On Monday, I wrote that former church members and staff told me that Mark Driscoll’s Scottsdale organization The Trinity Church doesn’t have elders. However, the organization does have a small corporate board made up of Driscoll as president and Jimmy Evans and Randall Taylor as Directors.
Nonprofits must have boards so here we have a board theoretically charged with the oversight of this organization. However, these are not elders as Driscoll describes them in his book Doctrine. Evans doesn’t attend the church. Taylor is not a pastor which, according to Driscoll, one must be to be an elder.
According to Driscoll, elders are chosen due to exemplary church membership to assume the role.
“Those who function as exemplary church members are then qualified to occupy the church leadership positions of deacon and elder, respectively.” (p. 322)
The organizational board of non-attending non-members aren’t elders. Unless Driscoll produces evidence in contrast to the testimony of former members and staff, I conclude that he in sole operational control of The Trinity Church.
Real Faith, Concealed Finances
A consequence of Driscoll’s control of the church is the blurring of lines between the church and his personal nonprofit ministry – Real Faith (formerly called Mark Driscoll Ministries). When you go to the Real Faith website, you find all the same sermon content that is also hosted at The Trinity Church. Driscoll uses the material he preaches at the church to raise money for his personal ministry. Last year, according to his 2020 990 IRS submission, Real Faith took in $555,182 in contributions.
Because Real Faith is a nonprofit organization, Driscoll has to file a 990 form which allows public disclosure of some aspects of his tax exempt activities. However, since The Trinity Church is considered a church (is it really, without elders?), no such disclosure forms are required. Thus, there is no public accounting of the church finances. According to former staff and members I spoke with, no financial statements are available to church members.
This is a gigantic red flag. The history of Mars Hill Church is littered with various financial shenanigans. Let me mention just one: Result Source and the church payment to manipulate the New York Times bestseller list to benefit Driscoll’s book Real Marriage.
Driscoll and the New York Times Bestseller List
Although famous in the history of Mars Hill Church, current The Trinity Church members may not have heard this story. Warren Smith at World first disclosed that
Seattle’s Mars Hill Church paid a California-based marketing company at least $210,000 in 2011 and 2012 to ensure that Real Marriage, a book written by Mark Driscoll, the church’s founding pastor, and his wife Grace, made the New York Times best-seller list.
Soon after this story broke, the contract between the consulting group Result Source and the church was leaked to me and can be viewed here. Mars Hill used church funds to purchase 11,000 copies of Real Marriage at retail cost and also paid the $25,000 consulting fee. Result Source used over a thousand different payment mechanisms to evade detection by the various bestseller lists.
Even though Driscoll knew the scheme was in place and had guaranteed his placement, he tweeted this when Result Source had finished their work:
Grace is thrifty so we were at the Dollar Store getting stuff for Gideon’s 6th bday when we heard we’d hit #1 on NY Times Best Seller list.
— Pastor Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) January 15, 2012
Clearly, Mars Hill members did not give their tithes and offerings to help Mark Driscoll get his book on bestseller lists. This incident demonstrated then and still does today the need for financial transparency in church work. It is concerning that The Trinity Church doesn’t provide audited financial statements to members. Why don’t members know where their money goes?
I’m a presbyterian and we have a representative form of polity. We are ruled by and elder board that we call the Session. The Elders are elected by the congregation and can serve for a max of 6 years without going off the board. The congregation also hires the pastor and annually approves his compensation. The Pastors actual unilateral powers are very limited. The Session must approve the budget, set the times of worship, approve the celebration of the sacraments, etc. if a church has a problem with involving the Pastor they go to the Presbytery level and someone comes in to investigate.
I think presbyterians understand human depravity and safegaurd against it. Refreshing to hear.
An update on the troll on Julie Roy’s website using the name Henri Ironside, a Moody pastor who died 70 years ago. He posted up a new post late yesterday afternoon on the blog about preachers hiring ghost writers. One of the writers interviewed worked for Mark at Mars Hill but left after Mark stopped giving anyone else credit. The things this Ironside man wrote were awful, rude, arrogant and demanding, plus rather long. Driscoll was mentioned on two posts there and those were the only one where this troll showed up. I asked this man who he was and put the Wikipage up for the real and very dead Ironside in comments myself. Then I repeated that after his latest, new, rude comment was put up. His comment and mine have now been deleted in the new post. It was either Sir Wallace himself or someone else who loves him and is just like him. The funniest things do happen on watchblogs…
Somehow the combination seems appropriate.
“A consequence of Driscoll’s control of the church is the blurring of lines between the church and his personal nonprofit ministry – Real Faith (formerly called Mark Driscoll Ministries). When you go to the Real Faith website, you find all the same sermon content that is also hosted at The Trinity Church. Driscoll uses the material he preaches at the church to raise money for his personal ministry. Last year, according to his 2020 990 IRS submission, Real Faith took in $555,182 in contributions.”
So, Real Faith is Driscoll’s personal ministry but it’s a nonprofit. What does that mean in practice? I suppose it means the ministry itself pays no income taxes. But I suppose the fact that it’s a nonprofit doesn’t prevent Driscoll from paying himself as fat a salary as he wants to from that ministry?
“…financial transparency in church work.”
In Driscoll’s kingdom?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fb4c814d1dbc2d170e76dd44c4db587715a0c0214eca2480a18fcfaa3514872.gif
We have “Financial Transparency” BECAUSE I SAY SO!
“If the Fuehrer says so, Two Plus Two Equals Five.”
— Reichsmarshall Herman Goering
Well, elders are inconvenient for frauds like Driscoll. Even Bill Hybels was, eventually, stopped by his elder board..But elders aren’t a guarantee. The current “woke” term is “lead team” and sketchy pastors go to a great deal of effort to make sure everyone on the “lead team” is “right thinking..”When I see a pastor involved in the elder selection process, I vote with my feet..
Mark Driscoll: “Rules for thee, but not for me.” Nice work, if you can get it. I wonder how long this church will take to fall apart?
Driscoll probably only needs two or three millionaires in his congregation to financially support his authoritarian “ministry.” If the money ever dries up, Driscoll would likely just relocate again.
I lived nearby. There are some very wealthy persons around, but they generally do not tithe, for the amounts would be enormous. Still someone is supporting that old building. I grew up in a church in Paradise Valley which is an extraordinarily wealthy town and yet that church never was swimming in the piles of cash you would think. If any of the millionaires living nearby did tithe we all would have noticed the effect. Yet the buildings of the old motel had ancient windows. It was, and still is, an odd out of place church.
Thank you for this insight. If Driscoll isn’t dependent upon the wealth of a few, then all he has is the collective wealth of his (presumably middle class) congregation. I wonder if Driscoll actually pays for his own housing and vehicles–and are there perks including annual bonuses that supplement his tax-free income? Driscoll will never tell.
Driscoll is also making modest news in that he signed a brand new document by celebrity leaders calling for greater accountability for people claiming to be prophets. The context is the Trump prophecies and the fact that so many people who made false prophecies refuse to apologize and, of course, they refused to sign the document. It is quite odd that Driscoll wants others to be held to account for what they say but he want absolutely none of that himself. http://propheticstandards.com/
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. On one hand, this could be a mere strategy for Driscoll to build alliances in an attempt to regain some legitimacy. On the other hand, Driscoll’s church is in the middle of Trump-land, and he could potentially lose congregants (donors) thereby taking a financial hit for his moral stand.
Though I do agree, Driscoll must hold himself accountable if he wants to call others into account.
When you consider that he also crashed J Mac’s “Strange Fire” conference which I would also say the conference was a very bad thing, going to the opposite extreme just to make other white-washed septic tanks look better by taking the focus off of them, you can see the same dynamic going on. It is probably the same thing, of lets take the heat off of us by putting it on someone else who is obviously doing that which is wrong.
Mark Driscoll doesn’t seem to think he’s accountable to anybody but God, and even that’s a bit iffy.
Some many years ago, my wife , my mother in law and myself were going to a
“church” called Melodyland Christian center, an old theater in the round that was about three blocks from Disneyland. It was run by a group of three “charismatic” pastors, the leader of whom was Ralph Wilkerson. They were always looking for a big “get” to guest at their services, the biggest of whom I remember was Corrie ten Boom. Beyond that they featured very glossy, high end “worship” with a constantly elevating emotional level. I will say that all of these guys were incredibly polished public speakers, but at those emotionally high levels, I’m not sure anyone was really listening.
These three guys controlled every aspect of what was, in it’s a hayday, a moneymaking machine
One Sunday worship I was down there by myself and they called for a congregational prayer in which the congregation was exhorted to praise Ralph Wilkerson for his( small h) gifts. Not God’s, Ralphs. I looked up, and about 14 other people besides myself in a group of 3000, were looking around. We all got up as if on cue, and walked out. I never went back, and it ended up in financial a few years later..
I remember Melodyland being a huge big deal in charismatic circles during the later 1970s, kind of like going to Bethel Redding is today. I should have expected it was a harbinger of what was to come.
It was definitely a big emotional high and that makes it very attractive, especially to folks with really needy personalities. My daughter and son in law were involved in Mars Hill as it exploded, and we visited there a couple of times. Saw the same things except they had “evolved” to repeatedly chanting the same trite little choruses over and over. My church briefly went thru a fling with Hillsongs “worship of worship”, but after a couple of weeks the pastors started looking at the theology of the pastors there and that was gone. It’s very hard to avoid the crooks, frauds and narcissists that are drawn to ministry. And they get away with it because people are constantly exhorted not to “judge”, which usually turns into,failing to discern..
It was definitely a big emotional high and that makes it very attractive, especially to folks with really needy personalities. My daughter and son in law were involved in Mars Hill as it exploded, and we visited there a couple of times. Saw the same things except they had “evolved” to repeatedly chanting the same trite little choruses over and over. My church briefly went thru a fling with Hillsongs “worship of worship”, but after a couple of weeks the pastors started looking at the theology of the pastors there and that was gone. It’s very hard to avoid the crooks, frauds and narcissists that are drawn to ministry. And they get away with it because people are constantly exhorted not to “judge”, which usually turns into,failing to discern..
Your church sounds as though it’s on a lot more solid ground than anything run by Mark Driscoll or Hillsong. Certainly, fraudsters and narcissists are drawn to ministry, partly because they know how to elicit that emotional high that a lot of people want from church, and also, as you mentioned, because judging the leadership is very much discouraged, which lets the less-than-honest skate by far too long.
We seem to be in good shape. The pastor for a long while was enamored of Willow Creek, and aspired to a “mega ” church in our community of 25K. He preached Christianity-lite a common occurrence in mega churches. I.e., hell is an eternal marshmallow roast. But as Hybels got in more and more trouble he seems a LOT less interested and his preaching has really gotten very basic, but very deep. I think we’re still buying VBS stuff from them. The church as a whole got involved in Compassion, Intl, which was deeply tied to Willow Creek Church, but when Hybels got deballed, our church completely dropped Compassion. It is NEVER mentioned anymore. I hope someone or something took up the slack for those kids. You have to be eternally vigilant. Having taken care of a number of pastors as patients over the years, I can tell you they’re very human, very fallible, and amazingly fragile. I’ll let a guy fumble along for awhile, as long as things change and improve. But if they don’t, I’ll vote with my feet. Christ couldn’t care less what church I go to…But he cares very much if I support and allow a narcissist and/or a fraud to make people stumble..
I haven’t heard about Melodyland in 40 years!
It’s heyday was the 1970s and maybe the early 1980s, when it was collecting ex-Jesus People from the Sixties.
Nothing remains of it. With the rebuilding of I-5 and the whole Disneyland expansion, the entire area (now the “Anaheim Resort”) has changed completely. Even the streets bear no resemblance to what I remember from when I first moved behind the Orange Curtain. I think the Melodyland site is now the Disneyland Pumbaa Parking Lot on Disney Way a block east of “The Park”, but I would have to dig out my old 1982 Thomas Bros map book to make sure.
I think I knew that. We had taken a trip down to Disney, I’m gonna say 15 years or so ago. We were using the hotel bus to take us to the park for a 3-4 day visit, and the bus came in via the road that Melodyland sat on. I think some of the building was still there but the parking was clearly Disney. I think the “pastors” sold the “ministry” to a married couple of “health and wealth” types who moved it to Fullerton. Hopefully it and they are dead and buried..We were at Melodyland when Nixon was hiding in the oval trying to stave off impeachment by lying thru his teeth. I remember he was sending out emissaries to various churches to plead his innocence..Melodyland was a frequent stop..
The Sixties version of Court Evangelicals holding MAGA rallies at their Megas?
Yes. Billy Graham got up in it. You can always tell when a prominent figure is guilty as hell. They start hanging with a well known preacher as a “spiritual advisor”.. I well remember Bill Hybels showing up on Nightline pimping for Bill Clinton. Now Hybels just pimps for himself… The guy that was showing up was a well known “completed jew” who I think was also an MD.. Can’t remember his name..
Yes. Billy Graham got up in it. You can always tell when a prominent figure is guilty as hell. They start hanging with a well known preacher as a “spiritual advisor”.. I well remember Bill Hybels showing up on Nightline pimping for Bill Clinton. Now Hybels just pimps for himself… The guy that was showing up was a well known “completed jew” who I think was also an MD.. Can’t remember his name..