Questioning the Origin Myth: A Rise and Fall Short Story

Mark Driscoll’s calling to ministry was a fixture in the storytelling that shaped Mars Hill Church. But what’s the origin of the origin story?

There’s a profound power to storytelling. In all kinds of communities, the stories we tell about who we are and where we came from are life-shaping.

At Mars Hill, one of the oft-told stories was about Mark Driscoll’s origin and calling. It began with the gift of a Bible from his future wife. That was the catalyst to faith, and a walk in the woods a few months later led to an experience of hearing God’s audible voice saying, “Marry Grace, plant Mars Hill, preach the Bible, and train men.”

That story was repeated countless times at Mars Hill, lending Driscoll a sense of both authority and purpose and inviting the church to get caught up in that mission with him.

This shorter episode dives deeper into this “founding myth” of Mars Hill, and how it evolved over time. It also explores the formative, almost liturgical effect it had on the church, and raises the question of how it might have contributed to a fragile architecture at the heart of the church.

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is a production of Christianity Today

It’s executive produced by Erik Petrik

It’s produced, written, and edited by Mike Cosper

Joy Beth Smith is our associate producer.

Music, and sound design, by Kate Siefker and Mike Cosper

This episode was mixed by Mike Cosper

Our theme song is “Sticks and Stones” by King’s Kaleidescope.

Special thanks to Ben Vandermeer

Graphic Design by Bryan Todd

Social Media by Nicole Shanks

Editorial consulting by Andrea Palpant Dilley

CT’s Editor in Chief is Timothy Dalrymple

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Let the Afghan Refugees Come Unto Me

In this global moment, we’re called to heed Christ’s command to open our hearts and hands.

As we can see from the gut-wrenching images in Afghanistan, most of those wishing to flee the Taliban will never be able to escape, even many who faithfully helped the United States in the twenty-year war there.

Some, though, will be able to make it to other countries—including the United States—to seek shelter and to start a new life. As evangelical Christians, we should resolve, even before our new neighbors arrive, to ignore those who would ask us to fear these refugees.

Historically, those wishing to ostracize refugees take a number of different tactics. They sometimes speak of them in language of “uncleanness”—using metaphors such as rodents or insects—or they might suggest that the asylum seekers are themselves vectors of disease. They sometimes, though less often, speak as bluntly as some are now of refugees as an “invasion” of those who are coming to “replace us” (with “us” almost always referring to white and nominally Christian Americans). But perhaps most often, they speak of refugees as a threat.

Just as we saw with Syrian refugees and Kurdish refugees in years past, we will soon hear the insistent cries of those arguing that Afghan refugees are terrorists, or at least that they might be, since they are “unvetted” and we know nothing about them. These claims aren’t true.

As Elizabeth Neumann—a former high-ranking Trump Administration national security official—demonstrates, even if a terrorist wanted to play the long game of twenty years of pretending to be a pro-Western, anti-Taliban figure, the vetting process for all of these refugees is intense and rigorous, using extensive biometric and biographic checks. And ...

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Don’t Quit Twitter Yet. You Might Have a Moral Duty to Stay.

As leaders, how do we avoid the faults of online life without shirking our public responsibility?

Recently, Caitlin Flanagan argued in The Atlantic that we really need to quit Twitter. She joins a long line of people who’ve sworn off the medium (at least for a time). Andrew Sullivan, Chrissy Teigen, Alec Baldwin, and other celebrities have publicly quit social media. Ta-Nehisi Coates famously left Twitter (and his 1.25 million followers) after an online argument with Cornel West in 2017.

In her essay, Flanagan examines how Twitter destroyed her “ability for private thought” and enjoyment of reading. She even admits to being a Twitter addict.

I am too. I have committed a thousand times to take a break from social media, just to find myself sneaking a look, consumed by shame, as if I huffed some glue real quick between work and picking up the kids. There are nights when I’m up too late, reddened eyes locked onto a screen, finally shaking myself out of my stupor with a cry: “Why am I doing this?”

We’ve all heard the studies. Social media decreases our ability to think critically, increases rates of depression, and fuels anxiety and distraction. Facebook and Twitter often make our conversations more combative. And online advocacy often usurps the more enduring (and more boring) work of governance and institutional change.

Nevertheless, most public discourse is now online. So even if social media is a cesspool, we still have to ask the question: Do some Christians have a moral responsibility to wade into the mire to voice opposition to bad legislation, promote good work, or amplify the concerns of the marginalized?

To cite one particularly disheartening example, sexual abuse victims of a lay leader in my own denomination took to Twitter this summer to highlight the ways leaders and systems ...

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Pro-Life Advocates Push Local Resolutions

Tired of failures at the ballot box and in courts, some turn to community declarations.

Ryan Sullivan didn’t give much thought to his pro-life position as a Christian beyond voting for pro-life politicians. Then he studied Exodus 21:22–24, where God prescribed the death penalty for any Israelite who assaulted a woman and caused her to miscarry.

“In that Scripture, the life inside the womb is treated with the exact same value as the life outside the womb,” said the pastor of Grace Community Church in Jackson, Mississippi. “Once I started thinking that way, I noticed that so much of the world around me—and even the Christian world around me—almost thinks of this abortion issue as merely a political one.”

The realization led Sullivan to embrace a new pro-life strategy: pushing local governments to declare themselves “safe” for the unborn. Members of Grace played key roles in establishing several safe cities in Mississippi. To date, 11 cities and two counties in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Alabama have done the same.

According to Les Riley, president of the pro-life Personhood Alliance, the Safe Cities and Counties Initiative shifts the strategic focus from federal-level efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade to local arenas.

Since 1973, the pro-life movement has “built huge organizations, raised millions of dollars, elected pro-life politicians and pro-life majorities, and, at the federal, state, and local levels, we’ve had control of the courts,” Riley said, “yet tens of millions of children are dead.”

The Personhood Alliance decided in 2018 it was time for another approach and started pushing for cities and counties to pass resolutions saying they are safe for the unborn. Other grassroots groups, such as Sanctuary Cities for the ...

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Dari TV Host: Afghanistan Will Now See ‘Pure Christianity’

As satellite ministry becomes one of the few ways under the Taliban to reach local believers, SAT-7 Afghan pastor reflects on the gospel impact of the US military withdrawal.

Afghanistan and its neighbor Iran share the Persian language. Now that the Taliban will rule from Kabul again, might the countries begin to also share a spiritual trajectory?

In 1979, the shah of Iran was overthrown in an Islamic revolution. The crackdown that followed ended the Western Christian presence in the nation. Yet today the Iranian church is one of the fastest-growing in the world, as the ruthlessness of the mullahs led many to sour on Islam and some to find new faith in Jesus.

Satellite TV ministry played a great role in spreading the gospel in Iran, and continues today across the border in Afghanistan. Christian ministry SAT-7 began broadcasting in 2002 in Farsi, the Persian dialect spoken in Iran, and in 2010 Shoaib Ebadi began its first prerecorded programming in Dari, the Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan. His show Secrets of Life went live in 2014, and today is accessible across the whole nation.

The 55-year-old Ebadi was born in Afghanistan but became a Christian in 1999 as a refugee in Pakistan. The following year he emigrated to Canada, and today heads Square One World Media, producing Christian media in various languages around the world.

He told CT about the history of the Afghan church, the impact of the US military upon it, and his hope that “pure Christianity” might now gain a hearing in his homeland.

Some statistics put the number of Christians in Afghanistan at 8,000. Can you give us a brief history of the church?

There was a Protestant church building constructed in 1970 in Kabul during the time of the shah, but it was destroyed when the monarchy was overthrown in 1973. The Catholics had a church in the Italian embassy since 1933. But these churches were only for foreign nationals, not ...

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1 out of 3 New Guitars Are Purchased for Worship Music

Industry study says church bands are core business.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation sold a record number of guitars in 2020, driven in part by people forced to stay at home during the pandemic. The company calculates that nearly a third of those new musical instruments were purchased by people who play in praise and worship bands.

This may not be surprising to anyone who knows a worship leader.

“Worship leaders are always commenting about wanting to get a new guitar,” said Adam Perez, a postdoctoral fellow in liturgical studies at Duke Divinity School. “There are conversations about needing to ‘up my guitar’ and discussions about types of guitar. For a lot of worship leaders, the guitar is that companion that marks your journey and marks your development as an authentic worship leader.”

No one knows the first person to bring a guitar into church, but it became common in charismatic congregations in Southern California in the 1970s.

Folk, rock, and folk-rock went to church with the hippies who converted during the Jesus People movement, and guitars became staples of the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard church style before spreading to other evangelical churches.

The style signaled openness and authenticity to white baby boomers raised on the Beatles, but guitars also had some practical advantages, according to Perez. They were portable. When a new church started in a school, or someone’s house, or even on the beach, no one had to haul over an organ. Guitars are also easier to learn to play than the pianos and organs traditionally used in church music.

“People joke about how simple it is—three chords or four chords—but that was a strength, not a weakness,” Perez said. “You could have a beginner guitar player ...

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Daniel Darling Fired from NRB After Pro-Vaccine Remarks

The ministry’s former spokesman had appeared in national media explaining why he as a Christian trusts the COVID-19 vaccine.

Daniel Darling, an evangelical author and the spokesman for NRB (National Religious Broadcasters), spoke out this month about his decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine in an op-ed in USA Today and a segment on MSNBC.

As of Friday, his remarks cost him his job with the ministry.

Darling was fired from NRB this week when he refused to sign a statement saying his pro-vaccine messaging amounted to insubordination, a source told CT on his behalf.

In a statement, Darling said he was “sad and disappointed that [his] time at NRB has come to a close.”

Darling joined NRB as its senior vice president of communications in April 2020, after a six-year stint as the vice president for communications at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

NRB, which calls itself the largest association of Christian communicators, has more than 1,100 members working in Christian radio, TV, and other media. Part of the group’s purpose, it says, is to advocate for the “free speech rights of our members.”

In the aftermath of Darling’s firing, some evangelicals raised concerns that NRB was defying its own stances around free speech and anti-censorship, or that it was aligning with conservative radio pundits at the expense of a leader like Darling.

NRB CEO Troy Miller confirmed Darling’s departure in an email to Religion News Service, which first reported the story, but did not elaborate on the reason. “Dan is an excellent communicator and a great friend,” Miller said. “I wish him God’s best in all his future endeavors.”

This summer, the spread of the delta variant has officials and community leaders once again urging vaccination. White evangelicals ...

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