Honest Answers to Hard Questions about Mars Hill Church - Part 2

um okay so uh moving on to another issue which became a public relations problem for mars hill uh did the uh evangelical council for financial accountability when they came to visit and you know look over uh the finances particularly in relation to the global fund did did they all find anything that they considered to be a you know a miss uh did uh did they have any suggestions for you that they you know kind of wanted to keep quiet or how how was that all handled i know you acknowledged that that maybe the messaging was confusing but that was something that i covered a good bit and maybe i maybe i thought i found more than i did i was always very curious about that one and the efca has has come down pretty hard on some other groups for what seems like maybe some similar messaging issues here in recent days so just kind of curious how they handled that with you guys yeah so we called them in so dan busby who was the head of ecfa uh and um our auditor from clark nuber um came to the church and i had them in our office and spot spent an entire day um with both of them going through all of the information on uh mars hill global now let me first say like i did a very bad job of communicating about marshall global my fault this is like this isn't mark driscoll's fault this is my fault i take full responsibility for mars so global it was and and it was a situation where i think i got a little overly excited about the opportunity to help people in ethiopia at the same time uh raising dollars uh global dollars of people that were podcasters um to fund uh not only you know church plants and those types of things marzo global was way before me um but i i really put uh gasoline to the fire as far as marshall global um you know from my vantage point mars hill in the past had never really done anything international missions type of stuff and so i brought you know want to bring in compassion international and let's adopt a whole bunch of kids all over the world you know i just was really fired up about it and i i think the the what my issue was is that i did not clearly communicate mars hill global and what we're doing in ethiopia give to marcel global and you're giving to mark to ethiopia i think that those two quickly because i was so excited about ethiopia um i still am i mean my son's from ethiopia and so i just i love it um and um but i did not communicate well and so when i brought dan and uh and um clark neuber in i was like listen whatever we need to do because this is a situation where i'm in control of this this isn't mark control like a plagiarism or something like that i'm i'm in control of this it's my fault um i want to do whatever the hell that we need to do to to to make this clear and so they looked through everything and looked through all the communication and i built binders for them that it kind of chronicled the way that we launched it and all that kind of stuff and so basically um you know i said dan what i'd like to do is i'd like to contact every single person that is given to marcel global and and say if you feel like that you were giving to ethiopia i will make damn sure that your whatever the amount of money that you gave to ethiop or gave to martial global will get to ethiopia and so i think we sent out like 3 700 emails and like 4 000 letters and uh and got back like 40 responses and it was like 40 thousand dollars that people had said yes i really felt like i was given to ethiopia and so but that still didn't i felt better because i felt like okay i've contacted every single donor and if if i misled them i i've i've corrected that mistake um i just you know it was one of those things where i i feel like that if we had handled other crisis differently in the past then martial global wouldn't have blown up and we would have been able to do what we did to correct the the poor communication and i think everything would have been different but because even though we did those things people assumed that there was something behind there that you know that there was some benefit that mark was getting or some like there was some like agenda or something like that um and but that was my fault i mean clearly clearly my fault um and one of the greatest things that i i look at like sutton you failed um at mars hill at marshall global you you absolutely failed and so i mean that wasn't dave's responsibility it wasn't mark's responsibility that was my responsibility i think what you said there about the pr part is what i'll just make a quick comment on and then we'll move on the the messaging about uh global when i started raising questions about it that was really more the issue than what you did what you did in response to it seemed really fair you know by by doing what you said you you offered the donors a chance to designate their donation in a way that they wanted to and that gave them a chance to do just what some of them did but the stories that um uh the pr and i i'm blocking on his name dean i think is his last name justin there we go i wanted to say jamie i don't know why but justin dean he's going to he's going to dig me for that we're still in touch i mean i talk to him every now and then but anyway justin was telling and and i guess i want to ask who who was behind that this is a curtain i want to draw back now did did was he in charge of messaging or did someone tell him mark is the the communicator of communicators so like there's no communication that goes out that that mark wasn't involved with the communication and that public side of things was critical important to mark whether it be medford whether it be i mean when marshall global broke i was in ethiopia literally taking a bunch of pastors um in ethiopia i was actually rooming with uh i think ryan williams at the time because it was his first trip to the big australian um that's now at in albuquerque um and and i was you know because we're 12 you know 10 12 hours difference um i was trying to communicate but it was all of that the communication part uh was super important to mark so he would read through all of that and and and the basic principle or the policy of we don't respond or we don't comment when um news uh or you or somebody else calls and asks questions that was very much driven by mark what was your perspective dave um yeah i i i think the thing that was hard for me personally in that season sutton uh with with mars so global and probably because it was so on the heels and i can't remember the exact timeline but it's very much in proximity to the real marriage thing probably for me that was the end of my journey philosophically with mars hill i i began to be very concerned that we were overlooking our local churches and focusing on the internet broader audience that we had i understood sutton and you'd have talked many times about this your your heart from your perspective having really come to faith through an online experience and a remote experience and and your passion to see more people like that would have been in your circumstance then we're going to come to the door of a church but might podcast a sermon it might get connected another way i knew you were i knew you had a missionary zeal for that i knew it wasn't you know self-motivated but i really began to see that we are we're we're out kicking our coverage this thing is becoming quickly unstable because we're not taking the time to support our local churches our attention really began to be diverted into an online broader global audience and i really felt like in the end that meant we were going to have anemic churches and so um yeah i don't remember i i appreciated that you that you reached out and initiated with dan busby and and our accountants to remedy that situation but it began to there just was a transition that happened where all of a sudden i think the people in the pews felt it really profoundly where it almost became like they were secondary and there was going to be this drive to really reach out to a global audience that may and there were limited resources we were always doing everything we could to to patch and put resources together so that we could do ministry and it just felt like there was a season where there was a tipping point and we became much more of an internet organization reaching a global audience then we really were committed to the local church and so for me i began to see the writing on the wall at that point like i don't think i can continue to do this so this is a personal personal thought at that point all right well thanks for that back to driscoll now to mark uh did either of you ever personally see him domineering or abusive now these are the things that were part of dave kraft's charges early in 13 there and then these became part of the formal charges than in 2014. so did you see those things that became part of the substance of those charges dave you and me go first yeah so um yeah i i uh i had a feeling you might ask us this question um and so i went back over the last two weeks and and uh circled up with some people that that at the time um when these things happened i don't know if i realized the the gravity of them but now obviously you do so i guess i'll go two different occasions one was in september of 2013. we had our lead pastor residence program where pastors would come in they would do a year's worth of residency at one of our local churches and then we would plant them as a mars hill church location and so this was that class coming in in september of 2013 and it was really the first time that mark had met them as a resident's team and just before literally like right before that couple of days before we had found out that one of our pastors had disqualified himself and he we had to remove him um from leadership and um and so mark walks into this this setting with these lead pastors and i was there several people were there um and um he says quote if you and he's talking about the lead pastor residents ever do something like that being the disqualifying uh act i will effin kill you end quote um and it was one of those just chilling moments um he was angry um and it was uh i think that kind of sets itself then 2012 um we're at the ballard location um and pastor mark was preaching there locally so this was before we had gone over to the location in bellevue um and we were preaching from there and and recording from there um and we had a tremendous uh response from baptism that day and that evening especially um and um there was the lead pastor was actually out that day and so somebody else was stepping in that day to lead the church and to do the announcements from the stage and all of those types of things and so during the sermon there's a call to baptism so many people literally get up um and want to be baptized well we had i think two three sir uh songs after the baptism and there's so many people wanting to get baptized that there's not enough time or change of clothes all i mean there's just it's an incredible um and so i'm backstage uh mark's backstage um and the lead pastor comes through there or the the guy that was basically taking the place of the lead pastor and uh mark grabbed him and put his thumb in his chest and said quote i'm going to rip your head off and s word down your neck and pushed on him and luckily that that pastor didn't react back just went on um and and uh um we're looking i mean basically we're all scrambling trying to get baptized it was the last service of the day you know that type of thing and it was so those were the two things that i recalled and then called those people to make sure that i got the words correct because they were directly involved in that wow [Music] i i witnessed a few examples warren maybe more seldom than people might think um a couple of them were private settings uh and um a couple of them were public settings uh one of the things that we saw especially as we began as sutton kind of or architected the board of accountability advisors we would do annual reviews and i remember one and at the end of those we would gather together and we'd receive our reviews from the independent members of our board job reviews and i remember one one of those years and i think you got a hard hat because you were you were taking a lot of criticism i received a a bullhorn like hey we need you to speak up more and mark received a lunch pail and the inside joke was this let this be the last lunch you ever packed because one of the things that mark would do is he would not not practice discipline within the organization chart and if he felt like somebody needed to have their lunch back he would meet with that person privately sometimes even unbeknownst to me or sutton pack that guy's lunch and then come back and so i i witnessed that on a handful of times and i think what's interesting is when i was aware of those things i would i would confront mark with them uh privately respectfully and just say hey you know this is it's not okay you know we can't i think you need to think about this i think can you consider this and his response was always interesting because he didn't push back on me he didn't blow up at me he seemed to take to heart what i was what i was bringing to his attention he made a commitment in every instance to follow up with a person's or person that he might have wounded and i believe followed through with that i think what was an area that maybe caused me some compassion but also some deep concern is he just didn't see it i i didn't sense that these were premeditated um hey i know what i'm about to do and this is going to cause a lot of damage that i can empathize with and i can foresee when i would bring these things to him there was almost a shocked surprise really wow you know i i i don't remember i don't remember that i don't i don't i don't i didn't see that and so you know my i i began to think that maybe he just doesn't see things the way i see things and he's not acting from a premeditated malicious place of heart he's blind to some things he's got this blind spot and yet that becomes more concerning if you're wounding people deeply and you don't even know it uh that becomes a real concerning issue so those are kind of the things i saw um you know and so yeah i did see if i did see some of those you know there was a there was a strategy that i think was unannounced that sutton employed and that was to begin to almost isolate mark from the organization so we moved offices mark had very limited interaction with the staff usually when he did it was in the best possible place that he would serve it would be up front teaching it would be encouraging it would be sharing good news but we didn't interact with many staff and then suddenly i really began to oversee almost the entirety of the staff and i don't know if that was intentional sitting on your part to kind of isolate mark so that we didn't have regular interactions there was progress that he made along the way um if he you know those that were in the organization for long seasons a decade or so would say hey he's changing he's not the guy he was 10 years ago these incidents are far and fewer between he's he's making progress but they never stopped entirely as far as i as far as i remember and one one thing to point out there is that dave had that opportunity to talk with mark i never had that i mean we played different roles um okay and i i was not um able to have those types of conversations or that place um in leadership um but dave did many times a couple of times in front of me um i know when i resigned um dave really stood up for me um and um and so there were times that that i saw from my manage point to where dave was like wait a minute this isn't right this isn't you know and called that out so the the and i would say probably the only person that i know that that's probably ever done that or that i'm aware of um that's done that as far as hey you know this is out of line hey um those types of things most people were like me in my place which was mark would tell me to go do something i go good do it um mark tell me to lead something or take on this responsibility i go do that very much i i he was my supervisor um and and that felt like that dave was more on a different level than most everybody else was i see um i have uh here with me the charges that uh were filed the formal charges and let me uh just read a couple and get your reaction to those here's one mark said in a meeting that he didn't want a certain elder to take on a certain prominent leadership role because quote his fat ass is not the image we want for our church do you remember that so i don't remember that specific one i mean is that you dave i don't i don't remember that specific one that sound uh unusual though i mean does that yeah well here's one you might remember in a meeting with lead pastors shaming and bullying of a lead pastor to break his conscience and swear in front of the group that says cuss in front of the group yeah i was i was i was present for that yeah i think he wanted him to use the f word didn't he you know he just as i recall he wanted him to swear um and he uh got the guy that he was asking to do this different cultural background from anglo culture and came from more of a prime and proper culture and he wanted him to swear and i think i think he used the word damn as i recall um yeah i think that's i think he just wanted to hear him swear and i think that's the word he used as i recall i may be wrong sudden i don't if you remember that directly no i remember it yeah yeah and uh in that same meeting he asked uh another lead pastor if he'd had sex with his wife yeah yeah and i witnessed that yeah yeah these uh i've uh you know i haven't gone to a lot of churches in my life but i've been on you know most of the ones i've gone to i've been on a board or something and i've never heard that anything like that in a in a board meeting uh so yeah i would think that would be a little concerning and i mean there are there's uh you know one two [Music] um let's see the three there's two three pages of this of these different things and these were investigated then by uh you know we'll get to that in a minute but investigated by a group of elders who interviewed lots and lots of people who uh you know gave their testimony another uh person who was around mars hill at the time was paul tripp many of our those watching this video the viewers will know who paul tripp is and uh he was on the board of advisors but he stepped off of the board in july uh 2014 uh i want to ask you guys if you know why he stepped off the board he did say um in reply to uh elders that he'd been consulting with that this is without a doubt referring to mars hill the most abusive course of ministry culture i've ever been involved with uh is that part of why he stepped away yeah it's interesting this this the the whole part of paul tripp uh it did it wasn't very long he actually it came out um in july that he had left but he actually left early june uh it's just that we kept it under wraps because we knew that it would explode what's interesting is is that paul as you can imagine is extremely busy person and um when we asked him to come out um he actually took a red eye the next day um to come out and meet with me and dave and mark and uh and and me and and our board chairman and then also met um that afternoon uh with some uh former uh elders um and he um quickly um i think in realized um like what he said that we had a horrible culture and unfortunately for dave and i um he had lots of meetings via conference calls but dave and i were never included on those conference calls with board members and so we were actually excluded and what's interesting is is that um so he had come out he'd come out twice he had met with former uh board members i mean former elders he had met with dave and i and mark and then the next thing i know and dave might have a different story but next thing i know is he resigns and i was shocked because i i mean honestly i was hoping of all the people um that were on the board um that he was going to to to basically provide accountability um onto the board um and and for him to quit um i i was shocked to be honest with you and um you know and i read and i had um very little interaction with him um but in hindsight after i had seen what he had said so he had resigned and then a lot of that stuff came out i was like dad gum i wish i had been a part of those conference calls because i would have said amen to many of the things that he was saying but i think that that's the reason why dave and i were not included in those conference calls as well yeah i have i have a lot of uh i have deep respect and appreciation for for paul tripp and really so appreciate the the men who served in that capacity voluntarily uh and especially at a time where mars hill was having a lot of problems they did so a great great cost my understanding in follow-up conversations and just the the work i did after the fact was i think paul came to the conclusion that the system as it existed and it is specifically me and sutton we're just not going to be able to hold mark accountable to bring about the changes that he thought were necessary and so i think he i think he was committed to us as long as he saw the possibility that we were going to be able to make the changes that he thought needed to be made and i think he came to the conclusion like like some others did too that this just is going to happen this way and stepped away so that's my understanding that the quote that you mentioned warren came from a conversation he had it actually happened in a as we were having an elder retreat with a subgroup of elders who are concerned and i think he communicated that same sentiment to them that neither sutton and i were capable of of really helping mark and holding mark accountable um and that moving forward he had no confidence in us being able to do that and i think he was right in that how about james mcdonald it's right around the same time didn't he step off of that same board do you know have any sense of that yeah um so that was august um right actually right before the acts 29 so we had paul tripp leaving we had james mcdonald leaving and then acts 29 uh removes us as a member but james leaving because he called me and talked to me um that he had just previously called mark and uh had resigned to mark and so he had called me and said that he was sorry um and his reasoning was is that he he didn't this was his comment he didn't want what's happening to mark to happen to him okay and so and so uh he didn't want his elders his elders supposedly at that point in time were asking him questions and everything and this is when the pressure so this is late july early august of 2014 the pressure for there to be an investigation on mark so i'm actually uh vacationing mark is uh taking his sabbatical uh in uh lebanon uh not leavenworth uh wenatchee i'm actually in wenatchee at the same time as mark and james calls and resigns and and then calls me to to tell me that he has resigned and so literally within a very publicly now now paul had actually quit uh the month of june but publicly it came out in july that um that uh paul had so paul resigns then james resigns and then soon after that i think it was like august the 8th that acts 29 removes us so those sequence happen and i'm going to say like like in less than a month oh the dominoes were falling uh wow it was it was i think i uh i wrote something like uh the worst week of mars hill's history uh and then then acts 29 removes mars hill and mark driscoll all at once so what uh what can you i mean you probably have some recollections about that event uh acts 29 uh drops that bomb what's that like inside the house yeah that was that was a devastating that was a devastating event and when i would talk with the the men i was responsible to serve warren the lead pastors of all the churches that's when the mass exodus happened probably in hindsight our credibility as a church was riding upon our ongoing connection to acts 29 there had been such a marshall had been more influential than any church in getting acts 29 up and going it was it was really uh an extension of our outreach ministry even though it had been transferred over to matt chandler and the village church and so people were thankful and proud and grateful for actually matt chandler had a tremendous amount of uh credibility and so when we were removed from that network the lead pastors i spoke to said that's when the most people at any point in time walked out the doors and never came back i was actually in texas when that happened i was taking one of my daughters uh to college and dropping her off and spending the last few days with her so i was on central time i was up early i think i got that at about eight in the morning central time which would have been six o'clock am pacific daylight time so i called mark and and shared with him the news and he seemed like he was stunned and you know we even had a brief conversation the extent of well maybe this is it you know maybe this is over at this point and then we later you know had time to think about later so was blindsided by that did had no idea no idea whatsoever that that was in jeopardy had no idea the conversations that matt and mark were having was on was unaware of the conversations that matt chandler was having with board members like paul tripp and maybe james mcdonald as well and that's what i think sutton's alluding to and some of the other issues is although he and i were part of the boa there were many conversations that would happen either one member to the next or all of us all of them excluding us that we were just we were blindsided by that we had no idea that was even a possibility and so that really eroded any credibility that sudden i had too with any other leaders in the church because they felt like we were sitting on this information for a long season which we weren't and so yeah that was that was that was tough you know i've had conversations with matt since um and he's uh you know he's he's he's convinced me that he and mark did have quite a few conversations um whether mark realized that the the seriousness of those conversations and the formality of what was about to happen i don't know i can't speak to that he says he doesn't and you know i'll take him at his word but yeah that was a huge blow that was really there was no turning back at that point we were really in a you know we were really in a tough spot yeah one one thing to keep in mind is um the so the the conversations that paul tripp was having with mark and with james mcdonnell and the two other board members dave and i really didn't didn't even know um like supposedly paul presented a seven point pro plan and and only got through four points um of it that's what paul has said um of course dave and i weren't on the call somewhere at the act like men conferences um matt chandler was talking to mark that whole previous year so all the year of 2013 they have act like men and events which mark is speaking james mcdonald's speaking matt chandler speaking and so from my understanding matt was talking to mark that whole year um because they would come together for those act like men conferences and uh and and matt was telling mark of course not dave and i weren't involved in those conversations so when matt you know cuts off mars uh mars hill from acts 29 it becomes a big shock to dave and i the same way that paul tripp quintin uh uh uh was was shocking um and so during that whole summer both dave and i i mean it was just one thing after another we'd be shocked in and then people would turn to us because mark was very much disconnected like dave was talking about from a standpoint of a culture and mark not packing anybody's lunch anymore mark was distant from the rest of the staff so the staff was coming to us saying okay so what about acts 29 so what about what are you on and we would not be able to answer those questions um so it was uh it was it was a just a crazy time during that summer of uh 14. yeah and then right after the acts 29 that's when the formal charges came mid-august of 14 then the 21 elders brought the formal charges it was about a week after they were submitted that they were leaked to me uh and published uh and that took uh what through the rest of august and september to investigate uh that's when we get to october and the findings are presented to the decision making board by the board of elders now i'm going to let you take us through that the the board of of elders and the board of advisors and there's so many boards yeah and uh i think i i think i've got it but i i know you do and so i'm going to let you two take us through that there is some there are some shenanigans here uh because the board who investigated the charges came up with with one finding or several findings but they came up with a particular finding that uh that really didn't see the light of day right i mean it didn't really come out and we're talking about disqualification here so you guys could kind of take us through that i think it would help maybe set the record straight on some things so i'll try to start dave and then you can you can team in here um i think you go back to the early part of 2014. early part of 2014 we add into the bylaws that a investigation will include and and so what we have is we have the board of accountability and advisors that's the main board of directors basically of of the church of the 501c3 okay and there's seven members me and dave are two of those members marks one and then we have four outside board members that board puts into the bylaws that a board of elders and we'll just call them elders elders can investigate and do investigate a allegations [Music] of any of the executive elders and that that is is led by um one of the board of accountability advisors so that was huge okay because that's what didn't happen in may of 2013 when dave kraft and nine elders brought similar charges there was no process there was nothing there was no group to do that um so those happen and that gets put into the bylaws and so then we go all the way around and we we're in august now and these 21 elders now are putting forth formal charges very similar to dave kraft's uh 2013 charges but what happens is differently this time is is per the bylaws is that these elders board of elders elders investigate these charges and so what they do early part of august and sept or middle of august and it's they really start at the end of august and they go through in september and they're investigating and they do 40 excuse me they do 40 different interviews with 40 different people there's two elders there's a note taker and they go through this hundreds literally hundreds of hours of of testimony is being taken down luckily um through the process i have all of those records so i have not only the uh the the the interviews but also what's important and what was good for dave and i to review was there was an october 1st october 2nd october 8th october 13th october 14th and october 18th uh board of advisors which is the main board board of advisors with these board of elders with these investigating elders and so we have transcripts of those meetings dave nor i i think dave you might have been in one of those meetings but i had already resigned um and so i was not a part of those but i have all of the transcripts from those meetings um and um and so it documents basically out um those pretty much their three main charges and i said them earlier in the podcast but it's quick tempered including harsh speech arrogant and the third one is domineering in his leadership of elders and staff and so that's the the findings that these investigating elders have um and that they are bringing those charges to the board of overseers okay which does not include dave nor i um in that or mark um so those are those outside four board members and then i think actually dave you might have been a part of one of those phone calls um but you can address that but that's that's kind of where we track everything and i think we can hit into the differences of those two groups and what ends up happening because this all unroll uh unravels very quickly in the first two weeks of october if we'll remember when mark took his um sabbatical he was supposed to be out until october the 14th i think but it was right around there let's just saw it the second weekend in october of 2014 and so that's what was trying to be wrapped up during that time period and that was kind of like the the drop dead date um for the investigating for the findings to come out and for there to be something going forward of course during this whole time i mean the churches the the people are leaving in in droves especially after acts 29 that's really where you see the great exodus from the marshfield churches yeah let me speak to the meeting i was a part of i i you know probably not should speak to meetings i wasn't privy to that would be dangerous um so i would have met warren with uh let's just call them as sutton as use the language already the overseers those were the ones that were made those are the outside board members that were making the final decision regarding uh they were rendering the verdict of the investigation and then the elders who had done all the investigative work so i met with them i believe it was monday october 13th and the the reason that date's significant is the overseers had met previously to that that very the weekend prior to that monday they had met with mark and grace uh communicated to them the the findings of the investigation and and gave them both some restorative plan a restorative plan of what changes were going to have to happen and needed to happen for mark to be leading the church moving forward and so i was a part of the meeting where the overseers communicated to the elders the investigative group here's what we've communicated to mark and grace there were there was some agreement in that meeting and uh the two things that were really even looking back over the notes from that meeting two things that i think are important particularly for members of mars hill to here the two points of that were just evident were both bodies expressed deep love and concern for martial church that was clearly a point of agreement two both groups expressed a deep love and appreciation for mark and really wanted to want it good for mark wanted wanted mark both groups wanted him to thrive long term in ministry but here were the two points of differentiation and they were significant the investigative group the elders wanted mark to be disqualified from the office of elder and have an open timeline with his restoration process to restore him to the office of elder and ultimately to uh to to be to resume his role as an executive elder at mars hill church the overseers did not want mark to be disqualified as an elder and they had set a target date of i believe it was january 4th 2015 so roughly what would that be two and a half months for mark to resume his duties albeit in a reduced role of power that was very clear in their plan uh sudden sudden had already resigned i had already communicated to the the the overseers that i would step away as soon as mark came back into the pulpit mark needed a clean start and he needed new guys around him to to gain credibility um he needed a new place to begin from and so during that meeting war on that monday it was clear that those two groups are at an impasse and a decision was made by the chairman of the board of overseers to have a follow-up meeting where they could maybe resolve those two differences again whether mark was disqualified or not and at what point in time if there was any set on the calendar for him to come back i was very convinced that neither side was going to budge i was i was very certain that if uh and what i mean by that is if the overseers would have said um yes this is what we're we're doing this and you guys gotta live with i think there would have been mass resignation from the board of elders and maybe even the lead pastors in their entirety i don't believe the board of overseers was open to mark being disqualified from ministry i don't from from the elder role i don't think they were going to give an inch on that issue and i do think they were set on him coming back in january uh before those two those two groups could reconvene and come up with some sort of resolution mark resign and so um yeah it's just it's left the story open-ended in a way that i i think it just needs to be told i think people need to know what happened i will say this um and let's looking back on the work that the board of elders did and uh even after they were finished with their work i know sudden i met with several of the people that were hurt that they interviewed and just to see the devastation and the hurt in those folks uh they did a tremendous amount of work yeah they're very they're very principled um their contention was we can't be pragmatic in this at all we're either going to follow out what the bible says regarding biblical qualifications and in in first timothy 3 and titus 1 and domineering as it's addressed in first peter 5 and they felt like to not disqualify mark would to be partial to him in a way that they wouldn't be for any other elder in that position in place and so yeah it was tough i don't believe they were free to tell their story after that was said and done i don't know that anybody's really shared anything from that to this day and so anyway there was an impasse i don't believe it was going to be resolved and before there could be a follow-up meeting between those two groups mark resigned the resignation has it was an interesting story he he said something about uh he and grace got separate messages from god about being i don't know ambushed or a trap had been set and i don't know if you either of you have any insight into that uh from you know knowing him or just knowing of the situation but the the elders again said one thing and the board of overseer said another thing and so do you have any insight into what that might mean yeah so i don't know dave mark called you he called me to tell me that grace was upstairs she was he was downstairs um that god spoke to him and said that it was going to be ambushed that they were going to be ambushed um by the obviously the the elders um and then she came downstairs and had the same thing and therefore that's why they resigned and so that was on that day um and that's that's just what he told me yeah he and i never spoke about that so we really didn't talk about that and so in the middle of the impasse between those two boards that's when the resignation came yeah i think it was literally that i think the resignation was submitted the day after that first meeting or the second day after that first meeting now there was to be a report that was released or i i don't know maybe i'm wrong about that but there you know everybody was kind of chasing that report for a long time and the elders were very tight-lipped about it was there ever a written report or was it more of a word of mouth report given to the the uh decision-making body the the overseers so i mean we the we don't know i don't know i don't know if it was a written report that the the leader of those board of elders was producing i do know that the uh that there were those meetings on the 1st the 8th the 13th and the 14th that you see those the documentation of the elders basically giving their findings to the overseers um verbally on conference calls and then those those conference calls having detailed notes of this person said this this person said this that type of transcript i would say yeah i've never seen a i've never seen a formal report okay and then there there was the there was a kind of a script that the some of the elders read to their congregations uh that did did describe the results of the findings that they did find him uh disqualified on those three counts that you that you listed but that i don't know that that conflict between the two boards has been uh laid out quite as clearly as you just did ever before i think that might be you may have made some news there i'm not sure that i'm excited about making this but uh the uh i do believe and i think you maybe were the first person that published it warren i think you had uh the transcript from what alex gionee wrote or said to the congregation at samamish that um the the the content that was read in the church is on i believe it was october 19 2014 was um was a compromise statement between the overseers and the elders in other words there was no disagreement that was that was a worked out compromise forged together the forge document that they read and that was scripted together so that was actually the outcome of a follow-up meeting that they probably had on the 18th i think to what was going to be read in all the churches on the 19th and that's why in that in those in those statements that were read in the churches that were words disqualified and those specific charges weren't outlined so that was that that was that combined so so i think what you have later published which was a statement that came out from the elders which is different than what was actually communicated into the in the churches on that night october 19th [Music] well okay so at the time the the members uh would have been and were in the dark a bit i mean they really didn't realize that that the uh if all of that investigating had led to the actual body who did the investigating coming up with uh the result that uh now you've described that he was considered disqualified with an open-ended restoration plan well that was the detail it wasn't ever worked out i mean that's the key like the the two those two sides ever coming together with a plan on what the church i mean it was never i mean because mark resigned before any type of a restoration plan you know any of that was ever been able to be finalized yeah so something else that has been asked by a number of members of mars hill was about a payout uh you know follow the money uh was there a payout at the end of to to uh mark driscoll at the end of marcel anybody know anything about that yeah so obviously i know a lot about the finances having overseen them for four years um you know if you if you go back so let me let me give a detailed answer to that question because i think people need to understand why i'll say why i'm saying it in may of 2014 i put a plan together where we needed to lay off 40 of the staff because at that point in time we had decreased giving and you could pretty much project that there was going to be a wall if we didn't do some massive staff reductions and reduce down the size of course we're at 15 churches all of those having either debt or lease expense so you you have a you have a large amount of ongoing expenses um and you need to cut unfortunately that plan was not put in place um but and then you fast forward september 10th we lay off 127 people in one day and so that cut was too late basically um and the dollars that were consumed during that time period that whole summer when you have decreased giving pretty much uh consumed the majority of the dollars that were in the church now understand mars hill never really had any assets most of the churches that we owned were leased and the ones that we did own we put very little money down and and didn't have really any equity in them the one church that we had equity in which was ballard that was finally sold really to help pay off some of the additional debt that was uh and uh on the other buildings but um so when i left in uh the middle part of september of 14 i i really wondered if they were going to be able to make that last payroll okay so so to to say that there was some kind of big payout to mark i i just and it just wasn't gonna happen and he resigned uh what two weeks later after i left so within the time period of two weeks that there's going to be millions of dollars that are going to be it just it's just not going to happen um so i i just and i mean dave stayed to the very very end december 31st but i'm going to just tell you what it would look like the financials look like it's in the middle of september of 14 i couldn't see um that there was any way to pay off those buildings and even a couple of those buildings like our um our the offices on 50th street there in balor it was a contaminated building that had significant contamination um and it was a real chore to try to get rid of that after um they closed mars hill so that's the detail that i can give you no i don't think in my opinion was mark given any type of major payout because there was no money to pay anybody else out okay yeah and i would have like suddenly said warren i would have been there through december 31st the clearly the organization continued in a season after that with a very reduced staff there were there were odds and ends to close down there were documents to be filed there are all kinds of things that happen but up until the time that i left i'm not aware of any payout that was made to mark well that will be of interest to uh to some of the members i think they were curious about that another question did mark uh ever wear a bulletproof vest go ahead dave you can answer this one yeah i think you're probably referring to uh was that the carrie newhoff interview he did yeah this is that where that thing was made well yes there and he i think he has something on a website uh recently too where he said okay yeah i i personally never witnessed mark wearing a bulletproof vest i i do know he we always had security teams uh that that watched that watched him watched after him um we do know he had some strange encounters with people that seemingly were unstable or might want to hurt him i believe there's one episode that happened way before sutton and i ever showed up or maybe somebody charged the stage of the machete uh why he was preaching but i i personally never witnessed him wearing a bulletproof vest yeah i i just to leave it open i think when i was there 99.9 percent of the time that mark preached i was there and most the time drove with him to the location wherever we he was preaching and i never saw a bulletproof vest at all so okay well all right what about phoenix phoenix just popped up here recently or uh it has uh has there always been a design on a warmer climate yeah so uh if you go back and look at our board documents from 12 and 13 um when we met on our annual board meeting we were always talking about either phoenix or orange county doing either a host and moving the capture location of where mark would preach to either of those two locations so we had talked about that when we even when we were leasing the building in orange county we talked about how that that could be a capture location uh and then when we went down to phoenix and opened that church in phoenix we did a ton of surveying of the area of you know what would be better downtown phoenix or scottsdale or those types of areas were there any old churches i spent a lot of time doing the research in phoenix looking for old church buildings those types of things so uh you know that was nothing new um for us to to have talked about that now if you go to the summer of 14 we had pre we had planned on uh by that time um really focusing on bellevue being the capture location um that being said you know we had done all those research in many years before yeah you know mark mark did genuinely suffer from seasonal affective disorder you could just you could feel it it was it was a heavy thing for him and then particularly in the later years warren with with the visibility growing of mars hill with already some of the issues that martial was unpopular and certainly the message that was being taught wasn't widely received in seattle it was difficult and i witnessed this personally with him it was difficult for him to go anywhere in seattle and not be at least approached by somebody so yeah my thought was always that the viability of seattle long term for him especially if he's going to do something outside of mars hill was just not this was not it just was not an option but yeah we had decided as sutton said we even even went so far as we looked at an opportunity at in los angeles uh i don't know when that was but we actually looked at a building there and didn't pursue it of even thinking about maybe relocating headquarters to los angeles in that season but we had we had really settled on on bellevue i i believe it was mark and grace's intent to raise their kids in seattle and get them to college there and so we had kind of settled hey we're going to make bellevue the home of this thing for the long term we had some big dreams for that and then everything came undone yeah well gentlemen uh i i six years ago i would never have believed that we would be having this conversation i mean first of all i would never have believed that we would be on on anything called zoom in a pandemic but i certainly wouldn't have believed i would be chatting with you guys uh and i'm it's it's a tribute to uh to grayson and uh all of that we are doing that so i i do thank you for your time and i just ask you one one last question here and that is is there anything you'd like to say to former morris hill church members and attenders or even to to to mark is anything you'd like to say in closing i'll go first um thanks warren i first i want to apologize to you um i personally have attacked you in the past never ever met you before um and when i got to meet you um post marshall um realize that you're being a genuine christian and and loving the church and um looking to do the right thing and to record the right thing and i appreciate that very much and i appreciate your friendship post martial we're all good appreciate that um you know dave and i since probably the last two years or no probably last six months have done a bunch of podcasts uh with i am call ministries um i think we did like nine of them um or eight eight or nine i'm trying to chronicle the thing lessons learned from mars health for pastors i know i've met and i know dave's met but i've met i can only speak to myself i've met with a bunch of people that i needed to reconcile with i needed to own things apologize for things the way that i handle things i'm going to continue to do that for people that need to and maybe something in this video that something that's triggered that they want to talk to me about i'm totally open to continuing to have those conversations to helping people heal and move on from mars hill church one of the reasons why i wanted to do this podcast with you warren is because you um are are a part of the mars hill story and if we were gonna sit down with somebody and put a period and and to go through all the details of the stuff that we knew at mars hill we would want to do it with you um so um we really appreciate you and um and so i'm just sad um um still have a hole in my heart because of mars hill have a hole in my heart because i know that that there were things that i could have done would have shoulda coulda done differently that might have changed the the outcome of mars hill um and that always is i'm just that's gonna be there always um and so um i just uh i love the people of mars hill i'm thankful of my time i try to remember all the good things that happened because there was a lot of good things that happened yes um but i'm also not shying away from the bad things and what people need to learn about um to to possibly change churches as they go forward and so um that's one of the reasons why my my my wife asked me this morning so why are you doing this today i'm like marcy we got to go through this um we got to talk about this and we've got to bring some of this stuff back up for maybe for this never to happen again so all right all right thank you dave yeah i uh thanks warren i do appreciate the uh the opportunity i think there's still a lot of holes in the mars hill story for a lot of a lot of the members and my hope in sharing these things wouldn't be to open up old wounds although i know that's maybe inevitable but maybe to fill in some gaps in the story because i do think that the truth helps us heal knowing knowing exactly what happened is is a step in in knowing okay where do we go from here how do we do that so you know i would say i feel three primary things i want to say three primary things to the people of mars so number one i'm sorry not only did i personally fail you as a leader uh we did sutton mark and i failed you we we collect it's easy to uh it's easy and i think it's simplistic dependence on mark i don't think that's fair and and i failed and the sutton failed and we failed together and i know for some that's had devastating consequences [Music] some people have deconstructed their faith and are still really hurting to this day and and i'm sorry i'm deeply sorry and i pray for you i want jesus best for you i want healing for you um i'm thankful i want to say thank you to the members of mars hill church i'm thankful for everybody but i'm especially thankful for those who either participated in the church plants that came out of martial whatever the circumstances were around that or stayed with the remnant churches of mars hill and uh found found strength found grace of god to move forward and walking with jesus today and staying faithful on his mission i'm super grateful for you really thankful for the the great people i got to serve with there um and probably the last thing i would say and this may sound really strange after this interview uh i'm hopeful the story isn't over yet and and i think we have to have open hearts and open hands to the way in which the lord might bring about redemption to this story yet and by that i mean everyone who participated we know ultimately that will happen right you know from from biblical perspective we know all jesus is going to make all things right ultimately but i think even before that ultimate experience uh i just want everyone to be who can by the grace of god be open to what does it look like for repentance and reconciliation some form of healing to happen you know anything i could say to mark i feel like i could say to him personally i don't have personal hard feelings towards him i don't feel like there's any personal offenses between the two of us that need to be resolved if i did i think i could pick up the phone and find out a way to communicate to him and we could we could work those things out so appreciate appreciate the opportunity to share the story and uh hope i hope in some ways and maybe unexpected ways this is healing and hopeful to the people who will watch and hear this well i think there are people who needed to hear what you guys have had to say in this time and so bless you both bless you sutton bless you david and thanks for the time thanks for going over these very hard questions and uh we'll just trust that indeed uh these will be redemptive words and that they will do what they need to do so again thank you and again thanks for being with me today god bless

Channel: Sutton Turner

Views: 5,436

Rating: 4.6078429 out of 5

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Id: FIdTqfDV1l4

Length: 69min 35sec (4175 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020