Forgiveness and Mars Hill
"When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrowto reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet."Steve Maraboli
My husband Bill was an executive pastor from 1994-2000 at one church, and after he was healed he served again from 2001-2007 at another. Six months after Annie's brain injury, Bill resigned as a pastor. Many factors played into his decision to leave vocational ministry, one of which was his desire to be at home in the evenings to help me care for Annie, who required intense 24/7 caregiving. Ministry meetings typically take place when lay people can attend them--in the evenings--and that wasn't going to work for us anymore.
Mars Hill Ballard
In 2009, our family began attending Mars Hill in Ballard. Our young adult sons connected with Mark Driscoll's evangelical bad boy persona, and the hard-edged music provided us a bridge with them, too. One of our sons played drums and soon joined the band, Ashborne. Bill and I enjoyed Mark's bold, unapologetic teaching style, and if we noticed any theological misfires from the pulpit, we'd give Mark a pass. "He's young," we'd say. Of course, the fact that Mark was pals with men like Wayne Grudem and Paul Tripp helped quiet any concerns we may have had.I was already settled in my stay-at-home-mom role years before we attended MH, so never felt the pressure to conform to any oppressive MH brand of being a submissive (subservient?) wife/mom. On the contrary, I've always felt rather spoiled to be able to be at home with my kids. The sad experiences I've read of many of the young women at MH who felt pressured to 'have babies and stay at home' weren't mine. I already had a tribe of kids way before we set foot inside MH, and frankly wasn't offended by anything Mark ever said about women. If I ever heard anything a little "off" coming from the pulpit, I gave Mark a pass. Because after all, he was "young."After Annie passed away in 2011, Bill and I had the time and energy to volunteer with the premarital counseling ministry under Phil and Jen Smidt. Again, from our vantage point, things at MH seemed fine. We felt our years of marital catastrophes bliss were being used to warn help the young couples we counseled. We had stepped from being Sunday spectators at MH to being involved again in ministry. And so far, all was well. It wasn't until the Real Marriage book tour came along that Bill and I tilted our heads like dogs and said, "Huh?" Actually, it was Bill who noticed things more than me. The patronizing way Mark talked to Grace in those RM videos. The book's rehashing of all of her sins and oddly...none of his. These red flags really began to gnaw at Bill. That still, small voice in his head was telling him that Mark wasn't all that young anymore and really should know better.
Mars Hill Everett
In 2012 we moved north and continued attending MH at the Everett campus when it was still meeting at Everett Community College. After we had been going there about a year, Bill started the MH elder training process. That's when the blinders came off. He had been an elder in two other churches; he knew what biblical eldership was supposed to look like. MH's elders, in contrast, had no authority to lead, guide or direct their campuses. No financial and ministerial decisions were made by the local elders. All decisions flowed from the top. The three guys behind the curtain, (Driscoll, Turner, & Bruskas) gave orders to the lead pastor, and he relayed directives to the elders. No questions were required of the campus elders, and in fact were prohibited, as has been documented in many blogs over the last year.But Bill had questions. One question was about the funding for the Everett launch. We gave to what we thought was a fund specifically tied to Everett, but as time passed we never knew when we were close to the amount needed to open. First they needed this amount to launch. Then they needed more--or maybe they didn't?--no one seemed to know. As a former executive pastor, Bill knew this wasn't adding up. Bill was concerned that someone was cooking the books. And apparently, that's exactly what was happening.The last straw for us came shortly thereafter, when close friends of ours who attended MH Bellevue made the fatal mistake of asking questions of the leadership there. Following the MH human resources playbook, our friends were called into a meeting, accused, yelled at, and dismissed from their ministry. Their abuse was our tipping point, and we jumped off the MH ship that week. A month or so after that, Janet Mefferd's story about plagiarism hit the news and the rest, as they say, is history.
Lessons Learned
As I mentioned at the beginning, Bill and I have been involved in church ministry for decades. We are both, ahem, in our mid-fifties, and have experienced plenty of negative--even abusive--can I say, crap at the hands of Christians. We've also received mercy and acts of sacrificial love from Christians. This perspective helped us when we left MH. We were able to recognize (finally) the abusive culture at MH and we left. But we didn't then draw the conclusion that all Christians are bad or that all churches are bad. Or that all Christians who stayed at MH are bad. This is so important for younger MH exiles to know and believe.Granted, no one at MH ever screamed and yelled at us. No one ever removed us from ministry or shunned us. We'd already lived that dream elsewhere and no doubt subconsciously avoided getting too close to any flame. But we, too, were sucked into the MH brand vortex, and wooed by the "cool factor" at the campuses we attended. Hopefully we've emerged wiser. We're definitely older.My purpose in sharing our story, however, is to encourage each wounded MH exile to remember that Mark Driscoll is not Jesus, and MH church was not heaven. Don't confuse them. God is still on His throne, the Bible is still true, and your faith is still real. Should the leaders of MH repent? Of course, and many have. Should the leaders be held to account for their financial shenanigans? Of course, and for those who feel a calling to hold them to account, may God bless your efforts.But if you've been hurt and have sought reconciliation with an offending brother or sister, and you've hit a roadblock, my advice is to let.it.go. Pray for your enemies, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:44. If you've done all you can to resolve grievances, and nothing is shaking loose, let it go, pray, and see what God does. He is eminently creative in resolving conflict.Yet some things may still go unresolved.It's been my experience that when things go unresolved, it's often a time for God to redirect my attention onto Him. To understand anew that His love, forgiveness and acceptance is all I need. Often it's a time for me to relearn the command to forgive others as He has forgiven me. (Ephesians 4:32) Sometimes after the Lord reminds me of all of the ways He's forgiven me, it's then that relationships are restored. Not always, but often.