Tag: The Trinity Church

Mars Hill Church and The Trinity Church: Is Past Prologue?

In August 2014, 21 former elders from Mars Hill Church brought formal charges under the bylaws of the church against Mark Driscoll. Recently, I have been listening to people talk about their experiences at The Trinity Church in Phoenix. To quote Yogi Berra, it feels like deja vu all over again.

For those who complain that I am unnecessarily bringing up the past, I will reply with Shakespeare that, at times, past may be prologue. The charges are linked below; those who are currently involved or recently left Trinity Church may want to compare notes with past Mars Hill elders who wrote in 2014. Anything seem familiar?

Read the 2014 Formal Charges 

These charges were investigated by a group of elders. According to Dave Bruskas (who was involved in the discussions), this group recommended that Driscoll be considered disqualified subject to involvement in a plan of restoration. However, another group of overseers who did not hear the evidence but also had oversight did not want to disqualify Driscoll and keep out of the pulpit indefinitely. These two groups could not agree and during  their time of disagreement, Driscoll resigned. Eventually, he started The Trinity Church in Phoenix.

Mark Driscoll’s Elderless Church, Part Four – Who Are the Elders?

Dee  Holmes conducted a one-woman protest yesterday and today at The Trinity Church in Scottsdale, AZ. She took up a presence on the sidewalk in front of the church and loudly raised the issues of no elders, no accountability in finances and the fact that police were called to keep a family off church premises after a teen boy in the family and Driscoll’s teen daughter shared a consensual kiss.

This tweet from Dee makes me wonder how much in the dark The Trinity Church members are. This man comes out in response to Dee and says the church has elders. That, of course, is either a brand new development or was carefully hidden from former staff who never heard of them and don’t know who they are.

As noted in this post, the nonprofit board of directors are not elders at least in the sense that Driscoll teaches in his book on Doctrine. In this flow chart provided to staff, there is no place for or mention of elders:

It seems entirely likely that members don’t know how the church is organized or funded. They haven’t seen financial statements or bylaws and have no idea what kind of organization they attend. That all may work out unless and until they have an issue or concern — like the family who objected to how their teen was treated after the infamous kiss.

Mark Driscoll’s Elderless Church, Part Three – Where’s the Board?

A former staff member from The Trinity Church provided the following document to me:

Notice the heading: “The ministry of The Trinity Church is ruled by God, influenced by Wise Counsel, governed by a board, led by the Senior Pastor, run by staff, and carried out by Team Trinity.”

However, looking at the flow chart, there is no board. Rather, note who is large and in charge – “Pastor Mark & Grace.”

Notice also that Driscoll’s daughter Ashley Chase is higher on the chart than the pastors. It also appears that Driscoll’s Real Faith nonprofit is a subsidiary of The Trinity Church. Now that is confusing. Driscoll’s nonprofit board and staff serve as a part of the staff of The Trinity Church. Maybe this is indeed a family business.

Actually, on a sheet of instructions given to staff, that exact phrase “family business” is used. See #8 under Professional below:

There are some catchy but meaningless phrases in this document. For instance: “We are Governed Throne Down, not Pew Up.” Who is on what throne? In practice, this is just a way of the single leader telling everybody else what to do and claiming God’s permission to do it.

Notice the conflation of The Trinity Church and Driscoll’s personal ministry: The Trinity Church and Real Faith.

Staff and volunteers also have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I will take that up in a separate post.

There are awful, harrowing stories coming out of this church. People are being kept from seeing family members because of how they feel about Mark Driscoll. Having chronicled stories from Mars Hill, I can say it feels like deja vu all over again listening to the hurting people contacting me now.

For any The Trinity Church attenders who are brave enough to read this far: Ask yourself why there are no financial statements. Do you know how your offerings are being spent? Why are there no elders or deliberative meetings over church direction? Why do people simply disappear from attendance without comment? Why are some people shunned?  Why aren’t  forgiveness and reconciliation stories what Mark Driscoll’s churches are known for?

If you are really brave, invest some time listening to these former Mars Hill Church co-workers of the man who now occupies your Trinity throne.

Mark Driscoll’s Elderless Church, Part Two

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:

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?

 

Mark Driscoll’s Elderless Church

Remember Mark Driscoll?

Driscoll is the former Seattle-based Mars Hill Church pastor who was charged by 21 of his former elders back in 2014 with an abusive style of leadership. There were two groups of leaders at Mars Hill Church who were involved in deciding what to do with Driscoll. The group of elders who investigated the charges found that he should be disqualified from ministry. Another group of overseers loyal to Driscoll did not want to communicate to the church that he was disqualified but wanted to keep him from the pulpit for a break. That group had not been a part of the investigation process and had not heard the evidence. In the middle of the several days these two groups were in disagreement, Driscoll resigned from the church without entering any process of restoration.

In short, a jury of his elder peers found him to be disqualified to be a pastor-elder. Instead of being restored by those elders, he left the scene and eventually started a new church — The Trinity Church — in Scottsdale, AZ.

It should come as little surprise that Mark Driscoll’s new church apparently has solved the elder problem which led to his demise at Mars Hill. Just don’t have any.

During the past couple of weeks, several former members of The Trinity Church in Scottsdale have contacted me to talk about about aspects of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. They contacted me due to my coverage of Mars Hill from late 2013 until 2015. They tell stories remarkably similar to those I heard from former Mars Hill members during that span of time. There is one major difference. In the current church, there are no elders who are putting on any brakes. There are no elders to whom appeals can be made. Several former members and staffers have told me that The Trinity Church does not have elders.

Some things do sound the same. Non-disclosure agreements are again being used. Money is again conditioned on silence. People are describing abrupt decisions about membership without due process. Friends and family who are considered disloyal to the church are being shunned. At some point, these stories may be told. For now, according to former members and staff,  the pastors who are there in addition to Driscoll are not elders in the decision making sense of the office. If elders hold you accountable in one place, eliminate them in the next place.

Doctrine: Who Needs It?

Over the years, Driscoll has taught often about elders. On The Trinity Church website, Driscoll has his book with Gerry Breshears — Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe — available for download. In that book, he discusses the biblical role of elders in a local church:

“The church is organized under qualified and competent leadership. The senior human leaders are men called elders (pastors).” (p. 309)

“The Bible describes the office of elder-pastor or overseer as the highest office in a local church, a position charged with the responsibility of overseeing the doctrinal soundness and spiritual health of the church. There is no end of confusion over the title pastor. It is often used for leaders of the church who get paid for their ministry, or specifically for the preacher. Negatively, this false understanding separates pastors from elders, the biblical term for senior leaders.” (p. 319)

“The duties of elders revolve around two major areas of responsibility: pastoral care (including equipping Christians for ministry and oversight of the church) and guiding and guarding the teaching of the church (including the preaching of God’s Word when the church assembles). The elders are the senior leadership team in a church and as such they bear primary responsibility for the well-being of the church’s people, resources, and doctrine.” (p. 319)

“It is important to note that the Bible always speaks of elders in the plural. This follows the New Testament pattern that ministry is to be done by teams so that everyone is under authority, including those in authority. While there will almost always be one man on the team of elders who is the leader of the elders, a “first among equals” elder, he does not hold a categorically different office from the other elders.” (p. 320)

There is more, but it should be clear that a local church as envisioned once upon a time by Driscoll and Breshears should have more than one elder. The Trinity Church does have pastors – in fact, the church lists five pastors: Brandon Anderson, Eden Fine, Darien Bennett, Carl Steele, and Landon Chase. However, as noted, nowhere are they referred to as elders. I wrote The Trinity Church asking about this without answer and the church bylaws are not available online. The former members and staff I spoke to said the bylaws are not available to members. Naturally, if the church has an alternative perspective, I will add it to the post.

So what is The Trinity Church? One former member I spoke to said it appears to be more like a family business. And indeed it may be. As I documented in prior years, the religion business can be quite lucrative for some. And if that is what a person wants in their Sunday morning activities, it is a free country. However, others would like to know if what went around before is coming around again.