Popular mega, multi-site Seattle, Washington ministry Mars Hill Church won’t be around to welcome home the victors of the Super Bowl 2015 if the Seattle Seahawks do indeed win again this year. The church, once pastored by the famously controversial Mark Driscoll will close down its mega operation on December 31.

Driscoll, 44, who interviewed Quarterback Russell Wilson and four of the other devout Christian players a few weeks before Super Bowl 2014, resigned as pastor of Mars Hill Church just last month.

In fact, the decision to dissolve Mars Hill Church was sparked by his resignation.

"Everything is closing down at the end of the year, including our central offices," Mars Hill communications director Justin Dean told The Christian Post.

After selling or transferring all property and assets that belong to the church, it will use its capital to satisfy its remaining debt, provide severance pay to staff that will be laid off at the end of the year then offer seed money to the newly independent churches.

Each of the church’s 13 locations will begin to be independently managed by their own respective lead pastor and/or elder team and is welcome to use whatever technology, applications, etc. that they feel necessary, stated Dean via email to CP.

On the church’s website, current teaching pastor David Bruska states the following:

Following much prayer and lengthy discussion with Mars Hill’s leadership, the board of Mars Hill has concluded that rather than remaining a centralized multi-site church with video-led teaching distributed to multiple locations, the best future for each of our existing local churches is for them to become autonomous self-governed entities. This means that each of our locations has an opportunity to become a new church, rooted in the best of what Mars Hill has been in the past, and independently led and run by its own local elder teams.

 

All of this comes to head after an October 2013 confrontation with nationally-syndicated Christian talk radio host Janet Mefferd and Mars Hill co-founder Driscoll. Her interview with Driscoll featured her discussing charges of plagiarism in his books, specifically A Call to Resurgence. Then, an investigation by WORLD Magazine.com revealed that Driscoll had used more than $210,000 in church funds to promote one of his books.

Driscoll took a sabbatical from his church back in August before officially resigning October.

During his time away, The Huffington Post reported that 21 former Mars Hill Church pastors filed charges against Driscoll, saying that he had engaged in a pattern of unrepentant, abusive and intimidating conduct.

According to the Huffington Post the charges lodged with the executive elders of the church, included:

* “Pastor Mark exhibits lack of self-control by his speech and by verbally assaulting others.”
* “We believe that the way Pastor Mark leads has created a culture of fear instead of a culture of candor and safety. People are often afraid to ask questions or challenge certain ideas.”
* “Pastor Mark is verbally abusive to people who challenge him, disagree with him, or question him.”

Driscoll was even removed from Acts 29 Network, a church-planting network of more than 500 churches he helped found after a pattern of “ungodly and disqualifying behavior.”

Fellow clergyman Timothy Keller, the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, told The New York Times of Driscoll’s “brashness and the arrogance and the rudeness in personal relationships — which he himself has confessed repeatedly."

This so-called brashness, however, was part of what many deemed to be Driscoll’s own unique charm and it was what catapulted him into internet fame with sermon podcasts downloaded by millions each week then being dubbed by Forbes Magazine one of the nation's most prominent and celebrated pastors.

He was edgy when he had to be and irreverent when he needed to be, especially concerning the role of men in society.

Driscoll was known for espousing dogma that placed men as the official breadwinners of the home, that discouraged women from being preachers and that challenged men to become better leaders of their home.

His most notorious comment was revealed by Warren Throckmorton  in his July 29 Patheos blog, claiming that Driscoll wrote – using the alias William Wallace - on the Mars Hill group forum in 2000 that “we live in a completely pussified nation.”

After all the allegations, Mark Driscoll apologized to his congregation and worldwide supporters when returning from his vacation at the end of August.