The Secret Leadership Lessons of Mark Driscoll

Slowly but surely, Mark Driscoll is making a comeback. He recently spoke at the “Thrive 2015" Leadership Conference at Bayside Church in Granite Bay, CA, and is slated to be interviewed (along with his wife Grace) by Australian Pastor Brian Houston at the “Speak, we’re listening” Hillsong church conference. Warren Throckmorton has reported on his Patheos blog that he has been contacted by sources who claim that Driscoll is preparing to plant a church in Phoenix, AZ.

His appearance at these conferences begs the question: “what lessons does Mark Driscoll have to offer other pastors”? During his tenure at Mars Hill Church, Driscoll created what Paul Tripp called “the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I've ever been involved with”, which literally dissolved amidst unanswered questions about possible mishandling of funds raised for world missions and whether or not Driscoll was qualified to be an elder. According to Driscoll, he and his wife audibly heard the voice of God telling them to resign. According to other accounts, Driscoll resigned rather than accept a plan for discipline and restoration laid out by the elders of his church after a yearlong onslaught of allegations that Driscoll had used plagiarized material in multiple books, had misused church funds to buy a spot on the NY Times bestseller list, and had abused and bullied his staff for years. Prior to his resignation, he was kicked out of the Acts 29 church planting network he helped found.

Presumably, most pastors already know how to commit career suicide, so perhaps Driscoll is telling pastors how to avoid making the same mistakes he made? Unfortunately, not so much. According to reports of his Thrive appearance, he doubled down on the tone of the remarks he made at Robert Morris’ Gateway conference in October of 2014, just days after he resigned as pastor of Mars Hill.

• He continued to portray himself as a victim, calling himself a “struck shepherd”
• He repeated his October 2014 narrative of having moved 3 times for safety since the controversy began (according to some accounts, he HAS moved 3 times since he began the church, almost 20 years ago, not 3 times in the last year or two)
• He stated that the week following his resignation was the first Sunday in 18 years that he didn’t have a sermon prepared on a Sunday (did he prepare sermons during the weeks prior to his resignation, when he was on break from leadership at the church?)
• Most telling were these comments by a Pastor named James Miller: “Driscoll just gave a long lecture on forgiveness without asking for it. Aside from the allusion to “not being totally innocent,” he really didn’t point out his own failings. In fact, it seemed like the entire lecture was aimed at his need to forgive those people who had wronged him. What has happened to his family is horrible, as he describes it, and should never happen. But what lingers after Driscoll’s resignation is that he evaded his Board’s plan for a disciplinary procedure. He never really reconciled with those whom he had harmed, and after all of his talk of forgiveness, it would have been so simple and so graceful for him to ask for it.”

All of this gives the distinct impression that whatever lessons Mark Driscoll had to learn about his own weaknesses as a leader either haven’t sunk in yet, or if they have, he isn’t going to share them openly at this point. That is why I am calling the following the Secret Leadership Lessons of Mark Driscoll: they’re either a secret to him or he’s keeping them a secret. If you want to avoid crashing and burning as a leader, pay attention to these ideas (in no particular order):

1. Secret Leadership Lesson #1: people can see through your spin. Wikipedia gives the following description of spin: “In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against some organization or public figure. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, "spin" often implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics”. After Mark Driscoll took a six week break for an investigation by the Mars Hills elders a letter from nine of Mars Hills elders was leaked, which contained the following statement: “We have become masters of spin ... we have taken refuge behind official statements that might not technically be lies on the surface, but in truth are deeply misleading”

Throughout anyone’s experience in ministry leadership, there will be a temptation to try to manipulate other people’s perception by manipulating the truth. For instance, many churches describe the transition of all staff members as some version of “they felt a call elsewhere”, even when staff members are fired for cause or resign for a completely different reason (than being called elsewhere). While it might not be appropriate to announce from the pulpit “Pastor Jones was fired for having an affair with his secretary Brenda” or “Elder Smith resigned because he can’t stand the Pastor anymore”, we should be honest about what really happened. There is nothing wrong with saying “Pastor Jones was removed from his position from this church by the board, and we’re not going to disclose the details”.

If a leader does give in to using spin, he should be aware that people see through it, and if he have a habit of using it, they will start assuming that he’s not telling them the truth. No one outside of Mars Hill knows with any certainty how much money was raised for Mars Hills Global or how much of it was spent in India and Ethiopia. But it is entirely fair to assume that the leaders who kept saying there was no way to answer those questions were engaging in ”official statements that might not technically be lies on the surface, but in truth are deeply misleading”.

2. Secret Leadership Lesson #2: if you don’t treat your team members well, they won’t be loyal to you. No one can deny that the World Magazine article exposing Mark Driscoll’s use of Results Source marketing scheme had a powerful impact on Driscoll and Mars Hill. Or that Warren Throckmorton will be forever linked to Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill the way that Bob Woodward is linked to Richard Nixon and Watergate. There remains an unanswered question, though: who gave World Magazine the copy of Mars Hill’s contract with Results Source, and who kept feeding embarrassing information about Mars Hill church, Mars Hill Global and Mark Driscoll to Warren Throckmorton? It was obviously someone with access to the Mars Hill inner circle of information and data, so they must have been a long-term staffer. At the same time, it was very obviously someone with an axe to grind with Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner.

That thing about Paul Tripp calling Mars Hill “the most abusive, coercive ministry culture I've ever been involved with” probably had some effect on why a Mars Hill insider was willing to destroy their pastor and church by leaking so much damaging information. Every organization has dirty laundry that shouldn’t be aired for the sake of the health of the organization and its leadership. If you want your staff to keep confidential information that could be damaging to you confidential, you may want to treat them nice. This is not to say that Results Source marketing schemes or Mars Hill Global funds misuse SHOULD be kept secret, but that there IS information that is legitimately kept out of the public eye, and you will need loyal team members to help you keep it out.

3. Secret Leadership Lesson #3: minimize your dirty laundry. Mark Driscoll and some of his supporters have taken pains to claim that he was never disqualified from ministry because he hadn’t stolen church funds, had an affair or preached heresy (as if the qualification for elder leadership were “not a thief, not an adulterer, not a heretic”). It’s somewhat valid to make that point though, given that there are well known celebrity pastors who actually ARE known to be thieves, adulterers and heretics. This causes us to ask the question: what really did bring Mark Driscoll down absent a blockbuster scandal like an affair?

Some people point to the effect of social media on Driscoll and Mars Hill as being the deciding factor, especially bloggers like Warren Throckmorton, who consistently kept on pushing out damaging reports and pressing the organization for answers. Mars Hill’s public relations spokesperson Justin Dean complained that “we didn't get everything right but I do think our critics, a few in particular, were responsible for starting a snowball effect of events, all under the guise of doing God’s work. These aren't honest people we were dealing with”.

In my opinion though, what destroyed Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill was the sheer volume of issues that kept coming up. The plagiarism, the results source scheme, the staff turnover, the 7 and then 21 former staff and elders filing charges, the unanswered questions about Mars Hill Global, the homophobic and misogynistic remarks going back years, the embarrassing William Wallace II rants, etc., etc. Were the bloggers and social media a factor? Yes, but Mars Hill had been a source of controversy and negative social media throughout its existence. It is more likely the truth that even many of his supporters just got tired of having to justify supporting him in light of all his dirty laundry time and again.

The point here is not that a spiritual leader is expected to be perfect, but that the character qualifications of an elder (especially the concept of being above reproach and having a good reputation with outsiders) are important if you want to keep your supporters supportive. Above reproach doesn’t mean without any sin (something no one can claim). According to gotquestions.org, it means that elders “are to be of such moral quality that they do not bring shame (to) or…disgrace the body of Christ”. So if you have a lot of enemies and you give them lots of ammunition to use against you, they’re going to use it effectively. That means keeping your reputation positive by avoiding the kinds of ethical lapses and broken relationships that Driscoll specialized in.

Overall, Mark Driscoll always acted like he was above the normal requirements of a pastor because of the success of his ministry, and unfortunately his followers and a host of big name leaders who should have known better enabled him to do so. Eventually though, the ministry built with his talent and charisma collapsed because it was never built on a foundation of Christlike personal character.