Saddleback Pastor Apologizes for Mark Driscoll Interview, But is He Sincere?
Newly minted Saddleback pastor Andy Wood apologized last week for interviewing Mark Driscoll at last year’s Echo Conference, saying that he regrets the “pain, confusion & distraction this caused.”
His apology has not assuaged his critics, however, and it’s no wonder. Wood is both coy and disingenuous in describing the purpose of the interview. In a previous comment, he said that Driscoll wasn’t being given a platform and that the conversation was intended to help other leaders avoid the same mistakes he made and was a sincere attempt to help people lead with love.” In his tweet, he said the talk was about “helping pastors learn from his (Driscoll’s) mistakes.”
It was nothing of the sort. Jason Adams-Brown, the former Planting and Missions Pastor of Echo Church, dismissed this as spin and damage control, writing on Twitter:
“I know of no one on Echo’s staff who was supportive of Wood bringing Driscoll to the leadership conference. Local leaders even asked him not to. The evidence was already clear on Driscoll before the podcast. He knew.
In a staff meeting his wife, Stacie Wood, said all the stuff that happened with Driscoll in Seattle was due to spiritual warfare because Seattle was a dark place. This was said because many were concerned about bringing Driscoll.”
While the audio has not been made publicly available and Echo Church has since purged the video from the website, RNS describes the scene this way:
“Driscoll was interviewed last year at a 2021 leadership conference run by Echo Church in San Jose. During a conversation with Wood — the soon-to-be lead pastor of SaddleBack Church — Driscoll described the troubles at his former church as a “board war” and blamed the devil, social media and secular culture for causing church conflict.
Church governance should be set up to protect a pastor’s power, he argued, adding that “you’re going to have people who are literally in your organization, sent there by Satan, to seek to steal, kill and destroy,” he said. “And they’ll call it love and accountability.”
After leaving Mars Hill, Driscoll moved to Arizona, where he now is pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale. He has also embraced charismatic and Pentecostal ideas about leadership. During his talk, he said modern-day apostles — whom he described as mostly suburban megachurch pastors — should rule over churches and other pastors, rather than those churches and pastors being overseen by a local church board or elders.
Driscoll’s idea met with enthusiastic approval from Wood, who described Driscoll as a mentor, someone who had helped shape his ministry and befriended him and his wife.
“We love you guys,” Wood told Driscoll.
This tracks. The only mistake Driscoll copped to in that interview is ever letting his elders hold him accountable, and it was a lesson he learned well as he jumped ship and started a new church. Is that the lesson Wood wanted the pastors to take away from the conversation?
Despite having hundreds and hundreds of people attending each week, Driscoll’s new church, The Trinity Church, has no elders. Instead, there are five other pastors, none of whom function in the office of an elder with the accountability and decision-making process that goes with it. Driscoll does have a small corporate board made up of a handful of people, some who don’t even go to his church and others who aren’t even pastors.
Whereas in years past, Driscoll defended a biblical understanding of the office of elders in his teaching and his books, he has since disavowed their importance, choosing to abstain from anything that may tinker with his power or do him dirty by daring to take him to task for his many acts of malfeasance.
This way, he has all power, and there are no limiting influences on the control he exerts. Armed with the keys to the kingdom, Mark finally gets to call the shots all on his own, unencumbered by biblical ecclesiology or any accountability.
Wood knew this, was told this, but chose to ignore it anyway. It’s for this reason we don’t buy the apology one bit.
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Your headline says it’s about Rick Warren, when it concerns Mark Driscoll.
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