SEATTLE (AP) - Minutes before the pastor walks to the pulpit, loud indie rock blasts from speakers to a crowd of mostly 20-somethings. The band on stage wears black, and the lead singer, with his scruffy five o'clock shadow and hair slicked down in rock-star style, croons about Emmanuel and rejoicing.
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(Photo: AP)
Welcome to Sunday service at Mars Hill Church, where the worship band plays indie rock, churchgoers smoke outside, and the pastor looks more like the head of a fraternity than the head of an evangelical church.
In a liberal city notorious for being "unchurched," and at a time when mainline Protestant churches have been in decline nationwide, this non-denominational mega-church has grown to about 6,000 people since it started in 1996. It's a mostly young crowd who come to hear the music, charismatic preacher and conservative theology at Mars Hill.
With his football-player stature, clean-cut hair and jeans torn at the knees, 36-year-old pastor Mark Driscoll could easily fit into most Seattle bars.
And he sounds like it too.
His sermons refer to everything from Mac & Jack's beer to women foiling their hair.
"Boaz has no game at all," said Driscoll at one Sunday sermon, referring to a Biblical figure who was unresponsive to his wife, Ruth, when they first met.
"The way we do things has a very Seattle vibe to it, from technology, music to style," said Driscoll, a Seattle native.
Driscoll preaches at the church's flagship black warehouse in the trendy Ballard neighborhood, but people can also watch him preach through streaming video and read his blog on the church's web site.
For members like Joy Pinkham, Driscoll's teachings are culturally relevant.
"He teaches what the Bible preaches - he doesn't sugar coat it," said 21-year-old Pinkham, a preschool teaching assistant and hair stylist, who wore a mod bob with side-swept bangs.
Tattoos, punk rock and alcohol aren't banned for this predominantly white congregation where more than half are between ages 21 and 30 and where many look like college students or yuppie hipsters.
"We take the Bible as literally true," Driscoll said. "If the Bible doesn't forbid something, we believe there's a lot of freedom in cultural issues."
It's part of Driscoll's conservative theology - a literal interpretation of the Bible where heaven and hell are very real, Mary was a virgin, and where sex before marriage and homosexuality are sins.
And it's this theology, along with Mars Hill's views on women, that have mired Driscoll and his church in controversy.
Women can't be pastors at Mars Hill and are encouraged to submit to their husbands.
It's raised some eyebrows on the blogosphere and among more liberal churchgoers in Seattle.
Not allowing women in church leadership is an injustice, said Adam Walker Cleaveland, a Presbyterian seminary student and blogger who has criticized Driscoll on his own blog.
The Bible is about adopting the ideas of Jesus Christ - like helping the disenfranchised - and not about taking the Bible literally, said Suzanne Gordon, 48, who attends a liberal Methodist church in Seattle.
"It's a distortion of the Bible," she said about conservative theology. "It's not an open, thinking, questioning, evolving type of character," she said. Continue >>
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