This has to be one of the most self serving sets of punishments I have ever seen. First of all - he is not a NY Times Bestseller. That was a lie aided by his own deception, which he still has not taken responsibility for. The remaining three seem to be designed to lower his profile and avoid having to discuss this growing scandal, which could very well destroy his church's tax exempt status. Hunker down for the rest of the year and ride out the storm. Now let us deal with a subject no one likes to discuss - accountability. Who is it that designed this reset? Was it some authority over him? Was it his newly reconstituted accountability board? Nope:
To be clear, these are decisions I have come to with our Senior Pastor Jesus Christ. I believe this is what He is asking of me, and so I want to obey Him.
So Jesus told him to avoid the press, stop tweeting, and offer a lame attempt an apology? Color me skeptical but when David was in the throes of repentance for the Bathsheba sins he wrote Psalm 51 and the key verses we have today. Contrast that with the decision to not access your Facebook account for nine months! Driscoll's own confusion is not done yet however:
I have also submitted these decisions to the Board of Advisors and Accountability. They have approved of this direction and are 100 percent supportive of these changes. It's a wonderful thing to have true accountability and not be an independent decision maker regarding my ministry and, most importantly, our church.
Beloved, this is not accountability. This is rubber stamping. Note that he did not submit suggestions to the board. He submitted the decisions he had already made. To then go on and claim that he did not make the decisions independently is patently silly at this point. The Driscoll supporters are already out in force declaring this to be a genuine apology and act of contrition but there are several problems with it that we have not even addressed yet.
First of all the entire letter is solely focused on one person - Mark Driscoll. There is a lot of introspection and life decisions being made and nice talk about his wife and family. There is multiple mentions of how he just wants to be a bible teaching pastor and how much he loves his church. The admissions he does make are vague to the point that it sounds like he apologizing because he knows he needs to say he is sorry but unsure what he is truly sorry for. The only mention of sin is this short, obscure reference to sinning while angry because he couldn't take the weight of the responsibilities as the church grew. So even in the one admission, there is a built in excuse. It would be akin to David saying that he gave into lust but c'mon - being king is very stressful. The largest problem however is the refusal to even address the sins he has already been exposed for:
1) There was no discussion whatsoever about using at least $210,000 in tithes and offerings to engage ResultSource in the cheating campaign to gain the top ten list. No discussion of how much that generated for him in royalties as the author. I have seen one analysis that claims a minimum of $500,000 profit was pocketed by Driscoll for this episode. What is the restitution plan? What safeguards have been put in place to ensure that the money the people entrust to him will not be spent on things that financially benefit Mark Driscoll?
2) There was no apology for the plagiarism scandal which has now grown to seven books of Driscoll's needing to be redone and annotated correctly. When confronted, Driscoll had blamed the ghostwriters and editors instead of taking any accountability. Just like the $210,000 is essentially theft, so is plagiarism.
