Mark Driscoll Launches The Trinity Church

August 7, 2016
Warren Throckmorton
Pathos

Our roving reporter Deana Holmes tells me that 162 cars were in the parking lot for today’s launch of The Trinity Church in Scottsdale AZ (170 for the second service). Security was on hand along with a television crew from Seattle’s King 5.  Apparently, they still remember the former Mars Hill Church pastor.
The worship team was provided courtesy of Amarillo, TX church Trinity Fellowship. Kind of a theme.
Driscoll was pastor of Mars Hill Church until he resigned in October 2014.  He and the church had been kicked out of the Acts 29 Network and suffered a severe decline of attendance after several questionable financial details were revealed. He had committed to a plan of restoration developed by his elders but said God told him a trap had been set for him and that he was released from Mars Hill.  Long interested in Phoenix, Driscoll moved the family with plans to plant a church not long after he resigned from Mars Hill.

Former church elder offers to meet Mars Hill plaintiffs

Emily McFarlan Miller
RNS
March 15, 2016

Mark Driscoll was an influential but edgy pastor within conservative evangelical circles for several years. Photo courtesy of Mars Hill Church

(RNS) Former Mars Hill Church elder Sutton Turner says he’s willing to meet with four former members of the now-defunct Seattle church who filed a 42-page civil racketeering lawsuit last month.

Turner wrote in a blog post, in response to the lawsuit against him and controversial ex-Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll, that he is “deeply grieved and saddened” by the closure of the church.

“In the past two weeks, I have prayed,” Turner wrote. “I have reached out to the plaintiffs directly to communicate my willingness to meet. And I continue to hope that Christ will walk us through this difficult but necessary process in a spirit of reconciliation.”

The former Mars Hill general manager and executive elder acknowledged that he had been named in the suit, but that he had not yet been served. He hopes by meeting with the plaintiffs he can “empathize with their hurt, pray with them, apologize to them, and clear up anything I can.”

READ: Mark Driscoll responds to ‘false and malicious’ allegations in lawsuit

The lawsuit accuses Turner and Driscoll of “a continuing pattern of racketeering activity,” namely, soliciting donations for specific purposes and then using that money for other things. It was filed under part of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which was created to prosecute the Mafia and other criminal organizations.

Among the allegations in the suit brought by Brian Jacobsen, Connie Jacobsen, Ryan Kildea and Arica Kildea: The church paid $210,000 to a company called ResultSource Inc. to land Driscoll’s book, “Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together,” which wound up on the The New York Times Best Sellers list.

Turner has called using ResultSource “one of the biggest mistakes of Mars Hill Church.” It was part of a marketing plan made when he first joined the staff at the church, and he had written a memo advising against it, he wrote in an earlier blog post.

The suit also alleges the church collected money for an organization called Mars Hill Global, saying those funds would go to overseas missions. Instead, that money appears to have stayed in the United States, it said.

In another blog post, Turner wrote Global always was intended to plant churches in the United States and apologized to donors who said they were led to believe all of that money would go to missions in India and Ethiopia.

Driscoll, who resigned from Mars Hill Church in October 2014, has called the allegations in the lawsuit “false and malicious.” The church’s 15 campuses closed that December.

(Emily McFarlan Miller is a national reporter for RNS)

http://www.religionnews.com/2016/03/15/church-elder-responds-to-mars-hill-lawsuit/

Mark Driscoll to launch new church on Easter Sunday

Religion News Service

Emily McFarlan Miller

March 16, 2016 

(RNS) Controversial former Mars Hill Church Pastor Mark Driscoll plans to launch his new church on Easter Sunday (March 27).

The Trinity Church will host its first gathering that evening at the Glass and Garden Drive-In Church in Scottsdale, Ariz., the new church announced on its website.

The website described the gathering as a “modest open house and prayer meeting” where Driscoll will share the vision for the church as it begins putting together its launch team.

“We know that God has gone before us, preparing an opportunity to minister. This building provides a wonderful opportunity for our mission,” it said.

Driscoll announced last month that he and his family had moved to Phoenix, where they were “healing up” and planning to launch The Trinity Church.

He had spent months praying for a church building with more than 1,000 seats along the 101 Freeway, according to the church website, and he “believes that God has supernaturally provided” that in the Glass and Garden Drive-In Church building. The church had launched on Easter 1966, it said.

Its drive-in theater since has closed.

The launch comes a month after a lawsuit was filed against Driscoll and former Mars Hill executive elder John Sutton Turner by four members of the now-defunct Seattle church, accusing them of “a continuing pattern of racketeering activity.” The suit claims the two solicited donations for specific purposes and then used that money for other things.

Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill in October 2014 amid allegations of plagiarism and abusive behavior, as well as outcry over critical comments he had made earlier about feminism and homosexuality under a pseudonym on a church message board. The church’s 15 campuses closed that December.

The pastor has called the allegations in the lawsuit “false and malicious.”

“I remain focused and devoted to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, loving others, and praying for my enemies,” Driscoll told RNS.

(Emily McFarlan Miller is an RNS correspondent)

http://www.religionnews.com/2016/03/16/driscoll-to-launch-new-church-on-easter-sunday/

Controversial Megachurch Pastor Mark Driscoll Finds A New Flock

BRANDY ZADROZNY
The Daily Beast
February 21, 2016

He called women ‘penis homes’ and allegedly ruled his Seattle megachurch like a tyrant. Now, he’s resurfaced a thousand miles away.

There’s a new church coming to Phoenix, Arizona.

According to its website, the pastor, Mark Driscoll, is a “Jesus-following, mission-leading, church-serving, people-loving, Bible-preaching pastor...grateful to be a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody.”

While he may wish he were less recognizable these days, compound adjective-loving Mark Driscoll could hardly be called a nobody. Though there’s no mention of it on The Trinity Church’s shiny new website, Driscoll built and presided over Seattle’s controversial Mars Hill Church, and he is one of the most famous and disruptive figures in the history of the evangelical mega-church movement.

Driscoll and two other pastors started Mars Hill in 1996. Before long, Driscoll was drawing crowds with a unique brand of hipster conservatism. He was a 25-year-old charismatic preacher with a Sam Kinison yell and a collection of ironic “Jesus is my homeboy” T-shirts, who talked freely about sex but offered a socially and theologically conservative message that introduced Seattle’s young unchurched to a macho, vengeful God. (He once described Jesus as “a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.”) The first services outside of the Driscoll living room were held in a music venue—owned by church cofounder Lief Moi—in a space aptly named the Paradox.

“Do they call you pastor here...ordude?” a Nightline correspondent asked in 2008.

Mars Hill was slated to become the biggest church in the country. In its heydey, it was welcoming more than 12,000 visitors every week to one of its 15 satellite campuses in five states and reporting $30 million in yearly revenue.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/21/mars-hill-s-controversial-pastor-mark-driscoll-is-back-with-a-new-megachurch-in-phoenix.html