One of the problems with the Internet for public figures is that the Internet never forgets. Your past will always catch up with you.

Admittedly, when twelve years ago he wrote the words below, the author was only thirty years old. But he was the pastor of a church with an average Sunday attendance of 350 and within 12 years with him as lead pastor his church exploded to the point where it could claim an attendance of approximately 14,000.

Mars Hill Church in Seattle and its pastor Mark Driscoll are currently mired in a complicated and confusing turmoil around governance and style which is far too complex for an outsider to comment on without way more research than I am willing to put in.

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.

(warning the following passage contains language and sentiments that would not normally appear on this blog – apologies if  you are offended… but you should be)

We live in a completely pussified nation.

We could get every man, real man as opposed to pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama’s boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish, and have a conference in a phone booth.

So, Johnny hits youth group one day to hear from his pussified youth pastor that he should perfect his virginity and dating skills. So Johnny tries to be a loving and patient man who looks for a nice woman like mom who will whip him into shape and beat him into submission so that he can one day join a men’s accountability group and learn how to keep his urges under control, which just causes him to be earn a B.A. in masturbation, M.A. in porno, and PhD in knuckleheadology as Johnny is now so terrified of women and his own penis that he sits in his room alone each night on the internet hoping to get some (with the occasional “falling into sin” with a woman as they inevitabaly cross “boundaries” of intimacy) because he’s so afraid of women and has no idea how to take one, or love one, or serve one, or take one to bed and make the Song of Songs sing again.

 One day Johnny finally gives in to the pressure of his pre-humpers singles ministry and gets stuck with some gal left on the shelf long after her expiration date that is just like dear old mom who wants him to shut up like Adam, take his beating, and join a church men’s group that is really a woman’s group in disguise complete with cookies and crying and antidepressants to cope with the insanity.

Poor Johnny is by now so completely whacked that he’s afraid of having kids and hold off his taking on any more responsibility as long as he can because Johnny is a boy trapped in a man’s body walking around in a world of other boys all trying to keep their pee pee behind their zipper and do just like their momma told them and be good women.

And so the culture and families and churches sprint to hell because the men aren’t doing their job and the feminists continue their rant that it’s all our fault and we should just let them be pastors and heads of homes and run the show. And the more we do, the more hell looks like a good place because at least a man is in charge, has a bit of order and let’s men spit and scratch as needed. And all their whining and fighting is nothing more than further evidence that we are still kings and unless we do our job everyone and everything is getting screwed except Johnny (metaphorically speaking of course).

I know many of the women will disagree, and they like Eve should not speak on this matter.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/07/29/newly-exhumed-documents-reveal-mark-driscolls-vision-of-our-pussified-nation

Did Mr. Driscoll ever renounce these sentiments? Did he apologize for the words he wrote and posted on the internet?

In fact in a January 2012 interview Driscoll said,

I don’t apologize for what I believe. I’ve never changed it.

And, if you criticize Mark Driscoll, he knows how to deal with you as he explained in October 2007 when he addressed a conference of pastors saying,

I am all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus. And, by God’s grace it will be a mountain by the time we are 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.

There’s people who get in the way of the bus, they’re gonna get run over. There’s people who wanna take turns driving the bus, they’re gonna get thrown off.

Is this a backlash against a culture that might be trying to recover qualities of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”?

How is this a man whose sermons merit 260,000 views per week online? Who are the 14,000 people who want to go to his church?

If Mark Driscoll’s style is the strategy we need to adopt to grow the church, I will stick with my gentle generous little parish.