As someone who occasionally attended Mars hill and a daughter and family who were members I can tell you of Marks charismatic power. When he started in a very small church in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle, I commented to my daughter that he needed prayer to protect him from the failings of so many powerful preachers and teachers. I marveled at the tattooed, rumpled crowds who filled his church looking like they just rolled out of bed or crawled out from a homeless tent. Yes I saw the masculine rhetoric but his preaching was for the most part powerful and orthodox. It is tragic how his own ego, narcissism and the adulation he received brought him down. I know former staff members damaged by his abuse. It is very sad that he apparently still does not acknowledge his own sin and faults. The Christianity today podcast is a great service to the church, but it would be a mistake to demonize Mark to such an extent that we miss how the forces of evil are at work and how easy it is for all of us to not see in our own weaknesses how things can go terribly wrong.