Pride, anger and a domineering spirit


Mark Driscoll has resigned as pastor and elder and grand poobah of Mars Hill Church.

Religion News Service has his resignation letter.

I readily acknowledge I am an imperfect messenger of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are many things I have confessed and repented of, privately and publicly, as you are well aware. Specifically, I have confessed to past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.

As I shared with our church in August, “God has broken me many times in recent years by showing me where I have fallen short, and while my journey, at age 43, is far from over, I believe He has brought me a long way from some days I am not very proud of, and is making me more like Him every day.”

You know…if you want to be a reasonably good person, especially a good person by the standards of 2014, you need more than one book, and more than one admirable person. You need to find inspiration and models in more than one place. Life is complicated, being reasonably good is complicated, the world is complicated – so just focusing on Jesus all the time is not adequate. At all.

Prior to and during this process there have been no charges of criminal activity, immorality or heresy, any of which could clearly be grounds for disqualification from pastoral ministry. Other issues, such as aspects of my personality and leadership style, have proven to be divisive within the Mars Hill context, and I do not want to be the source of anything that might detract from our church’s mission to lead people to a personal and growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

So he’s leaving.

But it’s sad and dispiriting that people think it’s at all adequate to get all your guidance and advice and inspiration about trying to do a good job of being a human from a church.

 

Comments

  1. machintelligence says

    Give him a year or two and he’ll be back. Perhaps not at Mars Hill, but somewhere.

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    … past pride, anger and a domineering spirit.

    But that was all in the past, people!

    As our only president says, we must look forward, not backward!

    After all: … He … is making me more like Him every day.

  3. Silentbob says

    … [God] is making me more like Him every day.

    … jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
    (Dawkins’ classic description of Yahweh.) 😉

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