Driscoll’s daughter, Ashley Chase, is the director of Real Faith. Yet, on Trinity’s website Chase is listed in her capacity as Real Faith director as a staff member of the church. Chase also is not listed on the latest IRS 990 for Real Faith, even though the IRS requires nonprofits to report compensation paid to anyone related to a board member.
So I'm glad to see I wasn't the only person who noticed that!
For folks unfamiliar with the history of financial opacity at Mars Hill, the most read and most viewed single post in the history of Wenatchee The Hatchet was the one about Mark Driscoll's personal financial compensation package.
Reference is made to materials from the Mars Hill years in which Sutton Turner expressed behind the scenes objections to practices he regarded as below board.
If you want to read about the history of Mars Hill real estate acquisitions there's a tag for that. There are a bunch of other things reported that will be of interest to people who were at Mars Hill and may have wondered (but did we really?) if history was going to repeat itself at The Trinity Church. That the family business is a family business isn't a surprise. At some point in the future we'll probably have to do a series on Win Your War.
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 ...
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/
So the seven-part series has recently, if it goes to seven parts, wrapped up. As Sutton Turner has commented and fielded questions here at Wenatchee The Hatchet he would probably not be too surprised that Wenatchee The Hatchet has taken the five hours needed to listen to all seven episodes, and likely Bruskas and Ryan Williams would not be surprised at this post either. Nobody who knows the history of this blog as a chronicle of the life and death of Mars Hill would be. So ... some notes ...
The seventh episode of an apparently seven (?) part series has gone up in which Ryan Williams talks with Dave Bruskas and Sutton Turner. Owing to offline life events I have had other projects going and haven't tackled MHC related stuff in a while. Now that Ragtime and Sonata Forms is up, though, I'll have time to get to the series, eventually. For those who haven't heard of the series the links to the episodes are available after the break.
Four years ago, Mars Hill Church in Seattle seemed too big to fail.
Just 17 years old, the church was drawing an average weekly attendance of 12,329 to 15 locations. In fiscal year 2013 alone, Mars Hill baptized more than 1,000 people, planted 53 churches in India, and supported 20 church planters and evangelists in Ethiopia. It released 50 new worship songs, gave away more than 3,000 Bibles in the United States and Ethiopia, and took in nearly $25 million in tithes and offerings.
Then, in a few breathtaking months, the whole thing collapsed. Founder and lead pastor Mark Driscoll’s bent toward the provocative, which was part of his draw, increasingly came under fire, fanned by a series of controversies.
Driscoll announced he was taking a break in August 2014, then resigned less than two months later. By the end of October, lead preaching pastor Dave Bruskas announced the whole thing was shutting down.
“We don’t have anything in church history this apocalyptic, as far as a behemoth like Mars Hill—not only a city but national and international voice—collapsing in a two-month period,” said Taproot Church pastor Dan Braga, who watched the whole thing from the adjacent suburb of Burien.
Mentioning the plagiarism and Result Source controversies early on is a good way to let readers know the nature and scope of the controversies surrounding Driscoll at the basic level; but it can be easy to miss that if you weren't documenting the plagiarism scandal as it was happening it could be easy to forget that between the evidence presented by Janet Mefferd or Warren Throckmorton or even here that the scandal about the integrity of Mark Driscoll's intellectual property was what it was because it turned out to encompass what was, at the time, a stretch of time going back to even his first book, then called Radical Reformission and since re-issued as Reformission.
Under no circumstances could the church be said to have collapsed in a mere two month period. Of course it would have been difficult to know that the numbers for attendance might have been declining for anyone who wasn't inside Mars Hill in 2014. That would be because Mars Hill decided to stop submitting numbers to magazine lists for list articles in 2013.
On September 12th, Outreach magazine will release its annual issue listing the 100 largest and fastest-growing churches in the nation. For the first time in a number of years, you won’t see Mars Hill Church listed. [emphasis added]
The longer I am at Mars Hill, the more I feel like a dad. First Corinthians 4 is a place my soul has been camping for the past year. There, Paul speaks of the fact that we have a lot of teachers, but not a lot of fathers. Elsewhere, he speaks of people as sons in the faith including Timothy, Titus, and others. Similarly, as an elderly man writing 1 John, John keeps referring to the people in the network of churches he oversaw as his dear “children.” As Mars Hill has experienced growth that is staggering and unprecedented for our region of the country, there’s nothing to prove. But, there are a lot of people to reach, love, and serve. I hope, by God’s grace, to have a growing family and pastor one church from the age of 25 until Jesus says I’m done. I genuinely care about the faces in our church and not just the numbers. I also want to relieve some of the pressure our leaders may feel to outdo ourselves every year, as that has the possibility to cause us to not make certain tough calls and changes because it could slow our growth for the sake of health. In the end, removing ourselves from the list is just something I feel the Holy Spirit has asked me/us to do and godly counsel from our executive elders and outside pastors of other very large churches.
I have no criticisms of the lists, nor any judgment regarding those who participated. I simply pulled our church off the list after conversations with some pastor friends who have done the same. We will continue to count things at Mars Hill, such as how many people we have on Sundays, how many people are baptized every year, how many people are in Community Groups, how many elders we have to lovingly lead our people, how many people are giving financially, how many dollars we are bringing in and sending out, how many locations and services we have, etc. But, we will use that data internally for our church and not be publishing it much externally. [emphasis added] Our church continues to grow and has big plans for long term expansion, and by God’s grace we are expecting our escalator of opportunity to continue to go up.
To count or not to count
Since we are no longer submitting our numbers for the Top 100 list, this seemed like an opportune time to speak about numbers. Churches that like to count are often accused of being proud, pragmatic, and all about the numbers in an unholy and unhealthy way; some are, some aren’t. ...
While Mark Driscoll wrote that Mars Hill would not be publishing the numbers externally and said that the church continued to grow, another Mars Hill pastor published the following:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/08/where-are-they-now-mars-hill-pastors_11.html?showComment=1376368921220#c7464551772588171156
... Mars Hills was around 14,000 people a Sunday at the end of 2012 and now is around 11,600. Most of the pastors who left did leave over the corporation management style that took full effect about 18 months ago, moving for a 5 day work week at 10 to 12 hours a day, to 6 day work week at 12 to 18 hours a day. And when you question this as a pastor or member like I did and many ex-pastors you are told to resign and leave Mars Hill for not being in full submission to Mars Hill's 3 executive pastors, Mark Driscoll, Dave Bruskas and Sutton. Turner. Most of the ex-pastors are bond by non-disclosure agreements and will be sued by Mars Hill for ever thing they have if they talk about it in public. I pray for a heart change form the 3 executive pastors and for all the ex-pastors and ex-members forced out of Mars Hill to land in a Christ centered church.
where it was noted, thanks to content from The City published by Sutton Turner that:
July Recap
All that to say, here is a summary of our July numbers—the first month of our new fiscal year:
Average weekly attendance: 11,151 (8,959 adults and 2,191 kids) [emphasis added
Maybe that 12k figure is what you get if you average year-round attendance but the July figure that was leaked to Wenatchee The Hatchet in the summer of 2013 had the average weekly attendance at least 1,175 lower.
There's also something to keep in mind about the 11,151 attendance number from July 2013. We have to compare it to what was listed as the attendance rate in Fall 2012 from the earlier fiscal year report.
Nor would that be the only detail that has been missing. As noted back in the blog post in January 2014 there's the matter of comparing how many contracted members were at Mars Hill across FY2012 and FY2013, which WtH did in the post linked to above:
...
Check out the average weekly attendance listed in what appears to be a FY2013 MHC annual report, that's 12,329 average. While 1,337 members were added the grand total number of members of Mars HIll Church only increased by a total of a net total of 60 members between FY2012 and FY2013. [emphasis original] Curious. If your organization has a net gain of formal members of a mere sixty after getting more than 1,200 newbies that's obviously not very awesome net growth....
Compared to FY2012's listing the percentage of people who gave $0 went from 23.9% to 35.1%. Interesting. (emphasis added) [WtH at 11:53pm---comparing this percentage of 0 donors to previous annual reports it also looks like possibly the highest ratio of non-givers at MHC in the last five fiscal years]
The number of people who gave between $1-$499 went from 42.9% to 29.5%. It looks like they're losing the bottom of the pyramid in terms of lowest-level donors but that Mars Hill Church is gaining in the mid-tier and major donor categories. But no organization can rely entirely on the top-tier for long. You have to mobilize your base-level, low-end donors. It's not safe to assume that some kind of Pareto principle means you can effectively ignore your base. Let's not forgot if the numbers presented in the MHC FY2013 report hold up a whopping 64.6 percent of donors to Mars Hill in FY2013 either gave nothing at all or gave no more than $1-$499 for the fiscal year. [emphasis original]
Merely looking at the attendance numbers listed for FY2013 would give you a truncated picture of Mars Hill's rise and fall. In terms of sheer numbers Mars Hill peaked in late 2012 and began to decline slowly in 2013 and then precipitously in 2014. Even the average in July being 11,151 was so if you count 2,191 children on top of 8,959 adults. Was the 13k from late 2012 also including children?
So the sentences in the Gospel Coalition article that say: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/seattle-reboot-life-after-mars-hill ... “We don’t have anything in church history this apocalyptic, as far as a behemoth like Mars Hill—not only a city but national and international voice—collapsing in a two-month period,” said Taproot Church pastor Dan Braga, who watched the whole thing from the adjacent suburb of Burien. ...
it's not really true. There was no collapse of Mars Hill in a mere two-month period. Mars Hill was already experiencing numeric decline in 2013. Mark Driscoll even made a point of saying in August 2013 that Mars Hill would no longer submit numbers to magazines for lists because numbers were important but not to be published for the general public. Thanks to information leaked about tracked numbers inside MH from sources with access to The City, the resource Mars Hill Church leadership used to communicate to the members, it was possible to establish that the average weekly attendance in July 2013 was lower than the publicly disclosed peak attendance. It was also possible to observe from the annual reports that while mid-tier and major donor giving had escalated that the rank-and-file donors were giving less and less.
As previously noted, the number of members who gave nothing at all rose from about 23% to slightly more than one third of all listed members. For anyone with a modicum of professional background in non-profit donor cultivation the numbers inside MH were starting to look creepy in terms of long-term sustainability even during the two years prior to the formal end. The memo from Sutton Turner to the executive elders that was leaked to Warren Throckmorton established in some detail that even at the uppermost echelons of Mars Hill leadership there was some real worry that the growth paradigm Mars Hill had committed to pursuing was economically unfeasible; even a slight stoppage in numeric growth could have had catastrophic consequences.
That Bellevue was described as "ground zero" of Mars Hill rather than Ballard indicates how much had changed in the last five years of Mars Hill. There are a variety of issues and incidents associated simply with what was once Mars Hill Bellevue but that is probably best served by another post.
Mars Hill Global began in 2009 to raise money from the global audience (those who listened via podcast) to help fund the mission of Mars Hill Church: “Making Disciples and Planting Churches.” Until late 2011, Mars Hill had not significantly funded international church planting but was heavily invested in US church planting. From 2009 to 2012, Mars Hill spent $8.6M in U.S. church planting and $170k outside of the U.S. [WtH, slightly less than 2% of expenditures went to church planting outside the US] but we'll get to a 2009 sermon that explains why this wouldn't be a surprise to potentially impatient readers]
When I joined Mars Hill in 2011, I built relationships with the Kale Hewyott Church in Ethiopia to train church planters there. My passion for Ethiopia (which existed before I arrived at Mars Hill) began to dominate the message of Mars Hill Global. In hindsight, I see how many believed that the only reason Mars Hill Global existed was to fund Ethiopian church planting.
When people started to question the distribution of funds given to Mars Hill Global, the church brought in ECFA and independent auditors, Clark Nuber. Both groups gave Mars Hill a clear opinion that the church had done nothing wrong. In spite of these findings, we felt led to send 3765 emails and 6000 letters to 100% of donors to Mars Hill Global from 2011 to 2014 to clarify their gift intent. Less than 40 families responded; Mars Hill Church sent an additional $40,000 to Ethiopia because donors requested their donations to Mars Hill Global be for Ethiopian church planting.
A full and total timeline from 2009 to 2014 with videos, blogs and other information is stored here. From 2012 to 2014, Mars Hill Church spent $13.7M in church planting in the US and sent $545k to Ethiopia and India.[WtH--spent from an amount of ... ?]During its existence, Mars Hill Church invested over $23M in church planting in the US and around the world.[WtH--not necessarily the same thing as having done it through Mars Hill Global, given that Mars Hill began in 1996 and Global started in 2009] This amount is over and above the general and administrative costs of Mars Hill Church’s central operations and staffing. (47% of the funds given to Mars Hill Global from 2012-2014 were large donations from a small number of donors who specifically asked prior to giving for their donations to be counted in Global. Many of these donors did not attend one specific Mars Hill location and wanted their donations supporting all Mars Hill operations including U.S. and international church planting.)
[ WtH--so it reads like that 47% of the funds given to Global from 2012 were from a small number of donors who wanted their giving to be counted in/toward global. Though these donors did not attend one specific location they wanted their gifts supporting all operations, but this raises a question of whether or not that was unusual because the donors requested this or because under normal circumstances donors might have expected or requested their gifts to be restricted to the campus they were giving to Mars Hill through/from]
Many have asked for these numbers. There was I time when I was restricted from providing these numbers. Now, everyone has the Mars Hill Global information that I had when I resigned in September 2014 (Eph. 5:13).
Actual financials reports with line items would have been nice.
Back in the pre-Turner era of Mars Hill Driscoll described the aims of Mars Hill Global as follows:
Prophets, Priests and Kings Trial: 8 witnesses from 1 & 2 Peter May 3, 2009 1 Peter 5:1-5 starting about 0:47 ... I have announcements for you.
First of all, kinda let you know what's going on at Mars Hill, Pastor Scott Thomas runs our Acts 29 church planting network along with Pastor Tar, Pastor Tyler Powell and that's going great. We give ten percent of our dollars [to] church planting. Acts 29 has 250 churches in the US, many, many, many more overseas. Our goal is to see over 1,000 churches planted within ten years. We're well on the way to that goal and that includes sending Pastor Jesse, who has been our campus pastor at Bellevue, to go plant in California. He's sensing that call on his life.
Pastor Mark (it's a different Pastor Mark), Pastor Mark up at the Shoreline campus, is going to go plant in Chicago, a new church, and Andrew Pack is planting in Seattle out of the Lake City campus. Some have asked, "Why start another church in Seattle?" Cuz we need a zillion and this will make two of them. We're well on our way to a zillion. We need lots of churches in Seattle and we praise God that Andrew and others want to plant churches. We're all for it.
Additionally, marshillglobal.com is an initiative led by your Lead Pastor Jamie Munson and here's where we're going: from seven campuses of Mars Hill to a hundred; from upwards of 10,000 people on any given Sunday to 50,000 in the next ten years. Leading this is Pastor Rick Melson, one of our executive elders and he's a great guy. We stole him from John Piper in Minneapolis. I'll rephrase that, we borrowed him for a long time to the glory of God from John Piper in Minneapolis, and he [Melson] is also running the Resurgence Training Center--it's a school that will open in the fall so that we can have a leadership engine to train more campus pastors, church planters and potential elders. We're seeking fifty students for the fall term. [emphasis added]
For all of this we will need to raise four million dollars above and beyond budget and Pastor Jamie has a really smart idea to take microgifts from a lot of our fans online. There's upwards of 20 million downloads of our sermons and content every year. [We're] asking those people who enjoy all that we give away to give some small gifts to help fund this global expansion and initiative. Many have asked--it's cool, we've recently had checks as large as ten thousand dollars--saying, "We love you. We listen to a lot of things. Here, how can we help?" So we're going to open that opportunity up. We're going to invite you to give as well, above and beyond your general tithes and offerings. And, amazingly enough, a generous donor stepped forward and said "I'll do a million-dollar matching fund. For everyone who gives any amount I'll match that up to the first million dollars." So that's the great kick-off. We praise God for that.
marshillglobal.com, you can check in there to get updates on where we're going, what we're doing and how we are expanding. That includes our newest campus, Mars Hill Albuquerque. We officially announce it today. We're going to New Mexico. ...
Turner mentioned that more than $23 million was spent in church planting. That's telling us what it was more than. What we don't necessarily get is a number that would tell us how much went into The Resurgence Training Center (for anyone who even remembers what that was these days). So some of the money given into Mars Hill Global would have gone to the Resurgence Training Center. There are folks who are willing to say they went there and graduated from there but let's not forget the big E on the eye chart. Mark Driscoll had had a personal ambition to start a movement that started a Bible college. No matter how great the education was at Re:Train there's a hindsight we can have today through which we observe that this was part of the legacy Driscoll wanted to be able to look back on. It's also something to keep in mind as part of the basis for Global in its early stages. We don't need to be so focused on how much went to overseas that we forget that at its inception Global was never explicitly designed for overseas missions but for the global expansion of what we can now regard as the Mars Hill brand.
The amount of money given/designated to The Resurgence Training Center could get some clarification, since it, too, was part of the Mars Hill expansion included within the fundraising activities of Mars Hill Global.
And the thing to keep in mind, that commenter Nathan priddis mentioned recently at Phoenix Preacher, is that we should ask ourselves--even if "all" the money raised by Mars Hill Global went to overseas activity, who's to say that would have made the conditions in those regions in Africa or India better?
In other words, let's not forget that even if all the monies that people gave that they thought were going to go from Mars Hill Global to Africa went there, what in the end would this have been except for the global expansion of the Mars Hill brand? Why would anyone in Africa need that? This is not to say people don't have any right or reason to be upset about all sorts of things Mars Hill Global. Turner gets that these things were worrisome to people, too. But Nathan priddis raised a point that doesn't seem to have come up among those who have been close to the Mars Hill side of things in online discussions (that I know of)--that we can't assume that all that Global money going to the missionary work Mars Hill had in mind would have been any good for people in Africa in the end.
Some have criticized the executive elder compensation I received for my position insinuating that I unfairly enriched myself. Once again, this criticism is painful and unmerited. When I accepted the call to Mars Hill as General Manager, I left the private sector as a CEO with a significantly higher pay. When I accepted the position of Executive Elder, I was given the same salary as the person I replaced. These salaries were approved by the board and were supported by by-laws and church governance.
In 2012, the board commissioned independent compensation studies to determine the salaries of all three executive elders. The Compensation Committee (made up of board members) then used these studies to determine the compensation of each executive elder. These studies were done by the independent firm of Capin Crouse. Many have an issue with the compensations of megachurch pastors today, and I respect their opinion. The process that the Board of Mars Hill went through to determine compensation for executive elders was 100% by IRS process and following National Council of NonProfits guidelines, completed by an independent accounting firm, and audited by another independent audit firm. My compensation was based on what others in similar positions in similarly sized churches were compensated.
The first thing to note is that the timeframe in which the criticism Turner describes may have been made would be useful to know. Prior to possibly 2014 the subject of how much executive leaders made didn't seem to be a burning question in coverage of Mars Hill for two fairly simple reasons: 1) nobody seemed able to figure out how much Mark Driscoll made and 2) nobody could figure out how he was even paid whatever it was he was paid who wasn't at the highest levels of the Mars Hill leadership culture. Turner's recent explanation of things presents his account in terms of criticism that may not have been possible until after numbers began to be disclosed for consideration
In fact it's tough to remember whether anyone even cared what Turner was paid enough to raise the issue in the press or at blogs for the majority of the history of Mars Hill. There were questions circulating about how much Mark Driscoll made, though. Over the course of a few years sources indicated to Wenatchee The Hatchet that the question of how much Driscoll was compensated, and how anyone could even verify what it was, was a question people had considered.
So it was not hugely surprising that the most looked-at post in the history of Wenatchee The Hatchet was ...
Housing Allowance: I recommend maintaining Pastor Mark's housing allowance of $200,000 for calendar year 2013, as was approved and provided in 2012 Executive Payroll: As of this summer, I have personally taken over entering the executive payroll. Outside of the Compensation Committee, there is no one with access to any of this information (including my assistant) for all three Mars Hill Church executive elders. I am the only person, besides the Compensation Committee, that needs to know about Pastor Mark's compensation. [emphasis added]
So one of the complaints was that how much Driscoll made was kept secret and to this day the question of precisely how Driscoll was paid has never been answered for the record. Was Driscoll paid directly by Mars Hill or was that pay mediated by a third party company the way payroll companies handle things for many an employer?
The housing allowance number was worth nothing because for those who recall Pastor Mark TV era blogging by Driscoll he noted that there were some concerns about whether the parish housing allowance might have been at risk because of a court decision. But, more saliently to the history of Mars Hill, by the middle of 2012 the Driscoll family had moved out of King County altogether into a home in Woodway. While Driscoll had blogged about how he wasn't going anywhere over the years and how some people didn't appreciate the risks of urban ministry. Back on October 25, 2013 (which is republished over here)
... Those ministering in more family-friendly suburban communities that welcome megachurches and gated neighborhoods may not understand the complexities of a ministry that is more urban and the dangers it can pose. ...
is that by then Driscoll had been living in Woodway for a bit more than a year. His post was worded as if he were still living in Seattle when he had not been living in Seattle since May 2012.
So when he wrote :
... I love Jesus--so does my family. I love our church--and so does my family. And I love our city--and so does my family. On average, we have seen 100 people get baptized every month for about the last five years. We are seeing lives change, and we find great joy in that. That said, I do all I can to care for my family and protect them, without being paranoid, and the truth is if I were not called to this line of work, I would quit.
Keep in mind that the tacit assumption was that he wrote as someone a normal reader would have assumed meant to say he was living in Seattle. The assumption at the time was not that he would have been living in Woodway given that a majority of coverage in media outlets talked about Driscoll being based in Seattle.
An average Mars Hill attending reader reading Mark Driscoll's 2013 blog post might well have worked under a surmise that he was blogging as someone who still lived in King County. It's really, really tough to sound like you can be taken seriously opining about the perils of urban ministry if you live in a gated house with a big dog in Woodway, Washington in Snohomish County.
So while Turner can certainly feel that there were those who unfairly criticized his compensation during his time at Mars Hill, at least from the Wenatchee The Hatchet side of things, it didn't seem all that common for people to worry about Turner's compensation. People were more concerned about how much money Mark Driscoll might be making and how secretive the leadership culture was about how much Driscoll was making and how anyone could even go about finding out that information.
I reported directly to Sutton for about three years. During this time, Sutton lead us through the most difficult situations I have encountered in my professional career. [emphasis added] Sutton was a consummate professional through thick and thin and maintained an unwavering ability to make decisions in the heat of the battle. To me, Sutton was more than a dependable boss, he became a business mentor to me and a dear friend to my family. He will be a pivotal asset to any organization, and a blessing to their staff.
paragraphing is supplied for the following: I wholeheartedly give Sutton Turner the highest recommendation possible. Sutton and I worked together in the non-profit world where his business expertise truly turned that organization around. When Sutton came in April 2011, the organization was in severe financial crisis—at risk of shutting its doors within a matter of months. The financial habit for years was spending on credit throughout the entire year and depending on the huge financial EOY gifts by supporters and donors. Sutton was brought in and made several immediate and difficult changes that needed to be made, at the expense of his popularity rating. This is one of the most valuable of Sutton’s qualities: his ability to do the best (and right) thing for the good of the whole regardless of public opinion. He’s sees the forest through the trees, unlike most others. In less than three years at the helm (April 2011–Jan. 2014), Sutton led the organization from a place of financial desperation to the healthiest place in its almost two decades of existence. [emphasis added]
Another one of Sutton’s fiscal successes was within one year he doubled the FYE gifts/funds from the donor base (June 2013 vs. June 2014). This is just one example of his acute business sense: seeing the possibility for growth, putting the right team together, and pursuing the end goal. Sutton is one of the most skilled leaders I have ever had the privilege of working with. He is a humble, but driven man who knows his strengths and his weaknesses. This is so important because he is very good at surrounding himself with people who support him well. He never allows ego to get in the way of his or the organization’s success. I was Sutton’s Account Manager, thus making him my “client” because he would funnel requests through me which I would then see through to completion amidst the other teams (i.e. video, design, finance, etc.).
Sutton always had a clear idea of what he wanted but he also knew that others had valuable input and subject matter expert suggestions. I will always appreciate how empowering Sutton was to everyone around him, especially as the CEO. Sutton has a unique way of connecting with his staff. His communication style is motivating, clear, strong, and sincere. He has a desire to make sure that his team is solid, informed, and unified. Again, I could not more highly recommend Sutton Turner. His last day was a sad one for me—I know his first day at your company would be one of the best decisions you could make.
John Sutton Turner is a focused and determined executive that has served our organization well for the last three years. He is a strategic thinker who understands the big picture, and has proven himself to be firm in making difficult decisions for the benefit of the organization. He turned our organization around from a place of financial duress when he first joined, to bring it to a place of financial robustness[emphasis added] and expansion to 15 different locations in multiple states in three years' time. He is an expert financial and operational executive, adept at providing projections and analysis necessary for rapid growth. John is also skilled in building a team and infrastructure necessary to support a growing organization, and in finding the right people for the right roles and overseeing their work. He built strong teams in human resources, IT, media and communications, and creative departments, all the while overseeing property development in multiple locations as our organization expanded to15 locations. John's capacity to effectively lead an organization through challenges to strengthen it and chart a clear course for success, would be an asset to any organization that desires growth and expansion under strong direction. I recommend John for your consideration without any reservation. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.
paragraphing supplied:
John Sutton Turner is an exceptionally gifted leader. I had the pleasure of working downstream from Sutton at a non-profit. When he arrived the organization was in the midst of crippling financial crisis that threatened the existence of the institution. Immediately, Sutton began making the difficult moves needed to ensure long term financial viability. Within a short period of time not only had the crisis been avoided but the organization received the highest financial accreditation in the industry. [emphasis added] Additionally, under his leadership assets and total revenue grew year over year while liabilities and expenses decreased even as other similar organizations continued to suffer the effects of the economic downturn.
Another of Sutton’s skills is defining systems, measuring processes, analyzing available data and using that to improve processes and control the future of the system providing for long term success. It was the implementation of these principles that saved our organization and brought us back from the brink of disaster. Sutton possesses exemplary managerial and delegation practices that people at all levels of the organization can benefit from. Though my role was downstream from him, he was always approachable, willing to help and took seriously his mentor role that the position automatically bestowed on him. I do not know that there is a man in the business world that I have learned more from than John Sutton Turner. I am still heavily involved in the organization he led and it was a very sad day when he resigned from the board of directors. His presence, leadership and inspiration to all will be greatly missed. It is with full confidence that I recommend him for any senior level executive position. I would be honored to work in any company that he was the CEO of.
Sutton is a natural leader with a wealth of experience and expertise. He has exceptional strengths in business development, real estate negotiations, and business planning. I had the privilege to serve directly under his leadership for nearly three years and am thankful for the personal and professional development he invested in me, and the knowledge and wisdom I picked up by observing him. He is a gifted business leader, and a trustworthy, respectable man. Within a short period of time he transformed the operations of our organization, rescuing us from imminent financial turmoil.[emphasis added] He provided high impact organizational leadership that we had been lacking for years. Sutton was instrumental in helping us engage in fruitful and impactful relationships and partnerships that have reshaped our priorities and values. I would welcome any opportunity to work with Sutton again, and hope our paths cross again in the future.
Sutton is one of the most gifted and talented leaders I have ever worked with. I reported directly to him as an Executive Director and then worked closely with him as the Senior Leader at one of our largest sites. Sutton was instrumental in turning our organization around from both a leadership and financial standpoint. [emphasis added] His business acumen raised the bar for everyone associated with him. He has the ability to recruit and develop key leaders while holding a clear vision for the future. He will make the difficult decision with the utmost care and consideration for all stakeholders. It has been a great joy and pleasure to know and work with Sutton. He will be a positive and influential addition to any team he leads. He has my highest recommendation.
That is, to be sure, a whole lot of quotations.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/09/Current- Executive Elders Current Financial Situation Saturday, March 17, 2012... After being at Mars Hill for 10 months and in my current role for 3 months, I now have a picture of a very broken and fundamentally financially unsustainable organization. I am sorry that I have not been able to really see the financial picture of the organization until just this week. So many distractions with A29, Real Marriage, GWOW, distractions with Churches, my Eldership, and a very incompetent staff when I arrived has kept me from not seeing the picture. But now I see the organization very clearly and we have some difficult decisions to make.
One of the greatest and most harmful events was Pastor Jamie resigning and leaving me in this job as General Manager/Executive Elder. From early June until he resigned in August, he had basically checked out. So I had less than 6 weeks as General Manager before becoming #1 King without being an Elder. Then finally in November, I was made an Executive Pastor without have any creditability with the staff. This single fact hindered my ability to really even understand the organization or the people, much less see the problems as they had existed for a long time.
“Sutton is fundamentally unhelpful for Mark. Sutton plays to all of Mark’s weaknesses and none of Mark’s strengths.” He pleaded with them saying that what Mark needs in an Executive Pastor is a “55 year-old seasoned godly man who watches over Mark’s soul as he administrates the church, and who can pull Mark into a room and say ‘you can’t do that in a meeting’ and you need to call another meeting and ask for forgiveness from the people you just spoke to. He doesn’t need a man who is his trigger man.” He made it clear that Sutton lacks the emotional and spiritual maturity to be where he is at in leadership.
Not all statements made about Turner by leaders at Mars Hill have quite synced up to the degree the recommendations do. To read about that ... go here.
Now consider all those accounts in connection to the September 6, 2011 announcement that Jamie Munson was resigning from presidency of Mars Hill, given by Mark Driscoll.
I am writing this letter to provide my perspective on Pastor Jamie’s transition as well as directives for how to respond and proceed. In seasons like this we need the elders, staff, and church to trust the senior leadership of Mars Hill. To help nourish that trust, Pastor Jamie and I are posting our letters together to demonstrate our unity and friendship while keeping no secrets and simply telling the truth. At his recent annual review, Pastor Jamie was given high performance marks and asked to return in his current role of Executive Pastor at Mars Hill Church. After a season of prayerful consideration, he informed his review team that he felt God was calling him to pursue a new ministry and business venture. He was again invited to continue in his current role on staff at Mars Hill Church, or move into another role in the organization. With great affection for the church, he has since come to the conclusion that the time has come for his transition off of paid staff. I want to make it emphatically clear: there is no disqualifying sin or error of any kind in Pastor Jamie’s life. This is in no way connected to anything negative. He is, by God’s grace, "above reproach," as he always has been.[emphasis added] I also want to stress that there is no relational friction between Pastor Jamie and myself. In the days leading up to his decision, my children were at his house playing and vice versa, as has been the case for years. Our wives, Crystal and Grace, were in contact as friends as they always are. Jamie remains one of my nearest and dearest friends, a brother in every sense of the word, and personally I assure you we had no conflict and are as close as we’ve ever been. For example, on our recent family vacation I missed him and simply called him so I could check in on my friend. I deeply enjoy Jamie and intend to remain close friends with him and his family, as do Grace and our children. Nothing has changed personally in our relationship. Jamie is the same godly, humble, helpful, enjoyable man of God he’s always been. In this, we’ve both shed a few tears and are committed to our ongoing friendship. Here is what I am asking from you. Please pray for the Munson family. Please pursue the Munson family. Bomb them with love and affection. Make sure that Crystal and the wonderful Munson kids feel the embrace of Jesus through the affection of Mars Hill. If you are their friends, keep being their friends. I have known Crystal since she was in college before she and Jamie met. She is wonderful. We adore and enjoy her. She is as committed to our church and the mission of Jesus as anyone at Mars Hill. Let’s ensure that in this season of transition her friendships and community remain stable, steady, and supportive. Correct any gossip or rumor you hear that is negative and untrue.[emphasis added] ...
So it would seem in 2015 more than half a dozen people have praised Sutton Turner for having the courage to make difficult decisions that turned Mars Hill culture around from the brink of fiscal and organizational ruin. It's impossible to avoid the question of Jamie Munson's leadership as president of the organization since 2007. Now if someone would like to contest the accuracy of the accounts quoted they're welcome to take up their own platform and say something, but the cumulative praise for Turner seems unable to avoid the sticky question of whether or not, under Jamie Munson's presidency, there was competent fiscal management.
It would seem that in addition to a chorus of witnesses praising Sutton Turner's fiscal competence in contrast to the earlier dispensation, there has in the last 14 months emerged another group testimony regarding the old leadership scene.
We've surveyed that earlier in the month, the topic of how the majority of the men who were elders at Mars Hill during 2007 and were connected to the terminations and trials of Bent Meyer and Paul Petry have publicly apologized for their roles--there's a whole lot of guys who were involved in the trials following Jamie Munson's letter announcing termination that have since considered the process sinful and harmful.
So if those who worked closely with Turner have publicly testified he saved Mars Hill from slipping into fiscal and organizational ruin (which was where Mars Hill was at the end of Munson's presidential reign); and if a majority of the elders who were at Mars Hill in 2007 have since publicly repented and recanted the legitimacy of the firings and trials, then on what basis could a Mark Driscoll say Jamie Munson was always above reproach?
Now that Mars Hill has been dissolving throughout 2015 it may be Sutton Turner saved Mars Hill from the brink of financial ruin but once the controversies surrounding Mark Driscoll's intellectual property and some of the means used to promote it erupted from 2013-2014 there may have been only so much Turner could do to keep things steady.
Driscoll's glowing praise of Munson in public, in light of the cumulative testimonies quoted above, now seems impossible to square with what people have stated the reality was for Mars Hill's financial state in 2011.
*Unfortunately, Mars Hill’s attorneys have requested that I not blog. I have removed some of the financial information as well as other non-financial information in response to their request.
When in the earlier statement they were: http://investyourgifts.com/learning-growing-communicating-under-criticism/ Posted by Sutton Turneron For the past several weeks, I have been planning to discuss the lessons I have learned from events and mistakes at Mars Hill Church on my website. Earlier this week, I wrote three separate blogs regarding the ResultSource decision in 2011 at Mars Hill. Today, I planned to focus on Mars Hill Global. However, last night I received a call to explain that Mars Hill’s former attorneys did not want me to post any more blogs and also to remove what has already been communicated this week.
More recently, Turner seemed to indicate that attorneys in association with Mars Hill had recently invoked litigation. This comment quoted below does not seem to have referred to a reported pending suit against former MH legal officers, but against Turner individually.
The litigation threat was against me (personally), nothing outside. I honestly don't understand it. As I said before in my blog, if the church was still a church, I would not communicate about anything, however the church is dead and it is time to learn from my mistakes and my sin.
I wanted to publicly apologize to people that had been hurt by my sin and my mistakes, following my 1:1 meetings with people directly that I needed to reconcile with. I thought it was time to communicate the full story - in detail with $ - however "they" got wind (honestly, don't know how) of what I was doing and told me to stop, with a threat. If I get sued for doing what I have done, my wife and I are fine with it.
It would seem Turner has nothing to lose and everything to gain by sharing where the money was spent and when in terms of clearing the air. It's a shame that it took the process of the formal dissolution of the corporation to spur him to considering this option.
However, something that seems worth noting is that the lack of clarity about what Mars Hill Global did and didn't do came in during the Sutton Turner regime. Back when Munson was legal president, there didn't seem to be any lack of clarity about what Global did. Driscoll explained the 2009-era vision for Global in a sermon that did not get transcribed and that Wenatchee The Hatchet had to transcribe. It's worth revisiting to see what was being said on behalf of Global in those years.
Whether or not it was former or current Mars Hill attorneys who have insisted that Turner not blog about Mars Hill has yet to be clarified but the statements made dealing with Mars Hill Global can be dealt with independent of questions as to which attorneys that were or weren't with Mars Hill got in some kind of touch with Turner.
Just a few observations about the following: ... Global Focus The vision and activities connected to the Global Fund must focus on reaching the worldwide church. As a person sits in front of his computer in Qatar, London, Cape Town, or Sydney, he does not care about Mars Hill planting in Everett. As an international citizen, however, he cares greatly about global evangelism, global missions, global causes for Jesus, global church-planting, etc. Though the sentiment is rare among Americans, people abroad feel a sense [of] belonging kinship with the global community.
Flagship Projects of the money that comes into the Global Fund, designate a fixed percentage internally for highly visible, marketable projects such as mission trips, orphan care, support for pastors, and missionaries in the third world, etc (ten to fifteen strategic operations in locations where Mars Hill wants to be long term). This percentage should be flexible (not a "tithe"), and not communicated to the public. Support for Mars Hill Global would be support for Mars Hill Church in general, but the difference and the draw would be that a portion of Global gifts would also benefit projects that spread the gospel and serve the needs of people around the world.
Even if unintentional the gap between the global/Africa emphasis in soliciting funds and the reality of local use created a problem. The problem was, basically, that some people felt that if Mars Hill was going to solicit money the solicitation ought to have accented the majority of activity and expenditure.
http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/10/GlobalFundMemo2011.png BENEFITS The Global Fund could be beneficial in a number of ways, besides the obvious gain of increased funding: * For a relatively low cost (e.g. $10k/month), supporting a few missionaries and benevolence projects would serve to deflect criticism, increase goodwill, and create opportunities to influence and learn from other ministries * Many small churches who may consider joining Mars Hill hesitate because they do not believe we support "missions." While we need to continue to challenge the assumptions underlying a claim, the Global Fund would serve as a simple, easy way to deflate such criticism and help lead change in those congregations * The ability to communicate and interact with supporters of Mars Hill Global provides an avenue for promoting events, recruiting leaders, and developing Mars Hill core groups in strategic cities IMPLEMENTATION * EE sets specific guidelines on what Global Fund will financially support * Possible suggestions: Church Planting, Orphan Care, and Widow Care in Developing Countries * Specific targets will easily allow MHC to say "no" to the flood of request that will come. * Launch MH Global 3 weeks before Easter 2012 * Website * Video * Testimonies of Jesus working in developing countries * Call to give * Monthly updates from all global fund projects.
What Turner and the others may not yet fully appreciate is that what can seem controversial about Global is that whatever good it did and whatever funds it raised, the nature of the memo highlights the benefits of Global for the brand of Mars Hill more than those whose needs would be met by Mars Hill's financial resources and activity.
There's an obvious point that could be easy to miss in the memo. You might not have spotted it but it's the Easter 2012 part. The November 2011 memos published by Turner explore Global as a "sleeping giant" but why would Turner and company have been interested in that?
In the spring of 2012 Turner sent a memo indicating that Mars Hill, at the risk of putting things to simply, was teetering on the brink of financial ruin, pursuing a series of projects at the same time that were not financially sustainable. The multiple campus launches and relaunches, the promotion of Real Marriage, these things were taxing the resources. Turner seemed convinced giving was not what it could have been. Whether the church should have been renting the city of Ephesus for a day didn't come up but it might have been part of the concern, maybe.
The point is, let's suggest that given that by the spring of 2012 the memo linked to above suggests a panic mode about the fiscal competence of the Martian culture. Global looked like an untapped resource, "a sleeping giant" that would be beneficial to the church. Now in the spring of 2012 there were mass layoffs and adjustments. In spite of that Driscoll would go on to declare that FY2012 had been the best year ever.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/09/mark-driscoll-fy2012-has-been-best-year.html http://marshill.com/media/jesus-loves-his-church/jesus-gave-us-communion#transcript
Pastor Mark Driscoll
August 5, 2012 ... And in that same spirit, we like to notify the church of how things are going. That includes monthly updates for all of Mars Hill. In one sense, we’re one church, in another sense, we’re fourteen local churches scattered across four different states, and pregnant with five more churches, hopefully to be birthed in about a year. And what we like to do is give a global update for how Mars Hill is doing, and then also allow the lead pastors of each local church to give a local update for how things are going at that particular location. Our fiscal year, our budget year, runs from July through June, so we just finished our fiscal year, and those who are administratively gifted and allow us to steward the resources that God has given us, have put together a final year-end report, and I’m really excited to share it with you. Before I get into the details, let me just say, we have just completed the greatest year in the history of Mars Hill Church, any single way you measure it: number of people, number of baptisms, number of Community Groups, number of people in Community Groups, number of Redemption Groups, number of people in Redemption Groups, number of weddings, number of children, number of services, number of locations. Whatever variable you would take a look at, it’s the highest it’s ever been. [emphasis added[ In the fifteen years of Mars Hill Church, we’ve just completed the greatest year we’ve ever had, and I can say with full confidence, it’s firstfruits and there’s much, much more to come. So, I want to start by saying thank you, Lord Jesus, for loving Mars Hill Church. And I want to thank you who love Mars Hill Church, and some of Jesus’ love is coming through you as you give, as you serve, as you pray, as you care. ... Just off the top of my head, I know that Pastor Sutton Turner, your executive pastor, is negotiating deals for Mars Hill Everett, as they’ve outgrown their kid’s space, Mars Hill Downtown, as they’re at five services having outgrown their facility as well, in negotiations for Mars Hill Orange County, also in negotiations for Mars Hill Federal Way, also hoping, trusting, praying that we’ll be able to open Mars Hill Tacoma, Mars Hill Renton, Mars Hill Kirkland/Bothell-ish, and so lots of real estate negotiations in play, in addition to others that I’m sure that I’ve forgotten. But, just be in prayer for that, that we would have the space to see more people come to church and come to Jesus.
Driscoll had landed a best-selling author status (thanks to Result Source) and had scored a million dollar home in Snohomish county. His star was higher than it had ever been and he could afford to issue pre-emptive character attacks on Justin Brierley and rear-guard defenses of shaking hands with T. D. Jakes. 2012 was probably a "best year ever" for Mark Driscoll. But what about Mars Hill as a whole? What about the Orange County eviction? What about the more rank and file staff?
We Really Need Your HelpFrom Pastor David Bruskas: From Pastor Dave:
As the final days of putting together a budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 are here, some Lead Pastors are wrestling with the reality of letting a few good people go at the local church level. And some of you have had recent conversations with your Lead Pastor regarding upcoming transitions that have been painful. I understand firsthand how hard it is to let a productive staff member go whom your church loves. I also know how hard it is for the people who have been served well to let staff go without a fight. So that makes Lead Pastors twice as vulnerable. They must face the disappointment of the departing staff member and the disappointment of the church. And much like I would expect any good leader to do, many Lead Pastors are fighting hard to keep staff and avoid cuts creatively and boldly. But we need to let go of that fight at this point. Here are a couple of reasons why.
First, we have, in reality, a single budget for all of our 14 churches. So this means for every cent in exceptions that once church receives above the $10 per adult compensation and ministry operation allotment, another church loses the same amount. So the only way for one church to win is for another church to lose. Second, the cost numbers per adult that Pastor Sutton and the Finance Team have given for targets aren’t arbitrary nor merely guidelines. They are hard targets that have been carefully researched and must be met. And if we don’t live within our means, we won’t just face the loss of future expansion opportunities, we will have to scale back our current ministry services significantly. And in the most dire circumstances, shut down a few of our churches. As of today, we are paying extra fees in financing the costs of existing buildings because of our unattractive financial condition to potential lenders. This must change for us even to be good stewards of what we already have. [emphasis added] ... Second, these are decisions the Executive Elders are making in unity. We have spent countless hours discussing together both the state of our finances and our present staffing model through face to face meetings, emails, texts and phone calls. We have worked through each of your staff rosters in an attitude of prayer thinking through every angle we could imagine to keep as many people as possible. [emphasis added] We grieve the fact that this cut is deep and results in letting go of some very good people who are performing well and helping the church. We have done the same thing with our central team reducing our costs 40%. It is super painful and we are very sympathetic towards you, your team and your church.And more than anything, we hurt for those who have lost jobs. We would request that you abide by our spending targets per person. Please respect these decisions by not coming to us individually in the hope that they may be changed. Pastor Sutton and I are happy to clarify anything that is confusing. But we can’t devote any more time to hearing appeals
...
With Mars Hill at times seeming to be teetering on the edge of fiscal cliffs every other year, it's "possible" the leadership was so focused on finding some way to keep the corporation solvent it was not nearly as careful as it could have and should have been about the nature of what Mars Hill Global was. It's not necessary to propose all out intent to deceive if we connect all the dots, if Mars Hill was as fiscally incompetent as Sutton Turner's 2015 narrative indicates, a failure to grasp the gravity of the fiscal situation could fuel a subsequent lack of proper concern for how to convey what Global had become.
Or, of course, it is also possible to propose that the way Global was promoted was too slippery and evasive, too. These are not mutually exclusive explanations being proposed. Wenatchee leans more toward the sloppy incompetence theory as to what went wrong with Global. What does seem to be the case, given the evidence and narratives at hand, was that the controversial lack of clarity about Mars Hill Global didn't come up until the Turner era. Whatever Turner's general story of the fiscal incompetence of late Munson-era leadership on Mars Hill financials (and one can only wonder how long Munson's going to let that stand as the new public narrative about his era of leadership), it can be said in Munson's defense that there seemed to have been nothing at all about Mars Hill Global during his tenure that could become any basis for controversy.
the summarizing quote that may be of interest for those who don't plan to read the whole thing might be this:
If I would have known how messed up Mars Hill was in 2011, I would never have taken the executive pastor job. My wife’s friend often tells her that God doesn’t reveal everything to us because then we wouldn’t do what he wants us to. Sometimes when we count the cost, by the grace of God, we underestimate.
http://investyourgifts.com/resultsource1/ Posted by Sutton Turner on April 20, 2015 ... In July 2011, a new marketing proposal was already in the works at Mars Hill: ResultSource. I learned of the project from the manager who was overseeing it. ResultSource was a marketing practice that purchased books through small individual bookstores that would qualify the book for the New York Times Best Seller List. Then, these books would be shipped to Mars Hill and sold in our nine church bookstores. It was proposed that being listed on the New York Times Best Seller List would increase the awareness of the church, support the upcoming sermon series, and increase church size.
I had a couple of meetings with the manager who was working on this project and at the time he stated his concern with the marketing proposal. I was not invited to any meetings to discuss ResultSource in my role as General Manager overseeing finance. However, I wrote several memos to my supervisor sharing my concern and lack of support for this marketing practice. I was relatively new to the staff and obviously not on the Board of Directors, nor was I asked to be a part of this particular decision. But due to my adamant disagreement and desire to best serve the staff and church, I wrote a memo on August 26, 2011 to my supervisor saying the following:
•The plan was poor stewardship. •If the plan were to be revealed, it would look poorly on the stewardship of Mars Hill Church. •If the plan were to be revealed, it would look poorly on Pastor Mark Driscoll.
A week later, I was notified that my advice was not taken and the plan to use ResultSource was approved. I don’t know who approved the plan. I don’t know what process was conducted concerning the decision. I do know that it showed that the process of making big decisions was broken and it needed to be fixed. ... Shortly after the decision to execute the ResultSource marketing plan was made, my supervisor resigned. After him, I was the highest-ranking employee in administration. The decision had been made but the contract hadn’t yet been signed. On October 13, 2011, I signed the ResultSource contract as General Manager a full month before being installed as an Executive Elder. After signing the contract, I emailed an elder, stating my frustration with having to be the one to sign the contract when I had voiced my disagreement with it. But few in the organization (or in the media since then) knew of my disagreement. When you stay in an organization and you do not agree with a decision, you have to own that decision as your own. Unfortunately, I will always be linked to ResultSource since my name was on the contract even though I thought it was a bad idea. If given the same opportunity again, I would not sign the ResultSource contract, but honestly, my missing signature would not have stopped it. Someone else would have signed it anyway since the decision had already been made.
To date Turner has not explained why he had to be the one to sign the contract. He would not have been the highest ranking officer ... although in the wake of Munson's resignation he could have been the highest ranking employee in the organization. But under Munson's bylaws (or Driscoll's, we've discussed the ambiguity of whose creation the 2007 bylaws ultimately was over here earlier this week) if Munson resigned as president the vice president was the preaching pastor, Mark Driscoll.
Still, there's a sense in which we should remember that Turner describes himself as willing to comply with policies he disagreed with. So in a sense while his name will always be attached to the Result Source Contract we should move forward a bit.
http://investyourgifts.com/learning-growing-communicating-under-criticism/ Posted by Sutton Turner on April 24, 2015 ... When the criticism of Mars Hill Global began in the Spring of 2014, I wanted to communicate about what happened with Global, its history, the financials, and my mistakes. Unfortunately, I was not permitted to discuss these things just as I was not permitted to discuss the ResultSource situation in the detail that I felt it deserved. There was actually a division on the Board of Advisors and Accountability (BOAA) as some men wanted to put all the blame for both Global and ResultSource on me, but I am thankful for men who did not allow that. [emphasis added]
Eight difficult, grievous months have passed since I resigned; four sad, yet hopeful months have passed since Mars Hill held its last service. I began to work on each of these topics through blog posts several months ago with the wisdom, counsel, prayer, and blessing of many friends who are former elders and staff members at Mars Hill.
After the first blogs were published, many people asked me, “Are you stabbing Pastor Mark, Pastor Dave, Mars Hill and … in the back?”
Since leaving Mars Hill in September, I have been in frequent contact with Pastor Dave Bruskas, Matt Rogers, and other pastors with whom I directly served, board members with whom I served, and many other top leaders with whom I have served shoulder-to-shoulder while at Mars Hill. Many of these men remained at Mars Hill after my resignation and some still faithfully remain at Mars Hill selling assets and closing the organization. Our ongoing contact has been as friends, not in any managerial or oversight context with regards to Mars Hill—I’m thankful that Jesus has allowed our friendships to extend leaps and bounds beyond that. We are family in Christ.
Conspicuous for the moment by absence is mention of Mark Driscoll. Whether this omission indicates anything is impossible to say but toward the end of giving Turner at least some benefit of a doubt let's observe the following--in a way what matters is not so much that Turner signed the contract (though, of course, that matters), what matters is who was invoiced for that contract?
By Turner's account there was a party or a group within the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability that was willing and supportive of the idea of letting Sutton Turner alone be the fall guy for controversy surrounding Result Source and Mars Hill Global. Turner also recounts that this split the BoAA and that some objected to this idea. Well, thanks to the reporting we've had access to in the last two years there's a very simple reason why we can accept this account as at least plausible. Mars Hill BoAA members would have known that regardless of whether or not Sutton Turner's name was on that contract, the invoices Result Source sent were to Mark Driscoll.
There might be those who would read skeptically everything Turner has published in the last week. That's understandable but so far, at least, while Turner's account seems to uncritically accept some "history" of MH governance that has been disproven years ago, Wenatchee The Hatchet's current impression is that Turner may have simply repeated the history of Mars Hill governance ("everybody had to all agree for anything to get done) that was told him when he arrived. In that case he was told a basically false story he was not in a position to have corrected. And since between the 2007 post-trial statements and Mark Driscoll's "Stepping Up" video we can't be quite sure if Jamie Munson wrote the bylaws or Mark Driscoll wrote the bylaws that were approved in 2007, Sutton Turner's story has at least remained consistent on the essential details.
What's more, Turner's account also squares with documents leaked from Mars Hill to Warren Throckmorton. Now if people dispute the accuracy of what Turner has said they should set the record straight. At the moment it seems as though Turner's recent account of a split in the BoAA in which some part of the group wanted to scapegoat him seems to reinforce the validity of Paul Tripp's statement that the BoAA was incapable of providing the kind of accountability it was designed to do. How would a BoAA split on the issue of whether or not to make the guy who signed a contract on behalf of Mars Hill to rig a #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list for Mark Driscoll a scapegoat be able to hold Mars Hill leadership accountable? As Paul Tripp stated last year about the BoAA, the most such a board could do was ensure financially restrained decisions, it could not meaningfully provide any other accountability.
Turner's account says "some men", meaning Turner's understanding was there was more than one man on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability who wanted to basically scapegoat him over Result Source. That's quite a claim. We can work out from the invoices of Result Source being sent to Mark Driscoll that those who opposed the scapegoat gambit could have done so on the basis of the fact that while Sutton Turner signed the RSI contract as a Mars Hill employee it was done to promote one of Mark Driscoll's books and Mark Driscoll had become the legal president of the organization.
As we've discussedatsomelength earlier this week, when the plagiarism scandal erupted and Janet Mefferd presented evidence that the Trial study guide infringed on a copyright the initial Mars Hill public response was to spread the blame on to a team of research assistants for an introductory essay that only had Mark Driscoll's name on it. Which is to say, as scapegoating the employed help goes, there seems to be some precedent for this having been done before in the face of controversy. Turner's story may yet get rebutted from elsewhere but for the moment what Turner has shared seems plausible (if incomplete) and would even fit what has demonstrably happened in the past when Mars Hill has reacted to public controversy.
If anyone previously or currently associated with the Mars Hill Board of Advisors and Accountability wants to clarify or correct any of the statements Sutton Turner has lately made now might be a good time.
