The Last Act of Leadership at Mars Hill

“If something happens to me, these all become autonomous churches and lead pastors become primary teaching pastors. So the whole thing is built for me to back out.”

— Mark Driscoll

Several years ago I watched a recorded conversation between Mark Dever, James MacDonald, and Mark Driscoll in which Mark Dever asked Mark Driscoll what the plan was if he were to ever leave the church that he founded, Mars Hill. (I think the question may have been "what happens when you die?") The question was about leadership succession; not so much what would they do if Mark got hit by a bus, but what Mark would do when he was getting ready to retire.

His response was that, when he left, all of the campuses of Mars Hill would become independent, autonomous congregations. He was confident that they had appropriate leadership at each campus who could carry the mantle, even if he were to go away.

One of the questions I've often considered in pondering the multi-site church movement is what happens when the lead preacher moves on. As far as I know, we're still in the "first generation" of Pastor's of video based multi-sites. These multi-sites have been built on the recognition that they have a particularly gifted preacher, and that it makes more sense for the mission of the church to attempt to replicate the preacher via video. In some cases, there is more to it, but there is never less. I haven't heard of any video-based multi-site churches with a boring preacher.

To be clear, I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with that. We must be willing to admit, though, that the risk of a personality cult is extremely high. Without careful succession plans, you are either setting the church up for disaster or you are setting the next preacher up for disaster, and probably both.

Mark's answer to the question struck me because of it's honesty. It was a tacit suggestion that no one else could do what he does. No one could be the "next Mark Driscoll". No one could fill Mark Driscoll's pulpit. No one could carry on the banner, even in the best of circumstances, when he presumably had time and opportunity to train a replacement as he approached retirement. Of course, that's precisely the reason that the question of what you do when the lead guy leaves looms so large.

The truth is that all churches, large or small, go through a similar difficult transition when a long-term, loved, and gifted pastor retires or leaves. I know a church who had a well-known, well-spoken pastor for years, and even though he retired nearly two decades ago, and they are on their second pastor since then, he is still revered as the one who was there during the golden years. The church has been shrinking ever since he left. The point is, it's not just large churches who have a difficult–if not impossible–time replacing the leader. The difference is in the magnitude of the problem.

The larger a church gets, particularly when it gets large under a single leader, the harder it's going to be to find someone with the ability and the skill set to "take over". And again, that's in the best of circumstances. Let alone when someone leaves suddenly.

Unfortunately for Driscoll, he was hit by the proverbial bus in the form of endless allegations and a little bit of his own unraveling. Regardless of how much of it was justified (and who are any of us to say, unless we were there?), the fact remains that by the time things were said and done he felt like the best thing to do was to walk away. So he did.

Fortunately for Driscoll, he had put a contingency plan in place at Mars Hill, and it looks like they pulled the rip chord on it. The last major act of leadership at the church (barring building sales, etc.) is that all of the campuses have an opportunity to become independent, autonomous congregations. Because no one can do what Mark did, and maybe no one should even try.

You Are Responsible for Your Story

“Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

— Aslan in The Horse and His Boy

It's amazing how much information you can find out nowadays. You hear about some allegations being leveled against someone as unknown as a pastor (let's face it: even some of the most well-known pastors are only well-known because most Christians live in a bubble), and a couple of Google searches and Facebook posts later you've learned all that you need to know. Or at least, all that you can know by looking on the internet. Suddenly your mind is filled with information that you almost certainly don't need, and you are left to your own devices to sort it all out.

Let's call them "non-relational reflections". Or something of the sort. It's the type of thing you think about when you don't really know a person and all you have in front of you is data. At least, you think it's data. It may be gossip. Or it may be true. It's hard to say.

It got me thinking a little bit about responsibility, and what I'm supposed to do with all this "truth" I discovered online. And then it got me thinking about my own story; the one that I'm living right now. The one that I actually am responsible for.

I've been reading The Horse and His Boy with my boys, Michael & Anthony. Does that make me the horse? If it does, then I am a wild stallion. Or perhaps one of those Budweiser horses. But I digress.

As Aslan explains to the boy, Shasta, why things happened for him the way that they have, Shasta eventually begins asking questions about his traveling companion, Aravis. What was the meaning of her story? Aslan's response stuck with me: "Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own." Later, Aravis receives the same reprimand from the Lion when she asks about Shasta.

It stuck with me because of the regularity with which I can and do find out about what is going on in someone else's life; someone else's story. It starts with curiosity. Then I form opinions. Eventually I act as if what is happening in someone else's story–a person I don't know and have never met–is somehow my responsibility. Either my responsibility to call out their bad behavior; my responsibility to reprimand them or warn others about them; or my responsibility to simply know. Then it's my responsibility to let everyone else know what I think. Judging by all the information and opinions I found on the internet, I'm not the only one who has a problem.

The trouble is that it can lead to at least two really dangerous paths. The first path is that we start wishing that we had someone else's story. The second path is when we start criticizing someone for how they are living their story.

The first path–wishing we had someone else's story–is human nature. We already know that we're prone to coveting what someone else has. More often than I care to admit I find myself wanting what someone else has; I wish that what happened to them would happen to me: they get a new house, new car, new clothes, their church grows faster than the one I'm at, etc. 

The second path, however, is much more subtle: criticizing others for how they are living their story. The reason it's more subtle–and I think, more dangerous–is because we can couch it in a whole lot of nice sounding things like "brotherly concern", or treat it as if we're just trying to "protect the sheep from wolves", or "hold them accountable!" or whatever other spiritual jargon we want to throw at it.

No one says, "for your own good and the glory of God I think you should give me your house." There's no way to be spiritual about your covetousness. But it's easy to be spiritual about your criticism.

Here's the thing. Well, the two things. First of all, we're all going to have different stories and Jesus makes pretty clear that when he's talking to Peter at the end of the book of John that it's a really good idea for us to worry about the story God has for us and not the one he has for someone else. And secondly, and I think, as a result of the first, we need to be really careful about these "non-relational reflections" into or about other people's lives. 

Yes, we should hold people accountable–but it's supposed to happen in relationships. The proximity of our relationship has a major impact on the responsibility of our relationship. If you don't have a relationship with someone, no matter how much information you can Google about them, no matter how many blogs you read about them, it's almost always going to be best to keep the criticism to yourself. Better yet, stop reading it altogether. What good does it do? If you have no responsibility to correct this person in the midst of their story, and you aren't going to do anything with the information but sit there thinking about how screwed up that persons story is or how stupid they are, then just leave it be. Most of the time, the people we are quick to criticize are people that we don't know and therefore have no responsibility for.

So I'm left with the data in front of me and I have to sort it out and then I conclude with this: it doesn't matter. It's almost impossible to figure out what's true and what's not true, and at the end of the day, it's almost never even information that I need. I'm responsible for me, my family, how I live my life, the choices that I make, and how I lead the people that God has told me to lead. I hope to live my story well, and I hope you live yours well.

I guess at the end of the day I hope that the pastors I read about on the internet live their story well, too. I'm just going to stop worrying about it so much. I have enough responsibility already.

“When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!””

— John 21:21-22

Stop Being a Superstar

We live in the age of superstars. We love celebrity status. And it's killing us.

To be fair, we have a heart-level problem. Christians call it a "worship" problem. Worship, simply put, is what we do when we ascribe ultimate value to something. The thing that we most ultimately value will be the thing to which we devote our attention, our resources, our energy, and even our full selves. We do it all the time, without even thinking. We'll give ourselves over to the thing that we most highly value. The problem is that we ascribe ultimate value to cheap substitutes rather than to an eternal and complete God, and end up feeling used, broken and frustrated. The Bible calls that misguided worship "idolatry". Idolatry is worshiping something other than God, displacing Him from his rightful position of having ultimate value.

The reason I provide that as an up-front caveat is because time and time again we find that the thing we consider to be ultimate is usually ourselves. In fact, we have been bombarded by the message (at least in my lifetime) that we need to look out for ourselves; that we are the most important person in our universe, and that we should be okay with that reality. We want to, and nearly succeed in, worshipping ourselves.

But the situation is even more complex. When you ascribe ultimate value to something–when you are worshipping it–it is rarely if ever just a personal thing. The natural outcome of your worship is that you will want others to worship the thing you ultimately value as well. It's impossible not to! The 21st century result is that all of us are vying for the attention of others; holding out the thing that we consider to be of the most value–ourselves–and hoping that others will join us in our idolatry.

While self-worship may have always been the agenda of the human heart, it has been propelled by advanced communications in the 20th century, and exacerbated further by social media in the 21st century. Give someone your smartphone and tell them to take a picture of the most interesting thing they can think of, and nine times out of ten they'll take a selfie. But that's just a symptom. Advances in communication and social media gave us at least three opportunities to promote our self-worship that most people throughout history didn't have.

First, it expanded our influence. Prior to the extreme advances in communication in the 20th century, the number of people whose influence extended beyond their town, city, and especially their state was few and far between. Most people's influence extended to their family, at best. Now, you can have instant access to literally billions of people. Drop the right tweet, post the right status, and you might find that suddenly you have real influence. The truth is that even people with a modest number of followers on Twitter or Facebook have a significantly higher amount of influence than someone would even dream about 100 years ago, simply because we are more connected.

Second, social media allows us to craft an alternate identity, or at least, highlight only the good parts of our real selves. The advances in technology mean that we can craft our little self-worship idol in a way that we know people are going to value it. Celebrities are created not because of who they are, but because of who we perceive them to be. We value the false identity they've created; not the real deal.

Alternatively, the best way to make sure that no one ever worships you is to let them get to know you. Then they find out the whole package and realize it's not that great. That's why your family doesn't think you're a superstar, even if everyone else does. In fact, no matter how great you are, your family never thinks you're that great. I'm pretty sure Barack Obama doesn't have his kids call him Mr. President at the dinner table, and I'm doubly sure that they talk back to him just like my kids talk back to me. I doubt LeBron James' mom and family cater to his every need at Thanksgiving dinner because he's arguably the best basketball player in the world. (Not to mention that if either of them actually expected that type of behavior from family, we'd think they were arrogant turds anyway, not worthy of our respect.)

Social media allows us to skip past having to let people in on the real deal and only show them what we want them to see. And we're okay with it, because the vast majority of them are never, ever going to know the real story. It's not just that what they are consuming is a limited version of ourselves; it's that all they will ever know is a limited version of ourselves. We can carefully craft the idol.

Third, and perhaps the thing that destroys us the most, is that our celebrity is quantifiable. How many followers do you have? How many friends? How many likes did you get on that last status update? Who commented? Who is talking about you if you google your name? You might not have had even a percentage of that information before the advances in technology. "How famous am I?" would have been a much more difficult question to answer with any accuracy.

These three opportunities exist for every single person in the 21st century to allow them to promote their own ultimate value. All of us have access to the tools that will give us influence. All of us can create a false identity to be worshiped. And all of us can quantify, every second of every day, exactly how well we're accomplishing our agenda. And it's killing us.

Every day we measure our self-worth (intentionally or unintentionally) by comparing ourselves to other people's false identity, and then turning around and seeing how many people are "liking" ours. Admit it: you would feel better about yourself if 50 more people liked your last status update; no one posts that selfie and feels good when they get zero comments or likes. Chances are, they'd be devastated.

This is why today, more than ever, we need to be pointing people's hearts and affections back towards Jesus. Only once we begin to see Jesus as having ultimate worth do we begin to release our agenda for our own glory. Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, promises to change us on that heart-level. Jesus gives us the confidence that we measure up and that he loves us, regardless of how many likes or comments we get. He's the only one who is going to love you perfectly, and not the fake you that you've crafted for outsiders. The real you that's sitting on your side of the computer.

My advice? Stop chasing celebrity or superstar status and start embracing Jesus. Instead of killing yourself trying to chase down the love of others, enjoy life with a God who chases you down because he already loves you.