In the last year or two, I have been deeply convicted by God that my angry-young-prophet days are over, to be replaced by a helpful, Bible-teaching spiritual father.
Now we start to get to the larger problems in this "apology." Note here that he is not convicted for being the angry young prophet. No; he claims to be convicted that those days are over. The implication seems clear that he is actually not sorry that he played this role of angry young prophet at all. Not only that, but by claiming God is convicting him that those days are over seems to indicate that God still condoned that time. So while he vaguely admits that there were times he was angry to the point of sin, he generally still feels as if the role he has played was divinely ordered. Clearly it was not. God did not instruct Mark Driscoll to stack up a pile of bodies behind his bus.
Driscoll goes on to claim that there have been changes to the accountability board at Mars Hill but the reality is that there has never been transparency and if these changes had already been implemented then why did the board initially stand by Driscoll and the decision to manipulate the NY Times Best Seller list? It was only after continued pressure did they change their tune. While these remain questions in need of answers Driscoll then takes on the meat of the latest scandal:
First, a marketing company called ResultSource was used in conjunction with the book Real Marriage, which was released in January 2012. My understanding of the ResultSource marketing strategy was to maximize book sales, so that we could reach more people with the message and help grow our church. In retrospect, I no longer see it that way. Instead, I now see it as manipulating a book sales reporting system, which is wrong. I am sorry that I used this strategy, and will never use it again. I have also asked my publisher to not use the "#1 New York Times bestseller" status in future publications, and am working to remove this from past publications as well.
Now, I have heard already good brothers read this as an admission of guilt but I would have to disagree. Take a close look at the couched words Driscoll uses. He is actually claiming that he was mistaken, not that he erred or sinned. He is actually claiming that he simply thought the arrangement with ResultSource was to maximize book sales when anyone who read the contract knows the specific goal was to land the book on the top ten list of the NY Times. The contract even went into specifics about how they would avoid detection! This was not a contract to spread the word. It was a contract designed to personally benefit Mark Driscoll. It is encouraging to see he is not going to use the title anymore but this is not an admission - it is an excuse. It is a poor one at that.
Driscoll goes on to speak to his celebrity status and how he wants to give that up to be a bible teaching pastor and I say fantastic! But God is not going to build on a rotten foundation and backhanded apologies. As Chris Rosebrough said yesterday, it appears as if Driscoll is still at the point where David was when he thought he could cover up his sins with Bathsheba. Nathan has yet to visit Driscoll and make him realize that "he is that man." Yet Driscoll then continues to outline what changes need to be made as he "resets" his life:
1) He will no longer refer to himself as a NY Times Bestseller
2) He will go offline for the rest of the year (no social media)
3) He will cut back on his travel and speaking
4) He will not be doing any interviews
