Mars Hill Church at Huntington Beach, CA went out with a dramatic flair. Watch:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/115578257[/vimeo]
MH Huntington Beach started as Mars Hill Orange County. The OC location was beset by problems from the beginning. Soon after the church signed a lease, the city of Santa Ana told the church that the zoning laws did not allow a church in the building. Despite requests from the OC pastors and fines from Santa Ana, the executive elders of Mars Hill declined to approve a move to another location. Eventually, Mark Driscoll floated a discrimination narrative (maybe Santa Ana is discriminating against a church), but after awhile moved to another location.
Understandably, since the video appears to be meant as a tribute, this part of the history is not described in the video.
Tag: Mars Hill Church
Dude, Where's My Logo?
This is what happens when you host your logo with someone else.
As we can see now (and probably not for long), at least one markdriscoll.org element was hosted by Mars Hill Church. Since that website and related assets went away, the Mars Hill assets will not show up anywhere else…including Mark Driscoll’s copy of the old MHC website.
Say Good-Bye to Mars Hill Church's Web Presence Tonight (UPDATED)
UPDATE: The website now has a history of the church and directory of locations which are attempting to become independent churches.
The history includes Leif Moi and Mike Gunn as co-founders and in 2014 there’s this:
While the year began with much joy, 2014 was a year marked by trials, tribulations, and ultimately—transitions. Facing mounting criticism as the church investigated formal charges against him, Pastor Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as vision and preaching pastor on October 14, 2014.
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Ecclesiastes 7:8 – “The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.”
If you want to get some last minute Mars Hill information put aside, now is the time to do it. Multiple sources are telling me that the website content will be unavailable at midnight eastern time.
As we now know, at least some of the sermon content will live on at markdriscoll.org. Google cache will have some available for several days but the Wayback Machine is hindered by the ever-pesky robot.txt.
Not sure about the social media but I suspect those accounts will be gone as well (e.g., You Tube, Twitter, Facebook).
The church has lots of business to conduct so it really can’t legally go away until the final dissolution. I have some more stories and information which I will add to the record in the coming days.
Readers can also use this post as an open forum on the last days at Mars Hill. Maybe MH Insida will make an appearance before he goes off to party. In any case, please keep it civil and respectful of each other.
Seattle Times Covers the Last Day at Mars Hill Church
Some interesting news in this article about the new Cross and Crown Church (formerly Mars Hill Ballard).
For those keeping up, the article is a brief update on Ballard.
According to the report, the Evangelical Credit Union, who is financing the building, wants to see fewer paid staff on the leadership team.
The Title of Mark Driscoll's New Non-Profit is Trademarked by Two Other Organizations (UPDATED)
Update: markdriscoll.org is back up. There are some Mars Hill elements which remain (e.g., navigation bar, and logo), are assets of the church, and presumably are being pulled from their servers. For instance, the logo:
The sites are telling Facebook they are the same site by using the same Facebook insight tag:
marshill.com
markdriscoll.org
There is content which comes from Justin Dean’s new company Doxa Media (for instance this image on the “Get” tab).
Also, see update at the end of the post concerning the co-directors of Learning for Living…
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Mark Driscoll’s new website has been down since the 27th after I reported that it was a copy of marshill.com.
This morning Janet Mefferd tweeted that Driscoll’s new organization, Learning for Living, is trademarked by Alistair Begg’s Truth for Life organization. I became aware of that last week and wrote Truth for Life for comment. Today, I spoke to someone at the organization who declined to comment but was aware of the issue. The person who is able to comment was not there today.
The phrase is also trademarked by the non-sectarian Learning for Living Institute. I don’t really know how this works since according to the search results two organizations have the same phrase. There was no response from the Institute to my inquiries before I posted this.
In any case, I don’t know if the trademark issue is the reason the website is down or if it relates to a clean up of the Mars Hill code issue raised over the weekend.
Update: Becky Garrison has information on who is helping Driscoll with Learning for Living:
Directors
Mark Driscoll
Greg Kappas
Tope Koleoso
23632 Highway 99, Suite F517, Edmonds, WA 98026 USA
As Garrison points out, Kappas (if it is the same one) is head of Grace Global Network. He has been with Driscoll since the beginning of his ministry, according to Wenatchee the Hatchet. Koleoso preached at Mars Hill’s best sermon series and is pastor of Jubilee Church in London. He was the speaker at Bellevue when former members protested outside that Mars Hill location. The address is a post box (517) at the UPS store there.