Tag: Mark Driscoll

If You Are a Leader at Mars Hill Church and Leave, Here is Where Mars Hill Says You Can't Serve

This morning I posted the story of Phil Poirier who was an elder at Mars Hill Everett. He was asked to sign a clause in the renewal of his position as a pastor of community groups that would, if followed, forbid him from serving at a church within a ten mile radius of a Mars Hill church.  He declined to sign it and was relieved of his position because of his refusal. Read more about the situation here.
A couple of folks plotted the points where Mars Hill churches are located and figured out what a ten mile radius from each of the church locations looked like on a map. The first one below came from a commenter who doesn’t want to be named. The distance from North to South edges is nearly 100 miles and would take over two hours to drive.
 

Here is another effort to illustrate the problem from Pirate Radio’s Chris Rosebrough.
 

These maps illustrate the problem caused by this “Unity of Mission” arrangement. Pastors, paid and unpaid, may feel called to move from Mars Hill to a church of another denomination or to start their own church. Examine again the language presented to the Mars Hill elders:

6. Unity of Mission
An Agreement between each member of the Full-Council of Elders, Executive Elders and the Board of Advisors and Accountability of Mars Hill Church.
As Pastors, we commit together that we will serve the best interests of our Savior Jesus Christ, and our church, Mars Hill Church. If and when any of us feel led to serve the Lord somewhere other than at one of the church locations of Mars Hill Church, we will submit our opportunity to one another and our Executive Elders first in accordance with Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”
Together this day, we commit that our next church ministry will not be within ten miles of any location of Mars Hill Church, except with the express consent of the local pastors of the nearest church, the sending church, if different, and the Executive Elders of Mars Hill Church . We are, as Ephesians 4:3 says, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” We care about the church, the testimony of our church, and the dear people who attend our church.
We would not want our actions to cause confusion or harm by making the people of Mars Hill question our love for the Lord, the purity of our church, or their decision to worship Christ here.
We acknowledge that as we adhere to this commitment, the Executive Elders and the Board of Advisors and Accountability will commit to do everything within their power to offer and support a church plant outside of the radius stated here.

Soon, I will post the response to Phil Poirier’s letter from Mars Hill Everett lead pastor Ryan Williams. Williams informed his other leaders that Poirier would be “transitioning” off of the elder board.

Forced Out for Asking Questions: Dalton Roraback's Mars Hill Church Story

Until recently, Dalton Roraback was a coach at Mars Hill Church. Coaches provide mentoring to Community Group leaders. Community Groups provide the context for relationship building and alignment within Mars Hill.
Like many Mars Hill members, Roraback had questions after hearing about the many controversies involving the church in recent months. As a long time member of MHC, Roraback knew many of the leaders and began to ask them to explain recent events. Finally, Roraback asked what turned out to be the wrong questions and found himself out of a position. He was relieved of his position because he asked questions.
After I heard about Roraback’s situation, I asked if he could summarize his experience. He did so and you can read the entire statement here. To help tell the story, I have pulled out a few excerpts:

I want to start this off by saying I had originally decided not to go public with my story.  I figured if the Elders at Mars Hill want to accuse me of being divisive then I wouldn’t add any fuel to that charge by going on the Internet and doing some kind of tell-all.  I thought all that people needed to know was that I was accused of being divisive and asked to step down, and that I had submitted my resignation as a member of Mars Hill.
That changed only hours later when I heard the following news.
“Elder Phil Poirier at MH Everett has been removed (“disqualified”) for refusing to sign the new “Unity of Mission” contract. They are all being required to get permission from the BOAA before being allowed to participate in any church within a ten mile radius of an existing Mars Hill location.”
I was stunned.  I had just told my Head Coach – sorry, my ex-Head Coach – that I wasn’t going to go public with my story, but the news about Pastor Phil made me realize that not to do so would be to do a disservice to the truth, to all the people like Pastor Phil, and to the many others who have been harmed, slandered, and spat out of the Mars Hill machine.  So after confirming that this news was true I decided to speak out.

More information about the “unity of mission” clause is coming in a future post. Essentially, it is a non-competition agreement.

Enter 2014.  I was now a Coach and was excited and ready to do my best to lead the three CG leaders and do whatever it was that God wished me to do.  My head coach was a good, godly man and a friend.  I felt like great things were going to happen, and that God was going to use us in awesome ways for His glory.
And then the double-whammy of the ResultSource fiasco and Dave Kraft’s public charges against Mark Driscoll hit the fan.
Now, Dave Kraft had (and has) a stellar reputation in the Mars Hill community.  I had trained under him in a couple of classes back in the day, and would take him at his word – as would most of us – on just about anything.  When these two events became public, I started asking questions.  I had been around a long time and had no problem in being able to speak to many of the elders to whom I reached out. As I spoke with them, what I heard stunned me even more.  Many of them agreed with Dave Kraft, but they also understood that they had very little power as Elders, if any, and would rather work from within to try to get true accountability in place.  Some also admitted if they spoke up they would get a visit from Sutton or another Executive Elder and they would be accused of not being ‘on mission’ or not being ‘all in’, and when that happens…it means you are done as an Elder at Mars Hill.

According to Roraback, Mars Hill is having problems:

I believe we are already seeing the effects described in the Isaiah passage.  People are fleeing Mars Hill by the droves every week.  Tithing is down.  The church is in emergency mode.  In place of the old Mark who was able to lay out the Gospel with such passion, his sermons contain less about Jesus each week. Instead, we hear Mark using Scripture to make himself look like the Apostles and those who speak out against him look more like the enemies of the early church.  It’s chilling to listen to, and unfortunately, I believe that many people are completely unaware that they are being manipulated with such ease.

Recently, Roraback was in the same meeting I described here and raised some pointed questions:

But probably the worst thing I did was asking the questions listed below. They are as follows, word for word:
“Hello,
I have two questions that I’d like to humbly and respectfully submit in advance as I imagine it will require some research ahead of time.
1. What are the salaries of the Executive Elders?  And if we are not allowed to know this, why not?
2. At least once a year, the On Mission CRUT must distribute a percentage of its assets to what is termed the “non-charitable beneficiary”.  Since this is tied directly to the Real Marriage finances, who is the beneficiary of this CRUT? I would imagine much of the backlash against Mars Hill could be deflated if it could be shown that this was paid out to Mars Hill, instead of an individual or individuals who benefit directly.”
I asked these questions on The City, Mars Hill’s website, in the Bellevue Leadership forum and posted them in advance of the CG Sync so that all the meeting participant could see them in advance and there would be no option for MH leadership but to address the questions.  As it turned out, someone else brought up my questions during the latest CG Sync and the response from the elder was, ‘Why is that important?’
The answers in the room from at least three people were some form of ‘because we pay their salaries with our tithes.’  The elder who was in the hot seat on this one pushed back on this response, continuing to suggest that this is not important, but when he realized the people in the room were not in agreement, he turned to another elder who got up to explain how the process of setting the Executive Elder salary worked.  It was a nice speech, and it made it sound like there were multiple layers of oversight – just not from the thousands of members who pay their salaries, of course. Mars Hill members are not allowed to know something that any church with integrity should be willing to share, especially during times when the members have lost trust in the Executive Elders.
So they refused to answer these questions, and it did not sit well with many in the room.
Twice during this same meeting, the elder leading this meeting labeled everyone who is speaking out against Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill as people who ‘only want to hurt the gospel, the church, and Mark Driscoll’.  I called him out on that in front of everyone saying that was a misrepresentation of godly people with valid concerns, but at the end of the meeting he made the characterization again.  I’ve heard now from two different people that elders and leaders are visiting Community Groups personally and labeling anyone who speaks out on these concerns as ‘divisive’ and ‘only wanting to tear down the church’.  In other words, wolves.  Couple that with one of the latest sermons entitled ‘Empowered by the Spirit to Face Wolves,” and you get the picture.
So five days later I was sitting at Starbucks with my Head Coach for an early morning meeting, and he was telling me that the elders at Mars Hill considered me divisive and were removing me as a Coach.  I asked if I had sinned in some way, and he said no, they did not consider me in sin. They just thought that the way I was going about asking these questions was done with a ‘divisive spirit’.  They said that I didn’t have to leave Mars Hill, and that after ‘a season’ I could petition to be a Coach again and they’d consider it.  I had spent the previous three hours in prayer (I couldn’t sleep, I was pretty stressed over all of this,) and I already knew God was finally allowing me to walk away.  I let him know that my wife and I wished to submit our resignation from Mars Hill, but I implored him to fight the good fight and to not simply accept everything that he was told as truth. I asked him to reach out to others and to stand up for what is right.  I believe that he will come around, because he does listen to the Lord, and God has called him to lead. However, like me, it will probably take some time for the realization to take root.  I pray for him whenever I can, and love him and his family very much.

So questioning where tithe money goes reveals “a divisive spirit?” What does refusing to answer legitimate questions reveal? There has been some talk in recent weeks about the Board of Advisors and Accountability possibly entering a mediation process. If so, it can’t happen soon enough. Despite spiritual talk from the BOAA, it doesn’t appear that anything has changed.
The executive salaries are a closely guarded secret at Mars Hill. Sources who are in a position to know have told me that Driscoll’s salary took a dramatic jump after Sutton Turner joined the executive elder board. Estimates are between $600k and $900k. Salaries are supposed to be set via a comparison to other churches of comparable size. It seems hard to fathom that some churches set salaries in a corporate manner, but this is apparently how it is done at Mars Hill. Judging from the reaction to Roraback, the leadership of Mars Hill views the subject of salaries to be a sensitive matter.
For more on Mark Driscoll’s On Mission CRUT, see this article by James Duncan. Duncan lays out the procedures by which the profits from Real Marriage may make it back to the Driscolls.
It seems clear that the membership of Mars Hill has not moved on from the Result Source and other events.
From earlier today: Who at Mars Hill Church Authorized Church Funds to Buy a Place for Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage on the NYT Best Seller List?

Who at Mars Hill Church Authorized Church Funds to Buy a Place for Mark Driscoll's Real Marriage on the NYT Best Seller List?

Before Warren Smith’s World Magazine article in March, the story about Mars Hill Church paying a consulting firm to boost Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage to the top of the New York Times best seller list was a carefully guarded secret at the Seattle megachurch. Almost three months later, members of the church are still asking their pastors about the deal. Last week, in a meeting of Mars Hill group leaders, members asked pastors Thomas Hurst and Jason Skelton to name who was responsible for the decision to spend church money on the promotion of the Driscolls’ book. According to sources in the meeting, Hurst and Skelton told those present that Driscoll said he was not involved because he had removed himself from the decision. Hurst added that Sutton Turner, who signed the contract (read it here), was new on the job and simply signed papers put in front of him. However, according to the sources, no person was singled out as being responsible for the RSI agreement.
This narrative raises questions about who at the church authorized the RSI contract. Turner’s name is on the contract, and the invoices (see below) were addressed to Driscoll. However, if Driscoll and Turner aren’t responsible, that leaves Jamie Munson and/or Dave Bruskas, who were the other two executive elders at the time.
Relevant to the Mars Hill members’ questions, I have obtained invoices dated five days after the RSI contract was signed. The invoices were sent to Mark Driscoll from RSI requesting payment of RSI’s $25,000 fee. While it is not clear who actually saw or paid these two invoices, they raise questions about the narrative presented in the recent group leader’s meeting and Driscoll’s involvement in the arrangement.

 

When the RSI-MHC story broke, Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll floated three different statements about the use of RSI to get Driscoll’s book on the New York Times list. As noted in a previous post, the initial position of Mars Hill Church was that the partnership between RSI and Mars Hill was an “opportunity” and an “investment.” Two days later, the Board of Advisors and Accountability of MHC said the arrangement was “common” but “unwise.” Then, several days later, Mark Driscoll said he first saw the arrangement as a way to market books but had come to see it as “manipulating a book sales reporting system” and thus “wrong.” In that statement, Driscoll seemed to indicate that he was aware of the situation.
I asked Mars Hill Church who was responsible for the Result Source agreement and church spokesman Justin Dean replied:

We have received your requests, and will not be responding with any comments now or in the future.

Adding another wrinkle is a note from executive pastor Sutton Turner in response to a member who recently left the church. In response to member concern over the Result Source arrangement, Turner wrote:

As I thought and prayed about your letter this morning, please know that we realize the Results Source decision was a wrong decision and poor stewardship. I am sorry as your Pastor that I failed you. Please accept my apology, I am very sorry.
I pray that I have learned from this and the godly authority that I am under has helped me and will help me in the future.
Please forgive me for my poor stewardship, I take that very seriously as a King.
God Bless you and I wish you all the very best.
Grace and Peace to you,
Sutton Turner
Executive Elder & Executive Pastor

So who is responsible for this expenditure of church funds? The invoices raise the possibility that Driscoll paid RSI’s fee while the church put up the money for the rest of the operation. Sutton Turner claims responsibility but others provide an out for him by saying he just signed the papers. An earlier church statement says Result Source was suggested by outside counsel. As of now, the situation is not clear and the church refuses to provide an official response.
In any case, this topic continues to be of interest to Mars Hill members and I suspect they will keep raising the matter. However, doing so may lead to negative consequences. Recently, one volunteer leader was removed from his position as a coach because he questioned leaders about this issue and executive salaries. More on that story to come.
Read the contract between Mars Hill Church and Result Source, Inc to promote Real Marriage.

Former Mars Hill Members Dispute Official Explanation About Recent Mark Driscoll Sermon Edits

In the weekly email to members, Mars Hill leaders provide an explanation about the recent sermon edits I first reported on May 19. The narrative is a similar to what the Mars Hill leaders told Christian Post recently.

Recent Sermon Edits
You may have questions about our video sermons and how they are produced and distributed each week. We wanted to provide some clarity on our process and specifically address concerns with the Acts Part 12 sermon that was edited.
It is standard operating procedure at Mars Hill to take the first two sermons that Pastor Mark Driscoll preaches each week and edit the best possible version of the message for distribution to the other Mars Hill locations and our online audience, partly because it is necessary to edit the sermon to conform to time restraints.
Pastor Mark not only submits to someone taking material out of his sermon, but he welcomes the process. This goes on each and every week and has been the standard procedure since we started recording our sermons many years ago. The weekly sermon editing process at Mars Hill is designed to provide the best content for all who watch and listen in a time-sensitive environment.
Recently, someone gained entry to a restricted, password-protected site to steal the original recording of a recent sermon, so they could compare the rough cut with the original material to determine what had been edited. In any case, we stand behind the sermon in its entirety as the content is helpful and orthodox.

There are good reasons to question this narrative. Current Mars Hill staff who cannot speak publicly for obvious reasons, and former Mars Hill volunteers and staff who served on the Media team have told me that the kind of edits done to the Acts 6:1-7 sermon are uncommon. Two individuals who once worked on the team spoke to me on the record.
First, Scott Shipp described his experience in audio editing. Scott worked on this team from 2005 to 2009. Shipp said:

I served on the Ballard productions team recording and editing the audio versions of the sermons from 2005-2009 (if I recall my dates right). We were instructed to never edit out any part of the middle of any sermon unless it was just a couple seconds and it was because of audio clipping, feedback, or some audio issue. When I heard that multiple minutes of a sermon were edited out it shocked me. Of course in the intervening five years they may have moved into more drastic editing, and as far as I know, all of the audio and video volunteers I knew there have left MHC now, but from my experience, this is unheard of.

Then Brian Jacobsen, a more recent member of the Media team, wrote:

Mars Hill’s response to Warren Throckmorton’s disclosure of the sermon video editing is troubling.
One of my responsibilities at Mars Hill was to preview the upcoming sermon early in the week to take note of some specific items. There was a group on the church’s private social network that was used for this sermon preview process. I think the group was named “Sermon Review”. We resigned from Mars Hill on Thursday, April 3, 2014, so the last time I previewed a sermon would have been on Sunday, March 30 or Monday, March 31.
I think it was sometime early this year that the Mars Hill Central production team changed the way they posted the preview video. Prior to that time, they tried to do some of the editing of the sermon video, with the various camera angles and what not, before posting it to the Sermon Review group. The change they made earlier this year was to post the raw footage from a single camera which was located higher up and toward the rear, with the camera set so you could see the entire stage and a lot of the congregation.
The clip of the deleted segment of sermon video that Warren Throckmorton made available on his blog looks just like a sermon preview video. I suspect the video that was posted in the Sermon Review group included this deleted segment and that it was the source of the clip obtained by Warren. Every Mars Hill church probably has a handful or more of the pastors and leaders in this Sermon Review group. My memory is that over 100 people were in this group and would have had access to this deleted sermon video clip.
Editing the sermon video and in some cases cutting out some content is normal. The production team has, at times, even combined video from different services in order to provide the best content. However, in the two and half years I was involved in previewing sermons, I don’t believe I have ever seen this extensive of a cut. This cut essentially removed an entire topic, which was Pastor Mark’s argument that Jesus made mistakes.
The final sermon video that was provided to the Mars Hill churches was 56:41 in length, which is a few minutes shorter than a typical Mark Driscoll sermon. His recent sermons have been 60 to 62 minutes. If they hadn’t cut out this segment, the sermon video would have been at about 62 minutes. Pastor Anthony Ianniciello was quoted as saying, “Partly because it is necessary to edit the sermon to conform to time restraints.” From these numbers, it appears the cut in this case was not necessary to conform to time restraints.

Finally, Wenatchee the Hatchet provides an account of a prior instance of redacted content which was related to embarrassing content rather than time constraints.

Website Changes: Donations to Mars Hill Global Are Now Donations to Mars Hill Church General Fund

Without admission or acknowledgment, Mars Hill Church continues to change the focus of Mars Hill Global.
Previously, I have raised questions about where Mars Hill Global funds go. Church sources have told me on condition of anonymity that very little of the money designated as Mars Hill Global donations (nearly $2.3 million from July 2012 to June 2013) are disbursed to international missions. In recent days, someone at Mars Hill has directed changes to the website to make it clearer that donations to Mars Hill Global are also spent in the United States.
Recently, this sentence was added to the description of Mars Hill Global on the MHC website:

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.

This sentence was added after my articles on Mars Hill Global were published.
Now, in contrast to the Google cache yesterday, a very similar wording has been added to the Mars Hill giving page.

This description alerts givers that all gifts go to support “evangelizing, making disciples, equipping leaders, and planting chures (sic) all over the world, including but not exclusive to Ethiopia, India, and the United States.” The language is now the same as on the Mars Hill Global page. Even though the Global promotional video is shot in Ethiopia, the new language does not restrict the donations to international causes.
Another change is the deletion of “Global Fund” as an option for giving. Currently, there is a drop down menu titled “Fund.” Now, there are only two options, General Fund (Local & Global) and Foundation/Endowment Fund (see below):

 
However, a screen capture from late April demonstrates that, at that time, donors had the option of designating their donation to the Global Fund.
 

Even though the page then noted that donations would help “global ministry efforts,” someone donating prior to the recent changes very probably believed that a gift to the global fund would actually go to international efforts.
Without acknowledging the situation, Mars Hill appears to be bringing themselves closer to compliance with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability guidelines on designation of giving.   I have written the ECFA several emails asking for comment over the past week but have received no answer. I have received no answer to my email to [email protected].
While Mars Hill appears to be giving more disclosure to potential donors, I cannot find on the Global or giving pages any disclosure of how much money has been disbursed to domestic and international efforts. Perhaps, the leaders won’t feel obligated to do so now, since they are being up front with the fact that Global and non-Global donations all go into the General Fund. However, potential donors might still want to know how much goes to Ethiopia and how much goes to the lease of a building in Bellevue, and past donors might want to know how much of their funds designated to the Global Fund went to that purpose.