Tag: Mars Hill Church

Eric Metaxas Says Driscoll Needs Grace, Never Heard of ResultSource, Buying Best Seller Spot is Wrong but Complicated (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Christianity Today informed me they stand by the quotes in the article.
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Last night Eric Metaxas briefly addressed his statements in yesterdays Christianity Today’s article on the ethics of buying a spot on the New York Times best-seller list.
To recap, you can read what Metaxas told CT here and below.
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Late last night, Metaxas addressed concerns about his statements in the CT by appearing to backpeddled from them.


I responded to the tweet by posting his comments to CT and asking if he could clarify.


From there, we had a brief exchange and he addressed the issue again briefly in other tweets to his “great audience.”


So that’s it as far as I can tell from his twitter feed. I got a form email to my requests for clarification.
I am not clear on his position. The CT article was about using ResultSource to manipulate the best seller list. CT’s writer Ken Walker said Metaxas thought Mars Hill didn’t do anything wrong; that opinion is more charitable than simply showing Driscoll grace. What CT printed (Mars Hill did nothing wrong) and what Metaxas said last night (buying on the NYT list is wrong) doesn’t match. Metaxas didn’t address the discrepancy in his tweets but did say that the NYT list issue is complicated. I would like to know how faking book sales with church money is complicated.
I hope Metaxas will see the contradiction which remains between his CT comments and his tweets and clear it up.
 

Eric Metaxas to Christianity Today: Getting on Best-Seller Lists is Good Stewardship (UPDATED)

UPDATE (1/8/15) – Eric Metaxas commented last night on Twitter about the CT article. I have a post at this link where his Twitter comments are presented. He said buying a spot on the NYT’s list is wrong but then said it was complicated. I think he could go further but this may be it.
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(Original article begins here)
According to Christianity Today, author and evangelical leader Eric Metaxas said Mars Hill Church did nothing wrong by using ResultSource to get Mark Driscoll’s book Real Marriage on the New York Times best-seller list.
Metaxas told CT:

“Anyone thinking there is something pure about that list does not understand the system and how it works,” he said. “I would even argue that trying to get on that list is a combination of a realistic sense of the market and good stewardship. When you understand … the Times list is a bit of a game … you realize being on that list has less to do with the actual merit of a book than with other, far less important factors.”

Prior to that quote, Metaxas is cited as referring to the Mars Hill Church scheme and indicated that Metaxas found nothing wrong with what Mars Hill did. Since that particular segment of the article was not in quotes, I don’t know if Metaxas’ comments were meant to apply specifically to Mars Hill Church or if Metaxas knows that the church committed church funds to purchase copies of Mark Driscoll’s book Real Marriage at retail prices via fictitious buying accounts in selected zip codes to bypass the NYTs monitoring system. I contacted Metaxas via email and twitter earlier this morning and will add any response I get.
Most of the industry contacts cited in the CT article take a dim view of manipulating the system. The New York Times told me back in November that they try to prevent such gaming of the system. Justin Taylor at Crossway had strong words about the practice:

From our point of view at Crossway, the bestseller lists are designed to provide an accurate reflection of the market’s response to an author and his or her book. If an author, agent, or publisher intentionally tries to subvert or distort the intended purpose of the bestseller lists, we believe this would constitute an ethical violation, in terms of standard ethical norms, but even more so in terms of Christian ethics. This would be dishonoring to the Lord (to whom we are ultimately accountable), and it would also conflict with our calling to love our neighbors as ourselves (by not creating a distorted or deceptive picture of reality). Christian authors, agents, and publishers are called to a high standard of integrity as we seek to glorify God, not only in the content of what we publish, sell, and market, but also in the way in which we go about this calling.” — Justin Taylor, senior vice president and publisher for books, Crossway 

Current Mars Hill Church president Dave Bruskas told his congregation that the ResultSource scheme was wrong as did Mark Driscoll in hindsight.
Readers can review the ResultSource contract with Mars Hill Church here.
I will be surprised and disappointed if Metaxas maintains the position he took in the article.

Christianity Today Revisits the Ethics of Using ResultSource to Score a New York Times Best Seller

Tonight, Christianity Today’s Ken Walker posted an article on the ethics of buying a spot on best seller lists. The coverage, which is also in the January print edition, links to the ResultSource contract I posted here.  Although I am surprised the views of Crossway executive Justin Taylor were not included, this is an important article with reaction from numerous industry sources. Most publishers who commented took a dim view of the methods used by ResultSource.
Some surprises from the article:
Eric Metaxas doesn’t see a problem with using a ResultSource like scheme. I wonder if he used them to help out with the Bonhoeffer book.
David Jeremiah’s book Captured by Grace was once listed on the ResultSource website as a part of the ResultSource portfolio. Back in November, I wrote about the mention of Jeremiah’s right hand man Paul Joiner in a Mars Hill Church memo on Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage campaign. Repeated contacts with Turning Point Ministry have gone unanswered. I plan some additional work on David Jeremiah’s approach to publishing best seller, possibly as early as tomorrow. It now appears that he has been using ResultSource to move his books up the lists since 2007.
ResultSource may not be doing much business since the secret sauce was revealed.
One thing not surprising is that the authors involved, ResultSource’s CEO Kevin Small, and Jeremiah’s current and Driscoll’s former agent Sealy Yates did not provide information or comment to CT.
 
 
 

Corporate Changes for Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll

For those keeping up on the corporate side of Mars Hill, Becky Garrison and Wenatchee the Hatchet are on top of the matter.
Garrison reports that Dave Bruskas is now the president of Mars Hill Church and Caleb Walters is the Secretary.
WtH reports on changes with Driscoll’s LLCs.
It is not clear who is making day to day decisions at Mars Hill. The church will no longer hold services but property still must be sold with a final distribution of assets to come. By bylaw, the Board of Advisors and Accountability has the power to guide these matters. As president, Bruskas functions as the CEO and by bylaw has the responsibility to run the organization.

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.
DoxaOnTheMHC City
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.