‘Fierce Wolves’: Mark Driscoll Accuses Former Lieutenant Of Trying To Split Trinity Church
Pastor Mark Driscoll warned his followers Wednesday of “fierce wolves … among you,” following the sudden departure of an associate minister and former security guard known as Driscoll’s chief henchman.
A mass email Driscoll sent at 7:44 a.m. accused Caleb Glennie of attempting to split Trinity Church, a Scottsdale, Arizona, congregation with reported weekly average attendance of 5,000 people.
“(He) took church members’ private information to solicit, urged staff members to resign and follow him … and announced a Men’s gathering on Tuesdays,” the email said. “Caleb has been lying for months. We rebuke Caleb and urge him to repent of sin patterns that have disqualified him as a pastor.”
READ: Mark Driscoll’s Booming Trinity Church Pays $15.5M For Vacant Office Complex
Driscoll started Trinity Church in 2016 after a series of scandals led to the implosion of his previous church, Mars Hill Seattle. His former elders have said that he’s not qualified for ministry. His current church has no elders.
With the new congregation, Driscoll has said that one of the core values is going on offense.
He has also emphasized the need for loyalty and built a large security team that runs extensive surveillance operations on people who leave the church. Glennie, a 43-year-old Army veteran, played a key role on the team, according to former members. He helped develop tactics and procured equipment, including semiautomatic, AR-style rifles.
Glennie was later promoted to head of the men’s ministry, “Real Men.”
Now Driscoll is threatening legal action and calling Glennie a false teacher, quoting the apostle Paul’s warning in Acts 20.
“Pay careful attention,” the Bible verse says. “Fierce wolves will come in among you … and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things,” “to draw away the disciples after them.”
Trinity Church did not immediately respond to an email from the Roys Report (RR) with questions about disqualifications and false teaching. Glennie did not respond to multiple texts.
Internal divisions becoming public
Vince Manuele, author of “Kiss and Tell,” an insider’s account of what he calls Driscoll’s “corruption, control, and abuse,” said the church’s aggressive response to Glennie is telling. Trinity’s typical approach is to ignore critics and remain silent when people leave.
“This is definitely a crack up,” Manuele told RR. “The fact that they sent this thing out shows that there’s a rift, and it’s starting to show.”
Glennie was baptized at Driscoll’s church in 2020. A year later, his wife, Jill, and two of their three children were also baptized at Trinity.
“This is the best day of my life,” Glennie said at the time. “I can’t even explain the feeling.”
Glennie worked as a real estate agent in 2021 but stopped selling houses to join the church staff. He was ordained in the church in 2023 and became the men’s minister, overseeing an area of major emphasis for Driscoll.
Glennie did not go to seminary or receive any kind of theological education, according to Manuele. He was mentored by Driscoll and became Driscoll’s right-hand man.
Another former member of Trinity who once called Glennie her “spiritual father” told RR that Glennie was devoted to Driscoll.
“He was at Mark’s beck and call,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution. “Caleb was about Mark, Mark, Mark. He saw himself as Mark Driscoll’s protector, absolutely.”
Didn’t care about past scandals
Glennie and others who joined Trinity knew of Driscoll’s controversial past, of course.
They knew he once boasted about the “pile of dead bodies” he’d left behind him in his determination not to let anything get in the way of ministry. They knew the story about how Driscoll screamed “How dare you!” in a church service. They knew he’d said crude things about women and pushed through a change of the bylaws at the church in Seattle that gave him more control and less accountability.
They knew he’d been accused of abusive leadership.
Some of the accusations they dismissed as fabrications. But others they believed, Manuele said, and kind of liked.
“The whole thing is about men and masculinity,” he told RR. “They have an obsession with Mark and like being close to him. Mark is always going to have people he can attract. He could kill someone and still have people follow him.”
Driscoll’s ministry and message have resonated with enough people that his Arizona church is apparently growing. Trinity is constructing a new building that will quadruple the size of its current footprint and have five times as much parking. The project is expected to cost $50 million.
Driscoll has also launched his own app, with his sermons, Bible exposition, culture war commentary and “practical tools to fix your marriage.” According to the ministry, the app has been downloaded more than 150,000 times.
Ministers leaving
But there still appears to be a lot of ongoing, internal turmoil at Trinity. Multiple staff members have left, calling the church culture disgusting and cult-like. One former member of the security team told RR that church leaders rank members, 1 to 10, on a loyalty scale, and maintain a list of former members banned from the property.
An archived version of the church website shows that four of Trinity’s 11 ministers have left in the last year, including Glennie and “Real Women” minister Julie Krombien.
According to the church email, Krombien and her husband, Todd, are joining Glennie and his wife to start a new church.
The cause of the split remains unclear. According to the church email, Glennie informed leadership last week that he and Jill were leaving “effective immediately.” He asked for six month’s severance pay but also, the church claims, used a Trinity credit card for personal expenses.
The email claims that Glennie refused to meet with anyone and wiped all the information from his church-provided laptop before disappearing.
If he thought that it was going to be a quiet departure, the email dispelled that misconception.
“No one is safe from Mark’s wrath,” Manuele said. “This is obviously a pattern with Driscoll. Anyone that leaves the church and anyone that even talks to people that leave the church, they are outcast.”
This article was originally published by The Roys Report.
Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.