Mars Hill Pastor Dave Bruskas Defines 'New Values' for 'Broken, Repentant' Church

Well, proof is in the pudding—maybe explain the actual circumstances under which the elders who pushed for Driscoll’s firing left? (see bottom line; the “clarification” was “they were not fired”. OK, does this mean “offered the chance to resign or be fired”, or does it mean they truly left of their own volition?)

And a few other things come to mind. Maybe go back to an actual board of elders instead of letting the lead pastor put his buddies on the board of executive elders? Get away from the corporate structure, maybe? As John the Baptist said to the Pharisees, bear some fruits worthy of repentance.

This is what is written on their blog:

LOCALIZED GOVERNANCE

Going forward we intend to pursue a more localized governance and oversight model in our churches. As we move toward a new structure there is no desire to consider a continuation of the current model of leadership, including the Executive Elder roles and the Board of Advisors and Accountability. We are currently NOT (emphasis mine) considering an option where I would take over in Pastor Mark’s previous role. We intend to provide more self-determining freedom to our local churches in a way that empowers local leaders to direct the future of their churches.

FINANCIAL CLARITY

In mid-November we will be releasing our 10th annual independent audit of our financial statements from this past fiscal year. This had been delayed as the auditors awaited the conclusion of the investigation into the allegations against Pastor Mark. We will be posting them to our website at marshill.com/stewardship and our desire is to continue providing better financial clarity going forward. Our hope and anticipation is that we will receive a good report. But if that isn’t the case, we will work openly and diligently to correct any problems.

CULTURE CHANGE

We want to be leaders who are humble, repentant, accountable to you and each other, and who communicate openly and regularly to our members. We want to be known not only for preaching the truth, but also for living it out by loving others well. As the Board of Elders continue to glean the lessons learned during this season, we are confident this will lead to greater church health through deep cultural change. Please pray for us. Jesus is our Senior Pastor. He loves you dearly and we as your elders desire to serve you better. We need his gospel and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit to become Jesus’ faithful under shepherds.

Let’s see how they follow through and implement the changes. This seems to be a very welcome first step in addressing the mess that Mark Driscoll left behind. I’ll put this it the category of ‘very cautiously hopeful’, for now, but this is just a very first step of many that need to be taken. I hope others like it follow soon. We’ll see how serious they are when the audit results come out and their planned steps (if any) of remediation.