http://careynieuwhof.com/2016/03/episode79/
One of the things Justin Dean's been saying in the wake of the closure of Mars Hill was that Mars Hill just didn't understand the media, perhaps how the media worked and that the media had it out for them.
There's a significant problem with this. Driscoll spent a year or two bragging about his media savvy and that of his wife. Grace worked in public relations before she became a parent. So while Justin Dean's initial defense of Mars Hill to Slate when a disciplinary situation with an Andrew became a national headline was to say there was unclear communication this plea-by-way-of-incompetence is not a defense that either of the Driscolls has been particularly demonstrably eager to endorse.
And since the topic of Andrew and Mars Hill from 2012 was the first time Justin Dean's name was likely to have been noticed ... that gets me thinking about something I was able to establish at length, as in about 20,000 words.
Pages
- Home
- a page with an index of tagged posts discussing the history of the former Mars Hill Church
- a page with an index of posts on music and musical analysis--guitar sonatas and contrapuntal music for guitar and other musical stuff
- writings at Mbird on animation, superheroes and other things (nobody cares about Jarvis Pennyworth)
Showing posts with label a confluence of situations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a confluence of situations. Show all posts
Friday, April 08, 2016
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Mars Hill Church and the idol of social media
A bit more than a year ago Wenatchee The Hatchet published this in the months after Andrew Lamb's case became a set of headlines. It was simply called "Mars Hill, Andrew in 2012 and the idol of social media".
While Mars Hill PR worked hard to avoid discussing disciplinary cases in early 2012 and leaned on the idea of protecting the privacy of victims, generally women, the reality was that the parties involved had largely blogged and tweeted away their privacy. As documented at considerable length, no less than Mark Driscoll himself preached tidbits giving away the identity of a party involved.
All of that thumbnail review is to propose that Mars Hill Church has a fixation of some kind on social media and branding. The fact that they are hunting for a Chief Sales and Marketing Officer makes this all but impossible to dispute. Come on, we can't quote ourselves all the time, though we could and that, too, would be a distinctly Mars Hill thing to do, in it's way. In fact ... let's just quote from ourselves now.
Every god and every cause demands a sacrifice and the great sacrifice made to the idol of social media and media saturation is what? What you publish is there for everyone to see. In other words, what you sacrifice when you immerse yourself in the internet and social media long enough is something called privacy. You can choose to give up ten percent of your privacy or thirty percent or you can create a persona that you offer to the internet and social media. That, too, is a sacrifice.
Mars Hill members, even leaders, have posted huge amounts of information to social and broadcast media in the course of more than a decade. It's conceivable, in fact, that some have posted information on social media or broadcast media they shouldn't have, even to the point of publishing something that might have cost them a job or two. Maybe it has already happened. Who knows?
To by what Mark Driscoll's associates did with his sermon quoted by Andy and Wendy Alsup last year, when something that has been in the public for years is quoted and shows Mars Hill or Driscoll in a potentially less than favorable light things get redacted. There are places where the longer material has been preserved in some fashion here and here. So between Wenatchee The Hatchet and the other two blogs there are at least three places where you can compare what Driscoll is quoted saying in the earlier form and what is available to hear on download more recently.
Last year Fighting for the Faith broadcast statements by Mark Driscoll made in the wake of the termination of two men from pastoral work. Chris Rosebrough discussed what the changes in Mark Driscoll's roles meant, as he understood them, here. That the words of Driscoll were not available, apparently, until last year suggests that this was material that nobody in association with Mark Driscoll seemed to think would be good to have available for public consultation. They're worth listening to for what Driscoll said about the necessity of casting vision and then just moving on if people aren't on board.
Short version, backing away from visible power and consolidating informal power. In fact Driscoll is currently legal president of Mars Hill Church. The secretary of state listing for Acts 29 Network looks out of date since there's no sign of Scott Thomas anywhere, but when Mark Driscoll mentioned in February 2012 that Scott Thomas asked him to resume presidency that's apparently what happened. So it seems that Mars Hill Church and Acts 29 Network, as legal entities, looked to be pretty much the same three officers. it may be different now that Acts 29 Network has a presence in Texas things may be different. And so it is, in that Texas does not consider it suitable or necessary to divulge the identities of the legal officers of an organization like Acts 29 Network.
What appeared to be happening was that Driscoll had been consolidating formal and legal power while the public statements were to the effect that Sutton Turner would be replacing Jamie Munson as the one with the "kingly" gifts. Now perhaps Turner is an adequate treasurer and secretary for Mars Hill Church but that remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen, if discoverable, who the legal officers of Mars Hill in Texas are and when the agent information on the Washington side may be updated.
It remains to be seen how soon Mars Hill will fill that Chief Sales and Marketing Officer position. Whoever gets that job may want to consider at least the possibility that social media is one of the idols of Mars Hill and that a careful examination of Mars Hill's social and broadcast media output "may" reveal that the controversies that have bedeviled Mars Hill may not be a devilish plot as much as unforeseen consequences of Mars Hill's own cultural fixations. Just presenting that as a possible interpretation of the evidence in social media at hand. Others are welcome to other interpretations.
While Mars Hill PR worked hard to avoid discussing disciplinary cases in early 2012 and leaned on the idea of protecting the privacy of victims, generally women, the reality was that the parties involved had largely blogged and tweeted away their privacy. As documented at considerable length, no less than Mark Driscoll himself preached tidbits giving away the identity of a party involved.
All of that thumbnail review is to propose that Mars Hill Church has a fixation of some kind on social media and branding. The fact that they are hunting for a Chief Sales and Marketing Officer makes this all but impossible to dispute. Come on, we can't quote ourselves all the time, though we could and that, too, would be a distinctly Mars Hill thing to do, in it's way. In fact ... let's just quote from ourselves now.
Every god and every cause demands a sacrifice and the great sacrifice made to the idol of social media and media saturation is what? What you publish is there for everyone to see. In other words, what you sacrifice when you immerse yourself in the internet and social media long enough is something called privacy. You can choose to give up ten percent of your privacy or thirty percent or you can create a persona that you offer to the internet and social media. That, too, is a sacrifice.
Mars Hill members, even leaders, have posted huge amounts of information to social and broadcast media in the course of more than a decade. It's conceivable, in fact, that some have posted information on social media or broadcast media they shouldn't have, even to the point of publishing something that might have cost them a job or two. Maybe it has already happened. Who knows?
To by what Mark Driscoll's associates did with his sermon quoted by Andy and Wendy Alsup last year, when something that has been in the public for years is quoted and shows Mars Hill or Driscoll in a potentially less than favorable light things get redacted. There are places where the longer material has been preserved in some fashion here and here. So between Wenatchee The Hatchet and the other two blogs there are at least three places where you can compare what Driscoll is quoted saying in the earlier form and what is available to hear on download more recently.
Last year Fighting for the Faith broadcast statements by Mark Driscoll made in the wake of the termination of two men from pastoral work. Chris Rosebrough discussed what the changes in Mark Driscoll's roles meant, as he understood them, here. That the words of Driscoll were not available, apparently, until last year suggests that this was material that nobody in association with Mark Driscoll seemed to think would be good to have available for public consultation. They're worth listening to for what Driscoll said about the necessity of casting vision and then just moving on if people aren't on board.
Short version, backing away from visible power and consolidating informal power. In fact Driscoll is currently legal president of Mars Hill Church. The secretary of state listing for Acts 29 Network looks out of date since there's no sign of Scott Thomas anywhere, but when Mark Driscoll mentioned in February 2012 that Scott Thomas asked him to resume presidency that's apparently what happened. So it seems that Mars Hill Church and Acts 29 Network, as legal entities, looked to be pretty much the same three officers. it may be different now that Acts 29 Network has a presence in Texas things may be different. And so it is, in that Texas does not consider it suitable or necessary to divulge the identities of the legal officers of an organization like Acts 29 Network.
What appeared to be happening was that Driscoll had been consolidating formal and legal power while the public statements were to the effect that Sutton Turner would be replacing Jamie Munson as the one with the "kingly" gifts. Now perhaps Turner is an adequate treasurer and secretary for Mars Hill Church but that remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen, if discoverable, who the legal officers of Mars Hill in Texas are and when the agent information on the Washington side may be updated.
It remains to be seen how soon Mars Hill will fill that Chief Sales and Marketing Officer position. Whoever gets that job may want to consider at least the possibility that social media is one of the idols of Mars Hill and that a careful examination of Mars Hill's social and broadcast media output "may" reveal that the controversies that have bedeviled Mars Hill may not be a devilish plot as much as unforeseen consequences of Mars Hill's own cultural fixations. Just presenting that as a possible interpretation of the evidence in social media at hand. Others are welcome to other interpretations.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
A Confluence of Situations: A Postscript
Last year Wenatchee mentioned a few things at the following post:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/05/mars-hill-andrew-in-2012-and-idol-of.html
... Mars Hill has lamented that they were not contacted by authors to verify the facts or seek explanation regarding the cases prior to publishing articles. But if Mars Hill was so concerned that nobody contacted them to verify the facts why did Mars Hill suspend its entire campus blog network and associated archives in early March 2012? Why did Mars Hill scrub away all references to spouses or offspring in pastor profiles? The question at hand has not been why bloggers and journalists didn't contact Mars Hill to verify facts about Andrew's case. The question is why Mars Hill said they regretted the press not verifying facts, yet undertook a massive information purge of the very facts the press, in the past, could have looked up without having to talk to anyone directly?
... So when Mars Hill lamented that nobody contacted them to verify the facts related to Andrew's case that lament was specious precisely because during this period of time they were, if anything, probably suppressing access to facts that were easy to look up before the controversy made the news. What does an information purge that has gone unmentioned in the press or blogs suggest? It suggests this-- bloggers and journalists verifying the facts connected to Andrew's case was the last thing Mars Hill wanted to happen.
Then later, this:
Someone could have done a massive info-dumping project showing all the still publicly accessible, on record information necessary to identify the key parties involved in the Andrew case and have done this months ago.
Someone didn't do that last year because Andrew Lamb and Matthew Paul Turner had made at least some effort to preserve Andrew's anonymity. Mars Hill had undertaken their massive information purge but that was moot in light of the sheer volume of information Mars Hill, as a culture, had blogged and tweeted and podcasted at every level between 2004-2011, including people who at one point were associated with Acts 29 churches. The fascination with and eagerness to use social media could be said to be in the DNA of Mars Hill and associated outgrowths.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/05/mars-hill-andrew-in-2012-and-idol-of.html
... Mars Hill has lamented that they were not contacted by authors to verify the facts or seek explanation regarding the cases prior to publishing articles. But if Mars Hill was so concerned that nobody contacted them to verify the facts why did Mars Hill suspend its entire campus blog network and associated archives in early March 2012? Why did Mars Hill scrub away all references to spouses or offspring in pastor profiles? The question at hand has not been why bloggers and journalists didn't contact Mars Hill to verify facts about Andrew's case. The question is why Mars Hill said they regretted the press not verifying facts, yet undertook a massive information purge of the very facts the press, in the past, could have looked up without having to talk to anyone directly?
... So when Mars Hill lamented that nobody contacted them to verify the facts related to Andrew's case that lament was specious precisely because during this period of time they were, if anything, probably suppressing access to facts that were easy to look up before the controversy made the news. What does an information purge that has gone unmentioned in the press or blogs suggest? It suggests this-- bloggers and journalists verifying the facts connected to Andrew's case was the last thing Mars Hill wanted to happen.
Then later, this:
Someone could have done a massive info-dumping project showing all the still publicly accessible, on record information necessary to identify the key parties involved in the Andrew case and have done this months ago.
Someone didn't do that last year because Andrew Lamb and Matthew Paul Turner had made at least some effort to preserve Andrew's anonymity. Mars Hill had undertaken their massive information purge but that was moot in light of the sheer volume of information Mars Hill, as a culture, had blogged and tweeted and podcasted at every level between 2004-2011, including people who at one point were associated with Acts 29 churches. The fascination with and eagerness to use social media could be said to be in the DNA of Mars Hill and associated outgrowths.
Friday, January 25, 2013
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 13
SUMMING UP
In investigating whether
Andrew’s claims were basically credible or not I found that the overall story
is credible. Andrew’s reluctance to fully
self-identify was a big reason all the above material has only been published
now and not back in May 2012. Lamb and Turner were able to confirm the basic
reliability of what I was able to work out and provided some background on
other details Wenatchee had not quite worked out. The rest was blogged and tweeted by the
Noriegas, reported in papers, or preached from the pulpit at Mars Hill.
So, to sum up Andrew’s
story via MPT: He was a member and a
volunteer at Mars Hill Ballard in 2011.
James Noriega was a pastor there who had remarried and had a stepdaughter.
Both James Noriega and his daughter/stepdaughter attest to an “Andrew”, and
Kaitlyn mentions being engaged to an “Andrew” at her own blog. Her mother refers to wedding shopping in
November and a dead link on her blog links back to her daughter’s blog with a
post title “An Unused Wedding Dress”. If this is all thought to be merely
circumstantial evidence it’s a pretty remarkable set of circumstantial
references to a person named “Andrew”.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 12
QUESTIONS OF TERMINATION
AND POSSIBILITIES FOR DECEIT
As to at least one
possible claim that Noriega was terminated there’s one embedded within this
thread at Mars Hill Refuge
If Noriega was fired in
September 2011 this would go a long way to explain why Patrick Kyle’s anonymous
friend on staff at Mars Hill could legitimately say that Andrew’s story was at
best incomplete and most likely deliberately misleading. I, however, read Matthew Paul Turner’s
account of the story and theorized that ambiguities and oversights were
probably done on purpose not necessarily to deliberately mislead but to protect
some measure of anonymity for the other parties involved in the “confluence of
situations” harmed by Andrew’s actions.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 11
THE NORIEGA FAMILY IN
OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA
...
Noriega has a Blogger
profile
His blogroll includes Be My Muse, Coffee and Kids, Justified By
Faith (his own blog), The Gospel
Coalition, and TheResurgence
Be My Muse is a blog
that is linked to at the blog Redeemed By
His Grace
Now for those who
remember this:
http://marshill.com/2012/02/13/a-response-regarding-church-discipline...
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 10
JAMES NORIEGA AT MARS HILL BALLARD
AND “ANDREW”
Noriega was eventually introduced to
Mars Hill Ballard as co-lead pastor of the Redemption Groups and as part of the
Biblical Living pastoral department.
The above link introduced
James Noriega in a Meet the Staff posting posted on from March 17, 2009. Unlike
the other links I have posted so far, the ballard.marshill.com link has been
dead since some time shortly after February 28, 2012. February 28, 2012
was when I documented the disappearance of James Noriega from the elder
listings at Mars Hill in any publicly observable form. But the title
embedded in the link is as plain as could be.
James Noriega was being introduced as a pastor on staff at Mars Hill
Ballard.
In fact, since the start
of March 2012 at least, the entire Mars Hill campus blog network and associated
archives have been suspended. Any old links default to the current event
calendar. That this happened the week after I documented the disappearance of
James Noriega from Mars Hill eldership and cited references on campus blogs
including interviews with Noriega himself and Pastor Tim Beltz is a curious
coincidence.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 9
SEEKING HUMILITY,
PROVIDING REAL ESTATE
The church Bill Clem and
James Noriega were pastoring, Doxa, was a boon to assimilate into Mars Hill for
various reasons Mark Driscoll explained in his July 2006 sermon. It was also advantageous for Clem, who was
approached by Driscoll shortly after Clem got word that his wife Jeannie had
been diagnosed with cancer. For James
Noriega the assimilation meant he was also transitioned into leadership within
Mars Hill. In a strange and improbably coincidence the two remarried men who
were pastors at Ballard both came from what is now Mars Hill West Seattle.
On November 9, 2011 the
following video got posted. In the video
Bill Clem says about what is now the West Seattle campus:
"It isn't as though we do a lot of ministry
here on Sunday morning, but this is where we did all of our ministry when we
first started a church plant called Doxa, which was an Acts 29 church in
partnership with Mars Hill."
The close of the video
establishes the following statistics.
Doxa launched in 2002 with eight people.
Today as many as 1,000 people meet to worship in that same
building every week.
In 2009 the West Seattle campus planted the Federal Way Campus.
So the majority of what
Driscoll said in the July 2006 sermon about not developing the 50th
street property and the advantages of acquiring Doxa check out. It’s a bit
surprising to read now in 2012 what Driscoll said in 2006, that he had made a
bid for what is now Mars Hill West Seattle way back in 1996 and was
rejected. Having Bill Clem plant an Acts
29 church at that property matches up with what Clem himself says about his
time as a church planter in Doxa. It
would appear that by Driscoll’s own account he’d had his eyes on the property
that is now Mars Hill West Seattle from the first days of his ministry way back
in 1996. He finally got the property for Mars Hill and with it he got both Bill
Clem and James Noriega as pastors. Despite his history of felonies and being
newlywed into his second marriage James Noriega was vetted for pastoral work at
Mars Hill.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 8
A FIVE-MILLION-DOLLAR
PLAN B?
Now to appreciate the
significance of “we don’t need to fight use permits” you need to be aware of
the 2005 capital campaign that led to the purchase of the 50th
street property. This requires a lot of citations that can’t be shortened. Here
they are.
The first excerpt is
from Confessions of a Reformission Rev, published in April 2006.
Our current facility cannot accomodate much growth beyond our
current four Sunday services. Additionally our kids' ministry is bursting at
the seams, our Capstone classes are in desperate need of space, and our
cramped, windowless office space would be perfect if we were a third-world
sweatshop.
So the elders voted to purchase a 43,000-square-foot dumpy
warehouse Jamie found one block away from our current building. When the
project is completed, we will have two buildings only a block apart, each
hosting church services, with 1,300 seats in one location and a projected 1,000
seats in the other. We will be able to grow to more than 10,000 people per
Sunday through multiple services in multiple locations. Each service will have
live worship teams, but I will only be live in some services and in video in
others.
However, in his July 30,
2006 sermon in 1 Corinthians Driscoll said several things about the property
mentioned in Reformission Rev:
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 7
"THAT IS A $5 MILLION GIFT.”
Part 26: One Body, Many
parts
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Pastor Mark Driscoll
July 30, 2006
… In the meantime, we also picked up another miracle. This is
West Seattle. This is on 35th at the top of the hill in West Seattle as you
head toward White Center. I grew up in this neighborhood. This is a church
building that is an absolute miracle. I’ll tell you the story on this space. I tried to launch Mars Hill Church in that
building ten years ago, and we were rejected, and I’ve always wanted to be in
there since. (emphasis added) And what happened was, is we were growing. I
went to Pastor Bill Clem, who was leading that congregation. He planted it for
Acts 29 Church Planning Network, him and James Noriega, who is the other elder
there and I said, “We’re maxed out. You got a fat building, 50,000 square feet,
1,000 seats.:” It’s a bigger building and the one you’re sitting in right now.
I said, “Is there any way we to use it?” They said, “Well, we wanna reach as
many people in West Seattle as possible. How about if we give it to you and
work together?” we prayed about it for a second and said, “Yes.”
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 6
PASTOR’S DAUGHTER,
STEPDAUGHTER: TWO CANDIDATES
In Matthew Paul Turner’s
account Andrew said he was engaged to a pastor’s daughter and that after his
confession he ended up meeting with his fiancée’s stepfather. Now in Matthew Paul Turner's wording the
stepfather might be construed as a separate person from the pastor at the Mars
Hill campus. This inference, however, could be a misleading and
inaccurate. I do not believe,
ultimately, that it’s plausible to simply assume that the fiancée’s father and
stepfather as described in a Mars Hill setting are necessarily different men.
It’s possible, of course, but I intend to explain the significance of these two
details at some length given what I know about the history and culture of Mars
Hill.
The requirements for
elder candidacy at Mars Hill are generally thought to be pretty stringent.
Divorce is not generally smiled upon at Mars Hill. Who could have been a pastor
at Mars Hill Ballard and have also been a stepfather? First we have to
establish the conditions under which such a scenario might have been considered
acceptable and only then consider whether there were actual candidates who in
2011 at Mars Hill Ballard could have met those criteria.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 5
SLATE AND A RESPONSE
FROM MARS HILL
The fury over Andrew’s
experience—and his decision to publicize the church’s internal disciplinary
procedures—has led to accusations by other Christians that one
of the most powerful evangelical voices in the country, Mars Hill pastor Mark
Driscoll, employs a cultlike leadership style. Now, for the first time, Mars
Hill is speaking out in response to its former member’s charges.
Not long after Matthew
Paul Turner’s two blog posts were published an article appeared in The Stranger
and, a bit later, an article in Slate.
The bolded text above links to the
following blog post I wrote in late January this year.
Unfortunately, Ruth
Graham's paragraph spectacularly misrepresents what I wrote. I did not
accuse Mark Driscoll of employing a cult-like leadership style. In fact what I
wrote was that I had experiences in 2007-2008 that completely shook my trust in
the competence and good will of counseling/biblical living pastors at Mars
Hill. Who wants to be linked to by Slate if Slate completely misrepresents what
you wrote? It seems unlikely anyone actually read the blog post linked to in
Graham’s article before the article hit publication.
Such is life.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 4
“A CONFLUENCE OF
SITUATIONS”—NEW REFORMATION PRESS
On February 4, 2012 New
Reformation Press published a clarification/retraction to an earlier statement
about Mars Hill’s discipline of Andrew.
Saturday, February 4,
2012
I recently put up a post
contrasting the supposed mishandling of church discipline at Mars Hill Church
in Seattle, and my own experience in a Lutheran congregation in Southern
California. You can read that post here.
A friend on staff at
Mars Hill read that post and reached out to me earlier this week. After a
fairly lengthy discussion, I have decided to post this retraction and
clarification. There is much more to the story than initial reports, including
the ones I linked to, than it first appears. It is a classic case of Proverbs
18:17 in action.
The first to plead his
case seems right,
Until another
comes and examines him. Prov.18:17
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 3
SOMETHING ON THE CITY
... The week before
Christmas, Andrew’s community group leader sent him another text message:
What’s your schedule like on Wednesday? Another meeting was to be planned, this
time with one of Mars Hills family/counseling pastors as well as Andrew’s new
community group leader.
Andrew admits that, by
this time, he was exhausted. The thought of one more meeting overwhelmed his
already very full brain. “But I took some time to pray, and decided that I
needed to meet with them and hear what they had to say.”
On the evening of
December 18, Andrew met with the pastor and small group leader. It was during
this meeting that Andrew first learned that he was being “brought under church
discipline.” Despite it feeling like he’d been going through church discipline
for a little more than a month, he didn’t say much. He did a lot of listening.
Discipline Contract
This part of the story
has been so widely blogged about it hardly merits further discussion. It merits mention for those who may have
actually never heard of these events. Even though I have referred to it set
that aside, particularly if you already know the details.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 2
THE STORY BREAKS
First we must begin with
the beginning of the public coverage.
Matthew Paul Turner’s blog is obviously where we have to start.
A Confluence of Situations: Andrew Lamb's disciplinary case at Mars Hill, part 1
A CONFLUENCE OF
SITUATIONS
A review of the 2012
Mars Hill Andrew case, public record, competing narratives, and a digression
into 2006 property acquisition
2012 was a year in which
Mars Hill made national headlines for a disciplinary case. Since this news
broke blogs exploded with commentary and mainstream as well as regional media
weighed in on the subject. In many cases a variety of things seem to have been
assumed by partisans for or against Mars Hill. The essentials of Andrew’s case
are not hard to look up.
Yet despite much
coverage and discussion was often more heat than light. One of the ironies of
local and national coverage is this, despite the heat of discussion around
whether or not Andrew’s case was fairly adjudicated few attempts were made to investigate
the most concrete claims and details in Andrew’s story (excepting, of course
Matthew Paul Turner, who ran with the story). On the Mars Hill side public
statements claimed that the desire of the church was to protect the privacy of
parties involved, particularly women. For
advocates of Andrew, however, a lack of investigation into the veracity of his
claims raised a simple but important problem. How could do we know that the
outline of Andrew’s story is plausible or even true?
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