Janet Mefferd: The Alternate Ending

by Frank Turk

UPDATED 05 Dec 2013: Yesterday at the start of the 2 PM hour (central time) Janet Mefferd issued an apology for the interview with Mark Driscoll, and also removed all the links and files related to this incident.

For the record, my assumption is that Janet has acted inside her own good conscience and has reached this conclusion based on her own review of the events. Until/unless there is evidence to the contrary, we should all operate under that assumption for two reasons:

1. It speaks best of Mrs. Mefferd. It assumes that she is neither a victim nor the kind of drive-by hooligan some in the blogosphere have made her out to be.

2. It keeps our own consciences clear, and avoids acting like rumor mongers and people with hard hearts.

If there is more to discuss here, I'll come back to it.

Yes, I know.  I should be doing something else, Like Ministry.  This is the third of 3 posts on this subject, tracking back to yesterday and earlier today.

Back on Thursday, I got a tweet from some of my magic helpers that I needed to listen to the next segment of Janet Mefferd when it came on the web (recorded).  So I waited for it to go to the archive, and it took a little while, but here's what I found:

I have a few comments about this video and the ensuing firestorm, so what else have you got to do? Prepare for Thanksgiving?

The first comment is this -- Mark Driscoll is obviously a fantastic historian.  I have covered that in the previous post.

But let's forbid that we seem too harsh.  Mark may be battling the flu, or be on cold medicine, and he may be too weak to take it.  But the uncut video reviewed there seems to be less than congruent with the events Pastor Driscoll has described.

In that context, Janet certainly went after Mark in her radio interview -- something, let's face it, Mark has never allowed before.  Maybe no one has ever really had the audacity to try since Driscoll is well-known as a manly man. But Janet addressed the appearance of wrong-doing at the StrangeFire conference in the first segment, and then moved on to Mark's new book in the next segment.

Put on your Big Girl Pant-TAYS!
If you want to DANCE!

That brings me to my second comment: I think it's a lot less than credible for Driscoll to believe nobody would eventually call him on his antics if he gave enough interviews.  Let's be serious: he did what he did for publicity, and it was exactly what he wanted.  For him to feign suffering indignity at this point can only be accounted for as part of the show -- not as any actual loss of dignity.  He doesn't have a scrap of that left to lose.

But let's turn to the second segment for a moment just for the sake of finishing this post well.  It's one thing to mention you have heard something from someone you know (and to do so in print), and it's another thing use those ideas without attribution.  That, ultimately, is the hazard of writing non-fiction.  Over the weekend, Wade Burleson weighed in about his view of the documentation problems with Driscoll's book.  I don't know anyone who would write a book using someone else's ideas without fully attributing them at all points.   I think Janet's argument gains full force when she cites the Mars Hill web site's fair use statement and points out that it seems like Pastor Driscoll may have the problem of a double standard.

Further, let's also remember that Mark Driscoll is a man and not a venerated saint.  As Carl Trueman points out in his piece from this weekend, someone ought to tell the Emperor when he's not wearing any clothes -- and if that's not politically correct, we have a problem of Christian ethics to deal with when it comes to the lifestyles of the Young, Restless and Reformed.

However, what has surfaced, apparently through Mark's publisher, is this alternate version of the last 2 minutes of the audio:

DOWNLOAD THE MP3 RIGHT HERE

What's unusual about this clip, I think, is that it turns out that it was allegedly recorded by the fellows at Mars Hill.  I had no idea that was ever done when one does an interview, but everyone lives the way they live.  It's obviously different than the end of the interview which went out live, and it bears another strange artifact: the voice of Mark's producer during the end of the interview.

That artifact is strange for one reason only: plainly, Mark's voice is over the phone; his assistant (I am told it is the voice of Justin Dean) is plainly not on the phone -- his voice doesn't sound like it's coming over the phone line but from another (better quality) mic. If they were doing a remote or some sort of studio-to-studio broadcast, that makes sense, but a phone interview?  Obviously they do it differently than many.

It seems to me we have to clear this one up, too.  By "we," I don't mean tiny, unable-to-hiatus me and then DJP.  I mean "we" the people tossing out accusations who are public people.  And I think there's an easy way to do this.

The version published to YouTube by the Janet Mefferd Show and Salem Radio has the breaks cut out, as podcasted radio often does. That audio is an air check, recorded from the output of the board in Janet's studio.  It is recorded on the Dallas end of the line.  While Ms. Mefferd's people have been adamant that they did not use the kill switch at any time for this interview (it's clear this is true during the interview earlier as Janet and Mark talk over each other a couple of times), it's possible, I guess, that someone's finger slipped.  However, it's unlikely that any fingers slipped on the Seattle side of the phone.  Since they were plainly recording the show, I say they come forward with the whole thing including the breaks so we can see what Pastor Driscoll was doing while the listeners were listening to commercials.  I'm sure he got moral support from Mr. Dean as the interview was not conducted from a position of genuflection on the part of Ms. Mefferd, and it will speak to the authenticity of the whole "alternative ending" now provided by Mars Hill and Tyndale.

What we certainly don't want to find out is that Mark Driscoll hung up in frustration, Mars Hill lied to Tyndale, and has caused Justin Taylor to promulgate a lie and accuse Ms. Mefferd of a few things he might regret having said.  What we want is to bring all the facts to light, exonerate Mark Driscoll, demonstrate that he doesn't live in a fantasy world where he is the dictator of thing past, present and future, and that the rest of us can retire since the only safe future for the Church is the one in his hands, according to his book, with or without a footnote.  That's the safe path, and I pray that we can all take it -- because after the events at StrangeFire, Mark's batting average is at stake. (which is not to say: again)

Can we live with the consequences of what we find when all the facts come to light?