Almost my last post here before going on holiday related to events in Seattle around Mars Hill Church and the challenge of lead pastor Mark Driscoll.
In that post I included a number of disturbing quotations from Mr. Driscoll’s writings. I then said,
The question that troubles me is how a church whose pastor uttered sentiments like those below, even if it was twelve years ago, could ever survive let alone experience spectacular growth in the sophisticated, enlightened, liberal city of Seattle.
https://inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/how-to-grow-a-church-of-14000/
I remain disturbed by this question and have yet to find a good answer, or even much interest in the question itself, until this morning I came across my question asked, in of all places “The American Conservative,” by Rod Dreher who writes:
We all understand, I think, the problem with leaders not wanting to lose what they have: power, wealth, fame, etc. The more difficult problem is explaining why people much farther down the power structure — specifically, those who are being exploited by the leadership — are willing to cooperate in their own exploitation. They too are unwilling to risk what they have — but what do they have, really?
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/mark-driscoll-pill-of-murti-bing/
Dreher suggests that the answer to why people acquiesce to abuse from people in power is that the discomfort of acknowledging reality feels more painful than living with the discomfort of the reality they are unwilling to see. The pain of losing a bright shiny charismatic presence in their lives is so great that, those who have given unconditional allegiance to a flawed leader, refuse to see the flaws in the broken human being they follow.
In his post Rod Dreher cites a justifiably famous and disturbing piece by William Lobdell in which the Times Staff writer recounts the painful story of his own gradual loss of faith when confronted by the inexcusable conduct of church leaders: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/21/local/me-lostfaith21
In the most stark manner imaginable Lobdell confronted the challenge that troubles me in the Driscoll affair. In covering the sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, Lobdell observed:
I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.
Lobdell’s piece should be required reading for every person in leadership in the church. We all need to ask ourselves the troubling question that, in the end, caused Lobdell to lose his faith, not just in the church, but in the God he believed the church exists to serve:
Shouldn’t religious organizations, if they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect higher standards than government, corporations and other groups in society?
The sad truth is, we in the church often do not “reflect higher standards” than other human organizations. Like all human organizations, the church is populated by flawed, broken, imperfect people.
For me, the brokenness of the church, while enormously painful, has not undermined my faith in God. I continue to be able to maintain a distinction between the beauty and truth that transcends all material manifestations, and the organizations that exist to point towards and seek to manifest that ineffable Presence.
It is not always an easy distinction to sustain. But, for all its imperfections, I experience enough light and goodness in the church to make bearing with its brokenness a worthwhile transaction. My faith is not confined to or defined by the church. The church remains, in my experience, an adequate instrument to ease open human hearts to embrace the possibility of a love that calls us into light, honesty, truth, and deep accountability for our attitudes, words, and actions.
Where I and the church fail I hope to be honest and clear-sighted. I trust that our shortcomings will draw me closer to God and to living more authentically and vulnerably rather than driving me away from that light and truth we exist to serve.
In A Spacious Place 
6 comments
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September 20, 2014 at 8:36 am
tressbackhouse
It is nice to have you back!!!
September 20, 2014 at 10:10 am
bobmacdonald
I am not convinced that this Mars Hill church ever succeeded. Adulation of a charismatic is not worship. Nor is the hierarchy that results equivalent to a following of Jesus who said – it shall not be so among you. Unfortunately, politics and humanity being what they are, I wonder if success or failure is a category we should ever apply to church.
I remember thinking once that I heard this question addressed to me – “who are you to judge the company I keep?” And I thought it a fair question. So I remained a middle of the road Anglican, refusing to tear the buttons on the coat, not that I was ever satisfied with the political state of the church – but I could not help reflecting all its conflicts in my own person. So I escaped into study especially when it became so much easier by the availability through email lists and blogs of so many Biblical studies professors on the internet these days. Down in the deep well of ignorance, I have been climbing since the mid ’90s like a small bug, up to wherever this rock face leads. It does say that God made the creepy-crawlies too – right (Psalm 104, I think) – yes but my wife would not let me use creepy-crawlies in my translation!
That is the sea great and wide of hand
there creeping organism
and there is no count
of those living tiny with great
I should be sorry for the one who failed himself as a leader. I was not aware of him till I read a piece by Rachel Held Evans on him. It contained language that was foul in the extreme, and militaristic in its condemnation of the weak – not exactly what I would like to hear from a preacher with a mega-congregation. I was not surprised when I heard his behaviour matched his rhetoric. I remember adulation even for myself when I was a new convert – a dangerous time. It is not worship.
September 22, 2014 at 8:26 am
Christopher Page
good thoughts Bob. I totally agree that the term “success” is difficult to apply to church. “Failure” on the other hand seems to me all-too-often an appropriate description of our flawed attempts to live in Christian community.
September 20, 2014 at 12:21 pm
Jennifer
I think people are reluctant to be whistle blowers because it is always a case of shoot the messenger. I’ve seen that over and over in my own life.
Have a good holiday!!!!
September 21, 2014 at 8:32 am
bobmacdonald
Mars Hill leaders last Sunday said attendance and giving had plummeted so fast that it would have to close several Seattle branches and cut its staff 30 to 40 percent. Story here
September 22, 2014 at 10:11 am
bobmacdonald
It’s hard to avoid posting this link from Rachel Held Evans so that your readers not familiar with the background of this problem might see the history.
The abuse noted here is so obvious, it is really hard not to wonder why it was not stopped earlier. It reveals a problem that is much deeper than our own fear in the Anglican church of Canada related to the problems of sexual abuse in the past millennia. The problems in Mars Hill are not revealed by a police record or fingerprints. (Neither of course are our own problems).
I can’t help asking – just how do we enable the fruits of the Spirit? This is what RHE puts in her central paragraph as the real measure of success in a church. What a hard question this is to consider.