Seattle-based megachurch Mars Hill to disband

Two weeks after controversial founding pastor Mark Driscoll resigned, leaders of Seattle-based Mars Hill announced Friday the megachurch has begun the process of dissolving.

Rather than remaining a centralized, multi-site church, leaders are asking its 13 regional congregations to either go independent, merge with another church, or disband entirely, teaching pastor Dave Bruskas wrote in a blog post on the church website Friday afternoon.

“The best future for each of our existing local churches is for them to become autonomous self-governed entities,” Bruskas wrote. “This means that each of our locations has an opportunity to become a new church, rooted in the best of what Mars Hill has been in the past, and independently led and run by its own local elder teams.”

All of the church’s existing church properties will either be sold or the loans assumed by the independent churches, subject to approval by the lender.

All centralized staff will be laid off, Bruskas wrote.

Any funds left over will be gifted to the newly independent churches as seed money and then the existing organization will be dissolved.

Church leaders hope to complete the process by Jan. 1, 2015, Bruskas wrote.

The move follows growing problems that resulting in a large number of followers depart the church amid allegations of financial misconduct, sexism and bullying by Driscoll, who announced his resignation October 14.