Author: Warren Throckmorton

Compare Paul Tripp's Explanation For His Resignation With The One Offered By Mars Hill Church's BOAA

I first reported Paul Tripp’s resignation from the Mars Hill Church Board of Advisors and Accountability on July 30.
Then, after much speculation, on August 1, the church’s weekly news email reported reasons for Tripp’s resignation:

Dr. Paul Tripp joined our Board of Advisors and Accountability in November 2013 and has been an immense help to our leaders over the past year. Dr. Tripp has extensive experience in discipleship and Biblical counseling. Earlier this month, we made the decision together to open the opportunity for him to work with greater focus on issues directly related to his expertise, namely the continued development of our community and redemption ministries.

Because simultaneously being a board member and a consultant does not allow for the required definition of “independence,” Dr. Tripp graciously submitted his resignation from the BOAA in early June, so that he can more extensively serve our church as a consultant. We are excited to continue this work with him, and are thankful for his continued support of Mars Hill Church.

Now compare this statement with Paul Tripp’s statement today:

It’s because of this love that I accepted the position on Mars Hill Church’s BoAA. But it became clear to me that a distant, external accountability board can never work well because it isn’t a firsthand witness to the ongoing life and ministry of the church.

Such a board at best can provide financial accountability, but it will find it very difficult to provide the kind of hands-on spiritual direction and protection that every Christian pastor needs. Unwittingly what happens is that the external accountability board becomes an inadequate replacement for a biblically functioning internal elder board that is the way God designed his church to be lead and pastors to be guided and protected.

So, since I knew that I could not be the kind of help that I would like to be through the vehicle of the BoAA, I resigned from that position.

I would still love to see the leadership community of Mars Hill Church become itself a culture of grace and I am still willing to help, but not through the means of a board that will never be able to do what it was designed to do.

Do they seem the same to you?

The Mars Hill BOAA makes it sound like the decision was mutual (“we made the decision together”) and that they reason for resignation was a conflict of interest. However, Tripp says the reason relates to his fundamental rejection of the “external accountability board” model. He has two objections to this model. One, it doesn’t work, and two, it isn’t compatible with Bible teaching.

Acts 29 Network also found fault with the BOAA to provide accountability:

 In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter. But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming. 

The BOAA later reacted in defense over those charges, with chairman Michael Van Skaik saying he had not talked with anyone at the Acts 29 Network board.

Even with the public statements it does not appear that the public is getting the entire story.

Is it possible that Paul Tripp did not tell the Mars Hill Church about his real reasons for resigning? Could it be that Acts 29 did not communicate with anyone at Mars Hill? Or was the BOAA being kept in the dark by Tripp and Acts 29?

For now, it appears that there are significant discrepancies in the accounts.

Additional information: Ex-member Scott Shipp takes the comparisons back in time to December 2013.

Paul Tripp Says He Resigned from the Board of Advisors and Accountability Because the Model Doesn't Work

Former Mars Hill Church Board of Advisors and Accountability member Paul Tripp broke his silence on his website by saying the following:

It’s because of this love that I accepted the position on Mars Hill Church’s BoAA. But it became clear to me that a distant, external accountability board can never work well because it isn’t a firsthand witness to the ongoing life and ministry of the church.

Such a board at best can provide financial accountability, but it will find it very difficult to provide the kind of hands-on spiritual direction and protection that every Christian pastor needs. Unwittingly what happens is that the external accountability board becomes an inadequate replacement for a biblically functioning internal elder board that is the way God designed his church to be lead and pastors to be guided and protected.

So, since I knew that I could not be the kind of help that I would like to be through the vehicle of the BoAA, I resigned from that position.

Read the entire statement on his site.

Many critics of Mars Hill Church begin with the change of by-laws in 2007 which ended the “functioning internal elder board” and replaced it with the current structure. Recently, Mark Driscoll blamed his personal health problems and his wife’s problems for the creation of those changes. Here Paul Tripp says it doesn’t work.

All posts on Mars Hill Church.

Former Staffer Says That Mars Hill Church’s Global Fund Was Restricted

A week ago, I posted an anonymous statement from a former staff member in the central office at Mars Hill Church. Today, I can offer you another statement from the same staffer. I received this quote from Rachel M, a former staffer in Mars Hill finance department.  Here is her quote.

I believe that Mars Hill leadership knew from the start that donations to the Global Fund were restricted and could not be used for unrestricted purposes. In fact, there was a separate account for Global in the books to note this distinction. During my time in the Finance Department, there was a pointed emphasis to be sure that restricted funds were not co-mingled with general funds. I believe that among the Financial Leadership Team (which includes multiple CPA-level staff, who would know all the ins and outs of restricted and unrestricted donations), there was a clear awareness that any restricted funds could not be directed to the general fund.  Without a doubt in my mind, Mars Hill leadership knew what they were doing.

This statement pulls back the curtain a bit on the situation and indicates some conflict between at least some members of the finance team and the executive elders. The concern expressed here by Rachel is understandable given the solicitations for Ethiopia and India in the Mars Hill Church services. Those solicitations should have triggered a more vigorous reaction from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. According to a ECFA publication written by president Dan Busby, video promotions like the following signal to donors that their donations to a specific fund will be used in keeping with the solicitation.

Busby’s guidance on how to determine donor intent is important and reproduced below: ECFARestrictedFundBusby makes it clear that donors signal donor intent, not the organization who received the donation. Mars Hill Church has it backward. In a recent World article, church spokesman Justin Dean said, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.” First, Dean implies that donations to the Global Fund were given by the “global family” (podcasters, non-members). However, much evidence presented here and in other posts demonstrates that members were asked to give to the Global Fund. Second, Dean assumes Mars Hill’s leaders know the intent of the donors. Busby’s article places donor intent with the donor, not the organization.  To discern donor intent, according to Busby, the organization can look to explicit and implicit expression of donor intent.

As the videos demonstrate (see also the image at the end of the post), Mars Hill Global, during 2012-2014, was promoted as the arm of Mars Hill Church dedicated to international missions. However, as Mars Hill now admits, very little of that money actually went to international missions. I have provided a wealth of information in prior posts to demonstrate that the Global Fund and Mars Hill Global became the missionary outreach fund of Mars Hill Church from 2012 to 2014.

Donors to Mars Hill Global Fund explicitly signaled their intent by checking Global Fund on the website when they gave. The implicit intent can be gleaned by donor response to the videos of Sutton Turner in Ethiopia asking the church members (not just podcasters) to give “above and beyond” their tithes in order to support Ethiopian evangelists. Before May 2o14, the church website clearly gave donors the option to choose Global Fund explicitly over the General Fund. If the donations were always intended to go to the General Fund as Mars Hill Church now claims, then why have two funds?

Busby’s guidance is clear but not being followed by Mars Hill Church:

Once the donor had indicated the intent for which the donation was given, and the charity has accepted the gift, it is the responsibility of the charity to fulfill that intent. The charity could have chosen not to accept the gift if the fulfillment of the donor restriction was in question.

In most cases the donor is responding to a specific appeal. The appeal itself generally identifies the purpose for which donations are sought. If the donor simply responds to the appeal, it should be assumed that the donor’s intent is that the funds be used as described in the appeal.

Another important point is that once the gift is given and the church accepts it, the church must honor donor intent. Donors can change their mind but donors should not have to jump through an additional hoop to inform the church how the money should be spent.

In my opinion, based on the assumption that the Global Fund was restricted, Mars Hill Church’s current policy is backward. Currently, they are requiring Global donors to contact the church to designate (again) that donations go to missions. However, as I understand ECFA guidance, the church should be requiring donors who want to redesignate their donation for the General Fund to contact the church to authorize those funds for general purposes.

Those Ethiopian and Indian evangelists should have gotten millions in support. Instead they only got a tiny fraction.  The “preponderance” of the money went to church plants in the United States and who knows what else. In my opinion, for Mars Hill to remain accredited, the ECFA should require the church to honor donor intent, expressed explicitly by the selection of “Global Fund” and implicitly by the responses to the constant promotion of Ethiopia and India via videos, the annual report, and the church website.
MarshillFAQGlobal       More articles on Mars Hill Global

Yet Another Citation Error in Mark Driscoll's Real Marriage

Pubishers have three options when plagiarism and/or errors are discovered. Such problems can be ignored, corrected or in extreme cases the book can be pulled from publication. In the case of David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies, there were so many errors that correction was not a viable option so the book was pulled by publisher Thomas Nelson. In the case of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage, Thomas Nelson elected to correct the errors. I found several such errors in Real Marriage, most of which Thomas Nelson corrected (e.g., here).
An error I did not find was identified by Peter Lumpkins when Real Marriage was released in January 2012. I recently learned of this error and plan to add it to my grid of other problems.  In summary, Lumpkins discovered that Driscoll added a word to a quote as if the word was a part of the original quote. The quote was sourced properly but Driscoll added a word to make it more supportive of his premise.
 
On page 172 in Real Marriage, Driscoll says the following:
RealMarriageOSLongman
 
The lengthy quote is from Tremper Longman’s book on Song of Solomon and is footnoted. However, in Longman’s book, as Lumpkin demonstrates, the word “oral” is not a part of the quote.  Longman says: “Thus, this may be a subtle and tasteful allusion to the intimacies of sex.” (p. 195).
In another place in Real Marriage (p. 186), the same sentence is cited but the word “oral” is in brackets. This is a better practice but given that the word is unbracketed here, many readers would probably believe the the exact quote is as Driscoll presented it.
Lumpkins discovered another problem but it appears that the publisher corrected it. Go read his post for the details.