If we want to enact social change, such as taking down a religious bully, we need to develop not only personal but public relationships with people outside our circle of influence.
Public relationships are negotiated relationships. They’re utilitarian, strategic, and episodic, meaning they start and stop in relationship to a mutually agreed upon goal.
Building public relationships introduces us to the practice of co-belligerence.
The term “co-belligerence” involves a mutually beneficial endeavor. Co-belligerents have temporarily found common ground to share, be it cultural, religious, ideological, or otherwise..
In early summer 2014, Paul Petry, the elder who’d defended Driscoll at our firstprotest, got in touch with me. He wanted me to meet Rob Smith. Rob had been a deacon at Mars Hill in 2007 but had resigned his membership to protest what he called “the unjust” trial Petry and another elder named Bent Myer were put through.
When Paul Petry introduced me to Rob Smith I knew I’d found my co-belligerent for this project. Rob and I formed a very public, intentional, and deeply respectful relationship.
Over time Rob and Paul Petry and I would become personal friends and they would go on to help us shape the beginnings of 3Practice Circles but at this juncture we were comrades, allies, and co-belligerents in the fight to take down a religious bully.
Rob and I share significant political and theological differences but when it came to rescuing as many people as possible from the deceptive leadership of Mark Driscoll there was no daylight between us.
Rob and I simply didn’t care if people liked us or agreed with us. I think this is one place Driscoll can teach us something. He clearly doesn’t care what you and I think of him, and we’ll need more of that if we expect to take down more political or religious bullies like him.
As Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, says, “The future belongs to those who take the present for granted.” Shirky is suggesting that the sooner you come to terms with the fact that your religious/political bully is not just bad but actually dangerous, the sooner you can begin to create a new future for yourself and your community.
Rob and I met briefly in 2007 on opposite sides of our first protest. Now in 2014 he had come to the same conclusion we had 7 years earlier, Driscoll wasn’t just another bad apple he was a dangerous apple.
“Mark had an issue with women, but it wasn't complementarianism, it was that he objectified women. Mark has sex problems.”
This protest group was made up primarily of ex-Mars Hill insiders who’d had it with Driscoll’s bullying. Following the instruction in Matthew 18, they tried to get him to meet privately for several years, but Driscoll was too busy to find time to hear their concerns and now ten years later has never apologized to any of the people he hurt.
Phoenix and Trinity Church you’ve been warned.
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