"Storm clouds seem to be whirling around me more than ever in recent months," said Pastor Mark Driscoll to his Mars Hill congregation last August, "and I have given much thought and sought much counsel as to why that is and what to do about it."
In the same announcement, he said, "I have requested a break for processing, healing, and growth for a minimum of six weeks while the leadership assigned by our bylaws conduct a thorough examination of accusations against me."
Thousands of Christian worshipers gathering weekly across four states, their church boasting annual revenues of more than $30 million: dissolving. Done.
Those storm clouds raged harder. Gale-force condemnation whipped up tumultuous seas of public criticism until, as those six weeks closed, a Seattle Times headline read: "Mars Hill Church reeling as Pastor Mark Driscoll quits." Reporter Janet Tu attributed his departure to "an avalanche of allegations," ranging from "charges of bullying," to "abusive behavior," to "plagiarism and overseeing mismanagement of church funds."
Two weeks after Driscoll's resignation, Mars Hill's Dave Bruskas announced in an October 31 post on the church website that as of January 1 2015, "the existing Mars Hill Church organization will be dissolved." After the church lays its central structure to rest, its 15 local bodies will float alone, if possible.
Thousands of Christian worshipers gathering weekly across four states, their church boasting annual revenues of more than $30 million, dissolving. Done.
Considering the ruins
It's difficult to see much more than the still-soggy ruins and drowned hopes of the once booming megachurch. "How did this happen so fast?" asks Rene Schlaepfer, pastor of Twin Lakes Church, a megachurch in Aptos, California. Watching disgrace devour other celebrity pulpits is always grim, he says, but this story hits home even harder.
"Driscoll went to Western Seminary, where I went. And as I try to lead a large, theologically conservative, evangelical church in a super liberal, super progressive place [Santa Cruz, California], Driscoll was doing something similar in Seattle. He was obviously someone I looked to for guidance.
"I'm completely blown away," says Schlaepfer. "It does not seem real. It's like a nightmare … to have it all just go away, to have to shut it all down. It does not seem redemptive."
Bill Clem, campus pastor and elder at Mars Hill's West Seattle location, then later at the Ballard location from 2006-2012, says, "I knew something would eventually happen, but none of us would have ever predicted this."
However nightmarish ruins like these may be, a traveler in Proverbs 24 suggests that the wise person will pay attention. He stumbles upon another's ruin and says, "…I saw, and considered it well; I looked upon it, and received instruction."
No simple answer
Clem pastored alongside Driscoll for more than half a decade, and he refuses to single out Driscoll, church structure, staff culture, or any problem as the one that "necessitated wrapping the car around the pole," as he puts it. Perhaps no singular, simple answer will ever emerge.
Nevertheless, Clem says, the structure of Mars Hill—which over time consolidated power and financial decisions in the central organization—did play a role. "As the structure became more refined, the driving motive became efficiency and growth, and those two factors began dictating church policy."
Tim Gaydos, pastor and elder at Mars Hill's downtown Seattle campus from 2006-2013, sees principles from Galatians 2 playing out here. "This all began as a work of the Spirit," he comments, "but we quickly started to push harder and harder, trying to accomplish it with human efforts—bigger, better, faster, stronger."
"One of the things that drew my wife and me in early was being involved in a particular neighborhood context, operating with a strong theology of time and place," Gaydos says. "But that started to shift significantly—to focus more on expansion to wherever we could find podcasters to set up a new site."
Welcome to the whole Seattle mindset, Clem says. "Some say, 'Let's deliver packages,' but Seattle says, 'No. Let's make it Amazon.' Some say, 'Let's have coffee,' but Seattle says, 'No. Let's make it Starbucks.' 'Let's have a grocery store.' 'No! Let's make it Costco.' Microsoft. Google. Boeing. Seattle is about power, expansion, and world domination."
The principle held true when that corporate drive took hold of Mars Hill. Clem had planted a small church called "Doxa" in West Seattle, and shortly after receiving a large building as a gift, they merged with Mars Hill, becoming its first expansion campus.
"At the time, when they got me and my building, the concept of multi-site church structure was fairly infantile in its movement and structure," Clem says, "and we chose to start out heavily centralized.
"For example, by the time we had three campuses, we still only had one youth pastor. His team did 'youth-ministry-in-a-box' at Shoreline on Tuesday, West Seattle on Wednesday, and Ballard on Thursday. And we did the same kind of thing with the different pieces, from counseling to children's ministry to whatever."
Centralization consolidated power and finances efficiently. And as Driscoll's celebrity brand infiltrated the Internet, plainly put, the church expanded enormously.
Gaydos says, "Mark made it no secret that he wanted to become the biggest church in America." Push further. Grow faster. Give more cash to fund "The Front."
Casualties from The Front
Confusion hovered around what "The Front" actually was, some pastors regarding it generally as whatever place evangelism or mission was happening, with others seeing it narrowly as attendance and property expansion. Still, either of the two beckoned for funding and the focus of attention.
In a city that (according to the Seattle Department of Planning and Development) boasts a median family income well above $90,000 per year, the financial ceiling for a city-center megachurch is high. And in today's megachurch culture, what besides finances would restrain the ecclesial throttle?
New buildings, more pastors, better technology: churches chase hard, but finances hold back. So, Clem says, they cut inefficiency wherever it lurked—such as caring for some of the resource-draining people or providing benevolence to the city, because such endeavors lack a high return on investment (ROI).
"We started going for high-profile, high-ROI stuff that brings in more money," says Clem. To do so, you've got to make the news, be known at the popular level, and have wide influence. The influence came, and attendance kept climbing.
"The growth was uncontrollable," Clem says. "On one Sunday in January, we launched four campuses. The problem is that this is only possible if you scale the campus pastor position way back. If being a lead pastor requires a skill set or maturity, then your pool to draw from gets smaller, and you cannot multiply fast enough.
"The only way to create scalable multiplication is to somehow dumb down that position so that a dog with a note in its mouth can do it."
Secure a space and hang an HD video screen. Project the celebrity pastor through DVD. Stir in a heap of cutting-edge promotion with just a pinch of local leadership, and you end up with a well-branded, easily marketable, quickly reproducible church-in-a-box, and "The Front" expands.
But casualties and collateral damage start piling up.
"It got to the point where I'd get a weekly printout that would tell me I had one minute and 40 seconds to make an announcement," says Clem. "I'd get a memo telling me to quit standing up in front and praying with people after the service because those hurting people are already regular attenders. The visitors are out in the lobby, so you need to be out in the lobby to get Velcro on the visitor to get them to stick so they come back.
"As the campus pastor, I'm being managed on where I stand, who I talk to—and I'm going, Are you kidding me? When I was 25 years old, I had more freedom to figure out how to do ministry than this."
Mars Hill obviously did not start this way. So what happened?
"A significant turning point came when we brought Sutton Turner on," Clem says, referring to the April 2011 hire of Turner as the church's General Manager, eventually stepping into oversight of Central Operations. Not that Turner was malicious or corrupt, says Clem, but his business savvy began to dominate the church's strategy and organizational structure.
"He had an MBA from Harvard and had just worked for the Prince of Qatar's royal family on a major real estate development where he oversaw 1,500 people. We were thinking, OK, we don't know what we're doing; Sutton knows what to do."
Gaydos avoids naming the addition of Turner a "turning point" because the leadership trajectory had been established beforehand. But through the fresh emphasis on business-inspired growth models, "Turner certainly accelerated our progression along that line."
When the reporters of this article reached out to Turner for a response, he commented on little besides the facts of his time at Mars Hill—the when and what of his hire, and his move into increased responsibility at Central. (He did not respond when asked if he viewed his hire as a turning point for the church, though he clarified his September resignation and expressed continued love for the church, saying that "It was a difficult decision, however the media criticism had become too intense for me and my family, and it was clear that the church in the near future would not be able to continue to afford me…. My time at Mars Hill has been one of the most challenging and spiritually growing times of my life.")
The centralized structure of Mars Hill grew in size and power. "The Front" expanded—pushing well outside of Seattle to other parts of Washington, Oregon, California, and New Mexico. As it grew, the key question became how to fund it all.
The cost of expansion
"'How do we get more money coming into Central?' became the main question," says Clem. He describes the basic Mars Hill budget strategy like this:
- A campus pastor sets his own budget for the year.
- He bases the number on a "per head" estimate for weekly giving.
- The goal is to keep increasing the per-head income.
"So, looking at my 'per-head' of $31, they wanted me to say, 'This year I think I can get this up to $35' and then set my budget accordingly," says Clem. "Then, if I didn't make that by the first quarter, Central would adjust.
"But look. If I make a budget based on just $4 more per person, with a congregation of more than 3,000 people, I'm talking about $12,000 per week [$624,000 annual]! And that number equals staff. So if I don't make it to the next level, I have to fire those people. And this is where some of the staffing volatility came from."
For campus pastors on startup church sites, everything hovered around congregation benchmarks. For 500 attendees, you got an executive pastor. 800? You could add a worship pastor. And if you boosted it up to 3,000 loyal listeners, the "award" was a youth pastor.
The pressure to grow rapidly increased. Expansion brought more financial responsibility. "So Central comes after the per-head money at the older campuses, and they say, 'You get to keep only $10 per head at your campus no matter how much people give,'" Clem says.
"Here's an example of what happens, then: When Driscoll quit preaching at my Ballard campus and went to Bellevue, I immediately lost 1,000 people. At $10 per head, that's $10,000 per Sunday that went out the door. And yet my people who stayed continued to give to the same budget; they actually started to give more.
"But because my attendance dropped, Central says my budget needs to drop, and that means that I have to fire a youth pastor.
"People don't want to lose the youth pastor and start asking, 'How much more will it take to keep Mitch?' And I'm saying, 'No matter how much more you give, we can't use a penny. It just goes to Central.' And they start going, 'This is communism!'"
So why would a pastor—or congregant—keep playing this game?
"For us, expanding 'The Front' meant mission and evangelism," Clem says. "We did everything to see people come to know Christ. There were two or three years in a row where we were seeing over 1,000 people baptized per year, and we started feeling like we could put up with a lot of crap—a lot of egotism, a management-by-objective leadership in the church—in order to see people come to know Christ.
"This became our legitimizing story. We all got caught up in the buzz. If you were to ask the other pastors now, I think that's what they would say to you, too."
By their results you shall know them
How can King Jesus's leadership characteristics ever make center stage if churches reserve that space for a growing church's bolder, sexier, more exciting qualities?
For the person or community bent on "going big" or "making a huge impact," the desire for popularity might be unavoidable. Simple, faithful, Jesus qualities and Christian fruits of the Spirit simply do not make headlines. Yet, even if such virtues don't feed rapid church expansion, at least a real church with real roots will stand—whether it be a bonsai or a mighty oak.
At the end of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, he says, "Beware of false prophets; by their fruit you will know them." We quote our Teacher. So why don't we apply his words? "So often Christians approach that as if it says, 'by their gifts you shall know them' or 'by their results or charisma you shall know them,'" Schlaepfer says.
"In context, Jesus is saying the exact opposite. He is talking about the fruit of the Spirit. By their spirit, their love, their joy, their peace, their gentleness—that is how you will know them."
New Testament professor and scholar Scot McKnight (Jesus Creed, The King Jesus Gospel, The Kingdom Conspiracy) says, "Leaders matter, period. Leaders matter because they become embodied in the culture they lead, and the bigger the culture, the more significant the leader.
"Let's face it," agrees McKnight, "in some of these megachurches, the celebrity factor is so powerful that without them the place collapses."
"I've been in a megachurch in Pennsylvania," says McKnight, "where the pastor was a gentle, loving, caring, godly leader. It was a big church that was healthy as it could be—because that pastor knew what he was doing in creating a culture of grace.
"And I've been in other churches, of course, where it was a controlling pastor with a controlling church culture. I do not think that it is at all taking a cheap shot to say that this is what happened with Mark Driscoll. I think he had elements of toxicity in his character that were amplified as the system grew bigger.
"This is going to be a great lesson for church leadership during the next 20 to 30 years."
The celebrity collapse
Part of the problem is the "free-wheeling" attitude that many young, evangelical church planters take on. They see the booming "success" of men like Driscoll and want to emulate.
"You get a free-wheeling evangelist who plants a church, and all of the sudden you've got a person who is responsible for everything that's happened," says McKnight.
Western Seminary's Dr. Gerry Breshears, a past friend and co-author with Driscoll, says many churches today have a problem with "giving lip service to 'co-laborers,' while depending on a single superstar." And if it is all about the superstar, he says, then what if things go wrong with him or her?
"You might not have a church anymore."
"Let's face it," agrees McKnight, "in some of these megachurches, the celebrity factor is so powerful that without them the place collapses."
"Paul describes bad leaders in the church as lovers of themselves, boastful, proud, abusive, unforgiving, without self-control, brutal, rash, conceited," says Schlaepfer. "I think a lot of times people who are interested in achieving results—thinking big—are willing to compromise on those character qualities."
A compromising church culture dominated by a celebrity leader leads to corrosive chemistry. "Every church has its own culture," continues Breshears, "and every church culture can go toxic."
"The whole corporate model for managing a church has infiltrated and affected the church more than anybody realizes."
"The elders at [Mars Hill] knew the problems they were facing with their celebrity pastor, but it got out of control," McKnight says. "Speaking into that situation did not lead to the kinds of virtues and characters they wanted, and so it crumbled."
"If I hear one more person at a church conference tell me that they finished Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs and picked up lots of great ideas on how to lead their church, I'm going to scream," says Schlaepfer.
"The whole corporate model for managing a church has infiltrated and affected the church more than anybody realizes."
"I looked upon it, and received instruction."
The Mars Hill empire has collapsed, under the weight of business principles gone wrong and the lie of celebrity ministry. But the key rot in the Mars Hill roots wasn't just the structure; it was the source of dependence.
"When it is dependent upon one charismatic leader," says McKnight, "it is not dependent on Jesus."
What if Mars Hill's elder board had been able to keep things properly Christ-centered? What if, from the onset, the church's DNA actively demanded Christian maturity and biblical wisdom over celebrity, expansion, and influence? We can only speculate, and seek to learn from the rubble of the Mars Hill collapse. Four key principles emerge:
1. A pastor's character shapes the church.
Pastors and leaders need to stop obsessing over methodology and cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. Schlaepfer says, "You need to realize the fact that you are going to reproduce your soul in your church, whether you intend to or not. And if you are sarcastic and defensive and arrogant, that's going to be reproduced in your people. Your soul, the fruit of the Spirit that's in your life, your strength and weaknesses as a leader, are going to be reproduced in that church."
2. "Submitted" does not mean "quiet."
"I am wrestling now with what loyalty means," says Clem, looking back on his days as a Mars Hill pastor. "I feel like I kept quiet as a pastor and elder at Mars Hill in a commitment to 'unity.' I put up with stuff I probably should not have put up with because I thought I was submitting to authority.
"But you know, Paul ironically writes 'submit to authorities' while he was in prison! For him, submission looked like 'I'm going to do what I need to do under God, and you do what you need to do; you have the right to it.' Whereas non-submission is 'I get to do whatever I want, and you don't have any right to punish me for it.'"
3. Beware of false "success."
Statements like, "Good leaders have followers" or "Living things grow" become mantras at churches like Mars Hill, says Gaydos. This logic extrapolates quickly to "great leaders have tons of followers" and "the faster things grow, the more alive they are." Soon, small attendance numbers and slow growth become problems to conquer.
"Beware of the theology of victory, which I think is very prominent in America," Gaydos says. "This victory theology is 'get upstream,' 'let's change culture,' 'let's change the world,' 'let's start a movement' kind of thinking. We become more concerned with 'doing something great' and less concerned with simply living as a faithful presence and witness in our neighborhoods and cities.
"If you are finding yourself worrying about 'leaving a legacy' or 'What does the city think about what we're doing' or 'What will you leave behind,' soon it will be all about your movement and not about your relationship with Jesus at all, simply receiving his love and presence."
Every young pastor needs to have a mentor relationship with a pastor who has been pastoring for at least 25 years in a church that is 'not' a megachurch.
"You first need to know what it means to be a godly church, and then figure out how that affects the city," says Clem. "Do not say, 'Our number one goal is to impact the city, and hopefully we won't compromise being the church while doing that.'"
4) Emulate Christ's servant-leadership.
McKnight comments, "Jesus offers what I think is the most significant statement about leadership in the entire Bible that will lead us toward a gospel culture. He uses language that we are all afraid of. He says that you are not to be called Rabbi, you are not to call anyone father, you are not to be called instructors, because you have one teacher—Jesus, and you have one Father—God the Father, and you have one instructor—the Messiah. The greatest will be your servant.
"So, a gospel culture is created when the pastor is the most submissive to Jesus in the culture itself. When he models discipleship the most, he will never suffer from creating a toxic culture.
"For this reason, every young pastor needs to have a mentor relationship with a pastor who has been pastoring for at least 25 years in a church that is not a megachurch. They will learn what true pastoring is really like, not celebrity pastoring."
***
As of New Year's Day, Mars Hill will be gone. Dissolved as an organization, the constituent churches that made up Driscoll's flock will scatter as best they're able, finding new names, new voices, new ways of being and worshipping, or trickling away altogether like the late Seattle rain into the Puget Sound.
Ben Tertin is a writer and pastor in Portland, Oregon.
Paul J. Pastor contributed reporting and editorial direction to this piece.
Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
