The campus that was finally known as Mars Hill Lake City was
originally Mars Hill Wedgwood. The address was:
3524 NE 95th Street
Seattle, WA 98115
Mars Hill Lake City: The open and shut case
The campus that was finally known as Mars Hill Lake City was
originally Mars Hill Wedgwood. The address was:
3524 NE 95th Street
Seattle, WA 98115
The site was functioning as a Mars Hill campus from later
2007 to the summer of 2010. This was one of the smallest campuses in the
Martian orbit but as you will see the campus was not only distinguished by
being small but by what a non-profit fundraising professional might consider
its loyal and robust donor base.
This campus was also the campus that Paul Petry was at with
his family in 2007 the year he and Bent Meyer got fired. Here is Jonna Petry's account from pages 3
and 4 of her story published at Joyful Exiles.
The last happy thing
that transpired during our time at Mars Hill Church was near Christmas in 2006.
Mark had asked the elders to consider which of them felt called to lead the new
Wedgwood campus in NE Seattle (formerly Anchor Baptist Church) and to let him
know. We had been thinking and praying
about what was next for us as Mars Hill Church continued to grow and this
opportunity seemed perfect. We went to Mark at the staff Christmas party to
express this. He was delighted, saying
it was a confirmation for him. He said Paul was just the elder he had in mind.
Mark brought over Lief Moi (his best friend, co-founder and right hand man at
the time) to share the good news. Lief
expressed delight as well. How excited
we were.
Then something
happened in late January or February. There was a shift. Mark had been seeking
all kinds of information and strategy for another reorganization plan in order
to "grow the church to the `next level'" and had recently had
meetings with Larry Osborn in California amongst others. Paul had one meeting
with the executive elders about taking on the lead pastor role at Wedgwood. One
Executive Elder, Steve Tompkins, insinuated that Paul had many people who
looked up to him in the church and that could potentially lead to a church split.
Steve asked Paul what he had to say about that. Paul was really shocked and
hurt at the poison of this remark and no doubt this had something to do with
the outcome.
Many drastic changes
occurred in the spring of 2007. Mark pressured all the elected executive elders
[with the exception of Jamie Munson} to resign their posts, saying a new
structure was necessary. Mark also
decided that Lief would no longer function as the pastor of the Ballard campus
(the primary and largest campus where Mark taught mostly in person) and as a
result the two of them had a horrible falling out. This was an ominous sign for me because Mark
had often spoken about his love and appreciation for Lief's willingness to go
"toe-to-toe" with him and how this was vital for the health of the
church.
Nobody talked to Paul
about Wedgwood again until May, when in a sort of backhanded way, Paul heard
from another elder, James Harleman (a former executive elder who had just
resigned from that position under Mark's pressure), that Paul was no longer
being considered for the position, that James was in fact going to lead
Wedgwood. That was really hard, but we
covered over our stinging disappointment and chose to believe that God must
have something else in mind for us.
Again, in September-October 2007 Paul Petry and Bent Meyer
were fired and the rest is pretty substantially documented through primary
correspondence at Joyful Exiles.
Of note is that Jonna Petry mentions an incident in which
Steve Tompkins is said to have insinuated that Paul Petry had many people who
looked up to him and that this could potentially lead to a church split. Full disclosure, I attended the Lake City
campus for about a year. There were people who wondered whether Lake City could
potentially form a splinter church whether or not Petry was the pastor. I informally heard people wonder whether such
a thing couldn't have happened with even Harleman as the campus pastor
there. But these theories were not
particularly compelling, especially since splitting off wasn't what
happened. By the summer of 2010 the
campus was shut down and the various members and attenders went to other
campuses.
But while Lake City existed it had a relatively early and
notable reputation for giving. Let's take what Driscoll said about the Lake
City campus from the Generous part 2a presentation:
December 21, 2008
Generous Part 2A)
And what’s happening
now, nationally – it’s interesting as I talk to pastors – they are freaking out
because their giving is going down to our levels, where we just tend to live.
We tend to be a fairly lean church.
So, here’s the little
friendly competition. I’ll show you what’s going on between campuses. Number
one is Lake City, who I hear this morning had zero people when we started
services. So, that may ruin everything for them. They were doing well ‘til
today.
The average person at
Lake City gives $216.00 a month, and about $2,600.00 a year. So, go, Lake City!
Number two is
Shoreline, up north, $205.00 a month, about $2,400.00 a year. Tied with them is
West Seattle. So West Seattle and Shoreline are neck and neck.
Number three is
Bellevue, one of our newest campuses, with Pastor Jesse – about $190.00 a
month, and about – just under $2,300.00 a year. Olympia, our newest campus, way
down south, is a smaller campus, but so far doing well in generosity – $174.00
a month, or about $2,000.00 a year.
Downtown – $154.00 a
month, about $1,800.00 a year. Ballard gets no gold star on its chart. Ballard
is the Mariners of Mars Hill campuses.
(Laughter)
It is the Seahawks of
Mars Hill campuses. We hope it doesn’t become the Sonics of Mars Hill campuses,
but it is at $130.00 a month, or about $1,500.00 a year. And part of our
problem going into the year end, so you know, is that about half of the
attendance is at Ballard. So, if things were flipped and the preponderance of
our attendance was at any one of the other campuses, we would actually have met
and exceeded budget. But because of the struggles at Ballard, we’re really in a
pain point.
Basically, the
campuses are floating financially. They’re all at or near – close to – within
striking distance of budget. Not Ballard – Ballard – Pastor Jamie’ll get into
the details – we’re in the middle of going from a staff of 27 to a staff of 16,
possibly less at Ballard. So, big adjustment at Ballard for 2009. Some people
being reallocated positions in the organization. Others losing their jobs. And
so, this is a hard season for the Ballard campus, particularly, and Ballard is
struggling most mightily.
During this time we at the Lake City campus sometimes heard
that not only was the campus doing pretty well but that the campus was also
helping to subsidize Ballard because Ballard was not doing so well. Regular readers will note that some anonymous
comments have indicated that systemic deficits and layoffs came to be expected
at Ballard but that this was not the case for campuses.
According to the FY 2009 report "It's All About
Jesus" the campus breakdown for FY09 high attendance was as follows. The average giving per adult was $2,514. This was the second highest figure to Mars
Hill Shoreline, which had an average giving per adult in FY 2009 of $2,601. So
Lake City had gotten to second place but not by a particularly large
margin.
From July 2009 to June 2010 the average annual giving per
adult at Lake City was $2,945, the highest of any campus during the FY2010
year. The average monthly giving per
adult was $245. The average weekly attendance was 302. This was one of the smallest campuses in the
church, though Olympia and the U-district were even smaller at 250 and 223
respectively. But if you count the
number of adult attenders the figures change. Lake City had an average weekly
adult attendence of 222. That's
right. By contrast, Olympia's adult
attendence average per month was 197 and for the U-district it was 223 (for
obvious reasons). So Lake City was second smallest to Olympia for adult
attendence. But, the point should be
noted again, in FY2010 they had the highest annual giving per adult and the
highest average monthly giving per adult.
Then with the start of FY 2011 the campus was pretty much
shut down. Lead Pastor Jamie Munson
explained the situation to the Seattle Times:
Published Friday, August 13, 2010 at 10pm
By Janet I Tu
Seattle Times Staff reporter
But not everything has
gone smoothly for Mars Hill financially.
For the fiscal year
that ended June 30, the church was $1 million short of its giving target and
had to lay off 12 employees — about 10 percent of its staff, Lead Pastor Jamie
Munson said a few months ago. Its budget was $14 million.
It also ended services
at its Lake City location, which over its three years hadn't been drawing as
many people as expected, Munson said.
Now something that might be worth noting is that the Lake
City campus launched Anchor Church in September of 2009.
By the time the Lake City campus closed in the summer of
2010 attendence had dwindled down to a very small amount. Word that the campus was going to get shut
down was sent out, if memory serves, a few months before the end of the fiscal
year 2009. I made a point of attending
the closing services there even though by then I had stopped being a member and
had decided to go elsewhere for church. Circa
2008 to 2010 attendence of sermons preached by the campus pastor could be
bigger than attendance for the Driscoll video feed. I’d begun by this time to hear people share
that the campus pastors were preaching
better sermons than Driscoll. More traditional pastors might suggest that these
campus pastors actually had a real communal link to the people they preached to
so, duh, of course their sermons were going to be better. But I digress. A survey of the annual reports indicates that
Lake City was a campus that was small but had a robust and loyal donor
base. Yeah, I put it in those terms but
I mean that affectionately.
When Munson told the Seattle Times that Lake City was not
drawing as many people as had been expected did Munson tell the Seattle Time's
Janet Tu how many people he hoped would be attending the Lake City campus? But if it's never been about numbers but lives transformed by Jesus then ... closing down a campus because it didn't draw the expected numbers could have used a bit more explanation.
Now some guy
(you can go see for yourself) posted the following comment at Wenatchee The
Hatchet earlier this year.
As long as you are
doing property research you may also find it interesting that the Lake City
Campus was purchased in July of 2006 for 2.0 million after being on the market
for almost 2 years with a starting list price of 3 million. In January of this
year Mars Hill sold the building to its then current tenants for 1.3 million. I
am not sure how much went into capitol improvements for the property but my
guess is that the church lost close to a million on that deal. The current tax
assessed value on that property is just over 2 million
Lake City and Downtown were properties that were acquired
before the 2008 housing bubble. If youwant to dig a bit to find out who may have been involved in that process thismay be a useful resource.
Whether or not Mars Hill lost money on the sale I'm not
quite situated to establish. But
observing the patterns of donor giving I would suggest that since many people
who went to Lake City were originally from Ballard assimilating them back into
Ballard could have helped. That's not what happened as best I can guess,
many went over to the Shoreline campus, though I can't say how many of those
have stayed even there. Harleman was
executive pastor at the Shoreline campus for a while and now is not listed as a
pastor anywhere, neither is Chad Toulouse who, for a brief while, replaced
Harleman as executive pastor. Neither Harleman nor Toulouse are executive pastors at Shoreline now and neither, so far as I can tell, seem to be listed as pastors at Mars Hill in any capacity.
Where they are now is not something I will necessarily field
at this blog. Longtime readers of this blog have by now figured out that I only
write a fraction of the stuff I know, most of it based on stuff I can establish
from primary sources and direct observation from my time at the religious
institution.
Those with access to publicly accessible records and so on are welcome to contribute if they find stuff. So far as I am aware Lake City was the only campus in the history of Mars Hill that was shut down. The Leary building got dropped in favor of Mars Hill Ballard but that wasn't a shut down case. Lake City may be said, so far, to be the only open and shut campus in the history of the institution that I'm aware of. If there are other cases people can weigh in, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment