Mars Hill Global – Page 4 – Warren Throckmorton

Mars Hill Church Posts Financial Audit and Information About Salaries and Global Fund

Just a bit ago, Mars Hill Church posted their financial audit and a blog post about various financial questions. Probably the most interesting post is the one which provides the church’s view of salaries and Global Fund. Here it is:

Today we posted our most recent Financial Audit. As we have done for years, this information is available for you to review at the bottom of our stewardship page.

As questions have arisen this past year around executive compensation and what we have traditionally called ‘Global’ donations, we wanted to provide some additional financial clarity in these areas.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

Ministry is done by people, and churches typically have the largest amount of their ministry expenses allocated to caring for staff. Mars Hill Church utilizes external salary surveys for large churches from two sources for determining it’s staff salaries, and an independent compensation study for our executives. Executive salaries also undergo a separate, additional independent third party review of appropriate salary setting procedures, accuracy and internal payroll controls.

As it says on our stewardship page, “the independent members of the Board of Advisors and Accountability set executive elders’ compensation. Additionally, an independent compensation study is done for our executive elders by an external accounting firm.”

Mars Hill Church has made many efforts over the years to provide accountability in the process of establishing salaries. There are also specific IRS and ECFA guidelines that have been in place and followed with regards to compensation for Pastor Mark Driscoll. These included an independent compensation study conducted on all three Executive Elders, updated every three years and reviewed by outside Board Members. None of the Executive Elders set their own salaries, and compensations were both informed and reviewed by outside entities. This effort was used to set compensation levels comparable to similar sized churches for congregational attendees and annual revenue of the church.

GLOBAL FUND

Mission at Mars Hill Church has always had both a local and global focus–believing that our mission is to serve our neighbors down the street as well as around the globe. This has equated to investments in local church plants across the U.S. and support for evangelists and churches in Ethiopia and India as well. Hundreds of thousands of people from over 230 different countries in the past year alone have participated in the ministry of Mars Hill Church through accessing content and listening to sermons online, and many of them have also provided financial support.

Initiation of “Global Fund” at Mars Hill. In 2009, Mars Hill Church began to use the term “Global Fund” to solicit gifts restricted for “capital development and expansion”. As communicated in the Global Newsletter on July 7, 2009, the Global Fund was used to raise resources for the following purposes: “start new Mars Hill campuses, plant new Acts 29 churches, and equip leaders at the Resurgence Training Center.” In the 2009-2011 time frame, over 80% of the funds given to the “Global Fund” went to Acts 29 church planting, with additional funds used for the Resurgence Training Center and church planting in India.

Mars Hill “Global Fund” 2012 and later. During this time period, Mars Hill Church changed its view of the Global Fund—not viewing the Global Fund as separate from the overall mission of the church of making disciples and planting churches. In the 2012 and later time frame, Mars Hill Church began reaching more givers through video bumpers before sermon podcasts, blog posts, and YouTube videos. Some of these ministry communications were totally about U.S. church planting, some were totally about Ethiopia, but most of these communications highlighted church planting in the U.S., Ethiopia, and India.

Communication sent by Mars Hill Church to donors to the “Global Fund.” To be abundantly clear about the use of gifts to the Global Fund subsequent to June 1, 2012, in early July 2014, Mars Hill Church sent approximately 6,000 letters and 3,765 emails to individuals who had made gifts as a global donor subsequent to June 1, 2012. In these communications, Mars Hill Church offered to redirect the donor’s gifts, made as a global donor during this time period, specifically for planting churches in Ethiopia or India. To date, 36 donors have responded to these communications, resulting in the redirection of approximately $40,000 of funds from Mars Hill Church’s charitable purpose to Ethiopia/India church planting.

We also created a new category for describing our international work under the title of Mars Hill Go. If you were a global donor who wished to redirect your gift please reach out to [email protected] so that we can verify and allocate the appropriate amount of funds to our international church planting partners in Ethiopia and India.

Additionally, in 2015 we expect to make a final donation to Vision Nationals in India, and New Covenant Foundation in Ethiopia, prior to distributing net assets to the new independent churches, and some of the new local churches hope to continue the legacy of supporting these missions.

We are so thankful for everyone who has ever donated to Mars Hill Church and taken part in our mission to make disciples and plant churches in the name of Jesus Christ. Hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have been impacted by the message of the gospel because of your gifts and we pray the legacy continues as we move into the new year and see many new churches take root in their local communities.

The salary information is nothing new and they failed to actually address the issues often raised — how much money did you spend on Ethiopia and India? The verbiage about Global solicitations being about the U.S. and international expenses is just incredible. Remember BoAA, the videos have been preserved. Please in your next blog post, produce the videos that said the Global Fund was about giving money to churches in the U.S.

Churches can’t just change restricted funds to open funds without telling donors. Mars Hill continued to allow people to give to the Global Fund but without telling anyone that the money was just another gift to the general fund.

Bellevue Church to Establish Controls for Accountability in Governance

A little while ago, Pastor Jason Skelton posted this update on the City:

Follow Up from the Eastside Vision Meeting

Pastor Jason Skelton Shared

Eastside Family,

We had a great day yesterday at our Eastside Vision Meeting, where we joined in partnership with our friends from Sammamish about what the Lord is laying on our hearts for the future of this church. For those who were unable to attend, we want to provide a brief synopsis of what we covered.

First, we desire for this new church to function from a place of shared leadership, deference, and trust. We are working hard, and seeking wise counsel from godly leaders, to understand how we can best structure the church in such a manner that would encourage trust, mutual submission, and deference among the elder team and ultimately among the whole church family. We’re sorry that, particularly in recent months, significant conflict has resulted in an inability to trust the leadership of the church. We have played a part in that, and ask for your forgiveness and also your prayers, as we seek to establish a new church moving forward.

Second, we are actively and prayerfully searching for a new Lead Pastor for this new church. We have some options that we are excited to share with you soon, as right now we are prayerfully assessing character and reviewing references in order to ensure that the man that we would bring before you is not only competent in his skill, but is a man who is marked by godly character. We are seeking to find someone who would help us to retain the best of our previous church (strong preaching, great worship services, etc) while helping us to grow in areas where we have been weaker in recent years, particularly in discipleship and missional engagement.

Third, the new church structure that we will establish will include controls for accountability. While we are still prayerfully considering how this will be written into our governance, we desire that the members of the church would have an active voice into the future by allowing them to affirm elements such as the slate of elders, and the implementation of new budgets. We hold to the conviction that the church, according to Scriptures, should be led by qualified elders who would appoint qualified elders. But we also desire to have accountability to the members of the church in such a manner that would allow their voices to be more readily heard. In addition, we are prayerfully considering how we can best partner with other networks or churches.

Fourth, we are presently working from some values as a church, as interim values while searching for our new Lead Pastor. Becauset we have been loved by Jesus:

We love one another

We grow together

We celebrate redemption

We serve joyfully

We never lose hope

Many have asked: how can I help during this time? You can help in several ways:

Pray. We are planting a new church on a very expedited timeline. We need your prayers and great favor from Jesus as we attempt to move forward.

Attend Interest meetings. We will be hosting interest meetings every Sunday in the cafe between now and the end of the year at 12:30p on Sundays. These meetings will be an opportunity to meet the elders, ask questions, and learn more about the future.

Ask Questions. We not only are open to your feedback, but we truly desire it. Please let us know your hopes, dreams, and questions about how this new church will come together.

Lastly, and most importantly, it is our utmost desire that this would be a church that loves Jesus, preaches the Word of God, and is a place that families would desire to attend – yours, mine, and others. We believe that the way for this to become a reality is to live our lives as one of an outpouring of love, as described in 1 Corinthians 13. This would mean that our church would be marked by patience, kindness, humility, truth, trust, and perseverance, among a host of other characteristics. We understand that we have at times operated in a manner that has not encouraged these characteristics, and in so doing, have brought much strife on the inside and criticism from the outside. On behalf of the elders at Bellevue, we extend to you our repentance and our genuine desire to move forward as a church that would be marked by authentic love, as rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our commitment to you to continue to pour ourselves out in sacrificial service—the Gospel demands no less.

On Behalf of the Bellevue Elders,

Pastor Jason

This is actually a refreshing message. I still don’t know how you extend repentance to an entire group of people but it seems like progress that the note contains that sentiment without any obvious messages to give money.

I hope some of the people attending the vision meeting will ask questions, as invited, about the amount of money the church plans to give to the Ethiopian and Indian church planters when the church folds.

More Evidence That Mars Hill Global Was Ministry of Mars Hill Church

UPDATE: That was fast (around two hours). The video evidence has been removed from Vimeo; it seems clear that Mars Hill Church does not want this information in front of the public. I intend to repost it in keeping with fair use of material for commentary. In the mean time, the transcript is below.
Video is now below.
……………………………..
Recently, Justin Dean told me that Mars Hill Church’s Global Fund was not a fund after 2012. Even though he admitted the Global Fund was a designated fund before 2012, he said the church did not consider it a fund after 2012. Furthermore, Dean added:

Beginning in 2012 the term “Global Fund” was used on our website to distinguish between global donors and local church donors. Receipts for donations from people who selected that designation would indicate “Global Fund” but it was not a fund and hasn’t been since before 2012.

As I have pointed out, members also gave to the Global Fund and so the term did more than distinguish between members and non-members. Throughout 2012-2014, the leaders of the church referred to Mars Hill Global as something the church members were doing via donations to the Global Fund.
The following video describing a pastors conference funded by Mars Hill is a case in point (the video has been removed from Vimeo, below I have it on YouTube).
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/82847540#t=5s[/vimeo]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/mUGGcVxhimM[/youtube]

(33 seconds) For the last three years there was no funding; there was no way to gather the pastors back together from 1600 kilometers all the way down to Dilla, Ethiopia, and there was just no way of funding that. And I really felt like at that point in time that it was the opportunity that Mars Hill Church had to fund this pastors’ conference. It was amazing that the additional funding that we had, they needed.(1:00)
(2:49) This pastors’ conference affected literally 400 hundred churches and in their Bible college education they had never received discipleship training so this equipping allowed them to go back to their young, young churches and their new believers and transfer that new training to their churches.
And so Mars Hill Church when you gave to provide the funding for them to have this pastors’ conference. Without the Lord sending funds through us, this event would never have happened. (3:25)

It can’t be much clearer. Sutton Turner does not thank podcasters or non-members. He thanks Mars Hill Church members for the funding for the conference. Global here is clearly a ministry of Mars Hill church. While he doesn’t use the words “Global Fund,” the Global Fund was the means that members could use to route their donations to pay for activities in India and Ethiopia. Members were routinely asked to give above and beyond their tithes and offerings to help support Mars Hill Global. Tithes were to be given to the General Fund and “above and beyond” to the Global Fund.

Washington State Attorney General May Examine Complaints from Mars Hill Global Donors

According to this report at the blog Sola Sisters, the Washington state Attorney General may investigate the questionable practices associated with Mars Hill Global.

According to former Mars Hill attendee Dean Watkins:

I just got off the phone with someone from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. They have spent some time trying to figure out how to have accountability for the Global Fund issue. As a church, Mars Hill is exempt from filing with the Secretary of State. But under RCW 19.09 “Charitable Solicitations,” whether or not an organization is exempt from filing with the Secretary of State, they must still comply with the law.

The chain of procedure is for Global Fund contributors to first go to the Attorney General’s office, who would then forward to the IRS, if upon examination they felt there was enough evidence to warrant doing so.

For Mars Hill attendees, both former and present, if you at one time contributed to the Global Fund, and you are concerned that the money might have been used incorrectly, please follow the link and file a complaint online. Also, if you do file a complaint please be aware that it will become public record. In the complaint you may even want to mention some of the desired outcomes.

A complaint form can be found at the AG’s website according to the blog post:

If you are a Mars Hill attendee or former Mars Hill attendee who contributed tithe money to the Global Fund, and you would like to request that this fund be examined, please follow this link – General Consumer Complaint Form. Please also feel free to forward this link to those you know who might have also contributed to the Global Fund.

Mars Hill Church Leaders Have Records of Donations to a Fund They Now Say Didn't Exist

Via spokesman Justin Dean, Mars Hill Church is now claiming that the Global Fund was not a fund after 2012. If that is true, then how is this letter from former executive pastor Sutton Turner to be understood?

Sutton Turner wrote:

Our records indicate that you have donated to the “Global Fund” since ____ 2012.

According to the church, six thousand of these letters were sent to people who donated money to the Global Fund. However, if, as Justin Dean said, there was no Global Fund after 2012, then why did Sutton Turner say church records indicate that gifts were given to the fund? The church clearly has record of who gave to the fund and could disclose the amount given and spent if desired.