http://marshill.com/media/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor
http://marshill.com/en/transcript/malachi-living-for-a-legacy/where-is-my-honor
MALACHI: LIVING FOR A LEGACY
WHERE IS MY HONOR?
Here’s where we’re at: Recently, 10,177 adults in attendance across Mars Hill. Fifteen churches, five states. We count people because people count. We count people because people count, and it’s not just numbers, it’s faces and names. There are also almost 2,500 kids, right? Can we say, “Praise God”? We like kids. When we started Mars Hill 17 years ago, there wasn’t even a children’s ministry—because there were no children. [emphasis added] People are coming in, getting saved, getting baptized, getting married, getting pregnant. Ideally, that’s the order, OK?
Remember that the FY2013 annual report listed the average attendance as 12,329. Sutton Turner's July 2013 update mentioned the following:
* Average weekly attendance: 11,151 (8,959 adults and 2,191 kids) [emphasis added]
So if there were 10,177 adults and almost 2,500 kids that would get you in the zone of the 12,329 average, wouldn't it? It's worth noting that Turner's July 2013 update bracketed out the slightly less than 9,000 adults and the slightly less than 2,200 children. This raises a question of whether or not it would be prudent to take whatever the average attendance is stated to be and simply subtracting one fifth of that amount to account for the children.
Speaking of children, that bit about how when Mars Hill started 17 years ago there were no children, might be hyperbolic?
Confessions of a Reformission Rev
Mark Driscoll, Zondervan
ISBN-13:978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:03-10-27016-2
page 54
... The church started as an idea I shared with Lief Moi and Mike Gunn. Lief is a descendant of Genghis Khan and his dad was a murderer, and Mike is a former football player. They proved to be invaluable, except for the occasional moments when they would stand toe-to-toe in a leadership meeting, threatening to beat the Holy Spirit out of each other. Both men were older than I and had years of ministry experience, and they were good fathers, loving husbands, and tough. [emphasis added]...
What's that again about no kids? If Driscoll from 2006 testifies that Gunn and Moi were good fathers how can a person take seriously the claim of Driscoll in 2013 that there were no kids in the beginning of Mars Hill? Again, perhaps Driscoll's 2013 statement is just some rhetorical, hyperbolic flourish. Or let's propose that none of the Gunn and Moi children were so young that they couldn't participate in the earliest services at Mars Hill. How about that? But to say there were no children at Mars Hill Church in the plainest, most literal form, is one of the most readily disprovable assertions about the history of Mars Hill in the history of Mars Hill by Mark Driscoll's own published account.
POSTSCRIPT: 01-18-2014
and ... from page 145
Jamie [Munson] came to Seattle at the age of nineteen, drinking, smoking pot, and having spent most of his life driving around in a maturity cul de sac, listening to Bon Jovi albums in the great nation of Montana. In Seattle, he lived with his sister and brother-in-law, Jen and Phil, who had been with the church from the beginning. They were the first couple who showed up with kids when we were in our core phase. [emphasis added]
So apparently in addition to the Moi and Gunn kids not existing Phil Smidt's kids don't count now, too when Driscoll says there was no children's ministry at Mars Hill at the start because there were no kids at Mars Hill Church. Fascinating.
No comments:
Post a Comment