Subtitle: How Long Until These Pages Are Scrubbed?
Sometime in 2012, the focus of Mars Hill Global became solidly on Global being the way Mars Hill Church did international missions. Do Mars Hill Church leaders still consider Mars Hill Global to be their international missions outreach? Despite the elimination of the Global Fund, the Mars Hill website still indicates that Mars Hill Global is the way Mars Hill Church supports international missions.
For instance, look at the current FAQ page:
And then there is this page. If you go to the Marshill.com and click the Connect tab, you come to this page. Note the “Global Ministries” link. It goes to the Mars Hill Global page.
And there is this December 2013 page promoting the 40 days of prayer:
Let the guesses begin. How long will these references to Global stay the same?
Month: July 2014
Mars Hill Church Scrubs Three Mars Hill Global Videos
UPDATE: Mars Hill claimed a copyright violation against the videos embedded below which resulted in them being removed from YouTube.
I’m not sure what to make of it but Mars Hill Church has made three videos private which were once featured on their Mars Hill Global You Tube channel. Two of them feature Pastor Mark Driscoll (in mid-2012) and in the other one, Pastor Sutton Turner (Jan. 2013) asks Mars Hill members for money to support Ethiopian church planting efforts (for a short time, you can see them in the list – #8, #24,#25 – on the Google cache page). Someone named muscleman uploaded the video featuring Sutton Turner before it was removed:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkgolN5w8Q[/youtube]
Transcript:
Howdy Mars Hill Church, pastor Sutton Turner here and I’m in Ethiopia, and I just want to thank Jesus for continuing to use Mars Hill Church to make disciples and plant churches. Mars Hill Global is the arm of Mars Hill Church that makes disciples and plant churches all over the world. We not only do church planting, but we help better equip church planters. Most recently, we shipped and now distributed a thousand Bibles into Amharic which is the language here in Ethiopia, and we launched a project to translate Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Doctrine book into Spanish. We have people from over 29 different countries that are giving on a monthly basis to Mars Hill Global.
So whether you’re a member of one of our Mars Hill Church locations in the United States or you’re one of 100,000 podcasters every single week, we encourage you to pray about giving above and beyond your tithe to Mars Hill Global. Thank you and let’s see more materials translated, more pastors sent out, more churches planted, and more people saved by Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)
Because the Google cache won’t last forever, here is a screen capture of the missing videos.
In the video, “To India, Ethiopia and Beyond: A Mars Hill Global Update,” Mark Driscoll takes the first minute of the video to give an update of church planting at Mars Hill in the U.S. Then he says, “We believe there are other opportunities and we are waiting for Jesus to clarify exactly where He wants us to go next. In addition, I want to tell you some things that are going on with Mars Hill Global.” (emphasis added). Note the transition from church planting at Mars Hill to a report about what is going on with Global. Driscoll then summarizes what is happening in India and Ethiopia. At one point, at 2:00, Driscoll points to the Mars Hill congregation and says, “You are funding over a dozen church planters in Ethiopia.” Later, he adds that through Mars Hill Global, the church is getting resources out “to the ends of the Earth.” In the other video, “What is Mars Hill Global?” Driscoll runs down a similar list of accomplishments. He says the international efforts are being done in addition to the church planting in the U.S.
From my point of view, beginning in early 2012, Mars Hill created an impression that gifts to Mars Hill Global were mainly going to international mission efforts. Inadvertently or not, they created confusion (as they have admitted) with their various definitions of Mars Hill Global (is it a non-member audience, is it a fund, is it both?), and their constant references to international efforts in the context of Mars Hill Global pleadings. Actually, most of this has been admitted. What is remarkable is that they used “the preponderance” of donations to expand their locations, even though they gave donors almost no indication that the money was being spent in real time for those local purposes.
In accord with fair use guidelines, I clipped relevant material from the deleted videos. These clips indicate that Driscoll presented Mars Hill Global as something Mars Hill Church was doing in addition to church planting in the U.S. This is of course make sense since the international efforts after 2011 had a name (Mars Hill Global) and a fund (the Global Fund). Non-members gave money to the General Fund and the Global Fund of Mars Hill Church and at times, Mars Hill leaders referred to Mars Hill Global as people around the world who donated money. However, in these clips, Global is referred to as an effort conducted by Mars Hill Church.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/YQM_TcGhGys[/youtube]
I don’t have an opinion about why these videos have been removed. Mars Hill has already acknowledged that the church caused confusion and the leaders spent money that at least some donors believed was going to international missions primarily on domestic expansion. In any case, these videos are three of the clearer presentations of MH Global as something Mars Hill does as opposed to seeing MH Global as a group of non-members who give money.
For all posts on Mars Hill Global, click this link.
Mars Hill Member Wants Accounting of Global Fund Donations
In late June, Mars Hill Church admitted that leaders took money designated for the church’s Global Fund and funneled those donations into their General Fund. On July 1, the church’s website disclosed that “the preponderance of expenses” were allocated to “church plants and replants in the U.S.” as opposed to mission efforts in India and Ethiopia. The church plants were Mars Hill Church branches in the United States.
Then in their July 11 newsletter, Mars Hill briefly addressed a petition at Change.org requesting an accounting of the amount of money spent on missions and the amount spent toward expansion of Mars Hill Church in the U.S. In that newsletter, they also claimed that letters were sent to 6,000 Global Fund donors offering them the opportunity to direct (again) their donations to missions work outside the U.S. While this may be true, not all Global Fund donors received this letter.
Recently, a Mars Hill member (I will call him John since he doesn’t want his identity revealed) contacted me to say he did not get a letter from Mars Hill about his donations to the Global Fund. He also provided a page of his online giving records to me. You can see a portion below with his name redacted.
While Mars Hill has now admitted that the Global Fund existed and was separate from the General Fund, this record provides additional evidence that members could designate their donations to the Global Fund. This evidence is in contrast to the following statement on the Mars Hill Global FAQ page:
Since 2009, we have used the term “Global” to help us distinguish between donors who attend our churches and donors around the world who follow us online.
That is only partly accurate. Indeed, on the Mars Hill giving website, donors are asked to designate whether or not they attend a Mars Hill church or not. Those who don’t attend a Mars Hill church are supposed to designate “global” as a location. However, until May of this year, donors could also designate a fund for their contribution. They could give to the General Fund, the Global Fund, or a Foundation designed to support church plants. Members and non-members alike could designate money to the Global Fund. The person above is a member of Mars Hill and designated his donations to the Global Fund.
See this video for a demonstration of how the website worked prior to the changes done in May.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4EFX3-RXyg[/youtube]
It should be a simple matter for Mars Hill Church accountants to run a report showing the amount given by non-members and members to the Global Fund and the General Fund. Likewise, a report could be generated to show where the Global Fund money was spent. However, despite the petition and the many requests for this information, Mars Hill has not provided it.
I asked John where he thought his money was being spent. He said, “It seemed pretty clear to me that the money was going to help out Pastors in Ethiopia as they received resources, training, and monetary assistance to plant churches abroad.” He added, “I had no reason to not believe it was going there until recent issues and events have come to light.”
I asked him what prompted him to donate to the Global Fund and he told me that the videos shown each Sunday before Mark Driscoll preached (e.g., this one) “were the most compelling part” of his decision to donate to the Global Fund. I asked John’s reaction to finding out that all of his donated money was not going to mission efforts. He said he had been eager to give time and money to Mars Hill, but now he said, “I no longer trust that Mars Hill will steward my tithes or others well and have begun giving my tithes to other church plants and missionaries.” He added, “There is no reason to hide from this unless they have either forgotten or choose to ignore the truth and freedom that comes from the Gospel of Jesus.”
John plans to discuss how to redirect or have his donations returned with his pastors in the near future.
The Institute on the Constitution's Imaginary Constitution
On the Institute on the Constitution’s Facebook page, the following image was posted on July 12:
The IOTC teachers Michael Peroutka and David Whitney believe that government has no role in the areas listed under family and church in this image above. This is apparently derived from the work of Abraham Kuyper and Christian reconstructionist Rousas Rushdoony (see this source).
As I looked at this, my reaction was that the IOTC teaches the Constitution of their imagination, not the actual one. According to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Congress also has the power to establish laws on bankruptcies and to make laws necessary to carry out Congressional powers. However, the IOTC teaches that families have jurisdiction over property and business ownership. Surely, property and business ownership cannot be left to individual families without some form of government regulation to protect the rights of all concerned. Bankruptcies involve individuals (often involving personal property and business ownership) but according to the Constitution, the Congress has the power to make laws regarding this aspect of commerce. Does the IOTC teachers think the Constitution has too much power?
Article 3, Section 2 establishes the courts to decide disputes between citizens over lands (property ownership) as well as other disputes between citizens. The actual Constitution gives citizens a judicial system as a protection. Families may not violate the rights of their members simply because they are biologically related. Churches may not violate the rights of their members simply because a member has signed a church covenant.
Article 4, Sections 2 requires that citizens in one state have the same rights in the several states. Article 6 makes the Constitution the supreme law in the land. The 7th Amendment in the Bill of Rights provides for the right of jury trial. Families and churches cannot claim exemption when disputes arise involving those spheres.
Families can govern their affairs, and churches have freedom to hold their beliefs sacred, unless those activities conflict with the Constitution and the powers given to civil government by it. We will always have debates about what those various limits are, but civil government has a much wider jurisdiction in the actual Constitution than in the one the IOTC teaches.
The IOTC course which is sweeping through Ohio and Maryland especially is particularly dangerous because it claims to teach about the U.S. Constitution but actually seeks to place the Christian reconstructionist interpretation of the Bible over the Constitution.
I prefer the actual Constitution.
Mars Hill Church Says A Little More But Not Enough About the Global Fund Changes
In this week’s email newsletter to members (dated 7/11/14), Mars Hill Church leaders mentioned the Change.org petition asking for financial accountability regarding the former Mars Hill Global Fund. Mars Hill has now admitted that money given to the Global Fund actually went in the church’s General Fund and mostly was spent on expanding Mars Hill video sites. Despite the fact that Mars Hill leaders admit there was a separate fund, they are requiring donors to contact the church and specifically designate (again) that their donation should go to missions (See the Global FAQs for more information). From the newsletter:
Update on Mars Hill Global
We are very thankful for what Jesus has done through our global family since 2009, with many disciples made and churches planted in the US, Ethiopia, and India.
As we strive to communicate the vision of Mars Hill Church, there has been an outside petition asking questions of Mars Hill. However, of the nearly 400 signers, only four have ever given to Mars Hill Global. We sent letters this past week to over 6000 Global donors giving them the option to designate their funds solely for international work if they wish. We received many replies of encouragement, as well as a few people who asked to change their designation, and we have gladly made those changes.
If you have any questions regarding Mars Hill Global, we have recently posted updates to our Global FAQ online page that you might find helpful.
I have heard from donors who did not get a letter or email from the church. In fact, I have not heard from any donors who did get a letter. Obviously, I am not in touch with 6,000 donors and so I am not saying a letter was not sent. However, some donors did not get a letter. Also, I would say it is a little early to quantify the reaction to Mars Hill’s change of public position (for a somewhat different reaction see Wenatchee the Hatchet). They just changed their Global FAQs on July 1.
I don’t understand what this sentence is trying to communicate: “We received many replies of encouragement, as well as a few people who asked to change their designation, and we have gladly made those changes.” Change designation from what to what?
The Global Fund was clearly designated as separate from the General Fund on the online giving page, as well as in Mars Hill documents. If donors wanted to designate their funds to Mars Hill Church’s General Fund, they had the option to do so. Thus, Global Fund donors were designating their money to what Mars Hill Church said was “how we as a church participate in the worldwide mission of Jesus” (see below from the FY 2013 Annual Report). Now Mars Hill is making their donors jump through another hoop to redesignate their money to missions. So when Mars Hill says they are changing the designations for gifts, I don’t understand. Are they really claiming that there was no designation before?
The petition (which is still open for signatures from anyone who wants to encourage disclosure in accord with ECFA guidelines) says:
Mars Hill Church has solicited millions of dollars for its “Global Fund” which, now that questions have been asked, has disappeared. It seems that most of the money was not spent on global or international outreach and that the money simply went into the general fund. Donors and those with a close interest or tie to Mars Hill Church ought to know exactly how much of what they gave was spent on international outreach. This is a part of a greater call for financial transparency from the leaders at Mars Hill Church.
Every time a person signs the petition, a letter is sent to the boards of Mars Hill Church and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability:
Mars Hill Church, please tell us how much “Global Fund” money was spent on “international” outreach. We donors, members, ex-members and the broader Christian community deserve transparency from the leadership at Mars Hill Church.
This is a question Mars Hill could answer easily. They know how many donors gave money, they certainly know how they spent the donor’s contributions. Mars Hill Church leaders already said the preponderance of the funds went to fund the expansion of Mars Hill video sites in the United States. Surely, they can tell us the actual numbers. Sources within Mars Hill have told me the percentage of Global Fund actually spent on missions is low, perhaps 5% or less. There is potentially quite a windfall for Ethiopia and India if Mars Hill donors would contact Mars Hill to stress they want those funds spent on missions. The amount would likely more than double the annual budget of Mars Hill’s partner for Ethiopia, New Covenant Foundation.
For all stories on Mars Hill Global, click the link.