http://marshill.com/media/gods-work-our-witness/gods-work-our-witness
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_god-is-faithful_sd_audio.mp3
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_god-is-faithful_vodcast.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_gods-work-our-witness_tv_sd_progressive.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_gods-work-our-witness_tv_hd_progressive.m4v
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_gods-work-our-witness_en_transcript.pdf
http://download.marshill.com/files/2011/12/04/20111204_gods-work-our-witness_es_transcript.pdf
God's Work, Our Witness
Pastor Mark Driscoll
December 04, 2011
01:04:28ish
...
All right, here’s the bottom line. The sun’s going down. I’ve been out all day. I want to go home and kiss Grace and eat dinner with the kids. Mars Hill has often really just, quite frankly, stunk at giving, and I think the last thing to be saved is a person’s wallet. And so I’m just going to tell you that most of the people in the church need to be giving a whole lot more.
Some of you are being generous. I’m not talking to you. For those people, we’ll have a separate conference for you in a phone booth.
For everybody else, the sad, cold, hard truth is about 24 percent of people at Mars Hill this year have given nothing. In addition, another 41 percent have given $500 or less. So that’s 65-ish percent of Mars Hill, two-thirds of Mars Hill’s twelve thousand people who are giving nothing or nearly nothing.
And I get it. I get, “Hey, what about the single moms? Hey, what about the college kid who’s, you know, eating Top Ramen? Hey, what about the kids that just got saved? Hey, what about the guys that are non-Christians?” Great, understood. Sixty-five percent? That doesn’t count. There can’t be 65 percent of people that are unemployed or in dire circumstances. We’re not asking people to give what we are demanding them to give. We’re asking them to give what God convicts them to give.
And I want you to ask this question of yourself. At the end of the year, how much do you anticipate that God wants you to give? We’re at that place now where it is going to take everyone being very generous to open up an opportunity to welcome nine thousand more people, all the new churches, seats, opportunities.
So is it about the money? Yes, it’s about spending the money to reach people for Jesus. Everything costs something. And we think that if you love Jesus and you believe people are going to hell, you should give at least as much money to that as toilet paper, and many of you aren’t.
Bottom line: you can do better. We love you and we trust in the grace of God. You will be more generous. ...
Others have blogged about this fundraising film in the past but have not written about it with the information provided this year through the coverage of World Magazine. Warren Cole Smith broke a news story in March that confirmed that Mars Hill Church and Result Source Inc signed a contract that would ensure a place for Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list.
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/unreal_sales_for_driscoll_s_real_marriage
"Mars Hill would not say whether the funds for the purchase of these books, which would total approximately $123,600 for the individual sales and $93,100 for the bulk sales, came from church funds"
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/03/RSIMHCContract.png
Contract dated October 13, 2011
That's old news and it's also old news that in later 2011 Jamie Munson stepped down from being Lead Pastor. During this transitional period Mars Hill Church distributed the fundraising film God's Work, Our Witness in mailings enjoining contracted members to continue to give to the church. Mark Driscoll's closing statements, quoted extensively above, declared that Mars Hill has generally stunk at giving. It is not clear how many people inside Mars Hill Church (formerly listed as Mars Hill Fellowship) knew about the Result Source contract but it seems important to bear in mind that John Sutton Turner signed the contract that was dated October 13, 2011 and this was obviously a month or so before God's Work, Our Witness began to be a sermon series at MHC.
When the news of the MH/RSI contract broke the Mars Hill Board of Advisor's and Accountability issued a response.
http://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability
By: Board of Advisors & Accountability
Posted: Mar 07, 2014
...
Result Source
In 2011, outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source to market the Real Marriage book and attain placement on the New York Times Bestseller list. While not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again. The true cost of this endeavor was much less than what has been reported, and to be clear, all of the books purchased through this campaign have been given away or sold through normal channels. All monies from the sale of Pastor Mark’s books at Mars Hill bookstores have always gone to the church and Pastor Mark did not profit from the Real Marriage books sold either at the church or through the Result Source marketing campaign.
To correct a statement in a recent article, Pastor Sutton Turner was the General Manager, not the Executive Pastor or Executive Elder as reported, at the time he signed with the referenced agreement with Result Source. In the time since this campaign we have established a new Executive Elder team, new Board of Advisors and Accountability, as well as a new marketing team.
...
The BOAA stands unreservedly behind Pastors Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas as the Executive Elders of Mars Hill Church. We deeply appreciate their endurance through false accusation, their submission to authority, and their humility where regrettable decisions from the past have come to light. We are thankful to God for His grace, which is evident in all that he allows for our good and his glory. We are confident that God is preparing Pastor Mark and the ministry of Mars Hill Church for a great harvest of souls in the days ahead.
In a letter apparently addressed to Mars Hill Church, apparently on March 14, 2014 or close to it, Mark Driscoll reportedly wrote the following regarding ResultSource:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/03/14/mark-driscoll-addresses-mars-hill-church-about-best-seller-issue-church-discord/
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/03/MHCletterMD.png
...
First, a marketing company called ResultSource was used in conjunction with the book Real Marriage, whichw as released in January 2012. My understanding of the ResultSource marketing strategy was to maximize book sales, so that we could reach more people with the message and help grow our church. In retrospect, I no longer see it that way. Instead, I now see it as manipulating a book sales reporting system, which is wrong. I am sorry that I used this strategy, and will never use it again. I have also asked my publisher to not use the "#1 New York Times bestseller" status in future publications, and am working to remove this from past publications as well
What Driscoll did not address were the allegations and evidence presented toward the claim that Mark Driscoll plagiarized the work of others. While in an on-air interview with Janet Mefferd Mark Driscoll said he might have made a mistake and that a mistake was not a sin the steady changes being made to Driscoll publications documented by Warren Throckmorton seem to suggest that the case that Mark Driscoll actually used the materials of other authors without proper or adequate citation spanned about half a dozen books, books that have been getting revised in the last few months in the wake of Janet Mefferd's on-air allegations.
What is worth noting is that in addition to Mark and Grace Driscoll's book Real Marriage not adequately citing or acknowledging the work of Dan Allender and others in the first printing; in addition to the controversy that came to light regarding the fact that Mars Hill Church contracted with ResultSource to land a #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list for Real Marriage, there is the additional context of Mark Driscoll, from the pulpit and in the 2011 fundraising film, was telling Mars Hill members that they frankly stunk at giving and could do better. The full context of this filmed rebuke seems to be that Mark Driscoll was scolding the congregation for their lack of financial generosity months after MHC and RSI inked a deal to rig a #1 NYT bestseller spot for a book that seems to made use of Dan Allender's work without giving him any credit. Newer editions of Real Marriage have remedied this but only, it seems, after the double whammy controversy regarding alleged plagiarism on the part of Mark Driscoll and of the contract to rig a place on the NYT bestseller list for the book.
And on top of all that, during the months of securing that place with help from ResultSource, Driscoll was regaling the congregation about their lack of adequate generosity toward the cause. In 2011 at the time of the film's release Driscoll mentioned that 24% of Mars Hill attenders gave nothing.
What's interesting is that according to the FY2012 annual report that was made available to the public in FY2012 the number of attenders/members who gave nothing was 23.9%. For FY2013 the number that gave $0 was listed as 35.1%. Go to the following link for documentation of those numbers.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/01/mars-hill-church-comparing-fy2012.html
There's time yet to find out what FY2014 has brought for MHC and what may yet be reported but since 2012 MHC seems to have been in numeric decline in average attendance and the percentage of those who gave absolutely nothing yet attended Mars Hill seems to have jumped ten percentage points since the late 2011 rebuke via film from Pastor Mark Driscoll.
Mark Driscoll rebuking the congregation during the late 2011 season in which executive leadership at Mars Hill had signed a contract with ResultSource to buy a place for Real Marriage on the NYT bestseller list when the book made use of Dan Allender's work without giving credit to him seems ... ironic. Driscoll was rebuking a flock for not giving generously enough during a season in which Sutton Turner had just earlier signed a contract to rig a place on the NYT bestseller list for a book that seems to have plagiarized Dan Allender's work. It seems more than just a teensy bit hypocritical for a megachurch pastor to scold his congregants about not giving generously enough to the cause if the cause turned out to include manipulating book sales to get a book that seems to have had plagiarism in it on to the NYT bestseller list.
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