On Saturday (May 10), the Everett (WA) Daily Herald carried an article following up on naturopath John Catanzaro’s response to the suspension of his license in January over cancer vaccines provided by his clinic. Although not a focus of the complaints against him, Catanzaro also claimed to have a professional relationship with the University of Washington and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. Both institutions denied any connection to Catanzaro and Dana Farber Cancer Institute demanded that Catanzaro stop claiming that he was working with the clinic. Subsequently, all references to Dana Farber as well as to the University of Washington disappeared from his materials without explanation.
According to the DailyHerald, Catanzaro has launched a website to defend himself and serve as a platform to raise money. His defense now is in the court of public opinion, but his formal hearing before the naturopath board is not slated to take place until August 6-8 of this year.
Catanzaro also told the Herald that he hopes to raise money in order to reimburse cancer patients for funds spent on vaccines. According to the Herald, Catanzaro said, “These are stage 4 cancer patients waiting on treatments we had to throw away and I just want to be able to pay them back for all they’ve lost.”
It is unclear why unused vaccines would require payments from patients. Patients pay as they go for treatments and if the vaccines are not going to be used, the clinic might suffer loss but the patients should only have to pay for what they use. Furthermore, Catanzaro’s non-profit arm seems to have sufficient resources to cover these research costs. According to the 2012 990 for the HWIF Cancer Research Group, the organization set up to fund vaccine research, the organization had a fund balance of $818, 301. The document demonstrates that revenues from program fees exceeded clinic expenses by just over $300,000 in 2012. Perhaps 2013 was a leaner year (the 990 is not available) but it appears that the non-profit should be able to step in for patients.
In the media coverage since Catanzaro’s suspension, additional questions are still unanswered.
Catanzaro has yet to address why he told the public that he had working relationships with the University of Washington and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. While he removed these references from his website after the lack of relationships came to light, he has not addressed the claims that he needed funds from clients to secure the services of Dana Farber. Dana Farber denied performing these services.
His relationship to his non-profit organization raises questions as well. According to the state of Washington, he is a director of the HWIFC Cancer Research Group, but his name does not show up as an officer or key employee on the organization’s IRS 990 report. According to the most recent 990, two of his employees, his wife and his accountant make up four of the six board members. As with the 2011 990, the 2012 report also shows significant transactions between the non-profit organization and Catanzaro’s for profit business.
Tag: Mark Driscoll
Mars Hill Church Wants $40 Million to Buy Bellevue College Building and Build New Church
According to a February 2014 communication from Mars Hill Church Executive Pastor Sutton Turner to MHC staff and elders that I obtained this week, Mars Hill Church is seeking to raise $40 Million to buy a Bellevue Community College building and build a new church. The building is in Bellevue, WA at 10700 Northup Way. Here is the pitch to buy the facility:
Why?
- Jesus has called us to be a Jesus-loving, Bible-preaching, multi-generational church.
- We want to see more people saved by Jesus, more people grow in Jesus, and more people be on Mission with Jesus for generations and generations.
- It’s all about Jesus.
How?
- We have a vision to plant 50 church across 50,000 people. It is a specific prayer of ours to see Jesus lead 4,000 people to get baptized in a single year.
- We must serve and love all of our churches more effectively. We also must train up the next generation of leaders. Finally, we must continue to stay rooted in and faithful to the Bible and to Jesus.
- It’s all about Jesus.
What?
- To do all of these things, it requires a Ministry Center that will house Mars Hill Schools (College and Seminary), Ministry Development, Leadership Development, and all Mars Hill support staff. It will be critically important that we are all connected and rooted in a local church.
- We need to raise $40M. This allows us to purchase the land, purchase the Ministry Center building, and build an 1,800 seat church building debt-free.
- It’s all about Jesus.
Who?
- Every staff member
- Every leader
- The entire Mars Hill family
- It’s all about Jesus.
Please earnestly seek the Lord’s guidance about how he is leading you to join in this generation-changing opportunity. Pray, and then here to sign in to your global account and make your pledge. As of today, all staff and elders have the ability to post your pledge. You should see this pledge box appear when you sign in.
Mars Hill has been looking for a large property in Bellevue since at least last year. The current location is slated to be the site of a massive project managed by the Rockerfeller Group. Since they need to move, MHC made an offer on a building owned by International Paper in 2013 only to find that Seattle Sound Transit had first refusal on the building. According to an October 2013 Seattle Times article, Mars Hill spokesman Justin Dean said the International Paper building was the property God intended for MHC to have. The church still has a page on the website where members can contact the Sound Transit Board to advocate for Mars Hill to purchase the International Paper building. The last tweet in the campaign #goodforbellevue was in November, 2013. I cannot find anything on the Mars Hill website which indicates that the congregation has been informed of the Bellevue College initiative.
I have asked MHC Executive Pastor Sutton Turner for comment and will add new information as it become available. A source with knowledge of the situation tells me that the real estate project could be jeopardized due to declining donations.
Note: Mars Hill removed most of the original links I used to research this post. I have saved many of the pages and have some archived pages substituted for the original links. It appears Mars Hill leaders would like to scrub the history of this incident.
Mars Hill's Board of Advisors and Accountability Hints at Secret Meetings
In today’s Mars Hill Church newsletter (as posted on a ex-Mars Hill members Facebook group), a statement was made by Michael Van Skaik, Chair of the Board of Advisors and Accountability about the silence from the church on mediation and reconciliation.
In the current season, Michael [Van Skaik] explained that the BOAA is focused on meeting with individuals as opposed to releasing public statements. Unfortunately, said Michael, public communications are often wielded as ammunition against the church, regardless of the motives of those communications. So the board invests its time into meeting with people one on one and limits its public communications. It’s a slow process, but Michael warned against being in a hurry to see change. Things didn’t get where they are in six months and they won’t be buttoned up that quickly either. The board is after long-term culture change and health.
“The fact is, spiritual growth can be slow,” Michael said. “[The reconciliation processes] are going well, but take time.”
That said, Michael is encouraged by the fruit that he’s seeing in the hearts and lives of the Executive Elders. He believes that God has certainly anointed Pastor Mark’s preaching and Mars Hill’s influence and views the current issues surrounding the church as ways that God is refining the leaders, working in their hearts and minds to further his message.
“The best days of Mars Hill are ahead,” he said. “Everyone on the Board is feeling like we need to go through these issues and learn from them deeply and have them affect the culture of the church for the future.”
This piece raises more questions than it answers. In private, 20 former pastors asked for mediation via a March 17 letter. Many days went by with no response. Then in early April, when the pastors started to make problems public, the BOAA made an overture to bring in an employee of one of the BOAA members to help mediate. Since then there has been silence from both Mars Hill and the twenty pastors. Now, Mars Hill speaks on the matter of reconciliation but still doesn’t mention the public overture made by the pastors.
Van Skaik appears to acknowledge that there are significant issues which “didn’t get where they are in six months” and which can’t be “buttoned up that quickly.” The message here seems to be that the situation is so bad that we need lots of time to clean it up but at the same time, things are good and getting better.
When Mark Driscoll and the Mars Hill leadership fired Paul Petry and Bent Meyer, the process was pretty public with Driscoll talking about the firings in sermons just before the deeds were done. He disparaged the work of those men in a sermon that left little doubt to whom he referred. Now, that charges have been filed the other direction, the BOAA wants a secret process.
Secret meetings may be appropriate for many situations but there are public issues which the church appears to be ducking. Meyer’s and Petry’s situation is one. A public exoneration of those men is in order. The legal matters relating to Mars Hill Orange County in 2012 is another one. Most aspects of that situation are matters of public record and yet the church refuses to address questions from observers and members. Mars Hill’s leadership has pretty ambitious goals and via Mars Hill Global wants donations and participation from the broader community of evangelicals. However, when it comes to being accountable to the broader community, in my opinion, they continue to fall short.
Mark Driscoll Appears on James Robison's Life Today Show; Also Appears on T-Shirt
I guess moving out of celebrity status is hard.
Mark Driscoll appeared as a guest on James Robison’s show today discussing Driscoll’s book A Call to Resurgence. The interview was tame compared to his interview with Janet Mefferd back in November 2013. As you can see from the transcript, Robison didn’t bring up any uncomfortable issues.
In mid-March, Driscoll said he would be doing “very few media appearances, if any.” Until Easter, Driscoll’s live preaching was mostly to staff. I wonder if the Robison show was one of “very few” appearances or is the media blackout now over.
Driscoll also recently appeared on a t-shirt:
Note the “Pastor Mark Driscoll” next to Saves. At least Jesus got top billing.
Mars Hill Church Members Want to Know Why The Orange County Campus Violated Zoning Ordinances in 2012
On Monday, I established that Mars Hill Church in Orange County violated the city of Santa Ana’s zoning law for the better part of a year (2011-2012). In defiance of the city and at the direction of Mars Hill’s executive elders, Mars Hill Orange County continued to meet in a building which was not zoned for a church, even paying fines instead of moving to another location, or simply waiting until a suitable location could be found. Then when the church was facing enforcement, Mars Hill’s pastor Mark Driscoll claimed to lack understanding about the city’s actions.
Apparently, Mars Hill members care about this issue because they asked about it during a recent “Vision Breakfast” where members could ask the executive elders questions. A May 18 email from Mars Hill leaders to members referenced the matter:
Turner’s reply to members is very close to the one he issued to me when I asked him when he became aware that the church in Orange County was in violation of zoning ordinance. Honestly, I don’t understand how the answer to that question would be influenced by a reconciliation with Kyle Firstenberg (the “person who is raising these issues publicly“). According to Firstenberg, he made Turner aware of his concerns on more than one occasion with no reply.
Furthermore, based on documentation supplied by the city of Santa Ana, it seems clear that the Mars Hill executive board knew that the church in Orange County was operating in violation of city ordinance. This is a matter of public record. I can understand why church members would ask about this and want their leaders to be accountable and transparent. As of now, that does not appear to be the stance of Mars Hill’s leaders.