Things start up around 42:00
For sake of review, let's bear in mind that when Scott Thomas stopped being president of Acts 29 he ended up taking a job at Darrin Patrick's church in 2012.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/03/scott-thomas-depature-from-acts-29-in.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/08/scott-thomas-in-executive-leadership-at.html
https://twitter.com/scottythom/status/215076917169233921
Announcement at Acts 29 Retreat by Darrin Patrick about our new job at The Journey in St Louis. #Blessed. http://fb.me/SYbI1aZ2
2 Retweets
1 Favorite
6:41 AM - 19 Jun 2012
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=33420160&l=02b1bf1b48&id=1044289260
And here ...
https://twitter.com/scottythom/status/232098247013978112
Preaching at The Journey-West County at 9am and 11am. Join us. http://journeyon.net/locations/west-county … http://fb.me/2lzqAL0Z1
5:58 AM - 5 Aug 2012
Here's a few quotes from a sermon from July 22, 2012 that Thomas preached (which may or may not still be available).
http://www.journeyon.net/media/god-we-worship/god-we-worship-god-graciouswe-dont-have-prove-ourselves-west-county-audio
Well, good morning. It's great to see you and be with you. My name is Scott Thomas, I'm the newest pastor at The Journey. I oversee pastoral development, and so I oversee all of the different sites, the campus pastors, and such. And I also reach out to the church-planting, the missions, serve on the executive leadership team. And so I have quite a bit that we're doing and I'm glad to be here with you.
I most recently came from Seattle. We just moved here. In fact we just moved into our house on Monday this week. ... We came from Seattle where I served as President of the Acts 29 Network for the last six years. ... Also served as executive elder of Mars Hill Church. ...
But what took place was Acts 29 was relocating down to Dallas. ... I sensed this was going to take place for about a year.
The problem in all this was that technically Scott Thomas had not resigned his membership at Mars Hill Church before or even for some time after accepting a paid staff position at another church, a breach of requirements in the Mars Hill member contract that would be pretty significant.
http://marshill.com/membership/covenant
- I will not function in leadership or as a member in another church family [emphasis added](Heb. 13:17).
- I covenant to submit to discipline by God through his Holy Spirit, to follow biblical procedures for church discipline in my relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ, to submit to righteous discipline when approached biblically by brothers and sisters in Christ, and to submit to discipline by church leadership if the need should ever arise (Ps. 141:5; Matt. 18:15-17; 1 Cor. 5:1-5; 2 Cor. 2:5-8; Gal. 6:1-5 8; 1 Tim. 5:20; 2 Tim. 2:25; Titus 1:9; 3:10-11; Heb. 12:5-11; Rev. 2:5-7, 14-25).
This is worth reviewing because whether we're talking about former executive elder Scott Thomas being allowed by Mars Hill Church (it seems) to take a paid staff position at another Acts 29 church or whether we're talking about Mark Driscoll still having legal presidency of Mars Hill Church after having been shown to have used the works of others without adequate citation in at least seven of his published works (and one of those works in which plagiarism seems to have occurred also was bought a place on the NYT best seller list, Real Marriage), the sum of events so far suggests that Mars Hill Church may have a leadership culture in which the executive leadership is simply not held to the same standard to which it holds all other levels of membership and leadership.
It's worth noting that in late 2011 when the trademark and logo situation erupted regarding Mars Hill Church and a small church in California that Real Marriage was about to get published, the book in which Grace Driscoll made use of Dan Allender's ideas without giving him any credit.
For those who may not remember all that at the ready, here's some of what MH had to say in 2011 in the wake of the trademark situation. 404 error shows up if you try to find this page now ,which may make it all the more worthwhile that Wenatchee The Hatchet has been documenting these things more or less as they go:
http://marshill.com/2011/10/22/clarification-on-some-rumors-that-have-been-on-some-blogs/
...
Sadly, in addition to giving things away, we’ve also had things taken. We’ve had churches cut and paste our logo, take our website code and copy it completely, had ministry leaders cut and paste documents of ours, put their name on them to then post online as if it were their content, and even seen other pastors fired for preaching our sermons verbatim. We're not the only church called Mars Hill, and occasionally there arises confusion between us and other churches that share the "Mars Hill" name, particularly as we now have our churches in four states. This was the case recently when one of our members called us to find out if we had planted Mars Hill churches in the Sacramento, California area. We had not, but when we went to these churches’ websites, it was obvious to us how people could be confused. Each of these three connected churches in the Sacramento region—planted in 2006, 2007, and 2010—bore the "Mars Hill" name and their logo was substantially similar to the logo we've used since 1996. When cases like this arise in the business world, it's customary for a law office to send a notice asking the other organization to adjust their branding to differentiate it. This is commonly referred to as a cease and desist letter. On September 27, 2011, our legal counsel sent such a letter to these three Mars Hill churches requesting that they change their logo and name. In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians. On Friday we spoke with the pastor of Mars Hill in Sacramento to apologize for the way we went about this. We had a very productive conversation and look forward to continuing that conversation in the days and weeks ahead. We made a mistake in not calling these churches prior to sending the letter. We should have picked up the phone before sending any other communication. Unfortunately, rather than hearing from the church in Sacramento, we began hearing that the matter was instead being speculated on by a blogger who did not verify any facts with us and, as a result, provided an inaccurate version of what transpired. This blog post from us is intended to alleviate any confusion. As a clarification, we have not sued any churches and have no plans to sue any churches. We have not sent any similar letters to any other "Mars Hill" churches, and we are not planning on asking any church with "Mars Hill" in their name to change their name.
This public statement (since removed) may be all the more poignant since October 13, 2011 was the date of the contract Sutton Turner signed with RSI so that Mark Driscoll's Real Marriage could get a spot on the NYT bestseller list.
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/03/RSIMHCContract.png
Let's let this sink in for a bit, Turner signed a contract to rig a spot on the NYT best seller list for Real Marriage, a book which when first published simply used Dan Allender's work without giving him credit, right down to the "good girl", "party girl" and "tough girl" terms and working definitions.
It got discussed over here:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/09/real-marriage-chapter-7-part-2.html
So was Mars Hill Church stating that someone at Stoke & Lawrence was the Mars Hill Church legal counsel?
Given that Warren Throckmorton and others (including Wenatchee The Hatchet) have managed to document how Mark Driscoll has published seven books that made use of the works of others without adequate cituation; and how Mark Driscoll (with Gerry Breshears) has published books with factual errors so egregious the books should not have been published with those errors (R. Scott Clark discussed the impossibility of Arminius being Calvin's son-in-law and Christian Brady discussed the virtually impossible dating of the rabbinical commentary on Genesis Targum Neofiti having predated the birth of Jesus); it looks as though it basically won't matter what Mark Driscoll has said or done because the BOAA has concluded Driscoll and the other executive elders have simply humbly endorsed false accusations while the BOAA itself has seemed to actually confirm that most of the "rumors" are simply true. MHC does have a policy of requiring non-compete agreements for leadership. Warren Throckmorton has blogged recently about Phil Poirier's situation and Chris Rosebrough has highlighted that it sounds like this is a case of a non-compete being required of someone who hasn't even verifiably been on paid staff. So Mark and Grace Driscoll can plagiarize Dan Allender's work without so much as a public concession of anything on Driscoll's part from the pulpit but a volunteer elder who isn't financially compensated is expected (these days) to sign some kind of "unity of mission" statement that functions as a non-competition arrangement?
At this point a person can't even be sure that since 2011 Mars Hill Church and its associates have not asked other churches with "Mars Hill" in their names to change their names or hand over domains.
No comments:
Post a Comment