On March 16, 2014 Wenatchee The Hatchet discussed the beginning of the broadcast delay set in place at Mars Hill Church for Mark Driscoll sermons.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-start-of-week-delay-broadcasting-at.html
For those who want to read that blog post again they can do so but this blog post recapitulates that material, seeing as the degree to which Driscoll sermons have editing done to them before public release on the internet has been the subject of blogging and news coverage.
Back in May of 2009 Mark Driscoll explained from the pulpit how and why Mars Hill Church was switching over to delays in when a preached sermon would go up online after having been rebroadcast to other campuses. He discussed it at some length and the pertinent remarks have been quoted in the past at Wenatchee The Hatchet. While the sermon series from which this material has been quoted has since been taken down the original content was available to be listened to at the time WtH transcribed it. Unusually, the entirety of the sermon went untranscribed in this particular case.
Now, of course, the audio for this sermon is no longer available at the Mars Hill website and robots.txt has been introduced to the site so The WayBack Machine can't be used to crawl the old site.
Nevertheless, since Wenatchee The Hatchet tries to keep things around for public education and journalistic enquiry ... :
http://marshill.com/media/trial/humble-pastors/prophets-priests-and-kings#downloads
Prophets, Priests and Kings
Trial: 8 witnesses from 1 & 2 Peter
May 3, 2009
1 Peter 5:1-5
starting about 5:30
This leads to an enormous change in how we do things. You may know that today we use satellite television technology where we live satellite the sermon to our various campuses but (you may have noticed, as well) we're on the Left Coast, left in EVERY way. We're over here on the Left Coast and on the Left Coast we're behind the other time zones.
So we need to find a way to sync up the sermon with every time zone so we're going to a week delay of the sermon beginning this month. Here's how it'll work. I'll preach Sundays at Mars Hill Ballard as I always do. We'll take the best sermon--and, yes, they're not all good. Some of them aren't good at all, and some of them, SOME weeks there's a good one. Some weeks, you just take what you get.
And sometimes, you know, one sermon's better than the other. We'll edit it. We'll take out the technical difficulties, things that I said that could get me picketed, we'll fix it, for Jesus, and then we'll send it out to the campuses. They'll play it back and once it's played back at all the campuses on week delay THEN we'll put it online. It won't go on the internet until it's played at all the campuses. And that's how it will work. [emphasis added]
There are eight reasons for this. I'll tell you why.
Again, different time zones. To go to different states, potentially different nations we need a different delivery method.
Number two, it does allow the bust sermon. Currently over half of the church is on video. The majority of Mars Hill is on video, not at Ballard where I preach live. Going forward, if we attain our goal of reaching 50,000 only ten percent MAXIMUM will be at Ballard hearing the sermon as I speak it. Ninety percent of the church will be watching it on week delay on video so I want to get the best sermon to the majority of our people.
Number three, campuses get a better preparation timeline. By getting the sermon in advance they can put together their music for Sunday, kids ministry, small group discussion questions, pastoral care and follow-up. Right now they have no idea where the sermon is going because I have no idea where the sermon is going. They keep asking, "Tell us what you're going to talk about." I don't know! Preaching happened. That's how it works, I just go and sometimes they're having a really hard time putting a service and following it up and I understand this and that will help.
Number four, it's cheaper. Right now the television satellite technology requires a lot of gear that we're able to sell to turn some profit. It requires the renting of satellite time, downlinks, dishes on campuses. All of this can be eliminated it saves, literally, over the course of our history, will save us millions of dollars. It's a big savings and it makes facilities much easier.
Here's what's happening. Our new campus which we're hoping to launch in Federal Way needs a facility. Olympia needs a permanent facility. Shoreline needs a bigger facility. And as we expand it becomes very difficult and limiting to do satellite. It requires a permanent installation. Schools, community centers, theaters, they don't allow that because it's their building and they don't want the infrastructure of their technology adjusted in any way and rightfully so. By going to week delay it allows WAY more flexibility to use innumerable facilities and move quickly from one to the other.
Last few reasons why we're doing this.
Number six, technical simplicity. Right now it's like a dish on your home and your cable. If the wind blows hard and it shifts we lose signal. Also, if it snows we have a real problem. We call them interns. We put them up on the roof with a broom and they're literally dusting off the satellite dish hoping not to fall off the church and meet Jesus prematurely. You can always tell who the interns are who do the short straw. They're the ones on the roof during the snow storms. This makes it more simple. It's easy playback technology.
Number seven, it allows translation and close caption. Right now I THINK my sermons are on TV in Korea. They translate the redneck jokes into Korean. I don't understand this. Apparently there ARE redneck Koreans and what this allows, this allows us to translate to different languages and also potentially to do closed caption for those who are hearing impaired. It allows us
more flexibility.
Now this leads to the last question. Some have asked, "Why not do a Wednesday or Thursday night service, capture the service, and then play it back?" Couple of reasons. One, I travel during the week. I've got book deadlines, media deadlines. It really would be a big imposition on the Ballard campus. Additionally, I don't have as much time to prepare the sermon. It won't be as good and if I don't do a good job the majority of the church is stuck with the worst sermon. Also, some have asked, "Well, why not do Saturday night?" And I won't.
So it's been established as of years ago that MHC would edit Mark Driscoll sermons before they were rebroadcast to other campuses where Driscoll wasn't preaching live, and that sermons would be edited so that things that might get Driscoll picketed wouldn't be included by the time the material went online, as Driscoll put it himself from the pulpit in 2009.
So to go by the publicly preached example Mark Driscoll shared for for why material might be removed from one of his sermons, "things that I said that could get me picketed" was something to screen out from the sermon audio/video before things went online.
It has also established that there could be anywhere between a one to two week delay between a sermon being preached at Mars Hill and the audio formally appearing on a Mars Hill webpage.
So while it might be a surprise for people to learn that Driscoll sermons can be or have been edited in advance prior to online publication this is neither unprecedented nor surprising given what has publicly been shared from the pulpit over the years. Of course the entire Trial series in 1 & 2 Peter has been swept away so you can't find it any longer, it seems, but it was in that sermon series Driscoll articulated the methodology and reasons for sermon broadcast delay and stated that removing things he said from the pulpit that would get him picketed was something that would get done. Sure, it was a joke, but sometimes the most tossed off joke can be the clearest indicator of how a person thinks about something. If Driscoll joked from the pulpit that his sermons would be edited in advance to remove things he said that could get him picketed Anthony Ianniciello's comment about editing sermons for length is an interesting point but one of secondary importance to Mark Driscoll's own words.
It's curious that Mars Hill Church has spent the last few months expending so much effort to preclude the possibility of quoting Mark Driscoll accurately and in context over the last fifteen years of his public ministry, though. At least it seems that way to Wenatchee The Hatchet but there may be some perfectly reasonable explanation someone can provide for why Mars Hill has been scrubbing away the majority of Driscoll sermons. Compared to the mass obliteration of a decade of Mark Driscoll's pulpit teaching a mere six minutes of excised comments about Jesus maybe making mistakes in some alternate universe where he could have been in Little League is miniscule.
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