Eight Years Later, I’m Finally Angry About Mars Hill Church, Seattle
Part 1: My Backstory
I was at Mars Hill Church in Seattle for ten years, from 2004 to 2014. I left a few months before Mark Driscoll resigned. He left abruptly even though he swore from the pulpit over and over again for years that he would never leave, that he would be pastoring at MH until he died. But I didn’t go there for Mark or leave because of him, honestly. It has taken years for me begin to understand why I went there, why I stayed so long, and what I have to say about it all.
At first I went to MH because I was in a shame spiral after a first sexual relationship when I was twenty-four years old. I was raised in an isolated, high control religious family that sometimes attended churches, and sometimes didn’t. Although my dad is mild and my mother has always set the tone and made the rules, we were firmly within patriarchal US white Evangelical Christianity, featuring purity culture, strict binaries, homeschooling, fear of the world, and End Times predictions.
When I first ventured out on my own in my early twenties I had some breakthroughs in regards to my family of origin and my beliefs, and some good, age-appropriate relationships. But after a first consensual sexual encounter, I had a whole body panic attack and ended up running back to old beliefs — and then seeking out a church that felt familiar. I actually didn’t like Mark’s preaching at first, but I met people who let me cry and express all my feelings for the first time and so I kept going.
The style of the church was just different enough from my home that I thought it was radically different; it was the same white Western Evangelical patriarchy but with good music, mood lighting, and coffee. Despite that, the love I received in friendships there was transformative. I had been chronically lonely for so long, and being a part of such a large group of people was exciting, healing, and helpful. But I was incredibly naïve, having never navigated cliques or this kind of large group peer pressure before. I received free counseling through the developing Redemption Groups ministry, and then began to get training to counsel others. It felt so good to be a part of something so intimate and important.
Over time I did really buy in to the preaching, and though I didn’t agree with everything, I learned to defend Mark and MH from criticism. I honestly thought he had a rough and rude exterior that belied a gentle and loving man! He lied so continuously, so blatantly and boldly (as he does to this day), that what he said came to seem true. And so many pastors who really knew him lied for years by not telling us about the real Mark (more on this in Part 2). I look back and see my foolishness, as it is obvious that the man is a violent bully, but I could not see it then.
I attended the Downtown Seattle branch of the church as it grew and split into more and more branches. At Downtown we had Tim Gaydos as our main pastor. I remember a time when people were discussing just letting the branches be independent, and letting campus pastors do the preaching, which I thought was a great idea, but then Mark gathered a bunch of power back to himself and insisted on preaching almost every Sunday at all the branches, in person or via video. We were told, and told ourselves, that he was just a particularly gifted preacher. LOL.
As an unmarried woman in my late twenties and thirties, I had a bit of a unique experience of the church community. I felt the pressure to marry and have kids, but since that aligned with my own wishes I didn’t challenge it or feel particularly hurt by it. I had time and freedom to volunteer a lot and work with quite a few pastors over the years, though never in a paid position. I felt supported in developing my own leadership and teaching abilities.
Many of us at Downtown really took to heart that we were a community devoted to our city and each other: we shared housing, money, childcare, and built lasting friendships. We made art together and collaborated on all kinds of projects. Despite the many ways the church overall was antagonistic to various communities in Seattle, many of us worked to build bridges and learned to love our neighbors practically. I organized my community group to work with a food bank and built connections with the nearby farmers market so there were fresh fruits and vegetables available. Downtown did an annual coat drive for people in need, and we started a rather misguided ministry to sex workers, which helped some people with housing and accessing resources.
But there was a push from our pastors to always do more, faster. I remember crying after sermons when Tim would berate us for not serving enough. He would assure me he didn’t mean me — but I knew how the others were doing their best too. I remember intense pressure in Redemption Group trainings by James Noriega (and to lesser extent Mike Wilkerson, Wes Oaks, and Gareth Best) to make sense of some of the most obtuse passages of the Bible, and to confess and repent of sins in particular ways. Already prone to fear and vigilance from my upbringing, I got caught in scrupulosity, a type of OCD about religion and morality. I remember pushing past lots of my discomfort, and I remember learning to push people past theirs.
I wronged a lot of people. During my time in leadership I remember victim blaming a rape victim, harshly criticizing a woman for not wanting children, and making a big deal of people having had abortions or premarital sex. I have apologized in person for some of these and am open to being reminded of others and making amends as people might need. By the end of my time there, so many of my own boundaries had been crossed, and I had become so familiar with pushing past others’ boundaries, that I was losing touch with the vulnerability and love that I had first experienced.
When pastors I knew started leaving around 2013 and as bits and pieces of the story came out of how they were trying to “hold Mark accountable” for his anger and bullying, I originally felt a lot of confusion. I had experienced bullying and coercion personally by the other pastors, not Mark (not first hand, in relationship, that is). I remember thinking, yeah, we know Mark has issues, but so do you! It was very hard to hear these men who had urged us into so many things that were unhealthy and harmful, leave suddenly and express their pain as victims of Mark. The men telling us they had PTSD had been victimizing us, and most of them never apologized to us. I can now hold all these truths at once, but at the time it felt backward.
When I left in July 2014, however, I was in no place to challenge anything. I was in survival mode. Coincidentally, I lost my home, job, and church community all at once, even though they were not related. I ended up moving suddenly to South Korea for a full time university position. I put all my energy into my new life for a few years.
Getting so far away and focusing on some neglected aspects of my life (like earning money and dating) for a while was good for me. It has been a slow process including distance, quiet, new input, and new relationships to get to a place where I can actually take time to read, listen, and write about MH Church. Being out of church altogether since the start of COVID, I have a very different perspective on it now than I did when I first left.
It’s funny how the anger has come up recently. Some of it is about money. Mark used to say that he and Grace had vowed to give more to the church each and every year. That was the example we were to follow. And I did follow it. It never occurred to me that behind his statement was the assumption that we would pay him more and more each year! That people like me would work outside the church, to pay the church, and work for free within it!!! While our money was used to buy our pastor’s own books to make him a best selling author, to build a mega church devoted to his fame. That would collapse when he deserted it.
(part 2 will go into my current perspective)
