Ballard’s most famous and controversial church is featured in a long New York Times Magazine article this morning with the headline, “Who Would Jesus Smack Down? Mark Driscoll, a Pastor with a Macho Conception of Christ.”
The story on Mars Hill Church takes an in-depth look at Driscoll’s Calvinism teachings (especially controversial gender roles), the church’s high-tech outreach and its younger, edgier adherents. An excerpt:
Mars Hill Church is the furthest thing from a Puritan meetinghouse. This is Seattle, and Mars Hill epitomizes the city that spawned it. Headquartered in a converted marine supply store, the church is a boxy gray building near the diesel-infused din of the Ballard Bridge. In the lobby one Sunday not long ago, college kids in jeans — some sporting nose rings or kitchen-sink dye jobs — lounged on ottomans and thumbed text messages to their friends.
