Pastor Mark Driscoll Teaches Us How To Be His Personal Assistant

To be honest, there are asshole secular bosses who basically say the same thing.

Its this one that gets me:

15. Is always accessible.

If you call or text on his day off, he’s available and on it.

Yeah.. people who work for you dont deserve days off or time with their family or friends. You massive douche.
 

 No, there’s a phrase for someone like that.  It’s someone who has “drank the kool-aid,” so to speak.

My husband and I have this running gag where we talk about buying a Compound and hiring on henchman.  We will pay close attention to these rules and may use them later when our nefarious plans come to fruition.

Sounds like he’s looking for another wife.

Where can I get me one of those “assistants”?  Oh, I forgot.  Pastors are special, I’m not.

because he loves Jesus, the church, and you.

While there’s something to be said about being mature about it when your boss shitcans you, having done 19 other things listed to the tee and loyally, you think your assistant actually loves YOU?

As someone who has looked for and had many jobs, there is no shortage of employers whose ideal hire is a lackey with no personal aspirations. Basically a person who functions like a machine because machines can’t do everything yet, the equivalent of being a second “them” to save them from having to do all that dull stuff themselves. While I understand some people are busy and important, expecting that person to love you when you’ve fired them is way over the line. Expecting them to never want your job or leverage their experience to a better job than being your perfect loyal shadow is over the line.

What Driscoll has listed is not uncommon and maybe even better to know this ahead of taking the job, because sometimes you find out after.

Yeah, but he uses “whom” wrong in the first rule.

“When it comes to the call of leadership, there’s nothing wrong with being a #2. In fact, it’s a high calling. For instance, Jesus is the right-hand man of his Father (actually seated at God’s right hand), doing the work God the Father sent him to do.”

So God’s right hand man, was actually still God, right?  I get confused by the Trinity.  Isn’t God Jesus and Jesus God, the same way Jesus is a communion wafer?

First of all, is he comparing himself and his assistant as god and Jesus? I would think he would at most consider himself a #3 making his assistant his #4.

In reply though, what I think bosses like this want is to be able to split themselves in two; they want their assistant to be just like a second them and work as though the boss’s thoughts and actions are completed by the assistant, seamlessly as if the same person just doing all the menial assistance so the boss isn’t interrupted to do it himself. See the first one listed on this page (3), “Does your thing. He’s not using you to do his thing.” An ideal assistant to a boss doesn’t have his own personhood and is rather just another body for the boss to use as if it were himself, to get himself a coffee or as a messenger; it reads his own mind and does these things as if you could remote control him with your own thoughts and have things in your hand when you want them and not 10 minutes after you have to ask for them.

So I don’t get confused by the trinity or Driscoll’s reference to being a #2 as if it were a high calling. Of course, he’s delusional, but as confirmed, not a lot different than many bosses. He may have some idea that it’s essentially thankless and difficult to subordinate oneself so completely to another person or he may not, I think not, I think he really believes his assistant is doing something super-important because he believes himself to be that important, and of course, Jesus never complained. So he’s shoveling bullshit. It’s difficult because I’m not saying bosses don’t need assistance, it’s the expectation that the assistant has no self, that this is the living they imagined for themselves to make.

In other words, he’s Driscoll’s personal slave. If he shows any sign of rebellion, Driscoll will destroy him.

Sounds like demands made by someone else – but who? Let me think…

I’ve had jobs where I didn’t care how much I was making to live like this. I never really care about money as long as I have enough, but I wouldn’t notice the difference between 15,000/year and 150,000/year* if my life was working like this every day. I can’t deal with it, and I personally don’t know why this little dance when you’re looking for a job – where you have to say all the things you can do and are willing to do and how much the company means to you and loyalty and longevity and all that. Just once I’d like to ask someone for a job, tell the truth, “I will do a great job, but I have a life, and I just need to eat. I won’t embarrass you or steal. Ok?” It’s the truth, isn’t it?

*I’ve never made anywhere near that much in my life, but making a lot less found I never had time to spend my money on anything but living expenses anyway. It’s a huge chunk of my life they’re renting that I can’t get back with money, so I find it hard to suffer in complete subordination to someone else with high expectations that I’m not so much a human being but his personal robot. Just like commission sales, it’s not for me.

Actually, in Jonestown, there were many, many tests of drinking the kool-aid (or flavor aid) before that last horrible day.  So, “drinking the kool aid” doesn’t just mean someone who dies…it’s someone who’s willing to prove that they’ll die (and prove it over and over again!).

I just don’t seen anything at all redeeming in that kind of servitude (outside of kinky BDSM play!).  It’s especially problematic when it requires a person to constantly subjugate their will to someone.  I’m not sure it’s ever healthy to do that.
(oooohhh…I see you graduated from theological seminary this year [majored in new testament studies too]…that explains more than a few things)

#3… Does anyone else see gay undertones there? ;P

While I think most of this list is pretty reasonable for a pastor’s assistant (besides maybe number 15), my problem with it is that he’s probably using this to shove it in someone’s face. Someone working under him might not be pleasing him, so he publishes a list of all the godly things this person should strive for. Then other people in the church can look at that list, so if that person complains, they can easily point out what *that* person did wrong, not what Driscoll is doing wrong.

Sounds like a middle-management job I had at a small CAD company a few years back.  They have a new leader now.  I didn’t wait.

I couldn’t resist thumbing through the other links in the article.  What a severe mind-control cluster**** of a church this is.

 But this list isn’t for the pastor’s assistant. This is what he expects of the lead pastors of the individual congregations that he oversees. Basically he wants to treat even his lead pastors as personal assistants, which is pretty creepy and shows how authoritarian Driscoll is.

This list is for what he expects of his lead pastors, not for personal assistants. If this is how he treats people he has placed in authority over thousands of people, I’d hate to see his lists for personal assistants.

Wow, where do I sign up?

I had a boss who treated me like that. Took it for the longest time, but after 2 months with 3 days off total and multiple double shift days a week, I snapped and walked out. 

Took almost a year total before I quit though. 

I can only assume women are not allowed to even be number 2 at Driscoll’s churches, since every rule says “he” or “his” or “him.” There’s never a mention of “she” or “her” or “hers.”