A lawsuit against past leaders of the now-defunct Mars Hill Church was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle on Feb. 29, reports Warren Throckmorton at Patheos.
The lawsuit alleges that Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner solicited charitable contributions that were then misused for other, unauthorized purposes. The lawsuit, filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, is being brought by Brian and Connie Jacobsen and Ryan and Arica Kildea.
Beginning in 2011, or earlier, and continuing through 2014, RICO Defendants and their co-conspirators engaged in a continuing pattern of racketeering activity by soliciting, through the internet and the mail, contributions for designated purposes, and then fraudulently used significant portions of those designated contributions for other, unauthorized purposes. It was a pattern of racketeering activity that extended through a myriad of MHC projects, including the Global Fund, the Campus Fund, the Jesus Festival, and the promotion of Driscoll’s book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (“Real Marriage”).
…A church is not simply a building and programs. MHC was a community of individuals—non-member attendees who considered MHC to be their church home, members, elders and pastors—who worked together in pursuit of a common mission—to make disciples and plant churches in the name of Jesus. Needless to say, the four groups are interdependent and the church cannot function without each of them. However, the RICO Defendants engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity so deeply embedded, pervasive and continuous, that it was effectively institutionalized as a business practice, thereby corrupting the very mission Plaintiffs and other donors believed they were supporting.
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