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 west seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label west seattle. Show all posts
Friday, November 19, 2021
Friday, February 28, 2020
Trinity West Seattle looking for lead pastor, David Fairchild no longer going to be lead pastor (lead at CCCW Houston)
On the theme of "where are they now" it was brought to WtH's attention that there's a job opening for lead pastor at Trinity West Seattle, formerly Mars Hill Church West Seattle campus.
https://contextstaffing.com/church-search/trinity-west-seattle-lead-pastor/
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http://www.trinityws.com/elders-staff/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pastorfairchild
...
Lead Pastor
Christ Community Church West Houston
Oct 2019 – Present 5 months
1303 Sherwood Forest St., Houston, TX 77043
Trinity West Seattle
Lead Pastor
Trinity West Seattle
Jan 2015 – Oct 2019 4 years 10 months
West Seattle Mars Hill Church
Mars Hill Church
3 years 9 months
Lead Pastor
Apr 2011 – Dec 2014 3 years 9 months
Board of Elders
Jun 2012 – Aug 2014 2 years 3 months
...
Fairchild explained the transition in a public farewell letter to Trinity dated 8-20-2019:
http://www.trinityws.com/2019/08/30/farewell-letter-from-pastor-david-fairchild/
Trinity West seems to be doing decently so far as I can tell and there's a familiar face on staff (not saying which one but the person will know and it's good to see things seem to be going well for that person. :) )
There's a lot of musical projects incubating, whether actual music or writing about music, but intermittently chronicling the post-MHC spin-off campuses is something we'll be doing at Wenatchee The Hatchet. So far it looks like most of the campuses that became independent churches in the wake of the Mars Hill dissolution are going steadily along. It could be easy for people who weren't paying attention to have an idea that there was nothing but proverbial dust and ashes after Driscoll pulled up stakes and bailed on the Puget Sound region. In light of recent reportage about the BoE report on Driscoll's qualification it seems as though the not-quite-news was that the Board of Elders concluded Driscoll needed to be restored to a point where he was considered fit to preach and the Board of Overseers opted not to declare Driscoll disqualified from ministry or to even publicly rebuke him, and the restoration plan that Driscoll said he agreed to before he resigned has been discussed.
Since the West Seattle campus building has a history of churches having to buy back their own building from denominational apparatuses more or less twice in the last half century it's a storied place. If you want to read more about the history of the building Trinity West meets at from the time when it was Mars Hill Church West Seattle follow the tag "west seattle" or "real estate and mars hill" for more background on the campus, some of its leadership, and some sense of what its folks have been through.
https://contextstaffing.com/church-search/trinity-west-seattle-lead-pastor/
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Trinity West Seattle’s congregation is housed in a historic building that is seated at Seattle proper’s highest altitude. God has truly allowed them to be a light on a hill and has done so through many church families over the last 100 years. The current church family is a replant that started in 2015 from the former Mars Hill Church location. God’s provision and the church community’s resilience through that transition is a part of the story, but Trinity West Seattle is looking forward to where God is leading them. They are a non-denominational church and part of the Acts29 church planting network. On Sundays, there is an average of 225 adults and 80 kids. Trinity believes they exist to reflect God’s glory in everything. As God’s people, they are committed to sharing the good news of the Gospel (that God has sent his Son to save a people to himself), forming a redeemed Community, and then sending those people in the world to live on Mission.
Trinity is looking for their next Lead Pastor to preach the Gospel and cast a vision for cultivating mature community groups all over the city who are sent on mission to reflect God’s glory in all of life.
...
Back during the Mark Driscoll resignation year David Fairchild was lead at West Seattle but is no longer listed.http://www.trinityws.com/elders-staff/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pastorfairchild
...
Lead Pastor
Christ Community Church West Houston
Oct 2019 – Present 5 months
1303 Sherwood Forest St., Houston, TX 77043
Trinity West Seattle
Lead Pastor
Trinity West Seattle
Jan 2015 – Oct 2019 4 years 10 months
West Seattle Mars Hill Church
Mars Hill Church
3 years 9 months
Lead Pastor
Apr 2011 – Dec 2014 3 years 9 months
Board of Elders
Jun 2012 – Aug 2014 2 years 3 months
...
Fairchild explained the transition in a public farewell letter to Trinity dated 8-20-2019:
http://www.trinityws.com/2019/08/30/farewell-letter-from-pastor-david-fairchild/
Farewell Letter to Trinity
8.29.19
Dear Trinity West
Seattle,
It is with a mix of
joy and sadness I write this farewell letter to you. Grace and I will be moving
to Houston, TX at the end of September, as we’ve accepted a call from an Acts
29 church in West Houston (www.c3houston.org). I will greatly miss you
and have cherished serving Christ alongside you, our staff, and our elders. You
have loved me and our family more than I could have ever hoped or imagined, and it has been one of my greatest
privileges to lead and serve you. We’ve shed tears together, worshipped
together, and have aimed to know Christ and make Him known together in West
Seattle. Your love for Jesus, your steadfastness through difficulty, and your
Christlike warmth, have honored our King and have impacted me more than I can adequately
express. I echo Paul’s thanks in his letter to the Philippian church:
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in
every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of
your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure
of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at
the day of Jesus Christ. It
is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart,
for you are all partakers with me of grace… Philippians 1:3–7
I, too, thank my God
for you, and will joyfully remember our partnership in the gospel. I am
likewise sure that the One who began a good work in you, will most certainly
bring it to completion. Jesus occupies His throne, is the Head of His church,
and loves you with a never-ending, always–and–forever love. He is trustworthy and good, and fully able
to turn our momentary grief into eternal glory. After all, our goodbyes in this
life serve to grow our longing for, and joy in, our promised reunion. I’m praying
for a bright and fruitful future at Trinity West Seattle, and am comforted to know you are in godly hands
with faithful elders who will lead and serve you well, as they seek to honor their King above all
else.
Until we meet again:
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with every one of you.
Your Brother in Christ,
David Fairchild
Friday, April 08, 2016
some further thoughts on Justin Dean's claim Mars Hill just didn't get media, revisiting how I put together Andrew's connection to the Noriega family at the MH Ballard campus based on social and mass media alone
http://careynieuwhof.com/2016/03/episode79/
One of the things Justin Dean's been saying in the wake of the closure of Mars Hill was that Mars Hill just didn't understand the media, perhaps how the media worked and that the media had it out for them.
There's a significant problem with this. Driscoll spent a year or two bragging about his media savvy and that of his wife. Grace worked in public relations before she became a parent. So while Justin Dean's initial defense of Mars Hill to Slate when a disciplinary situation with an Andrew became a national headline was to say there was unclear communication this plea-by-way-of-incompetence is not a defense that either of the Driscolls has been particularly demonstrably eager to endorse.
And since the topic of Andrew and Mars Hill from 2012 was the first time Justin Dean's name was likely to have been noticed ... that gets me thinking about something I was able to establish at length, as in about 20,000 words.
One of the things Justin Dean's been saying in the wake of the closure of Mars Hill was that Mars Hill just didn't understand the media, perhaps how the media worked and that the media had it out for them.
There's a significant problem with this. Driscoll spent a year or two bragging about his media savvy and that of his wife. Grace worked in public relations before she became a parent. So while Justin Dean's initial defense of Mars Hill to Slate when a disciplinary situation with an Andrew became a national headline was to say there was unclear communication this plea-by-way-of-incompetence is not a defense that either of the Driscolls has been particularly demonstrably eager to endorse.
And since the topic of Andrew and Mars Hill from 2012 was the first time Justin Dean's name was likely to have been noticed ... that gets me thinking about something I was able to establish at length, as in about 20,000 words.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
over at Mark Driscoll's site, the new and improved "One Body, Many Parts", a 2006 sermon that's available in 2016 but one third the length it was a decade ago.
http://markdriscoll.org/sermons/one-body-many-parts/
One Body, Many Parts
Pastor Mark Driscoll
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
July 30, 2006
If you stream it at Mark Driscoll's site the sermon is 27:07
If you download it from here ...
http://marshill.se/marshill/media/1st-corinthians
http://download.marshill.se/files/2006/07/30/20060730_one-body-many-parts_sd_audio.mp3
it's 1:10:56
That's one of the more amazing size reductions for a Driscoll sermon I've come across. Why was so much cut? Well, one possibility is that this was a sermon that, more than most others, dealt with a lot of stuff specific to Mars Hill and to Mars Hill's acquisition of real estate.
It's fascinating, really, because the epic level of excising this sermon was subjected to raises a question about how much Mark Driscoll pads his sermons. If you cut out the bragging/updating about real estate and local personalities; if you cut out the jokes and anecdotal observations; if you boil everything down to what he says is in the biblical text and what he says about the biblical text (he who's talked of his degree in exegetical theology) it's possible that a whopping two thirds of a Mark Driscoll sermon is just not necessary for preaching the Bible.
If you'd like to read a really long excerpt from what that sermon used to include, and don't want to listen to a decade-old Mark Driscoll sermon to find out how much got cut ... it just so happens here at Wenatchee The Hatchet we've got that old sermon transcript. This is mostly just the old stuff that referred to the nuts and bolts of real estate issues at what was Mars Hill back in 2006.
http://markdriscoll.org/sermons/one-body-many-parts/
One Body, Many Parts
Pastor Mark Driscoll
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
July 30, 2006
http://marshill.se/marshill/media/1st-corinthians
http://download.marshill.se/files/2006/07/30/20060730_one-body-many-parts_sd_audio.mp3
it's 1:10:56
...
So let me tell you what this looks like at Mars Hill and what this means. I’ll catch you up to speed. I was 19 years of age, in college, didn’t know Jesus.The Holy Spirit came, make me a Christian, changed everything, told me to start Mars Hill Church. Got married in college, moved back, worked in college ministry for a year and-a-half. Most of you know the story. It’s in the book, Confessions, you can pick it up on your way out, but, but the thing was, God said start a church in Seattle. And so I met with some pastors. I’m like, “Okay, I’m 25. God called me to start a church in Seattle.” They all said, “Do not do that.” Seattle is un-churched. It’s very liberal. There’s like one republican, but he’s trying to move, you know? And, and everybody is young, and are all committed to punk rock and anarchy, so good luck gettin’ ‘em organized. You know, there never gonna go for an org chart and, and they’re all broke and they’re all college students and singles and homeless. They’re not gonna give you any money. And there all moving all the time. They don’t own their homes so you’re – it’s gonna be shooting a moving target. There’s no Bible college, seminary or bookstore of any weight our size in the city because no one’s ever gotten there. It’s the least churched city in America. Run for your life. You know? And I was like, “Okay, but Jesus said to go, so we’re gonna do it.”
So we started a Bible study in our rental home, my wife and I did, in Wallingford and it started very small, about the size of a Mormon family. There’s like 10, 12 people. Not a big deal out of the shoe and just started teaching the Bible and praying at the age of 25 that God’d get this thing some traction
and we’d get somewhere. It outgrew our little home, we moved into a youth room at a church, moved into their main room, and in the fall of 1996 – the first week of October – week officially launched Mars Hill Church on Sunday evening. And you know what, over the years, we’ve had all kinds of trials and trauma and drama and we’ve moved a bunch of times and it’s a crazy story. You can read it. But here’s where we’re at. In the most unlikely, peculiar place in all of America.
We moved into this building, here in Ballard, at our Ballard campus, three years ago. We were a church of about 11 or 1,200. We’re now the church of 4 to 5000, depending upon the week. We’ve quadrupled in three years, in the least likely place in America. The church planting graveyard, where I know a list, personally, of over 30 people that have tried to start a church here and failed. And millions of dollars have been attempted to start these churches and nothing has worked. And what is just shocking to me is to recent reports came out. One said that we’re the 22nd most influential church in America. That’s out of over 400,000. Another one said we're the 15th fastest growing church in the nation. That’s out of 400,000 churches, okay? And we’re the only church in Washington and Oregon, on either of those lists, and those are the two the least churched states in the United States of America.
Kay, and some of you say, “What are you, bragging?” No, we’re blessed. We’re totally blessed. I feel like a kite in a hurricane. Just like every other kite, I just got a hurricane. It’s a cool ride. It’s a little crazy, but it’s a cool ride. God, the Holy Spirit apparently loves a lotta people in Seattle, is working on their heart, destroying a lot of people to Jesus, and is working through the people of Mars Hill in a way that I would use the word – and I don’t think I ever have – of miracle. I don’t throw that work around. I’m not one of those guys and TV, with white pants and a wife who looked like she lost a
paintball gun war, but I believe – I believe that we’re kinda living a miracle. That’s what I believe, right? That’s kinda what I believe. And that God keeps blessing. So what has happened is, we started asking the question, “Well, whereas this thing going and what are we gonna do now,” because this
year we went to five services in this building and quite frankly, it almost killed me and the staff. We’re doing 8:30, 10:30, 12:30, 5:00 and 7:00 and by this service, I wasn’t even a Christian, I was saying crazy stuff. And so I apologize but you know, it was like, “Well, we gotta figure something out. I mean, this is crazy.”
So what we did is we purchased a building that came up for sale a block away and we told you we needed $3 million and a bank loan to renovate that space, go to 1000 seats, open it up, and do services here and there and I’d walk between the two. We’re still waiting on the permits for that building. We do now own it. We’re in permit purgatory, just waiting for the permit – and waiting for some time now. And in the meantime, we said, “Well, we gotta do something to alleviate this growing, you know, number of people in Ballard. It’s very hard to get into. Let’s try a video service as an experiment in Shoreline.” Crista Ministry approached us. Very gracious people. The interim president of the time was a member of Mars Hill, said, “We’ve got about a 400-seat room. We’ve got a full daycare for kid space, lots of parking. You can have it on Sundays for free.” We can afford that.
So, we took it and we did some renovation – sound, light, video, chairs, paint – about $100,000.00. Carpet – got it all dialed in and we videotaped the morning service and then drove it up to Shoreline and played it on a screen. The musicians were live, everything else was live, and it worked. Actually, the service grew, very quickly, and right now, they’re running over 400 people on Sunday morning. It’s packed out. Last week alone, they checked in 16 new families with multiple kids, into the kids ministry. It’s bursting at the seams. We gotta go to two services in Shoreline. We’re like, “That’s gonna work. That’s gonna work.” Indeed gets around the biggest problem, which is I’m not omnipresent. [take heart reader, this was before 2008's "I see things"] I can’t be everywhere and the – and some of you will say, “Well, what about our other options? We don’t like this technological option.” Well here are our options: all right, our first option is, we say Mars Hill’s full. We put a big sign out that says, “Sorry, we’re full. The Mormon Tabernacle’s got seats. Go there. Get your underwear. Good luck.” We’re not gonna do that. You know, Plan B is that we get a huge room, four, five thousands seats, which I’m not averse to, and if you have one, gimme a call, but you know, we get this big room and we pull everybody together. But then we’re not reaching the whole city, everybody’s coming in.
The other problem is that the city and the county have outlawed large churches in the City of Seattle, so what we’d have to do to bring the love of Jesus to the city is first sue them, which seems like a weird place to begin. We want to talk about the love of Jesus. You’ve been subpoenaed. You know, I mean, that’s just a weird place to begin. And so, I mean, that’s probably not the best way to go and it – what we would have to do is sue, change the zoning. If we wanted, we’d have to buy a very large piece of land, and then we would have to get permits and we’d have to build a building that would be a couple hundred thousand square feet to get four – three, four, five thousand seats. We’re looking at, at this point, I’d probably six to eight years out and probably about $60 million. Which we don’t have, no one will lend it to us. I looked under all the couch cushions in the church, and it’s just not there.
So, that wasn’t a good plan and what we would have to do then, is say, “Well, we can’t grow for six or eight years. Nobody else can meet Jesus. Nobody else can worship Jesus. That’s it. We’ll see you again in a decade.” Which is not a good plan. Seven this technological capacity came in. We said, “You know what, we could try that. We could try that.” And it worked very, very well in Shoreline. And because it’s worked so well, we actually, as an elder team here, pastors – there’s 15 of us and a number in the process – we redid our constitution and bylaws. It took six months. It’s not the sexy part of the church, which it’s the parts they keeps you out of jail, so it’s very important. We redid our bylaws. There’s an executive team of elders – six men plus myself – we’ve been meeting an incredible number of hours to reengineer and rearchitect the whole church in preparation for our tenth anniversary this fall, saying, “How can we reach as many people as possible, still have a friendly relationship with the city. Work around the zoning requirements. Do it within budget. Do it on timeline and allow Mars Hill to go from a church of four to five thousand to a church of eight to ten thousand. Double, without having to spend $60 million and here’s the plan. Here’s the plan.
I start with Jesus’s quote – this is in your handout as well. “I will build my church,” and that’s Jesus – I love the fact that he says that – and he has been doing a great job at his job. So the next one. Here is Ballard. Here’s Ballard. This is what happens when you have tech guys with cameras. You’re like, “We could walk around.” “All right, fine.” Everybody’s – everybody’s gonna get seasick, but that’s cool.” So there’s Mars Hill Ballard, where you’re sitting tonight. Thirteen hundred seats, 4,000 square feet. We will continue to use this building, but there are a few problems with this building. One, we could use more seats, which is shocking, because we keep growing. Two, parking around here has gotten very, very tight. Today is sockeye salmon day and you’ll notice that there are trucks with trailers that are taking all the parking that we usually steal in the neighborhood, ‘cause all the guys are out fishing, which makes no sense because they get up at 5:00 in the morning to go fishing and they have fish at the store. So I don’t understand what this is all about. You get – whenever you wake up, you could just go get one. You know, I don’t understand.
So, the parking around here is really bad today, and one of the lots we usually use is being repaved, so we can use it. Additionally, just behind me, if you’ve seen that little Beirut lot, just to the south of us. Have you seen that thing? It’s all rocks, man. I mean, it’s a good place to have a war. And it’s just a totally bummed out lot, but here’s what their building there. A Trader Joe’s, a 24 Hour Fitness, looking at restaurants, coffee shops, because what’s coming into this area is condos. Hip, a young, cool, urban development as Fremont and Ballard come together, the industrial area is being transformed. What that means is, we’re gonna lose all the street parking that we’d been utilizing and we need to become self sufficient with their own parking, otherwise this building’s gonna be relatively obsolete for our use. So, that leads me to the next point.
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 Shermer 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.
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 leaving that congregation. He planted it for Acts 29 Church Planning Network, 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.” 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. 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 log that it is on his 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. [well, maybe not exactly "all the way to the Supreme Court as in the Court chose to hear the case, unless "certiorari denied" still counts] The congregation lost and these people actually bought their own building back, because they refused to drop the authority of Scripture as their value. 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.
And we’re now in Wedgwood. We bought a building last week. If you missed it, here’s Wedgwood. Wedgwood is just north of the university village, okay? If you haven’t got the point, we’re in a real estate acquisition phase as a church. We’re doing – we call it facility evangelism. We’re winning buildings for Jesus all over the city and I’m on the lookout for struggling, dead, dying churches. We’re like – and they’re calling us, saying, “Could we plug in?” “Yes, let’s talk about that. We love Jesus and real estate.” So, this is a building in Wedgewood. Now here’s what happened. We did not have sufficient office space for our staff. You take all the interns, deacons, elders, pastors, synonymous – it’s about 70 people, full-time and part-time. We have them in 4,000 square feet of office space. Some of you say, “That’s a big house.” Yeah, for a family of five, but if your wife was pregnant with 68 kids, that would not be enough, right? So, what happens is if you come here during the week, sitting in the chairs in the main room are interns on laptops with cell phones ‘cause this is their office during the week. So pick up your coffee cup on the way out. Don’t mess up their office.
So what we decided was, we need to appoint campus pastors at each location. And each of the campus pastors will be overseeing what’s going on at their campus. There will be stuff that is officing at each campus, and now will have an office campus where about half of the staff will be to run the website, the podcasts, the vodcasts, printed materials, organize community groups, spread out the counseling and everything can be in one location. So, this building – let me tell the story on this – mishap and really quick. It’s 18,000 square feet with about a – almost a hundred parking places on site. Is already zoned as a church, so we could use it immediately and we have good friends in the Southern Baptist Convention and one of their regional leaders came in met with me – he’s an old friend – said, “I heard you need space. We love you. What could we do to help.” He’s a really great guy, loves Jesus. I said, “We need an office building, big, zoned for our use. We needed immediately because we gotta get it ready for our ten year anniversary this fall. We don’t have all the cash up front. We’re tight on cash, so I need a friendly deal, can you do it?” Here’s what he said, “I have this building. It values and $2.5 million. I’ll sell it to you for $2 million.” That’s a half a million dollar savings. Right there’s a good deal. That’s 20 percent off the
price.
And I said, “Well, we can’t pay for it all up front.” He said, “Here’s what I’ll do. You put $800,000.00 down and I’ll give you three years, no interest, no payments.” That’s over $300,000.00 savings. In three years, you get the financing for the $1.2 million and the question then is, well, what if, perchance, we can’t get the financing. He said, “I’ll carry the note at a 6 percent interest.” On a commercial property. That’s million dollar deal. Between the equity we gain in three years, what we save on principle and interest, and the $500,000.00 off of the purchase price, that’s a million dollar deal. In our 50th building, we have made a million dollars in a year. In West Seattle, we just picked up a five million dollar gift. It’s been a very busy but very cool summer.
And that leads me to where we are. This changes everything. One body, many parts. Right? These are all the parts and here’s what it’s gonna look like, because we all worked together. One, where multi-campus. We now own roughly $20 million of real estate, $3 million of sound, light, video, computers and assets, with the total debt of $12 million. That is for the purchase and renovation of these projects. To get them not completed, but certainly functional. Some of you will freak out and say, “But that’s $12 million dollars debt.” Actually, for a church of our size, that’s fairly reasonable. The banks are willing, and have lent us, that amount of money. And here’s the thing I would tell you. Look at it this way – if somebody came to you and said, “I am going to sell a real estate portfolio to you for 60 cents on the dollar,” you should take a deal. That’s where we’re at. We just got all these properties and we have 60 percent debt but we have 40 percent equity in our total collective real estate. And we have now moved from just using this 40,000 square foot building and the 20,000 at Shermer, we’ve added the 20,000 that we will continue to own next door, 50,000 in West Seattle and almost 20,000 square feet in Wedgewood. Additionally. Much as multi-campus, multimedium.
Here’s how it’s gonna go. Here at Ballard, the 9:00 AM, the 11:00 AM and the 5:00 PM in the 7:00 PM will continue to exist but I will not be here at the 11:00 AM service. Okay, I won’t be here. There will be a video of me. Will video the 9:00 AM in high def. A screen will come down. They’ll Photoshop me, make me highly attractive, so it’ll be, it’ll be even better than live. I’ll be tall and slim and handsome, it’ll be amazing and they’ll be live – everything will be the same, except for a I’ll just be on a video. And for those of you that are here, half of you are in the back of the room watching probably on a video anyway. So – and at Shoreline, were gonna go to two services, 9:15 and 11:15 and it’ll be live streaming and we’ll take the sermon and we’ll pipe it through the Internet up to Shoreline and they can essentially TiVo it and hit play whenever they’re ready to go, ‘cause they’re bursting at the seams, need to go to two services. That all allow them to grow to 800. And then I will drive, instead of doing the 11:00 here, I’ll drive over to West Seattle. My goal is to matriculate about 600 of you with me, plus 100 children – that’s the number that we’ve identified from West and South Seattle that are coming to Ballard – to take you with me to that 1,000 seat room and take Mars Hill to West Seattle really in a big way, starting in October, for our ten year anniversary, and to start to fill up that 1,000 seat room, which’ll make us the biggest church in all of West Seattle from day one. And that will leave more seats here at the 11:00, so that our visitors and guest who hit that service, because it is our biggest, can continue to come. Here’s our services. I mean this is crazy. 9:00, 9:15, 10:30, 11:00, 11:15, 5:00 and 7:00. Three via video, four live, three parts of the city all working together.
Additionally, one part, when body, rather, many parts. Multi-midweek. We’ve only been doing midway classes, junior high, high school, young marrieds, pre-marrieds, counseling, those kind of things, on Wednesday nights in Ballard. But starting this fall, up at Christa, there will be programming, classes and such for all age groups in Shoreline, beginning in October, at Christa. In Ballard, Wednesday nights, as always, beginning in October and in January, midweek programming, classes and such, beginning in January. What you to see – we’re going for as much of the city as we possibly can. We want to have – we have community groups scattered all over the region. You can go to a Bible study just about anywhere. Now, you can go to church and a lot of different areas. You can go to mid week and a lot of different areas. So, if you live in one area, work in one area, if you relocate, move, sell your home, go somewhere else, were probably gonna be there. We’re going with a Starbucks method, right? Starbucks is everywhere. Like I went – you know, if you go to the Starbucks and you say, “Hey, can I go to the bathroom?” They give you the key, you go in the Starbucks, there’s another Starbucks. It’s crazy. They open new Starbucks in the bathrooms of old Starbucks, that’s the way they do it.
So those are thought, if we’re gonna, if we’re gonna try and reach as much of Seattle as we can, we just spread this thing all over the place. We go everywhere, it’s totally viral, we penetrate neighborhoods, we take a preexisting buildings that are zoned for our use and we, we roll in good churches and we help them to do a better job. We continue to plant churches. Over 100 have been planted. Ten percent of our dollars are still going to church planting. One body, many parts. Kinds of things, tons of things going on. Here’s the big ask. First thing, pray. Pray like crazy. Pray like you mean it. Pray like a Pentecostal. But your hand in the air, say, “Jesus,” say “Holy ghost.” Yell a little bit. Say words like, “Claim it in Jesus’ name.” Do that, okay? Y’all gotta be praying this in. Seriously. I mean, I’m ready to truck in some Pentecostals just to teach us, right? You guys gotta stop praying like white bread indie rockers. You gotta start praying like charismatics, okay? Both of the charismatics are excited about that. Will get into that next week, too, because we are charismatics. And so you gotta pray. Pray for wisdom. Pray for dollars. Pray for timelines. You know, the reason we gave you this booklet, you can read through it and say, “Okay, these are a lot of things to be praying for.” We definitely need to pray this all in.
Secondly, serve, right? Everybody’s gotta get out of the stands and get on the field and suit up. It’s game time, if you’re a Christian, man, we got stuff for you to do. Become a member, get plugged in, help us find a meaningful place for you to serve. Right now, we’re working on almost 20,000 square feet in Wedgewood, 50,000 square feet in West Seattle. We’re doing demo, we’re doing painting, we’re doing construction and we need you to come out and volunteer and help, right? You say, “Well I don’t have any skills.” If you’re just an angry man, we’ll give you a hammer, you call it demo, it’s a ministry for Jesus, go break things, you’ll feel better, okay? If you can paint. If you could take out the trash. If you have any skills whatsoever, we can put you to work, it’ll save a lotta money and a lotta time to help us get these buildings ready to go for our ten year anniversary and we need everybody to do their part, whether it’s working in kids ministry, community groups – we need all hands on deck. If we take this church from four or five to eight or ten thousand, that means that we can’t have any spectators. Everybody’s gonna suit up for game day.
And lastly, on October 1, 2006, our ten year anniversary, we’re asking that the entire day’s offering would be given to these projects and that you would give $1.2 million in a day. Not Canadian money. That’s like 27 bucks. American dollars. $1.2 million American dollars. And here’s what we’re gonna do. What we told you was, when we got that other building, that we needed $3 million from you and we needed the loan from the bank to get that space done. We’re not asking for any more dollars than what we asked for a year ago. All we’re doing is taking those dollars and like fishes and loaves, hand it to Jesus. We are multiplying them. So we’re gonna do that building and West Seattle and Wedgwood and be looking for a space for Shoreline. All right, so rather than just doing 40,000 square feet, were doing more than 100,000 square feet. As what we’re looking at doing. And so what we’re trying to be, is good stewards. And I know some of you may be critical and you may say, “But I gave that money toward real estate.” It will still go toward real estate. It will just be multiplied. Now, out of that three million that we’ve asked for, we’ve received 1.8 million. Actually, about half of that has come from a handful of very generous people. Some other people have done what they can. We want you to start thinking, praying, saving, and saying, “Okay, the body is many parts, what is my part? What am I supposed to be praying in? What am I supposed to be doing to serve to make this happen? And financially, what am I supposed to be giving to contribute? What is my part?” and I’m gonna be excited on our tenth anniversary if we blow out a million dollar Sunday, knock all this out. Some of you then ask, “Well, is this it? Are we done?” Of course not. This is what we’re doing this summer. You know, it’s gonna be something else. I assure you of that. Now, I don’t know what it is. As the Holy Spirit leads and Jesus opens an opportunity, we’re a church that is happy to hit the brakes, turn on a dime, and go somewhere else if there’s more people to get saved.
And lastly, some of you will say, “So what is it all about the numbers?” Of course it is. The number of people who worship Jesus. We want that number to go up, right? There’s a book of our Bible called Numbers. It’s a perfectly good word, you know? And if – what we’re saying is, if four or five thousand people are worshiping Jesus, that’s good. But if eight or ten thousand worship Jesus, that’s better. We would like more people to be able to go to church, more people to hear about Jesus, more people to participate in the community of Mars Hill. We’d like to go into more neighborhoods. We’d like to take over more real estate. We would like to see Jesus change more lives. We would like to see the Holy Spirit enter into and transform more people, by the thousands.
I’m 35, been doing this almost 10 years, got about 40 years to go, depending upon what I do with red meat and, and my diet, but in 40 years, what could we get done? We’re not done. We’re nowhere near done. To me, what’s cool is we get a chance to sort of relaunch the church at our ten year anniversary and just scatter it all through the city and take all the opportunities that Jesus would give, work around the zoning issues, work around the real estate costs, work around a complicating variables to reach as many people as possible so that more people love, meet, worship, serve, and are changed by Jesus to go as far and as fast and as hard as we can in the least churched city in America, where no one would’ve expected this but apparently the Holy Spirit has got a big job for us to participate in – and what a great honor in it is to be a part of it. It’s super humbling. My wife asked me last night, she said, “So are you freaked out?” No, it kinda freaks me out that I’m not freaked out. But I’m not freaked out. I’m sleeping good. I feel good. I believe this is exactly what God wants is to do. The elders are in total, unanimous agreement. We’re in total harmony on this. I mean, we’re getting free and reduced real estate. We’re going to take it and roll and go and if everybody does their part, everything will be fine. Even for $1.2 million. If every adult brought $300, we’d be done. Let me break it down to the number of people. It’s not that big of a deal, so don’t freak out.
If you’re new to Mars Hill, this happens all the time. It’s been going on for ten years. We just have more zeros, but it’s the same stuff. Is just the same thing. And things change, but Jesus is still God. The Bible’s still true. We’re still a church family and we are just trying to love and serve the city as large and as well as we can, as quickly as we are able. I’m pretty excited. I’m having a good time. So here is where we land, the bottom line. Some of you are here, you’re saying, “Why tell me this?” Because we want to be honest. We went to make a budget this year. We called the other large churches in our state. We said, “What’s your budget?” they said, “We won’t tell you.” What? “We don’t disclose that.” Well at Mars Hill, we do. We tell you what we’re doing. We tell you what it’s going to cost. You tell you when we change our plans because we want to have integrity and we want to just be honest with you. ...
That was then but, even then, it's strange how in Driscoll's lengthy account so little was made of Mike Gunn and Lief Moi as co-founders. And not much about being sent out by Antioch Bible Church. Not much about help from David Nicholas, in there.
So what happened to that real estate? West Seattle became Trinity West and bought back their own building last year. Mars Hill Ballard got bought by another church that's painted it sea foam green color of some kind. Mars Hill's corporate offices were a case of deed in lieu of foreclosure and forfeiture of contract.
As of March 2016 there isn't even a corporate holding tank that could be called Mars Hill. Perhaps now that that corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church no longer exists, could Sutton Turner paint the town red with numbers connected to Global allocations? He mentioned last year that he wanted to share some numbers but got some threats from lawyers on behalf of Mars Hill.
Meanwhile, the lesson for the evening may well be that as Driscoll's old sermons from a decade ago keep coming back up pay attention, if you can, to whether they come back two thirds shorter and consider whether this is a sign of just how much padding with stories about himself and his life and times he's crammed into sermons people might want to say is just solid Bible preaching.
POSTSCRIPT
03-31-2016
06.45PM
What people who weren't at Mars Hill from the earlier period won't realize about this sermon is that Christians Gone Wild was probably the first sermon series since the start of Mars Hill were Driscoll began recycling in earnest. There was kind of a phase where he was redoing stuff he'd done before. He used to say he'd only revisit material if he felt he chunked it the first time around so ... it made sense he'd revisit Ecclesiastes. But with 1 Corinthians it didn't seem he'd changed enough in his basic interpretation of the texts to warrant a wholesale recycling of the book as the basis for as eries. But considering how many services he was insisting on preaching and how NO ONE else was given the pulpit ... it retroactively makes a certain amount of sense that he'd fall back on an earlier series. The church had had enough turn over since 2000 that it was like preaching the book "new"
The 2007 Ruth series was in many respects recycling stuff from 2005 Driscoll did at a singles ministry event kick-of event. In hindsight, that time would have been better spent reading a Jane Austen novel.
One Body, Many Parts
Pastor Mark Driscoll
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
July 30, 2006
If you stream it at Mark Driscoll's site the sermon is 27:07
If you download it from here ...
http://marshill.se/marshill/media/1st-corinthians
http://download.marshill.se/files/2006/07/30/20060730_one-body-many-parts_sd_audio.mp3
it's 1:10:56
That's one of the more amazing size reductions for a Driscoll sermon I've come across. Why was so much cut? Well, one possibility is that this was a sermon that, more than most others, dealt with a lot of stuff specific to Mars Hill and to Mars Hill's acquisition of real estate.
It's fascinating, really, because the epic level of excising this sermon was subjected to raises a question about how much Mark Driscoll pads his sermons. If you cut out the bragging/updating about real estate and local personalities; if you cut out the jokes and anecdotal observations; if you boil everything down to what he says is in the biblical text and what he says about the biblical text (he who's talked of his degree in exegetical theology) it's possible that a whopping two thirds of a Mark Driscoll sermon is just not necessary for preaching the Bible.
If you'd like to read a really long excerpt from what that sermon used to include, and don't want to listen to a decade-old Mark Driscoll sermon to find out how much got cut ... it just so happens here at Wenatchee The Hatchet we've got that old sermon transcript. This is mostly just the old stuff that referred to the nuts and bolts of real estate issues at what was Mars Hill back in 2006.
http://markdriscoll.org/sermons/one-body-many-parts/
One Body, Many Parts
Pastor Mark Driscoll
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
July 30, 2006
http://marshill.se/marshill/media/1st-corinthians
http://download.marshill.se/files/2006/07/30/20060730_one-body-many-parts_sd_audio.mp3
it's 1:10:56
...
So let me tell you what this looks like at Mars Hill and what this means. I’ll catch you up to speed. I was 19 years of age, in college, didn’t know Jesus.The Holy Spirit came, make me a Christian, changed everything, told me to start Mars Hill Church. Got married in college, moved back, worked in college ministry for a year and-a-half. Most of you know the story. It’s in the book, Confessions, you can pick it up on your way out, but, but the thing was, God said start a church in Seattle. And so I met with some pastors. I’m like, “Okay, I’m 25. God called me to start a church in Seattle.” They all said, “Do not do that.” Seattle is un-churched. It’s very liberal. There’s like one republican, but he’s trying to move, you know? And, and everybody is young, and are all committed to punk rock and anarchy, so good luck gettin’ ‘em organized. You know, there never gonna go for an org chart and, and they’re all broke and they’re all college students and singles and homeless. They’re not gonna give you any money. And there all moving all the time. They don’t own their homes so you’re – it’s gonna be shooting a moving target. There’s no Bible college, seminary or bookstore of any weight our size in the city because no one’s ever gotten there. It’s the least churched city in America. Run for your life. You know? And I was like, “Okay, but Jesus said to go, so we’re gonna do it.”
So we started a Bible study in our rental home, my wife and I did, in Wallingford and it started very small, about the size of a Mormon family. There’s like 10, 12 people. Not a big deal out of the shoe and just started teaching the Bible and praying at the age of 25 that God’d get this thing some traction
and we’d get somewhere. It outgrew our little home, we moved into a youth room at a church, moved into their main room, and in the fall of 1996 – the first week of October – week officially launched Mars Hill Church on Sunday evening. And you know what, over the years, we’ve had all kinds of trials and trauma and drama and we’ve moved a bunch of times and it’s a crazy story. You can read it. But here’s where we’re at. In the most unlikely, peculiar place in all of America.
We moved into this building, here in Ballard, at our Ballard campus, three years ago. We were a church of about 11 or 1,200. We’re now the church of 4 to 5000, depending upon the week. We’ve quadrupled in three years, in the least likely place in America. The church planting graveyard, where I know a list, personally, of over 30 people that have tried to start a church here and failed. And millions of dollars have been attempted to start these churches and nothing has worked. And what is just shocking to me is to recent reports came out. One said that we’re the 22nd most influential church in America. That’s out of over 400,000. Another one said we're the 15th fastest growing church in the nation. That’s out of 400,000 churches, okay? And we’re the only church in Washington and Oregon, on either of those lists, and those are the two the least churched states in the United States of America.
Kay, and some of you say, “What are you, bragging?” No, we’re blessed. We’re totally blessed. I feel like a kite in a hurricane. Just like every other kite, I just got a hurricane. It’s a cool ride. It’s a little crazy, but it’s a cool ride. God, the Holy Spirit apparently loves a lotta people in Seattle, is working on their heart, destroying a lot of people to Jesus, and is working through the people of Mars Hill in a way that I would use the word – and I don’t think I ever have – of miracle. I don’t throw that work around. I’m not one of those guys and TV, with white pants and a wife who looked like she lost a
paintball gun war, but I believe – I believe that we’re kinda living a miracle. That’s what I believe, right? That’s kinda what I believe. And that God keeps blessing. So what has happened is, we started asking the question, “Well, whereas this thing going and what are we gonna do now,” because this
year we went to five services in this building and quite frankly, it almost killed me and the staff. We’re doing 8:30, 10:30, 12:30, 5:00 and 7:00 and by this service, I wasn’t even a Christian, I was saying crazy stuff. And so I apologize but you know, it was like, “Well, we gotta figure something out. I mean, this is crazy.”
So what we did is we purchased a building that came up for sale a block away and we told you we needed $3 million and a bank loan to renovate that space, go to 1000 seats, open it up, and do services here and there and I’d walk between the two. We’re still waiting on the permits for that building. We do now own it. We’re in permit purgatory, just waiting for the permit – and waiting for some time now. And in the meantime, we said, “Well, we gotta do something to alleviate this growing, you know, number of people in Ballard. It’s very hard to get into. Let’s try a video service as an experiment in Shoreline.” Crista Ministry approached us. Very gracious people. The interim president of the time was a member of Mars Hill, said, “We’ve got about a 400-seat room. We’ve got a full daycare for kid space, lots of parking. You can have it on Sundays for free.” We can afford that.
So, we took it and we did some renovation – sound, light, video, chairs, paint – about $100,000.00. Carpet – got it all dialed in and we videotaped the morning service and then drove it up to Shoreline and played it on a screen. The musicians were live, everything else was live, and it worked. Actually, the service grew, very quickly, and right now, they’re running over 400 people on Sunday morning. It’s packed out. Last week alone, they checked in 16 new families with multiple kids, into the kids ministry. It’s bursting at the seams. We gotta go to two services in Shoreline. We’re like, “That’s gonna work. That’s gonna work.” Indeed gets around the biggest problem, which is I’m not omnipresent. [take heart reader, this was before 2008's "I see things"] I can’t be everywhere and the – and some of you will say, “Well, what about our other options? We don’t like this technological option.” Well here are our options: all right, our first option is, we say Mars Hill’s full. We put a big sign out that says, “Sorry, we’re full. The Mormon Tabernacle’s got seats. Go there. Get your underwear. Good luck.” We’re not gonna do that. You know, Plan B is that we get a huge room, four, five thousands seats, which I’m not averse to, and if you have one, gimme a call, but you know, we get this big room and we pull everybody together. But then we’re not reaching the whole city, everybody’s coming in.
The other problem is that the city and the county have outlawed large churches in the City of Seattle, so what we’d have to do to bring the love of Jesus to the city is first sue them, which seems like a weird place to begin. We want to talk about the love of Jesus. You’ve been subpoenaed. You know, I mean, that’s just a weird place to begin. And so, I mean, that’s probably not the best way to go and it – what we would have to do is sue, change the zoning. If we wanted, we’d have to buy a very large piece of land, and then we would have to get permits and we’d have to build a building that would be a couple hundred thousand square feet to get four – three, four, five thousand seats. We’re looking at, at this point, I’d probably six to eight years out and probably about $60 million. Which we don’t have, no one will lend it to us. I looked under all the couch cushions in the church, and it’s just not there.
So, that wasn’t a good plan and what we would have to do then, is say, “Well, we can’t grow for six or eight years. Nobody else can meet Jesus. Nobody else can worship Jesus. That’s it. We’ll see you again in a decade.” Which is not a good plan. Seven this technological capacity came in. We said, “You know what, we could try that. We could try that.” And it worked very, very well in Shoreline. And because it’s worked so well, we actually, as an elder team here, pastors – there’s 15 of us and a number in the process – we redid our constitution and bylaws. It took six months. It’s not the sexy part of the church, which it’s the parts they keeps you out of jail, so it’s very important. We redid our bylaws. There’s an executive team of elders – six men plus myself – we’ve been meeting an incredible number of hours to reengineer and rearchitect the whole church in preparation for our tenth anniversary this fall, saying, “How can we reach as many people as possible, still have a friendly relationship with the city. Work around the zoning requirements. Do it within budget. Do it on timeline and allow Mars Hill to go from a church of four to five thousand to a church of eight to ten thousand. Double, without having to spend $60 million and here’s the plan. Here’s the plan.
I start with Jesus’s quote – this is in your handout as well. “I will build my church,” and that’s Jesus – I love the fact that he says that – and he has been doing a great job at his job. So the next one. Here is Ballard. Here’s Ballard. This is what happens when you have tech guys with cameras. You’re like, “We could walk around.” “All right, fine.” Everybody’s – everybody’s gonna get seasick, but that’s cool.” So there’s Mars Hill Ballard, where you’re sitting tonight. Thirteen hundred seats, 4,000 square feet. We will continue to use this building, but there are a few problems with this building. One, we could use more seats, which is shocking, because we keep growing. Two, parking around here has gotten very, very tight. Today is sockeye salmon day and you’ll notice that there are trucks with trailers that are taking all the parking that we usually steal in the neighborhood, ‘cause all the guys are out fishing, which makes no sense because they get up at 5:00 in the morning to go fishing and they have fish at the store. So I don’t understand what this is all about. You get – whenever you wake up, you could just go get one. You know, I don’t understand.
So, the parking around here is really bad today, and one of the lots we usually use is being repaved, so we can use it. Additionally, just behind me, if you’ve seen that little Beirut lot, just to the south of us. Have you seen that thing? It’s all rocks, man. I mean, it’s a good place to have a war. And it’s just a totally bummed out lot, but here’s what their building there. A Trader Joe’s, a 24 Hour Fitness, looking at restaurants, coffee shops, because what’s coming into this area is condos. Hip, a young, cool, urban development as Fremont and Ballard come together, the industrial area is being transformed. What that means is, we’re gonna lose all the street parking that we’d been utilizing and we need to become self sufficient with their own parking, otherwise this building’s gonna be relatively obsolete for our use. So, that leads me to the next point.
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 Shermer 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.
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 leaving that congregation. He planted it for Acts 29 Church Planning Network, 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.” 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. 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 log that it is on his 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. [well, maybe not exactly "all the way to the Supreme Court as in the Court chose to hear the case, unless "certiorari denied" still counts] The congregation lost and these people actually bought their own building back, because they refused to drop the authority of Scripture as their value. 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.
And we’re now in Wedgwood. We bought a building last week. If you missed it, here’s Wedgwood. Wedgwood is just north of the university village, okay? If you haven’t got the point, we’re in a real estate acquisition phase as a church. We’re doing – we call it facility evangelism. We’re winning buildings for Jesus all over the city and I’m on the lookout for struggling, dead, dying churches. We’re like – and they’re calling us, saying, “Could we plug in?” “Yes, let’s talk about that. We love Jesus and real estate.” So, this is a building in Wedgewood. Now here’s what happened. We did not have sufficient office space for our staff. You take all the interns, deacons, elders, pastors, synonymous – it’s about 70 people, full-time and part-time. We have them in 4,000 square feet of office space. Some of you say, “That’s a big house.” Yeah, for a family of five, but if your wife was pregnant with 68 kids, that would not be enough, right? So, what happens is if you come here during the week, sitting in the chairs in the main room are interns on laptops with cell phones ‘cause this is their office during the week. So pick up your coffee cup on the way out. Don’t mess up their office.
So what we decided was, we need to appoint campus pastors at each location. And each of the campus pastors will be overseeing what’s going on at their campus. There will be stuff that is officing at each campus, and now will have an office campus where about half of the staff will be to run the website, the podcasts, the vodcasts, printed materials, organize community groups, spread out the counseling and everything can be in one location. So, this building – let me tell the story on this – mishap and really quick. It’s 18,000 square feet with about a – almost a hundred parking places on site. Is already zoned as a church, so we could use it immediately and we have good friends in the Southern Baptist Convention and one of their regional leaders came in met with me – he’s an old friend – said, “I heard you need space. We love you. What could we do to help.” He’s a really great guy, loves Jesus. I said, “We need an office building, big, zoned for our use. We needed immediately because we gotta get it ready for our ten year anniversary this fall. We don’t have all the cash up front. We’re tight on cash, so I need a friendly deal, can you do it?” Here’s what he said, “I have this building. It values and $2.5 million. I’ll sell it to you for $2 million.” That’s a half a million dollar savings. Right there’s a good deal. That’s 20 percent off the
price.
And I said, “Well, we can’t pay for it all up front.” He said, “Here’s what I’ll do. You put $800,000.00 down and I’ll give you three years, no interest, no payments.” That’s over $300,000.00 savings. In three years, you get the financing for the $1.2 million and the question then is, well, what if, perchance, we can’t get the financing. He said, “I’ll carry the note at a 6 percent interest.” On a commercial property. That’s million dollar deal. Between the equity we gain in three years, what we save on principle and interest, and the $500,000.00 off of the purchase price, that’s a million dollar deal. In our 50th building, we have made a million dollars in a year. In West Seattle, we just picked up a five million dollar gift. It’s been a very busy but very cool summer.
And that leads me to where we are. This changes everything. One body, many parts. Right? These are all the parts and here’s what it’s gonna look like, because we all worked together. One, where multi-campus. We now own roughly $20 million of real estate, $3 million of sound, light, video, computers and assets, with the total debt of $12 million. That is for the purchase and renovation of these projects. To get them not completed, but certainly functional. Some of you will freak out and say, “But that’s $12 million dollars debt.” Actually, for a church of our size, that’s fairly reasonable. The banks are willing, and have lent us, that amount of money. And here’s the thing I would tell you. Look at it this way – if somebody came to you and said, “I am going to sell a real estate portfolio to you for 60 cents on the dollar,” you should take a deal. That’s where we’re at. We just got all these properties and we have 60 percent debt but we have 40 percent equity in our total collective real estate. And we have now moved from just using this 40,000 square foot building and the 20,000 at Shermer, we’ve added the 20,000 that we will continue to own next door, 50,000 in West Seattle and almost 20,000 square feet in Wedgewood. Additionally. Much as multi-campus, multimedium.
Here’s how it’s gonna go. Here at Ballard, the 9:00 AM, the 11:00 AM and the 5:00 PM in the 7:00 PM will continue to exist but I will not be here at the 11:00 AM service. Okay, I won’t be here. There will be a video of me. Will video the 9:00 AM in high def. A screen will come down. They’ll Photoshop me, make me highly attractive, so it’ll be, it’ll be even better than live. I’ll be tall and slim and handsome, it’ll be amazing and they’ll be live – everything will be the same, except for a I’ll just be on a video. And for those of you that are here, half of you are in the back of the room watching probably on a video anyway. So – and at Shoreline, were gonna go to two services, 9:15 and 11:15 and it’ll be live streaming and we’ll take the sermon and we’ll pipe it through the Internet up to Shoreline and they can essentially TiVo it and hit play whenever they’re ready to go, ‘cause they’re bursting at the seams, need to go to two services. That all allow them to grow to 800. And then I will drive, instead of doing the 11:00 here, I’ll drive over to West Seattle. My goal is to matriculate about 600 of you with me, plus 100 children – that’s the number that we’ve identified from West and South Seattle that are coming to Ballard – to take you with me to that 1,000 seat room and take Mars Hill to West Seattle really in a big way, starting in October, for our ten year anniversary, and to start to fill up that 1,000 seat room, which’ll make us the biggest church in all of West Seattle from day one. And that will leave more seats here at the 11:00, so that our visitors and guest who hit that service, because it is our biggest, can continue to come. Here’s our services. I mean this is crazy. 9:00, 9:15, 10:30, 11:00, 11:15, 5:00 and 7:00. Three via video, four live, three parts of the city all working together.
Additionally, one part, when body, rather, many parts. Multi-midweek. We’ve only been doing midway classes, junior high, high school, young marrieds, pre-marrieds, counseling, those kind of things, on Wednesday nights in Ballard. But starting this fall, up at Christa, there will be programming, classes and such for all age groups in Shoreline, beginning in October, at Christa. In Ballard, Wednesday nights, as always, beginning in October and in January, midweek programming, classes and such, beginning in January. What you to see – we’re going for as much of the city as we possibly can. We want to have – we have community groups scattered all over the region. You can go to a Bible study just about anywhere. Now, you can go to church and a lot of different areas. You can go to mid week and a lot of different areas. So, if you live in one area, work in one area, if you relocate, move, sell your home, go somewhere else, were probably gonna be there. We’re going with a Starbucks method, right? Starbucks is everywhere. Like I went – you know, if you go to the Starbucks and you say, “Hey, can I go to the bathroom?” They give you the key, you go in the Starbucks, there’s another Starbucks. It’s crazy. They open new Starbucks in the bathrooms of old Starbucks, that’s the way they do it.
So those are thought, if we’re gonna, if we’re gonna try and reach as much of Seattle as we can, we just spread this thing all over the place. We go everywhere, it’s totally viral, we penetrate neighborhoods, we take a preexisting buildings that are zoned for our use and we, we roll in good churches and we help them to do a better job. We continue to plant churches. Over 100 have been planted. Ten percent of our dollars are still going to church planting. One body, many parts. Kinds of things, tons of things going on. Here’s the big ask. First thing, pray. Pray like crazy. Pray like you mean it. Pray like a Pentecostal. But your hand in the air, say, “Jesus,” say “Holy ghost.” Yell a little bit. Say words like, “Claim it in Jesus’ name.” Do that, okay? Y’all gotta be praying this in. Seriously. I mean, I’m ready to truck in some Pentecostals just to teach us, right? You guys gotta stop praying like white bread indie rockers. You gotta start praying like charismatics, okay? Both of the charismatics are excited about that. Will get into that next week, too, because we are charismatics. And so you gotta pray. Pray for wisdom. Pray for dollars. Pray for timelines. You know, the reason we gave you this booklet, you can read through it and say, “Okay, these are a lot of things to be praying for.” We definitely need to pray this all in.
Secondly, serve, right? Everybody’s gotta get out of the stands and get on the field and suit up. It’s game time, if you’re a Christian, man, we got stuff for you to do. Become a member, get plugged in, help us find a meaningful place for you to serve. Right now, we’re working on almost 20,000 square feet in Wedgewood, 50,000 square feet in West Seattle. We’re doing demo, we’re doing painting, we’re doing construction and we need you to come out and volunteer and help, right? You say, “Well I don’t have any skills.” If you’re just an angry man, we’ll give you a hammer, you call it demo, it’s a ministry for Jesus, go break things, you’ll feel better, okay? If you can paint. If you could take out the trash. If you have any skills whatsoever, we can put you to work, it’ll save a lotta money and a lotta time to help us get these buildings ready to go for our ten year anniversary and we need everybody to do their part, whether it’s working in kids ministry, community groups – we need all hands on deck. If we take this church from four or five to eight or ten thousand, that means that we can’t have any spectators. Everybody’s gonna suit up for game day.
And lastly, on October 1, 2006, our ten year anniversary, we’re asking that the entire day’s offering would be given to these projects and that you would give $1.2 million in a day. Not Canadian money. That’s like 27 bucks. American dollars. $1.2 million American dollars. And here’s what we’re gonna do. What we told you was, when we got that other building, that we needed $3 million from you and we needed the loan from the bank to get that space done. We’re not asking for any more dollars than what we asked for a year ago. All we’re doing is taking those dollars and like fishes and loaves, hand it to Jesus. We are multiplying them. So we’re gonna do that building and West Seattle and Wedgwood and be looking for a space for Shoreline. All right, so rather than just doing 40,000 square feet, were doing more than 100,000 square feet. As what we’re looking at doing. And so what we’re trying to be, is good stewards. And I know some of you may be critical and you may say, “But I gave that money toward real estate.” It will still go toward real estate. It will just be multiplied. Now, out of that three million that we’ve asked for, we’ve received 1.8 million. Actually, about half of that has come from a handful of very generous people. Some other people have done what they can. We want you to start thinking, praying, saving, and saying, “Okay, the body is many parts, what is my part? What am I supposed to be praying in? What am I supposed to be doing to serve to make this happen? And financially, what am I supposed to be giving to contribute? What is my part?” and I’m gonna be excited on our tenth anniversary if we blow out a million dollar Sunday, knock all this out. Some of you then ask, “Well, is this it? Are we done?” Of course not. This is what we’re doing this summer. You know, it’s gonna be something else. I assure you of that. Now, I don’t know what it is. As the Holy Spirit leads and Jesus opens an opportunity, we’re a church that is happy to hit the brakes, turn on a dime, and go somewhere else if there’s more people to get saved.
And lastly, some of you will say, “So what is it all about the numbers?” Of course it is. The number of people who worship Jesus. We want that number to go up, right? There’s a book of our Bible called Numbers. It’s a perfectly good word, you know? And if – what we’re saying is, if four or five thousand people are worshiping Jesus, that’s good. But if eight or ten thousand worship Jesus, that’s better. We would like more people to be able to go to church, more people to hear about Jesus, more people to participate in the community of Mars Hill. We’d like to go into more neighborhoods. We’d like to take over more real estate. We would like to see Jesus change more lives. We would like to see the Holy Spirit enter into and transform more people, by the thousands.
I’m 35, been doing this almost 10 years, got about 40 years to go, depending upon what I do with red meat and, and my diet, but in 40 years, what could we get done? We’re not done. We’re nowhere near done. To me, what’s cool is we get a chance to sort of relaunch the church at our ten year anniversary and just scatter it all through the city and take all the opportunities that Jesus would give, work around the zoning issues, work around the real estate costs, work around a complicating variables to reach as many people as possible so that more people love, meet, worship, serve, and are changed by Jesus to go as far and as fast and as hard as we can in the least churched city in America, where no one would’ve expected this but apparently the Holy Spirit has got a big job for us to participate in – and what a great honor in it is to be a part of it. It’s super humbling. My wife asked me last night, she said, “So are you freaked out?” No, it kinda freaks me out that I’m not freaked out. But I’m not freaked out. I’m sleeping good. I feel good. I believe this is exactly what God wants is to do. The elders are in total, unanimous agreement. We’re in total harmony on this. I mean, we’re getting free and reduced real estate. We’re going to take it and roll and go and if everybody does their part, everything will be fine. Even for $1.2 million. If every adult brought $300, we’d be done. Let me break it down to the number of people. It’s not that big of a deal, so don’t freak out.
If you’re new to Mars Hill, this happens all the time. It’s been going on for ten years. We just have more zeros, but it’s the same stuff. Is just the same thing. And things change, but Jesus is still God. The Bible’s still true. We’re still a church family and we are just trying to love and serve the city as large and as well as we can, as quickly as we are able. I’m pretty excited. I’m having a good time. So here is where we land, the bottom line. Some of you are here, you’re saying, “Why tell me this?” Because we want to be honest. We went to make a budget this year. We called the other large churches in our state. We said, “What’s your budget?” they said, “We won’t tell you.” What? “We don’t disclose that.” Well at Mars Hill, we do. We tell you what we’re doing. We tell you what it’s going to cost. You tell you when we change our plans because we want to have integrity and we want to just be honest with you. ...
That was then but, even then, it's strange how in Driscoll's lengthy account so little was made of Mike Gunn and Lief Moi as co-founders. And not much about being sent out by Antioch Bible Church. Not much about help from David Nicholas, in there.
So what happened to that real estate? West Seattle became Trinity West and bought back their own building last year. Mars Hill Ballard got bought by another church that's painted it sea foam green color of some kind. Mars Hill's corporate offices were a case of deed in lieu of foreclosure and forfeiture of contract.
As of March 2016 there isn't even a corporate holding tank that could be called Mars Hill. Perhaps now that that corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church no longer exists, could Sutton Turner paint the town red with numbers connected to Global allocations? He mentioned last year that he wanted to share some numbers but got some threats from lawyers on behalf of Mars Hill.
Meanwhile, the lesson for the evening may well be that as Driscoll's old sermons from a decade ago keep coming back up pay attention, if you can, to whether they come back two thirds shorter and consider whether this is a sign of just how much padding with stories about himself and his life and times he's crammed into sermons people might want to say is just solid Bible preaching.
POSTSCRIPT
03-31-2016
06.45PM
What people who weren't at Mars Hill from the earlier period won't realize about this sermon is that Christians Gone Wild was probably the first sermon series since the start of Mars Hill were Driscoll began recycling in earnest. There was kind of a phase where he was redoing stuff he'd done before. He used to say he'd only revisit material if he felt he chunked it the first time around so ... it made sense he'd revisit Ecclesiastes. But with 1 Corinthians it didn't seem he'd changed enough in his basic interpretation of the texts to warrant a wholesale recycling of the book as the basis for as eries. But considering how many services he was insisting on preaching and how NO ONE else was given the pulpit ... it retroactively makes a certain amount of sense that he'd fall back on an earlier series. The church had had enough turn over since 2000 that it was like preaching the book "new"
The 2007 Ruth series was in many respects recycling stuff from 2005 Driscoll did at a singles ministry event kick-of event. In hindsight, that time would have been better spent reading a Jane Austen novel.
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.
Monday, August 17, 2015
West Seattle follow up once again the church that has met at that building seems to have had to buy back its own building
http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=2492200485
7551 35th Avenue SW
7551 35th Avenue SW
Seattle, WA 98126
as of July 22, 2015 Trinity West (formerly Mars Hill West Seattle which was formerly Doxa) now owns its own real estate. Gross sale price was a bit under 2 million. The officer on behalf of Trinity West on the transaction is named as David Lee, one of the directors in the WA SOS listing.
What was once Mars Hill Seattle has the most comprehensively documented history, at least here at Wenatchee The Hatchet. You can peruse the other tagged posts with "west seattle" at your leisure.
There's a peculiar way that history has repeated itself here with the church at the formerly Doxa real estate that may be best summed up by words in a sermon from 2006 preached by Mark Driscoll.
Since Mars Hill yanked so many sermons over the last calendar year, and since it's not clear whether Mark Driscoll Ministries will feature this content it seems, once again, that Wenatchee The Hatchet has to quote something that was documented by Wenatchee The Hatchet:
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.”
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. [emphases 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.
Last October Mark Driscoll resigned and as Kerry Dodd has mentioned via LinkedIn he's been successfully overseeing new entities emerging away from the corporation known as Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc. Once again faithful churchgoers have apparently had to pony up the money to buy back the building of their own church. Plus or minus a few fees it looks like Mars Hill bought the real estate from Doxa for a gross sale price of slightly over 180,000 ... so it looks like anyone who stayed at what was Mars Hill West Seattle through it's Doxa-to-Mars-to-Trinity stage got to see the people at that church sell the real estate to Mars Hill for about a tenth of what they recently had to pay to get the same building back.
So ... basically, it looks like what was once Mars Hill West Seattle is re-incorporated in some fashion where the Mars Hill corporate/board leadership required Mars Hill West Seattle turned Trinity West to have to BUY BACK ITS OWN REAL ESTATE. Why? ...
Here's an excerpt from Driscoll in 2004.
These silly, stupid, little denominations, what they do is this. Hank in Dubuque, Iowa, is a union farmer. He goes to his local church, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, whatever mainline liberal denomination it might be. Hank loves Jesus. Hank gets radically saved. Hank takes 10 percent of all the money from his plumbing job, and he gives it to his church 'cause his pastor there loves Jesus, and he doesn’t know any different. The pastor’s a good guy, and Hank’s a good guy, so Hank gives 10 percent to the church. Hank thinks it’s going to the church.
Well, it doesn’t go to the church. Hank’s 10 percent goes into some fund that’s far away from Hank in some bureaucrat’s office. And that bureaucrat’s paid by Hank to sit around and make decisions and write silly little books that’ll govern Hank’s church. And if Hank doesn’t agree with it, that’s just tough 'cause Hank doesn’t have a Master’s degree. [emphasis added]He only loves Jesus. He’s just a plumber. He should shut up. He’s like Jesus. He’s a blue collar guy, not really fit to do doctrine.
And so this guy over here and his bureaucrat friends who get their salary paid by Hank’s 10 percent and his buddy’s 10 percent from the union hall, they decide that all the sudden Hank’s gonna have a homosexual pastor. All of the sudden, Hank’s not gonna believe that the Bible’s the Word of God 'cause they took a vote.
All of the sudden, they’re gonna send theologians in to do a conference telling Hank that maybe Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. And Hank wonders, “Why do I gotta put up with this? Am I not paying your salary? You don’t seem to love Jesus.”
And then those guys say, “Well, you know what, Hank? We own your building. You and your kids and your grandkids and your friends, you guys worked really hard, and you’ve given sacrificially to pay off that building? Ultimately, Hank, we own your real estate, so Hank, you gotta put up with this, meaning you gotta keep paying our salary to abuse you. And if you try to rebel, we’ll steal the real estate that you paid millions of dollars for, Hank.” That’s how mainline denominations work. You wonder why people don’t leave their denomination? Because the denomination – the liberal ones – own the property. Guys, think about that.
We bought this building a year ago. You guys are giving sacrificially. We’re paying for this building. Can you imagine working very, very, very hard as a church to pay this off and we don’t own it? Some bureaucrat in office somewhere that you never met, that doesn’t know you, that when you get sick won’t be at the hospital laying hands and praying over you, won’t baptize your kids when they get saved, won’t officiate your wedding, won’t sit down and study the Bible with you? A guy you can’t even meet with, you’ll never know, just some guy pushing paperwork somewhere who’s not your pastor, he control your building that you paid for. [emphasis added]
And where does the money netted from the sale go? Kerry Dodd can boast that he's overseeing the dissolution of Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc. and the liquidation and distribution of its assets. But where's all the money for the sale of Mars Hill Ballard to Quest going? Where's the money for selling West Seattle to Trinity West Seattle going? If as Sutton Turner explained earlier this year Mars Hill is basically just a holding company what is the company holding the returns for the real estate purchases for?
So ... basically, it looks like what was once Mars Hill West Seattle is re-incorporated in some fashion where the Mars Hill corporate/board leadership required Mars Hill West Seattle turned Trinity West to have to BUY BACK ITS OWN REAL ESTATE. Why? ...
Here's an excerpt from Driscoll in 2004.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111017082141/http://marshill.com/media/1-timothy/1-timothy-6-1-10
1 Timothy
Part 12: 1 Timothy 6:1-10
Pastor Mark Driscoll
March 21, 2004
1 Timothy
Part 12: 1 Timothy 6:1-10
Pastor Mark Driscoll
March 21, 2004
These silly, stupid, little denominations, what they do is this. Hank in Dubuque, Iowa, is a union farmer. He goes to his local church, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, whatever mainline liberal denomination it might be. Hank loves Jesus. Hank gets radically saved. Hank takes 10 percent of all the money from his plumbing job, and he gives it to his church 'cause his pastor there loves Jesus, and he doesn’t know any different. The pastor’s a good guy, and Hank’s a good guy, so Hank gives 10 percent to the church. Hank thinks it’s going to the church.
Well, it doesn’t go to the church. Hank’s 10 percent goes into some fund that’s far away from Hank in some bureaucrat’s office. And that bureaucrat’s paid by Hank to sit around and make decisions and write silly little books that’ll govern Hank’s church. And if Hank doesn’t agree with it, that’s just tough 'cause Hank doesn’t have a Master’s degree. [emphasis added]He only loves Jesus. He’s just a plumber. He should shut up. He’s like Jesus. He’s a blue collar guy, not really fit to do doctrine.
And so this guy over here and his bureaucrat friends who get their salary paid by Hank’s 10 percent and his buddy’s 10 percent from the union hall, they decide that all the sudden Hank’s gonna have a homosexual pastor. All of the sudden, Hank’s not gonna believe that the Bible’s the Word of God 'cause they took a vote.
All of the sudden, they’re gonna send theologians in to do a conference telling Hank that maybe Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. And Hank wonders, “Why do I gotta put up with this? Am I not paying your salary? You don’t seem to love Jesus.”
And then those guys say, “Well, you know what, Hank? We own your building. You and your kids and your grandkids and your friends, you guys worked really hard, and you’ve given sacrificially to pay off that building? Ultimately, Hank, we own your real estate, so Hank, you gotta put up with this, meaning you gotta keep paying our salary to abuse you. And if you try to rebel, we’ll steal the real estate that you paid millions of dollars for, Hank.” That’s how mainline denominations work. You wonder why people don’t leave their denomination? Because the denomination – the liberal ones – own the property. Guys, think about that.
We bought this building a year ago. You guys are giving sacrificially. We’re paying for this building. Can you imagine working very, very, very hard as a church to pay this off and we don’t own it? Some bureaucrat in office somewhere that you never met, that doesn’t know you, that when you get sick won’t be at the hospital laying hands and praying over you, won’t baptize your kids when they get saved, won’t officiate your wedding, won’t sit down and study the Bible with you? A guy you can’t even meet with, you’ll never know, just some guy pushing paperwork somewhere who’s not your pastor, he control your building that you paid for. [emphasis added]
And where does the money netted from the sale go? Kerry Dodd can boast that he's overseeing the dissolution of Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc. and the liquidation and distribution of its assets. But where's all the money for the sale of Mars Hill Ballard to Quest going? Where's the money for selling West Seattle to Trinity West Seattle going? If as Sutton Turner explained earlier this year Mars Hill is basically just a holding company what is the company holding the returns for the real estate purchases for?
| 2745035 | 20150723001577 | 6/24/2015 | $1,711,768.00 | MARS HILL CHURCH | TRINITY WEST SEATTLE | Statutory Warranty Deed | None |
| 2212348 | 20060606001775 | 6/2/2006 | $180,236.00 | GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH | MARS HILL FELLOWSHIP | Statutory Warranty Deed | None |
Sunday, August 09, 2015
from Mars Hill West Seattle to Trinity West Seattle
Mars Hill West Seattle
Trinity West Seattle
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/
UBI Number 603451811
Category REG
Profit/Nonprofit Nonprofit
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/12/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2015
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Registered Agent Information
Agent Name DAVID LEE
Address 7551 35TH AVE SW
City SEATTLE
State WA
ZIP 98126
Governing Persons
Title
Name
Address
Chairman Fairchild, Leonard 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Director Ellis, Clifford 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Director Lee, David 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Trinity West Seattle
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/
UBI Number 603451811
Category REG
Profit/Nonprofit Nonprofit
Active/Inactive Active
State Of Incorporation WA
WA Filing Date 11/12/2014
Expiration Date 11/30/2015
Inactive Date
Duration Perpetual
Registered Agent Information
Agent Name DAVID LEE
Address 7551 35TH AVE SW
City SEATTLE
State WA
ZIP 98126
Governing Persons
Title
Name
Address
Chairman Fairchild, Leonard 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Director Ellis, Clifford 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Director Lee, David 7551 35TH AVE SW
SEATTLE, WA 98126
Sunday, August 31, 2014
a chronology of Lief Moi's connection to MH 2007-2008 in primary documents: part 4b background of James Noriega's addition to MH elder team
In 2006 Noriega was added to the leadership team at Mars Hill. Minutes of meetings regarding the decision are obviously not available, but at a couple of points in the history of Mars Hill Mark Driscoll mentioned Noriega from the pulpit.
The following sermon has been scrubbed, however.
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, him and James Noriega [emphasis added], 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.”
This sermon is also no longer access to the public
I’ll give you an example. In the middle of our reorganization as a church – we go to multiple campuses – we’ve just reconstituted what we’re calling a Board of Directors. It is sort of a senior level of eldership that oversees a lot of the policies and procedures for the whole church, and I was meditating on it this week. And I could tell you about all the men on the board. I’ll just tell you of a few. These are new men that were recently added to this board, and the one common thread which I see weaves all their stories together is this, humility. Not that they are humble, but they are pursuing humility by God’s grace.
...
The last one is James. He was running a drug and alcohol treatment center, I think for the Union Gospel Mission. He was an elder at Doxa Church in West Seattle. He and Pastor Bill were there and I approached them and said, “I think we should partner together,” and turned that building into Mars Hill West Seattle. I don’t know what the building’s worth – $4 million, whatever. He said, “Well what’s the deal?” I said, “Give us the building, resign as elders, work through the membership process, work through the eldership process. I guarantee you nothing – no power, no job, no eldership. If you meet the qualifications and the men vote you in, we’ll make you an elder, but I guarantee you no job. Nothing. If you believe it’s right for Jesus, give us the building, resign, give up all power of authority, give up your position. Walk away from it all for the cause of Jesus.”
He said, “Okay, I think it’s best for Jesus.” He resigned, voted to hand us the building and the people. Humbly went through the eldership process. After he finished the membership process, oversees our drug and alcohol addiction recovery. We just voted him onto the Board of Directors. Why? Because God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble.
This link and associated content will get you a 404 error
http://marshill.com/2010/10/07/when-mars-hill-became-multi-campus-church-2006-present
In the above document Pastor A. J. Hamilton wrote the following:
In early 2006, Mars Hill first became a multi-site church when we launched the Shoreline campus with live-streaming over the Web. This meant that at times, the sermon would look like a badly dubbed Samurai movie or Pastor Mark's image would explode into a messy digital kaleidoscope of color. We also increased the number of elders from 15 to 24, adding Pastors James Noriega and Bill Clem from Doxa (a former A29 church plant that is now our West Seattle campus). Campus planting took off for a season and Bellevue, Downtown, Olympia and Federal Way launched and continue to grow, relaunch into new facilities and plan for further expansion through new works.
The following sermon has been scrubbed, however.
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.
This sermon is also no longer access to the public
I’ll give you an example. In the middle of our reorganization as a church – we go to multiple campuses – we’ve just reconstituted what we’re calling a Board of Directors. It is sort of a senior level of eldership that oversees a lot of the policies and procedures for the whole church, and I was meditating on it this week. And I could tell you about all the men on the board. I’ll just tell you of a few. These are new men that were recently added to this board, and the one common thread which I see weaves all their stories together is this, humility. Not that they are humble, but they are pursuing humility by God’s grace.
...
The last one is James. He was running a drug and alcohol treatment center, I think for the Union Gospel Mission. He was an elder at Doxa Church in West Seattle. He and Pastor Bill were there and I approached them and said, “I think we should partner together,” and turned that building into Mars Hill West Seattle. I don’t know what the building’s worth – $4 million, whatever. He said, “Well what’s the deal?” I said, “Give us the building, resign as elders, work through the membership process, work through the eldership process. I guarantee you nothing – no power, no job, no eldership. If you meet the qualifications and the men vote you in, we’ll make you an elder, but I guarantee you no job. Nothing. If you believe it’s right for Jesus, give us the building, resign, give up all power of authority, give up your position. Walk away from it all for the cause of Jesus.”
He said, “Okay, I think it’s best for Jesus.” He resigned, voted to hand us the building and the people. Humbly went through the eldership process. After he finished the membership process, oversees our drug and alcohol addiction recovery. We just voted him onto the Board of Directors. Why? Because God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble.
http://marshill.com/2010/10/07/when-mars-hill-became-multi-campus-church-2006-present
In the above document Pastor A. J. Hamilton wrote the following:
In early 2006, Mars Hill first became a multi-site church when we launched the Shoreline campus with live-streaming over the Web. This meant that at times, the sermon would look like a badly dubbed Samurai movie or Pastor Mark's image would explode into a messy digital kaleidoscope of color. We also increased the number of elders from 15 to 24, adding Pastors James Noriega and Bill Clem from Doxa (a former A29 church plant that is now our West Seattle campus). Campus planting took off for a season and Bellevue, Downtown, Olympia and Federal Way launched and continue to grow, relaunch into new facilities and plan for further expansion through new works.
Per the corresponding post about Clem, documents available through King County
While it is important to understand how and why Mars Hill began to embrace multi-site in the wake of failing to clear up licensing and zoning issues for the 50th street building that had been purchased earlier, this is still documenting a different story. It is with this real estate transaction and its details in mind we can return back to this part of the story:
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
From Appendix B (page 115 of 145)
Mars Hill Re-organization document, previously sent to members on June 23, 2007
Lief Moi
Initially, Pastor Lief Moi was uncomfortable with the transition plans and uncertain that his conscience would allow him to continue as an Elder of Mars Hill Church. This precipitated several tense and difficult meetings for us as an Elder team, striving for unity but also the most effective way to organize and lead our church. After a few weeks off with his family to think and pray, Lief Moi resigned from his position on staff as well as his office as Elder of Mars Hill Church. Loving our brother and unwilling to let this matter go without every possible effort for reconciliation Pastor Mark, and Pastor Bill Clem spent hours laboring over Lief’s concerns and frustrations. Following the extremely fruitful meeting with Pastors Mark and Bill, Lief sought reconciliation with several pastors who felt they had been wronged in the matter by him, and submitted himself humbly for restoration as an Elder of the church. The Elders assembled, discussed the matter soberly, and after much prayer and discussion voted to restore Lief as an Elder of Mars Hill Church and a member of the Ballard Campus team. Lief will continue to employ his unique gifts, which many of our members have been blessed by for years, to strengthen faith, fortify marriages, and equip the saints for acts of service as we love our city with Jesus. This process put many of our men’s faith, endurance, constitution, and their trust in Jesus to the test. It drove many men deep into God’s Word for wisdom, seeking His discernment and leading through prayer. Despite sleepless nights and frayed nerves, we are truly a stronger Elder body because of this incredible labor God has shepherded us through. In His wisdom, He has made us bear this weighty issue as we move to a structure that distributes and delegates authority and mandates more trust and confidence in one another. Praying together as 24 men united by our love of Jesus and His great commission, it is evident He has uniquely tempered us for the coming season as a lovingly unified yet honest and effective team.
Mars Hill Re-organization document, previously sent to members on June 23, 2007
Lief Moi
Initially, Pastor Lief Moi was uncomfortable with the transition plans and uncertain that his conscience would allow him to continue as an Elder of Mars Hill Church. This precipitated several tense and difficult meetings for us as an Elder team, striving for unity but also the most effective way to organize and lead our church. After a few weeks off with his family to think and pray, Lief Moi resigned from his position on staff as well as his office as Elder of Mars Hill Church. Loving our brother and unwilling to let this matter go without every possible effort for reconciliation Pastor Mark, and Pastor Bill Clem spent hours laboring over Lief’s concerns and frustrations. Following the extremely fruitful meeting with Pastors Mark and Bill, Lief sought reconciliation with several pastors who felt they had been wronged in the matter by him, and submitted himself humbly for restoration as an Elder of the church. The Elders assembled, discussed the matter soberly, and after much prayer and discussion voted to restore Lief as an Elder of Mars Hill Church and a member of the Ballard Campus team. Lief will continue to employ his unique gifts, which many of our members have been blessed by for years, to strengthen faith, fortify marriages, and equip the saints for acts of service as we love our city with Jesus. This process put many of our men’s faith, endurance, constitution, and their trust in Jesus to the test. It drove many men deep into God’s Word for wisdom, seeking His discernment and leading through prayer. Despite sleepless nights and frayed nerves, we are truly a stronger Elder body because of this incredible labor God has shepherded us through. In His wisdom, He has made us bear this weighty issue as we move to a structure that distributes and delegates authority and mandates more trust and confidence in one another. Praying together as 24 men united by our love of Jesus and His great commission, it is evident He has uniquely tempered us for the coming season as a lovingly unified yet honest and effective team.
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