Part 1: The Chesapeake Church Bus
“There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus, and by God's grace, it'll be a mountain by the time we're done.” Mark Driscoll, former pastor of Mars Hill Church
In 2006, Ted Haggard was exposed for having sex with and buying methamphetamines from a gay prostitute.
In 2014, Mars Hill Church, a network of 13 churches under the leadership of Mark Driscoll, was dismantled virtually overnight. The fascinating story of the fall of Mars Hill is chronicled in “Who Killed Mars Hill?,” a podcast from Christianity Today. The podcast details the abusive nature of Mark Driscoll, whose unethical behavior, narcissism, and bullying ended in his resignation from the church he founded. The podcast, which debuted this past summer, gained immense popularity in a short amount of time.
In 2016, ten women filed a lawsuit against Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles and the Advanced Training Institute, charging him with sexual abuse. Gothard, a major voice within the conservative Christian homeschooling movement, had gained additional fame because of his ties to the popular reality television family, the Duggars.
In 2018, Bill Hybels, founder of the Willow Creek megachurch, outside of Chicago, resigned after several staff members accused him of sexual misconduct.
In early 2021, an investigative report revealed that influential evangelist Ravi Zacharias had engaged in multiple accounts of sexual misconduct, including rape. After initially denying allegations of abuse, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries eventually hired a law firm to investigate the claims of the alleged female victims. Unfortunately, Mr. Zacharias was never charged with a crime; he died in May 2020. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at his memorial service.
Carl Lentz, former pastor at the United States chapter of the megachurch Hillsong, is going to be the subject of a docuseries by Discovery Inc. Lentz was fired after a series of “moral failures,” including having an affair, inappropriate sexual conduct, and bullying.
These are just a handful of the fallen leaders within the Protestant Christian Church. Some of them simply succumbed to sin. Others were wolves in sheep’s clothing - narcissists drawn to a position and culture that would grant them both adulation and power.
One thing each of these church scandals have in common? Until exposure was no longer avoidable, the leaders, elders, and board members of these churches and organizations did their very best to cover up wrongdoing and to silence the victims.
Every single one.
In a piece in Vox about Bill Hybels’ resignation from Willow Creek, Katelyn Beaty, editor-at-large at Christianity Today, observed that[m]any evangelical institutions are beholden to the power of celebrity and of charismatic men, and have staked too much of their future on the ‘success’ of those men, regardless of potential wrongdoing. There can be a fear that if ‘bad news’ comes out about those men or the church, it will harm the spread of the gospel.
But the culture is changing. Churches are no longer willing to put up with abuse and corruption among their leadership. Women, especially, are not willing to remain silent or “forgive their abusers” in order to save the reputation of the church or the abuser himself. And today, when church leadership abandons the people who most need protection, there are other options.
In 2014, World Magazine broke the story that Mars Hills Church had paid a marketing company over $200,000 to make bogus book “purchases” to make sure that Mark Driscoll’s book, Real Marriage, made the New York Times best-seller list.
Around the same time, several bloggers exposed Driscoll’s vulgar personality and instances of his abusing his position of power within his church.
In 2018, Julie Roys, a radio host on Moody Radio, published a series of articles exposing corruption within Moody Bible Institute on her personal website. Her investigative reporting led to three of the top officers at MBI resigning their posts. Her reporting is also responsible for exposing James MacDonald, pastor of megachurch Harvest Chapel, of various misdeeds, including financial misconduct, bullying, and other miscreant behavior.
In 2019, the Washington Post wrote an article about the bloggers who are exposing abuse within Protestant churches. It profiles Darlene Parsons, who founded The Wartburg Watch, a blog dedicated to exposing hypocrisy in the Protestant church, and Julie Ann Smith, who began a blog recounting her own experience as a victim of spiritual abuse within the church she attended. Days after publishing her first article, Smith’s former pastor filed a lawsuit accusing her of defamation – a lawsuit that backfired miserably. Not only was it dismissed five weeks after being filed, but it garnered the attention of an ABC affiliate, and the story of a pastor suing a blogger went viral. Today, Smith runs Spiritual Sounding Board, a watchdog blog that covers a bevy of church abuse stories.
Individuals who come forth and tell the truth often face condemnation and ostracization. They risk losing friends, their church community, and their reputation. They are often asked to hide their stories so as not to harm the church.
But our Lord called on His people to clean house if it’s been fouled by its own leaders:
I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. [Revelation 2: 2, 7.]
After I learned about Chesapeake Church’s shameful treatment of the Lafferty family (names have been changed – the people and the incidents are real), I felt certain it wasn’t a one-time incident. And sure enough, just a little bit of investigation revealed multiple former members and employees of Chesapeake Church who can attest to witnessing or surviving mistreatment by Robert Hahn.
Turns out, there’s a pile of bodies behind the Chesapeake Church bus. By God’s grace, they survived.
And they want to tell their stories.
This is a platform for them to do so.