Will Troutman

Husband to Sarah, Counselor to some and partaker of delicious snacks.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@reachjulieroys So selective accountability it would seem. These congregants deserve an honest account.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@JosephGriffinJG I haven’t watched every snap this year, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I saw one quick WR screen ever from this offense.

[Mike Cosper @MikeCosper]

The story of Mars Hill is not the story of @pastormark being some tough guy who stood up to weak-kneed Seattle leftists and got run out of town.

It's the story of a pastor who broke promise after promise — not to make the church about his celebrity and platform, not to betray their love for the city of Seattle, not to use the largesse of the church for his personal benefit, not to betray the biblical and theological values that defined their culture from the beginning of the church.

Over and over, Driscoll disappointed people. Not the outliers, the liberals and fringe hangers-on who wanted to ride the church's success, but the MOST committed, most devoted, most responsible for Driscoll's rise in prominence and his success as a national movement leader.

He disappointed them not with mere human frailty, but with power grabs, with a spirit of vengeance, with an insistence that Mars Hill's success wasn't the result of a uniquely talent-dense and gospel-centered community, but of his own cult of personality.

He ran the most committed and most talented off, either out of the staff or out of town, and certainly out of positions of influence.

But, when you burn the bridges with every person who made you successful, you refuse to repent of your sins, you constantly double down on your own certainty and rightness, it tends to catch up.

He was investigated by a group of godly men who found him unqualified to serve in ministry. Rather than enter a process of repentance and restoration — which all of them wanted — he quit, jumped town, and ran off to Arizona like a deadbeat dad skipping out on child support and alimony.

Dozens of churches bear the scars of his failure to live up to the calling of a pastor in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Hundreds of people await the phone call where he takes any responsibility for the ways he not only wounded them at the time, he has slandered them for the decade-plus since. He claims without evidence there was a plot to take over the church. That's not just wrong, is slanderously wrong, a slander against the pastoral teams at 15 churches that were at pains to keep things together while the maelstrom came down around his head.

He vanished, though, and restarted with Trinity Church.

Since COVID, he's tried to rebuild his platform around MAGA and criticism of the Left. Driscoll's unique blend of biblicism and "I am the prophet and I saw weird things in my dreams so you need to follow me" is far more unhinged now than it was 20 years ago, but the rule of the day is that if you hate the right people, you'll find a lot of allies.

That brand of tribalism has brought him into the orbit of a bunch of MAGA personalities who ought to know better. Who ought to be able to Google the backgrounds of their ministry partners. Who ought to be able to equally apply high standards of church governance and church discipline to a member who embraces radical LGBTQ ideology to a former pastor who rejects the basic biblical requirements of repentance, reconciliation, and humility.

If you think that one of those is dismissable in a way that the other isn't, I'd love to hear your rationale.

But if we say character matters, character is destiny, and all the rest of that stuff, and we look away from the mountain of evidence disqualifying Driscoll from the platform in general and the pulpit in particular, and we normalize him at some culture war event cuz he hates the right people, then I suppose all the things the Left has critiqued the Right about — abandoning all principles and morals in the era of Trump — is indisputably true after all.

I'm not MAGA. I could care less in many ways. But I do want better for my MAGA brothers and sisters.

[Thomas Chatterton Williams @thomaschattwill]

Speech is not violence. Violence is violence.

[Golf Digest @GolfDigest]

Scottie Scheffler just gave one of the best (and deepest) press conference answers ever heard.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@clairehopple 😂 “This paper has anthrax on it, peace out sucka!”

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@StarWarsDaily_ I agree with the consensus regarding the actress who played Reva. I also didn’t like the undermining of the of the lightsaber. Reva survives multiple stabs?? Qui-Gon Jinn apparently didn’t attend that training. Final act was fun, but we got B- treatment of a sacred character.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

Vosteed Giveaway https://t.co/WVFl6WI9kb

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@clairehopple Spouse has that much more street cred as he powers that electric bike.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@costello_nic What is the “smarter play”that has anything to do with basketball? Intent is everything with what he did.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@Marta_Barbian Shot callers, obvi

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@SportsMediaJB Great spot!

[SEC Network @SECNetwork]

RT if you think @GamecockFB is in.

[South Carolina Football @GamecockFB]

We are THE University of South Carolina.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@StephenKellySC @GamecockFB That was close to the scene at the Troutmans!

[Barstool Gamecocks @Barstool_Cocks]

This is art.

[Brad Crawford @BCrawford247]

Put this South Carolina team in the College Football Playoff. The Gamecocks have earned it.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

The little changes in vernacular are always interesting to me.

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

When did the red zone become the red area?

[Will Troutman @troutmaster76]

@DoGoodRon_ UPS guy from the future