For all the ramp up for Mars Hill Schools, replete with reports that Steve Tompkins taking on a directorial role; Mars Hill stating it needed to raise $40 million buy one Bellevue College Building; and possibly even leasing real estate; it needs to be asked what happened to the Resurgence Training Center and its Masters in Missional Leadership. After all, the Resurgence Training Center got a bit of a roll out from Christian media in 2009 and Driscoll even referenced the Re:Train program from the pulpit, as documented over here very recently.
To be blunt, if we can't find some public accounting for what happened to that MH attempt to start a school with what was apparently one tenth the start-up costs who would have a reason to give to the $40 million dream MH executive leadership wants people to give to now? Where are the graduates of the Re:Train Masters in Missional Leadership these days? Since it sounded as though Driscoll said in his 2009 sermon that Mars Hill Global was partly assigned a role in fundraising for Re:Train would there be a way to document the revenue raised for the Resurgence Training Center? Would there be a way to even figure out where ANY monies donated to the somewhat opaque entity known as Mars Hill Global actually go?
Warren Throckmorton has recently blogged about how the options for gift designation have changed for Mars Hill Global. If Mars Hill Global donations at this point simply get absorbed into the Mars Hill General Fund those funds could pretty much go anywhere, couldn't they? Mars Hill Global may distribute books to people overseas but in this respect all that means is that the book distribution of the Mars Hill Military Ministry that was absorbed into Mars Hill Global in 2012 has been assimilated into whatever Mars Hill Global is. That's not a role or task that gives Mars Hill Global itself any manner of distinction. At the risk of quoting yet another MH page that's gone 404 ... :
http://marshill.com/2012/04/14/military-mission
... Because of the enormous growth of this ministry, we are needing to make some changes that will allow us to keep up with the great number of orders that are flowing in. The Military Mission will now become part of our new Global Ministries department. Because distribution is a large part of what Mars Hill Military Mission does, this strategic move will allow us to send out more resources at a quicker, less expensive, and more efficient rate. We have also combined Global Ministries and Military Mission’s financial contributions to one account. This will not only simplify our accounting processes but it will enable our ministries to have more of a global impact. Those of you who are currently giving specifically to the Military Mission might ask “Will my donations still be funding the Military Mission?” Our answer would be, “Yes—and then some.”
So Mars Hill Global may fund missionaries and church planters but they'll have to document it. When Mars Hill Church seemed to be extricated from Acts 29 in 2012 it's possible that when the external donations to missions nose-dived in FY2012 to FY2013 that the alternate avenue "could" have been to give to missions via Mars Hill Global. But if Throckmorton's recent blogging states that MHG gifts go to the Mars Hill General Fund in terms of what Mars Hill Global donation options offer for designation that might just raise the question as to whether Mars Hill Global is even meaningful an entity unto itself. There is no Mars Hill Global with a separate UBI in the Washington Secretary of State listings, so far. If Mars Hill Global has no distinct identity from Mars Hill Church then in a way it would make sense why any donations to one might be immediately accepted as general fund gifts ... but ... it seems weird that Mars Hill Global would get any promotion or exposure as an entity with any identify of its own in fundraising activity, and why any discussion of any Ethiopia anything would come up if Mars Hill Global may have that as only a fraction of activity relative to the revenue raised through its public role as a means to solicit funds. If WtH has understood Driscoll's 2009 sermon properly it sounded like Driscoll mentioned Mars Hill Global being devoted to fundraising for Mars Hill global expansion rather than as a missionary venue or even as a venue for doing any work of any kind overseas.
The opinion of Wenatchee The Hatchet is that prospective donors to Mars Hill Global and to the Mars Hill Schools shouldn't even think about cutting checks to Mars Hill Global without getting a detailed explanation for why the last Mars Hill attempt at a school seems to have fizzled out.
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