“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
While being discreet to
protect the identities of those involved, and avoiding many of the gory
details, my friend laid out enough evidence to satisfy me that the initial
accounts given by Andrew and those promoting his story are at best incomplete,
and most likely deliberately misleading. Large parts are left out, including
the majority of action taken by the church to reconcile him. Also, Andrew’s case involves a confluence
of several situations that it appears Mars Hill has properly and thoroughly
dealt with. [emphasis added] Because the details involve the sin of others
that are not publicly known, the church has decided the best course of action
is to remain silent to protect those people’s reputation and privacy. They did
not divulge the identities of the people involved, or the specific details of
each situation to me, but they gave me a rough overview of the pieces missing
in various accounts of the incident now in circulation. In light of these facts
it is only right that I publicly retract my former comments directed at Mars
Hill.
The
crucial phrase here is “confluence of several situations”. The phrase evokes in
four words what soldiers might express in a single compound word. There’s no
indication as to the number, type, or severity of the situations the anonymous
friend of Patrick Kyle on staff at Mars Hill reached out to him about. Andrew’s
case was, apparently, intertwined with a number of other situations.
While I grant Andrew may
have had plenty of biases and reasons to present a particular narrative it has
not here been established how his story is incomplete at best or probably
deliberately misleading. The most common (and generally anonymous) way this has
been done is to state or imply Andrew was sexually profligate as well as
deceptive, and was/is a “wolf”. But what the confluence of situations involved
was merely asserted without any expansion or verification. Obviously no one at New Reformation Press was
in a good position to verify anything and they understandably backed down from
what they published earlier. But the
story of Andrew’s discipline case was still picking up steam.
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