I began checking out Mars Hill Downtown in the beginning of March 2009. It was then that I gave myself to Christ. I met a girl who I became very good friends with. I checked out her community group and was plugged in with a few leaders who I thought became good friends of mine. One girl in particular spent a year getting to know me. We were hanging out a lot within that year. She never judged me, or I never thought she did. She and my community group leader asked me to go through Redemption Groups after only 4 months of becoming a Christian. I didn't know what the word redemption even meant. I told both women that I didn't feel it was the right time. They asked me if I was scared. Ummm no, and to prove that I signed up. I felt forced into something that was not the right time but at Mars Hill, you don't question authority or you will get put into a 100 meetings. I will get to that later. During Redemption Groups, I was dating a guy who I really cared for. My community group had been very forceful that the boyfriend needs to come to Mars Hill community asap to meet him. I brought that up in Redemption Groups and told them that I didn't want my community to be so involved. I was told in a very loud tone "you are not to date". What?!?! The guy was getting weirded out about my involvement at the church and ended his relationship with me.
That she was urged to go into Redemption Groups four months after becoming a Christian does sound a bit odd. It may be there's a culture within such groups that imagines that they are a vital, necessary ministry where people fearlessly tell the truth to each other and normal members who never join such groups may likely be in denial about their real sin issues. In a church setting like Mars Hill there might be a double blind set of thoughts--those who never think of joining a Redemption Group because they figure they've got no addictive or sex abuse history may figure tha those groups are for the Christians who don't have it together while for those in the groups the people who really don't have it together because they're not humble enough to join such a group are the ones who must be living lives of secret shame. Paradoxically it may be possible for the same emotional narrative of the other within the church could be the same on either side of that divide.
I had more questions about Christianity and even things at Mars Hill but because of my friend's leadership at Mars Hill, I noticed I was becoming more popular also. I didn't want to lose that "fame" (sick I know). I wanted to do Children's Ministry but the only way to volunteer was to become a member. I didn't know what any of that meant so I just signed up. No one walked through that process with me. I didn't even know what covenant meant but I was going to find out soon enough. My friend started a ministry called REST that I got plugged in with. It was exciting and I still support the ministry in the sense that they help those girls involved with sex trafficking. I am no longer volunteering with that team but I do pray that more women on the streets meet Jesus. I was continuing to get plugged in in everything I could. Then I realized that those ministries became more important than my relationship with Christ. My friend was still my mentor at this time and I stayed in REST because of my passion for that industry and because she ran the ministry. I told my friend that I wanted to switch to the street team and felt more called to that team. She wouldn't let me. I even looked at other organizations because I wanted to be with the women who are involved and help them. My friend was mad and told me I wasn't to go to another organization. This is when I started feeling control taking place. This is all within the first year also.
Erin gets at something I have discussed with a handful of people over the years, the people who are first part of a group see it through the halo effect. Part of that halo effect is that so long as your social capital is on the rise and you are gaining more friends, opportunities and pleasant social experiences you don't stop to consider anything that may be bad or harmful if it doesn't touch you directly or even indirectly. I know more than a handful of people who used to remark that people who left Mars Hill must have just had issues with spiritual authority who would turn around just months or years later and themselves express outrage at how things went for them. What changed? Well, what changed was they were finally on the receiving end of what they assumed other people deserved not that there could have been any double standards or special pleading in how that emotional reaction welled up, right?
Over time you can conclude that your ministry volunteerism is your relationship with Christ. After all, isn't ministry an outworking of your Christian walk and calling? Isn't ministry where you use your giftings? Well, not necessarily. One of the things I noticed at Mars Hill was that while I was lucky enough to get recruited into things where I was observably good at something other people tended to get recruited into ministries where the church needed warm bodies. Read that as "security and childrens ministry".
In 2010, my community group got so big that they had to split into two groups. I wanted to stay with my original leaders because they knew me and I trusted them. Three members of that group including one of the leaders told me that I needed to go to the new group forming. I didn't want to because a single man was leading the group and I felt uncomfortable. I was raped about 5 years ago and I still have some healing to do so I protect myself against single men especially when their is some sort of "dominance" or "control" placed to them over me. My community group wouldn't listen and they told me to join that group. This is where things started to get out of control. A female stepped up and co-lead. We were cool but we didn't get along too well. I would express my concern to others and tell them that this was not the best fit for our growth in Christ. Of course, no one listened and I was told that it was "my heart". I prayed about it a lot and knew this community group was not the place for me. I wanted out. A new church plant was coming and I signed up asap to get out of my community. It didn't work. My community wouldn't let me go at all.
This suggests that a lot of the rhetoric about protecting sexual abuse victims at Mars Hill could be pro forma. Sorry but it does come off that way. It's worth noting MH had a woman co-lead the group but you'd think if Mars Hill cared so much about helping sexual abuse victims Erin would never have been pressured and ordered to comply with something she felt uncomfortable with.
There's quite a bit more to Erin's story and I don't plan to quote from the whole thing. I have, however, felt it would be useful to make some observations from Erin's story that resonate with some of my own observations from having had twelve years of direct involvement and association with the church and people in it. There are a lot of kind, generous Christians in the church and that has not chnaged. There are also, of course, some systemtic problems in the culture and the, er, matrix of leadership that have gone unaddressed.
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