Former Mars Hill Church Board of Advisors and Accountability member Paul Tripp broke his silence on his website by saying the following:
It’s because of this love that I accepted the position on Mars Hill Church’s BoAA. But it became clear to me that a distant, external accountability board can never work well because it isn’t a firsthand witness to the ongoing life and ministry of the church.
Such a board at best can provide financial accountability, but it will find it very difficult to provide the kind of hands-on spiritual direction and protection that every Christian pastor needs. Unwittingly what happens is that the external accountability board becomes an inadequate replacement for a biblically functioning internal elder board that is the way God designed his church to be lead and pastors to be guided and protected.
So, since I knew that I could not be the kind of help that I would like to be through the vehicle of the BoAA, I resigned from that position.
Read the entire statement on his site.
Many critics of Mars Hill Church begin with the change of by-laws in 2007 which ended the “functioning internal elder board” and replaced it with the current structure. Recently, Mark Driscoll blamed his personal health problems and his wife’s problems for the creation of those changes. Here Paul Tripp says it doesn’t work.
A week ago, I posted an anonymous statement from a former staff member in the central office at Mars Hill Church. Today, I can offer you another statement from the same staffer. I received this quote from Rachel M, a former staffer in Mars Hill finance department. Here is her quote.
I believe that Mars Hill leadership knew from the start that donations to the Global Fund were restricted and could not be used for unrestricted purposes. In fact, there was a separate account for Global in the books to note this distinction. During my time in the Finance Department, there was a pointed emphasis to be sure that restricted funds were not co-mingled with general funds. I believe that among the Financial Leadership Team (which includes multiple CPA-level staff, who would know all the ins and outs of restricted and unrestricted donations), there was a clear awareness that any restricted funds could not be directed to the general fund. Without a doubt in my mind, Mars Hill leadership knew what they were doing.
This statement pulls back the curtain a bit on the situation and indicates some conflict between at least some members of the finance team and the executive elders. The concern expressed here by Rachel is understandable given the solicitations for Ethiopia and India in the Mars Hill Church services. Those solicitations should have triggered a more vigorous reaction from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. According to a ECFA publication written by president Dan Busby, video promotions like the following signal to donors that their donations to a specific fund will be used in keeping with the solicitation.
Busby’s guidance on how to determine donor intent is important and reproduced below: Busby makes it clear that donors signal donor intent, not the organization who received the donation. Mars Hill Church has it backward. In a recent World article, church spokesman Justin Dean said, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.” First, Dean implies that donations to the Global Fund were given by the “global family” (podcasters, non-members). However, much evidence presented here and in other posts demonstrates that members were asked to give to the Global Fund. Second, Dean assumes Mars Hill’s leaders know the intent of the donors. Busby’s article places donor intent with the donor, not the organization. To discern donor intent, according to Busby, the organization can look to explicit and implicit expression of donor intent.
As the videos demonstrate (see also the image at the end of the post), Mars Hill Global, during 2012-2014, was promoted as the arm of Mars Hill Church dedicated to international missions. However, as Mars Hill now admits, very little of that money actually went to international missions. I have provided a wealth of information in prior posts to demonstrate that the Global Fund and Mars Hill Global became the missionary outreach fund of Mars Hill Church from 2012 to 2014.
Donors to Mars Hill Global Fund explicitly signaled their intent by checking Global Fund on the website when they gave. The implicit intent can be gleaned by donor response to the videos of Sutton Turner in Ethiopia asking the church members (not just podcasters) to give “above and beyond” their tithes in order to support Ethiopian evangelists. Before May 2o14, the church website clearly gave donors the option to choose Global Fund explicitly over the General Fund. If the donations were always intended to go to the General Fund as Mars Hill Church now claims, then why have two funds?
Busby’s guidance is clear but not being followed by Mars Hill Church:
Once the donor had indicated the intent for which the donation was given, and the charity has accepted the gift, it is the responsibility of the charity to fulfill that intent. The charity could have chosen not to accept the gift if the fulfillment of the donor restriction was in question.
In most cases the donor is responding to a specific appeal. The appeal itself generally identifies the purpose for which donations are sought. If the donor simply responds to the appeal, it should be assumed that the donor’s intent is that the funds be used as described in the appeal.
Another important point is that once the gift is given and the church accepts it, the church must honor donor intent. Donors can change their mind but donors should not have to jump through an additional hoop to inform the church how the money should be spent.
In my opinion, based on the assumption that the Global Fund was restricted, Mars Hill Church’s current policy is backward. Currently, they are requiring Global donors to contact the church to designate (again) that donations go to missions. However, as I understand ECFA guidance, the church should be requiring donors who want to redesignate their donation for the General Fund to contact the church to authorize those funds for general purposes.
Those Ethiopian and Indian evangelists should have gotten millions in support. Instead they only got a tiny fraction. The “preponderance” of the money went to church plants in the United States and who knows what else. In my opinion, for Mars Hill to remain accredited, the ECFA should require the church to honor donor intent, expressed explicitly by the selection of “Global Fund” and implicitly by the responses to the constant promotion of Ethiopia and India via videos, the annual report, and the church website. More articles on Mars Hill Global
Apparently Mars Hill Church is not going to sue me to keep sections of their deleted Mars Hill Global videos from public view. After the 10-14 day waiting period for Mars Hill to file suit, the church did not do so and You Tube restored the video of Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner promoting Mars Hill Global as an international mission outreach.
Watch: [youtube]http://youtu.be/XFiD7XkYtPk[/youtube]
Those excerpts came from three videos Mars Hill Church deleted from their You Tube account. The videos are important because they conflict with what Mars Hill Church is claiming about Mars Hill Global between 2012-2014. In a recent World article, church spokesman Justin Dean said, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.” The problem with this statement is that churches cannot designate or restrict funds after they are donated. If the church pitches a fund as going toward a specific purpose then the church must honor that purpose. The videos make it clear that Mars Hill members were informed that the Global Fund was the way Mars Hill church does missions and that such gifts were to be given above and beyond their regular giving to the church. Thus, the donors were not only “Mars Hill Global family” and the donations were given to a fund that church leaders said was used for international missions. (Note: An earlier version of this post had more information about the Global Fund as a designated fund. I decided to present that information in a separate article)
In a press release, ex-Mars Hill deacon Rob Smith said a group of 75 ex-members and leaders at Mars Hill today were prepared to ask the Mars Hill Church elders to consider new charges against the executive elders of Mars Hill Church. However, in light of the action by the Acts 29 Network to remove Driscoll and the church as members, the group has decided to wait.
Charges Against Mark Driscoll and Church Executives Delayed After Ouster from Acts 29
August 8, 2014 Seattle, WA – In the light of the announcement today by the Acts 29 Board removing Mars Hill Church and Pastor Mark Driscoll from its membership, and calling for his removal as pastor, a group of over 75 members and ex-members have chosen to delay the filing of 53 new charges against the pastor and his Executive Elders.
Spokesman for the group of 75 members and ex-members bringing formal charges, Rob Smith, said, “It is with a mix of sadness and relief to see that Acts 29 has taken these actions. We hope and pray that the call for Mark Driscoll to step down from ministry is heeded. We would therefore rather wait and withdraw our plans to file new charges if he steps down, or file them in due course if he chooses to ignore the call of the Acts 29 board. We are in prayer for Mark and his family. We pray that he will find comfort, restoration, and hope in the Christ that he loves. We are committed to love him well and stand ready to support him and his family through these difficult days. We echo the call of the Acts 29 board.”
One of the charges that was to be filed today is that the current bylaws were passed in a sinful and unlawful manner that violated both the text and spirit of the 2006 bylaws under which the new bylaws were passed. If found to be true, the church’s current bylaws may be deemed invalid and repealed.
Smith called on the church’s current leadership to examine the manner in which the current bylaws were passed, and to take the bold move to declare them invalid and reinstate the 2006 bylaws that govern the church by “a plurality of equal elders. A return to a classically Reformed church governance model, preached and taught so well by Pastor Mark Driscoll, will serve the future of Mars Hill Church well.”
Smith also called for “an end to the order given to the Mars Hill Church members to shun Pastor Paul Petry, and for a complete exoneration of both Pastor Paul Petry and Pastor Bent Meyer for their valiant attempts to protect the church in 2007.”
The church has frequently been in the news lately, rocked by various scandals involving it’s coarse-tongued, “tough-guy” persona pastor, including allegations of plagiarism, libel, using church funds to manipulate sales of his sex book onto the New York Times bestseller list, posting vulgar online rants demeaning to women under an assumed name, and most recently the revelation that solicited donations to the church’s global fund for missions to Africa and India were misappropriated and spent on acquisitions of real estate in Spokane and Everett, Washington.
Last week, church members, ex-members, and members of the community showed up for a protest in front of the church’s main campus after Driscoll declared in a video to church members that he wanted to “reconcile” with people he has “hurt” but was unable to do so because “they remain anonymous.” The video sparked the startup of a Facebook group called “Dear Pastor Mark: We Are Not Anonymous” and large signs carried by protesters at last week’s demonstration repeated the theme.
See the announcement about the removal of Mars Hill Church from Acts 29 Network here, and all posts on Mars Hill Church, click the link.
