Mark Driscoll's flagship Christian conference has been cancelled due to "unforeseen changes" in the line-up of speakers, some of whom have recently distanced themselves from the controversial preacher.
Resurgence, a yearly conference born out of Driscoll's Mars Hill Church, will not take place this year, and those who have bought tickets will receive a refund, the organisation confirmed.
The news comes after a troubled period for the staunch Calvinist pastor, who was removed from the church planting network he founded, Acts 29, earlier this month. The pastor faces accusations of presiding over a culture of intimidation at the church, and former members have held protests. Additionally, his marketing practices for his books have been brought into question.
The event website now contains only this statement: "The Resurgence Conference has always been born out of our love of Jesus and the church, and the desire to support efforts to grow leaders to grow churches.
"Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel this year's conference due to unforeseen changes to our speaker line-up and other challenges we believe would make it difficult to provide the quality of conference people have come to expect from Resurgence."
Christian leaders Paul Tripp and James Macdonald had been due to speak at the conference; but they recently resigned from the oversight board of Mars Hill.
Paul Tripp said in a statement that he left the post because a "distant, external accountability board can never work well."
Other controversies surrounding Driscoll this year have been the coming to light of various un-politically correct comments that he made 14 years ago, such as calling Christian men "Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama's boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish".
