The embattled Mars Hill Church canceled its annual Resurgence conference late on Thursday, scuttling an event that brings big name preachers to the Seattle area.
The apparent reason is that leading evangelicals — including past Resurgence attendees — are rapidly cutting ties with the mega-church’s leading man, Mark Driscoll.
The Resurgence 2014 conference was to feature James MacDonald and Paul Tripp, two evangelical leaders who recently resigned from a Mars Hill oversight board.
The preaching at last year’s Resurgence included Matt Chandler, board chair of the Acts29 evangelical “church planting” network. Acts29 broke from Driscoll and Mars Hill last week, and removed Mars Hill churches from its website. Chandler signed a letter urging that Driscoll “step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help.”
The following notice appeared last night on Mars Hill’s Resurgence 2014 website:
“The Resurgence Conference has always been born out of our love of Jesus and the church, and the desire to support efforts to grow leaders to grow churches.
“Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel this year’s conference due to unforeseen changes to our speaker lineup and other challenges we believe would make it difficult to provide the quality of conference people have come to expect from Resurgence.
“Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be receiving a prompt refund. Thank you for your support of Resurgence and the ministries of Mars Hill Church.”
Early this week, Driscoll’s name was scrubbed from four upcoming “Act Like Men” conferences. He had been slated to speak in Phoenix this October, Dallas-Fort Worth in November, plus Miami and Chicago next year.
The turmoil comes on the eve of a major expected challenge to Driscoll.
Multiple ex-Mars Hill members, including former pastors and program directors, are expected to go public with charges of misconduct against Driscoll. These include intimidation and the use of threats, shunning of ex-members and use of bad language.
Driscoll has delivered a series of mea culpas to his flock, promising to relinquish his “celebrity” role, be a “loving pastor” to his church community and cut out his sometimes-intemperate remarks on Twitter. He apologized for using Mars Hill money to stroke sales of his book “Real Marriage” to get it on the New York Times bestseller list.
And Driscoll has pledged himself to reconciliation with former members, but complained that his critics had chosen to “remain anonymous.”
The latter charge led to creation of a Facebook page, and an early August demonstration outside the Mars Hill Church in Bellevue with the theme: “We are not anonymous.”
With its lineup of powerful (and handsomely compensated) preachers, Resurgence has been a very big deal at Mars Hill.
The two-day conference promised doses of “Jesus-centered theology,” “Jesus-modeled leadership,” “Jesus-empowered living” and Jesus-inspired missionary work.
“Resurgence trains the head, heart and hands of leaders,” the advertisement read.
“We host the largest Church leadership blog, publish half a dozen books annually, hold conferences around the country and offer a master’s level theological training program for leaders from around the world.”
It’s an impressive boast for a church that began 18 years ago in a Seattle living room, and has spread to 15 churches in 5 states.
Driscoll was profiled in the New York Times Magazine five years ago, in which his rough-hewed sermons and rock music were seen as dressing up a stern Calvinist faith. Mars Hill has emphasized a top down structure, starting with male dominance in the family.
The alleged excesses inside the church were, until recently, revealed mainly by the redoubtable Warren Throckmorton, a Pennsylvania college professor who writes for the Patheos website.
A tipping point, in fellow evangelists’ patience, may have come two weeks ago with release of a long-suppressed 2001 rant in which Driscoll held forth (under the pseudonym William Wallace II) against what he called a “Pussified Nation.” He made derogatory remarks against not just liberal Christians but a luminary in the conservative evangelical movement.
Since then, Driscoll has been booted from Acts29 — which he co-founded — and seen Mars Hill churches scrubbed from its website.
He has been removed from the program at Act Like Men conferences. He has seen his books withdrawn from the shelves of 180 LifeWay Christian stores across the country.