Mars Hill Church

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Can someone write a decent article about Rob Bell? That LA Magazine piece wasn't it

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Can someone write a decent article about Rob Bell? That LA Magazine piece wasn't it

It’s been awhile since we heard from Rob Bell, the Grand Rapids, Mich., superstar pastor whose 2011 book asking if hell is truly real got him booted out of evangelical Christian circles. He was quite the phenomenon a decade ago and then he disappeared for a time.

Turns out that, like many folks who live in the northern half of the country, Bell wanted to escape to a better climate — so it was off to California he went.

Los Angeles Magazine just ran a long piece on what Bell is up to now as he lives near the tony Venice Beach section of Los Angeles. The soulful photos look like, as one Twitter poster remarked, “like he delivers sandwiches for a hipster restaurant in Portland.”

Bingo.

The story begins with a casual mention about Bell having surfed that morning in Malibu. But (cue the flashback) 10 years ago:

… Bell was among the most prominent Evangelical pastors in America. His Michigan megachurch, Mars Hill, attracted over 10,000 worshippers a weekend. His debut book, 2005’s Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, sold half a million copies. And he performed annual speaking tours to packed theaters around the world. One newspaper called him “The next Billy Graham.” But that was before Bell went to hell.

In his fourth book, 2011’s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell wondered aloud whether a loving God would really condemn billions of nonbelievers to eternal torment. The book sold half a million copies and landed him on the cover of Time. It led to friendships with the likes of Oprah Winfrey. But it also led conservative pastors to label him a heretic and a false teacher; it led to him leaving not just his church, but the church; it led to him questioning the faith that had made him famous. And it led him to Los Angeles.

Then he began a podcast in 2015.

More than 300 episodes and tens of millions of downloads later, the Robcast has helped to resurrect Bell’s career.


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Mark Driscoll redux: Believe it or not, this Daily Beast feature is best of the lot

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Stories about ousted Mars Hill Church pastor Mark Driscoll are surfacing again, now that the former Seattle mega-church leader has resurfaced in Phoenix with a new church plant and no repentance toward the carnage left behind in the Pacific Northwest. Mars Hill, his now former church, has had to sell $25 million worth of property to make ends meet. 

Of all the outlets I’ve scanned, the Daily Beast thus far has come up with the best reporting about the matter. I should mention that Joel Connelly’s blog atseattlepi.com was first out of the blocks in December with the story of Driscoll’s move to Phoenix.

Connelly has been following Driscoll for years. If you need to bone up on his clips and some of Driscoll’s history, click here. Here's a brief summation of the latest news, which appeared Feb. 1 in The Seattle Times:

Mark Driscoll finally made it official: He’s starting a new church in Phoenix. The culmination of a comeback that has been gaining steam over the past year, the former Mars Hill pastor announced the news of The Trinity Church on Monday by email, Twitter and a new website.
In a folksy video on the site, which begins with a “howdy” from Driscoll, the pastor said he and his wife, Grace, sitting by his side, were “hoping, trusting, praying, planning and also a little” -- he made a jokey grimace -- “worrying about planting a church here.”
Driscoll also noted that he was “healin’ up” in his new home. And his bio on the site refers to the Driscolls recently facing “the most challenging year of their lives,” one that prompted the pastor to take a year off.
But aside from those remarks, there’s no reference to Driscoll’s troubled and controversial history at Mars Hill. Indeed, there’s no direct mention at all of the megachurch he presided over for 18 years in Seattle, until snowballing allegations of plagiarism, emotional abusiveness and misogyny led him to resign in October 2014.

 It does seem weird that Driscoll seems to have taken up a southern accent in his new digs.


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Seattle Times scores a winner in piece on Christian health-share ministries

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There aren’t many religion writers in the Pacific Northwest these days and that's a shame.

For example, The Seattle Times apparently hasn’t had one since Janet Tu left the beat several years ago. If something breaks like last year’s ouster of Mark Driscoll -- then-pastor of Mars Hill, Seattle’s largest church at the time -- the newsroom has to pull reporters from other beats to cover it.

So it was a surprise to see this story leading their web site Sunday on Medi-Share and two other Christian “health-sharing ministries” that act quasi-health insurers for lots of Washington state residents.

When Melissa Mira suffered sudden heart failure at the end of her second pregnancy last year, she worried first about her health and her baby -- then about the more than $200,000 in medical bills that began rolling in.
“Your world is just crashing down around you and you wonder: ‘How is this going to be covered?’ ” recalled Mira, 30, who spent more than a month away from her Tacoma home, hospitalized at the University of Washington Medical Center.
For Mira and her family, the answer came not through traditional health insurance, but through faith that fellow Christians would step forward to pay the bills.
The Miras -- including daughter Jael, 4, and baby Sienna Rain, now a healthy 9-month-old -- are among the growing numbers of people looking to “health care-sharing ministries” across the U.S. At last count, there were more than 10,000 members in Washington state and nearly 400,000 nationwide, individuals and families whose medical costs are taken care of entirely through the organized goodwill -- and monthly payments or “shares” -- of like-minded religious followers.

The writer is the newspaper’s health reporter and the tone is informative and respectful. It’s kind of sad when it’s unusual to find a piece in the secular media about religious practices that have no snark attached.


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Big scoop for Sarah: Former GetReligionista scores exclusive on Mark Driscoll resignation

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We're proud to say we knew you way back when, Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

The former GetReligionista scored a major scoop Wednesday with her Religion News Service report on the resignation of Mars Hills Church pastor Mark Driscoll:

(RNS) Mark Driscoll, the larger-than-life megachurch pastor who has been accused of plagiarism, bullying and an unhealthy ego that alienated his most devoted followers, resigned from his Seattle church Tuesday (Oct. 14), according to a document obtained by RNS.
The divisive Seattle pastor had announced his plan to step aside for at least six weeks in August while his church investigated the charges against him. Driscoll’s resignation came shortly after the church concluded its investigation.
“Recent months have proven unhealthy for our family — even physically unsafe at times — and we believe the time has now come for the elders to choose new pastoral leadership for Mars Hill,” Driscoll wrote in his resignation letter.

Other major news organizations quickly jumped on the story, including CNN.


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Who is in charge of judging Mark Driscoll, other than the New York Times?

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As the story of Mars Hill Church and the Rev. Mark Driscoll continues to unfold, I want to flash back to the very important New York Times story that yanked this drama onto the national front burner (other than for evangelical insiders).

This story was quite good, with few examples of usual jarring advocacy language pointing readers toward the progressive social doctrines advocated by the Times. In particular, note that this story often featured the views of conservative Christians who are now critical of Driscoll's leadership style and some of the actions that may or may not have grown out of it. Even though this story travels into moral and cultural issues, there are very few traces of "Kellerism" in it.

However, this report does have one major problem, from my point of view. It is clear that Driscoll is facing the judgment of evangelical Protestant leaders from coast to coast. However, the story never really states the degree to which Mars Hill Church is, itself, an independent body that has few ties binding it to any denomination or tradition.

In other words, if Mars Hill is a kind of mini-denomination of its own, who has the legal, as well as the doctrinal, right to investigate and then pass judgment on its founder?


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