Tag: Mars Hill Church

What If The Global Fund Actually Went To International Missions?

According to the Mars Hill Global FAQ page, $10 million have been given by non-members to the church. This is about as specific as one can get since they don’t provide enough information to sort it all out. Here is what they say about giving by the “global family“:

WHERE HAVE PAST GIFTS BEEN USED?

During fiscal years 2009-2014, over $10MM dollars has been given to Mars Hill Church by the Mars Hill global family. During that same time period $22.48MM has been spent on church planting in the US, India and Ethiopia. In 2009-11 over 80% of funds given by the Mars Hill global family went to Acts 29 church planting and funds were consistently spent in India for church planting in each of those years. In 2012- 2014 expenditures for church planting efforts in India and Ethiopia were increased with the preponderance of expenses related to church plants and replants in the U.S.

So this does not address how much money was given to the Global Fund that once was an donation option for Mars Hill members and non-members.
In the Mars Hill Church 2013 Annual Report, the church reported taking in nearly $2.3 million in Mars Hill Global Giving. It is not clear if the $2.3 million is money from non-members or if this is how much was donated to the Global Fund. In the annual report, all accomplishments on the Mars Hill Global page are related to India and Ethiopia. So it is reasonable to assume that the $2.3 million amount was donated toward international missions. Only Mars Hill can clear this up but they aren’t talking.
Although worded differently, blogger Justin Bullington asked yesterday on his blog what would have happened if the Global Fund actually went toward missions. Go read his post; he figures a couple of people groups could have been reached if the money had been spent on missions.
I thought about it in a slightly different way. I checked out how much it costs to fully support an Ethiopian evangelist for a year. It turns out that according to Mars Hill’s partner in Ethiopia, New Covenant Foundation, it costs $170/month to support an evangelist. Currently, according to the Global FAQ page, Mars Hill supports 40 evangelists. If Mars Hill is supporting them fully, then the yearly investment in Ethiopia is $81,600. They also support 33 in India which cost $200 per urban evangelist (rural evangelists are supported at $50/month). Assuming all evangelists are urban, Mars Hill spends  $79,200 there.  Combining the two countries, I estimate Mars Hill spent $160,800 on church planting during the past fiscal year.
Assuming a deduction of about 20% for administration, Mars Hill could have had $1.8 million to provide to missions during 2012-2013. In other words, they could have supported over 10 times the number of evangelists they are now.  The group Mars Hill partners with for Ethiopian outreach New Covenant Foundation took in just over $450,000 in 2012. If the Global Fund giving was what it appears to have been, Mars Hill’s donations could have been a game changer for that organization.  Instead, the “preponderance of expenses related to church plants and replants in the U.S.” (i.e., franchise locations in “Bellevue, WA; Everett, WA; Tacoma, WA; Phoenix, AZ; and soon Spokane, WA“).
These figures may not be accurate. Mars Hill could easily provide the data. In the mean time, I think these estimates are reasonable based on the information available.
 

Mars Hill Church Claims Copyright Violation on Mars Hill Global YouTube Videos

Mars Hill Church has claimed copyright violation due to my posting video clips of Pastor Mark Driscoll telling members about Mars Hill Global. Despite hours of Mars Hill material on YouTube, Mars Hill has chosen to aggressively move against the Mars Hill Global content. They also issued a take-down request on a video hosted by YouTube account “muscleman.” That video had been up for months on YouTube, but was targeted the day after I pointed out that Mars Hill removed it from their account.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/YQM_TcGhGys[/youtube]
(Oddly enough, it still plays as an embedded video, but when you try to watch it on You Tube, you get this screen)

The video posted by “muscleman” is the same one that airs as an ad on YouTube (see this post), and opens many of Mark Driscoll’s sermons on the Mars Hill website (e.g., this one in January, 2014).  The transcript of that video is as follows:

Howdy Mars Hill Church, pastor Sutton Turner here and I’m in Ethiopia, and I just want to thank Jesus for continuing to use Mars Hill Church to make disciples and plant churches. Mars Hill Global is the arm of Mars Hill Church that makes disciples and plant churches all over the world. We not only do church planting, but we help better equip church planters. Most recently, we shipped and now distributed a thousand Bibles into Amharic which is the language here in Ethiopia, and we launched a project to translate Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Doctrine book into Spanish. We have people from over 29 different countries that are giving on a monthly basis to Mars Hill Global.
So whether you’re a member of one of our Mars Hill Church locations in the United States or you’re one of 100,000 podcasters every single week, we encourage you to pray about giving above and beyond your tithe to Mars Hill Global. Thank you and let’s see more materials translated, more pastors sent out, more churches planted, and more people saved by Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)

In the videos I excerpted, Mark Driscoll pointed out to the Mars Hill congregation that through Mars Hill Global they were supporting Ethiopian evangelists. This is in contrast to the recent claims that Mars Hill Global meant money coming from non-members. However in the removed videos, Driscoll clearly owns the ministry Mars Hill Global and points to the congregation as the source of the support for the international mission effort. I continue to believe the videos clips are covered by Fair Use exemptions and am weighing my options.
How strange is this situation? Mars Hill Church has been defending Mars Hill Global, while at the same time they have apologized to the congregation for confusion caused by the way they have referred to Global. Perhaps, they would justify their actions by saying they want to remove confusing content. However, that content has been played multiple times. Just removing it without explanation makes the situation more confusing. It is surreal and demeaning to the public to present a message for years and then change the message suddenly without explanation, acting as if it had always been that way.
This is not the first copyright rodeo. I suspect we will see at least some of these videos again (as we did before).

Crosscut on Mars Hill Church's Recent Problems

Reporter Stacie Solie has a dark view of Mars Hill Church’s recent problems in today’s online edition of Crosscut, a Seattle area news and information website.
The first paragraph provides a taste:

There are emerging stories of sensational kangaroo courts and “sex demon” trials, like something out of the Salem witch hunts of the 1600s. Even more devastating to individual members are the ways in which they are shamed, taught to blame themselves and each other when they see problems, and to formally shun people who step out of favor with church leaders. Shunnings, both formal and informal, have caused the outcast to spend years in isolation, cut off from friends, sometimes suffering deep clinical depression, nightmares, disillusionment and shattered faith.

Solie pulls no punches in describing the results of her reporting. As usual, Mars Hill representatives declined to comment or be interviewed.  I was interviewed for the article and show up briefly near the end.

Mars Hill Church's International Mission Ministry: Mars Hill Global

Subtitle: How Long Until These Pages Are Scrubbed?
Sometime in 2012, the focus of Mars Hill Global became solidly on Global being the way Mars Hill Church did international missions. Do Mars Hill Church leaders still consider Mars Hill Global to be their international missions outreach? Despite the elimination of the Global Fund, the Mars Hill website still indicates that Mars Hill Global is the way Mars Hill Church supports international missions.
For instance, look at the current FAQ page:

And then there is this page. If you go to the Marshill.com and click the Connect tab, you come to this page. Note the “Global Ministries” link. It goes to the Mars Hill Global page.

 
And there is this December 2013 page promoting the 40 days of prayer:

Let the guesses begin. How long will these references to Global stay the same?

Mars Hill Church Scrubs Three Mars Hill Global Videos

UPDATE: Mars Hill claimed a copyright violation against the videos embedded below which resulted in them being removed from YouTube.
I’m not sure what to make of it but Mars Hill Church has made three videos private which were once featured on their Mars Hill Global You Tube channel. Two of them feature Pastor Mark Driscoll (in mid-2012) and in the other one, Pastor Sutton Turner (Jan. 2013) asks Mars Hill members for money to support Ethiopian church planting efforts (for a short time, you can see them in the list – #8, #24,#25 – on the Google cache page). Someone named muscleman uploaded the video featuring Sutton Turner before it was removed:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkgolN5w8Q[/youtube]
Transcript:

Howdy Mars Hill Church, pastor Sutton Turner here and I’m in Ethiopia, and I just want to thank Jesus for continuing to use Mars Hill Church to make disciples and plant churches. Mars Hill Global is the arm of Mars Hill Church that makes disciples and plant churches all over the world. We not only do church planting, but we help better equip church planters. Most recently, we shipped and now distributed a thousand Bibles into Amharic which is the language here in Ethiopia, and we launched a project to translate Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Doctrine book into Spanish. We have people from over 29 different countries that are giving on a monthly basis to Mars Hill Global.
So whether you’re a member of one of our Mars Hill Church locations in the United States or you’re one of 100,000 podcasters every single week, we encourage you to pray about giving above and beyond your tithe to Mars Hill Global. Thank you and let’s see more materials translated, more pastors sent out, more churches planted, and more people saved by Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)

Because the Google cache won’t last forever, here is a screen capture of the missing videos.


In the video, “To India, Ethiopia and Beyond: A Mars Hill Global Update,” Mark Driscoll takes the first minute of the video to give an update of church planting at Mars Hill in the U.S. Then he says, “We believe there are other opportunities and we are waiting for Jesus to clarify exactly where He wants us to go next. In addition, I want to tell you some things that are going on with Mars Hill Global.” (emphasis added). Note the transition from church planting at Mars Hill to a report about what is going on with Global. Driscoll then summarizes what is happening in India and Ethiopia. At one point, at 2:00, Driscoll points to the Mars Hill congregation and says, “You are funding over a dozen church planters in Ethiopia.” Later, he adds that through Mars Hill Global, the church is getting resources out “to the ends of the Earth.” In the other video, “What is Mars Hill Global?” Driscoll runs down a similar list of accomplishments. He says the international efforts are being done in addition to the church planting in the U.S.
From my point of view, beginning in early 2012, Mars Hill created an impression that gifts to Mars Hill Global were mainly going to international mission efforts. Inadvertently or not, they created confusion (as they have admitted) with their various definitions of Mars Hill Global (is it a non-member audience, is it a fund, is it both?), and their constant references to international efforts in the context of Mars Hill Global pleadings. Actually, most of this has been admitted. What is remarkable is that they used “the preponderance” of donations to expand their locations, even though they gave donors almost no indication that the money was being spent in real time for those local purposes.
In accord with fair use guidelines, I clipped relevant material from the deleted videos. These clips indicate that Driscoll presented Mars Hill Global as something Mars Hill Church was doing in addition to church planting in the U.S. This is of course make sense since the international efforts after 2011 had a name (Mars Hill Global) and a fund (the Global Fund). Non-members gave money to the General Fund and the Global Fund of Mars Hill Church and at times, Mars Hill leaders referred to Mars Hill Global as people around the world who donated money. However, in these clips, Global is referred to as an effort conducted by Mars Hill Church.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/YQM_TcGhGys[/youtube]
I don’t have an opinion about why these videos have been removed. Mars Hill has already acknowledged that the church caused confusion and the leaders spent money that at least some donors believed was going to international missions primarily on domestic expansion. In any case, these videos are three of the clearer presentations of MH Global as something Mars Hill does as opposed to seeing MH Global as a group of non-members who give money.
For all posts on Mars Hill Global, click this link.