Megachurch Methods: Apparently Mars Hill Global Money Can Be Spent Anywhere

Those in charge of Mars Hill Global seem to agree with me that Mars Hill Global is really Mars Hill Church.
Last week, I posted a 2011 document about the rebranding of Mars Hill Global (among other things, “cultivate an international audience and giving base”) and a slide showing the dramatic rise in giving on behalf of the MH Global brand. After those posts appeared, a sentence was added to the website description of MH Global:

Mars Hill Global has the same mission as Mars Hill Church – evangelizing, making disciples, equipping leaders, and planting churches all over the world, including but not exclusive to Ethiopia, India and the US.

The May 15 Google snapshot of the page looks like this:

The current page adds a sentence at the beginning:

My guess is that the sentence is designed to slightly better inform potential donors (remember the purpose of MH Global – “cultivate an international audience and giving base”) that the money they give to Mars Hill Global may not go to Ethiopia or India but to the general fund of Mars Hill Church.
Given the pictures of Ethiopian churches and children, some donors might think that their money was going to Ethiopia. However, according to current and former Mars Hill sources, that is not necessarily the case. This new disclosure hints that my sources are on target.
In the Mars Hill 2013 Public Disclosure package, there is no mention of Mars Hill Global, Ethiopia, India, etc., and only one mention of a mission fund:

In October 2012 alone, nearly $150,000 came in to the Mars Hill Global brand. From July, 2012 to June, 2013, nearly $2.3 million was given to Mars Hill Global. However, in available reports (the 2013 Annual Report and Public Disclosure package), where the Mars Hill Global money was disbursed is not reported.
What would be nice is Mars Hill leadership would simply indicate on the website how much money is given on behalf of Mars Hill Global and then where that money goes.  In fact it would be more than nice, it would satisfy the guidelines of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.  The guidance is clear that reporting should make it clear where money is spent. According to the ECFA:

Historical practices of faith missions and other charities has conditioned donors to give for specific purposes and to expect their funds to be used for those stated purposes and not for the organization’s general use. Such practices include raising funds to support specific projects or programs as well as the ministry of specific workers. Fundraisers acknowledge that specific use appeals are more effective than general appeals.

Currently, I cannot find such an accounting. Last Thursday, I wrote [email protected] and asked if donations to Mars Hill Global go to missions or the Mars Hill general fund. Perhaps some accounting exists and the folks at [email protected] will let me know this week, although it is possible that the sentence added above indirectly addresses the matter.

CNN Fires Editor Over Multiple Instances of Plagiarism

It is becoming plagiarism Friday. See these previous posts.
Today CNN announced the ouster of Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former editor who wrote mainly about international news. According to an Editor’s note on the CNN website, CNN discovered about 50 articles with plagiarized material. According to the Washington Post, there were 128 separate instances of plagiarized material in those 50 articles. The investigation is ongoing.
Some articles have been completely removed. Some, like this one on the crisis in Ukraine, contain a disclaimer at the end of the article:

Editors’ Note: This article has been edited to remove plagiarized content after CNN discovered multiple instances of plagiarism by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former CNN news editor.

I have not been able to track down pre-edited versions of these articles to see what material was lifted from another source. The several articles I have located are not available on the Wayback Machine or in Google cache.
Gumuchian might have been better off to write for a Christian publisher. Especially if she had a large media buying audience, she might have gotten off by saying “mistakes were made.”
 
 
 

On Being a Ghostwriter Without Knowing It

Comedian Danny Murphy today relates a story of having some of his material end up in several sources without attribution.
He provided detail about his interactions with magachurch pastor Craig Groeschel. Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv, modified the material for use in a book on marriage. That first book went out of print but a newer book still includes the material and the publisher did make the correction.
Murphy learned of the situation through listening to a sermon where the preacher quoted his material. When Murphy told the pastor about the citation, the pastor didn’t believe him!

Et tu, Challies? (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Tim Challies responded here in the comments, at Collin Garbarino’s blog, and added a comment on the Teresa of Avila post:

Note: Readers pointed out that initially I did not properly cite Wikipedia’s entry on Teresa of Avila; I appreciate having that pointed out and added a footnote as appropriate. It was clearly marked as a quote in my research notes but that did not make it to the article. As for the general tone of the article, it is meant to be informational more than biographical, by which I mean I do not provide exhaustive information about the false teachers; most of my interest is in the false teaching. Of course this does not excuse sloppy or inaccurate information and this article did not adhere to the standards I would want it to. I am traveling this week and, being away from my usual routines and my usual reference works, allowed myself to be sloppy in both research and writing. It would have been far better to save this for another week and to ensure it was of better quality. I will attempt to revisit this article soon and to do a better job of it. For the next few days I am in Australia preaching two to three times a day and I need to prioritize that (I’d really appreciate your prayers in this time as I have not adjusted well to the fourteen time-zone difference and am extremely tired); I will return to the article after I return to Canada. In the meantime, please do forgive me for my sloppiness.

Challies also said he would speak to David Kjos about his response to Collin.
————————– (Original post starts here)——————————
There is a little dust up happening at Tim Challies blog surrounding plagiarism and Protestant-Catholic disputes.
Collin Garbarino has the story:

Challies is in the middle of a series on false teachers. Some of the posts are helpful, some less so. This morning’s post was less so.
In this morning’s post, he denounces the mysticism of Teresa of Ávila. I’m not a fan of Theresa’s writings, but even so I was disappointed with Challies’s lack of engagement with her texts. It was as if he had never even held one of her books in his hand.
And then I started Googling.
It turns out that he copied and pasted, with slight rewording, a section of the Wikipedia entry on Teresa.

You’ll need to go to Collin’s post to read the comparison between Challies summary of Teresa of Avila’s views and the Wikipedia entry but Collin is right, they are nearly the same. For instance, Wikipedia’s entry says:

The “devotion of union” is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, or a conscious rapture in the love of God.

Then Challies writes:

Devotion of Union. The devotion of union is a supernatural, ecstatic state in which human reason has become absorbed in God and only memory and imagination remain unclaimed. This is a state of bliss and peace where the higher faculties experience a sweet rest and the devotee experiences conscious rapture in God’s love.

Paraphrased but the main words are the same with the order of presentation the same. Elsewhere the phrasing is identical. See Collin’s post for the entire section.
I wrote Challies and his assistant contacted me this morning. In fairness to him, he is in Australia and apparently has not had much internet access. Also, he tweeted a response to Collin’s question about the appropriateness of the citation. Challies acknowledged that it was not appropriate and said he would fix it.

 
Of course, a link to Wikipedia should have been in place at the beginning, but at least he intends to correct the matter.
However, there is more to the story. Collin pointed out the plagiarism in a comment on Challies’ blog but then spent more time addressing what he perceived to be distortions about Teresa of Avila. His comment was initially removed and then restored:

It doesn’t seem that you are familiar with Theresa beyond a cursory Google search. Perhaps you have read all her books, but it doesn’t sound like you actually understand her in this blog post. As a matter of fact your discussion of her teaching is almost word for word the Wikipedia entry on Theresa’s teaching.
Moreover, you wrote: “She left behind a significant number of books including The Way of Perfection(1583), and The Interior Castle (1588), which many regard as a masterpiece of spiritual autobiography alongside Augustin’s Confessions.”
First, she didn’t really write that many books.
Second, you seem to have misunderstood this sentence from the Catholic Encyclopedia at newadvent.org: “The account of her spiritual life contained in the “Life written by herself” (completed in 1565, an earlier version being lost), in the “Relations”, and in the “Interior Castle”, forms one of the most remarkable spiritual biographies with which only the “Confessions of St. Augustine” can bear comparison.” Most of her spiritual autobiography actually occurs in Life Written by Herself. Interior Castle is more of a guide book.
I would never defend Theresa’s writings, but if you’re going to condemn someone as a false teacher in the public square, you should actually engage with the texts yourself. It takes longer, but it will do you and your reader more good.

Initially I thought his comment was removed because he pointed out plagiarism, but I think it had more to do with his fairness toward the Teresa of Avila. Moderator David Kjos wrote in response to another commenter:

Thanks for the heads-up. I checked him out, and it seems you’re right. Another contrarian troll weeded out.

According to Collin, he is now banned from commenting there, or in other words, he has been “weeded out.”
If Collin had posted repeatedly without reading what Challies wrote (we’ve had a few of those here), then moderation of comments is in order; but in this case, Collin posted an informed perspective and made a true observation. For that, he becomes a contrarian troll.
I hope Challies fixes more than the plagiarism when he returns.
See also:
Mark Driscoll’s Citation Errors at a Glance

Megachurch Methods: And By Mars Hill Global We Mean Mars Hill Local

Yesterday, I posted a Mars Hill Church document about the rebranding of Mars Hill Global as a revenue source. The document was sent out by MH Pastor Sutton Turner in 2011 to the Media and Communications Teams and began:

When it comes to giving potential, Mars Hill Church’s global audience is a sleeping giant.

Since 2011, the giant has indeed ceased from slumber. At a recent Mars Hill vision breakfast meeting, this slide was presented to the congregation:

These numbers are increasing rapidly while overall giving has been flat, and according to sources in Mars Hill, declining in recent months.  In fact, the situation is troubling enough that sources tell me that the church will be approaching an entity known internally as “The Lucas Group” to help raise money. In addition, I have heard from several former staff members that the amount of Mars Hill Global money disbursed on behalf of missions outside of the United States is very low, less than 5%.
According to these sources, the rest of the funds are pooled in the general fund which is used to support administration of the  Mars Hill franchises. Consistent with that claim is the fact that MHG website lists the United States as a target of Mars Hill Global. All the franchises are listed, including the churches surrounding Seattle. Reviewing the April Mars Hill Global newsletter, it looks like global is local with most of the material being about the U.S. churches.
In 2011, Sutton Turner asked if there was a better name than Mars Hill Global for the cultivation of the international giving base. I think the better name would be Mars Hill Church.