Mark Driscoll

On July 27, 2015, Driscoll announced that his new ministry had purchased the mailing list and assets of The Resurgence from Mars Hill Church and that he and his family had moved to the Phoenix area. On February 1, 2016, Driscoll announced the opening of his new church: The Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. As of February 2016, the staff roster included two former Mars Hill employees. Texas megachurch pastors Robert Morris and Jimmy Evans were on the church's board.

Driscoll was scheduled to appear at Hillsong Church's 2015 Australian and UK conferences. A petition against Driscoll's appearance at the conference collected 3000 signatures, prompting Hillsong Church Senior Pastor Brian Houston to cancel Driscoll's planned speaking event. Instead, the Hillsong conference presented a 30-minute taped interview of Mark and Grace Driscoll interviewed by Houston at the conference.

In the summer of 2014, Driscoll faced public criticism and formal complaints from Mars Hill staff members and congregants due to his perceived abusive behavior. In August 2014, the board of Acts 29 Network removed him from its membership and urged him to step down from ministry. On October 14, 2014, Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill Church. Within three months of Driscoll's resignation, Mars Hill Church was dissolved.

In 2014, Petry, Smith, and Moi all joined--and, in some cases, organized--online protests against Driscoll. Commentators linked the summer 2014 "unrest" at Mars Hill to the structural changes of 2007, along with other developments in Driscoll's career.

Michael Paulson, writing for The New York Times, wrote that while Driscoll has endured criticism from the American political left and liberal Christianity for many years, recent years leading up to and including 2014 saw the rise of criticism from conservative Christians, including Driscoll's former "allies and supporters." According to the Seattle Times, Janet Mefferd's plagiarism accusations were a "crucial turning point" that drew outside interest into Mars Hill's internal affairs, and prompted inquiries from new critics about the church and how it handled its finances. After hearing of Mefferd's plagiarism accusations, evangelical Christian and Grove City College psychology professor Warren Throckmorton took interest and became a prominent critic of Driscoll and Mars Hill, documenting other examples of perceived plagiarism, abuse reported by former Mars Hill members, and questionable uses of church finances.

On March 29, 2014, four former Mars Hill elders (Kyle Firstenberg, Dave Kraft, Scott Mitchell, and co-founder Lief Moi) created a blog titled "Repentant Pastor" and posted online "confessions and apologies" related to their leadership roles in Mars Hill. In a joint statement, they wrote, "we recognize and confess that Mars Hill has hurt many people within the Mars Hill community, as well as those outside the community." Salon summarized the statements, writing that the former leaders emphasized their failures to "rein Driscoll in" and their complicity with Driscoll's "autocratic" management style. Firstenberg wrote that while the church appeared to flourish, employees lived in constant stress, and "success was to be attained regardless of human and moral cost." Firstenberg added:

In a recorded message shown to church members on July 27, 2014, Driscoll discussed the various controversies of 2014. He said that he could "not address some members' discontent ... because the complaints were anonymous." According to Rob Smith, former program director at the church, the anonymity assertion "really touched a nerve" with former members. In response, dissenters organized a Facebook group called "Dear Pastor Mark & Mars Hill: We Are Not Anonymous."

On August 8, 2014, the board of Acts 29 removed both Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from membership. Chairman Matt Chandler wrote, "it is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark [Driscoll] and Mars Hill [Church] in our network." The board of directors of Acts 29 expressed gratitude for Driscoll's work with the Network as co-founder and former President, but declared his recent actions "ungodly and disqualifying behavior." To Driscoll, they wrote, "our board and network have been the recipients of ... dozens of fires directly linked to you ... we are naturally associated with you and feel that this association discredits the network and is a major distraction." They further advised him to "step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help."

On August 24, 2014, Driscoll announced he would take a six-week "extended focus break" from his pastorship while charges against him were investigated. Later that week, a letter signed by nine current Mars Hill pastors which severely criticized Driscoll was leaked to the public. The letter, written days before Driscoll stepped down, urged him to step down from all aspects of ministry. It included a quote from "internationally recognized" author, pastor and former BOAA member Paul Tripp saying, "This is without a doubt, the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I've ever been involved with." One of the pastors who signed the letter was fired five days later for "rebellion against the church." By September 9, eight of the nine pastors who signed the letter had resigned or been terminated, including worship director Dustin Kensrue. The last of the nine pastors was demoted from pastor to lay elder.

LifeWay Christian Resources, a Christian bookseller and publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced on August 10, 2014 that they suspended sales of Driscoll's books. Marty King, communications director for LifeWay, said, "[we] are not selling Mark Driscoll's books while we assess the situation regarding his ministry." King identified Acts 29's call for Driscoll to step down as "certainly a part" of their decision, along with the "cumulative effect" of other allegations against Driscoll.

Driscoll was removed from the speaker roster of several planned Act Like Men conferences, which includes other Acts 29 speakers and past Driscoll associates, including James Macdonald and Matt Chandler. He was also removed as closing speaker at the Gateway Church Conference, an annual gathering of thousands of evangelical pastors. Mars Hill Church also cancelled their own Resurgence 2014 conference, planned for October 2014, since several planned speakers had cut ties with Driscoll.

In the fall of 2014, a group of elders released a report on an investigation into accusations of bullying and intimidating behavior by Driscoll made by 21 former church elders. The investigation involved "some 1,000 hours of research, interviewing more than 50 people and preparing 200 pages of information." The report concluded that Driscoll had never been charged with "immorality, illegality or heresy," and considered "some of the accusations against Pastor Mark to be altogether unfair or untrue." Additionally, the report found that many of the "other charges had previously been addressed by Pastor Mark, privately and publicly. Indeed, he had publicly confessed and apologized for a number of the charges against him, some of which occurred as long as 14 years ago." However, elders did find "bullying" and "patterns of persistent sinful behavior" by Driscoll. The board also concluded that Driscoll had "been guilty of arrogance, responding to conflict with a quick temper and harsh speech, and leading the staff and elders in a domineering manner", but was not charged with anything immoral or illegal. Driscoll maintained that he had not disqualified himself from ministry.

Church leadership crafted a "restoration" plan to help Driscoll and save the church. Instead, Driscoll declined the restoration plan and resigned on October 14, 2014, citing concerns for his health and safety. His resignation came as a "surprise" to the church's Board of Overseers, who said in a statement that they had not asked Driscoll for his resignation.

On October 20, 2014, Driscoll publicly stated that prior to his resignation, he and his family were harassed and he had received death threats.

Driscoll is described in a 2014 profile by Salon as being the center of a cult of personality, and of using controversy to increase his visibility. Salon has also described "[sex] talk fused with God talk, or titillation more broadly, [as] a key component of the Driscoll brand," adding: "Driscoll's stage persona at times has included tight jeans and an extra button open on the shirt. He once greeted a crowd at the University of Washington by reporting that he had gotten his genitals caught in his zipper before the show and that he would be stopping on time because his wife was at home waiting for him with a cream pie."

On July 30, 2014, dissenters released a "controversial, vulgar" rant Driscoll had written under the pseudonym "William Wallace II" in 2000, dubbed the "Pussified Nation" rant. The rant contained "blunt and emotional comments critical of feminism, homosexual behavior, and 'sensitive emasculated' men", and called for "real men" to rise up in the spirit of Scottish warrior William Wallace as depicted in the film Braveheart. Mars Hill Church had long since deleted their unmoderated "Midrash" discussion board where the forum postings occurred. Driscoll referenced the incident in his 2006 book Confessions of a Reformission Rev; in that book, he stated that he believed his intentions were good, but regretted having written the rant. He wrote in 2006, "I had a good mission, but some of my tactics were born out of anger and burnout, and I did a lot of harm and damage while attracting a lot of attention." Driscoll responded to the release of the rant in a letter to his congregation, writing that "the content of my postings to that discussion board does not reflect how I feel or how I would conduct myself today." On September 8, 2014, blogger Libby Anne republished other examples of material written by "William Wallace II" in 2001, and remarked she had "rarely seen an evangelical man assert male superiority and prominence this directly."

On March 5, 2014, evangelical magazine World published an article claiming that Mars Hill Church paid a $25,000 fee to marketing firm ResultSource, to manipulate sales numbers of Mark Driscoll's book Real Marriage and thereby attain a place on the New York Times bestseller list. ResultSource accomplished this objective—the book briefly reached #1 in the "Advice How-to" category—by buying 11,000 copies of the book, using $210,000 of Mars Hill Church's money, from a variety of online sources and payment methods.

On March 17, 2014, Driscoll posted an open letter of apology in response to this controversy and others, writing that he will no longer claim to be a New York Times bestselling author, and that he now sees the ResultSource marketing campaign as "manipulating a book sales reporting system, which is wrong." He wrote that he was giving up his status as a "celebrity pastor", that he considered his "angry young prophet" days to be over, and that he was reducing his public presence in speaking engagements and on social media.

In May 2013, former Mars Hill elder Dave Kraft filed formal charges (under Mars Hill Church bylaws) of "mistreatment" against Mark Driscoll and other leaders at Mars Hill. He specifically accused Driscoll of being "domineering, verbally violent, arrogant, and quick-tempered." Kraft further argued that this "established pattern of ... behavior" disqualified Driscoll from church leadership. Mars Hill Church's Board of Advisors and Accountability responded, saying that they sent one hundred letters to former elders and staff in an effort to substantiate Kraft's charges. They received eighteen responses, which they reviewed, and determined them to be "non-disqualifying" with respect to Driscoll's leadership position. However, the board did initiate a "reconciliation process" to address "many offenses and hurts that are still unresolved." Dave Kraft worked at Mars Hill from 2005 to 2013 and was Driscoll's personal "coach" during that time.

On November 21, 2013, radio host Janet Mefferd accused Driscoll of plagiarism. Mefferd claimed that 14 pages of Driscoll's book A Call to Resurgence quoted "extensively and without citation" from Peter Jones's 1999 book, Gospel Truth/Pagan Lies: Can You Tell the Difference? and Jones's 2010 book One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference. Driscoll's publisher Tyndale House stated that they performed a "thorough in-house review" and disagreed that this was a case of plagiarism. Neil Holdway, a plagiarism expert with the American Copy Editors Society, concluded that "Driscoll had not adequately indicated the extent to which he had borrowed Jones's work."

More allegations of plagiarism in other Driscoll works soon surfaced, including passages from a sermon series companion text, Trial: 8 Witnesses From 1&2 Peter, which were copied verbatim from passages written by David Wheaton in the New Bible Commentary. InterVarsity Press, publisher of the New Bible Commentary, stated that Driscoll failed to properly provide quotation or attribution for the material. The relevant passages were posted online. The allegations soon expanded to include claims that Driscoll used ghostwriters and researchers without giving them proper attribution. As of December 2013, neither Peter Jones, D.A. Carson, nor Janet Mefferd had made any further statements pertaining the case.

I was a part-time, topic producer for Janet Mefferd until [December 3, 2013] when I resigned over this situation. All I can share is that there is an evangelical celebrity machine that is more powerful than anyone realizes. You may not go up against the machine. That is all. Mark Driscoll clearly plagiarized and those who could have underscored the seriousness of it and demanded accountability did not. That is the reality of the evangelical industrial complex.

Driscoll apologized for "mistakes" related to the allegations in a statement released to The Christian Post on December 18, 2013.

The emerging church is a growing, loosely connected movement of primarily young pastors who are glad to see the end of modernity and are seeking to function as missionaries who bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to emerging and postmodern cultures. The emerging church welcomes the tension of holding in one closed hand the unchanging truth of evangelical Christian theology (Jude 3 ) and holding in one open hand the many cultural ways of showing and speaking Christian truth as a missionary to America (1 Cor 9:19–23 ). Since the movement, if it can be called that, is young and is still defining its theological center, I do not want to portray the movement as ideologically unified because I myself swim in the theologically conservative stream of the emerging church.

On March 29, 2012, Driscoll resigned as President of Acts 29 and from the Council of The Gospel Coalition, turning his responsibilities over to Matt Chandler. Commenting on the transition, Chandler said, "[the Acts 29 board was] running a network of 422 churches on six continents the same way when it was 80 to 100 churches on one continent." Chandler also planned to disentangle Acts 29 from Mars Hill Church; prior to Driscoll's departure, Acts 29 was primarily funded by Mars Hill. By mid-2014, Driscoll was no longer on the board of Acts 29.

Mark and Grace Driscoll published their first book together, entitled Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, in January 2012. It includes a chapter entitled "Can We ___?", discussing a biblical rationale for specific sexual acts that evangelical pastors are considered reluctant to discuss. Driscoll said that the book was written because "only two [Christian] books go into depth on sexuality ... a lot of Christian teaching about sex is answering questions of a previous generation." The Driscolls and Mars Hill Church heavily promoted the book, taking interviews with The View, Fox & Friends, and Piers Morgan Tonight.

After the catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake, Driscoll and James Macdonald founded Churches Helping Churches to help churches rebuild after catastrophic natural disasters. They helped to rebuild dozens of churches in Haiti and Japan. Driscoll first flew to Haiti shortly after the earthquake, and set up a partnership between his church and Jean F. E. St. Cyr, a Haitian pastor. Mars Hill Church donated $1.7 million in medical supplies.

In March 2009, Driscoll was involved in an ABC Nightline debate entitled, "Does Satan Exist?" Driscoll and Annie Lobert, founder of the Hookers for Jesus Christian ministry, argued for the existence of the devil against the philosopher Deepak Chopra and Carlton Pearson, a former fundamentalist minister and author of The Gospel of Inclusion. A commentator described the debate as "contentious", with all participants taking "uncompromising" positions. Driscoll argued that a belief in both Satan and God was an essential tenet of Christianity. Driscoll has also been featured on the program discussing other topics including the Ten Commandments and sex.

In 2009, The New York Times Magazine called Driscoll "one of the most admired—and reviled—figures among evangelicals nationwide." In 2011, Preaching magazine named him one of the 25 most influential [English-speaking] pastors of the past 25 years.

Prior to the reorganization, Mars Hill was governed by a full council of two dozen church elders (including Driscoll) who had equal voting authority and voted on major decisions, and a five-member council of "executive elders" (also including Driscoll) who handled daily operations but deferred to the full council for major decisions. According to then-Mars Hill pastor Paul Petry, in summer 2007, Driscoll "replaced the [executive council] with yes-men" and began to make major decisions--such as purchasing a $4 million new building--without consulting the full council.

In September 2007, Driscoll proposed changes to the bylaws that would grant indefinite terms of office to the "executive elders". Driscoll and proponents of the changes argued that the church had outgrown its original governing structure, while opponents contended that the changes consolidated power with Driscoll and his trusted lieutenants. Paul Petry and another pastor, Bent Meyer, both dissented from the changes. In response, Driscoll fired both from their jobs. A Mars Hill forum posting reported--without naming the pastors--that one was fired for "displaying an unhealthy distrust in the senior leadership" and the other for "disregarding the accepted elder protocol for the bylaw deliberation period" and "verbally attacking the lead pastor [Driscoll]."

In a 2007 sermon he preached in Edinburgh, Scotland, Driscoll asserted that Song of Solomon 2:3 refers to oral intercourse and added, "'Men, I am glad to report to you that oral sex is biblical. ... The wife performing oral sex on the husband is biblical ... Ladies, your husbands appreciate oral sex. They do. So, serve them, love them well'". During the same sermon, Driscoll stated that he had once advised a woman that she ought to perform oral sex upon her husband, and to apologize for her past unwillingness to do so; Driscoll added that later, the woman's husband was influenced to become a Christian because she had followed this advice.

In 2006, Driscoll founded The Resurgence, a "theological cooperative" to support Acts 29 and Mars Hill Church. The Resurgence aims to train church leaders in conservative reformed theology. It has three main branches: Re:Lit, a publishing house; Re:Train, a missional training centre; and Re:Sound, a music arm.

Driscoll, Mars Hill's first paid pastor, had been its main preaching pastor and public face since its inception. As the church grew, he began to train other elders and deacons, moving himself into a more executive role in setting vision and continuing to preach. By 2006, the church counted 4000–5000 weekly attendees at three campuses in the Seattle region. In that year, Driscoll claimed that he had reached a personal crisis due to his "overwhelming workload"—at this time he was the principal authority in Mars Hill, president of Acts 29, president of The Resurgence, an author, and an international traveler with speaking engagements. He was, by his own account, sleeping only two to three hours per night and began to fear that he would die early from a heart attack. Ultimately, in 2006–2007, he began to restructure the church and claimed he was going to divest power. Within Mars Hill, he publicly stated that he resigned as "legal president", president of the elder board, and chief of staff, while retaining his roles as public face and preaching pastor.

Driscoll believes that Christianity has been "feminized". In a 2006 interview with Desiring God, he said, "The problem with the church today, it's just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, 'chickified' [sic] church boys. Sixty percent of Christians are chicks, and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks. ... The whole architecture and the whole aesthetic [of church buildings and services] is really feminine." In contrast, Driscoll emphasizes what he perceives as macho behavior in the actions of biblical protagonists: he describes Jesus, Paul the Apostle, and King David saying: "... these guys were dudes. Heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose, dudes." He believes that in order to be innovative, the church needs to get entrepreneurial young men involved, who will "make the culture of the future."

In 1998, Driscoll and David Nicholas founded the Acts 29 Network ("Acts 29"), a church planting network, in response to people approaching Driscoll for advice on planting churches. The goal of this parachurch organization was to plant 1000 new churches around the world "through recruiting, assessing, training, funding, and coaching." Acts 29 started slowly under Driscoll's tenure, with 11 churches at its inception and 17 by 2003. At that point, it began to grow rapidly, reaching 50 churches by 2006 and 410 churches by 2011. The majority are still located in the U.S., with 38 churches in 16 other countries.

On gender roles, Driscoll is a complementarian, believing that men and women have equal worth, but have different roles within the family and the church. He endorses male headship of the home and church. According to a Mother Jones profile on Driscoll in 1998, he may have held egalitarian views at one time. He offered church courses in "evangelical feminism" and is quoted as saying "the Bible is clear that men and women are both created by God in His image and likeness and totally equal in every way." In 2003, Driscoll said that he wished he could change the parts of the Bible that he believes restrict women from being pastors.

Later in 1997, he was invited to speak at a Leadership Network pastors' conference in California. The speech he made inspired many within the nascent emerging church movement and, according to Driscoll, shifted the movement's focus from reaching Generation X to reaching the postmodern world. As a result, Mars Hill Church and Driscoll were thrust into the national spotlight: he was interviewed on National Public Radio and Mother Jones magazine published a feature on the church. Mars Hill Church grew from 160 members in 1996 to 350 in 1999.

In 1996, Driscoll co-founded Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. As of March 2014, Mars Hill Church had 14,000 members in five states and fifteen locations. He also founded The Resurgence (a theological cooperative) and co-founded other parachurch organizations, such as Acts 29 Network, Churches Helping Churches, and The Gospel Coalition. He has written for the "Faith and Values" section of the Seattle Times, OnFaith, and the Fox News website. Driscoll has also authored a number of popular Christian books, including A Call to Resurgence.

Driscoll, Lief Moi, and Mike Gunn founded Mars Hill Church in spring 1995 and officially launched it in fall 1996. The church first met in the Driscolls' home. By spring 1997, the church had relocated and expanded to two services. Driscoll later reflected that he was "not ready" when he planted Mars Hill at age 25.

In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the emerging church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake.

In high school, he met his future wife, Grace Martin, daughter of Gib Martin, an evangelical pastor. In 1989, he graduated from Highline High School in Burien, Washington, where he served as student body president, captain of the baseball team, editor of the school newspaper, and the "most likely to succeed" in his graduating class. At age 19, as a college freshman, Driscoll converted to evangelical Christianity. The same year, according to Driscoll, "God spoke to me ... He told me to marry Grace, preach the Bible, train men, and plant churches ... I began preparing to devote my life to obey [God's] call for me." He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Washington State University with a minor in philosophy and holds a Master of Arts degree in exegetical theology from Western Seminary.

Mark A. Driscoll (born 1970) is an American evangelical pastor and author best known as the founder of Mars Hill Church. He is currently Senior and Founding Pastor of The Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, which was founded in 2016.

Driscoll was born on October 11, 1970, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He was raised Roman Catholic in the Riverton Heights area of SeaTac, Washington, which he described as "a very rough neighborhood" where serial killer Ted Bundy had picked up victims. He is the oldest of five children and the son of a union drywaller. He described a difficult family history of abuse and crime, writing: "The men on my father's side include uneducated alcoholics, mental patients, and women beaters. ... One of the main reasons my parents moved from North Dakota to Seattle was to get away from some family members when I was a very young boy."