I noted this a couple of years back but by the time Mark and Grace Driscoll's Spirit-Filled Jesus was released most of the campuses of the former Mars Hill Church had survived to relaunch as new churches.
Showing posts with label ballard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ballard. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2021
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Sutton Turner clarifies two questions regarding "bullet proof vest?" and severance pay correction, there was a severance pay some time after a Ballard sale
While I had not intended to post about this topic until I had more time to assemble background material, Turner has published the interview in two parts and also, more recently, published a clarifying statement. Plus, this particular sunny Sunday the heat proper has not kicked in yet, so before it gets into the early 90s, let's get this out of the way.
For those who haven't read the interview ...
For those who haven't read the interview ...
https://investyourgifts.com/honest-answers-1/
https://investyourgifts.com/honest-answers-2/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/https://investyourgifts.com/honest-answers-2/
https://www.wthrockmorton.com/
Discussing the interview itself is still an incubating project. However, I want to highlight that there have since been two clarifications from Turner at his blog, published August 5, 2020. There were two points Turner wanted to clarify, corrections sent his way about two questions: 1) did Driscoll wear a bulletproof vest? (Turner and Bruskas couldn't remember ever seeing that) and 2) what severance payout did Driscoll get after resignation (Turner didn't recall there being the funds for such a thing in later 2014 while he was still there). There are corrections given by Turner to both those statements and it is those corrections we'll look at in some detail. I'm aware that some view Turner or Bruskas or both as spinning things. That's possible but ... having chronicled the life and times of Mars Hill off and on for ... a decade ... Turner's corrections do not contradict anything I've managed to document here and the corrections he's given show that, as he admitted in the larger interview, there WAS stuff he didn't have access to on some questions. So ... read Turner's statement that is reproduced after the break if you want to read more:
https://investyourgifts.com/clarification/
https://investyourgifts.com/clarification/
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Seattle press reports arrest of man, and seizure of AR-15 rifle, who threatened Cross and Crown Church, formerly Mars Hill Ballard
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/07/pussified-nation-page-6.html
William Wallace II
posted 01-06-2001 09:01 PM
I love to fight. It's good to fight. Fighting is what we used to do before we all became pussified. Fighting is a lost art form. Fighting is cheaper than medication and more effective than counseling. Fighting always wins over compromise. Fighting is what passionate people do instead of killing. So log on, fight away. And if you are reading this and talking to yourself log on you coward and get in the ring.
Radical Reformission
ISBN 0-310-25659-3Mark DriscollZondervan
copyright 2004 by Mars Hill Church
page 14
... So I married Grace, began studying Scripture with the enthusiasm of a glutton at a buffet, and started preparing myself to become a pastor who does not go to jail for doing something stupid. To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats--which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.
There may never come a day when the co-founding elder of what was once Mars Hill, Mark Driscoll, may fully be able to appreciate the legacy he has made for himself. He can talk about the number of people that were baptized at Mars Hill Church and never have to stop to wonder how many of those people who were baptized then are even still Christians now. He can also talk about how many people got married, even though he preached himself that the first day of your marriage isn't what defines your marriage, the last day does. He can talk about the lives that were changed in abstract ways, about lives changed by Jesus ... but as I've written extensively over the years which Jesus are we talking about? The Jesus presented in the Bible or a Jesus reverse-engineered in Driscoll's preaching to correspond to Mark Driscoll's own ideas about manliness? A person with a life changed by that kind of Jesus may end up twice the son of hell he might have been before.
After Pussified Nation was made available for public consideration Driscoll made a point of saying he felt differently in 2014 than he did when he wrote as William Wallace II. In a 2006 he admitted he sinned and cussed a lot but that God drew a straight line with a crooked stick. But at no point has Mark Driscoll said that he thinks differently on social and gender issues now than he did in his 2000 provocation.
He can say that he no longer feels the way he did when he was writing as William Wallace II. He may one day even think differently than he did when he wrote as William Wallace II. Had a whole lot more of us seen William Wallace II to be who Mark Driscoll really was without a mask of public piety, there might have been no Mars Hill left after 2001, but too many of us who were there thought the show was for confrontation. People needed to have a sense of humor and recognize a character on a message board for what it was. Others of us (me) mistakenly believed that while the rants reflected who the guy really was at the time, he could get better and had submitted himself to older and wiser men who would be able to reel him in and spur him to dial things back. Obviously that hope proved to be profoundly mistaken and I hope to never stop regretting the small part I played in entertaining that overly permissive and optimistic hope.
The Mark Driscoll at The Trinity Church is the Mark Driscoll who wrote the passages quoted above about how he loved fighting and that he wrote editorials that even allegedly inspired a few bomb threats.
Why mention this?
Because the legacy of Mark Driscoll and how he led Mars Hill Church and the kind of leadership example he provided to his leadership culture can never be merely checklists of baptisms and wedding ceremonies and "lives changed". There are also the other things like those who saw how Mark Driscoll and others chose to live and, in response, chose to reject the Christian faith; or those marriages that were founded on a vision of married life inculcated by a Driscollian example that Real Marriage revealed may have been more of an act for the public than a lived reality; because the kind of man who could have proxies lament that other people cribbed his work may have taken a few shortcuts on footnotes himself. Because, in a phrase, in his post Mars Hill interviews Mark Driscoll has seemed a bit more eager to take credit for positives than to mention any particular negatives. Because it's possible for legacies to live on, but especially because it's possible for legacies to live on in ways that impact people I've met.
So, in case anyone actually forgot this, Cross and Crown was once Mars Hill Ballard. It wasn't going to escape my attention that some man was arrested recently for issuing threats to Cross and Crown Church. This was reported recently be Deborah Horne.
http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-arrested-ar-15-rifle-seized-after-threat-to-kill-all-at-seattle-church/648876204
and also at
http://q13fox.com/2017/11/16/man-arrested-ar-15-rifle-seized-after-he-allegedly-threatened-to-kill-you-all-at-seattle-church/
...
Goga's alleged messages were sent to pastors at the Cross and Crown Church. The pastors told police that Goga had not been in contact with any members of the church for about a 18 months, when, they said, he had previously threatened to burn the church down -- an incident that was not reported to police. The pastors told police Goga had become upset with them because they had recommended he seek medical help for past comments he had made.
http://komonews.com/news/local/man-arrested-after-threats-to-kill-you-all-to-university-district-church-ar-15-seized
...
Goga reportedly had previously attended the Cross and Crown Church and threatened to burn it down a year and a half ago, according to police. That threat reportedly came after church members told Goga to seek medical treatment.
According to police, he began sending emails to the church in October saying "people are going to get themselves killed now" and "time to engage the artillery and kill you all."
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/16/25570901/spd-arrested-a-man-and-seized-an-ar-15-after-he-allegedly-threatened-a-church
Seattle police officers arrested a 25-year-old man in Snoqualmie on November 9 for allegedly sending a series of threatening emails to a University District church that he previously attended, according to the department's blotter. Police detectives seized an AR-15 rifle from the man's home in Covington after his arrest.
A police spokesperson identified the arrestee as Edeek Goga. King County prosecutors on Thursday charged Goga with felony harassment for the alleged threats. Jail records show that he was released on bail on November 14. Prosecutors had request bond of $100,000.
Goga allegedly began sending threatening emails to Cross and Crown Church in October, including a message saying "time to engage the artillery and kill you all.” Goga's messages followed a Facebook post 12 days earlier containing a photo of an AR-15 and the message "going on an adventure.” Church officials reportedly called the police, and officers made note of call.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/covington-man-charged-for-threatening-seattle-church/
On Tuesday, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office charged a 25-year-old Covington man with felony harassment for threatening violence against a Seattle church, according to charging documents. Seattle Police arrested Edeek Grigorovich Goga on Nov. 9 and placed him in King County Jail, but he was released on bail five days later, according to jail records.
On the evening of Oct. 26, Edeek Grigorovich Goga reportedly sent threatening emails to two pastors at the Cross and Crown Church in the University District, which he had previously attended. It was the first time Goga had contacted any of the church members since allegedly threatening to burn down the building a year and a half ago. The October emails to the pastors contained criticism of the church for recommending that Goga seek medical treatment: “Time to engage the artillery and kill you all,” they read, in part. Although the church hadn’t reported the previous arson threat, the pastors did alert SPD of the emails because they feared that Goga might act upon his threats.
...
Seattle Police Swat arrested Goga at his landscaping job in Snoqualmie on November 9, and detectives later confiscated an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from his Covington home.
According to the charging documents, Goga told police that he was angry at the Cross and Crown Church for not helping him overcome his depression, but that they “should have known that he did not intend to carry through with his threat.”
Now for the review of the history of how Mars Hill Ballard became Cross and Crown. Cross and Crown has had a bit of a journey in terms of real estate, but it was formerly a church that opened up in the wake of the demise of Mars Hill, and was onceMars Hill Ballard.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
Eventually Cross and Crown Church relocated after the sale of the former Ballard campus to Quest Church
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/02/throckmorton-reports-what-wth-has-heard.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/02/15/quest-church-to-occupy-old-mars-hill-ballard-building/
Cross and Crown Church relocated to what was once the Mars Hill University District campus, and purchased that real estate on March 10, 2016 according to the King County Assessor records.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/03/mars-hill-church-closes-sale-of-former.html
http://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=6746700035
It's worth emphasizing that a big reason this matters is because back in the William Wallace II days Mark Driscoll's approach was to write incendiary, provocative stuff and then all of a sudden when people decided to escalate real-world aggression in response to Driscoll's on-line provocations his tune changed abruptly. We'll get to that tone-shift soon enough but first ...
One of the things Driscoll mentioned in his 2013 piece "The Hardest Part of Ministry" was the fear he had for the safety of his family, a thoroughly understandable and legitimate concern. Yet in all of that verbiage Driscoll avoided mentioning that he had a long history of deliberately incendiary public statements. The easiest example of how he decided to court controversy was with Pussified Nation but we have the quotation from his 2004 book establishing that he managed to, by his account, incite some bomb threats and that he loved that because the only thing worse than death would be a boring life right?
And then when potentially emotionally or mentally unstable (or simply very angry) people escalated responses to seeking physical confrontations Driscoll suddenly dropped the role-playing and talked about how crazy it was that people were taking things too seriously.
Coming from a man who would, ten years later, only be seen by the majority of Mars Hill Church members through the mediation of a screen and a week later than the date he would preach his sermons the irony of this 2001 polemic would be hard to overstate. The line between fantasy and reality can be pretty easily crossed when you go out of your way to not deal with people in person.
For a guy who claimed to be a pastor he should know there's a proverb about how like throwing around flaming arrows, firebrands and death is the one who deceives his neighbor and then says "I was joking."
Having recently finished reading Justin Dean's book PR Matters what jumps out about this recent headline is that the arrested person had an association with a church community that was once part of Mars Hill. As Justin Dean has gone out from his post-mars Hill work into publishing a book on how public relations is important for your church he's shared some stuff that suggests that we who have covered the history of Mars Hill have potentially seen just the tip of the iceberg of a large church culture with some stuff that hadn't been discussed while Mars Hill existed. We'll get to a specific example on the subject of men with guns who were church members precisely because Dean mentioned a case in his new book.
It's important to establish that prior to working on staff in communications at Mars Hill Justin Dean never worked in PR for a church previously and he has not been listed as on staff in a PR capacity since the end of Mars Hill at very many a place (i.e. any so far).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinjdean
Prior to Mars Hill he worked at Ygnition Networks and since Mars Hill he has not listed being on staff at a single church.
That's a significant bit of history to know because when it turns out Dean's only ever been on staff in communications at a single church that was the former Mars Hill it's all but impossible to not notice something like the following.
PR Matters: A Survival Guide for Church Communicators
Justin Dean
copyright (c) 2017 by Justin J. Dean. Published by DOXA Media Group, LLC
ISBN 0692862676
ISBN-13: 978-0692862674
from Chapter Ten, Crisis Planning
page 177
We were in a bit of a crisis mode when we realized the shooter at a local Christian school was a member of our church. The media never linked the story to us, but we went into crisis mode just in case they did. It would have been devastating had the headlines turned to "Local Church Member Shoots Up School."
it's impossible to think of more than, really, just one shooting incident at any place that could be described as being a Christian school in the Seattle area. That would have been the 2014 shooting incident at Seattle Pacific University. You couldn't possibly just stroll into the Crawford Music Building these days to visit faculty and staff or practice some piano without getting security clearance to enter that building. You don't have to really guess how I know this, do you? I haven't exactly made being an SPU alumni all that secret even if I don't normally mention it here.
In order to fully appreciate this disclosure from Dean it may be helpful to know that his employer, Mars Hill Church, was already likely in crisis mode over the previous year for completely other reasons. The June 5, 2014 shooting incident at Seattle Pacific University happened just a few months after the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability issued a statement in the wake of WORLD magazine reporting that Mars Hill had contracted with Result Source to secure a #1 place on the NYT bestseller list for Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage.
https://world.wng.org/2014/03/mars_hill_board_stands_behind_driscoll
Driscoll was also embroiled in a controversy related to his books after a late 2013 on air conversation in which Janet Mefferd accused him of plagiarism. Just a month before that fateful November 2013 conversation Mars Hill had a public relations debacle in the form of the Good for Bellevue online campaign on behalf of Mars Hill getting the International Paper Building, which had turned out to have been purchased by Sound Transit at least a month earlier.
http://komonews.com/archive/mars-hill-church-god-wants-us-to-have-disputed-property
In the context of a cumulative dumpster fire of successive public relations nightmares, if it were also discovered that a man who shot and killed at a Christian school in the Puget Sound area turned out to be a church member a certain church might have died even earlier than it did.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/timeline-seattle-pacific-university-shooting/244056933
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/trial-begins-for-man-accused-of-deadly-shooting-rampage-at-seattle-pacific-university/
...
Ybarra has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Berliner described to jurors how Ybarra posed as a potential transfer student to scout the campus, twice visited a Lynnwood gun store to load up on birdshot and detailed in his journal his hatred for the world.
She said the state doesn’t contest that Ybarra “is mentally ill to some degree,” but noted he intentionally stopped therapy and medication to fuel his hate.
“Mentally ill is not legally insane,” she said. “We ask you to pay attention to the facts and the words the defendant used back then.”
It wasn’t until long after his arrest that Ybarra would claim he was suffering under a delusion that he was being commanded by God, she said. But in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Ybarra told police detectives he was angry at what he perceived as disrespect from other people and felt “powerful” after committing the shootings, Berliner said.
“That’s why he wanted people to die — he wanted people to take him seriously,” she said.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/aaron-ybarra-sentenced-to-112-years-for-deadly-shooting-at-seattle-pacific-university/
Before Aaron Ybarra was sentenced to 112 years in prison, he named each of the victims — the freshman who was killed, the young woman who was critically wounded and the three students who managed to run away — of his June 2014 shooting at Seattle Pacific University.
“I’ve realized I’ve damaged more than just innocent people. I damaged the community and even the world. I’ve hurt a lot of people’s emotions. I wish I could take that away, but I can’t,” Ybarra, 29, said Friday. “I’m sorry to the world.”
During his trial last fall, jurors heard Ybarra’s anger at the world that prompted him to go off his medications, scout the campus and then return with a 12-gauge shotgun on the second-to-last day of classes, intent on killing as many people as he could. He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The SPU shooting incident is literally the only shooting incident at a Christian school that comes to mind, and that was in 2014. If Justin Dean or others are aware of some other shooting at a Christian school that can get clarified later. And since it's been established by Dean's own history of his employment that he was on staff as communications leadership at Mars Hill Church and served in no staff capacity at a church be
.fore or since to date then "our church" seems like it could only have referred to an incident in which it was feared the press would discover that someone who shot people at a Christian school in the Puget Sound area was a member of ... Mars Hill Church.
Mark Driscoll can go on the road and talk about lives changed but if it turns out that part of the Mars Hill Church history is that a member of that church went to Seattle Pacific University, shot and killed someone, and ended up pleading not guilty by way of insanity then that's part of Mark "I see things" Driscoll's legacy, too. That, too, has to be considered part of the Mars Hill Church legacy if it turns out to be the case.
If it turns out to be the case then what good were those spiritual super-powers of discerning abuses after they allegedly happened (if they even happened) that Mark Driscoll shared in 2008, if it turned out Driscoll didn't even have sight clear enough to avoid a plagiarism controversy by putting the appropriate footnotes into his books in their first editions? If Driscoll had the discernment he has claimed to have how did he manage to get embroiled in a plagiarism controversy to begin with, let alone the Result Source controversy? Driscoll used to say headship means it's your responsibility as the man in charge even if it's not your fault. If he ever took that principle of headship seriously then would an incident like a school shooting perpetrated by a church member not count?
Most ironic of all, perhaps, is that had Justin Dean not mentioned working at a church where they feared the press would discover a guy who shot up a local Christian school was a church member, it's possible nobody would even be in a position to point out that the only church this could have been at was Mars Hill ,simply on the basis of the single church Justin Dean has established that he ever worked for.
It's good to hear that nobody at Cross and Crown Church was harmed. I'm not going to skip over the fact that I know people who are over there, even if I haven't seen them in a while. I'm grateful nobody got hurt.
POSTSCRIPT 11-21-2017
One of the things that is impossible to establish from Dean's anecdote is whether the person who shot up a Christian school was, in fact, verifiably a member of the church at the time of the incident. In the case of Mars Hill someone might attend for years and never technically be a member but be recognized within the Mars Hill community. Someone might be a member, allow membership to expire, and yet still attend for a time. Which is to say that Dean's use of "member" is vague even if we can establish from Dean's own accounting of his professional history that he was never working as communications staff for any church but Mars Hill Church.
Another point for consideration is that within the history of Mars Hill Church leadership have been known to say things in hyperbolic ways or to exaggerate slightly for rhetorical and contextual effect. Take, for instance, Mark Driscoll's 2006 sermon account of how Mars Hill Church acquired the West Seattle campus. Be patient, there's a reason for all this subsequent detail.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-mars-hill-acquired-west-seattle.html
http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians/spiritual-gifts-part-ii#transcript
… In the meantime, we also picked up another miracle. This is West Seattle. This is on 35th at the top of the hill in West Seattle as you head toward White Center. I grew up in this neighborhood. This is a church building that is an absolute miracle. I’ll tell you the story on this space. I tried to launch Mars Hill Church in that building ten years ago, and we were rejected, and I’ve always wanted to be in there since. And what happened was, is we were growing. I went to Pastor Bill Clem, who was leading that congregation. He planted it for Acts 29 Church Planning Network [emphasis added], him and James Noriega, who is the other elder there and I said, “We’re maxed out. You got a fat building, 50,000 square feet, 1,000 seats.:” It’s a bigger building and the one you’re sitting in right now. I said, “Is there any way we to use it?” They said, “Well, we wanna reach as many people in West Seattle as possible. How about if we give it to you and work together?” we prayed about it for a second and said, “Yes.”
The first thing to address out the gate is the Supreme Court case. Was the property that was known as Doxa church involved in a case that went to the U. S. Supreme Court? Well, Driscoll doesn't provide any meaningful background as to when this case might have been heard even at a local level, let alone gone to the United States Supreme Court. He also doesn't mention whether the high court even agreed to hear the case.
...
Hillcrest Presbyterian Church vs the Presbytery of America.
The reason that's significant is because if you bothered to look up the case Driscoll seemed to be alluding to it only went up to the Supreme Court long enough to get shot down on the basis that the high court wasn't interested in appealing or overturning a ruling already made at the state level. At the most basic level Driscoll had to fudge what it meant for a case to go "all the way up" to the Supreme Court.
If Justin Dean were put on the spot about whether or not Ybarra, who shot people at Seattle Pacific University in 2014, was ever a member or an attender of Mars Hill it's not clear that he could establish that that was the case. More to the point, in the literary context of Chapter Ten, where Dean was emphasizing how it is important for a church to have a crisis plan ready for potential crises in public relations, the whole point of the story is more of a "here's a for instance" that is used to bolster "why" from a case study.
The trouble is that if Dean was alluding to the Ybarra shooting incident then this suggests that things behind the scenes at Mars Hill were stranger and more chaotic than anyone had previously ventured to guess in public writing.
Since only Ybarra fits the profile of a man shooting a Christian school adjacent Mars Hill in the Puget Sound area in the last few years Dean's anecdote, apparently given for rhetorical effect, raises more questions than can probably be answered. It seems improbable that Dean intended the anecdote to inspire any public enquiry so it won't be a surprise if there are no answers.
If Ybarra were a member of Mars Hill there's no way to prove it but, on the other hand, had Justin Dean not made a point of claiming that there was a crisis at a church he worked for in which people feared the press would link a school shooter to the church, and went so far as to claim the shooter was a member, none of this would be up for consideration.
On the whole, Mars Hill's public reputation was at its peak in the early 2012 period up through a stadium Easter service. Even then there were controversies but the cumulative reputational controversies Mars Hill had to deal with were not really to do with hostile coverage from secular or liberal media; the most significant scandals involved issues of intellectual property and its integrity and enforcement; the nature of fundraising activity and financial allocations; and the nature of who had governmental power and how much as distinct from disclosures about said power and its use and all these from within explicitly Christian media, media that was very often neither particularly liberal nor remotely secular.
There's even an anecdote in Justin Dean's book where he seems to concede that how he handled a public PR campaign to get an already annexed building may have damaged the reputation of the church beyond repair.
Justin Dean
PR Matters, page 118
A reporter caught me off-guard and it threw a whole building campaign off the tracks. We might have been able to recover by doing another interview and explaining what happened. I certainly wanted to stay in the fight. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to even clarify my position because the prevailing decision was to move on. We were already under a lot of pressure at the time, and frankly it marked the beginning of us giving up on the future of the church. ....
If this was a reference to the disastrous attempt on the part of Mars Hill Church to get the International Paper Building in Bellevue there was no chance of another attempt. Sound Transit (not without its critics around here) had already obtained the International Paper Building about a month before Mars Hill set up the "Good for Bellevue" website/campaign. The attempt to get that real estate was a lost cause before the website went up, from what's been reported on that incident in Puget Sound papers.
What is more, given the history of Mars Hill acquiring a large property without even having the zoning issues worked out (the former corporate headquarters purchased in 2005, for instance), Justin Dean came to a Mars Hill that had already had a history of boondoggle real estate investments, whose leadership was not necessarily very good at scoping out good properties or being fully informed about zoning and usage issues before dumping money into a project.
If a reporter caught Justin Dean off guard and that tanked an entire building project what does that say about his experience and skill in handling public relations?
It's remarkable, really, that Mars Hill went from peak influence in early 2012 to being a pile of organization cinders and rubble by the end of 2014. I've never shied from saying that one of the most significant catalysts for the death spiral of Mars Hill Church's public reputation was simply how Justin Dean opted to handle one reputational crisis after another. It's probably he handled things the way the people he worked for told him to handle things, perhaps, but the net result was the collapse of Mars Hill Church. If Justin Dean wants to sell a book about how good public relations can help your church his track record so far is that he worked at one church and during his time there it went from being one of the fastest growing churches in America to one of the most remarkable church implosions in recent memory. In a way, Dean's book was informative, but not about public relations methods. There's almost nothing in the book Dean published that you couldn't also hear from Mark Driscoll's own teaching about media exploitation. On the other hand, there are anecdotes about crises behind the scenes that suggest that contrary to Dean's possible optimism, Mars Hill may have been even more doomed to fail than anyone previously thought.
William Wallace II
posted 01-06-2001 09:01 PM
I love to fight. It's good to fight. Fighting is what we used to do before we all became pussified. Fighting is a lost art form. Fighting is cheaper than medication and more effective than counseling. Fighting always wins over compromise. Fighting is what passionate people do instead of killing. So log on, fight away. And if you are reading this and talking to yourself log on you coward and get in the ring.
Radical Reformission
ISBN 0-310-25659-3Mark DriscollZondervan
copyright 2004 by Mars Hill Church
page 14
... So I married Grace, began studying Scripture with the enthusiasm of a glutton at a buffet, and started preparing myself to become a pastor who does not go to jail for doing something stupid. To pay the bills, I edited the opinions section of the campus newspaper, writing inflammatory columns that led to debates, radio interviews, and even a few bomb threats--which was wonderful, because the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life.
There may never come a day when the co-founding elder of what was once Mars Hill, Mark Driscoll, may fully be able to appreciate the legacy he has made for himself. He can talk about the number of people that were baptized at Mars Hill Church and never have to stop to wonder how many of those people who were baptized then are even still Christians now. He can also talk about how many people got married, even though he preached himself that the first day of your marriage isn't what defines your marriage, the last day does. He can talk about the lives that were changed in abstract ways, about lives changed by Jesus ... but as I've written extensively over the years which Jesus are we talking about? The Jesus presented in the Bible or a Jesus reverse-engineered in Driscoll's preaching to correspond to Mark Driscoll's own ideas about manliness? A person with a life changed by that kind of Jesus may end up twice the son of hell he might have been before.
After Pussified Nation was made available for public consideration Driscoll made a point of saying he felt differently in 2014 than he did when he wrote as William Wallace II. In a 2006 he admitted he sinned and cussed a lot but that God drew a straight line with a crooked stick. But at no point has Mark Driscoll said that he thinks differently on social and gender issues now than he did in his 2000 provocation.
He can say that he no longer feels the way he did when he was writing as William Wallace II. He may one day even think differently than he did when he wrote as William Wallace II. Had a whole lot more of us seen William Wallace II to be who Mark Driscoll really was without a mask of public piety, there might have been no Mars Hill left after 2001, but too many of us who were there thought the show was for confrontation. People needed to have a sense of humor and recognize a character on a message board for what it was. Others of us (me) mistakenly believed that while the rants reflected who the guy really was at the time, he could get better and had submitted himself to older and wiser men who would be able to reel him in and spur him to dial things back. Obviously that hope proved to be profoundly mistaken and I hope to never stop regretting the small part I played in entertaining that overly permissive and optimistic hope.
The Mark Driscoll at The Trinity Church is the Mark Driscoll who wrote the passages quoted above about how he loved fighting and that he wrote editorials that even allegedly inspired a few bomb threats.
Why mention this?
Because the legacy of Mark Driscoll and how he led Mars Hill Church and the kind of leadership example he provided to his leadership culture can never be merely checklists of baptisms and wedding ceremonies and "lives changed". There are also the other things like those who saw how Mark Driscoll and others chose to live and, in response, chose to reject the Christian faith; or those marriages that were founded on a vision of married life inculcated by a Driscollian example that Real Marriage revealed may have been more of an act for the public than a lived reality; because the kind of man who could have proxies lament that other people cribbed his work may have taken a few shortcuts on footnotes himself. Because, in a phrase, in his post Mars Hill interviews Mark Driscoll has seemed a bit more eager to take credit for positives than to mention any particular negatives. Because it's possible for legacies to live on, but especially because it's possible for legacies to live on in ways that impact people I've met.
So, in case anyone actually forgot this, Cross and Crown was once Mars Hill Ballard. It wasn't going to escape my attention that some man was arrested recently for issuing threats to Cross and Crown Church. This was reported recently be Deborah Horne.
http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-arrested-ar-15-rifle-seized-after-threat-to-kill-all-at-seattle-church/648876204
and also at
http://q13fox.com/2017/11/16/man-arrested-ar-15-rifle-seized-after-he-allegedly-threatened-to-kill-you-all-at-seattle-church/
...
Goga's alleged messages were sent to pastors at the Cross and Crown Church. The pastors told police that Goga had not been in contact with any members of the church for about a 18 months, when, they said, he had previously threatened to burn the church down -- an incident that was not reported to police. The pastors told police Goga had become upset with them because they had recommended he seek medical help for past comments he had made.
http://komonews.com/news/local/man-arrested-after-threats-to-kill-you-all-to-university-district-church-ar-15-seized
...
Goga reportedly had previously attended the Cross and Crown Church and threatened to burn it down a year and a half ago, according to police. That threat reportedly came after church members told Goga to seek medical treatment.
According to police, he began sending emails to the church in October saying "people are going to get themselves killed now" and "time to engage the artillery and kill you all."
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/11/16/25570901/spd-arrested-a-man-and-seized-an-ar-15-after-he-allegedly-threatened-a-church
Seattle police officers arrested a 25-year-old man in Snoqualmie on November 9 for allegedly sending a series of threatening emails to a University District church that he previously attended, according to the department's blotter. Police detectives seized an AR-15 rifle from the man's home in Covington after his arrest.
A police spokesperson identified the arrestee as Edeek Goga. King County prosecutors on Thursday charged Goga with felony harassment for the alleged threats. Jail records show that he was released on bail on November 14. Prosecutors had request bond of $100,000.
Goga allegedly began sending threatening emails to Cross and Crown Church in October, including a message saying "time to engage the artillery and kill you all.” Goga's messages followed a Facebook post 12 days earlier containing a photo of an AR-15 and the message "going on an adventure.” Church officials reportedly called the police, and officers made note of call.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/covington-man-charged-for-threatening-seattle-church/
On Tuesday, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office charged a 25-year-old Covington man with felony harassment for threatening violence against a Seattle church, according to charging documents. Seattle Police arrested Edeek Grigorovich Goga on Nov. 9 and placed him in King County Jail, but he was released on bail five days later, according to jail records.
On the evening of Oct. 26, Edeek Grigorovich Goga reportedly sent threatening emails to two pastors at the Cross and Crown Church in the University District, which he had previously attended. It was the first time Goga had contacted any of the church members since allegedly threatening to burn down the building a year and a half ago. The October emails to the pastors contained criticism of the church for recommending that Goga seek medical treatment: “Time to engage the artillery and kill you all,” they read, in part. Although the church hadn’t reported the previous arson threat, the pastors did alert SPD of the emails because they feared that Goga might act upon his threats.
...
Seattle Police Swat arrested Goga at his landscaping job in Snoqualmie on November 9, and detectives later confiscated an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from his Covington home.
According to the charging documents, Goga told police that he was angry at the Cross and Crown Church for not helping him overcome his depression, but that they “should have known that he did not intend to carry through with his threat.”
Now for the review of the history of how Mars Hill Ballard became Cross and Crown. Cross and Crown has had a bit of a journey in terms of real estate, but it was formerly a church that opened up in the wake of the demise of Mars Hill, and was onceMars Hill Ballard.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
Eventually Cross and Crown Church relocated after the sale of the former Ballard campus to Quest Church
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/02/throckmorton-reports-what-wth-has-heard.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/02/15/quest-church-to-occupy-old-mars-hill-ballard-building/
Cross and Crown Church relocated to what was once the Mars Hill University District campus, and purchased that real estate on March 10, 2016 according to the King County Assessor records.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/03/mars-hill-church-closes-sale-of-former.html
http://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=6746700035
It's worth emphasizing that a big reason this matters is because back in the William Wallace II days Mark Driscoll's approach was to write incendiary, provocative stuff and then all of a sudden when people decided to escalate real-world aggression in response to Driscoll's on-line provocations his tune changed abruptly. We'll get to that tone-shift soon enough but first ...
One of the things Driscoll mentioned in his 2013 piece "The Hardest Part of Ministry" was the fear he had for the safety of his family, a thoroughly understandable and legitimate concern. Yet in all of that verbiage Driscoll avoided mentioning that he had a long history of deliberately incendiary public statements. The easiest example of how he decided to court controversy was with Pussified Nation but we have the quotation from his 2004 book establishing that he managed to, by his account, incite some bomb threats and that he loved that because the only thing worse than death would be a boring life right?
And then when potentially emotionally or mentally unstable (or simply very angry) people escalated responses to seeking physical confrontations Driscoll suddenly dropped the role-playing and talked about how crazy it was that people were taking things too seriously.
Coming from a man who would, ten years later, only be seen by the majority of Mars Hill Church members through the mediation of a screen and a week later than the date he would preach his sermons the irony of this 2001 polemic would be hard to overstate. The line between fantasy and reality can be pretty easily crossed when you go out of your way to not deal with people in person.
For a guy who claimed to be a pastor he should know there's a proverb about how like throwing around flaming arrows, firebrands and death is the one who deceives his neighbor and then says "I was joking."
Having recently finished reading Justin Dean's book PR Matters what jumps out about this recent headline is that the arrested person had an association with a church community that was once part of Mars Hill. As Justin Dean has gone out from his post-mars Hill work into publishing a book on how public relations is important for your church he's shared some stuff that suggests that we who have covered the history of Mars Hill have potentially seen just the tip of the iceberg of a large church culture with some stuff that hadn't been discussed while Mars Hill existed. We'll get to a specific example on the subject of men with guns who were church members precisely because Dean mentioned a case in his new book.
It's important to establish that prior to working on staff in communications at Mars Hill Justin Dean never worked in PR for a church previously and he has not been listed as on staff in a PR capacity since the end of Mars Hill at very many a place (i.e. any so far).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinjdean
Communications Director
Mars Hill Church
I oversaw all communications, content and editorial, social media, and public relations for one of the largest churches in America.
Founded in 1996 by Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill was one church with 15 locations in 5 states and ultimately closed its doors at the end of 2014. Visit marshill.com to learn more.
Founded in 1996 by Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill was one church with 15 locations in 5 states and ultimately closed its doors at the end of 2014. Visit marshill.com to learn more.
Prior to Mars Hill he worked at Ygnition Networks and since Mars Hill he has not listed being on staff at a single church.
That's a significant bit of history to know because when it turns out Dean's only ever been on staff in communications at a single church that was the former Mars Hill it's all but impossible to not notice something like the following.
PR Matters: A Survival Guide for Church Communicators
Justin Dean
copyright (c) 2017 by Justin J. Dean. Published by DOXA Media Group, LLC
ISBN 0692862676
ISBN-13: 978-0692862674
from Chapter Ten, Crisis Planning
page 177
We were in a bit of a crisis mode when we realized the shooter at a local Christian school was a member of our church. The media never linked the story to us, but we went into crisis mode just in case they did. It would have been devastating had the headlines turned to "Local Church Member Shoots Up School."
it's impossible to think of more than, really, just one shooting incident at any place that could be described as being a Christian school in the Seattle area. That would have been the 2014 shooting incident at Seattle Pacific University. You couldn't possibly just stroll into the Crawford Music Building these days to visit faculty and staff or practice some piano without getting security clearance to enter that building. You don't have to really guess how I know this, do you? I haven't exactly made being an SPU alumni all that secret even if I don't normally mention it here.
In order to fully appreciate this disclosure from Dean it may be helpful to know that his employer, Mars Hill Church, was already likely in crisis mode over the previous year for completely other reasons. The June 5, 2014 shooting incident at Seattle Pacific University happened just a few months after the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability issued a statement in the wake of WORLD magazine reporting that Mars Hill had contracted with Result Source to secure a #1 place on the NYT bestseller list for Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage.
https://world.wng.org/2014/03/mars_hill_board_stands_behind_driscoll
Driscoll was also embroiled in a controversy related to his books after a late 2013 on air conversation in which Janet Mefferd accused him of plagiarism. Just a month before that fateful November 2013 conversation Mars Hill had a public relations debacle in the form of the Good for Bellevue online campaign on behalf of Mars Hill getting the International Paper Building, which had turned out to have been purchased by Sound Transit at least a month earlier.
http://komonews.com/archive/mars-hill-church-god-wants-us-to-have-disputed-property
In the context of a cumulative dumpster fire of successive public relations nightmares, if it were also discovered that a man who shot and killed at a Christian school in the Puget Sound area turned out to be a church member a certain church might have died even earlier than it did.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/timeline-seattle-pacific-university-shooting/244056933
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/trial-begins-for-man-accused-of-deadly-shooting-rampage-at-seattle-pacific-university/
...
Ybarra has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Berliner described to jurors how Ybarra posed as a potential transfer student to scout the campus, twice visited a Lynnwood gun store to load up on birdshot and detailed in his journal his hatred for the world.
She said the state doesn’t contest that Ybarra “is mentally ill to some degree,” but noted he intentionally stopped therapy and medication to fuel his hate.
“Mentally ill is not legally insane,” she said. “We ask you to pay attention to the facts and the words the defendant used back then.”
It wasn’t until long after his arrest that Ybarra would claim he was suffering under a delusion that he was being commanded by God, she said. But in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Ybarra told police detectives he was angry at what he perceived as disrespect from other people and felt “powerful” after committing the shootings, Berliner said.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/aaron-ybarra-sentenced-to-112-years-for-deadly-shooting-at-seattle-pacific-university/
Before Aaron Ybarra was sentenced to 112 years in prison, he named each of the victims — the freshman who was killed, the young woman who was critically wounded and the three students who managed to run away — of his June 2014 shooting at Seattle Pacific University.
“I’ve realized I’ve damaged more than just innocent people. I damaged the community and even the world. I’ve hurt a lot of people’s emotions. I wish I could take that away, but I can’t,” Ybarra, 29, said Friday. “I’m sorry to the world.”
The SPU shooting incident is literally the only shooting incident at a Christian school that comes to mind, and that was in 2014. If Justin Dean or others are aware of some other shooting at a Christian school that can get clarified later. And since it's been established by Dean's own history of his employment that he was on staff as communications leadership at Mars Hill Church and served in no staff capacity at a church be
.fore or since to date then "our church" seems like it could only have referred to an incident in which it was feared the press would discover that someone who shot people at a Christian school in the Puget Sound area was a member of ... Mars Hill Church.
Mark Driscoll can go on the road and talk about lives changed but if it turns out that part of the Mars Hill Church history is that a member of that church went to Seattle Pacific University, shot and killed someone, and ended up pleading not guilty by way of insanity then that's part of Mark "I see things" Driscoll's legacy, too. That, too, has to be considered part of the Mars Hill Church legacy if it turns out to be the case.
If it turns out to be the case then what good were those spiritual super-powers of discerning abuses after they allegedly happened (if they even happened) that Mark Driscoll shared in 2008, if it turned out Driscoll didn't even have sight clear enough to avoid a plagiarism controversy by putting the appropriate footnotes into his books in their first editions? If Driscoll had the discernment he has claimed to have how did he manage to get embroiled in a plagiarism controversy to begin with, let alone the Result Source controversy? Driscoll used to say headship means it's your responsibility as the man in charge even if it's not your fault. If he ever took that principle of headship seriously then would an incident like a school shooting perpetrated by a church member not count?
Most ironic of all, perhaps, is that had Justin Dean not mentioned working at a church where they feared the press would discover a guy who shot up a local Christian school was a church member, it's possible nobody would even be in a position to point out that the only church this could have been at was Mars Hill ,simply on the basis of the single church Justin Dean has established that he ever worked for.
It's good to hear that nobody at Cross and Crown Church was harmed. I'm not going to skip over the fact that I know people who are over there, even if I haven't seen them in a while. I'm grateful nobody got hurt.
POSTSCRIPT 11-21-2017
One of the things that is impossible to establish from Dean's anecdote is whether the person who shot up a Christian school was, in fact, verifiably a member of the church at the time of the incident. In the case of Mars Hill someone might attend for years and never technically be a member but be recognized within the Mars Hill community. Someone might be a member, allow membership to expire, and yet still attend for a time. Which is to say that Dean's use of "member" is vague even if we can establish from Dean's own accounting of his professional history that he was never working as communications staff for any church but Mars Hill Church.
Another point for consideration is that within the history of Mars Hill Church leadership have been known to say things in hyperbolic ways or to exaggerate slightly for rhetorical and contextual effect. Take, for instance, Mark Driscoll's 2006 sermon account of how Mars Hill Church acquired the West Seattle campus. Be patient, there's a reason for all this subsequent detail.
https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-mars-hill-acquired-west-seattle.html
http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians/spiritual-gifts-part-ii#transcript
Part 26: One Body, Many parts
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Pastor Mark Driscoll
July 30, 2006
That is a $5 million gift. That is a $5 million gift, right? And I don’t know if you’ve been tracking the real estate market, people aren’t giving away a lotta real estate right now in Seattle and so we have – we’ve taken Pastor James and Pastor Bill on staff at Mars Hill. We have taken their members through the Gospel Class and they’re now members of Mars Hill. [emphasis added] They’ve been meeting as a core group over there. As we speak, there is $1.5 million of construction going on at the West Seattle campus, with the intention of opening in October in time for our ten year anniversary, and we want to expand over to West Seattle as well. We were thinking, “Well, we can borrow $8 million from the bank. We can spend $3 million and for $11 million, we can open up a 40,000 square foot location.” Well, we can now open more square feet for $1.5 million. So obviously, you take that opportunity.
The two cool aspects of this particular campus is one, is already zoned as a church, so we don’t need to fight use permits. We don’t have to bring it up to code. We can just walk in and use it immediately and it saves us, literally, a few years of permitting. Secondly, the lot that it is on is only zoned for 15,000 square feet of building and it already has 50,000 square feet, and because as grandfathered in, we could use it all. We could never build this building today as it exists. And the cool thing with this building, a very Godly church that loved the Bible – started this church, built it, their denomination went liberal, dropped the doctrine of the inerrancy or perfection of Scripture and this building went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was the test case for who owns the church building, the congregation or the denomination. The congregation lost and these people actually bought their own building back, because they refused to drop the authority of Scripture as their value. [emphasis added] And so, there were some Godly older saints who paid for this building twice. It then went into decline but there is still a core of these people, like in their 70s and 80s, that are now members of Mars Hill. Grandmas tithing, waiting for us all to show up and fill that thing up again, and they’re praying us in. It’s a really cool God story and what God has done is pretty amazing.
The first thing to address out the gate is the Supreme Court case. Was the property that was known as Doxa church involved in a case that went to the U. S. Supreme Court? Well, Driscoll doesn't provide any meaningful background as to when this case might have been heard even at a local level, let alone gone to the United States Supreme Court. He also doesn't mention whether the high court even agreed to hear the case.
...
Hillcrest Presbyterian Church vs the Presbytery of America.
Well, the thing about Hillcrest Presbyterian is that if you look it up now here's what you'll probably find first:
That's roughly a six minute drive from the property that is now Mars Hill West Seattle which is here:
7551 35th Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98126
Okay, so if you look up Presbytery of America literally you won't find it. You will find this, however.
PCUSA, for the folks who aren't actually Presbyterian, would be considered by Driscoll in all likelihood to have been a denomination that sold out on the inerrancy of scripture..
Here's a reference to this case hitting the Supreme Court of Washington from October 9, 1973.
The case didn't actually get appealed to the United States Supreme Court until Apr 22, 1974 and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
If Justin Dean were put on the spot about whether or not Ybarra, who shot people at Seattle Pacific University in 2014, was ever a member or an attender of Mars Hill it's not clear that he could establish that that was the case. More to the point, in the literary context of Chapter Ten, where Dean was emphasizing how it is important for a church to have a crisis plan ready for potential crises in public relations, the whole point of the story is more of a "here's a for instance" that is used to bolster "why" from a case study.
The trouble is that if Dean was alluding to the Ybarra shooting incident then this suggests that things behind the scenes at Mars Hill were stranger and more chaotic than anyone had previously ventured to guess in public writing.
Since only Ybarra fits the profile of a man shooting a Christian school adjacent Mars Hill in the Puget Sound area in the last few years Dean's anecdote, apparently given for rhetorical effect, raises more questions than can probably be answered. It seems improbable that Dean intended the anecdote to inspire any public enquiry so it won't be a surprise if there are no answers.
If Ybarra were a member of Mars Hill there's no way to prove it but, on the other hand, had Justin Dean not made a point of claiming that there was a crisis at a church he worked for in which people feared the press would link a school shooter to the church, and went so far as to claim the shooter was a member, none of this would be up for consideration.
On the whole, Mars Hill's public reputation was at its peak in the early 2012 period up through a stadium Easter service. Even then there were controversies but the cumulative reputational controversies Mars Hill had to deal with were not really to do with hostile coverage from secular or liberal media; the most significant scandals involved issues of intellectual property and its integrity and enforcement; the nature of fundraising activity and financial allocations; and the nature of who had governmental power and how much as distinct from disclosures about said power and its use and all these from within explicitly Christian media, media that was very often neither particularly liberal nor remotely secular.
There's even an anecdote in Justin Dean's book where he seems to concede that how he handled a public PR campaign to get an already annexed building may have damaged the reputation of the church beyond repair.
Justin Dean
PR Matters, page 118
A reporter caught me off-guard and it threw a whole building campaign off the tracks. We might have been able to recover by doing another interview and explaining what happened. I certainly wanted to stay in the fight. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to even clarify my position because the prevailing decision was to move on. We were already under a lot of pressure at the time, and frankly it marked the beginning of us giving up on the future of the church. ....
If this was a reference to the disastrous attempt on the part of Mars Hill Church to get the International Paper Building in Bellevue there was no chance of another attempt. Sound Transit (not without its critics around here) had already obtained the International Paper Building about a month before Mars Hill set up the "Good for Bellevue" website/campaign. The attempt to get that real estate was a lost cause before the website went up, from what's been reported on that incident in Puget Sound papers.
What is more, given the history of Mars Hill acquiring a large property without even having the zoning issues worked out (the former corporate headquarters purchased in 2005, for instance), Justin Dean came to a Mars Hill that had already had a history of boondoggle real estate investments, whose leadership was not necessarily very good at scoping out good properties or being fully informed about zoning and usage issues before dumping money into a project.
If a reporter caught Justin Dean off guard and that tanked an entire building project what does that say about his experience and skill in handling public relations?
It's remarkable, really, that Mars Hill went from peak influence in early 2012 to being a pile of organization cinders and rubble by the end of 2014. I've never shied from saying that one of the most significant catalysts for the death spiral of Mars Hill Church's public reputation was simply how Justin Dean opted to handle one reputational crisis after another. It's probably he handled things the way the people he worked for told him to handle things, perhaps, but the net result was the collapse of Mars Hill Church. If Justin Dean wants to sell a book about how good public relations can help your church his track record so far is that he worked at one church and during his time there it went from being one of the fastest growing churches in America to one of the most remarkable church implosions in recent memory. In a way, Dean's book was informative, but not about public relations methods. There's almost nothing in the book Dean published that you couldn't also hear from Mark Driscoll's own teaching about media exploitation. On the other hand, there are anecdotes about crises behind the scenes that suggest that contrary to Dean's possible optimism, Mars Hill may have been even more doomed to fail than anyone previously thought.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
follow up on the Mars Hill and B-50 Investments, LLC transactions. B-50 Investments, LLC was party to a deal with MH back in 2014.
As has come up in comments, some wonder what B-50 Investments, LLC is. Well ... perhaps there's a document or two that could shed a shaft of light or two (if only that) on the matter.
You may want to scroll along down here and open up this post after the break.
The docs are presented in a large format and so, as has become potentially usual, you'll want to collapse the menu on the right hand side.
It will aid reading.
So, B-50 Investments, LLC got the remaining Ballard lot. What's conspicuous here is that the real estate formerly known as Mars Hill U-District isn't in the transaction Lot listings. But in order to establish that we have to look at the 2014 document.
Which is below the break:
You may want to scroll along down here and open up this post after the break.
The docs are presented in a large format and so, as has become potentially usual, you'll want to collapse the menu on the right hand side.
It will aid reading.
So, B-50 Investments, LLC got the remaining Ballard lot. What's conspicuous here is that the real estate formerly known as Mars Hill U-District isn't in the transaction Lot listings. But in order to establish that we have to look at the 2014 document.
Which is below the break:
Tuesday, February 09, 2016
the end of Mars Hill's Ballard corporate headquarters, acquired formally 12-2005, deed in lieu of foreclosure and contract forfeiture in Dec 2015
For those who have kept tabs on real estate transactions to do with Mars Hill there's been a few sales from the 2015 period. But conspicuous by absence of a closed formal sale was the Mars Hill headquarters.
Well ...
http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2768301895
there might be an update here.
The sale of the actual Mars Hill Ballard campus in Ballard has been established. Being in Seattle, WtH heard word of that before it was possible to really confirm it in a documentary way.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/11/mars-hill-ballard-building-for-sale/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/02/throckmorton-reports-what-wth-has-heard.html
But now, of course ...
But the headquarters lot itself ...
it looks like it was kind of given away. Back in December 2015.
the technical phrasing is "deed in lieu of foreclosure and contract forfeiture"
For people who never attended Mars Hill or only attended since about 2008 it might be impossible to convey the significance of the Mars Hill real estate that became its corporate headquarters. Ten years ago Driscoll announced a bold plan for it.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/03/driscoll-on-property-in-2006-munson-on.html
Confessions of a Reformission RevMark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
page 176
Our current facility cannot accommodate much growth beyond our current four Sunday services. Additionally our kids' ministry is bursting at the seams, our Capstone classes are in desperate need of space, and our cramped, windowless office space would be perfect if we were a third-world sweatshop.
So the elders voted to purchase a 43,000-square-foot dumpy warehouse Jamie found one block away from our current building. When the project is completed, we will have two buildings only a block apart, each hosting church services, with 1,300 seats in one location and a projected 1,000 seats in the other. We will be able to grow to more than 10,000 people per Sunday through multiple services in multiple locations. Each service will have live worship teams, but I will only be live in some services and in video in others.
Ten years later the project was never completed.
The remarkable thing is mere months after Confessions of a Reformission Rev was published ... we can observe a lengthy statement Mark Driscoll made in a sermon in the 1 Corinthians sermon series that "might" not make it into the re:vival of its web presence at Mark Driscoll Ministries.
in his July 30, 2006 sermon in 1 Corinthians Driscoll said several things about the property mentioned in Reformission Rev:
Part 26: One Body, Many parts
By 2007 ... it started to look as though one of the problems was not just "when" but even "if" the real estate that became Mars Hill headquarters could EVER become what was promoted in Mark Driscoll's 2006 book. The subject came up again amidst concerns about other controversies like by-laws revisions and pastor terminations in 2007, and was addressed by Jamie Munson (who, as Mark Driscoll recounted it, was the one who scouted out the real estate in the first place).
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Page 72/145 from Mars Hill: A miracle of Jesus
November 9, 2007
Section: Stewardship
Answers submitted by Pastor Jamie Munson
Q: What is the status and future plans for the property M.H. owns just north of the Ballard campus?
...
A:
We purchased the building on 50th with the intention of performing a massive renovation, and by connecting it with our Leary building, to create a large campus in the middle of the city. Since the 50th building dedication, our renovation plans were delayed by our attempt to obtain a change of use permit. [emphasis added] During the permitting delay we were gifted a building in West Seattle and undertook renovating and opening that building as our next campus. At the time of these changes we communicated this to the members of the church openly and honestly as we wanted to be faithful to the stewardship and generosity of the body. Also, each quarter a letter is sent to members, along with their donor statement, urging faithful stewardship and giving updates to vision and building strategies. In addition, Pastor Mark wrote a lengthy letter that was sent to members electronically, and handed out at all campuses explaining the shift to a multi-campus church before the West Seattle campus opened. Due to the restrictions and expense of building a single large building in our city our focus has shifted from one large campus to becoming a multi-site church of smaller campuses. Your elders feel this will enable a more effective and cost-efficient spread of the Gospel throughout Seattle and beyond. It will still take capital campaigns and the purchasing of facilities but allows us to spread and grow more quickly as Jesus leads. [emphasis added]
We are leasing part of the 50th building to generate some revenue. We are also performing a minor renovation of portions of the building to alleviate our current office and production space needs. This will eliminate the need for leasing office space for our use. In addition the property provides some much needed parking relief for our Ballard campus and also needs such as storage. An average church of our size functions with about 4 times as much square footage as we do with our Ballard campus. Storage, meeting rooms, office space and parking are greatly needed and this property serves those with purposes in the mean time. Future development options are being considered as well but there are no firm plans for these. This is further complicated as the city is considering further zoning changes and restrictions in industrial areas of the city. Until this legislation is decided it hangs property owners up as the future possibilities of the property are unclear. We are hanging on to the property and using it to the fullest extent possible in the mean time. [emphasis added]
And then ... well ... the rest is history ... just not the history of ever getting those renovations done, apparently.
Of course had the leadership of Mars Hill gone straight for multi-site because they thought of that first perhaps they'd have never bought the lot to begin with. As famous as Mars Hill became for being a multi-site church a detailed history of its real estate development and publicly accessible statements made by its leadership over the years suggests the possibility that multi-site was essentially a pragmatic plan B.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-confluence-of-situations-andrew-lambs_8460.html
And as of 2016 it turns out, based on King County records, that what the dissolving Mars Hill leadership ended up doing was giving the real estate away.
Considering the grand vision Mark Driscoll cast for the real estate a decade ago in Confessions of a Reformission Rev it seems impossible to not consider the fate of that real estate. Anyone want to contribute a (moderated) comment about how a deed in lieu of foreclosure and contract forfeiture might work?
POSTSCRIPT
For those who might even possibly care what B-50 Investors, LLC is
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603448660
UBI Number 603448660
Category LLC
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/03/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2016
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Then there's ... a potentially not necessarily related ...
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603447982
B-50, LLC
UBI Number 603447982
Category LLC
Active/Inactive Inactive
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 10/30/2014
Expiration Date 10/31/2015
Inactive Date 02/01/2016
Duration Perpetual
Well ...
http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2768301895
there might be an update here.
The sale of the actual Mars Hill Ballard campus in Ballard has been established. Being in Seattle, WtH heard word of that before it was possible to really confirm it in a documentary way.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/11/mars-hill-ballard-building-for-sale/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/02/throckmorton-reports-what-wth-has-heard.html
But now, of course ...
it looks like it was kind of given away. Back in December 2015.
the technical phrasing is "deed in lieu of foreclosure and contract forfeiture"
For people who never attended Mars Hill or only attended since about 2008 it might be impossible to convey the significance of the Mars Hill real estate that became its corporate headquarters. Ten years ago Driscoll announced a bold plan for it.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/03/driscoll-on-property-in-2006-munson-on.html
Confessions of a Reformission RevMark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2
page 176
Our current facility cannot accommodate much growth beyond our current four Sunday services. Additionally our kids' ministry is bursting at the seams, our Capstone classes are in desperate need of space, and our cramped, windowless office space would be perfect if we were a third-world sweatshop.
So the elders voted to purchase a 43,000-square-foot dumpy warehouse Jamie found one block away from our current building. When the project is completed, we will have two buildings only a block apart, each hosting church services, with 1,300 seats in one location and a projected 1,000 seats in the other. We will be able to grow to more than 10,000 people per Sunday through multiple services in multiple locations. Each service will have live worship teams, but I will only be live in some services and in video in others.
Ten years later the project was never completed.
The remarkable thing is mere months after Confessions of a Reformission Rev was published ... we can observe a lengthy statement Mark Driscoll made in a sermon in the 1 Corinthians sermon series that "might" not make it into the re:vival of its web presence at Mark Driscoll Ministries.
in his July 30, 2006 sermon in 1 Corinthians Driscoll said several things about the property mentioned in Reformission Rev:
Part 26: One Body, Many parts
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
Pastor Mark Driscoll
July 30, 2006
There is the building a block away. We purchased it a year ago. It was heading into foreclosure. We purchased it for under market value. It has increased in value since that time, and this is just some interior and exterior shots of the space, and our plan was to turn that into a large room to see maybe 800 to 1,000 people. And so, what we have instead decided to do, first, we’re going to keep that building – and it’s been great – ‘cause according to King 5 television, they had a report that said that 98105, which is this zip code, is one of the five fastest, increasing valued zip codes in the State of Washington. Since we bought that building, as it was going to foreclosure, we already have gained a million dollars in equity in that building. We have no intention of getting rid of it, but here’s what we do want to do with it. We want to knock half the building down and just turn it into parking to increase our parking capacity. Secondly, the other half of the building – we don’t feel that we have to use right now because of some other things that have come available that we’re gonna tell you about – but we’re gonna keep it. We’ll rent it out with the hopes that a tenant will pay most of our mortgage. We can keep it then, and then if we ever do wanna build on it, we can develop it and do whatever we want with it but we feel it’s important right now to watch and see what happens with this neighborhood, particularly what happens to parking, and then make a determination down the road as to best use.
And the reason that we don’t need to develop it as we had thought is because of some other things have come available. Among those is Shoreline and these are some shots from the Shoreline campus and where we are meeting at Christa Ministries, at [Schirmer] Auditorium. Four hundred seats, plus a full daycare. It’s amazing kid space. Huge gym for the kids to run around in. Lots of parking. They’re letting us use that on Sunday and now this fall for beginning, for midweek programming for nothing. It’s free. We don’t even pay for janitorial, we don’t even pay for utilities. It is a savings of over $100,000.00 a year. We can be there for two more years. It’s a savings of 200 plus thousand dollars. We love Christa. We’re very, very grateful for their kindness to us. Eventually, we will need to purchase a permanent site for our Shoreline. We’ll need to get them a permanent purchase campus, ‘cause we can only be there for two years. I mean, wouldn’t it be great if somebody let you how the house for two years for free? I mean that’s a very kind gift, so we are actively looking for another place to buy….
By 2007 ... it started to look as though one of the problems was not just "when" but even "if" the real estate that became Mars Hill headquarters could EVER become what was promoted in Mark Driscoll's 2006 book. The subject came up again amidst concerns about other controversies like by-laws revisions and pastor terminations in 2007, and was addressed by Jamie Munson (who, as Mark Driscoll recounted it, was the one who scouted out the real estate in the first place).
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Page 72/145 from Mars Hill: A miracle of Jesus
November 9, 2007
Section: Stewardship
Answers submitted by Pastor Jamie Munson
Q: What is the status and future plans for the property M.H. owns just north of the Ballard campus?
...
A:
We purchased the building on 50th with the intention of performing a massive renovation, and by connecting it with our Leary building, to create a large campus in the middle of the city. Since the 50th building dedication, our renovation plans were delayed by our attempt to obtain a change of use permit. [emphasis added] During the permitting delay we were gifted a building in West Seattle and undertook renovating and opening that building as our next campus. At the time of these changes we communicated this to the members of the church openly and honestly as we wanted to be faithful to the stewardship and generosity of the body. Also, each quarter a letter is sent to members, along with their donor statement, urging faithful stewardship and giving updates to vision and building strategies. In addition, Pastor Mark wrote a lengthy letter that was sent to members electronically, and handed out at all campuses explaining the shift to a multi-campus church before the West Seattle campus opened. Due to the restrictions and expense of building a single large building in our city our focus has shifted from one large campus to becoming a multi-site church of smaller campuses. Your elders feel this will enable a more effective and cost-efficient spread of the Gospel throughout Seattle and beyond. It will still take capital campaigns and the purchasing of facilities but allows us to spread and grow more quickly as Jesus leads. [emphasis added]
We are leasing part of the 50th building to generate some revenue. We are also performing a minor renovation of portions of the building to alleviate our current office and production space needs. This will eliminate the need for leasing office space for our use. In addition the property provides some much needed parking relief for our Ballard campus and also needs such as storage. An average church of our size functions with about 4 times as much square footage as we do with our Ballard campus. Storage, meeting rooms, office space and parking are greatly needed and this property serves those with purposes in the mean time. Future development options are being considered as well but there are no firm plans for these. This is further complicated as the city is considering further zoning changes and restrictions in industrial areas of the city. Until this legislation is decided it hangs property owners up as the future possibilities of the property are unclear. We are hanging on to the property and using it to the fullest extent possible in the mean time. [emphasis added]
And then ... well ... the rest is history ... just not the history of ever getting those renovations done, apparently.
Of course had the leadership of Mars Hill gone straight for multi-site because they thought of that first perhaps they'd have never bought the lot to begin with. As famous as Mars Hill became for being a multi-site church a detailed history of its real estate development and publicly accessible statements made by its leadership over the years suggests the possibility that multi-site was essentially a pragmatic plan B.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-confluence-of-situations-andrew-lambs_8460.html
And as of 2016 it turns out, based on King County records, that what the dissolving Mars Hill leadership ended up doing was giving the real estate away.
Considering the grand vision Mark Driscoll cast for the real estate a decade ago in Confessions of a Reformission Rev it seems impossible to not consider the fate of that real estate. Anyone want to contribute a (moderated) comment about how a deed in lieu of foreclosure and contract forfeiture might work?
POSTSCRIPT
For those who might even possibly care what B-50 Investors, LLC is
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603448660
UBI Number 603448660
Category LLC
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/03/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2016
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Then there's ... a potentially not necessarily related ...
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=603447982
B-50, LLC
UBI Number 603447982
Category LLC
Active/Inactive Inactive
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 10/30/2014
Expiration Date 10/31/2015
Inactive Date 02/01/2016
Duration Perpetual
Monday, January 04, 2016
2016, a new year, and the MH re-plants share their respective histories ... or not, an overview of which MH spin-offs have leaders who were on the BoE that was investigating Driscoll
sadf
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-shoreline-to-sound-city.html
http://soundcitybiblechurch.com/about-us/history/
In 1996, a pastor named Mark Driscoll started a new church in Seattle called Mars Hill. Mars Hill Church grew rapidly, and in 2006 decided to plant its very first remote campus, a video location called Mars Hill Shoreline. The pastor who launched the new location, Steve Tompkins, put it this way: “God kept bringing more people to hear the gospel. Even five Sunday services [in Ballard] back-to-back didn’t address our need for more space.”
God did many amazing things in and through Mars Hill Shoreline: people were saved, hundreds were baptized, families were started, lives were transformed. However, there were also many issues that built up over the years which all came to a head in 2014, a year of great difficulty for the church. Facing mounting criticism as the church investigated formal charges against him, Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as vision and preaching pastor on October 14, 2014. Shortly afterward, it was announced that each local campus of Mars Hill would have the opportunity to launch out as their own fully independent church.
After much prayer and discussion, the elder team of Mars Hill Shoreline did make the decision to re-plant Mars Hill Shoreline as Sound City Bible Church. The elders made the commitment to learn from the sins and mistakes of the church in the past while focusing on a fresh vision to help people hear the good news of Jesus all throughout the north end of the greater Seattle area.
Sound City Bible Church is not simply Mars Hill carrying on under a new name. It is a new church with a new elder team, a new doctrinal statement, a new mission and a new set of values. This church has been through some difficult times, but through it all is more convinced than ever that Jesus truly is the one who is worth placing ultimate hope in. We hope and pray that God would give us many years together to glorify God by proclaiming Jesus, receiving grace, being disciples, and making disciples.
Trinity West sort of doesn't have a history page
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-west-seattle-to-trinity.html
http://www.trinityws.com/
Some of these churches are starting from scratch and disconnected from Mars Hill so it might make sense to not have a history that states up front the Mars Hill lineage while formally declaring a different set of goals is in order. Now Fairchild was not on the BoE, for those who remember what the Board of Elders was.
But ... if your church says one of its core values is "legacy" then not mentioning a legacy connected to Mars Hill becomes more puzzling.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-tacoma-to-resurrection.html
http://www.resurrectionchurch.com/about/
For those who don't remember, Bubba Jennings was not just on the Board of Elders, he was also an executive elder around the time the 2007 firings and trials occurred.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-3-pastor-bubba.html
So he may not only be able to answer questions about investigation into Mark Driscoll from 2014, he is one of the only people who had a connection to the termination and trials of Meyer and Petry from 2007 that has not publicly recanted/repudiated involvement of any kind in that process.
Redemption in Spokane indicates their story as connected to Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-spokane-to-redemption.html
http://redemptionspokane.com/whoweare/
Redemption Spokane is a new church planted in the heart of the Inland Northwest with the mission to see the work of redemption impact Spokane, seeing many people’s lives changed by the power of the Gospel. Our founding pastor, Miles Rohde, and a large number of our original core members had a heart to see a new church planted in the heart of Spokane that would reach the entire region. Originally beginning with the vision of being a church connected to Mars Hill Church, in the fall of 2014 a decision was made to become a fully independent church with our soft-launch in January 2015.
The church building, located on the corner of 2nd Ave and Division Street, has been a bastion of the gospel in Spokane since the first church building was constructed at this important crossroads in downtown Spokane. Having moved into this church building, right in the heart of Spokane, Redemption Spokane desires to continue the legacy of the Gospel being faithfully preached to all.
As a church, we had our official launch at our Easter service in 2015.
For those who may have forgotten ... somebody was on the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Driscoll, if memory serves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-7-pastor-miles.html
One would already have to have known that the Rainier Valley Church had a Mars Hill history to observe it's still at the Union Gospel Mission site.
http://www.rainiervalleychurch.com/about-us/
Given the obscure but swift disappearance of Willie Wilson from its leadership that this church even still exists at all could seem like a feat of community cohesion.
Choi was also mentioned as a member of the BoE
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-1-pastor-ed-choi.html
Former Mars Hill Portland is now Redeemer in Portland and has nothing much to say about its history. They will, however, be nominating deacons soon (and may possibly have already)
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-portland-to-redeemer.html
http://redeemerpdx.com/about/leadership/
...
The Elder board of our church currently consists of: Pastor Eric Appleby, Pastor Jon Crist, Pastor Kevin Kelly, Pastor Ryan Mount, Pastor Dan Ortega, Pastor Tim Smith and Pastor Jim Swanson. Two of the Elders of Redeemer Church are also paid staff. They are: Tim Smith, in the role of Lead Teaching Pastor and Kevin Kelly, in the role of Executive Pastor.
God has called all of these men to lead by example and to serve with love, humility and grace, placing care and service to the flock over their own interests. Should you wish to speak to any of our Elders, please email redeemer@redeemerpdx.com indicating whom you wish to speak with and they will get back to you promptly.
Since Tim Smith was one of the members of the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Mark Driscoll maye an elder can lead by example by answering questions about what was in the report/investigation from later 2014?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-8-pastor-tim-smith.html
or maybe field questions about statements made about Mark Dunford?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/mark-dunford-releases-statement.html
https://www.facebook.com/dunford.mark/posts/10152930946657345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zjdmzp7wr060f5/StatementFromTheDunfords.pdf?dl=0
Olympia ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-olympia-to-harbor-church.html
http://www.harborolympia.com/leadership/
Not a whole ton of history there to share. Although Mars Hill Olympia was where the Mars Hill Military Mission was once based, which was a ministry that basically distributed Mars Hill authored books to soldiers. The Military Mission was shut down in early 2012 after having been moved, for reasons not necessarily clearly explained, from Olympia to central HQ or thereabouts. As discussed at this blog, the book distributional aims of the defunct Military Mission could have made sense as an easy way to handle the bulk orders for the bulk order side of the Result Source strategy.
There are churches that were once Mars Hill that clearly believe it's best to lead up front with the line of descent. Other chuches seem eager to avoid this still unavoidable element of their history, at least for now.
For those who don't remember the name of Matt Rogers, who was pastor at Mars Hill Bellevue in 2014 and on the BoE and eventually appointed to the BoAA ...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/26/is-matt-rogers-the-newest-member-of-the-mars-hill-church-board-of-advisors-and-accountability/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-6-pastor-matt.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-bellevue-to-doxa-church.html
http://doxa-church.com/servant-leaders
There's not a lot of evidence he's connected to Doxa Eastside lately. There's no trace of him if you do a search for his name on their site. Given Rogers' role on both the BoE and the BoAA and what he was willing to say about public criticism of Mark Driscoll a hard reboot without him might seem beneficial. The hard reboot might also extend to not really sharing much by way of establishing the historic connection between Doxa and the former Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
http://crossandcrownseattle.com/home/about/
4554 12th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Cross and Crown has left the Ballard site and taken up at what was once the U-District Mars Hill site.
It has, if memory serves, taken on people from the sites that were formerly Mars Hill Downtown, Ballard and the U-District. As reported a while back by Wenatchee The Hatchet and Warren Throckmorton some of the campuses had been losing attenders or members in the months running up to Driscoll's formal resignation. Consolidating those who were left at some of the campuses to what used to be Mars Hill Ballard made some sense. In a way the consolidation process was a kind of mirror to the 20007 dispersion process in which people were sent out to launch campuses for the multi-campus process. And it's tough to forget that the multi-site approach became appealing as Mars Hill central leadership realized the second campus idea for what became the central headquarters was either impossible or wildly impractical. In th ehistory of Mars Hill it is worth stressing that when we consult the talks of Mark Drsicoll about multi-site compared to what he published in Confessions of Reformission Rev about a decade ago, the entire multi-site approach was a kind of epic Plan B.
So, anyway, Cross and Crown does not have a very detailed history for itself yet.
Then there's the somewhat shortlived Mars Hill Albuquerque.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-albuquerque-to-north.html
Not only does there not seem to be any history for the church you can't even tell who the leaders are as you can with just about any of the other churches, unless you go digging up the sermons.
You can learn more if you fill out a form, though.
http://northchurchabq.com/connect/
So, having reviewed a few of the sites that were once Mars Hill and having noted which applicable names showed up in the Board of Elders ... let's revisit a statement quoted by Warren Throckmorton.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. [emphasis added] Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
The elders of Mars Hill Church acknowledge as we’ve gone through all of this investigation, and heard all of these stories, we acknowledge that we have personally led in some of the same ways that demonstrate some of the same ways that Pastor Mark had. And those things require repentance and forgiveness and restoration. We realize that there are ways that we have led as elders in ways that have been domineering, sometimes arrogant and sometimes boastful and at least for my part, I want to say I deeply regret those sins and I ask for your forgiveness. We want to lead you into the future in a way that displays more grace, more love as we speak the truth to each of you. If there are people that I have offended in ways I have pastored this church, I would welcome that you come to me and speak with me to allow me the opportunity to reconcile with you.
At this time Mars Hill Church is going to move ahead under the Board of Overseers established plan for transition. Pastor Dave Bruskas will serve as the teaching and preaching pastor during an interim period of time until we establish a direction we are going as a church. The Board of Advisors are going to be working in the weeks to come on a plan for moving forward and for how that will unfold, what the next steps are, there are a lot of things to consider. As we discover what those things are, what the spirit shows us, then we want to communicate clearly to you and transparently to you what’s happening, the directions and the changes that will be taking place.
2016 is a new year but even if there's a new man, to borrow an apostolic epistletory idiom, the old man isn't completely dead yet.
No, actually, we can be pretty literal about this. The corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church is still technically listed as "Active" even today by the Washington Secretary of State website.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
It still lists Dave Bruskas as President and Caleb Walters as Vice-President even though Kerry Dodd's been describing himself as President for a while and describes himself thus as of ... right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-dodd-a4174712
Recognized by who for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities? Would whoever recognized Kerry Dodd for this clarify for the record they recognized this?
and ... Caleb Walters is still mentioning he's Chief Operations Officer for the potentially still existing Mars Hill.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
Who was on the board of directors since the resignation of Driscoll that seems implicit in Dodd's verbiage? Who's been on the transition team? While many a person has assumed that things were "over" the dissolution of the company is the period in which stuff gets sold and assets get distributed. This was/is the period in which to actually pay more rather than less attention to what may be going on. Sure, Driscoll's got a church he's aiming to start up but there's no need to forget that Mars Hill hasn't ceased to exist as a corporate entity just because a celebrity threw in the towel rather than comply with a restoration plan proposed by a board.
So as 2016 moves forward we'll get to see which of the 11 spin-offs prospers or not. It remains to be seen. They may all make it but we don't know yet.
Meanwhile, we know which churches seem to feel comfortable enough to explain in their public web presence where they've come from and which aren't yet.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-shoreline-to-sound-city.html
http://soundcitybiblechurch.com/about-us/history/
In 1996, a pastor named Mark Driscoll started a new church in Seattle called Mars Hill. Mars Hill Church grew rapidly, and in 2006 decided to plant its very first remote campus, a video location called Mars Hill Shoreline. The pastor who launched the new location, Steve Tompkins, put it this way: “God kept bringing more people to hear the gospel. Even five Sunday services [in Ballard] back-to-back didn’t address our need for more space.”
God did many amazing things in and through Mars Hill Shoreline: people were saved, hundreds were baptized, families were started, lives were transformed. However, there were also many issues that built up over the years which all came to a head in 2014, a year of great difficulty for the church. Facing mounting criticism as the church investigated formal charges against him, Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as vision and preaching pastor on October 14, 2014. Shortly afterward, it was announced that each local campus of Mars Hill would have the opportunity to launch out as their own fully independent church.
After much prayer and discussion, the elder team of Mars Hill Shoreline did make the decision to re-plant Mars Hill Shoreline as Sound City Bible Church. The elders made the commitment to learn from the sins and mistakes of the church in the past while focusing on a fresh vision to help people hear the good news of Jesus all throughout the north end of the greater Seattle area.
Sound City Bible Church is not simply Mars Hill carrying on under a new name. It is a new church with a new elder team, a new doctrinal statement, a new mission and a new set of values. This church has been through some difficult times, but through it all is more convinced than ever that Jesus truly is the one who is worth placing ultimate hope in. We hope and pray that God would give us many years together to glorify God by proclaiming Jesus, receiving grace, being disciples, and making disciples.
Trinity West sort of doesn't have a history page
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-west-seattle-to-trinity.html
http://www.trinityws.com/
Some of these churches are starting from scratch and disconnected from Mars Hill so it might make sense to not have a history that states up front the Mars Hill lineage while formally declaring a different set of goals is in order. Now Fairchild was not on the BoE, for those who remember what the Board of Elders was.
But ... if your church says one of its core values is "legacy" then not mentioning a legacy connected to Mars Hill becomes more puzzling.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-tacoma-to-resurrection.html
http://www.resurrectionchurch.com/about/
For those who don't remember, Bubba Jennings was not just on the Board of Elders, he was also an executive elder around the time the 2007 firings and trials occurred.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-3-pastor-bubba.html
So he may not only be able to answer questions about investigation into Mark Driscoll from 2014, he is one of the only people who had a connection to the termination and trials of Meyer and Petry from 2007 that has not publicly recanted/repudiated involvement of any kind in that process.
Redemption in Spokane indicates their story as connected to Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-spokane-to-redemption.html
http://redemptionspokane.com/whoweare/
Redemption Spokane is a new church planted in the heart of the Inland Northwest with the mission to see the work of redemption impact Spokane, seeing many people’s lives changed by the power of the Gospel. Our founding pastor, Miles Rohde, and a large number of our original core members had a heart to see a new church planted in the heart of Spokane that would reach the entire region. Originally beginning with the vision of being a church connected to Mars Hill Church, in the fall of 2014 a decision was made to become a fully independent church with our soft-launch in January 2015.
The church building, located on the corner of 2nd Ave and Division Street, has been a bastion of the gospel in Spokane since the first church building was constructed at this important crossroads in downtown Spokane. Having moved into this church building, right in the heart of Spokane, Redemption Spokane desires to continue the legacy of the Gospel being faithfully preached to all.
As a church, we had our official launch at our Easter service in 2015.
For those who may have forgotten ... somebody was on the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Driscoll, if memory serves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-7-pastor-miles.html
One would already have to have known that the Rainier Valley Church had a Mars Hill history to observe it's still at the Union Gospel Mission site.
http://www.rainiervalleychurch.com/about-us/
Given the obscure but swift disappearance of Willie Wilson from its leadership that this church even still exists at all could seem like a feat of community cohesion.
Choi was also mentioned as a member of the BoE
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-1-pastor-ed-choi.html
Former Mars Hill Portland is now Redeemer in Portland and has nothing much to say about its history. They will, however, be nominating deacons soon (and may possibly have already)
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-portland-to-redeemer.html
http://redeemerpdx.com/about/leadership/
...
The Elder board of our church currently consists of: Pastor Eric Appleby, Pastor Jon Crist, Pastor Kevin Kelly, Pastor Ryan Mount, Pastor Dan Ortega, Pastor Tim Smith and Pastor Jim Swanson. Two of the Elders of Redeemer Church are also paid staff. They are: Tim Smith, in the role of Lead Teaching Pastor and Kevin Kelly, in the role of Executive Pastor.
God has called all of these men to lead by example and to serve with love, humility and grace, placing care and service to the flock over their own interests. Should you wish to speak to any of our Elders, please email redeemer@redeemerpdx.com indicating whom you wish to speak with and they will get back to you promptly.
Deacons
As a new church, we will soon nominate Deacons who will be responsible for taking various day-to-day burdens of service from the Elders, in order that they may focus on prayer, teaching and general oversight of the church. Redeemer Church will have both men and women Deacons, as supported by scripture.Since Tim Smith was one of the members of the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Mark Driscoll maye an elder can lead by example by answering questions about what was in the report/investigation from later 2014?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-8-pastor-tim-smith.html
or maybe field questions about statements made about Mark Dunford?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/mark-dunford-releases-statement.html
https://www.facebook.com/dunford.mark/posts/10152930946657345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zjdmzp7wr060f5/StatementFromTheDunfords.pdf?dl=0
Olympia ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-olympia-to-harbor-church.html
http://www.harborolympia.com/leadership/
Not a whole ton of history there to share. Although Mars Hill Olympia was where the Mars Hill Military Mission was once based, which was a ministry that basically distributed Mars Hill authored books to soldiers. The Military Mission was shut down in early 2012 after having been moved, for reasons not necessarily clearly explained, from Olympia to central HQ or thereabouts. As discussed at this blog, the book distributional aims of the defunct Military Mission could have made sense as an easy way to handle the bulk orders for the bulk order side of the Result Source strategy.
There are churches that were once Mars Hill that clearly believe it's best to lead up front with the line of descent. Other chuches seem eager to avoid this still unavoidable element of their history, at least for now.
For those who don't remember the name of Matt Rogers, who was pastor at Mars Hill Bellevue in 2014 and on the BoE and eventually appointed to the BoAA ...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/26/is-matt-rogers-the-newest-member-of-the-mars-hill-church-board-of-advisors-and-accountability/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-6-pastor-matt.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-bellevue-to-doxa-church.html
http://doxa-church.com/servant-leaders
There's not a lot of evidence he's connected to Doxa Eastside lately. There's no trace of him if you do a search for his name on their site. Given Rogers' role on both the BoE and the BoAA and what he was willing to say about public criticism of Mark Driscoll a hard reboot without him might seem beneficial. The hard reboot might also extend to not really sharing much by way of establishing the historic connection between Doxa and the former Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
http://crossandcrownseattle.com/home/about/
4554 12th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Cross and Crown has left the Ballard site and taken up at what was once the U-District Mars Hill site.
It has, if memory serves, taken on people from the sites that were formerly Mars Hill Downtown, Ballard and the U-District. As reported a while back by Wenatchee The Hatchet and Warren Throckmorton some of the campuses had been losing attenders or members in the months running up to Driscoll's formal resignation. Consolidating those who were left at some of the campuses to what used to be Mars Hill Ballard made some sense. In a way the consolidation process was a kind of mirror to the 20007 dispersion process in which people were sent out to launch campuses for the multi-campus process. And it's tough to forget that the multi-site approach became appealing as Mars Hill central leadership realized the second campus idea for what became the central headquarters was either impossible or wildly impractical. In th ehistory of Mars Hill it is worth stressing that when we consult the talks of Mark Drsicoll about multi-site compared to what he published in Confessions of Reformission Rev about a decade ago, the entire multi-site approach was a kind of epic Plan B.
So, anyway, Cross and Crown does not have a very detailed history for itself yet.
Then there's the somewhat shortlived Mars Hill Albuquerque.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-albuquerque-to-north.html
Not only does there not seem to be any history for the church you can't even tell who the leaders are as you can with just about any of the other churches, unless you go digging up the sermons.
You can learn more if you fill out a form, though.
http://northchurchabq.com/connect/
So, having reviewed a few of the sites that were once Mars Hill and having noted which applicable names showed up in the Board of Elders ... let's revisit a statement quoted by Warren Throckmorton.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. [emphasis added] Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
The elders of Mars Hill Church acknowledge as we’ve gone through all of this investigation, and heard all of these stories, we acknowledge that we have personally led in some of the same ways that demonstrate some of the same ways that Pastor Mark had. And those things require repentance and forgiveness and restoration. We realize that there are ways that we have led as elders in ways that have been domineering, sometimes arrogant and sometimes boastful and at least for my part, I want to say I deeply regret those sins and I ask for your forgiveness. We want to lead you into the future in a way that displays more grace, more love as we speak the truth to each of you. If there are people that I have offended in ways I have pastored this church, I would welcome that you come to me and speak with me to allow me the opportunity to reconcile with you.
At this time Mars Hill Church is going to move ahead under the Board of Overseers established plan for transition. Pastor Dave Bruskas will serve as the teaching and preaching pastor during an interim period of time until we establish a direction we are going as a church. The Board of Advisors are going to be working in the weeks to come on a plan for moving forward and for how that will unfold, what the next steps are, there are a lot of things to consider. As we discover what those things are, what the spirit shows us, then we want to communicate clearly to you and transparently to you what’s happening, the directions and the changes that will be taking place.
2016 is a new year but even if there's a new man, to borrow an apostolic epistletory idiom, the old man isn't completely dead yet.
No, actually, we can be pretty literal about this. The corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church is still technically listed as "Active" even today by the Washington Secretary of State website.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
It still lists Dave Bruskas as President and Caleb Walters as Vice-President even though Kerry Dodd's been describing himself as President for a while and describes himself thus as of ... right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-dodd-a4174712
President and General Manager
Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc.
- Keen management to daily operations to guarantee proper handling of all legal affairs and creditor obligations
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
Recognized by who for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities? Would whoever recognized Kerry Dodd for this clarify for the record they recognized this?
and ... Caleb Walters is still mentioning he's Chief Operations Officer for the potentially still existing Mars Hill.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
Who was on the board of directors since the resignation of Driscoll that seems implicit in Dodd's verbiage? Who's been on the transition team? While many a person has assumed that things were "over" the dissolution of the company is the period in which stuff gets sold and assets get distributed. This was/is the period in which to actually pay more rather than less attention to what may be going on. Sure, Driscoll's got a church he's aiming to start up but there's no need to forget that Mars Hill hasn't ceased to exist as a corporate entity just because a celebrity threw in the towel rather than comply with a restoration plan proposed by a board.
So as 2016 moves forward we'll get to see which of the 11 spin-offs prospers or not. It remains to be seen. They may all make it but we don't know yet.
Meanwhile, we know which churches seem to feel comfortable enough to explain in their public web presence where they've come from and which aren't yet.
Sunday, August 09, 2015
from Mars Hill Ballard to Cross and Crown
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/
CROSS AND CROWN CHURCH
UBI Number 603452575
Category REG
Profit/Nonprofit Nonprofit
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/14/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2015
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Agent Name ADAM CHRISTIANSEN
Address 1401 NW LEARY WAY
City SEATTLE
State WA
ZIP 98107
Chairman Haeusel, Matthias 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Christiansen, Adam 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Huxford, Thomas Cameron 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Harris, Scott 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Langley, Kirby 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
CROSS AND CROWN CHURCH
UBI Number 603452575
Category REG
Profit/Nonprofit Nonprofit
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/14/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2015
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Agent Name ADAM CHRISTIANSEN
Address 1401 NW LEARY WAY
City SEATTLE
State WA
ZIP 98107
Chairman Haeusel, Matthias 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Christiansen, Adam 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Huxford, Thomas Cameron 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Harris, Scott 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Director Langley, Kirby 1401 NW Leary Way
Seattle, WA 98107
Thursday, March 26, 2015
new president for Mars Hill Church, Kerry Dodd, information courtesy of Warren Throckmorton and King County records
Formerly the CFO of Mars Hill Church, Warren Throckmorton's recent blogging has established that the recent sale of real estate by Mars Hill to Quest Church featured Kerry Dodd as the president of Mars Hill Church.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/03/1400LearyWay-Deed.pdf
So Bruskas is gone. Turner and Driscoll are also gone. It's turning out that there may not be any executive elders in the corporation at all. Precisely who is left running the corporation set to expire at the end of this calendar year is not entirely clear. But it would seem that absent any executive pastors there still need to be legal officers. So if Kerry Dodd has become president is the secretary still Caleb Walters, Chief Operating Officer of Mars Hill?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2015/03/1400LearyWay-Deed.pdf
So Bruskas is gone. Turner and Driscoll are also gone. It's turning out that there may not be any executive elders in the corporation at all. Precisely who is left running the corporation set to expire at the end of this calendar year is not entirely clear. But it would seem that absent any executive pastors there still need to be legal officers. So if Kerry Dodd has become president is the secretary still Caleb Walters, Chief Operating Officer of Mars Hill?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Puget Sound Business Journal: Mars Hill Church makes $4.2 million on sale of flagship Ballard sanctuary
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/03/04/quest-church-paid-9-million-for-mars-hill-ballard/
It's getting linked to by Warren Throckmorton and the article is below at the link.
http://m.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/03/mars-hill-church-makes-4-2-million-on-sale-of.html?ana=twt&r=full
It's getting linked to by Warren Throckmorton and the article is below at the link.
http://m.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2015/03/mars-hill-church-makes-4-2-million-on-sale-of.html?ana=twt&r=full
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Throckmorton reports what WtH has heard, that there's been a buyer interested in the MH Ballard complex, Quest Church
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/02/15/quest-church-to-occupy-old-mars-hill-ballard-building/
Actually living in Seattle WtH had heard a week or so ago that there was a buyer interested in purchasing the Mars Hill Ballard complex. The post is as follows:
Although details are few, an announcement in church this morning indicated that Quest Church, pastored by Eugene Cho, will occupy the old Mars Hill Ballard building.
An unidentified staffer indicated that a press release would come out later this week with more details. It is not clear at this time whether Quest Church will purchase the building or enter into some other kind of relationship with what is left of Mars Hill.
Mars Hill Church ceased holding services on the last Sunday of December 2014. The church continues to function as a legal entity to dispose of property and other assets. Church sources have gone silent about the pace of dissolution. The potential lawsuit is still potential.
Mars Hill Ballard became Cross and Crown Church in 2015. For now, Cross and Crown still meets at 1401 NW Leary Way in Seattle. I wonder where they will go next.
When the press release emerges that will be interesting to see. As noted before, Wenatchee heard that this lately announced development was in the works. Before today there was nothing close to a formal verification of the report so it didn't merit a post before. Now it does, and it will certainly merit a post when the formal press release appears.
Whether the purchase of the Ballard campus will include the purchase of the corporate HQ real estate has not yet been cleared up.
sort of update
UPDATE 02-15- 07.43PM
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/02/15/quest-church-to-occupy-old-mars-hill-ballard-building/#comment-1857469908
from one mapleleaf1234
Mars Hill has been unable to sell the U-District Church due to zoning regulations. (It can be used as a church and nothing else). Mars Hill has gifted that church building to Cross and Crown, who will be moving there. Not sure if Quest is buying or leasing the Ballard building.
Which wouldn't be a surprising seeing as how not thoroughly investigating zoning restrictions on real estate was how the MH elders bought the boondoggle that the MH corporate HQ estate turned out to be. Whether Quest is buying that 51st street property hasn't been addressed yet but the zoning restrictions have "probably" not going away.
Meanwhile, it seems plausible that the U-District real estate hasn't managed to sell or can't sell and could get gifted to Cross and Crown. It's not "that" far from MH Ballard as it was.
One of the last things to get fielded about the MH U-District real estate would have been ... from September 7, 2014
Revisiting the promotion of 2013's A Call to Resurgence in light of a recent campus closure announcement.
Actually living in Seattle WtH had heard a week or so ago that there was a buyer interested in purchasing the Mars Hill Ballard complex. The post is as follows:
Although details are few, an announcement in church this morning indicated that Quest Church, pastored by Eugene Cho, will occupy the old Mars Hill Ballard building.
An unidentified staffer indicated that a press release would come out later this week with more details. It is not clear at this time whether Quest Church will purchase the building or enter into some other kind of relationship with what is left of Mars Hill.
Mars Hill Church ceased holding services on the last Sunday of December 2014. The church continues to function as a legal entity to dispose of property and other assets. Church sources have gone silent about the pace of dissolution. The potential lawsuit is still potential.
Mars Hill Ballard became Cross and Crown Church in 2015. For now, Cross and Crown still meets at 1401 NW Leary Way in Seattle. I wonder where they will go next.
When the press release emerges that will be interesting to see. As noted before, Wenatchee heard that this lately announced development was in the works. Before today there was nothing close to a formal verification of the report so it didn't merit a post before. Now it does, and it will certainly merit a post when the formal press release appears.
Whether the purchase of the Ballard campus will include the purchase of the corporate HQ real estate has not yet been cleared up.
sort of update
UPDATE 02-15- 07.43PM
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2015/02/15/quest-church-to-occupy-old-mars-hill-ballard-building/#comment-1857469908
from one mapleleaf1234
Mars Hill has been unable to sell the U-District Church due to zoning regulations. (It can be used as a church and nothing else). Mars Hill has gifted that church building to Cross and Crown, who will be moving there. Not sure if Quest is buying or leasing the Ballard building.
Which wouldn't be a surprising seeing as how not thoroughly investigating zoning restrictions on real estate was how the MH elders bought the boondoggle that the MH corporate HQ estate turned out to be. Whether Quest is buying that 51st street property hasn't been addressed yet but the zoning restrictions have "probably" not going away.
Meanwhile, it seems plausible that the U-District real estate hasn't managed to sell or can't sell and could get gifted to Cross and Crown. It's not "that" far from MH Ballard as it was.
One of the last things to get fielded about the MH U-District real estate would have been ... from September 7, 2014
Revisiting the promotion of 2013's A Call to Resurgence in light of a recent campus closure announcement.
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