Category: Religion

Mars Hill Church Claims Copyright Violation on Mars Hill Global YouTube Videos

Mars Hill Church has claimed copyright violation due to my posting video clips of Pastor Mark Driscoll telling members about Mars Hill Global. Despite hours of Mars Hill material on YouTube, Mars Hill has chosen to aggressively move against the Mars Hill Global content. They also issued a take-down request on a video hosted by YouTube account “muscleman.” That video had been up for months on YouTube, but was targeted the day after I pointed out that Mars Hill removed it from their account.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/YQM_TcGhGys[/youtube]
(Oddly enough, it still plays as an embedded video, but when you try to watch it on You Tube, you get this screen)

The video posted by “muscleman” is the same one that airs as an ad on YouTube (see this post), and opens many of Mark Driscoll’s sermons on the Mars Hill website (e.g., this one in January, 2014).  The transcript of that video is as follows:

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)

In the videos I excerpted, Mark Driscoll pointed out to the Mars Hill congregation that through Mars Hill Global they were supporting Ethiopian evangelists. This is in contrast to the recent claims that Mars Hill Global meant money coming from non-members. However in the removed videos, Driscoll clearly owns the ministry Mars Hill Global and points to the congregation as the source of the support for the international mission effort. I continue to believe the videos clips are covered by Fair Use exemptions and am weighing my options.
How strange is this situation? Mars Hill Church has been defending Mars Hill Global, while at the same time they have apologized to the congregation for confusion caused by the way they have referred to Global. Perhaps, they would justify their actions by saying they want to remove confusing content. However, that content has been played multiple times. Just removing it without explanation makes the situation more confusing. It is surreal and demeaning to the public to present a message for years and then change the message suddenly without explanation, acting as if it had always been that way.
This is not the first copyright rodeo. I suspect we will see at least some of these videos again (as we did before).

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.
 

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.
 
 

Christian Post Provides Free Advertising for International Healing Foundation

I missed this a couple of days ago. The Christian Post provided free advertising for the following activity masquerading as therapy:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJXWFZz0Qjo[/youtube]
This video cannot be shown enough. This is what the Christian Post is advertising with their puff piece on the International Healing Foundation. Doyle says being attracted to the same sex is a matter of poor parenting. Richard Cohen, the founder of IHF, says the therapist should establish a parent child relationship as a means of replacing what clients didn’t get from their parents. This is a dangerous and false premise. Some gays and some straights didn’t get what they needed from their parents, but this doesn’t make them gay or straight. Putting the therapist in the role of a nurturing parent is reflects a wrong diagnosis and potentially sets up an unhealthy dependence on the therapist. Furthermore, a robust line of research suggests that the pillow beating catharsis treatment is fundamentally unhelpful.
Perhaps these points and more are why no graduate training programs offer these approaches for the purposes designated by IHF. I know of no graduate training programs housed in Christian colleges which teach these techniques. Even at Liberty, Doyle was not allowed to consider Cohen a clinical supervisor, nor was he allowed to count his experience there toward his school internship.
Chris Doyle says the IHF does therapy. However, I even wonder about that. According to their 2012 990 form, they took in very little money in program services fees with the lion’s share of their income coming from donations.
I hope the reporter will consider doing a counter point article in response.
 
 

David Myers on Animosity Between Similar Groups

On Sunday, Politico published an enlightening article by Hope College psychology professor David Myers on the divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims. In the article Myers provides four points to help explain why people who share so many things in common are such enemies.
Myers also briefly illustrated his point with the historic Northern Ireland conflict between Protestants and Catholics. It occurred to me that on a lesser level, we see these conflicts arise all of time within Christianity. Charismatics and non-charismatics, Calvinists and Arminians, and so on share many points of agreement but war over the fewer differences. Myers article is well worth reading; his four basic points are:
1) No matter our similarities with others, our attention focuses on differences.
2) We naturally divide our worlds into “us” and “them,” ingroup and outgroup.
3) Discussion among those of like mind often produces “group polarization.”
4) Group solidarity soars when facing a common enemy.
Number three is a point which concerns me most about noticing differences. Such polarization can become especially hot if people fail to talk to those in the other camp. I see no problem with freedom of expression as long as we make sure everybody has it. We need to talk to each other rather than cloister and polarize further.  Myers expresses it this way:

Turning today’s closed fists into tomorrow’s open arms requires recognizing the relative modesty of our differences, finding our deeper commonalities, defining a larger “us,” communicating across group lines and discovering transcendent goals.