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

some further thoughts on Justin Dean's claim Mars Hill just didn't get media, revisiting how I put together Andrew's connection to the Noriega family at the MH Ballard campus based on social and mass media alone

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.

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.

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. 

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.”

Noriega’s process of conversion seems to have started in 1999.
  He doesn’t seem to have been baptized until June 2004, upon which he’s reported to have been escorted out by a police officer.  Months later, however, he’s reported in November 25, 2004 as newly ordained. The article does not mention the organization or persons who ordained him.  To that we have to turn to other sources.


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
 
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 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.

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?

Well ...  this week Andrew identified himself to the world and that means that a pile of stuff Wenatchee The Hatchet had been sitting on since early last year is stuff that seems right to publish.  What you're about to read is not secret insider stuff.  This doesn't include anything only insiders could have read, like Joyful Exiles.  What you're about to read is all stuff that's easy to find and it may provide new details about the background of the Andrew disciplinary situation.  If that's of interest ...