When I was a kid, I remember my mom and dad using the phrase, “the proof is in the pudding.”
As I got older, I found myself using it as well.
Now, I’ve researched this statement’s origin and true meaning, and I’ll admit that it doesn’t exactly mean what I thought it did. But let me explain how I understood it.
Let’s say that a couple got married that we didn’t think they would make it, but several years later, they were still together… So I might say, well, I didn’t think they would make it, but the proof is in the pudding; they’re still going strong.
Or maybe someone would start a new business venture that seemed absolutely crazy. Then ten years later, they were millionaires… I might say, well, we thought they were crazy, but the proof is in the pudding; they’re millionaires now.
I’ve realized recently that this is the same philosophy I’ve always used when thinking about church.
I’ve listened to the podcast “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” in its entirety, and I’ve even gone back and listened to a few episodes a second time.
This podcast chronicles the leadership of Mark Driscoll at his church, Mars Hill, in Seattle, Washington.
I was a fan of Mark Driscoll in the early 2000s. He was someone my husband and I listened to when podcasts and online sermons were very new. He was someone who we found extremely easy to listen to. We had recently left a very toxic, legalistic church, and Mark Driscoll’s teaching was just what we thought we needed. He yelled at his congregation as our old pastor did, but he said new, hip, almost prophetic things when he spoke. His message resonated with us. We bought his books, listened to his sermons, and would have loved, at the time, to visit his church.
Then he preached a sermon series on the Song of Solomon. Though we listened, we began to wonder if maybe this Mark Driscoll was a little too out there for us, perhaps he was taking a few too many liberties with things and was a little crasser than was ok for a pastor to be from the pulpit.
We didn’t throw his books away, but we did slow down listening to him and moved on. We knew his church had disappeared very suddenly, but we didn’t know how or why.
Until “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast began last summer.
Because we followed Mark Driscoll so closely during the early 2000s, this podcast was eye-opening for us. We could pinpoint the time in Mark’s ministry when these things started happening, and we were completely blown away when we learned what was really going on.
My husband and I would listen to these podcasts during the day and then discuss them when he came home each night. We couldn’t believe the things we were hearing, and we also couldn’t believe how familiar so many of the things we heard were with things we had experienced ourselves.
I highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t listened to this podcast download it and start listening. It’s a Christianity Today publication. It’s on all the podcast platforms.
What we learned about Mark Driscoll and his church was that he was an extremely abusive leader. He did things that no pastor should ever do. He treated his staff terribly, and still today, many of them are wounded. He ruled his church as a dictator. It was his way or the highway. If people didn’t do things the way he wanted them done, they were gone. If anyone challenged his ideas, they were against him. One lady was even called a heretic when she mentioned that Mark needed men who wouldn’t just have his back and let him have his way, but men who would challenge him and keep him in check. He fired her almost immediately after finding out she had said this.
Mark Driscoll didn’t begin his leadership of people this way. Instead, he would groom them. He would rope them in with his personality and make them feel important and loved. Mark would let them into his inner circle, and then he would slowly start to manipulate these people. He would make sure that they had his back at any cost, that they would blindly move forward with his visions for the church, no questions asked.
Then, when they questioned or challenged him… they were out.
And it happened over and over. These people’s stories are heart-wrenching. They were used and abused and then discarded.
What happened at Mars Hill didn’t happen overnight. This happened a little at a time, slowly but surely…
Mark Driscoll was and still is a narcissistic man.
Research shows that 31% of pastors are narcissists.
Just think about that for a minute. It just makes sense. It’s a profession where the person has a captive audience every week, they have people who they lead, and those people follow the pastor willingly.
When you add that these men are “called by God” to these positions, you add another layer of trust and dedication from the followers.
The role of the pastor is the perfect place for a narcissist. Unless a person has the spiritual gifts to handle everything that being a pastor entails, it can go wrong very quickly.
A narcissist in a pastor position is a disaster waiting to happen.
But do you know how they are able to keep these positions for so long, how they keep the people following them and blindly trusting them…they can point to all the good things happening… you know, the proof is in the pudding.
I used this idea to keep me under the leadership of more than one person.
At the church where my husband was for most of his life, where we were married and had kids… the pastor was most likely a narcissist. Everything revolved around him.
His sermons were calculated, his words harsh, and his body language was that of someone who thought they were just a little better than those around him. He was, after all, the man of God. So who was I to challenge him? God gave him the vision. As the pastor, he led that vision, and we carried it out as a church.
But more than his personality or his body language, it was his need to be followed blindly, to be the one making the decisions and the one who was completely in charge, that was scary.
I remember when the church voted to add a couple of new deacons. This pastor chose just who he wanted as deacon, and his only requirement was that these men backed the pastor at all costs.
Let’s just unpack that for a moment. If the requirement for the deacons was that they supported the pastor, and if the church was small enough that there wasn’t a board of elders, and the deacons were also acting as the board of elders, that left the deacons as the only people keeping the pastor in check, to question him and hold him accountable. So, if their main job was to back the pastor… then who is actually keeping the pastor in check?
The answer is that no one was keeping him in check because no one was allowed to question him.
Isn’t that just a dictatorship with a regime behind him?
But do you know why we stayed so long? Well, the proof was in the pudding…
The pastor was an A #1 abusive jackass. Still, people were coming to know Jesus, kids were being baptized, families were joining the church, and the membership was growing… who were we to question what God was doing? The pastor may have had issues, but God was working, so something must be right.
You hear similar things when you listen to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast. Although Mark Driscoll was a toxic one-man show, who was causing harm to people over and over, God was still working. The church was growing… the proof was in the pudding. So, instead of dealing with the unchecked issues with Mark, many of the things were overlooked or swept under the rug because he could always point to the proof. And in the end, it brought the entire church to its knees.
I even experienced this mindset in Tree Town. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. I knew something wasn’t right. I knew the pastor’s leadership was questionable at best, but he was my friend and was nothing like the pastor we had at our old church.
He didn’t seem loud and proud. He didn’t scream from the pulpit. He was even down on himself most of the time. When things went wrong, he usually went into a poor me mode. I didn’t realize at the time that this was just another form of abusive leadership. I was always worried I would let him down and send him down the depressive spiral, and he used that. His constant worrying about how things looked for him, to the point of him asking me to control the narrative instead of telling the entire truth… it wasn’t loud; it was a quiet manipulation. Abusive leadership doesn’t always mean screaming; abuse can be quiet and self-deprecating. It can come from a pastor who wrings his hands in worry about what others think about him because in the end, whether you are screaming or whispering, if ministry is all about the leader, there’s a problem…
But at the time I could overlook all of this because I was in the inner circle. I felt important and needed, but most of all, kids were coming to know Jesus, kids were being baptized, our camp numbers were up, and VBS was the biggest ever… the proof was in the pudding. And I nearly drowned in that pudding.
What if the proof isn’t in the pudding? What if God is working despite the leader? What if we realize that God has asked us to come alongside Him and minister to people, that He loves us and wants us, but He doesn’t need us? He is God, after all. What if God is working, and we think it’s because of the pastor or the leadership, and the truth is it has nothing to do with them at all?What if the pastor is hiding behind all the good things? What if people are being abused, belittled, and harmed behind that closed door?
That was happening at Mars Hill, and no one knew until it was too late. Anyone who brought up a negative word about the church or the pastor was shunned and called a liar. The pastor and the church had to be protected at all costs.
One of Mark Driscoll’s famous quotes was this… “There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus. By God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done.” “Either you get on the bus, or you get run over by the bus; those are the options. But the bus ain’t gonna stop.”
This comment came from a man who had been given way too much control. He himself was a runaway bus… but I wonder how many bodies are behind the proverbial church bus. How many people have been run over, and how many pastors didn’t care? How many were able to cover all the bad things up, because… look what God is doing… the proof is in the pudding…
But today, I pose this question to you… what if the proof isn’t in the pudding? What if the pudding is covering up a lot of things people need to see?
What if God is simply working because He is God, and the pudding has nothing to do with it?
Until Next Time,
Whitney