Mars Hill Church – Page 85 – Warren Throckmorton

Who at Mars Hill Church Authorized Church Funds to Buy a Place for Mark Driscoll's Real Marriage on the NYT Best Seller List?

Before Warren Smith’s World Magazine article in March, the story about Mars Hill Church paying a consulting firm to boost Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage to the top of the New York Times best seller list was a carefully guarded secret at the Seattle megachurch. Almost three months later, members of the church are still asking their pastors about the deal. Last week, in a meeting of Mars Hill group leaders, members asked pastors Thomas Hurst and Jason Skelton to name who was responsible for the decision to spend church money on the promotion of the Driscolls’ book. According to sources in the meeting, Hurst and Skelton told those present that Driscoll said he was not involved because he had removed himself from the decision. Hurst added that Sutton Turner, who signed the contract (read it here), was new on the job and simply signed papers put in front of him. However, according to the sources, no person was singled out as being responsible for the RSI agreement.
This narrative raises questions about who at the church authorized the RSI contract. Turner’s name is on the contract, and the invoices (see below) were addressed to Driscoll. However, if Driscoll and Turner aren’t responsible, that leaves Jamie Munson and/or Dave Bruskas, who were the other two executive elders at the time.
Relevant to the Mars Hill members’ questions, I have obtained invoices dated five days after the RSI contract was signed. The invoices were sent to Mark Driscoll from RSI requesting payment of RSI’s $25,000 fee. While it is not clear who actually saw or paid these two invoices, they raise questions about the narrative presented in the recent group leader’s meeting and Driscoll’s involvement in the arrangement.

When the RSI-MHC story broke, Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll floated three different statements about the use of RSI to get Driscoll’s book on the New York Times list. As noted in a previous post, the initial position of Mars Hill Church was that the partnership between RSI and Mars Hill was an “opportunity” and an “investment.” Two days later, the Board of Advisors and Accountability of MHC said the arrangement was “common” but “unwise.” Then, several days later, Mark Driscoll said he first saw the arrangement as a way to market books but had come to see it as “manipulating a book sales reporting system” and thus “wrong.” In that statement, Driscoll seemed to indicate that he was aware of the situation.
I asked Mars Hill Church who was responsible for the Result Source agreement and church spokesman Justin Dean replied:

We have received your requests, and will not be responding with any comments now or in the future.

Adding another wrinkle is a note from executive pastor Sutton Turner in response to a member who recently left the church. In response to member concern over the Result Source arrangement, Turner wrote:

As I thought and prayed about your letter this morning, please know that we realize the Results Source decision was a wrong decision and poor stewardship. I am sorry as your Pastor that I failed you. Please accept my apology, I am very sorry.
I pray that I have learned from this and the godly authority that I am under has helped me and will help me in the future.
Please forgive me for my poor stewardship, I take that very seriously as a King.
God Bless you and I wish you all the very best.
Grace and Peace to you,
Sutton Turner
Executive Elder & Executive Pastor

So who is responsible for this expenditure of church funds? The invoices raise the possibility that Driscoll paid RSI’s fee while the church put up the money for the rest of the operation. Sutton Turner claims responsibility but others provide an out for him by saying he just signed the papers. An earlier church statement says Result Source was suggested by outside counsel. As of now, the situation is not clear and the church refuses to provide an official response.
In any case, this topic continues to be of interest to Mars Hill members and I suspect they will keep raising the matter. However, doing so may lead to negative consequences. Recently, one volunteer leader was removed from his position as a coach because he questioned leaders about this issue and executive salaries. More on that story to come.
Read the contract between Mars Hill Church and Result Source, Inc to promote Real Marriage.

Former Mars Hill Members Dispute Official Explanation About Recent Mark Driscoll Sermon Edits

In the weekly email to members, Mars Hill leaders provide an explanation about the recent sermon edits I first reported on May 19. The narrative is a similar to what the Mars Hill leaders told Christian Post recently.

Recent Sermon Edits
You may have questions about our video sermons and how they are produced and distributed each week. We wanted to provide some clarity on our process and specifically address concerns with the Acts Part 12 sermon that was edited.
It is standard operating procedure at Mars Hill to take the first two sermons that Pastor Mark Driscoll preaches each week and edit the best possible version of the message for distribution to the other Mars Hill locations and our online audience, partly because it is necessary to edit the sermon to conform to time restraints.
Pastor Mark not only submits to someone taking material out of his sermon, but he welcomes the process. This goes on each and every week and has been the standard procedure since we started recording our sermons many years ago. The weekly sermon editing process at Mars Hill is designed to provide the best content for all who watch and listen in a time-sensitive environment.
Recently, someone gained entry to a restricted, password-protected site to steal the original recording of a recent sermon, so they could compare the rough cut with the original material to determine what had been edited. In any case, we stand behind the sermon in its entirety as the content is helpful and orthodox.

There are good reasons to question this narrative. Current Mars Hill staff who cannot speak publicly for obvious reasons, and former Mars Hill volunteers and staff who served on the Media team have told me that the kind of edits done to the Acts 6:1-7 sermon are uncommon. Two individuals who once worked on the team spoke to me on the record.
First, Scott Shipp described his experience in audio editing. Scott worked on this team from 2005 to 2009. Shipp said:

I served on the Ballard productions team recording and editing the audio versions of the sermons from 2005-2009 (if I recall my dates right). We were instructed to never edit out any part of the middle of any sermon unless it was just a couple seconds and it was because of audio clipping, feedback, or some audio issue. When I heard that multiple minutes of a sermon were edited out it shocked me. Of course in the intervening five years they may have moved into more drastic editing, and as far as I know, all of the audio and video volunteers I knew there have left MHC now, but from my experience, this is unheard of.

Then Brian Jacobsen, a more recent member of the Media team, wrote:

Mars Hill’s response to Warren Throckmorton’s disclosure of the sermon video editing is troubling.
One of my responsibilities at Mars Hill was to preview the upcoming sermon early in the week to take note of some specific items. There was a group on the church’s private social network that was used for this sermon preview process. I think the group was named “Sermon Review”. We resigned from Mars Hill on Thursday, April 3, 2014, so the last time I previewed a sermon would have been on Sunday, March 30 or Monday, March 31.
I think it was sometime early this year that the Mars Hill Central production team changed the way they posted the preview video. Prior to that time, they tried to do some of the editing of the sermon video, with the various camera angles and what not, before posting it to the Sermon Review group. The change they made earlier this year was to post the raw footage from a single camera which was located higher up and toward the rear, with the camera set so you could see the entire stage and a lot of the congregation.
The clip of the deleted segment of sermon video that Warren Throckmorton made available on his blog looks just like a sermon preview video. I suspect the video that was posted in the Sermon Review group included this deleted segment and that it was the source of the clip obtained by Warren. Every Mars Hill church probably has a handful or more of the pastors and leaders in this Sermon Review group. My memory is that over 100 people were in this group and would have had access to this deleted sermon video clip.
Editing the sermon video and in some cases cutting out some content is normal. The production team has, at times, even combined video from different services in order to provide the best content. However, in the two and half years I was involved in previewing sermons, I don’t believe I have ever seen this extensive of a cut. This cut essentially removed an entire topic, which was Pastor Mark’s argument that Jesus made mistakes.
The final sermon video that was provided to the Mars Hill churches was 56:41 in length, which is a few minutes shorter than a typical Mark Driscoll sermon. His recent sermons have been 60 to 62 minutes. If they hadn’t cut out this segment, the sermon video would have been at about 62 minutes. Pastor Anthony Ianniciello was quoted as saying, “Partly because it is necessary to edit the sermon to conform to time restraints.” From these numbers, it appears the cut in this case was not necessary to conform to time restraints.

Finally, Wenatchee the Hatchet provides an account of a prior instance of redacted content which was related to embarrassing content rather than time constraints.

Website Changes: Donations to Mars Hill Global Are Now Donations to Mars Hill Church General Fund

Without admission or acknowledgment, Mars Hill Church continues to change the focus of Mars Hill Global.
Previously, I have raised questions about where Mars Hill Global funds go. Church sources have told me on condition of anonymity that very little of the money designated as Mars Hill Global donations (nearly $2.3 million from July 2012 to June 2013) are disbursed to international missions. In recent days, someone at Mars Hill has directed changes to the website to make it clearer that donations to Mars Hill Global are also spent in the United States.
Recently, this sentence was added to the description of Mars Hill Global on the MHC website:

Mars Hill Global has the same mission as Mars Hill Church – evangelizing, making disciples, equipping leaders, and planting churches all over the world, including but not exclusive to Ethiopia, India and the US.

This sentence was added after my articles on Mars Hill Global were published.
Now, in contrast to the Google cache yesterday, a very similar wording has been added to the Mars Hill giving page.

This description alerts givers that all gifts go to support “evangelizing, making disciples, equipping leaders, and planting chures (sic) all over the world, including but not exclusive to Ethiopia, India, and the United States.” The language is now the same as on the Mars Hill Global page. Even though the Global promotional video is shot in Ethiopia, the new language does not restrict the donations to international causes.
Another change is the deletion of “Global Fund” as an option for giving. Currently, there is a drop down menu titled “Fund.” Now, there are only two options, General Fund (Local & Global) and Foundation/Endowment Fund (see below):

However, a screen capture from late April demonstrates that, at that time, donors had the option of designating their donation to the Global Fund.

Even though the page then noted that donations would help “global ministry efforts,” someone donating prior to the recent changes very probably believed that a gift to the global fund would actually go to international efforts.
Without acknowledging the situation, Mars Hill appears to be bringing themselves closer to compliance with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability guidelines on designation of giving. I have written the ECFA several emails asking for comment over the past week but have received no answer. I have received no answer to my email to [email protected].
While Mars Hill appears to be giving more disclosure to potential donors, I cannot find on the Global or giving pages any disclosure of how much money has been disbursed to domestic and international efforts. Perhaps, the leaders won’t feel obligated to do so now, since they are being up front with the fact that Global and non-Global donations all go into the General Fund. However, potential donors might still want to know how much goes to Ethiopia and how much goes to the lease of a building in Bellevue, and past donors might want to know how much of their funds designated to the Global Fund went to that purpose.

Mars Hill Church Defends Edits to Mark Driscoll's Sermon on Acts 6:1-7

In an exclusive statement to Christian Post, Mars Hill Church denies that the edits to Mark Driscoll’s recent sermon on Acts 6:1-7 were anything unusual. They also stand in support of the content of the edited portion.
According to the CP article, sermons are evaluated and then edited on a routine basis. In one sense, this is certainly true. Many people have access to the sermon prior to finished product and can make various suggestions. According to my sources, most editing is for the sake of time. Sometimes editing is done to remove content the leaders don’t want the congregation to hear or know. For instance, older sermon transcripts have been edited to remove mention of Leif Moi, one of the founders of Mars Hill. Other former leaders have been scrubbed from the website, as was Mark Driscoll’s naturopathic physician when the doctor lost his license.
In this case, sources from Mars Hill tell me that some staff took Driscoll’s references to the mistakes of Jesus as thinly veiled self-defense, using the life of Jesus to do it. Others had few concerns about the content but were worried that Driscoll would be perceived as comparing himself to Jesus in order to minimize the concerns of former members. These varied concerns led to the edits, according to my sources.
Without naming the sermon, at least one former Mars Hill pastor, Dave Kraft, raised concerns about making an analogy from Jesus’s actions to human mistakes. Kraft is one of the pastors leading 20 former Mars Hill pastors to request mediation with Driscoll and the other executive elders.
CP’s Alex Murashko said I didn’t return an email by press time. All Murashko wanted to know was where I got the video. I wrote back to ask how that information would be relevant to his story.

Mars Hill Church to Hold Vision Breakfast on June 10

I have obtained a memo inviting Mars Hill Church members to attend a “vision breakfast.” In a report on the last vision breakfast, it was reported by Sutton Turner that at least one member had questions about the 2012 legal situation for the church in Orange County CA. Turner said he wouldn’t answer because he wanted to talk to Kyle Firstenberg first.

Vision Breakfast | 6.10.14
From Pastor Sutton Turner:
Mars Hill Bellevue, My deepest prayer for our church family these past several weeks has come from Hebrews 12:1–2: that we would lay aside every weight and sin, and that we would run with endurance the race that is set before us. I’ve been praying that we would look to Jesus! I ask you to pray as well for our continued health and maturity as individuals and as the body of Christ at Mars Hill.
HEAR THE VISION
I can’t wait to gather together for our upcoming Vision Breakfast on June 10. Vision Breakfasts are our regular opportunity throughout the year for the leadership to share a united vision with all of our local churches. Vision Breakfasts allow us to communicate on a more intimate level. Think of them as family meetings: they allow us the chance to personally engage with you, Mars Hill, regarding what we believe Jesus has next for us as a body of believers.
JOIN US
Pastor Mark, Pastor Dave, and I will address all Mars Hill churches via live video. Then, Pastor Thomas will address your church family with a personal word about your local mission. So, please mark your calendars for June 10 and plan to join us for future Tuesday-morning Vision Breakfasts, held from 7:00 to 8:30 a.m. (PST), on the following days:
• June 10 (RSVP here)
• September 9
• November 11
Breakfast is served at 7:00 a.m. and is generously funded, organized, and served by members of Mars Hill Bellevue. They continue to treat us so well—and yes, the food is always great! We are thankful to the Lord for their gift of hospitality and the good they do for the household of faith (Gal. 6:10). RSVP If you are interested in attending the Vision Breakfast on June 10, please RSVP in order to help us plan accordingly.
Gratefully, Pastor Sutton Turner Executive Pastor and Executive Elder

There is something surreal an intimate conversation with a video feed. In any case, perhaps there will be some mechanism for questions to get to the executive elders. There is much that could come up. Perhaps the elders will tell the congregation what is happening with the 10700 Northtup Way property; and where the Mars Hill Global money is being spent. Maybe there will be an update about the mediation efforts with the 20 former pastors, or an explanation for the editing of a recent sermon or why so many popular leaders are leaving.