the Demise of the Church from Former Pastors and Advisor

Subtitle: Gerry Breshears finally speaks
Ben Tertin at the Leadership Journal has a long article out today online which hopes to examine some “painful lessons” from the demise of Mars Hill Church. One aspect of the article which makes it necessary reading for Mars Hill watchers is the on the record statements from former pastors Bill Clem and Tim Gaydos. Both former pastors had much to say about the corporatization of church under Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner, and Dave Bruskas.
I recommend reading the full article, but I will provide some snippets first. Then I want to address the comments made by Driscoll’s co-author Gerry Breshears. First from Tim Gaydos:

Centralization consolidated power and finances efficiently. And as Driscoll’s celebrity brand infiltrated the Internet, plainly put, the church expanded enormously.

Gaydos says, “Mark made it no secret that he wanted to become the biggest church in America.” Push further. Grow faster. Give more cash to fund “The Front.”

Clem has a way with words:

“The growth was uncontrollable,” Clem says. “On one Sunday in January, we launched four campuses. The problem is that this is only possible if you scale the campus pastor position way back. If being a lead pastor requires a skill set or maturity, then your pool to draw from gets smaller, and you cannot multiply fast enough.

“The only way to create scalable multiplication is to somehow dumb down that position so that a dog with a note in its mouth can do it.”

Interesting way to describe a lead pastor under the Mars Hill regime.

“It got to the point where I’d get a weekly printout that would tell me I had one minute and 40 seconds to make an announcement,” says Clem. “I’d get a memo telling me to quit standing up in front and praying with people after the service because those hurting people are already regular attenders. The visitors are out in the lobby, so you need to be out in the lobby to get Velcro on the visitor to get them to stick so they come back.

“As the campus pastor, I’m being managed on where I stand, who I talk to—and I’m going, Are you kidding me? When I was 25 years old, I had more freedom to figure out how to do ministry than this.”

Clem isolated the arrival of Sutton Turner as the turning point:

“A significant turning point came when we brought Sutton Turner on,” Clem says, referring to the April 2011 hire of Turner as the church’s General Manager, eventually stepping into oversight of Central Operations. Not that Turner was malicious or corrupt, says Clem, but his business savvy began to dominate the church’s strategy and organizational structure.
“He had an MBA from Harvard and had just worked for the Prince of Qatar’s royal family on a major real estate development where he oversaw 1,500 people. We were thinking, OK, we don’t know what we’re doing; Sutton knows what to do.

One correction: Turner does not have a MBA from Harvard. He attended a summer program for executives at Harvard but his MBA is from Southern Methodist University. Clem can be forgiven for thinking that because Mars Hill Church leaders told the congregation he did.
I was surprised to see Gerry Breshears quoted in this article. Back in December of 2013, when I asked Breshears about plagiarism in a book he authored with Driscoll, he told me Driscoll had addressed the matter and he had nothing else to say.

I don’t think I’ll say anything in these issues. Mark’s statement seems well thought out and more than adequate to address the specific issues involved. His clear admission of error and taking responsibility and action as a result seems commendable. I hope it gets as much attention and appreciation as the plagiarism charges did.

The problem with the “taking responsibility” narrative was that Driscoll didn’t exactly do that. He said “mistakes were made” and did not address all of the books with documented plagiarism. Breshears not only was a co-author with Driscoll, but he served Mars Hill Church as a theological consultant to Driscoll.
Just recently, Breshears wrote about lessons from Mars Hill and in doing so blasted unnamed bloggers who brought many aspects of the Mars Hill culture to light.
However, to the Leadership Journal, Breshears said:

A compromising church culture dominated by a celebrity leader leads to corrosive chemistry. “Every church has its own culture,” continues Breshears, “and every church culture can go toxic.”

Yes, things can get toxic, especially when bystanders enable those who are making it toxic.

Mars Hill Church Posts 2014 Annual Report; No Resolution of Global Fund

Maintaining certain fictions until the end, Mars Hill leaders posted the 2014 annual report today.
The section on Mars Hill Global and Mars Hill Go reflects what happened to Mars Hill Global after I reported on the tactics to promote missions but use Global Fund money to fund U.S. expansion.

Between 2012 and May 2014, the Global Family was called the “Mars Hill Extended Family” and Mars Hill Go was marketed as the Mars Hill Global and the Global Fund.
The annual report maintains an upbeat reframing of the church closing and includes a brief accounting of finances for the year. No word in the report about the fate of those 73 church planters in Ethiopia and India.