Mark Driscoll Announces Launch of The Trinity Church (UPDATED)

In an email to supporters and a You Tube video, Mark and Grace Driscoll have announced the formation of The Trinity Church. I reported late last year that Driscoll had formed the legal corporation along with Jimmy Evans and Randall Taylor.  At the time, I asked rhetorically if the launch would be in January. I was close.

Watch:

The website is TheTrinityChurch.com. The church is named after Grace Driscoll’s home church in the Seattle area. So far, the church is a P.O. Box (see some pics here).

In what appears to be comparable to Mars Hill Church’s Board of Advisors and Accountability, Driscoll lists four pastors as providing “wise counsel”: Larry Osbourne, Randal Taylor, Jimmy Evans, and Robert Morris. These pastors have “apostolic gifting.”

Mark and Grace Driscoll have pastors with apostolic gifting who love them, know them, and are invested in them.

We learn from, respect, honor and seek wise counsel from the following leaders, their families, churches and ministries. We also appreciate those ministry leaders praying for and supporting our church plant.

Josh McDowell and Wayne Grudem are on the prayer team. UPDATE: Without note, Wayne Grudem’s name has been removed from the list of prayer supporters.

Andy Girton and Brandon Andersen are listed as associate pastors.

Apparently, it is forbidden to mention Mars Hill Church.

Although the incorporation papers say the church won’t have members, The Trinity Church website says the following about membership:

Once the church is established, a class and process for spiritual church membership will be offered.

Sounds similar to Mars Hill in that spiritual members didn’t vote. Legally, they weren’t members for the purpose of being involved in the business of the church.

The board of directors from the Arizona state corporation website is below:
The Trinity Church Directors

Click the following links for the posts covering The Trinity Church, Mars Hill Church, and Mark Driscoll.
UPDATE: After the post was published, I noticed another video on Driscoll’s You Tube page, published today. Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWI06YsSa3s[/youtube]
Here he describes the church plant again, but dressed in different clothing. I think the first video about the church plant was shot back in early December based on the clothing and scenery in this December 7 video.
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Thomas Nelson Contract: Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage Advance Was $400,000

Cash
Image courtesy of sheelamohan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wenatchee the Hatchet has a copy of the 2011 agreement between Mark and Grace Driscoll’s LLC (On Mission, LLC) and Thomas Nelson to publish Real Marriage. Dusting off my Mars Hill sources, I conclude it is legit. In it, we learn:

-The Driscolls received an advance of $400,000.

-The book had a working title of “A New Marriage with the Same Spouse.”

-The contract calls for the Driscolls to pay for corrections. I wonder if they did since corrections due to citation errors had to be made.

-Mars Hill could have gotten thousands of books through Driscoll at an 80% discount. Instead, Mars Hill’s contract with Result Source called for the church to purchase 11,000 copies at an adjusted retail price so the numbers would count toward the New York Times best seller list. According to this contract, those royalties went to the Driscolls via On Mission.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that being the pastor of a church willing to develop a marketing campaign for your book (see that also at WtH) which includes a preaching series (with research done by consultants) and full support from a marketing team (paid for by tithes) is a really sure way to become wealthy.

This reminds me of the qualms expressed by the Communications Team at Mars Hill Church in 2011 before the executive elders committed church money to the Real Marriage campaign.
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Mark Driscoll isn’t the only one who found financial gain in megachurch service. David Jeremiah does something like this once a year.

Brian Houston Publishes Interview with Mark and Grace Driscoll

Apparently, the interview was placed on Houston’s website on July 28.


It has been posted at Vimeo (see the end of the post)*

This is old news to those who followed the story when the video was shown at the Sydney conference. I have good audio for the interview, but the video has more people paying attention.

A transcript of the interview is here (not flawless but a good effort).

At the same time as the video has been posted, Driscoll announced that he has moved to Phoenix.

Houston has done Driscoll a huge favor with this interview. It will be interesting to see if Driscoll plants a church in a city where Hillsong has a significant presence. In fact, Hillsong purchased a building Mars Hill once considered for the Phoenix expansion. Mars Hill launched Mars Hill Phoenix in 2014 which later became Phoenix Bible Church later that year.

The link for the video was here https://vimeo.com/134722998 but it was taken down later in July, 2015.

Publisher Thomas Nelson Alters Mark Driscoll's Book Real Marriage To Correct Citation Problems

On January 9, I compared a section of Mark & Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage to Justin & Lindsey Holcomb’s book Rid of My Disgrace. In that post, I noted that the Driscolls did not give adequate credit to the Holcombs for some material adapted from the Holcombs’ book on recovery from sexual assault. While some supporters of Mark Driscoll have minimized concerns about plagiarism and  inadequate citation, the publishers involved apparently consider the problems to be important. First, Thomas Nelson added an acknowledgment to Dan Allender* in Real Marriage and now the publisher has made more changes in the book to more appropriately cite the Holcombs’ work.
The image below shows the original version compared to the Google version (p. 125) now online:

With these corrections, Thomas Nelson addressed the precise issues that I pointed out in the January 9 post. The current version is much better and gives appropriate credit to the Holcombs.
Thomas Nelson should get some credit for this reaction to concerns over plagiarism. In contrast to Tyndale House, Thomas Nelson apparently viewed the citation of the Holcomb’s work as less than market standards. Recall that Thomas Nelson pulled David Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies when it became clear that the book was filled with factual errors. Now, they have taken a less drastic course but nonetheless tacitly acknowledged problems which require action.
I would say that the several publishers involved have a lot more work to do to make appropriate corrections. Now that Thomas Nelson has moved to make these changes, Tyndale House may feel additional pressure to rethink the findings of their investigation regarding citation of Peter Jones’ work in A Call To Resurgence.
*This now shows up in the Google version as well.
UPDATE: Thomas Nelson issued a statement to me today regarding the changes being made to Real Marriage. Click the link to read the statement.

Kindle Edition of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage Adds Dan Allender to Acknowledgments

In mid-December, I wrote about Mark Driscoll’s use of Dan Allender’s material in Driscoll’s book Death By Love. Others have written about the lack of citation of Dan Allender’s work in Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage.  In short, Allender refers to styles of relating often used by women who have suffered abuse — tough girl, party girl, good girl — in his book The Wounded Heart. The Driscoll’s use the same scheme to describe abuse victims in their book Real Marriage, but without attributing the terms or concepts to Allender. Wenatchee the Hatchet established that Grace Driscoll, at least, was familiar with Allender’s work prior to writing Real Marriage. However, in the print book, no reference to Allender can be found.
In contrast, the Kindle version being sold now does mention Allender. The Kindle edition adds Allender’s name and book title to the Acknowledgments section of the Kindle edition of the book:

We want to thank Dan Allender, whose book, The Wounded Heart, has helped shape our thinking about the effects of abuse.*

Here is an image of the print edition from Google books:

There is no mention of Allender on pages 221-222, and if you search the book, Allender does not turn up in the search results.
Now on the same page in the Acknowledgments section in the Kindle edition*, it looks like this:

Now Allender is mentioned between the Driscoll kids and the church planters.
I purchased Real Marriage on January 3, 2014, long after the lack of citation had been publicly discussed. Ebooks are very easy to change. However, making changes in the print edition is another matter. We may never know if this change was the result of conversations between NavPress and Mark Driscoll but the alteration does seem to be tacit acknowledgment that Allender’s work should have been cited. In any case, the gesture is nice, but insufficient. Allender’s book should be cited with a footnote where the material is used.
Given what I have found thus far, I suspect there will be more Kindle corrections.
*Driscoll, Mark; Driscoll, Grace (2012-01-03). Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (p. 221). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
For all posts on Driscoll and Mars Hill, click here.