Confronting the Rise of MAGA Mark

SPEAKERS: JULIE ROYS, MIKE COSPER, MARK DRISCOLL

Note: This is a rough transcript and may contain some misspellings.

Julie: In 2014, pastor Mark Driscoll abruptly left Mars Hill Church after his overseers found him guilty of arrogance and leading in a domineering manner. Driscoll then planted a church in the Phoenix area where his pattern of bullying and demonizing those who challenged him continued. Chad Freeze is the former head of security at Driscoll’s Trinity Church in Scottsdale.

Chad Freese: But when you bring something up before Mark Driscoll or the Trinity Church, you’re kicked out as we see it happen with this individual here, and this isn’t an isolated incident. This happened to several people. Yeah. They kicked people outta church and they start slandering them. This person’s toxic.

They’re demonic, they’re liars. Everything that they’re saying is false.

Julie: But in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Driscoll Star is rising. Once again on September 29th, the Charlie Kirk show featured Driscoll speaking about revival.

Mark Driscoll: When revival hits its new technology, it’s a moment that activates a young generation that leads to a movement.

And so we have all of the ingredients are here, and I hope, and I pray that is exactly what we’re on the precipice of.

Julie: And just recently, Texas Senator Ted Cruz posted a reel of Driscoll’s talking about his alleged mentoring relationship with the slang T-P-U-S-A leader,

Mark Driscoll: one of our most recent communications.

He said, thank you. I have a ton of questions. I didn’t ask for it, but I have become a high profile defender of the faith. I need to be the best I can. I said I’d be honored to serve for free invisibly as needed. You have an anointing to steward and it’s massive proud of you. And pray for you and your family daily.

Julie: Given that the bulk of Charlie Kirk’s followers are young people, it’s likely that many of those hearing Driscoll on these platforms know nothing of his past. And having just lost someone, they considered a hero. These young people are longing for someone to fill that void. But my guest today, who has spent years researching Mark Driscoll warns about giving this charismatic preacher any authority to speak into this moment or into one’s life.

His name is Mike Cosper, and he’s the producer and host of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, an extremely popular podcast that launched in 2021, telling the dramatic story of what happened at Driscoll’s Church. I’m Julie Royce and you’re listening to the Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church.

Joining me now is Mike Cosper, who produced and hosted the wildly popular podcast, the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. He’s also the senior contributor at Christianity Today and the author of several books, including his latest, the Church in Dark Times, understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement.

So Mike, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you join me.

Mike: I’m happy to be here. Thanks, Julie.

Julie: And I have wanted to have you on this podcast for a long time. I’m a huge fan of the rise and fall of Mars Hill. Absolutely awesome production quality, but the storytelling was great. And I think beyond that, the most important thing is it exposed somebody who I think is extremely dangerous.

And that is mark Driscoll. The only criticism I would have is that you stopped at Mars Hill. Because I’ve done a lot of reporting at what has continued, in fact, I would say almost his brazenness has become greater at this Trinity Church that he started now in Scottsdale, Arizona. And did you ever think of including that as part of, an addendum to the rise and fall of Marcel?

Mike: If, for those who’ve heard the show, they know I think we interviewed somewhere around a hundred. People that were members or former, former members of Mars Hill or affiliated with the church in some way. Part of the reason, part of the reason why the show was called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and not the rise and fall of Mark Driscoll was we really wanted to tell the story of the church.

And with a series like this, there’s so much, there’s so much that goes into the production and everything. We wanted it to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Sure. So we did stop ourselves there. We talked about Trinity a little bit on some bonus episodes. I have thought about going back more recently ’cause I think that.

And I’m sure we’ll get into this, but I think that one of the things that, one of the things that has happened in the last couple of years for most of the period between let’s say 2014 when he stepped down and 20 22, 20 23, a lot of what Mark being up to is he’s trying to figure out what he’s trying to figure out the next act.

And he first really reappears on the scene as a preacher trying to make his way into the charismatic Pentecostal movement. He’s tried on a number of hats, let’s just put it that way. And. So I think what he’s found in the last couple of years is a niche that really works for him.

And obviously turning Point USA now is a part of all of that and the MAGA mark is like the new mark.

Julie: Yeah. And that is why we’re doing this podcast today because I saw him in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a lot of posts where all of a sudden he’s best buds with Charlie Kirk, supposedly.

And he prayed for him every day. He met with them, with JD Vance was introduced to JD Vance by mark Driscoll, I mean by Charlie Kirk, supposedly. But it seemed like he’s trying to capitalize on this moment, which would be classic Mark. And so then he was on the Charlie Kirk show.

Ted Cruz posted a reel of his on his social media, and I’m like, does Ted Cruz probably has no idea

Restore Promo – Mary DeMuth: who

Julie: he just platform. And I think there’s so many young people who followed Charlie Kirk and now are getting introduced to Mark Driscoll maybe for the very first time. And so what I really wanted to do was bring you on because you’re like the resident expert on Mark Driscoll on especially his time at Mars Hill to talk about.

Okay, this is a man that should come with a warning label. He did so many things that were concerning, that were really awful. He should be disqualified from ministry a hundred percent. His former elders said so recently, within the past few years, have had put out a document saying, this man should not be in ministry.

And yet here he is continuing to reinvent himself. And now with the MAGA movement and now Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Let’s just, one of the questions I asked you prior to doing this podcast is if you were to. To boil down into, and I know it’s hard to because Sure, sure.

There, there’s so much stuff on Mark. But if you were to boil down into say, four or five major issues that you have with Mark Driscoll and that people should be aware of, what would they be? So let’s start with number one. Here’s an issue you should be aware of with Mark Driskell.

Mike: Yeah. If I could say something about Charlie Kirk for a second.

Sure. ’cause I think this is actually really relevant. I did some reporting for ct about, about Charlie Kirk after his death. And like a lot of people who are in my shoes. I’m somebody who’s politically, 10 years ago, I would’ve been consider considered very much on the right, very conservative or whatever.

I was not I was not enamored with Trump at any point, not drawn into that whole MAGA world or whatever. And so these days, I’m a squished to most of the people on the right or whatever.

Julie: Join the club because Exactly. I am very much a conservative, and yet somehow I get painted as a liberal.

And it’s just, it’s so strange to me how that happens.

Mike: It’s wild. And with with Kirk, I think one of the things that I learned, in particularly in, in doing that reporting f what was so interesting to me is that the young people who were resonating with Kirk were resonating with Kirk for reasons that were very different and frankly described a Charlie Kirk that I had not seen.

The Charlie Kirk that I had seen was this sort of fire brand, young guy that was gonna go on and do these cable hits. He was gonna do these speeches at T-P-U-S-A events and MAGA rallies or whatever that were, yeah, that were very focused on Trump and all the rest.

What young people resonated with Kirk and I think this is really relevant to the Driscoll conversation, is that Kirk would go onto college campuses, he would say challenging things, and he would embolden Christians to live out their faith on campus, right? Like he’d give them this sort of permission to not hide.

I think that’s relevant to, to Driscoll because drop Driscoll into one of those. Prove me wrong Tense. Yeah. He’s gonna be very good. Yeah. Like outstandingly good.

And it will not shock me at all if we see him sitting under one of those, prove me wrong tents here in the next few months. I’ve

Julie: wondered that myself, like I said, that coming out of it, and I saw Mark Driscoll getting so close to T-P-U-S-A, but by the way, Charlie Kirk platformed him.

Mike: Yeah.

Julie: He was one of the first to platform him after the rise and fall of Marsel after all of our reporting on all of the spiritual abuse. He was involved in surveilling, passed members 24 7 at their homes. This loyalty scale. Stuff we may get into, but just really bizarre stuff. And then he platforms him and I was shocked by that and terribly disappointed.

But I will say that I think you’re right. I have a daughter who is finishing up at Grand Canyon University who was there when Charlie Kirk was on campus, and she loved a lot of his clips that he would put out because he was saying the things like the anti-abortion arguments and some of those I’d be like, yay, go Charlie.

Thank you for making that argument. Thank you for saying those things. There’s other things where he reminds me of Mark too, because he would say things in such a provocative way that you’re like, oh my word. Did he just say that? But yes, he and Mark in that way. We’re very much alike, and Mark is so quick on his feet and so bright, and yes, he could fill those shoes.

Now a lot of people are saying Erica’s gonna fill those shoes. She’s a very competent person, no doubt about it. She’s got the education, those kind of chops to do that. But that’s a certain skill. It’s a unique set of

Mike: skills. Yes, it is. And

Julie: Mark has it in spades, so I would agree with you there.

Mike: As your actual question, I think the I think the first and foremost reason that, that Mars Hill had a fall. Was that for so many of the members, there was this sense that Driscoll had betrayed the original values of this church. And there’s a real key moment in the story.

There’s an episode there’s an episode of the show, I think it’s titled I Am the Brand. Or maybe it’s just titled The Brand. I should have checked that, but I know it’s episode seven six, I think. Oh, is it? Yeah. It’s just you go, there you go. I just looked at it last night.

That’s so funny. There’s the, this episode that, that kind of marks this shift. And the shift was, there’s a couple of elements to it that I think are important. One is there’s this moment in the early two thousands when a guy joins the church staff named Jesse Bryan. And Jesse Bryan was this guy who, you know, to, to this day, has this in enormous gift for thinking about branding and messaging and all the rest.

And he had been working he’d been working in the music industry. He’d been working in commercial branding for Red Bull. And he, he found himself at Mars Hill. He was drawn in by the community, by the vision for the thing, and committed himself to trying to, make it what it could be quits.

His job comes on staff. That’s the moment where the growth of Mars Hill you know, truly, really, and truly accelerates. Mark had a bit of a national profile already because of because of some efforts with this with a couple of different nonprofits that were trying to platform and elevate the profiles of young Evangelical leaders.

When Jesse comes to the church is when the church really explodes, because what Jesse helped Driscoll do was to identify, Hey, what are the things that, what are the things that matter most? What are the things that you do really well? What are the things that distract people or cause the wrong kinds of controversies, we wanna start the right kinds of controversies.

So he really sharpened Driscoll’s ability to communicate and to reach widely. And as a result, the church just exploded for the next decade. Key to that for someone like Jesse was a lifelong Seattle kid. He was a punk rock kid. He was tied into this community of Seattle, especially in the early two thousands, like Seattle was as much of a hub of kind of tech startup, hacker culture, all of that stuff as San Francisco, was or is now.

And so Jesse himself had this ability to like, pull in really talented people to help accomplish what they were trying, what they were trying to do. What happens down the line a few years later is they have this kind of pivot moment where Driscoll’s trying to coalesce power inside the church around a much smaller group of people.

Prior to this point, the church had been ruled by elders in the way that like, a lot of like Reformed Baptist churches are where if you’ve got 27 elders, they all have an equal vote. He wanted to coalesce most of the church’s actual governing authority around four or five people that he handpicked, and most of them were on staff and reported to him as well.

And there was real conflict around all of this. It led to the, there was one elder that really stood up against it, a man named Paul Petri, who was very courageous. There were two that stood up against it, but Petri was the one who really took the brunt of Driscoll’s wrath for this destroyed petrie’s life.

And it was on the backside of this conflict around, this coalescing of power, which Driscoll was successful of. That they really began to kinda restructure the church primarily as a platform for Driscoll. And it was within a couple of years of that, that they started talking about this Mars Hill global vision, this vision for expanding the church into other cities and other places and everything else.

One,

Julie: one note on that this whole coalescing power yeah. Having a small group, the executive elders who have all of the. The power I interviewed someone who, and this never actually made it into print, who lived in James McDonald’s house, and they would describe Mark Driscoll as James McDonald’s little brother.

And they’re like, these two were bad enough by themselves, but to together. Unbelievable. But she said she remembers him being on speaker phone, talking to Mark, and Mark was instructing him how to make the elder board really big. So that they really didn’t know what was going on. And then getting these executive elders who would actually approve everything, which we know now.

There was a black budget that James McDonald would that only he knew and these few elders, but apparently he got that idea from Mark Driscoll. So this was the two of ’em. It’s interesting how these stories begin to intersect, but yeah. It was a similar thing as Mars Hill,

Mike: right?

Yeah, for sure. And look, I think a lot of churches followed. I’m not even, I’m not even confident that the model began at Mars. I’m I would guess that they probably got it somewhere else and, adapted it in, into their own. But this was a very in, in the sort of young, restless, reformed world.

I was a pastor in that world at the time. This was a very popular thing. This happened at my own church. We, our elders delegated a lot of the governing authority to a very small group of people. And the motivation for that is the mission is so important. It has to move as quickly as possible.

’cause, obviously people are dying and going to hell, like all around us. So with the mission’s so important, we’ve gotta really empower the people who we see as the most effective evangelists, the most effective at being able to grow the church and whatnot. To move quickly and make, make decisions again, like the tech world connection.

Like the whole move fast break things thing was very much a part of all of this. What was interesting in, in producing the show was that we saw that so many people realized far too late that once those decisions had been made. What it did was it created a vision for the church that was no longer attached to Seattle itself and to, to the culture of Seattle, the people of Seattle.

The global vision for them, for these key leaders. And Jesse was one of ’em. There, there was this sense that wait we’re not playing the same game anymore. We’re doing this because we love this city and we love these people and we really wanna reach them. This feels more and more like a vanity project.

And as those concerns were raised, pretty much anyone who raised those concerns was pushed out very quickly.

Julie: And I actually have a clip by Jesse from the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, where he talks about exactly that. The saying was, it’s all about Jesus. But the reality was it was all about Mark.

Jesse Bryan: We were in London and Mark had sold out like Royal Albert Hall, which is this really fancy like place. And at the end of the perform or the show or sermon or whatever, like we were at back of house and we got in the taxi cab and the, the taxis in London, you have like jump seats where they look at each other.

So like it was Mark and my friend and then myself, and I was sitting in the jump seat with the taxi driver behind me and there was these guys outside of the venue and they wanted Mark’s autograph and to take a picture with him like at the back door, almost like fans, right? And we hop in there and I looked at it, mark and I said, how crazy is that those dudes are trying to get your autograph in a photo.

You’re just a pastor. And he looked at me and he said, I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but I’m a big deal. I thought he was quoting Anchorman. So I started laughing and I looked at my friend who was next to him, and he shook his head like he was dead serious. And he shook his head like, dude, he’s not joking.

And Mark wasn’t joking. And I was like, oh man, we’re in trouble.

Julie: Exactly what you were saying, noticed it way too late. And by this time, yeah, mark was the brand.

Mike: For sure. Yeah. And look, I think if you look at what Mark has done since leaving Mars Hill, he looks at so many so much of those early years, so much of the like coalition building, the developing empowered leaders around him and all the rest of that.

I think he looks at all of that as a mistake. And Trinity has really been built as a church. Around one person, one personality. It, grace elevated with him, but but Grace as an appendage of Mark.

Julie: And to your point, I think at Mar Hill, he would’ve never said some of the things that he has said Now at Trinity, I’ve heard from numerous people who are on staff.

He, he says very clearly, this is a family business. This is our business. It’s all about, it’s all about us. And does he really have elders, like when I was investigating, didn’t seem like he had any elders whatsoever. In fact, people said that, he talked about like the mistake of elders. ’cause he had somebody that held him accountable right.

At Mars Hill. That’s why he ended up leaving, because they came and said he had a pattern of sin and of bullying and all these things. And he didn’t wanna stay for the restoration plan. And when you say it’s all about Mark I have a clip from. Chad Freeze, who was the former head of security at Trinity.

And what he says in his very first meeting with Mark, what he observed is really telling,

Chad Freese: said, okay, Chad, this meeting is yours as the head of security kick it off and run with it. So I passed out the handouts to everyone in the room, and I started speaking, and not even 30 seconds in, mark says, he goes, Chad let me interrupt you.

I’m sorry. I, I told you, I asked you to run the meeting. Just let me set the stage so you understand where I come from and my background, which I already knew most of his background. But he starts off by again, just all about numbers. And he said, Chad, just so I’m the largest pastor in the Western United States.

I have the biggest ministry presence in southwest United States. I’ve got millions and millions of people viewing my content online. He said, my episode on my pray.com was downloaded 10 million times in December. He goes on and on with statements like that, wow. It’s all I me. And that’s the very first couple minutes of my meeting with him.

And my eyes were truly open to where he preached on stage is all about Jesus. But in reality, the actions behind the scenes are, it’s all about Driscoll. And I didn’t know that phrase was coined or used during the Marc Hills days. And so I started Googling it. But that’s what I started to see right here in this meeting.

He was telling me all about him, how great he is, how wonderful he is, how big his presence online is, and how wonderful his ministry is, and how that needs to be protected above everything else. And not once did he say, I’m so thankful that millions of people view my content because I have a great production team.

I have a great social media team. I have this, all these people that support it. I brought that up. I mentioned that to him like, yes, you do have a great presence because of all these volunteers and a few paid staff that are helping you get to that point. But again, it was all about him and all about numbers from the very beginning.

Julie: Probably not surprised to hear that, are you?

Mike: No, not at all. And again, I think one of the lessons that he took from the whole experience at Mars was not to empower those people, those creatives that had supported him. I actually think that hindered him at Trinity for a very long time.

I think the reason for his success at Mars Hill was he had, there was a talent density at the church of, musicians and Yeah. Designers and these branding people, the videography, like all the rest. And there were people who were in that congregation. There were people who were willing to invest in those aspects of the church’s ministry at a time when like churches weren’t doing a lot of that stuff, I think be because that community largely rebelled against him early and I think he has been more reluctant to empower some of those people. And again, I think if you look at what’s happened since he launched Trinity, he’s tried on a number of different sort of versions of himself.

Yeah. Lots of different kind of branding ideas, lots of different approaches and all the rest. Because he’s lacked that kind of strong creative support that he, that he benefited so much from at Mars. At the same time, look at the folks that were doing that stuff at Mars. Look at the, go find their corporate their companies that they started when they left Mars.

Look at their client lists and it’s extraordinary what those people have gone on to do.

Julie: Wow. It really was just a unique assembling of talent. But I’ve heard the same thing at Willow Creek. I, I think when you have. That person who becomes the celebrity, although they made him the celebrity, that often it does attract that kind of talent to it and Right.

Unfortunately it becomes, again, more about them than about Jesus. Let’s talk about some other things. You mentioned the sex stuff, which, and again, this part if you have young children and you’re listening to this, you may just wanna scoot them out of the room or put on your headphones.

Because parts of this next section will not be appropriate. And that’s telling in and of itself that I have to put a disclaimer because we’re going to play. Part of a sermon that Mark gave. Could you explain a little bit of the context of what’s going on here?

Mike: I think Mark realized fairly early in the life of the church that a lot of the members of a lot of the members of Mars Hill, it was a it was a preview of a lot of what has become much more common in the last decade or so of just like deconstructed Christians trying to find their way, right?

Yeah. One, one of the myths of Mars Hill was it was in this city of Seattle where there were no Christians and there were no churches and there were, that was all nonsense. There are tons of churches, tons of Christians, lots of them growing up in the suburbs, lots of them very influenced by Seattle culture.

And many of these, many of these young people felt dis disaffected and disconnected from the church culture of the late 1990s. F as a result they had left the church or they were loosely affiliated, or they weren’t identifying as Christians anymore, and they found their faith really renewed inside this culture that had built it at Mars Hill.

And one of the things that Mark latched onto very quickly was that, the purity culture of the nineties was this he would make this comment that, we tell young people sex is filthy, dirty and wrong, so save it for the one you love. And we take them yeah, exactly.

And so they’d, they’d get into their marriages and, couples would struggle sexually because of some of the res residual stuff from the from the purity culture thing. So Mark began very early in the life of the church from the pulpit, having very frank.

Often very practical. Like love line style, sex advice from the pulpit. He also combined that with his view of manhood and womanhood. Like he really preached a vision of women’s subordination. Women belonged at home. Women needed to be serving their husbands so their husbands could go out in the world and work hard and, change the city of Seattle.

And really a kind of a kind of sexual subordination was part of the teaching. I wanna be careful about how I say that, because it was not subordination to the point where it didn’t matter how women experienced sex. It, he preached on that and again, from the pulpit explained to husbands how to please their wives.

Not something you hear on in every. Not something you hear on your, the corner of First Baptist or whatever. But it was very clear. It was very clear in that kind of teaching. And it’s very clear if you read, the book real Marriage that came much later in, in his career at Marcel, that there, there was a sense that a primary duty of the wife was to keep her husband sexually satisfied, whatever that required, which at times was describing things that were for many women, very demeaning and very rarely dealt with the realities of like married sex when a partner has experienced sexual trauma and, whatever else might be carried into the marriage.

I’ll say this too. The behind the scenes Mark was often very crass about these things. We had some reporting on that in the show, and then famously at the end of the life of the church, one of the things that came out was that, much earlier in, in the life of the church, there had been this online message board on which Mark had created a what do we call it now on Twitter?

Like the dummy accounts, the ghost accounts or whatever. Yeah. He’d created this anon called William Wallace ii. And and a lot of the stuff said by William Wallace II was profoundly offensive.

Julie: Yeah, very offensive. And there was a sermon that Mark gave in Scotland that I’ve got a clip of from the rise and fall of Marel.

You, you got a hold of this sermon. It’s breathtaking. I’m gonna play it and then we can talk about it. But again, in my world, I deal with so many survivors of sexual abuse. And when I heard this, it to me was absolutely breathtaking because I know how these women struggle sexually and I’ll just play it and then we’ll talk about it.

But this is absolutely breathtaking.

Mark Driscoll: I am glad to report to you that oral sex is biblical. Amen. No, you can do better than that. The wife performing oral sex on the husband is biblical. God’s man said, amen. Ladies, your husbands appreciate oral sex. They do. So serve them. Love them i’ll tell you a story if you don’t tell anyone else of a man who started attending our church because of oral sex, right?

So many women go to church, I think in your country at 60 or 70%. My husband won’t come to church. He doesn’t have any interest in the things of God. He doesn’t understand why church would apply to him. When a woman like that in our church, he became a Christian or husband, was not a Christian. He hated the church, wanted nothing to do with the church.

She kept browbeat him about Jesus, you need to get saved. You’re gonna burn in hell. And he had no interest in that. And so finally I was teaching a class on sex and she said, oh, so oral sex on a husband is what a wife is supposed to do. I said, yeah. She said, my husband’s always wanted that, but I’ve refused him.

I went to First Peter three. I said, the Bible says if your husband is not a Christian, that you are to win him over with deeds of kindness.

I said, so go home and tell your husband that you are in a Bible study today, and that God has convicted you of sin and repent and perform oral sex on your husband and tell him that Jesus. Jesus Christ commands you to do the next week the man showed up at church.

He came up to me, he said this, this is a really good church.

Julie: He delivers it with, it’s funny. It is funny. And, but again and you do this in, in, in the podcast you brought attention to the fact that, let’s think about this again. This is a pastor who just told a woman who’s uncomfortable with performing a certain sex act that Jesus commands her to do it, and she went home and did it.

What if she has trauma around that? What if she has, some sort of issue around that? That is incredibly insensitive. To women to, to say something like that with no nuance, with no any. It, again, to me was breathtaking, but I know this again, is the tip of the iceberg and some of the other things that you mentioned.

Make it so that. And this is something that we’re seeing Sheila Guar talk a lot about today, of how everything got centered somehow, around this time on men and women pleasing men and wives. That was your whole job. And the man was basically the center of sex and women and how they felt was really unimportant.

And if your husband strayed, this is the amazing thing, it became the wife’s fault. You must not have pleased him well enough. Whereas we know now men who have sex addictions, men who are involved in porn, there’s no pleasing them as a wife. This man has a problem. But it became the woman’s fault.

And so again, I think this centering on the man, it became very misogynistic without, maybe Mark even realizing how incredibly misogynist he is and was. And yeah, this to me was one of the really tragic parts of Mark that he’s never repented of. And my guess is he’s still at it

Mike: in Grace Driscoll’s section on real marriage.

She talks about her own background, her own sexual traumas as a young person. And she, she, there, there’s this incident where she talks about promiscuity. Like the way it’s framed in the book by both of them really, but especially by Mark, is that this was a problem the marriage had to overcome, right?

This was her problem that she brought into the marriage because of, because of what had happened to her and the mistakes that she had made and all the rest. There’s a very specific incident described in which he talks about having had a premonition about her being promiscuous in their past, before they were married and having to confront her over it and all this.

And it’s just, I think most people who would read that today would read that and go, man, you’re just heaping scorn on your wife and the pages of this book in a way that is it’s startling. It’s genuinely startling to read. I would say this too, I mean something that Wendy Sep talked a lot about in, in our conversations for the show and a lot of it’s in the show was just this sense that there was this there was this pressure on women to bring a pornified culture into the bedroom, right?

Women were supposed to act like the women were supposed to do strip teases for their husbands. That’s in sermons. And, and there’s fairly explicit descriptions of what women are supposed to be doing when they do this, to please their husbands. And he would tie it to a he would tie it to a passage in Song of Solomon.

And again, that was part of Mark’s strategy around these conversations about sex was to particularly, to take the book of Song of Solomon and say, there’s really nothing spiritual about this book at all. There’s no spiritual metaphor in this book. Everyone who ever called said that it was a spiritual metaphor was wrong.

This is a sex manual, a. Primarily about how a woman is to please her husband, and you can go back and there, there are still places online where most of these sermons are archived and they’re extraordinary.

Julie: Yeah. When you were talking about grace I think the word would be victim shaming today.

Yeah. What he did, he blamed her essentially for all the problems in their marriage, and she didn’t have much of a voice, which, sometimes I wonder about that poor woman in that marriage. But they’ve made it a long time. But yeah, it just is again breathtaking. But speaking of real marriage, this became a controversy because of the way that Mars Hill.

Took funds of the church to make this book a hit which you can’t do today. It’s manipulating the whole New York Times bestseller list. But describe what happened there and why this was such a big issue.

Mike: Yeah. So they hired a, what was essentially a PR firm. And they guaranteed a sum of money I believe it was $250,000 to, for this PR firm to make sure that the church, or sorry, to make sure that Mark’s book landed on the New York Times bestseller list, the first week that it was out.

And you can go back now and you can look at a lot of, these influencer types at the time, influencer pastors and others. And the tell is that, when a book is really successful, it hits the New York Times list, and if it’s seven week one, it’s, 12 week two, and then it, works its way down the list or whatever.

Or it works its way up and down the list or whatever back in the day when, you know, when the times and when some of these book scan organizations, weren’t policing this stuff as well. What would happen is a book would appear on the, the top 10 of the New York Times on the week that it came out, and then it would vanish and the Nielsen Book scan numbers, if you actually looked at them, you, they would’ve sold, 50,000 copies on the first week that the thing came out and a thousand the next week or whatever.

So that’s a tell that the system is be, is being gained. What, what result source, this organization who did these things would do, is they would basically create all these pre-orders at local bookstores all across the country, and and then buy all these books and then warehouse them at a central location that Mars had to figure out what to do with after the fact.

When the church closed, I had multiple pastors tell me this from multiple locations. They said, yeah, one of the problems when the church closed was that we had boxes and boxes of real marriage stacked up all over, all over the building that we didn’t know what to do with, so that was done with, it was truly done as a vanity project, I think, and church funds

Julie: were used

Mike: to do that. Yeah, it was entirely church funds that were behind it. And the, I, the justification was, we’ll eventually be able to give all these away or sell them in our church bookstore because the church is growing so fast and because this is such a central issue for us that, that mark is preaching on all the time.

But it was, it was the fact that they achieved that Mark ended up on the view, like Mark ended up on good, I think it was Good Morning America. Yeah. And I think, you know what ultimately again, this it was as clear a reflection of as any, that the church had really become about Mark and his platform.

Julie: Sure. And I hate to say this, but Mark is not completely unique in this, among. Celebrity pastors. Dr. David Jeremiah did a similar thing where they bought his book and gave it out to people on his email list and supporters, and it’s unfortunate that these things happen, but my understanding is prior to, I think this was from his former CFO was prior to doing that, he hardly got any advance at all after that.

He was getting even above six figures to write a book. It and I

Mike: and I would say this I think that if we, the client list for Result Source was primarily pastors. Yes. And be, because those were the people who had the institutions with the kind of funds to throw at a quote unquote marketing effort around, around a book like this.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very concerning. Another concerning thing, speaking of books, is the plagiarism. And this was actually one of the very, very early things that came out, which was a huge red flag. But I think the way it was handled is even. Perhaps a larger red flag. Would you explain about the plagiarism controversy and how Janet Metford former radio host with, I think she was with Salem at the time, ended up with a FA, but yeah, how she played into this whole.

Situation.

Mike: Yeah. I always loved giving Janet Metford as much credit as possible in this story because she had the courage to, to say some things at a time when it, this just wasn’t allowed. Most like Christian media had a real reluctance to be critical in these ways about things that many people would’ve looked at and said, oh, these are small infractions, or whatever.

Janet went full Leroy Jenkins on this story. What it, what happened was Driskell had a book, co book come out in 2014 and a few weeks before this incident with Janet Metford, he had gone to a he had crashed a conference at John MacArthur’s Church. The conference was called Strange Fire.

It was a, essentially, it was a conference arguing against the charismatic gifts in the church. Mark crashed it with James McDonald. They brought a a car full of books to give away of Mark’s new book his most recent book. And it was meant to be a social media event.

A social media controversy. And it was, it very much was they misrepresented how Grace Community Church had responded to them. Great. They, I don’t remember the details off the top of my head, but

Julie: They said they got ’em confiscated, right? That’s

Mike: right. The Grace

Julie: Security had confiscated the books.

The problem was. People actually have video of this. And they didn’t confiscate the books.

Mike: Driscoll told, said, we want to give them to you as a gift is, and that’s on video. After they had said that they confiscated the books and all the rest. So that bothered Mefford very much Yeah.

Around the scene, which by the way,

Julie: Do you know Me’s connection to John MacArthur?

Mike: No, I don’t actually.

Julie: So her husband, Charlie Metford, works for Ambassador Advertising and he’s a longtime agent of John MacArthur. Ah.

I got in trouble with Janet because I was like, Hey, why haven’t you ever said anything about all the reporting showing that John MacArthur is covered for predators and actually punish their victims at Grace Community Church?

And man, she came after me with a virulence, and actually my board told me, Julie, don’t engage. Because

Mike: yeah,

Julie: she’s a pit bull. There’s no doubt. She’s a pit bull. She is

Mike: a pit bull.

Julie: I appreciate a lot of what she does. But yeah, MacArthur is a very, that is one person you can’t touch with Janet Metford.

And in fact, she said she’s never even read, the bulk of my investigation. But anyway, I digress. But this is why she really. Really protects or protected John MacArthur when he was alive.

Mike: Yeah. She’s a What strikes me about Metford that’s worth saying is that whatever her principles are, she sticks with them.

Yeah. And

Julie: I think this was principled. I don’t wanna just say

Mike: yeah.

Julie: I think she was genuinely offended. By what was done. Which she should have been. Yeah, absolutely. Should have been. I just wish she would’ve applied it equally in some other cases, but anyway.

Mike: Totally. So she shortly after that, she got a publicity inquiry from from Mark’s publicist for this book.

She invited him to come on the show. She read the book, and as she read the book, she realized that Driscoll had d Driscoll had plagiarized. In particular the plagiarism that she called out was a book to Peter Jones books that in a Call to Resurgence. Driscoll had, pulled some stuff from, and Driscoll reacted very poorly to the accusation of plagiarism.

Julie: Yeah. In fact, I have the clip. Oh, good. Do you want me to play? Yeah. Let me play the clip of the two of them, because this is classic Driscoll.

Mike: And Kkm.

Janet Mefford: I’m glad that you mentioned Dr. Jones because as people will know, he is the foremost Evangelical scholar on the rise of neo Paganism has coined the terms Twoism and Oneism, which you mentioned in your book.

Now. I was reading your book in preparation for the interview, and when I came across this section on the new Paganism, I was a little interested to note that you didn’t quote him and you didn’t footnote him. You have a footnote after the first sentence where you mention Twoism and Oneism and it says, see for example, truth exchange in Peter Jones, book one or two.

But then you go on for several more pages and you never footnote him. Why?

Mark Driscoll: I, Peter Jones is actually a friend of mine. I’ve had dinner with him a lot. His wife is really great too. She is a really smart great gal. In my book doctrine, I talk a lot about his concepts and this book. I took his big idea and worked it out through the cultural implications, but I wasn’t working specifically from his text.

But I think Peter tell you I love him a lot. We’re good friends and I’ve learned a lot from him. Most of what I learned from him was actually sitting down over meals and him talking and me listening. And I should have been taking notes that would’ve been a little easier to footnote throughout the interview,

Mike: Driscoll oscillates between pleading ignorance, insisting that he credited Jones sufficiently and deflecting to criticizing me.

Mark Driscoll: Man, I thought we’d have a better interview than this. It seems like you’re having a grumpy day.

Janet Mefford: Oh, I’m not having a grumpy day. The problem that I’m seeing here, I was actually really excited to talk to you about the book. In all honesty, mark as a Christian, ’cause I have the same concerns you do about cultural Christianity going away and real Christianity needing a revival.

Let’s

Mark Driscoll: talk about that

Janet Mefford: and not

Mark Driscoll: a

Janet Mefford: footnote. Let me say one. Let me say one other thing.

Mike: He also makes an appeal to his own good work that he’s accomplishing.

Mark Driscoll: You’re gonna take the entire interview and find what you are critical of and the nail you’re gonna hammer so that your audience can see you. Hammer Mark Driscoll today.

Mark Driscoll loves Jesus. Mark Driskell loves you. Mark Driscoll’s, in the least one of the least church cities in America, preaching Jesus for 17 years, trying to see people get saved, and I was hoping we could help others talk about man their

Mike: kids, as the interview wraps up. Mefford gives a defense of her line of questioning

Janet Mefford: to ask you, it’s a public book.

People are gonna be reading it. You have an awful lot of people who follow you. And I think it’s a fair question.

Mark Driscoll: I don’t, I think it’s, I think it’s rude and I think the intent behind it is not very Christ-like. But I’ll receive it and I’ll try to receive it graciously and humbly, but I wouldn’t allow you to pretend to take a generous, gracious, moral gospel high ground.

I, I would not. I would not just give you a pass on that out of love for you ’cause I want you to grow as well. And I think I think it’s a good opportunity for you to grow as well.

Mike: Here’s Janet Metford again, looking back,

Janet Mefford: somebody after the fact referred to what I did as committing the sin of journalism and the aftermath of all of it, I understood very clearly from lots and lots of people who are around me, that you are not supposed to do what you just did.

And I thought to myself, that’s ridiculous because what you’re really saying is that dishonest people who steal from other Christians should never be confronted because that’s just rude.

Julie: Extraordinarily well said by Janet. Kudos to her. But Mark, what he does in this is playbook stuff.

If you read Wade Mullen’s book something’s not right. This is the playbook for how you make it. You’re not the problem. The person who’s confronting you is the problem. Gee, you’re having a grumpy day. No, she’s not having a grumpy day. And this is just rude to bring up my plagiarism. Again, he was completely in the wrong.

Janet was completely in the right. She took a courageous stance. But what happened to her, not only shows Mark Driscoll’s lack of character, but the way that the, as I often call it, the evangelical industrial complex, which actually was coined by Skye Giani, who was at CT for a very long time.

That. This is how the system works, how it all coalesces to silence and beat up on the person who’s trying to bring accountability, which she tries to do here. So describe some of what happened to Janet in the wake of this, which is breathtaking.

Mike: Yeah, Salem Media was very unhappy about this because I think between Driscoll’s agent and his publishers his marketing and publicity people there was just a lot of pressure that was immediately applied.

The initial response from the publisher was very dismissive. And and then I think you saw as well and look Twitter and. And Facebook and some of these things weren’t quite what they are now at the time, but you did see this sort of groundswell online of people basically saying, you’re making a big deal outta nothing.

Like he footnoted the guy, he mentioned his name, and then he, basically quoted his ideas for, I think it’s, I think it’s six pages or so, that he basically, pulls his ideas and presents ’em as his own. People were essentially saying, yeah, this isn’t a big deal.

This isn’t a problem. Now, had that been submitted. To like a college litter, English Lit 1 0 1, persuasive writing 1 0 1, something like that. And footnoted that way the professor would’ve had the responsibility to, to fail you for it. Yeah,

Julie: a hundred percent.

But this was a sign of the times too, because when I first started reporting on Moody, same thing happened. It was brutal. James McDonald, same thing happened in the beginning. Then when that, when the Hot Mic came out and some of the horrific things that he said and then he ends up getting fired and the elder, then things started to shift, and I think now, and there’s other, world Magazine used to do these kind of reports.

Ravi Zacharias when Ct, I remember when he died. Oh, yeah. And CT put out that obituary and included some of the issues, allegations, yeah. Yeah, the allegations. And at this point the allegations had not been fully reported by ct, by us or by World Magazine at that point, but Oh, just lambasted, like, how dare you do this?

You’re dancing on the man’s grave, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think now it’s different. And now I think people are beginning, back then it was like we always defended the celebrity, we always defended. We couldn’t believe that this great Christian leader could have the moral issues, ethical issues that they have.

But I, I do think that’s changed. But back then. It was, I mean it, how dare you. And it really was every single time, like David and Goliath.

Mike: Really? Yeah. And I, and I would argue that I think the fall of Driscoll was really critical to setting the table for that cultural change. I would

Julie: agree. Yeah.

Mike: But what it took was extraordinary because what, what happens after them effort interview, she gets hammered and her producer I believe, was fired immediately, like within weeks of the interview. English

Julie: sch Schluter or something like that. Yes. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. And but what was interesting was this, this blogger that most people had never heard of at the time, a guy named Warren Rock Morton.

Warren’s a psychology professor at Grove City College. But Warren had this I don’t know if we, I don’t know if you’d call it a hobby. It wasn’t his, like official like area of scholarship expertise where he had spent a decade debunking the work of David Barton, who’s this Christian nationalist historian. Barton is making a comeback right now as well. In fact, he was just assigned the role of rewriting Texas’s history curriculum by Governor Abbott. But Barton is a junk scholar. He’s absolutely a junk scholar. And he had written a number of books, basically reframing Thomas Jefferson as a devout evangelical Christian and a number of things like this.

Warren had with a fellow scholar, done a lot of work going through the work of Barton and, just delineating all of the lies and the misrepresentations and the junk history and all the rest war. Warren heard this story and it really bothered him. And so he started to look into it and I think he took one book and just went through and.

Outlined like here. I think it was that, I think it was, I think the first one that he did was that called resurgence. And outlined all of the ways that Peter Jones had been plagiarized throughout the book. And when that when those blogs started coming out, a number of people at Mars Hill, including someone inside Mars Hill that was very close to Mark at the time began feeding him information.

And from there war between Janet and Warren, it created this sort of permission structure for former Mars employees and o other people who had negative experiences with Driscoll over the years to be able to start coming out, gathering online, gathering around these hashtags on Twitter, gathering in Facebook groups and various things.

And giving them permission to. To say what they had to say. And, the, that, that was the source through which the real marriage controversy came out. And then ultimately there was a certain point when Driscoll had been put on leave and to deal with some of this stuff and then come back.

And when he came back there, there was a group of former Mars people who had built this chat board in the 1990s. And they had a Facebook group that was Y-F-W-T-W-N, which was u sorry, I just, I’m trying to get the acronym right, which was U Fd with the Wrong Nerds. These were a bunch of former Mars people and they had.

One of them had a hard drive in, in storage that had the entire archives of this chat board from years and years ago, and they had the ability to prove that it was Mark and they were, they released this William Wallace thing. They, and once the William Wallace stuff came out, that was the thing that he was not able to really recover from.

Yeah. He was able to dodge and jab a lot of the other things but that really, that was nail in the coffin.

Julie: Remind me of some of the really horrible things that William Wallace said.

Mike: The most famous one, probably of the Wallace quotes was that women were penis homes. And it was in the midst of a rant, being critical of homosexuality, saying, the homosexual sex act is in inappropriate because a woman is the home for the penis. And why would you not send your penis to the home? Like that sort of thing.

Julie: Not to mention a little bit demeaning of or objectifying of women. Oh yeah. Extraordinarily, yeah. To unbelievable. And this really brings us to what I think is the major thing with Mark and I said this was Jane McDonald too.

If he had only been nice, if he only hadn’t I wouldn’t be surprised if some other pastors like Joel Osteen have lots of things that that he’s done, you know? I don’t know, but. He’s nice to people. But he ticked off, as you said, he ed with the wrong people. The bullying was so over the top, but up until this point, like bullying was not a disqualifying.

Even though when you look at, a, an elder with qualifications, you should be temperate, should be kind. These are the things that, that you should see in the character of an elder. But and I remember when I was reporting on James McDonald, somebody said, and you don’t wanna take this wrong way, but they’re like, dang, I wish he had just done some sort of sexual infidelity because that boom, we’d be able to get him.

But when it’s bullying, it’s hard to prove. And it has, you have to show a pattern. But they did. And I think one of the most brazen and for those who aren’t familiar with this, I know for a lot of people this is oh yeah, the body’s behind the bus. But if you’ve never heard this. It is so brazen and you gave the context was when Paul Petri was Yeah.

Was fired and another guy for simply trying to hold him accountable. Yeah. They were just dismissed. But

Mike: and I really do think this is the most important story that we told in the whole podcast because Paul’s firing was so profoundly unjust, so obviously an act of rage and reactionary, vitriol, literally all the man had done was say, Hey this new structure that you’re proposing.

I don’t see the, I don’t understand the biblical justification. And Paul was a trained lawyer who was saying, and I’ve got legal questions about how do we protect the institution and all the rest of it. Paul went to church on a Sunday night, and Driscoll preaches this sermon about how he’s got elders.

He’s preaching through the book of Nehemiah. And Nehemiah beats up a bunch of people and he says, I got elders that I want to beat up. And Paul’s in the congregation as he’s saying this, not thinking he’s talking about him. ’cause he’s what did I do? He has a meeting with Driscoll afterwards in which Driscoll, spews venom and fires him and another elder.

And and then he gives this talk at an Acts 29 event a little, a few days later.

Julie: Yeah. Listen to how he describes it. It again, I, even though I’ve heard this probably dozens of times, every time I hear it doesn’t lose its impact.

Mark Driscoll: Here’s what I’ve learned. You cast vision for your mission, and if people don’t sign up, you move on.

You move on. There are people that are gonna die in the wilderness and there are people that are gonna take the hell. That’s just how it is. Too many guys waste too much time trying to move stiff neck, stubborn, obstinate people. I am all about blessed subtraction. There, there is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus, and by God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done.

You either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options, but the bus ain’t gonna stop. And I’m just a, I’m just a guy who is look, we love you. But this is what we’re doing. There’s a few kind of people, there’s people who get in the way of the bus, they gotta get run over.

There are people who wanna take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off ’cause they want to go somewhere else. There are people who will be on the bus leaders and helpers and servants. They’re awesome. There’s also just sometimes nice people who sit on the bus and shut up. They’re not helping or hurting, just let ’em ride along.

You know what I’m saying? But don’t look at the nice people. They’re just gonna sit on the bus and shut their mouth and think, I need you to lead the mission. They’re never going to, at the very most, you’ll give ’em a job to do and they’ll serve somewhere and help out in a minimal way. If someone can sit in a place that hasn’t been on mission for a really long time, they are by definition not a leader.

And so they’re never going to lead. You need to gather a whole new core. I’ll tell you guys what too. You don’t do this just from your church planting or replanting? I’m doing it right now. I’m doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday, we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night.

They’re off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission, so now they’re unemployed. You, this will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail. I’ve read enough of the New Testaments to know that occasionally Paul puts somebody in the wood chipper.

Julie: So hearing that again, it’s classic mark, isn’t it?

People are expendable.

The mission is all important, but really the mission is not the mission of Jesus Christ. Because it’s all about Mark.

Mike: And I would I would even say it was it, I think what appealed to the elders right, was this sense that they’re looking at, they’re experiencing this intimate community.

They’re experiencing spiritual growth. All of that was I would even say at the time most of those elders had an awareness that Mark had an anger problem. I think most people who had been on staff or been involved in any significant way for any period of time would’ve been able to tell you that I think the elder’s primary loyalty was not even necessarily to mark, it was to the church, but their sense was, their belief was the mission is so important that we can’t risk disrupting it by.

Pushing against Mark, pushing into a situation where he needs to be disciplined, in a way that that, that could slow us down. And I think that was the logic of those elders. But again, the reason why I think this moment is so important is it’s because the moment where you really see, you see the leaders coalesce around that idea that what, whatever it is that are the character flaws in this man.

We’re not able to actually really address them because if we address them, it’s gonna slow down the mission of the church. And, long term that was what was most important to all of them.

Julie: Yeah. And I think what’s forgotten in this, and they often talk about like whenever we’re exposing some right, prominent pastor, they say what about the fruit?

And by the fruit they mean how many people are coming to Christ or how many people are giving, or how big the platform’s getting, all of these things. But fruit is never defined in the way the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. And all of these things in these pastors that are caught in misconduct are lacking in spades.

And yet we overlook it. And it’s interesting when you look at the qualifications of an elder, again in scripture, it’s all about character. It’s all about, it’s not saying how great of an orator you are. It’s not saying how great of an evangelist you are. It’s not saying it’s what is your character.

And I think we, we have forgotten about that in the church way too much. We’re getting back to it, I hope. But a lot of people will say. And Mark said, he’ll talk about, he have athletes in one sense. I repented of that, but then there’s been no repentance. And by the way, just so if people don’t know, when he was confronted, he was given a, they were going to give him a restoration plan.

The elders were at Mars Hill so that they didn’t want him to leave. I’ve talked to Sutton Turner. In fact, we have a podcast with Sutton Turner, which just, he was one of the executive elders who has been genuinely repentant about the role that he played in Mars Hill. And he’s really a godly man.

In fact, I asked if he wanted to talk recently about this when even doing this kind of a podcast. And he was like, you know what? I just, it’s traumatizing every time, every time he goes back to it. But but again this was classic Mark. He was given this restoration plan. They wanted him to stay, but they wanted him.

To be repentant, to change his character. And instead he bolts, honestly, the most cowardly thing, and he puts it on, God says, God told us grace and I, that we can go. And that’s what he did. He left. He has never, and people need to hear this, he has never reconciled with the people he so profoundly harmed at Mars Hill.

And let me tell you, it has continued the harm at Trinity. I know a family that got kicked out of the church because their teenage son kissed and they were dating, kissed his daughter, got kicked out of the church and excommunicated for this. Again, just bizarre behavior.

The paranoia, the, all of this thing it has continued. And actually, I wanna play a clip from again, Chad Freeze. Who talks about what he observed? Again, the power, the manipulation. Yeah. You wanna jump in before I play? That’s fine.

Mike: Yeah. But just before the clip, I just wanna say I think one of the things that’s interesting in Mark’s story is, and again, we profile much of this on the podcast. Is there there’s this impulse towards exaggeration for his, like the threat He’s under the suffering. He’s under. Oh, yeah. The violence he’s experienced, like the exaggeration is extreme. And this was something I heard.

We spoke to, we spoke to a number of people who, who served as Mark’s assistants over the years. And if you were Mark’s assistant, you were working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. You were at his house. Like you were driving him around, like you were in lockstep with the guy. And Mark would tell these stories about protestors showing up at his house and throwing rocks at his kids and all the rest of this.

Like Mark, mark lived in a a very secluded place outside of Seattle in a, in a fortress of fences and gates and his kids were. A hundred yards off the road at a minimum. So this kind of stuff was just, this kinda stuff was just made up and it was made up often.

And he, he would often tell stories about how he had to wear bulletproof vests and he had to, ’cause of these different kinds of threats and all the rest of it. And this was all stuff that sort of emanated from him in particular. And I, again, I think it’s relevant here to a certain extent because being connected to turning point USA in a moment that we’re dealing with now, where literally someone was shot in the neck, right?

This horrific killing. I can’t help but think that innate paranoia that I think is. It, I don’t want, I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m not gonna play one on the podcast, but I think there’s something almost pathological about it. Yeah. Based on the number of lies that, that Mark told and that were documented in the show and stuff in the background, that innate paranoia has a very destructive relationally destructive valence on it.

That I can’t help but think in the circumstances that’s not gonna work for him long term in all of this. And he

Julie: self-destructs. He really does. Yeah. And he destroys people around him. And when you talk about that paranoia, we did a number of stories on his in-laws, so his children have married, beautiful.

Sounds like spouses who had beautiful families. Those families have been excommunicated, essentially from their own children, because Mark will not have anybody in his sphere or in his family who is not 100% behind Mark. And so you get close to Mark, red flags, they notice the red flags, but God forbid you say anything about ’em, because then you’re cut off.

And it’s, and by the way, this Josh McPherson, who was on the podcast the Charlie Kirk show with with Mark Driscoll talking about revival, that guy is made in Mark’s image and has platformed him at his, like men’s conferences, which are just like the rah over the top toxic masculinity if you ask me kind of conferences.

But when we published something about McPherson, because he had platformed also this guy Art a Zeria who had who had left by what they called adultery, but you talked to his victim and it was adult clergy sexual abuse.

Mike: When we published, he’s at a, at, he’s at a large church in Portland or was Right?

Or was.

Julie: Yes. And also a professor out there. And Josh was

Mike: at, Josh is in Wenatchee, right?

Julie: Washington. Yes, he is. And when we published on this, somebody said, this is exactly like the whole thing with the in-laws said this is exactly what Josh did to us. And he is in the same mold. So the fact that both these guys are being platformed by T-P-U-S-A is to me, absolutely frightening.

And you’re absolutely right. Mark is paranoid to begin with, but put him in a situation where there might be a real reason for paranoia, like a real reason for concern for life. That, that, yeah, that’s a scary proposition

Mike: for sure.

Julie: All right, let me play this clip because I think it, it shows you again, th these are character issues.

They don’t go away, and they’re still there.

Chad Freese: Then Mark shifted and he was very soft spoken the first, I don’t know, 20, 30 minutes. Then he got real angry, and he is he said, Chad I do not trust a single man on my staff. I don’t trust him, not a single one of them. And sprinkling a few curse words in there.

So he’s going on and on. Chad, I don’t effing trust any of them. Who knows what they’re, what could happen next? And he’s one thing after another, he turns around, looks at Brandon. I mind you, pastor Brandon Anderson’s sitting on the couch behind him, not even at the table with us. He’s behind him. So Mark turns around and he points at Brandon’s face and he yells at him and he’s this is your effing problem and you better effing fix it.

And just cursing him and yelling at him. And Brandon’s face turns blood red and he turns over, looks at me and looks back at Mark and he says, yes sir. I got it. We’ll fix it. Yes sir, we’ll fix it. He said, that goes for all the men on my staff. You all need to get your stuff in order. And all the men in the room are, yes, sir.

Yes sir. Whatever you say, sir. Absolutely. And that’s the type of behavior. And I could see that culture in that environment again. This is my first meeting. I’m like, wow, everyone’s a yes man. They’re literally bowing down doing whatever this guy says.

Julie: And this is where it’s almost, I think at Trinity gotten to the point where a lot of people are calling it a cult because again, dissent is absolutely a hundred percent not allowed.

Mark has to be in control and it has to be, a hundred percent, yes. A hundred percent behind him. And Chad also talked about, and actually some other people we interviewed talked about this as well. This loyalty scale they had that Mark actually rated all of his staff by their loyalty. And again, this isn’t our loyalty is to be to Jesus.

Loyalty is a good thing, but where we place our loyalty is important. This was loyalty to Mark and the closer or the higher up you were on the loyalty scale, the more proximity you had to mark. Who cares about proximity to Mark, right? But this is how important this man is in his own mind, how paranoid he is about people.

Naing on him, instead of saying maybe I should reform my character so people aren’t so wounded around me that I have to worry about them harming me. It’s just unbelievable to me

Mike: the way he talks about himself. He sees himself as like John the Baptist prophet in the wilderness saying the hard things that other people aren’t willing to say.

And that’s the reason, that’s the reason he has to be so careful. That’s the reason people came after him. Look, if you go and look at some of the interviews he has done about Mars Hill, post Mars and the version of the story that he tells honestly, it gets more fantastical every time.

There’s these like revelations from God and these dreams and all this, and how, he knew that these people were coming after him for this, and these people were, and none of that is real. Like none of that. The reasons that, you know, the reasons that Mark was in trouble with the church, the reasons that the elders were disciplining him.

That stuff is all extremely well documented. We literally I mean if you go back to the show itself, we literally have the audio of the, executive elder meetings where they’re discussing why they need to play, enforce a certain kind of discipline on Mark. So when a person, I think when a person like Mark is in a place where they’re so self aggrandized, they can’t absorb that kind of criticism.

It sets up the situations like, like what we’ve seen. I think it’s really. I think it’s, I think it’s good of you to be highlighting this as he’s being platformed forward in, in a lot of ways, because as a shiny object, he’s really attractive, especially, especially when he is hating the right people.

He has the right enemies, that, that kind of a vision. But I also do think that the trajectory will be self-destructive inside all of this as well.

Julie: Yeah. And I was surprised, maybe not surprised, but disappointed that the current T-P-U-S-A spokesman, who’s the executive producer of the Charlie Kirk show is Andrew Colt.

I looked at his background and actually he says on the program that he used to attend Mark’s Church, and I noticed he was in Seattle for the time before it all blew up. So I’m wondering if it was Mars Hill. I don’t see that he ever lived in Phoenix. But he also used to work for Kairos pr, which if you know anything about Kairos, that’s Johnny Moore.

Johnny Moore tight with James McDonald. He’s the one that laughs on the the hot mic about when James McDonald jokes about planting child porn on Harold Smith’s computer. Johnny Moore is the guy sitting there laughing and and he’s a longtime liberty guy with Jerry Falwell Jr.

He was a part of all that. I, this Corvette, it’s like one of these, you don’t wanna say guilt by association. The guilt would be, that he actually had them on. And how dare you have you not done your homework or all this and you’re still doing it? I just, it was just one of these things where I just beg people to look and to research and to see who these people are.

We are in a cultural moment right now in this country where T-P-U-S-A has prominence they’ve never had before. It could be used for good, it could also be used, and this was, even in the thing they’ve got the 47 hats there, it’s become so much about Trump, how we got married to Donald Trump.

A Christianity got married to Donald Trump, and it is just absolutely, again, been I would just dumbfounded. Dumbfounded. I never would’ve on it. It’s dumbfounding. It’s dumbfounding.

Mike: To quote John MacArthur, MacArthur was the one in 2016 who said that. Oh yeah. That he thought that the reason we got Donald Trump was because was because of Driscoll.

’cause Driscoll sort of corson the evangelical, dialogue in a way that, that, that made Trump palatable. And it was so funny. As you, I haven’t listened to a lot of those clips in a very long time. And ’cause the show came out four years ago. I li when you played the clip of his conversation with Janet Mefford, it struck me more than it, it has in the past how Trumpy his language is, he’s talking about himself in the third per Mark Driscoll.

Is this? Mark Driscoll? Is that Mark Driskell Iss a nice person. You’re having a grumpy day. Like it’s very much the way that it is that, that Trump talks this, these like clipped sentences, punchy, funny. So yeah, there, there’s something to it. And I think that will be the appeal of Mark in a moment like this.

One, one can only hope as you say that at some point people pay attention to the. The body’s behind the bus.

Julie: Yeah. And that is why we’re doing this, because those bodies count, they matter. They’re not just matter to us, they matter to God. The kingdom of heaven is not one the same way the kingdom of earth is one.

It is a different, it is an upside down kingdom and this kind of verbal violence. It is, it’s not the way of Christ. And so as believers, we cannot put, you know what we think, we can’t become Machiavellian, which is exactly what we’ve become, I believe in the evangelical church where the ends justify the means and they don’t friends.

They never do. And it always turns out poorly. I’m grateful to you, Mike, for the work that you have done, bringing us back to really what is the truth of the gospel, why we can’t follow certain leaders, and why we need to be more discerning as a church. So I’m just I’m very grateful very grateful for that.

And grateful that you took the time today to remind us of these things. And Frank, can I tell you, if you have not listened to the rise and fall of Marcel I would say it’s the best podcast I’ve ever listened to. Of course, I don’t listen to that many, but, and it’s right in my niche, but it was, it’s so well done.

But it’s also, this is a primer on abuse, abusive pastors and why we need to do differently as a church. And so again. So grateful to you, Mike. Thank you so much.

Mike: No, it’s very kind of you to say all of that and I appreciate it. And yeah, happy to have this conversation.

Julie: Blessings to you and I hope we get to talk again.

Mike: Let’s do it.

Julie: Thanks so much for listening to the Roy’s report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Royce, and just a quick reminder that the Roy’s report is listener supported. So if you appreciate these podcasts and want them to continue, would you please consider donating to the Royce report?

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Restore Promo – Drs. Jenny Bayless & Diane Langberg: We need to be talking about spiritual abuse and religious trauma. This is a place where it’s safe for those who have been hurt in churches. It is also a place for people to learn more about how to respond to those situations, and it is much needed

Restore Promo – IHOPKC Survivors and Advocates: walking into the room, even taking the platform today felt so safe.

I, there was no nerves, there was no anything. I just, there is an atmosphere of support and comradery. And love that’s here.

Restore Promo – Lance Ford: I think that it’s really become a kind of a refuge. It’s become a green pasture for people to come find one another. And so many times there’s a solace, there is a restoration just in finding someone else that’s experienced what you’ve experienced,

Restore Promo – Pastor Ray Curry Jr.: to know that there are people from all over the country, all over the world who have experienced these same things and they’re uniting in Christ, but healing.

And I just think it’s a beautiful experience.

Restore Promo – Mary DeMuth: It’s not that we don’t love the church, it’s actually that we do love the church very much. And that’s why we’re having these kinds of conversations. It makes me feel less alone when I can talk with someone who’s had a shared experience like that.

Restore Promo – Caleb Campbell: It was so cool to see, the room is packed.

And folks are eager to engage. They’re encouraged, but they’re also encouraging one another. And I believe that this is so good because the need is so great.

Restore Promo – Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson: This conference is not only for those who’ve been victimized and hurt, but it is for people who want to be the answer now to what sadly, the church in the last 30 to 40 years has covered up and those who want to be the on the cutting edge of how God is moving to vindicate.

To show his justice,

to bring his healings. I just so believe in the power of story and we need to unite, and so I just would welcome any survivor to come and know that you’ll be loved. You’ll be heard. You’ll be seen. And this is just a safe place for all of us.

Julie: We celebrate what God is doing. We celebrate that the those that have been hurt and wounded by the church, that there’s a place that they can come that’s safe and they can find healing, and they can find community and they can be ministered to.

We celebrate that. It is so amazing. And at the same time, we grieve that, right? How sad is it that we need to have a conference for people who have been wounded by the very place, the very institution that should be ministering, healing to them.