Category: Mars Hill Church

Mars Hill Church Pastor Grapples with Being Removed from Acts 29 Network Membership

Since the Acts 29 Network removed Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church as members, Mars Hill members have had questions about the reasons for the action. It may be that the campus pastors have as many questions as the congregants have. Ryan Kearns is the Director of Community Groups at Mars Hill and is a pastor at the Bellevue campus. In this posting to the Community Group leaders, Kearns attempts to explain the Acts 29 action to questioners. In the image, two questioners are redacted but I can tell you that they asked about the reasons for the Acts 29 action: Kearns replied:

My apologies for leaving that part of what I shared with Bellevue leaders last week. Here it is below: Because we did not know this was coming we did not have a chance to prepare answers to many of the questions you likely have yourselves and might come up in your group this week. Our Chairman of the BoAA has released a statement that we shared with all our members on Friday. Please encourage people to read that first if they have not. We have asked Pastor Matt Chandler for clarification on his letter and rather than speculate on what he meant we would like to wait for him to respond. In the meantime your Bellevue elder team is in communication with all parties to further understand the situation and hear all the facts. I will come back to you later when I have more information. Again I know it is frustrating to have to wait for clarification and I appreciate your patience and understanding. It is vital for you to know that your Elders love you and Jesus. We take our roles seriously and aim to serve you all. We will continue to do that and be worthy of your trust.

The BOAA response is posted here and took a defensive tone. I hope Matt Chandler replies and outlines the reasons for their action; the executive elders knows what they are and could share that with the rest of the elders. Perhaps they will do that at the full council of elders’ retreat which got underway on Monday evening.

Whatever Happened to the Mars Hill Church Jesus Festival? And the $3 Million?

Wenatchee the Hatchet asked the question on August 1, but I don’t see an official answer anywhere. Asking around, a former member who was in training to become a Community Group leader told me the Jesus Festival (slated for August 22) was canceled in the Spring after the news broke about Mark Driscoll’s New York Times scandal.  I can find no official announcement but there has been no publicity about the event since Spring. The Jesus Festival was one of the reasons why Mars Hill needed to raise $2 million “over and above” tithes at the end of 2013. According to Mars Hill website:

During these 40 days of prayer and 5 days of fasting, we are praying for $2 million over and above our donors’ tithes to fund these endeavors in 2014. We believe Jesus has given the vision, so we trust that he will graciously provide the means to do it through his people. If the Holy Spirit leads you to give during these focused days of prayer, please visit marshill.com/give.

What were the endeavors?

1) MARS HILL GLOBAL

Pastor Mark first met church planter Pastor Arjuna Chiguluri in 1998, and Mars Hill Church has been working with and supporting Pastor Arjuna and Vision Nationals in India since 1999. In the last couple of years, we have expanded our Global efforts and are privileged to support church planters and evangelists in Ethiopia who have shared the gospel with over 11,000 people, of which 890 people have been saved. Over the next decades, we want to see Mars Hill Church grow into a worldwide movement and see 1,000 churches planted throughout India and Ethiopia. This is an ambitious goal, but as Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). For more information, go to Marshill.com/global.

The page linked here is the Mars Hill Global page. In this description of Mars Hill Global, there is no mention of church plants in the United States, just India and Ethiopia. In fact, mention of Mars Hill expansion comes later in the appeal. If the money was always supposed to go to Mars Hill expansion in the U.S., then why not mention it here?

2) JESUS FESTIVAL

In the summer of 2014, Mars Hill will be hosting an evangelistic, outdoor outreach, aptly titled The Jesus Festival, at Marymoor Park in Seattle. This will be a family friendly event with activities for the kids, music, and amazing gospel preachers. This will be a great opportunity for outreach in the community and to build unity among the Bible-teaching churches in the Seattle area.

Apparently, the money came in (closer to $3 million), but the festival is off, called off months ago. Shouldn’t the people have been consulted? They gave toward a festival but didn’t get one. As late as February, Mark Driscoll was still promoting the festival as a free event. In a February 5 email to the church, Driscoll wrote:

From Pastor Mark Driscoll: Heaven is going to be a party and we need to practice for that party. Over the next few months, you’ll be hearing a lot more about our first-ever Jesus Festival, August 22 at Marymoor Park near Seattle. Everyone at Mars Hill churches far and near is invited for this unique opportunity to grow together and evangelize within the surrounding community. We’ve never done anything quite like this event, but picture a huge outdoor celebration with live bands, food trucks, fun stuff for the kids, open-air gospel preaching, baptisms, and a summer night filled with the worship of thousands of brothers and sisters praising Jesus together. Pastor Dustin Kensrue will be leading us in worship, and as the date gets closer we’ll announce some special guests who will be joining us as well. Thanks to your generosity as a church, the whole thing will be free, which will make it very easy to invite non-Christian family and friends.

Keep on picturing.

3) LEADERSHIP TRAINING The two key missional distinctives of Mars Hill Church are planting churches and making disciples. In order to reach the world with the good news of Jesus, we need biblically literate, gifted leaders. In order to train these leaders, we need a school. In the fall of 2014, we are hoping to offer a 1-year Bible certificate program. Eventually, it will be a fully accredited Bible seminary to help train future leaders and to grow existing leaders in knowledge of the Bible and sound theology

This apparently is going to get underway this Fall. Nonetheless, this is a puzzle. Why does the church need money for this since the schools are supplying the professors and Mars Hill has the space. Presumably they are getting rent. If anything, this should be a money maker for Mars Hill Church.

4) 5 MARS HILL CHURCH PLANTS/REPLANTS

In the new year, our Mars Hill family will be replanting churches in Olympia, Tacoma, Everett, and Huntington Beach to move them into bigger and better buildings, and we are planting a brand new location in Phoenix. Our hope is that thousands will come to meet Jesus at these churches and become disciples.

According to the Mars Hill website, Mars Hill Global Fund helped pay for these campus expansions. Everett and Tacoma have sent “thank you notes” to the Global Fund, and the Fund FAQs also mention funding for Phoenix, Bellevue, and Spokane. So the $2 million went to these churches too?

5) OUR MOST EVANGELISTIC CAMPAIGN

As the Western World becomes more secularized, the Church is becoming more ostracized. Simply put, Christianity is a threat to many of the sacred cows in American culture. Pastor Mark is currently working on a sermon series and book that will tackle many of these issues, including gay marriage, the exclusivity of Jesus, the authority of scripture, etc. This series springboards from an extensive sociological study on thousands of Americans’ opinions on Christianity that was conducted by a top research firm, and will focus on the objections that real people really have.

This must be a reference to the now-postponed book, The Problem with Christianity. The book was slated to be released in the Spring, then it was pushed back to the Fall and now there is no date for release while Tyndale is waiting for “the best season.” The research for this book was done in Spring 2013 and already paid for by the time of this appeal so it is unclear to me how this campaign would require additional donor funding. If anything, according to the messaging about Mark Driscoll and his books, the sales of the books should provide additional income to the church. Unless they don’t.  In any case, this isn’t happening this year either. All in all, I suspect the main beneficiary of these donations (as with the Global Fund) was U.S. expansion of video franchises.

Mark Driscoll "Will No Longer Be Able To Be the Closing Speaker" at Gateway Church Conference

Acting on a tip and noting his picture missing from the conference line up, I asked the Gateway Church conference organizers if Mark Driscoll would be speaking at their annual conference as planned. On the 13th, conference coordinator Troy Wilcox answered:

That is a great question, as it is a very recent change. Mark Driscoll has been scheduled to speak at the conference for about 6 months, but due to some recent complications he and his ministry are experiencing, he will no longer be able to be the closing speaker.  We are hoping to still have him there in some capacity, but that is all pending. I apologize for the late change, and I understand you (sic) disappointment, but it was definitely not intentional.  Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks, Troy Wilcox, Gateway Conference Coordinator

Oh, the disappointment. Gateway Church is where James Robison is an apostolic elder and is another multi-site church which started in a living room.

Mars Hill Church Cancels The Resurgence Conference

This just out this evening:

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. Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be receiving a prompt refund. Thank you for your support of Resurgence and the ministries of Mars Hill Church.

Probably, the absence of Paul Tripp, James MacDonald and others would have made the conference a little slim. More Acts 29 fallout. The line up that was to be included is here. Paul Tripp, James MacDonald, Greg Laurie, J.I. Packer, Crawford Loritts, Terry Virgo and of course Mark Driscoll were slated to speak. Before last night: resurgencescreen

Acts 29 Fallout: Information About the Mars Hill Church Partnership with Corban University and Western Seminary

Free lance writer Becky Garrison has been asking Mars Hill Church’s partners in education if there is any fallout relating Acts 29 Network’s removal of Mark Driscoll and the church from the organization’s membership. Western Seminary and Corban University are slated to offer classes at the church’s new Northrup Way location in Bellevue.
Western Seminary

Garrison emailed Derek Hiebert, the Seattle Teaching Site Director for Western Seminary inquiring about the status of their relationship with Mars Hill given the fact that Western Seminary partners with the Acts 29 Network. Here is his response.

Thank you for your inquiry and question about the nature of our relationship with Mars Hill and Acts 29.
Western Seminary is committed to providing gospel-centered graduate level training in the Seattle metro area.  Mars Hill acts as a partnered host organization providing facility and some of the logistics.  Western is leading and implementing the content, curriculum, programs and structure of our training, while Mars Hill provides the space for us to accomplish the training.  Western is excited to serve anyone and everyone in the Seattle area who desire to pursue theological and ministry training.  Western is not under the authority or structure of Mars Hill.  We are a separate and distinct organization here to serve Mars Hill and any other church, organization and person who wants to benefit from our ministry.
The nature of our partnership with both Mars Hill and Acts 29 is such that we will continue to serve both organizations.  As a graduate level training institution, there is not a conflict of interest with the way that we serve both Mars Hill and Acts 29.  Acts 29, as a separate organization, can decide the nature of their partnerships with churches and organizations.  We do not influence their jurisdiction on those matters, nor do they influence ours.
Hope this helps for clarity.  Please feel free to respond if you have more questions.  We want to ensure everyone understands our role, vision and purpose in the Seattle area.

When she inquired about their stance on plagiarism given that Driscoll has committed plagiarism in multiple books, his answer failed to address the fact that Driscoll is scheduled to teach a course during the Spring 2015 semester.

As a gospel-centered evangelical institution, our policy is not to practice or encourage plagiarism.  We maintain integrity within our walls when it comes to accurately citing sources we trust and with which we dialogue.
As an institution partnering with Mars Hill Church in order to serve the Seattle area with our training, we certainly do not condone plagiarism.  Whatever the incidents are concerning this, we pray and hope that Mars Hill Church, as a separate organization, will be able to deal internally with them from a biblical perspective according to the gospel.

According to the Mars Hill Schools page, Driscoll and other MH pastors plan to teach for Western Seminary at the Seattle site:

You’ll learn from our senior pastors and ministry leaders as well as seminary professors, all on-site at Mars Hill Church Bellevue.
“As a graduate of Western Seminary, I am very excited to host this top-notch theological program and to be in the classroom investing in students committed to serving Jesus’ mission through the local church.”
Pastor Mark Driscoll, Founding, Preaching & Vision Pastor, Mars Hill Church

Mr. Hiebert did not return my call to learn if Western had dealt internally with the Driscoll plagiarism issue.
Corban University
When Garrison asked Corban University about their current relationship with Mars Hill Church, she received this response from Steve Hunt, Vice President of Marketing for Corban University.

We, and others, are watching the events surrounding the Mars Hill ministry with interest as recent developments unfold. In November of 2013 we entered into an agreement to provide faculty for a Bible certificate at Mars Hills Schools, with the hope that many more people could benefit from deepening their understanding of the Word. That is still our hope and our commitment, and we are in dialog with all parties concerned to see if any developments will hinder our effort to carry out our mission ‘to educate Christians who will make a difference in the world for Jesus Christ.’

Driscoll is on the schedule to teach an apologetics course at Corban’s Seattle Mars Hill site.

Western wants to make sure people know that the two institutions are separate and Corban is “watching the events.” I suspect more announcements are coming and I will update this post if either school addresses the plagiarism issues.