Agony in Seattle. Van Rue’s Reflection on Mark Driscoll and His Abuse Inside American Evangelicalism

This is a guest post by Van Rue reflecting on the abuse of Mark Driscoll and how it plays out in greater evangelicalism. Why have 25 million people left evangelicalism? This is Van Rue’s thoughts on Driscoll’s abuse and evangelicalism propping him up. This blog thanks Van Rue for his thoughts and wisdom.

“Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.”

Archibald MacLeish, poet & professor

Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. 11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. 12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. 13 But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, 14 for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said,

“Awake, O sleeper,
rise up from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”

Ephesians 5:10-14 NLT

I am working on a blog post that is taking more time than planned. As it continues being worked behind the scenes Van Rue has a good self reflection of Mark Driscoll and American evangelicalism. Van Rue briefly attended Mars Hill and he places it in the context of the 25 other million people who have walked away from evangelicalism in the United States. This blog really appreciates Van Rue’s kindness and what he has to say.

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The $14 million dollar ($100 million overall) Superbowl ad campaign “He Gets Us” has drawn criticism for a variety of reasons, but the underling question that is not being is asked is “why” is this being run? Hobby Lobby’s David Green and other anonymous donors (Mr. Green is the only person who has make his role public) have raised a princely $100 million for this vague PR campaign promoting an even vaguer “Jesus”.  The simple answer is that over 25 million people have left the Evangelical Church in the last few years, and the religious right sees the consequences of their dwindling base of voters, donations and power.  Hobby Lobby’s David Green revealed he is tired of Christian being unfairly “persecuted”, but we know that the paranoid Religious Right plays the persecution card when it simply can’t control everyone.  

Taking this first question one step farther, why have 25 million people left the Evangelical church?  

The ground zero of why people are leaving Evangelicalism in droves goes back to Mars Hill Church which I formerly attended here in Seattle for a short time.  Religious affiliation has been a slow decline in the US since 1945. But this very slow leak turned into a deluge in 2015.  The “mega-church” movement masked this leak as people left smaller community churches for much larger regional ones, following the retail trend of larger “big-box” stores.  One of those “big-box” churches was Mars Hill lead by Mark Driscoll here in Seattle that peaked with an Easter attendance of over 20,000 people in 2014.  It did not last long, within a year it would become one of the largest church disasters all of Christian history.

In 2014 there were no “exvangelicals” or “deconstruction”, no one had the left the church en mass.  Those that had left individually did so quietly and were not yet considered a movement or even a trend. Evangelicalism public image was still intact, no one except a few bloggers had looked behind the curtains of Evangelicalism’s quietly growing theological rot.  People had always left, but what changed in 2014 is that people were now leaving because of the unrepentant unrighteousness of Evangelical leaders.    

Then let’s catch you a bit on what happened here at Mars Hill and how and why it changed everything. 

Mark was a hero first to the Emergent Church Movement (people forget Mark’s huge role) and then to Evangelicals and changed the entire religious landscape during his peak from 2000 to 2014.  He was the first to Pastor to leverage social media to gain enormous fame. Millions of followers on social media clung to his every post, thousands paid to hear him speak at conferences, and tens of thousands bought his (frequently plagiarized) “best-selling” books (in truth, Mark used church money and paid to get on the NYT Best Seller’s list).  10,000 churches were planted emulating his “model”.  When Driscoll talked all of Evangelicalism listened.

But behind the fame lay horrendous spiritual abuse during his entire tenure. Mark was recording in 2007 in one sermon “There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus, and by God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done”.  Mark true to his prophecy hired hundreds of Pastors, Elders and Leaders and volunteers for its 15 campuses, and during their hiring process these new leaders were required to share every sin they have ever committed, going back to their earliest memories.  This 2 day “confession” session was exhausting and psychologically manipulative to ensure every sin, even those in child-hood or previously confessed… and was recorded.  

Mark used these recording two heinous ways. First, Mark tirelessly filled with a fierce burning and raging anger that exploded almost every day.  The many victims of unpredictable rage were not just yelled at, Mark also used these people’s “confession” to stab deep at their deepest fears and insecurity, and eviscerate, berate and demean people in enormously damaging ways.  Mark enjoyed going for the emotional and spiritual jugular, and only stopped slashing when his victims bled completely out.  The second application was old fashioned black-mail:  If people threatened to expose things about Mark, he simply promised to release these recorded confessions.  The current location or status of these recordings are unknown but many people remain bullied into silence.  Most of the worst stories about Mark remain untold to this day.

Scientology’s “Auditing” process and blackmail were identical but they were not the only Cult that Mark heavily borrowed from. Mark also borrowed much from Joseph Smith and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Mars Hill was enormously controlling of everyday lives of its members.  A couple who began dating in a Mars Hill small group, but without prior “permission” and on discovery were immediately excommunicated and shunned from the church. Mars Hill both spied on members and very cultishly controlled where you worked, who you dated and married, and who were your friends.   Families and marriages were destroyed by Mark’s command to utterly shun anyone he declared persona non grata, as wives and husbands would shun their spouses at Mark’s command.

Many of Mark’s vile church bulletin boards posts (re-shared in 2014) were shocking in their utter vulgarity and misogyny of women, many of the comments relegate value of all woman to purely sexual and even slave-like role.  A short list of Mark’s shocking comments or the Gospel of Mark Driscoll are here, but they include that “women are penis homes” and their only value is sex, “we live in a p***ified nation” because men have not stood up to women, all other churches “..remake Jesus into a feather-hair fairy in lavender tights”.  His sermons in Scotland were so vulgar in Mark’s command that women give men oral sex, he was asked to never return to the country. Mark was also later banned from Australia, both unprecedented.  When a Pastor in Colorado was discovered to have sex with men, Mark blamed his wife for “…letting herself go”.  In one early sermon in his “ministry”, Mark’s first words were “F*** you!” and earned the moniker the Cussing Pastor.  The Mars Hill website contained direct links to pornography.  Mark claimed on many occasions he experienced divine detailed sexual visions of rape and adultery, and would then explicitly describe his pornographic “vision” detail with the claim they came from the Holy Spirit.  Mark was not eccentric, or just off-kilter or just brash; Mark was vulgar, vile, grossly sexually explicit, pornographic and tirelessly demeaning to women from the pulpit.  

After almost of decade of many “Matt 18 claims”, in 2014 the Mars Hill Elder board finally found Mark unfit for ministry, removed him from the pulpit and initiated a restoration plan.  Mark would not stand for being told what to do, so tough-talking Mark cowardly resigned from Mars Hill, ran from Seattle and set up shop in Phoenix AZ.  His only vague apologies were for his “improper language”  and “moving too fast”, blaming all the issues on overwork.  This is akin to Hitler apologizing for parking violations. 

Mark has never apologized to the literally thousands of people here in Seattle he cruelly eviscerated with unyielding abuse. There have been no apologies for his plagiarism, misogynism, anger, slander, lying, false theology, pornographic messages or using church money to fund his personal ego.   

But Mark was only the first cruelty visited on former attendees of Mars Hill, the second devastating blow came from the many Evangelical church’s leaders who continue to this day to rally around Mark, call the hundreds accounts against him false, claim he was an innocent victim of a smear campaign, or falsely claim he has apologized to his thousands of victims (not one of thousands of people here in Seattle has received an apology).  

AFTER all this become public, Mark was still secretly invited to speak at many conferences including the huge Thrive Conference hosted by at Bayside Church by Ray Johnson on May 1st 2015.  In horrible irony I helped plant Bayside Church in the 90’s, attending their very first service in the back corner of a tennis club. As a super-volunteer I started all their prayer and most of their outreach ministries.  When we learned Mark was going to be a secret speaker at Thrive, I tried furiously to contact Ray and even offered to fly dozens of Pastors at my expense from Seattle to Sacramento so he could hear first-hand Mark’s many crimes.  Ray never once responded to my many pleas.  Mark was paid handsomely to speak at Thrive, and given a standing ovation by over 5000 Pastors and leaders for a rousing sermon that was… mostly lies.  After Mark’s standing ovation, Ray laid hands on Mark prayed over by thousands of church leaders, and anointed him for abuse that continues today in Arizona.  Many people here in Seattle were retraumatized by the enthusiastic support 5000 Pastor’s and Church Leaders who gave Mark a standing ovation.  Some of literally vomited. Evangelicalism had made its choice, it was going to protect its most abusive and pornographic “Pastor” in all of church history, and abandon its women, children and the most vulnerable. We became a sacrifice on the altar of Evangelicalism’s money and fame.

Church leaders that still support Mark include theologian John Piper, Andy Woods (now pastor at Saddleback), Dan Kellogg at Gold Creek Church, Jimmy Evans of XO Marriage, Brian Houston (formerly of Hillsong, now facing criminal charges for concealing that his father was a pedophile), Nathan Finochio (formerly of Hillsong NY, before it imploded). Robert Morris of Gateway Church, and Larry Osbourne of North Coast Church, and Ray Johnson at Bayside and the Thrive Conference.  These are among the fasted growing, largest and most influential churches in the world.  They have through their collective support of Mark declared that all of Evangelicalism is a very unsafe place for women, children and all minorities.

We were thousands of religious refugees, not just abandoned by Evangelicalism, but mocked, ridiculed and re-abused by Pastor’s all over the world who blamed us for shaming Mark.  Hundreds of former Pastors at Mars Hill were unable to find work in any other church and left ministry altogether.  Former Mars Hiller’s began to reexamine Mark’s sermons going back to the year 2000 and especially his series on Moses.  We found not only many biblical errors in Mark’s sermons, but also many in wider Evangelicalism as well.  Although we never called it “deconstruction” at the time, the process of examining the many biblical flaws and errors of Mark and all of Evangelicalism that wildly supported him had begun.

Around 2011-12 many of us in Seattle after putting Mark’s horrible theology under the microscope realized something frightening:  Mark was headed fast and deep into the jungles of his own Guyana.  We could not stop him, but we could make sure he had a smaller pool to piss-in, and that fewer people drank his Kool-Aid.  Hundreds of us worked hard to expose the vile deeds and warn the public, and hopefully spare a few. We hoped by exposing and opposing Mark we would make his trail through the jungle a bit harder to follow.  

This was a revolution of sorts by about a thousand former Mars Hiller’s.  Although this group included about 75 former Pastors and Elders it was mostly driven by the laity.  We spoke out, protested Mark at gatherings, and wrote blog posts.  Mark would appear at coffee shops and other businesses, and the patron’s there would recognize him, and spontaneously confront Mark loudly causing the coward to flee.  We continue today to ensure as long as remains in any position where he can abuse others (and he has) his horrible abuse and false teaching would be retold and reshared.  

The 2016 Presidential election featured a candidate that was only slightly more crude and vile than Mark and the Evangelical Church embraced him with even greater enthusiasm. I fully believe Driscoll’s misogyny, sexual perversion and willingness to talk about “p****” anesthetized and readied the church for the most morally bankrupt President in American history, who was enthusiastic to do the same.

In 2016 Blake Chastain started the pod-cast “Exvangelical” and the movement became a flood of people leaving behind the toxic racism, misogyny, hatred, thousands of instances of hidden sexual and spiritual abuse, all lead by greedy celebrity and hypocritical pastors who spent more time covering-up each other’s sin than in ministering to people.  People began to see that a church who celebrated the misogynistic and abusive Driscoll, and the racist, misogynistic and lying Trump as hero’s, was not a church lead by Jesus.  With no voice but their feet, 25 million have left so far and that count is still growing.  Evangelicals had long ago kicked Jesus out the door, and we just followed him.

The Evangelical church today is not a safe place for the vulnerable, it’s abandoned any call to be a sanctuary. Accounts of sexual and spiritual abuse by “Pastor’s” and those who protect them have become so frequent its mind numbing.  Let me be clear, if you like John MacArthur tirelessly protect pedophiles, you are also a pedophile.  If you promote and platform serial abusers like Mark Driscoll, you are also a spiritual abuser.  And the hard work to expose these criminals and false teachers and share the story of their victims is being done mostly by lay people.  Although this is historically unprecedented its not biblically so, please read Ezekiel 34.

The good news is these scoundrels Driscoll and Trump have exposed the rotting stinking underbelly of the Evangelical movement.  It’s become clear to millions that Evangelicalism has abandoned all aspects of a truly authentic Jesus and publicly declared itself a cult.   Evangelicals are more interesting in building a kingdom of fame and power, than of expressing love for the vulnerable or living out the charcter of Christ.  They had twisted the Gospel from a message of hope to one of control and gun idolatry. Evangelicalism was off the rails and Trump and Driscoll and their supporters have served to exposed how far.  If you could sum up this movement in only a few words, it would be that “character matters”.

Although the recent revival in Asbury College has drawn the media attention, a quiet revival had already started since 2015, and is now turned into a flood that began with 20,000 people leaving Mars Hill.  What the church needs today is not a vague and expensive marketing campaign like “He Get Us”, it needs accountability.  It needs to take the example of Christ seriously, and know that character matters.  Like Jesus must bring love and sanctuary to the most vulnerable, and re-embrace his mission of bringing hope, justice and healing to our world.  A Gospel not lived out is no gospel at all.  The Church was never intended to be a country club for the theologically elite, but a front-line MASH unit of love and compassion for a wounded world.  In this we have failed horribly.

The Bible’s enduring message to the Evangelical church is its need to get woke:  “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Eph 5:14.