Mars Hill Bellevue – Warren Throckmorton

Mars Hill Church's The City Still Online

Even though Mars Hill Church is no longer doing business, the church’s social media platform, The City, remains operation and is being used by at least of the new churches – Doxa Church in Bellevue. I obtained a screen cap of this communication from Jeff Vanderstelt via emails sent as a notification that content was available on the website.

The entire communication is below:

As we enter into a new year we are also entering into a new beginning as a church. This Sunday marks the beginning of our first official gathering together as Doxa Church. I am excited to lead us through our very first series entitled: Foundations – Building a New God Glorifying Church Together.

We will begin the New Year with two new gathering times starting this Sunday: 9am and 11am.

During our Foundations series we will walk through each of the building blocks for establishing a church that exists to see God glorified through all of us everyday and in every place. Each week we will address a key building block followed with opportunities for discussion in groups during the week around each topic. I will also give you Scripture to read to prepare you for the next week’s message. This Sunday I will address Doxa’s Vision.

If you would like to read ahead, take some time to read Ephesians 1 and 2 Corinthians 3-4.

At the end of this series each of us will have the opportunity to commit to be a member of our new church. In order to commit with integrity, you will need to hear each message. So, if you are not able to attend all of our gatherings for this series, please make sure you watch or listen to a recording.

During this time, we will do our best to keep you aware of all that is happening from week to week. While we are still establishing our new communication hub, we will continue using The City to communicate to one another. We hope to have a new system for communication in place by February.

Many of you have also asked how you can give to the new church. We are building avenues for online giving which should be available soon. Until then, we will have to go ‘old school’. Please plan on giving with a check or cash during one of our gathering times on Sunday.

As some of us processed through the messiness of new beginnings I reminded them – as I want to remind you – building a new church is messy. We are at the beginning of laying a new foundation. Not everything will be perfectly in place from day one. That’s OK. That’s what beginnings are like. If you’ve ever begun a new job, moved to a new house, got married or started a family, you know. New is messy. And yet together, we all get to create something new together. It’s the beginning of a new work and all of us get to shape the future together. I’m excited to witness with you what Jesus wants to bring about as he continues to build His church through us in this new season!

So, please come join us in the mess of building a new foundation with Jesus as our cornerstone.

May he be glorified in us, through us and throughout the Eastside!

While Doxa is a new name and there is a new pastor, the church also has several elders from Mars Hill, at least one of whom was and presumably still is on the Board of Advisors and Accountability (Matt Rogers). Rogers, who recently tweeted that he was grateful for every minute of something to do with Mars Hill (his time there or the last service, can’t tell), has never publicly addressed the conflicting statements of the BoAA. For that matter, none of the lead pastors have addressed the discrepancies between the lead pastor’s public statements about Mark Driscoll and those coming from the BoAA.

Mars Hill Bellevue Becomes Doxa Church

After incorporating as Bellevue Church, and using Eastside church for awhile, the Mars Hill Bellevue leaders seem to have settled on Doxa Church as the new name for the Jeff Vanderstelt led church. From Jason Skelton late yesterday:

If you were at any of our gatherings on Sunday, you had the opportunity to join with us in the exciting news that we have welcomed Jeff Vanderstelt as the Lead Teaching Pastor of our new church. He will begin in this new role on January 1st, 2015.

As a part of our series, Jeff preached on Sunday and also shared the new name of the church: Doxa Church. Doxa is the Greek word for Glory, and foundational to the choice of the name Doxa is Colossians 1:27 which reads: “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Jeff’s sermon was a part of the series “Jesus: Gift of God” and the focus of this sermon was on the name “Immanuel,” which means “God with us”, showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. We encourage you to watch the entirety of the sermon to understand the deep meaning of our church name.

We look forward to seeing you this Sunday, December 28th, as we celebrate the work that God has done through Mars Hill Church. We will have one special service together at 10am. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church has prepared a special message that will be shared.

On behalf of the elders, we want to wish you a Merry Christmas. See you on Sunday!

In Christ,

Jason

Proposed Bellevue Church (Was Mars Hill Bellevue) Bylaws; More Details About Bellevue Church Plant

As noted earlier this week, Bellevue Church announced today that Jeff Vanderstelt will become the lead teaching pastor at Bellevue Church. The Church intends to become a part of the Soma family of churches. The bylaws for the new church has been available to those interested and are linked here.
The church will be more open to the congregation than Mars Hill Church was. Members will be able to vote on purchases over $100k but not on the elders (see below).* The Board of Elders will be a self-perpetuating board.
To read the Bellevue Church bylaws, click here.
Jason Skelton posted this information earlier today:

As we wrap up 2014, we wanted you to know about the schedule for the remaining weekends, and what to expect as we enter the new year and begin the new church.

December 21st

Jeff Vanderstelt will be preaching at all of our services to continue our“Jesus: Gift of God” series, and we will formally welcome him as our Lead Teaching Pastor who will serve as one of the elders to replant the church. We have some additional exciting news to share, including the selection of our church name (“Bellevue Church” has been a placeholder while we are in the selection process for a new name). As well, on the 21st we will have the final in our series of “Interest Meetings,” with the topic of this week’s meeting being Counseling, Redemption Groups, Kids Ministry, and Student Ministry. This meeting will be led by Jeff Vanderstelt and Alex Ghioni, with other key leaders as well. Our ministry leaders will be here to talk through plans for the new church, and they also want to hear from you.

December 24th

We will not be hosting a Christmas Eve service this year, in an effort to ensure that volunteers and staff families have a great opportunity to be with their families after what has been a very busy season. If you’re interested in the festivities, many of the area churches are hosting Christmas Eve services, and we would encourage you also to attendSnowflake Lane together with your family or community group.

December 28th

This will be the last Sunday of the year, as we also celebrate the work that God has done through Mars Hill Church. Thousands of lives have been changed, millions of sermons have been downloaded and the Word of God has been powerfully at work. We will gather together for one final service together at 10am on December 28th. This will be our only service this Sunday to have an opportunity for the whole church family to be together.

January 4th

The start of the new year will mark the start of our new church. Join us on January 4th as Jeff Vanderstelt begins as the new Lead Teaching Pastor. Service times will be at 9am and 11am.

Lastly, we want to share just a few brief details related to planting the new church, especially amidst the busyness of the Christmas season. Most of these have already been communicated, we just wanted to compile to share it as reminders.

Last week, we shared that we have hired a number of new staff members. On Sunday we announced that Jeff Vanderstelt had resigned his position at Soma Tacoma and now joins the leadership team for the new church plant. The elders of the new church plant include Dave Cox, Alex Ghioni, Roger Molvar, Tim Patton, Matt Rogers, Jason Skelton, and Jeff Vanderstelt.

In the new year we will change our service times to 9a and 11a. This will allow us to focus our efforts on Sunday morning services, as well as utilizing the remainder of the day for additional training and equipping opportunities, particularly allowing those driving from a further distance to not be required to come into Downtown Bellevue on multiple days per week. It’s our prayer that this will also help our volunteer teams who have served sacrificially these past few months.

Also in the new year, Student Ministry will be on Sunday evenings at 5p. We will be sharing more details about Student Ministry in the coming weeks.

Our new church plant will seek to become a member of the Soma Family of Churches, but we will not be “Soma Church” or directly connected in any legal or financial manner with Soma Tacoma. Jeff Vanderstelt will be our Lead Teaching Pastor, but he has resigned from his role as an elder at Soma Tacoma. He will remain in an oversight role of the Soma Family of Churches but it should be noted that this network functions solely as a relational network of like-minded churches and has no governing or binding authority over local churches. The new church plant will be an independent church. We will be sharing more about our desire to become part of the Soma Family of Churches in the new year.

We have attached a version of our preliminary bylaws that will serve for the next six months while we evaluate and assess their effectiveness, as well as work toward affirmation of the new elder team. These bylaws are formed from the principles we shared in November at our Vision Meeting, and have been reviewed by numerous church members, leaders through our Interest Meetings,and have also been reviewed by outside counsel. We have intentionally created a version that is not extremely robust, in order that we can learn and grow over time.

In addition to this information, we’ll be sharing an extended post on what transparency will look like in the new church early next week.

We’re excited, and we pray that you are too. Jesus has been abundantly showing his grace and opening doors for the future and we confidently believe that a great, healthy church for the Eastside is in store. If you have not had an opportunity to talk to us in person and have feedback you’d like to share, we have created a form where you can provide it here. That being said, our elders are always available to you, please reach out to any of us moving forward.

In Christ,

Pastor Jason

*While it appears that the elders will elect people to their board, there is a provision on page 5 or the congregation to have some kind of input. According to the provision on the annual meeting, the congregation will affirm the elders:

An annual meeting of the church shall be held each year at a date, time, and place to be determined by the Board of Elders. At the annual meeting, the voting members shall affirm the elders assessed and appointed by the Board of Elders, affirm an annual budget, provide notice of changes to the church bylaws, and transact any other business as may come before the meeting.

This is not fleshed out. The congregation may simply get a slate of board members and be instructed to vote on the slate. If so, the opposition to one member would have to be intense for the congregation to vote down the entire slate. However, since the method of affirm is not spelled out, one cannot know how much congregational input there will be.

Mars Hill Bellevue's New Preaching Pastor Jeff Vanderstelt on Why People Are Disillusioned with Church

Note: This video was published in September 2013. I am not saying he is talking about Mars Hill Church. He is talking about church in general. I think the present situation will give Soma and Rev. Vanderstelt an opportunity to apply this teaching which came long before now.
Vanderstelt, who was named yesterday as pastor of Mars Hill Bellevue (soon to be Bellevue Church), has some good things to say about why people are turned off from church. I think he missed other reasons equally as important (e.g., anti-science, culture war mentality, etc.). However, his second reason — hypocrisy — is one which seems especially relevant as Mars Hill Church runs out the clock on public accountability.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/nofEHVP9WZ4[/youtube]
The church which is being called a “plant” already has 12 elders. Six of those elders are holdovers from Mars Hill. One of them — Matt Rogers — as a member of the Board of Advisors and Accountability has a lot of unfinished business to address. The allegations from the group of nine pastors about the BoAA are still out there uninvestigated, despite a promise from then Mars Hill spokesman Mark DeMoss that they would be. The allegations were serious and involve matters of trust and integrity. However, they have been swept under the rug with the clock running out.
Lots of Christianese is being spoken; but will anything change with these new developments? As Vanderstelt seems to be aware, people are watching and want to know if the Gospel means anything in the way the church does business.

Jeff Vanderstelt Selected as Lead Teaching Pastor at (Mars Hill) Bellevue Church

This was announced earlier today via The City:

From Pastor Jason Skelton:

On behalf of the elders of Soma Tacoma and Bellevue Church, it is our privilege to share with you today the news that Jeff Vanderstelt has been selected as the Lead Teaching Pastor of Bellevue Church in Bellevue, WA.

Over the last six weeks, the elders of Bellevue Church and Soma Tacoma have been praying together to seek the Lord and know His will in this important decision. It has been our desire to create as many opportunities as possible to allow the congregation to speak into the process. This has included multiple public gatherings from Q&A in Bellevue, Sammamish, and Soma Tacoma, as well as Jeff preaching at Bellevue Church on November 23rd and December 7th. With a remarkable spirit of unity from both congregations, that we take as a sign of confirmation from the Holy Spirit, we now move forward with confidence in presenting this decision to you.

Today at the Soma Tacoma gathering, Jeff has resigned his eldership, and formally accepted the role as Lead Teaching Pastor of Bellevue Church. He will be publicly welcomed on December 21st when he will be present to preach that day as well in Bellevue. His first official day will be January 1st, 2015, which signifies the beginning of planting a new church.

From Jeff:

“Jayne and I are blessed to be clearly led by the Spirit in conjunction with the affirmation of Soma Tacoma and Bellevue Church to step into this new adventure. We are confident that Jesus is leading us into this and eager to serve Him as he continues to build his body on the Eastside. We can not do this without Him nor without the prayers of his people. In light of that, we earnestly ask that you lift us up in your prayers as we make this difficult transition from a church family that we dearly love to one that we are already growing in love for and anticipate loving in ever increasing ways over the coming months and years. We are eager to see the glory of Jesus fill the Eastside through his body the church as the waters cover the sea!”

With this decision, Bellevue Church will seek to become a member of the Soma Family of Churches, though the timeline for this has not been determined.

Our prayer, and our vision, is that the good news of Jesus would saturate the Eastside so that every man, woman, and child would have a daily encounter with Jesus in word and deed.

In Christ,

Soma Tacoma Elders

Don Crook

Justin Kuravackal

Abe Meysenburg

Mark Tilden

Jeff Wall

Randy Sheets

Bellevue Church Elders

Dave Cox

Alex Ghioni

Roger Molvar

Tim Patton

Matt Rogers

Jason Skelton

After the news from Bellevue recently about new staff, it was unclear that Soma was still involved.

Barring any legal complications, Bellevue Church is in line to receive what could be a substantial amount of money from the dissolution of Mars Hill Church. Initially, there were high hopes that the involvement of Vanderstelt and Soma would bring in a new era of transparency. However, up to now, those representing Soma Church have ignored questions from the public and from Soma members about the transition of Bellevue from Mars Hill Church to Soma.