Warren Throckmorton

The grassroots are great except when they aren’t.
Matt Barber wants all the religious right candidates to go on holiday somewhere to “an undisclosed location,” fast and pray and then vote on who will run against Jeb Bush.  In a way, without the delegates, it would be the beginning of a Christian party choosing a candidate to run against the GOP and Democrats. Barber apparently thinks the problem with religious right candidates is that there are too many of them, not the fact that their message isn’t going to win over the nation.
And then if the Christian party wins, all the spoils goes to those guys who sacrificially supported the other guy.
The problem for the GOP is that any of the people Barber mentioned would lose large in the general election.
However, this “can the far right win?” question is going to be a big story line in the 2016 election so maybe those Christian right candidates should squeeze their egos into one room and hash it out. Let the GOP voters then decide if it is the Christian Party or the Republican Party.

Reading the book U-Turn: Restoring America to the Strength of its Roots is a frustrating experience. For the most part, authors George Barna and David Barton labor to make the case that America needs to turn back to God in order to avoid judgment. I have been hearing these appeals since I was in high school (“If my people who are called by my name…”). In all of them, the speakers or authors have warned that America had become so bad that judgment was just around the corner.
As a part of their efforts to make a doomsday scenario believable, the authors recruit lots of statistics and surveys. This is understandable since George Barna is a pollster. However, what is puzzling is Barna’s and Barton’s failure to use the most recent work of the Barna Group. To illustrate, here is what Barna and Barton say about students, their faith and college attendance.

Clearly many parents of these younger adults failed to transmit to them a vibrant and useful faith, which was largely because the parents themselves lacked a vibrant and useful faith. As proof of this, although eight out of ten Americans claim to be Christians, only 9 percent of these Christians agree with six of the most elementary nonnegotiables of the Christian faith.* So poorly equipped are Christian young people by their minimally believing Christian parents that 61 percent of Christian youth who now attend college abandon their faith as a result.79 (Barna, George; Barton, David (2014-10-21). U-Turn: Restoring America to the Strength of its Roots (pp. 100-101). Charisma House. Kindle Edition.)

Barna and Barton take a dim view of Christian parents and higher education and blame them for what they say is a generation falling away from Christianity. The footnote for this paragraph leads to a book by co-authored by Ken Ham. In that book, Already Gone, Ham and his co-authors cite a 2006 article on the Barna Group website:

To me, it seems odd that Barna would cite someone who cites him. Why not just cite your own work directly? More puzzling, perhaps, is the fact that Barna did not cite the recent research group bearing his name.* Furthermore, in U-Turn, he makes the situation sounds worse than it is. 
The 2006 Barna said that 61% were “spiritually disengaged.” The 2014 Barna says 61% of youth “abandon their faith.” As the 2011 Barna Group article will teach us, being spiritually disengaged isn’t quite the same thing as abandonment of one’s faith.
In a 2011 article on the Barna Group website, five myths are identified about youth leaving church. While it isn’t the last word on the subject, it is a reasonable article which breaks down the religious development of several groups of young people. Barna and Barton should have used it. People considering this book should be aware that Barna didn’t use the research he helped start in 2007. 
The Barna Group in 2011 rebuts George Barna of 2014 (which is really an amplification of Barna of 2006). The 2014 Barna says “61 percent of Christian youth who attend college abandon their faith as a result.” The 2011 Barna Group said that statement contains two myths. They are:

Myth 1: Most people lose their faith when they leave high school.
Reality: There has been considerable attention paid to the so-called loss of faith that happens between high school and early adulthood. Some have estimated this dropout in alarming terms, estimating that a large majority of young Christians will lose their faith. The reality is more nuanced. In general, there are three distinct patterns of loss: prodigals, nomads, and exiles.

Compare what Barna says in his new book with what an article on the Barna Group website said in 2011. It seems ironic that he has become one of the people who say a large majority of young Christians will “lose their faith.” As the 2011 article correctly notes, the reality is more nuanced. If you want nuance, skip U-Turn and read the Barna Group’s website.
The second myth contained in Barna of 2014 relates to the impact of college. Barna and Barton say 61% abandon their faith “as a result” of college. On the contrary, the Barna Group in 2011, said:

Myth 3: College experiences are the key factor that cause people to drop out.
Reality: College certainly plays a role in young Christians’ spiritual journeys, but it is not necessarily the ‘faith killer’ many assume. College experiences, particularly in public universities, can be neutral or even adversarial to faith. However, it is too simplistic to blame college for today’s young church dropouts. As evidence, many young Christians dissociate from their church upbringing well before they reach a college environment; in fact, many are emotionally disconnected from church before their 16th birthday.

Mr. Barna, I didn’t say it; the group you founded did. It is too simplistic to blame changes in faith on higher education. And yet, that is exactly what you and David Barton do in your book. I recognize you also blame parents, but let me go out of a limb to say I think that is too simplistic too.
There are more instances where data are used incorrectly to yield a misleading conclusion. There are too many problems with this book to address them all but I intend to get to some of them as I am able. For more, see also here and here.
 
*The original post indicated that Barna was affiliated with the Barna Group. He sold it in 2009 to David Kinnaman.

When Mars Hill Church closed the doors for the last service, the corporation Mars Hill Church did not cease. However, it has never been clear who remained in charge of the organization on a day to day basis. By by-law, the church’s Board of Advisors and Accountability has the power to create a plan of dissolution but the church has not disclosed who remained on that board. While I don’t know all involved in that capacity, I do know now who is the president of the church. Also, one person often speculated to still be involved is not.

According to documents filed last week in the King County court house, Chief Financial Officer Kerry Dodd is referred to as the president of the corporation. Dodd was hired by Sutton Turner early in Turner’s tenure as executive pastor. According to a 2012 memo to fellow executive elders, Turner considered Dodd to be a capable CFO. As president of Mars Hill, he signed documents recently in the sale of the Mars Hill Ballard building to Quest church.

The other update involves former executive pastor Dave Bruskas. Yesterday, Bruskas informed me via email that he resigned all of his roles and duties at Mars Hill Church, including his corporate role, on December 31, 2014. Under the Mars Hill bylaws, executive pastors have a position on the BoAA. As of the end of last year, there were no publicly named executive pastors.
At the time of the last service, remaining BoAA members were Matt Rogers, Larry Osborne, Michael VanSkaik, and Jon Phelps.

Who runs Mars Hill has become relevant again due to the ongoing questions surrounding the use of Mars Hill email lists by a shadowy group/individual doing business as “Church Leaders List.” After xxxchurch director Craig Gross purchased what former Mars Hill public relations spokesperson Justin Dean called The Resurgence mailing list, Church Leaders List essentially left public view by shutting down its website and twitter account. Now there are concerns that Mars Hill had not sold the list to anyone, raising questions about how Church Leaders List secured it. Efforts to get comment from the attorney who is responsible for selling The Resurgence assets have not yielded direct comment. No one from Mars Hill Church has offered comment as well.

Meanwhile, Justin Dean’s website has gone into maintenance mode and is unavailable; his twitter account has been removed.

Craig Gross summarized his involvement and what he believes about the situation in a new post today.

Initially, the story of Craig Gross buying an email list from Church Leaders List seemed like a marketing story gone sideways. However, there appears to be much more to the matter.
At the end of Christianity Today’s article on this, Bob Smietana wrote:

On Tuesday, Dean apologized for his part in the drama over the list. He admitted that he’d been involved the initial sale of the list to churchleaderlist.com (screen cap of page now removed from the web).

Now Justin Dean’s website is down (and his Twitter page has been removed) and so that statement is not available (except via Google cache) and screen cap below.

 
According to Craig Gross’ explanation, Dean’s involvement may have been that Dean was churchleaderlist.com. I asked Dean yesterday and today about his dealings with Church Leaders List but have not heard back from him. Gross wrote:

I found  it interesting that as soon as I posted this that Justin Dean posted a blog on his website that he somewhat apologized for distributing the list to me. Lets be clear, he sold the list to me. He didn’t broker a transaction. He sold me the list along with several other people who paid $1350-$1500 for the list.

I asked the lawyer that was in charge selling the assets for 100k earlier in 2014 and he said that no one has purchased the rights to sell these assets yet.

I have seen communications which indicate to me that Mars Hill Church has not sold The Resurgence email lists. Thus, if the lists have not been sold by Mars Hill Church, then how did Church Leaders List get them?
From my conversations with former Mars Hill staff, I believe there is a limited group of people who have access to the lists.
Mars Hill Church is still a viable entity but has not responded to repeated requests for information or comment. Given the non-profit status of the church, the public and former members still have an interest in their operations. If the church is selling member emails without permission, then they should come forward and acknowledge this. If not, then the question remains, how did Church Leaders List get that information?
 
 

So Monday night, John Hagee’s Blood Moon movie aired around the country. According to promoters, it was so popular that they are bringing it back in April.
Unless, of course, the world ends before that.
A breathless press release gives the details:

Read the rest here.
There is at least one sentence in the press release that I bet the writer would like to take back.

 It is rare that science, history and scripture align with each other, yet the last three series of Four Blood Moons have done exactly that. 

If scripture is true, then such alignments should be common place. In fact, believers shouldn’t fear science or history. Instead believers should be wary of other believers who think they have everything in science and history figured out.
As a sidebar to this “docu-drama,” World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah took on John Hagee’s claim that he discovered the Blood Moon alignment, using words like “plagiarism” to describe Hagee’s book and movie (see this for example). Since Farah published another book by Mark Blitz on the Blood Moon deal, he has some skin in the game. Be interesting to see how that plays out.
If nothing happens, probably no one will care much about who was wrong first.