Resources on Mars Hill Church

[skjaere]

I make no secret of the fact that I have a number of beefs with the Seattle-based megachurch and its celebrity pastor. This collection of links and resources is largely for my own reference, but I hope others will find it a useful resource as well. Please feel free to comment if you have any others you think I should add, or if you just want to

Comments

[glitterybint]

1) I though Mars Hill was led by Rob Bell, who is ace.

2) is this the same Jesus who surrounded himself with women and spent so much of his time championing them and their rights?

[skjaere]

1) I don't know anything about Rob Bell, but MHC seems to be solely centred around the personality of Mark Driscoll.

2) Maybe they're talking about two different guys? I think Monty Python did a film about that....

Edit: OK, looked up Rob Bell. Apparently he founded a church by the same name in Michigan.

[blaueteufelin]

There are two Mars Hills, one in Seattle, one in Michigan, both led by charismatic men who are basically the complete opposite of each other. :p Rob Bell kind of creeps me out in a Svengali-ish way, but he's certainly not the giant homophobic misogynist douche Mark Driscoll is.

[superl99]

I give it no more than a year before there is a sex scandal involving Mark Driscoll and either a) one or more prostitutes of either gender; b) one or more minors of either gender; c) hard drugs; d) wife beating; e) all of the above. Self-righteous misogynistic homophobic bastards like this always have something to hide.

[skjaere]

I'd like to think so (except that I'd hate to see anyone else harmed in such a situation), but I feel like we think that's a pattern because those are the ones we end up hearing about, and we hear about them because of the massive hypocrisy of what they do, rather than because such offenses are unique to their personal brand of creepiness. There's probably lots of creeps who stay under the radar their whole lives.

[blaueteufelin]

I don't know. He's almost certainly abusive but some emotionally abusive people are very good about keeping their behavior to things that they're extremely unlikely to get caught for. Just having psychological control over people can be enough for them. Also religious complexes can just as easily work in the direction of being obsessively upright as being a secret hypocrite. He could pride himself on being a completely faithful husband who is incredibly protective of his wife and children. I tend to suspect that's more Driscoll's hang up than the traditional secret vices and/or crimes.

I would be shocked if he were 100% straight, though.

[chiv]

From the looks of things, he's been active and preaching since 2004, it's not a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon.
Any revelation is probably going to be slow-burning.

[superl99]

Would you have any interest in getting commentary from a female priest? I have a friend in Finland who is a priest in the state Lutheran church, and also has degrees in Western theology and church history. She could probably provide you with some good biblical arguments against this crap.

[skjaere]

I'm always interested in more input, though I've done a lot of reading myself, and am up on most of the good arguments against complementarianism. I also feel like (as with liberal/democrat v. conservative/republican) what we're dealing with are diametrically opposed philosophies, and it's almost impossible to convince anyone who holds one that anything the other side believes is valid. Still, if she's interested in discussing this, I'd be happy to hear from her.

[superl99]

Yeah, she may not necessarily have anything new to offer, but you might find it interesting anyway!

Thanks for linking to my blog.

[ext_1170433]

Hey There!

My name is Gary and you linked to my blog "Searching For Chet Baker" and my article "The Dangers of Mark Driscoll & The Mars Hill Church". I appreciate it and I'm glad you found my blog and found it useful, if only for this one post.

I'm fairly new to learning about this guy although once I got to knowing about him I realized that I had heard of him before because people in my church (Spokane Washington) have mentioned him and some of them absolutely adore him and think he's a "great man".

ooooooookay.

Anyway, I noticed I was getting some hits from here and wandered over here to see what was going on. Thank you, once again, for the link!

Gary

Re: Thanks for linking to my blog.

[skjaere]

No problem. I hope you find some of the other links here helpful and informative. I personally find the survivor blogs to be the most compelling.