The Mark Driscoll bio page on Vyrso.com still refers to him in the present tense as the pastor of Mars Hill Church. I realize this is a fluid situation, but you might want to at least update the bio to make it past tense.
They made that change quick.
They sure did!
Read this right away and was thinking "Oh great, people who are against him". To me he is still a pastor.
I don't know Mark Driscoll, and I wish God's richest blessings on him. As far as what we are "against," I think we can all probably agree that we are "against" verbal abuse, domineering leadership in the church, blatant misogyny, crude language, and questionable marketing/financial practices.
Sure, he is still a pastor at heart, and may very well still have a calling from God to be in ministry for the rest of his life once he gets back on his feet. I hope the best for him. I was just suggesting the factual details be corrected, as he has stepped down as pastor of Mars Hill Church. The bio used to say he was currently the pastor of MHC. They've since updated it.
If an author died or changed to teaching at a different seminary, I would also suggest those details be updated on their author page. Had nothing to do with being "against" Mark Driscoll. I'm for him in that I pray that God would heal him and use him for good in the future. He's a very beaten down man at the moment. I do think he brought that on himself, but so do we all, and God's discipline, though painful at the time, is always for our own good in the long run. I have no long-term animosity towards him. He's been cast out of where he was doing the harm, now let's see the restoration begin. I hope it's possible. I believe in a God with whom even the most unlikely restoration is possible, and I am looking out to see what he will do in Mark's life in the future.
He appeared at the Gateway Conference which he was originally supposed to speak at before everything went down. He spoke a bit how about all the attacks against him. It was sad how we as Christians shoot each other down. I didn't know much about him as far as his sermons or his books he's written but he sure earned my respect. Happy to see my Pastor Robert Morris and then Pastor Jimmy Evans both speak over him.
I happen to know more about the inside of the story, having two friends who attended his church. I'm sure the sermons and books and other public sides of his ministry have helped many people. But there is a dark side to the man too. I would not characterize calling him to account for this as "shooting each other down". He has been callous towards people being thrown "under the bus" for trying to live out their role of keeping him accountable to his higher calling, even rejoicing in the fallout and wishing for more bodies under the bus. While there might be exceptions of people who had selfish motives, in most cases it was people of integrity who were sincerely worried about what Driscoll was doing and felt it their duty to call him on it, for the health of the body of Christ. He pretty much rejected any accountability and consolidated power in his own hands, firing pastors and elders who dared to challenge that methodology. Many of the rest of his pastoral team and elders went along with him at the time, in order to keep their jobs, and because (for better or for worse) they truly believed he was in the right at the time and the people trying to point out a pattern of abuse were just being insubordinate. But finally there were just too many red flags, and the walls had to come tumbling down. In the wake of what has been uncovered, a whole bunch of the elders who initially supported Driscoll against the critiques have repented of their complicity in hurting many others.
Sometimes one in leadership needs to be brought to his knees in order to protect the weaker sheep who are being trod over, and that's what happened in this case. It's all very sad. Driscoll has prodigious gifts as a speaker and teacher, but he did have some major blind spots and flaws which hurt a lot of people. As I said, I do not believe anyone is beyond redemption, not even a megachurch pastor. But I also think pastors are in positions that can do more harm than most of us can, and must take that responsibility very soberly. If someone has a pattern of sin in their life, the best way to get it dealt with by God is to go into ministry. He will make sure it comes to light and gets dealt with, and woe to the pastor who has a huge public persona, because it will be a very public chastening by God. That's what we're seeing here. I do think it means God loves Mark Driscoll and has good things in store for him. I only hope and pray that Mark is open to the changes that will need to happen in him for him to be of use again in the kingdom.
When ministry is all about one person and how much he can accomplish for God and how much he is looked up to and revered by others, it's usually heading in the wrong direction. That was the temptation Mark Driscoll fell into, and the people around him sinned by enabling him in that, out of fear (a fear he had instilled in them by bullying them).
Here's another example of a pastor who had a lot to learn and for whom God had to use a very painful experience to teach it to him, but Hallelujah that he did open himself up to what God was doing in his life, and now uses that lesson to bring glory to God. I hope for something like that in Mark's life too.
The site in link that says "Here's another example of a pastor" led me to a page which Internet Explorer forced closed "to protect my computer" due to something on the page. I would suggest caution.
I got there with problems ... IE didn't care nor did my AV of choice
Hmm, that's weird. It's a newspaper website, Marin Independent Journal, the main newspaper of Marin County, California. It's possible they were subject to some hack attack, but the site displays fine for me with no warnings from Chrome, so I doubt it. Do you have the most up-to-date version of IE? It might be a false positive (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2019197/answer-line-malware-or-false-positive.html; how ironic it would be if you couldn't view that article either!). And is your AV up-to-date? Always good to heed protective warnings, but sometimes they can be faulty.
Anyway, the gist of the article was that it was a high-flying pastor with a busy successful ministry and a huge ego. He had a stroke and lost the ability to speak and move his right hand, and his ministry came crashing to a halt. A friend gave him a camera and suggested he learn how to take pictures as something he could do without having to speak to anyone. He has learned through the experience to know God's grace in a way he never did before, in spite of his not being able to "perform" as the big-name pastor he once was. He's also learned a gentle way of viewing the world through his camera lens, creating art and communicating through that medium. So it has both opened his eyes, and given him a new gift he can share with others. I followed the link to his website and his photos are quite beautiful and moving. I found the whole story very profound. Sometimes God takes something away in order to give a greater blessing which we might not have expected would be a good thing prior to our loss, but which in retrospect we realize it was worth losing the other thing in order to receive.
Firefox and Chrome (with Avast! antivirus) both were ok with the link.
