ADDENDUM::Lawsuit: Controversial Pastor Ran Mars Hill Megachurch Like a Crime Syndicate - The Daily Beast

Just when controversial pastor Mark Driscoll was hoping to make a new start, former members of his old stomping grounds at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church have filed a lawsuit alleging Driscoll and his chief elder ran the now-shuttered megachurch like an organized crime syndicate, in which church members became unwitting participants.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the Western District of Washington U.S. District Court in Seattle under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law originally created for prosecution of Mafia figures.

Former members have been threatening to file such a lawsuit for months to find out just where the members’ tithes—some $30 million yearly, according to church reports—actually went.

Mars Hill closed its doors in 2014, following a number of scandals involving allegations of Driscoll’s bullying and spiritual abuse of members and church leaders, misogyny, and homophobia espoused on a church message board, plagiarism, and misuse of church funds—which this lawsuit seeks to redress. Since its closure, the details of the organization’s dissolution have been opaque, with little public accounting, and a group of remaining leaders who have refused to comment on who gets what from the failed enterprise that not so long ago passed the collection plate around to more than 12,000 visitors every week at 15 satellite campuses.
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 Driscoll followed their lead, resigning in October 2014, and two weeks later, the church was no more. Driscoll now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and plans to start a new church there.

Lawsuit: Controversial Pastor Ran Mars Hill Megachurch Like a Crime Syndicate - The Daily Beast

Seattle megachurch head Mark Driscoll quits after church clears him of ‘heresy’

The head pastor for a Seattle megachurch resigned on Wednesday despite being cleared of any criminal activities in a church investigation, CNN reported.

Mars Hill Church pastor Mark Driscoll announced his departure from the church after 18 years in a letter sent to the church’s board of overseers, saying that parts of his “personality and leadership style” had fostered divisiveness within the organization.

“Recent months have proven unhealthy for our family—even physically unsafe at times—and we believe the time has now come for the elders to choose new pastoral leadership for Mars Hill,” Driscoll wrote, according to Religion News Services.

Driscoll, who founded Mars Hill in 1996, was under investigation after a group of 21 former ministers accused him of plagiarism and creating a “culture of abuse” within the organization. A letter accompanying the accusations identified 25 alleged instances of him making inappropriate remarks toward staff members.

But the church said in a statement that the investigation, which entailed interviews with more than 50 sources, had cleared him of “any immorality, illegality or heresy.”

Seattle megachurch head Mark Driscoll quits after church clears him of ‘heresy’

Inside Mars Hill's massive meltdown | Crosscut.com

A look at the fiasco that is or was Mars Hill. The subtitle I think sums up well exactly what the problem is, "How narcissism, misogyny and Mark Driscoll's own troubled past led to the mega-church mass exodus his flock was too scared to talk about."
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As insiders begin to open up, financial scandals are also rising to the surface. Former pastors say the church is being run more like a cutthroat business, where people who give up their secular jobs to serve the church are then abruptly fired on a whim. The threat of witholding severance pay is used to secure their silence in the form of non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses. But several former pastors have now refused to comply.

Recently, a former member started a petition at change.org requesting financial transparency. It asks Driscoll to reveal his salary, which is estimated by a few insiders I spoke to to be somewhere in the ballpark of $900,000, and it raises questions about how much of the $2 million donated to the church's Global Fund in the 2012-2013 fiscal year actually made it to Ethiopia and India.

Inside Mars Hill's massive meltdown | Crosscut.com

Former Mars Hill Members Protest Mark Driscoll Outside Church

A group of about 65 people stood outside Mars Hill Church in Bellevue, Washington, Sunday to protest pastor and founder Mark Driscoll.

In a recent video, Driscoll acknowledged that church leaders had been dismissed abruptly. But former church members took issue with his claims about what hindered his response to criticism.

"One of the things that has been complex is the fact that a lot of the people that we are dealing with in this season remain anonymous," he said in a video posted on July 21. "And so we don't know how to reconcile or how to work things out with people, because we're not entirely sure who they are. And so that has made things a little more complex and difficult as well."

In response, former Mars Hill deacon Rob Smith created a Facebook group called "Dear Pastor Mark & Mars Hill: We Are Not Anonymous."

"Pastor Mark Driscoll lamented that he's confused and unsure how to reconcile with people who were 'hurt' by his actions because they are 'anonymous," the group description says. "This page exists for those who wish to lovingly help Pastor Mark by letting him know that they are not 'anonymous.'"

Former Mars Hill Members Protest Mark Driscoll Outside Church

Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Ex-Right-Hand Man Predicts the End of the Resurgence

A new post on the We Love Mars Hill blog (covered before here) is making waves in the Christian community as Pastor Mark Driscoll‘s former right-hand man, Mike Anderson, explains why he, too, withdrew his membership from the controversial Seattle megachurch.

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Mike writes that his change of perspective happened slowly, but the watershed moment for him that made him decide once and for all to leave the Mars Hill cult[ure] was when his dad gave him a philosophy book on mass movements (one I personally recommend — it’s a good, quick read),,,

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Anderson stops just shy of calling Mars Hill a cult, but the connection in his mind is clear from everything else he says. As I observed before, this is the beginning of the end of the New Calvinism movement, and as more and more folks tell their stories (like Anderson), the “survivors” groups will hit a point of critical mass and Driscoll and his ilk will not be able to retain their power.

Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Ex-Right-Hand Man Predicts the End of the Resurgence

Publisher Cuts Ties With Mark Driscoll's Resurgence After Plagiarism Accusations

Tyndale House Publishers has cut ties with Mark Driscoll's Resurgence imprint, according to The Daily Beast news site. The company has removed from its website The Problem With Christianity, Driscoll's next Resurgence book slated for September release, and reportedly does not expect to publish a trade paper version of A Call to Resurgence, his first title under the imprint.

Tyndale and Driscoll's Mars Hill Church in Seattle forged a partnership to create the new imprint in April 2013. Resurgence published works by multiple authors, including Driscoll, and planned to release five to seven titles per year.

Driscoll has been embroiled in controversy regarding a decision to boost his New York Times best-seller ranking using a company called Result Source and, in a separate matter, accusations of plagiarism.

Tyndale came to the defense of the author initially on plagiarism with Ron Beers stating that Driscoll handled the situation in a "biblical manner."

Publisher Cuts Ties With Mark Driscoll's Resurgence After Plagiarism Accusations

Pastor at Mars Hill Church Abruptly Leaves, Moves Out of State

With so much controversy surrounding Mars Hill Senior Pastor Mark Driscoll in recent months, it may not surprise some that one of its pastors is suddenly leaving.

Members recently learned of the abrupt departure of Mike Wilkerson, the director of biblical counseling at Mars Hill Ballard. Wilkerson will be moving out of state this weekend.

“One of our long-time friends and pastors, Mike Wilkerson, has decided to step down from eldership at Mars Hill,” pastor Scott Harris said in a letter addressed to the “Mars Hill Family.”

“Mike has been part of Mars Hill for many years, and we are grateful for his leadership, particularly in helping us build our biblical counseling and Redemption ministry across all 15 churches,” Harris added.

Harris said Ballard congregation members prayed over Wilkerson last weekend, and explained that “he plans to move out of state this coming Saturday.”

Wilkerson has been at Mars Hill since 2000 and joined staff in 2004. His focus was on leading biblical counseling and Redemption Groups, which he helped develop.

Pastor at Mars Hill Church Abruptly Leaves, Moves Out of State

WORLD | Unreal sales for Driscoll’s Real Marriage | Warren Cole Smith | March 5, 2014

Driscoll has been having issues of late: revamping church history  and plagiarism being the most recent. That aside,,,

Does the end, justify the means?

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.

According to a document obtained by WORLD, ResultSource Inc. (RSI) contracted with Mars Hill “to conduct a bestseller campaign for your book, Real Marriage on the week of January 2, 2012. The bestseller campaign is intended to place Real Marriage on The New York Times bestseller list for the Advice How-To list.”

The marketing company also promised to help place Real Marriage on the Wall Street Journal Business, USA Today Money, BN.com (Barnes & Noble), and Amazon.com best-seller lists.

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Mars Hill would not say whether the funds for the purchase of these books, which would total approximately $123,600 for the individual sales and $93,100 for the bulk sales, came from church funds.

According to the terms of the contract between ResultSource and Mars Hill, “RSI will be purchasing at least 11,000 total orders in one-week.” The contract called for the “author” to “provide a minimum of 6,000 names and addresses for the individual orders and at least 90 names and address [sic] for the remaining 5,000 bulk orders. Please note that it is important that the make up of the 6,000 individual orders include at least 1,000 different addresses with no more than 350 per state.”

The purpose of this instruction appears to be a way to outsmart systems put in place by The New York Times and other list compilers to prevent authors from buying their way onto best-seller lists. ResultSource apparently uses other techniques to work around the safeguards of the best-seller lists. According to its agreement with Mars Hill, “RSI will use its own payment systems (ex. gift cards to ensure flawless reporting). Note: The largest obstacle to the reporting system is the tracking of credit cards. RSI uses over 1,000 different payment types (credit cards, gift cards, etc).”

Obsessed with fame much or a bit hypocritical? I vaguely remember a narrative in the Gospels about Jesus expelling the money changers from the Temple, accusing them of turning the Temple into a den of thieves through their commercial activities.

WORLD | Unreal sales for Driscoll’s Real Marriage | Warren Cole Smith | March 5, 2014