Warren Throckmorton

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).

Reporter Stacie Solie has a dark view of Mars Hill Church’s recent problems in today’s online edition of Crosscut, a Seattle area news and information website.
The first paragraph provides a taste:

There are emerging stories of sensational kangaroo courts and “sex demon” trials, like something out of the Salem witch hunts of the 1600s. Even more devastating to individual members are the ways in which they are shamed, taught to blame themselves and each other when they see problems, and to formally shun people who step out of favor with church leaders. Shunnings, both formal and informal, have caused the outcast to spend years in isolation, cut off from friends, sometimes suffering deep clinical depression, nightmares, disillusionment and shattered faith.

Solie pulls no punches in describing the results of her reporting. As usual, Mars Hill representatives declined to comment or be interviewed.  I was interviewed for the article and show up briefly near the end.

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?

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.
 

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.