Warren Throckmorton notes Mark Driscoll now asking for 650k--revisiting Re:Sound and MH Global as precedents for whatever Driscoll's fundraising for, and noting a delicate irony in his lambasting the Meta turn of Facebook as a satanic counterfeit when his celebrity was founded on media leveraging

Recently Warren Throckmorton noted that Mark Driscoll has asked for $200,000.00

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/12/07/after-a-year-of-trials-mark-driscoll-needs-200000-to-finish-strong/

and yet more recently asked for $650,000.00

https://www.wthrockmorton.com/2021/12/10/stop-the-presses-mark-driscoll-needs-650000-more/

 

According to the following the reasons for the fundraising ask are as follows:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211210040745/https://mailchi.mp/59b961cbdfb7/an-exciting-way-to-finish-2021?e=86d2476eea

 

Our goal is to raise $650,000 beyond our regular budget needs in the final month of 2021. We have a $150,000 matching fund that doubles your gift between now and year-end, and your generous worship gift will help us with the following:

 

1. Upgrade our outdated soundboard that is too small for our growing number of volunteer musicians

2. Add more lighting and cameras so that we can improve the worship experience in the main room and also capture the worship and baptisms (over 400 in 2021!) in audio and video format to share online to minister to the more than 100 million people who are receiving Bible teaching through Real Faith from Trinity Church

3. Reset our stage, audio tuning, and audio treatment to best use our current main room for worship, thereby allowing us to add additional future worship nights

4. Set up our new Trinity Church worship studio with 3,200 square feet of office, meeting, songwriting, recording, and practice space that is in addition to our current studio space

5. Add more worship interns and part-time trainees we are developing as worship leaders

6. Purchase a mobile sound system for the Versus worship team in Sonora, Mexico. This is a band of young leaders, mainly pastor’s kids, who are holding outdoor and indoor worship events in conjunction with a network of pastors we have supported for years. They share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the next generation and need gear for this ministry which they all volunteer in

7. Our epic final worship event of the year with 4 services on December 23-24 with a choir, orchestra, and huge party to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in Scottsdale and capture it all in audio and video to send out online to the nations

notes on Ep 8 of Older Pastor/Younger Pastor--Sutton Turner confirms that Mark Driscoll has blocked him across social media and won't talk to him in any capacity, and some other things

I thought it was going to be a seven episode run but there are eight episodes.
https://amicalled.com/pastoral-lessons-from-mars-hill-church-e8-lessons-on-recovering-after-crisis/
What is more, Sutton Turner has published the transcript of episode 8
https://investyourgifts.com/recovering-after-crisis/
Ah, thanks!  That sure beats Wenatchee The Hatchet having to spend a uncounted hours transcribing things like Mark Driscoll's 2008 spiritual warfare series before being able to do any analysis of it!

Excerpts from and thoughts/notes on Episode 8 are below:

an update on Redeemer Church Portland (former Mars Hill Portland) merger with Door of Hope, an ironic turn of events in light of Driscoll's 2011 "Jesus Loves Church Mergers" post in is Pastor Mark TV period

It's axiomatic that you're not supposed to trust anonymous comments on the internet.  But that caveat has a few provisos.  When I was a journalism student one of my professors said that "in general" you will find that anonymous sources aren't often going to share things with you that you couldn't find out from the public record if you just looked harder.  That said, anonymous tips are still worth considering if the information they share can actually be verified.

So, in that spirit, a person who left an anonymous comment about the recent changes at what was formerly Mars Hill Portland and then Redeemer that provides an update that can be vetted by a publicly available source, the Door of Hope church that has agreed with an interim board at Redeemer to assimilate Redeemer.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2018/03/redeemer-church-in-portland-has-filed.html?showComment=1533393264375#c9203292765554535516

Anonymous said...

UPDATE ON REDEEMER CHURCH Portland OR as of 8.3.2018
Redeemer church Portland OR voted unanimously to join Door of Hope Effective July 19, 2018 see the following for more information - http://redeemerpdx.com/ Thought you might like to know about this – Additional Info & the transition timeline is on Redeemer’s Facebook Page.
Facebook Announcement of Transition Schedule dated July 24, 2018 at 3:37pm
Hey Redeemer! As was announced on Sunday, our Board voted to join Door Of Hope. Here are some dates to remember over the next few weeks until we join them at Revolution Hall:
-Sunday, July 29 - Josh White will be preaching on their core values and lots of other information on how to serve in and connect to DOH - you won't want to miss it
-Sunday, Aug 5 - Tim will be back preaching in Psalms
-Sunday, Aug 12 - Tim will preach our last service as Redeemer Church. We'll have a family style celebration of what God has done in and through our church
-Sunday, Aug. 19 - join DOH for Sunday services at Revolution Hall
**Please like and share this post so word gets around!**
Door of Hope's FAQ Regarding Merger can be found on Door of Hope's website - http://www.doorofhopepdx.org/redeemer-faq/

7:34 am

 

and here is the Door of Hope FAQ about the merger.  It's fairly extensive and provides background for the recent decision. 

 

http://www.doorofhopepdx.org/redeemer-faq/

In Brief

Door of Hope is currently in talks with Redeemer Church regarding the prospect of their congregation becoming part of DoH. [emphasis added] If we go forward, the Redeemer congregation would begin attending DoH services, and DoH would take ownership of Redeemer’s building, a beautiful historic church in the Sunnyside neighborhood of SE Portland. After some helpful repair and upgrade work, DoH would move Sunday services from Revolution Hall to the Redeemer building.

 

How did the discussion with Redeemer begin?

Josh White and Redeemer pastor Tim Smith were put in touch with one another through a mutual mentor at Western Seminary. In recent months, it became clear that this was an opportunity that could benefit both church bodies and help further our shared mission of serving the city of Portland. [emphasis added]

 

How does this opportunity fit into Door of Hope’s vision for its future?

We desire to plant churches in Portland that hold to Christian orthodoxy and express Door of Hope’s four pillars. Having Redeemer Church join DoH would enable us to hold Sunday services in a building that aligns with our philosophy of being present in the local community, while joining with the people of Redeemer to make Jesus known in our city. Additionally, this move would open up potential space for a future church plant in our Fremont building.

How many people are part of Redeemer? Do we have the pastoral and volunteer capacity to care for all of them?

At the moment, we’re expecting around 100 people from Redeemer to join Door of Hope. This would translate to an increase of around 10% in our Sunday attendance, which fits comfortably within our current capacity. [emphases added] We anticipate that we’ll need to expand our existing Children’s Ministry volunteer team, but are happy to say that the Redeemer building will offer a dedicated Children’s Ministry space that exceeds the capacity of our space at Revolution Hall.

 

Who is empowered to make decisions on behalf of Redeemer’s congregation?

Redeemer has an interim board that was established to make decisions regarding the future of the church. After prayerful consideration, the board unanimously voted in favor of joining Door of Hope’s community.

Are there significant theological differences between Redeemer and Door of Hope? Will this change the feel of Sunday services?

Door of Hope and Redeemer are aligned theologically, and share a common commitment to Christian orthodoxy and to proclaiming the Gospel in our city. Our approach to ministry will not be changing, and the new church building will still retain the distinctive feel and values of DoH. In fact, this building aligns even more closely with our desire to be a visible, welcoming presence within the local community.

Will the staff or leadership structure of Door of Hope change?

There will be no change to the leadership structure at Door of Hope. We would be hiring Redeemer’s current lead pastor, Tim Smith, as an associate pastor on DoH’s pastoral team, but Tim would be the only Redeemer staff member joining DoH. [emphasis added]

What would Tim Smith’s role at Door of Hope be? Would he be an elder?

Tim would serve as an associate pastor, working alongside our other pastors in shepherding the church. Additionally, he’d play a key role in helping the Redeemer congregation integrate into DoH. He would not be coming on as an elder. [emphasis added]

What will happen to leaders currently serving at Redeemer?

Ministry leaders at Redeemer would not automatically become leaders at Door of Hope. However, we’re excited to welcome in all members of the Redeemer congregation and help them discover opportunities to serve with their unique gifts.

What is the proposed timeline for Redeemer’s integration into Door of Hope?

We’d love to see Redeemer join Door of Hope before the sign-up process for the Fall community group season begins. The DoH elder board will be voting on August 4, and we’re currently looking at August 19 as a potential integration date. [emphasis added]

What still needs to happen before Door of Hope’s leadership makes a definitive decision?

While the DoH leaders are excited about the prospect of having Redeemer join our family, we want to take time to effectively communicate with our body, carefully evaluate the needs of the Redeemer building, and prayerfully plan the transition.

What work will be done on the Redeemer building?

A thorough building inspection has been completed, with no significant findings outside of general maintenance needs. The building is functional and safe as it is, but we want to do a number of improvements, including installing an HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system and upgrading the existing Children’s Ministry space.

Would Door of Hope be assuming the mortgage on the new building?

DoH would either assume the mortgage with Redeemer’s current bank or refinance it with our own bank. The value of the building currently exceeds the deficit on the mortgage, meaning that the assets would exceed the liabilities. The repayments would be significantly less than what we currently pay for the use of Revolution Hall, which means this would not only be a financially sound move, but a financially beneficial one. [emphases added]

How would this decision impact Grace City Portland?

We’re excited about the work that Grace City is doing and are happy to see the way that the Fremont building has served their needs as a church plant. Having Door of Hope move into the Redeemer building would mean that Grace City could continue to use the Fremont building for the foreseeable future.

What is the plan for the long-term future of the Fremont building?

Our long-term goal would be to plant a church into the Fremont building that would reflect our pillars and form part of a Door of Hope family of churches.

 

Who the mutual mentor may have been would have to be a guess here but someone at Western seminary is established.  Smith will be an associate pastor at Door of Hope.  Door of Hope would be assuming the mortgage on the Redeemer building, it seems, and the value of the building currently exceeds the deficit on the mortgage meaning the assets would exceed the liabilities.  So ... it would appear the merger makes sense in terms of a real estate pivot.   

 

The number of people who would be anticipated to join Door of Hope from the Redeemer side is stated as 100 people. 

 

100 people? 

 

Let's look at a snapshot of the Mars Hill FY2012 report

 

 

and from FY2013

 

since Mars Hill collapsed in 2014 there wasn't a big incentive to list the number of people in attendance in the annual report.  But ... there was a circa April 2014 financial slide in a document passed along to Wenatchee The Hatchet we can consult.

 

 

Giving households obviously can't be construed as attenders since peoplecan give to a cause even if they aren't members.  Still, the numbers do suggest that there was some kind of numeric decline that could be measured going on.

 

For the former Mars Hill Portland to reach a point where its operational liabilities make a church merger seem like a good idea and 100 people are anticipated by Door of Hope to join them if the merger goes through, that could seem to tell a story of Redeemer on the rocks.  As Justin Dean has been telling things in podcast interviews promoting PR Matters he's been saying all the churches are doing well, thanks. 

The Redeemer Portland merger that looks like it gets voted on today reminds me of something Mark Driscoll once wrote the following that we'll quote a large chunk of.  Keep your eyes peeled for references to Leadership Network people or the Vanderbloemen group while you're reading this 2011 chestnut that you may not be able to dig up at Driscoll's newer web presence.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20111201225737/http://pastormark.tv/2011/11/29/jesus-loves-church-mergers-and-so-should-you

 

...

 

Missional Mergers

The mergers we’ve been a part of at Mars Hill, and some of the mergers other churches in the Acts 29 network have been a part of, have by God’s grace been missionally focused mergers. By this I mean that they’ve been the result of two churches coming together to ask how they can work together to accomplish a shared mission, to see many people come to Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20). Underlying this is the belief that if Jesus' name is made much of in the building, then it does not much matter whose name is on the sign of the building.

Each of these mergers has had different details surrounding them. Sometimes there are financial struggles, such as with Sammamish. Other times, there is a devastating loss to the leadership, as with the case of Pastor Bill and his wife at Doxa. These mergers were akin to an adoption, where a hurting church in need was adopted by a healthy church to work together as brothers and sisters in Christ to the glory of God to accomplish his mission.

Sometimes there is simply a desire to be more effective and to have greater reach as a church, which leads healthy churches to join together to see greater impact for the gospel. Such was the case when we merged with City on a Hill in Albuquerque and with The Vine. These types of mergers are like marriages, in which two churches come together with strengths that complement each other to accomplish the mission of God. As within marriage, there is a leader in the merger, but unlike an adoption type merger, there is health on both sides.

Here’s the painful truth—the calls we are getting lately from churches we have not yet merged with are often cases where the senior leadership was disqualified because of sin, often sexual. Once the leadership leaves, often the best people remain and try to save their church, and a merger is a way to help such people save their church from death.

Other calls we are getting are from churches where the leadership has gotten off-track theologically and moved into false teaching and error. These churches are seeking help to right their ship.
And, sometimes the pastors of smaller churches are so burdened by the administration of running their organization that they want to merge with a bigger church like ours so that we can take those burdens off them and allow them to focus on serving people and making disciples, which is why they went into ministry in the first place.

Often times the whole story behind a merger is not told because of the painful circumstances that need not be made public. As a pastor who loves churches and God’s people, some of what I see and hear is heartbreaking, and if a merger can save a church from death and support godly people giving their all to keep yet another church from the grave, then I am certain it makes Jesus happy no matter what the critics may say.

In each case, the situation is never one of a larger church coming in to pick up the remains of a smaller church but rather of two churches wanting to be as faithful to God’s calling as possible.
These types of mergers are not unique to Mars Hill and are, in fact, growing around the country. Leadership Network research has indicated that 2 percent (6,000 churches) of US Protestant churches merge annually, and another 5 percent of churches (15,000) say they have already talked about merging in the future.

The good news is that a vast majority of churches that have merged with a shared mission in mind have experienced new vitality and growth, seeing their influence and ability to minister in the community grow exponentially. This is something we can attest to at Mars Hill and something I’ve personally seen in many churches across the country.

Granted, these mergers are never without their hardships and struggles, but by God’s grace they’re resulting in a great harvest.

Facing the Facts

The reality is that church mergers will only continue to grow. As the baby boomers begin retirement, there will be a growing decline in Protestant churches in attendance and a very real need for leadership at declining churches. Unfortunately, the upcoming generation is not only smaller in numbers demographically, but also less likely to be involved in church, and especially less likely to be involved in church leadership and the ministry as a vocation, according to some sources. This is creating and will continue to create a great crisis in which many long-standing, God-fearing, and Bible-loving churches who have a great heritage and a history of gospel work in their city, face the prospect of closing their doors for good—often selling their property to commercial interests or even other religious expressions. And once those churches close, the zoning changes and a church may never be able to reside in that community again.

The following are some sobering statistics from the upcoming book by Warren Bird and Jim Tomberlin of the Leadership Network, entitled Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work. I thank them for sending me an advance copy of the manuscript and encourage you to read the book when it comes out in April.

• Roughly 80 percent of the three hundred thousand Protestant churches in the United States have plateaued or are declining, and many of them are in desperate need of a vibrant ministry.

• Roughly three thousand of these declining churches (1 percent of all churches in America) will close their doors permanently nationwide in the next twelve months.

• Among the 20 percent of growing congregations across the United States, many are in desperate need of space. These conditions present a potential win-win for forward-thinking church leaders who believe that “we can do better together than separate,” and it is revitalizing church topography.

• Church foreclosures, virtually unheard of in the United States before the Great Recession of 2008, have recently increased in number. According to a Wall Street Journal report, nearly two hundred churches have had their properties foreclosed on by banks in 2008, 2009, and 2010, up from only eight foreclosures in the two years prior to that and none in the previous decade.

• One recent study found that the percentage of congregations reporting some or serious financial difficulty more than doubled to nearly 20 percent since about 2000. From 2000 to 2008—before the recession’s toll was felt—congregations reporting “excellent financial health” had dropped from 31 percent to 19 percent. They dropped further to 14 percent in 2010. The recession only exacerbated their economic situations, according to survey compiler David Roozen, director of The Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

• The biggest elephant in church boardrooms in the United States is the topic of senior pastor succession. It is a difficult conversation for most aging senior pastors to have with their boards and staff, so usually it is ignored until too late. Many are predicting a tsunami of church turnovers during the next decade as the aging baby boomers turn over the reins of U.S. churches to the next generation. According to William Vanderbloemen, founder and president of the Vanderbloemen Search Group, senior pastor succession “might be the biggest unspoken crisis the church in the US will face over the next twenty years.”

• About 30 percent of churches going into a merger do so without pastors in both of the churches, according to the Leadership Network 2011 survey of church mergers.

At some point, the American church will have to face the facts that in order for many churches to survive and continue ministry and service to their community, it will take thinking differently about local churches working together and sometimes merging together.

 

 

So the irony of Mars Hill Portland becoming Redeemer in the wake of the implosion of Mars Hill Church without a clear line of succession within Mars Hill, and then Redeemer Portland getting to the point where it agreed to merge with Door of Hope and having the prospect of ... 100 people joining Door of Hope if the vote goes through ... that irony is hard to overstate.  Mars Hill Portland may have become in the mere four years after the demise of Mars Hill a church that's dwindling away and that has found it advantageous to agree to a church merger. 

 

POSTSCRIPT

08-06-2018

06.17PM

 

There's a confirmation on the Redeemer side of things, too, and, per a recent comment, the hand-off/transfer has become official.

https://redeemerpdx.com/

 

On July 19, 2018 the Board of Directors of Redeemer church voted unanimously to join Door of Hope in order to further the Gospel in the city of Portland. As of August 19th we will start meeting with them at Revolution Hall for worship for several months. During this time The Castle will undergo some much needed renovations and after they are finished, Door of Hope will move into the building. We are excited for this opportunity and thankful to the Father for His provision during our time of transition as a church.

 

Stay tuned here for further updates on when Door of Hope will be starting services here at The Castle.

 

Quartz--the housing market crash of `08 was catalyzed by house-flipping and not poor subprime borrowers defaulting--remembering the old real estate scene of Mars Hill

https://qz.com/1064061/house-flippers-triggered-the-us-housing-market-crash-not-poor-subprime-borrowers-a-new-study-shows/

The grim tale of America’s “subprime mortgage crisis” delivers one of those stinging moral slaps that Americans seem to favor in their histories. Poor people were reckless and stupid, banks got greedy. Layer in some Wall Street dark arts, and there you have it: a global financial crisis.

Dark arts notwithstanding, that’s not what really happened, though.

Mounting evidence suggests that the notion that the 2007 crash happened because people with shoddy credit borrowed to buy houses they couldn’t afford is just plain wrong. The latest comes in a new NBER working paper arguing that it was wealthy or middle-class house-flipping speculators who blew up the bubble to cataclysmic proportions, and then wrecked local housing markets when they defaulted en masse.

Analyzing a huge dataset of anonymous credit scores from Equifax, a credit reporting bureau, the economists—Stefania Albanesi of the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Geneva’s Giacomo De Giorgi, and Jaromir Nosal of Boston College—found that the biggest growth of mortgage debt during the housing boom came from those with credit scores in the middle and top of the credit score distribution—and that these borrowers accounted for a disproportionate share of defaults.
As for those with low credit scores—the “subprime” borrowers who supposedly caused the crisis—their borrowing stayed virtually constant throughout the boom. And while it’s true that these types of borrowers usually default at relatively higher rates, they didn’t after the 2007 housing collapse. The lowest quartile in the credit score distribution accounted for 70% of foreclosures during the boom years, falling to just 35% during the crisis.

So why were relatively wealthier folks borrowing so much?

Recall that back then the mantra was that housing prices would keep rising forever. Since owning a home is one of the best ways to build wealth in America, most of those with sterling credit already did. Low rates encouraged some of them to parlay their credit pedigree and growing existing home value into mortgages for additional homes. Some of these were long-term purchases (e.g. vacation homes, homes held for rental income). But as a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report from 2011 reveals (pdf, p.26), an increasing share bought with the aim to “flip” the home a few months or years later for a tidy profit.
...

and there's another link

The proposal that house-flipping catalyzed the housing crash rather than subprime lending to those who otherwise should not have gotten housing loans reminds me of a fad among the early Mars Hill scene.  People were encouraged to invest in real estate.  The idea was that a couple would buy a home, maybe a home they couldn't technically afford if it was all up to them and their credit, but to ameliorate this by community living and "life together".  What that meant in practice was people would rent out rooms and space to other people within the church so that a community living set up was in place.  Eventually the home owners might have a baby or two or the tenant might get married and the community living set up might change.  Maybe somebody would have to move out or a new couple would emerge and the housing situation would adjust. 

The Driscoll house that was on Montlake, for instance, ended up being a rental space taken up by anywhere between six to eight people at a time in the latter part of the last decade.

For those who can dig up the old fundraising film God's Work, Our Witness (audio and SD video (we hope))and cross reference it to the history of real estate acquisitions and Mark Driscoll's own narrative it as a Mars Hill & Mark Driscoll's Real Estate story.  The real estate situation Mark Driscoll had at the start of this century is inextricably bound up in the social and economic context within which he decided to take up the pen name William Wallace II and write "Pussified Nation".

Confessions of a Reformission RevMark Driscoll, Zondervan 2006
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-27016-4
ISBN-10:0-310-27016-2

CHAPTER FIVE, 350-1,000 PEOPLE
page 119
[this season begins in early 1999]
I had worked myself to near burnout and was still the only paid pastor on staff although there was enough work for ten people.

[remember that at this point Mike Gunn and Lief Moi still had full-time jobs, Driscoll's work was apparently part-time and he had a stipend from the advisory board and supplemented his income in other ways]

page 120
A friend in the church kindly allowed me to move into a large home he owned on a lease-to-own deal because I was too broke to qualify for anything but an outhouse. The seventy-year-old house had over three thousand square feet, seven bedrooms on three floors, and needed a ton of work because it had been neglected for many years as a rental home for college students. Grace and I and our daughter Ashley, three male renters who helped cover the mortgage, my study, and the church office all moved into the home. [emphasis added] This put me on the job, literally, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, as the boundary between home and church was erased.

We ran the church out of my house for nearly two years, including leadership meetings and Bible studies for various groups on almost every night of the week. It was not uncommon to have over seventy people a week in our home. Grace got sucked right back into the church mess. She was a great host to our guests. But I started growing bitter toward her because I was again feeling neglected.

I began working seven days a week, trying to save the church from imminent death. I had decided to go for broke and accepted that I would either save the church and provide for my family or probably die of a heart attack. I lived on caffeine and adrenaline for the better part of two years, ate terribly ,and put on nearly forty pounds. 

Then from God's Work, Our Witness, linked to above:

about 27:33
The Driscolls’ Basement
Once we got kicked out of that building, literally everything moved back into our house. So offices in our house across from our bedroom, interns in the basement.

Pastor Matt: Poor Grace. Like, it was so ghetto down there because, I mean, you know bachelors. There’s like three guys living down there, and the dishes would just stack up, stack up. I remember they’d start stinking real bad. And every couple of weeks, like, we’d see the dishes done. I’d come home from work, and I’d say, “Hey, man, did you do the dishes? Thanks.” He was like, “Nah, I think Grace did them again.”

Grace: We shared laundry facilities and so, yeah, I just ended up cleaning half the time, because it was—I couldn’t even stay down there to do laundry. It was so disgusting.

Pastor Matt: Sorry, sorry, Grace. [emphasis added]

We had just picked up Pastor Tim in Albuquerque, New Mexico, around that time and he had never played an electric guitar. He’d never sung in a band. He’d never written a song, and he couldn’t sing, man. When he sang, it actually sounded like he got captured by Al-Qaeda. So we had to pay for vocal lessons and go buy him an electric guitar.

Pastor Tim: [The kind of worshipers that he is seeking are those that will worship in spirit and truth, and that is a thought that has changed every aspect of how I think.] When I came to Mars Hill, I had never really been in a band. I played a lot of acoustic guitar with hand drums, but I hadn’t really been in a band. I hadn’t ever really written a song, and I’d never owned an electric guitar—a lot of acoustic, a lot of flannel, a lot of sandals.

Tim and his wife moved out from Missouri to live in my basement and go work Joe jobs and give it a shot because we met him for twenty minutes at a conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Pastor Tim: Because you weren’t at that conference.

Beth: No, no, it was just him.

Pastor Tim: You hadn’t met these people. You hadn’t read these things. I just came home from New Mexico from this conference and said, “Hey, what if we moved to Seattle now?”

Beth: That was a little harder sell for me. We had to pray about that for a while.

Pastor Tim: Yeah, because we didn’t know anybody here.

Beth: No, no.

Pastor Tim: So in August of 1999, we rolled into the Driscoll family’s driveway. It was the second time I’d ever seen Pastor Mark. We talked on the phone a time or two and exchanged a couple of e-mails. I think we both met Grace here in this basement while she was doing the laundry.
Beth: We had a dining table right here and some chairs, and there was a futon right here. It was a little nicer.

Pastor Tim: The bathroom was nice, right?

Beth: Oh, yeah. I’m not going to—I’m not sharing that part.

Jeff: Matt lived in the basement, and I was over there a lot, and I did silk screening. I cleaned off my screens in his shower downstairs and totally stained it. I think that was permanent. And so I wrecked his basement.

Beth: That’s the first thing I cleaned. I’ll just say that. It was okay for a period of time. We knew it wasn’t forever, so—

Pastor Tim: Years later, I would ask Mark, I asked him, “Why in the world did you do that? Because I’m pretty sure you haven’t just taken anybody else in, and I’m not sure I would exactly the same way, either.” And he said that he had a dream that God told him that I was moving here, and we were supposed to work together. I had no idea what was in store, but apparently God did.
Driscoll's history of telling guys he dreamed about them in connection to recruiting them into leadership roles at Mars Hill has been examined at moderate length elsewhere. 

Eventually the Driscolls moved out of that house and into another house, while returning the Montlake property as a rental which would house renters until the Driscolls put the house on the market some time around roughly 2009, maybe?  The house didn't ultimately sell until later.

It would require people who invested in the real estate scene in the Puget Sound area coming forward to share their stories to share more detail but it was relatively commonplace within Mars Hill for people to try a hand at the landlord thing.  Not everyone was cut out for it and even those who were cut out for it could find it was a hassle at times.  But the price of housing in Seattle has long been a point of vexation for those of us who live here. 

The gist of the housing scene as applicable to what was once Mars Hill, from my admittedly limited perspective, was that people were encouraged to invest in real estate and rent out to as many fellow church attenders and members as they could to consolidate a presence in the city.  This happened with the acquisition of church campus sites but it also happened in residential areas, though the extent to which this happened isn't something I'm in a position to really investigate.  Former MH real estate people could address that, perhaps.

Driscoll's own account was that he was able to get real estate in the city because someone was willing to give him a lease to own deal that was not a reflection of what his credit history would have warranted.  If the received narrative of the subprime borrower were applicable then Driscoll would have been one of those sorts of not-so-safe bets.  But if the counter-narrative were applied, the one that says that speculative house-flipping from the middle class did more to catalyze the housing bubble then that might be an angle for potential historians of the Mars Hill scene to explore.  Not that this seems practical at the moment since a roster of Mars Hill members over its whole life that could be cross-referenced to real estate transactions within King County and outlying counties would be ... hard to assemble. 

What was presented as creating a counter-culture within Mars Hill by leaders like Mark Driscoll or Jamie Munson--this acquiring real estate and renting to others and perhaps also flipping the real estate to turn a profit now and then--was handed down as a way to not be like the surrounding city.  Well, "maybe" that was the case in King County but it's hard not to have doubts about that.  The real estate practices of people who bought homes in the King County area during the Mars Hill era on the part of Mars Hill attenders, members and leaders may not only not have been counter-cultural, it might have turned out to be the embodiment of the zeitgeist of the time.
asf

Sutton Turner discusses Mars Hill Global allocations in recent post, a small fraction of the money raised went overseas and a lot went to US church planting, revisiting how some money went to the now defunct Resurgence Training Center in light of a 2009 Driscoll sermon

emphases in red and/or bold are added
http://investyourgifts.com/dismissed-whats-next/
Posted by Sutton Turner on August 25, 2016
...
Mars Hill Global

Mars Hill Global began in 2009 to raise money from the global audience (those who listened via podcast) to help fund the mission of Mars Hill Church: “Making Disciples and Planting Churches.” Until late 2011, Mars Hill had not significantly funded international church planting but was heavily invested in US church planting. From 2009 to 2012, Mars Hill spent $8.6M in U.S. church planting and $170k outside of the U.S. [WtH, slightly less than 2% of expenditures went to church planting outside the US] but we'll get to a 2009 sermon that explains why this wouldn't be a surprise to potentially impatient readers]

When I joined Mars Hill in 2011, I built relationships with the Kale Hewyott Church in Ethiopia to train church planters there. My passion for Ethiopia (which existed before I arrived at Mars Hill) began to dominate the message of Mars Hill Global. In hindsight, I see how many believed that the only reason Mars Hill Global existed was to fund Ethiopian church planting.

When people started to question the distribution of funds given to Mars Hill Global, the church brought in ECFA and independent auditors, Clark Nuber. Both groups gave Mars Hill a clear opinion that the church had done nothing wrong. In spite of these findings, we felt led to send 3765 emails and 6000 letters to 100% of donors to Mars Hill Global from 2011 to 2014 to clarify their gift intent. Less than 40 families responded; Mars Hill Church sent an additional $40,000 to Ethiopia because donors requested their donations to Mars Hill Global be for Ethiopian church planting.

A full and total timeline from 2009 to 2014 with videos, blogs and other information is stored here.
From 2012 to 2014, Mars Hill Church spent $13.7M in church planting in the US and sent $545k to Ethiopia and India. [WtH--spent from an amount of ... ?] During its existence, Mars Hill Church invested over $23M in church planting in the US and around the world. [WtH--not necessarily the same thing as having done it through Mars Hill Global, given that Mars Hill began in 1996 and Global started in 2009] This amount is over and above the general and administrative costs of Mars Hill Church’s central operations and staffing. (47% of the funds given to Mars Hill Global from 2012-2014 were large donations from a small number of donors who specifically asked prior to giving for their donations to be counted in Global.  Many of these donors did not attend one specific Mars Hill location and wanted their donations supporting all Mars Hill operations including U.S. and international church planting.)

[ WtH--so it reads like that 47% of the funds given to Global from 2012 were from a small number of donors who wanted their giving to be counted in/toward global. Though these donors did not attend one specific location they wanted their gifts supporting all operations, but this raises a question of whether or not that was unusual because the donors requested this or because under normal circumstances donors might have expected or requested their gifts to be restricted to the campus they were giving to Mars Hill through/from]

Many have asked for these numbers. There was I time when I was restricted from providing these numbers. Now, everyone has the Mars Hill Global information that I had when I resigned in September 2014 (Eph. 5:13).

Actual financials reports with line items would have been nice.

Back in the pre-Turner era of Mars Hill Driscoll described the aims of Mars Hill Global as follows:

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/2009-mark-driscoll-sermon-sheds-some.html

http://marshill.com/media/trial/humble-pastors/prophets-priests-and-kings#downloads
http://download.marshill.se/files/2009/05/03/20090503_humble-pastors_sd_audio.mp3
[it's mistitled "Humble Pastor", it was originally listed as Prophets, Priests and Kings" and discussed earlier at Wenatchee The Hatchet.  The 5-17-2009 sermon is a different sermon even though in the media library at the marshill.se site it will appear to be "Humble Pastors", too.]

Prophets, Priests and Kings
Trial: 8 witnesses from 1 & 2 Peter
May 3, 2009
1 Peter 5:1-5
starting about 0:47
... I have announcements for you.

First of all, kinda let you know what's going on at Mars Hill, Pastor Scott Thomas runs our Acts 29 church planting network along with Pastor Tar, Pastor Tyler Powell and that's going great. We give ten percent of our dollars [to] church planting. Acts 29 has 250 churches in the US, many, many, many more overseas. Our goal is to see over 1,000 churches planted within ten years. We're well on the way to that goal and that includes sending Pastor Jesse, who has been our campus pastor at Bellevue, to go plant in California. He's sensing that call on his life.

Pastor Mark (it's a different Pastor Mark), Pastor Mark up at the Shoreline campus, is going to go plant in Chicago, a new church, and Andrew Pack is planting in Seattle out of the Lake City campus. Some have asked, "Why start another church in Seattle?" Cuz we need a zillion and this will make two of them. We're well on our way to a zillion. We need lots of churches in Seattle and we praise God that Andrew and others want to plant churches. We're all for it.  

Additionally, marshillglobal.com is an initiative led by your Lead Pastor Jamie Munson and here's where we're going: from seven campuses of Mars Hill to a hundred; from upwards of 10,000 people on any given Sunday to 50,000 in the next ten years. Leading this is Pastor Rick Melson, one of our executive elders and he's a great guy. We stole him from John Piper in Minneapolis. I'll rephrase that, we borrowed him for a long time to the glory of God from John Piper in Minneapolis, and he [Melson] is also running the Resurgence Training Center--it's a school that will open in the fall so that we can have a leadership engine to train more campus pastors, church planters and potential elders. We're seeking fifty students for the fall term. [emphasis added]

For all of this we will need to raise four million dollars above and beyond budget and Pastor Jamie has a really smart idea to take microgifts from a lot of our fans online. There's upwards of 20 million downloads of our sermons and content every year. [We're] asking those people who enjoy all that we give away to give some small gifts to help fund this global expansion and initiative. Many have asked--it's cool, we've recently had checks as large as ten thousand dollars--saying, "We love you. We listen to a lot of things. Here, how can we help?" So we're going to open that opportunity up. We're going to invite you to give as well, above and beyond your general tithes and offerings. And, amazingly enough, a generous donor stepped forward and said "I'll do a million-dollar matching fund. For everyone who gives any amount I'll match that up to the first million dollars." So that's the great kick-off. We praise God for that.

marshillglobal.com, you can check in there to get updates on where we're going, what we're doing and how we are expanding. That includes our newest campus, Mars Hill Albuquerque. We officially announce it today. We're going to New Mexico.  ...

Turner mentioned that more than $23 million was spent in church planting.  That's telling us what it was more than.  What we don't necessarily get is a number that would tell us how much went into The Resurgence Training Center (for anyone who even remembers what that was these days).  So some of the money given into Mars Hill Global would have gone to the Resurgence Training Center.  There are folks who are willing to say they went there and graduated from there but let's not forget the big E on the eye chart.  Mark Driscoll had had a personal ambition to start a movement that started a Bible college.  No matter how great the education was at Re:Train there's a hindsight we can have today through which we observe that this was part of the legacy Driscoll wanted to be able to look back on. It's also something to keep in mind as part of the basis for Global in its early stages.  We don't need to be so focused on how much went to overseas that we forget that at its inception Global was never explicitly designed for overseas missions but for the global expansion of what we can now regard as the Mars Hill brand.

The amount of money given/designated to The Resurgence Training Center could get some clarification, since it, too, was part of the Mars Hill expansion included within the fundraising activities of Mars Hill Global. 

And the thing to keep in mind, that commenter Nathan priddis mentioned recently at Phoenix Preacher, is that we should ask ourselves--even if "all" the money raised by Mars Hill Global went to overseas activity, who's to say that would have made the conditions in those regions in Africa or India better?

http://michaelnewnham.com/?p=26619#comment-344282

In other words, let's not forget that even if all the monies that people gave that they thought were going to go from Mars Hill Global to Africa went there, what in the end would this have been except for the global expansion of the Mars Hill brand?  Why would anyone in Africa need that?  This is not to say people don't have any right or reason to be upset about all sorts of things Mars Hill Global.  Turner gets that these things were worrisome to people, too.  But Nathan priddis raised a point that doesn't seem to have come up among those who have been close to the Mars Hill side of things in online discussions (that I know of)--that we can't assume that all that Global money going to the missionary work Mars Hill had in mind would have been any good for people in Africa in the end.

Throckmorton: Bruskas has recently sounded off on Strange Fire, Result Source and other stuff

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/12/16/mars-hill-church-executive-elder-dave-bruskas-on-mark-driscoll-nyts-best-seller-list-strange-fire-and-more/

There's a video and about 2:15 Bruskas described himself as having been part of a leadership culture that was "heavy handed and domineering".   He also described these problems as still being within the community (though the audio is a bit muffled). 

Throckmorton notes in the reent post Bruskas describes regretting participation in the Strange Fire stunt.  That Bruskas was at the Strange Fire stunt Driscoll seemed to spearhead has been documented generously via social media and if you want a synopsis of that ... there's a post here:

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/06/revisiting-time-where-mark-driscoll.html

Last Wenatchee can readily recall discussing things at much length in connection with Bruskas would have been ...

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/12/throckmorton-dave-bruskasmark-driscoll.html

The time Bruskas told leaders "we need your help" facing down a layoff season days after Driscolls finalized buying a million-dollar home in Snohomish county. 

Throckmorton's recent post adds some new elements to consider about what Bruskas may or may not have been in a position to know in 2011 when Real Marriage was getting drafted and RSI was being contacted.

For himself the three things he felt grieved about were the New York Times best-seller scam, the Strange Fire conference, and the performance driven culture of ministry.

Bruskas said he was a new executive elder in 2011 who was informed about the ResultSource contract by Jamie Munson in a car ride to work one morning. He asked if the approach had integrity and was financially feasible. Bruskas said Munson answered yes to both. After that, according to Bruskas, he didn’t ask any more questions.

Bruskas disclosed to friends that he was going to take the #2 position at Mars Hill in July 2011. That was about a month after Mark and Grace Driscoll and their agent Sealy Yates met at Thomas Nelson to discuss the ResultSource approach to scamming the best-seller list.  This June 27, 2011 note from Sealy Yates to Kevin Small was included in a Mars Hill memo on the ResultSource-Real Marriage campaign.


Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/12/16/mars-hill-church-executive-elder-dave-bruskas-on-mark-driscoll-nyts-best-seller-list-strange-fire-and-more/#ixzz3M7cQyLS9
Of particular note ...

http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/12/Yates2SmallJun11.png

There's a partial correspondence Throckmorton quotes from regarding Jamie Munson interacting with the Mars Hill Board about Result Source.  Throckmorton has lately asked who might have been on that board.  Well, absolutely not Rick Melson, though Rick Melson had a role at Mars Hill.

Long ago before it was scrubbed from something like a LinkedIn Profile it was said of Melson that:

President/Campus Network Director
Resurgence/Mars Hill Church
January 2009– June 2010 (1 year 6 months)

And it couldn't have been Tim Beltz, who stopped being an executive leader in 2010.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-beltz/76/960/7a8

Executive Pastor
Mars Hill Church
October 2007 – November 2010 (3 years 2 months)|Greater Seattle Area

So if Melson and Beltz were both gone by the middle of 2010 who was still on the executive team? The accounts about and by Sutton Turner about his joining executive leadership raise some questions about whether he ever intended to become an executive elder at Mars Hill.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-narrative-question-when-i-came-to.html

Turner was brought on during a period in which Munson was still an executive elder and president. Driscoll was technically vice-president and while Turner was on the executive team he was not yet an elder.  It was conceivable that during this time to ensure the bare minimum of three executive elders required at the time that Dave Bruskas may have been added, whether by invitation or self-nomination.  Given the pattern of men who played roles in acquiring real estate landing prestigious jobs at Mars Hill Bruskas' possible role in getting City on a Hill in Albuquerque to Mars Hill in 2009 may or may not have been part of a possible pattern.  Driscoll had expressed some interest from the pulpit in the New Mexico site being a hub for further interstate expansion in 2009.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search?q=albuquerque+2009

As preserved at the above post there's some indication that the summer of 2011 was when Bruskas transitioned out.

http://halfabridge.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/a-quick-note-about-dave-bruskas/
a quick note about Dave Bruskas


August 16, 2011


Mike DeLong


Yes, Dave Bruskas, now-former pastor of City On A Hill (now Mars Hill Albuquerque) has apparently [link] left Mars Hill Albuquerque for a position in the Seattle area [link]. The transition was apparently an amicable one [link], although I have not seen an official announcement for those of us outside the Mars Hill Church circle of light, etc. We wish the Bruskas family all the best in their new situation.
So summer of 2011 seems to match up across the board.  With Turner on the executive team but not yet installed as an elder and with there having been just Munson and Driscoll as official executive elders it's not clear even to Wenatchee The Hatchet whether between November 2010 and August 2011 there were the bare minimum three executive elders required by the by-laws Jamie Munson drafted.  Was Scott Thomas still in executive eldership in 2011, possibly?  Wenatchee The Hatchet can't recall him being on the executive leadership side of things in MH in 2011, though he had a significant role in Acts 29.

The excerpt published by Throckmorton involving Yates and Small is interesting not just because it raises a question as to who the full roster of executive elders would have been in June 2011 when Rick Melson and Tim Beltz were both definitively out of executive eldership, leaving open the question of who the third executive elder required by the bylaws would have been if it wasn't Sutton Turner (yet).  There might have been some executive elder in there for the third slot Wenatchee The Hatchet just forgot about.

And it all makes it seems as though RSI was more connected to Thomas Nelson and BOTH Driscolls than a reader might have previously imagined.  "The Driscolls and I" leaves little doubt that Grace seemed to be involved, too.  By "The Driscolls" it seems a reasonable guess to refer to just Mark and Grace Driscoll.  One Rick Sprull is described as agreeing to work with Mars Hill and Result Source to make the campaign work. 

There's a question lurking in the paragraph quoted by Throckmorton and it has to do with Jamie Munson.  Since Munson was in 2011 still the legal president of Mars Hill based on the bylaws that were voted through in 2007 it would make sense that Munson would have necessarily played an active role in dealing with Result Source and in discussing the viability of using Result Source on a Driscoll book with boards at Mars Hill in 2011.  And yet ... let's revisit something in a memo credited to Sutton Turner from March 17, 2012.

http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/files/2014/09/Current-Financial-Situation-March-17-12.pdf

One of the greatest and most harmful events was Pastor Jamie resigning and leaving me in this job as

General Manager/Executive Elder. From early June until he resigned in August, he had basically checked

out. So I had less than 6 weeks as General Manager before becoming #1 King without being an Elder.

Then finally in November, I was made an Executive Pastor without have any creditability with the staff.

This single fact hindered my ability to really even understand the organization or the people, much less

see the problems as they had existed for a long time.

How was this "basically checked out" possible if in the midst of the summer of 2011 Munson has been described as talking with the Mars Hill board about the viability of the Result Source Inc deal?   If by "checked out" the reference was to the ordinary operating processes of the corporation known as Mars Hill was there evidence?  Or was "checked out" something that has to be modified by our increasing awareness that Munson played a role in the Result Source deal? 

And if Thomas Nelson people were meeting with the Driscolls and with Kevin Small of Result Source then ... how much disavowal from the publisher holds up?  If a paragraph of correspondence suggests Thomas Nelson people agreed to work with Result Source people then it doesn't seem to matter if it wasn't the idea of someone at Nelson if they at some point agreed to go along with the idea, does it?

And for those who don't recall, the book that came to be known as Real Marriage had been incubating since at least as far back as later 2010.

For those who didn't spot this, way back in January 2011 Driscoll tweeted the following:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110106073333/http://twitter.com/PastorMark
Talking w/Grace about our book. Big idea God has hit me with is that marriage is about being a best friend so that's my top goal for 2011 11:15 AM Jan 4th via HootSuite

And even earlier:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101206061023/http://twitter.com/PastorMark
Grace & I are writing re sex & marriage is making progress. With the 2 publisher finalists in town. Title is unsettled - Your Best Wife Now?          

So based on the late 2010 tweet the Driscolls had narrowed the publishers down to two finalists and Driscoll cracked a joke about a working title.  Two finalists by December 6, 2010.  According to the statement by the MH BoAA this year ...

https://marshill.com/2014/03/07/a-note-from-our-board-of-advisors-accountability

In 2011, outside counsel advised our marketing team to use Result Source to market the Real Marriage book and attain placement on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Of possible interest for the incubation of Real Marriage may be cross-referencing the Result Source collaboration with the financial instrument developed to purchase a million dollar home in Snohomish County.

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/search/label/a%20house%20and%20a%20contract

Let's review the chronology in its bare bones.  It seems we've learned that BOTH Driscolls had to have known about the RSI deal by at least June 27 2011.  By this time On Mission LLC had been incorporated in Colorado in January 2011. The financial instrument Future Hope Revocable Living Trust was created in February 2011 according to the deed of the house in Woodway purchased May 2012. So in December 2010 the two publisher finalists had been chosen.  In January 2011 the side company to manage book royalties was incorporated in Colorado.  In February 2011 the financial instrument that was used to buy the Woodway house got created.  Some time in 2011 "outside counsel" advised RSI and by the end of 2011 the deal was inked.  The rest was history.

At the moment what's not clear to Wenatchee The Hatchet is who the third executive elder from November 2010 to June 2011 would have been.  If Bruskas was on board as an executive elder in August 2011 he wasn't on the executive team yet and yet there's no clear documentation as to who the necessary third executive elder would have been.  We know Driscoll and Munson were there but perhaps alert readers can explain who the third executive elder at Mars Hill was from the months of November 2010 through July 2011 was?  Even Wenatchee The Hatchet forgets stuff.   If Bruskas became an executive elder some time in August 2011 then his connection to RSI and knowledge of it may have been minimal if it was Munson and/or Turner doing a lot of the meeting.  But if Bruskas wasn't on the scene in the executive eldership yet in June 2011 and Sutton Turner was in the executive leader circle but not yet an elder there needed to be a third man.

Throckmorton: reports that Bruskas to join MH Albuquerque in January

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/11/09/dave-bruskas-to-join-mars-hill-albuquerque-in-january/

After joining MH in 2009 with the assimilation of City on a Hill, it looks like just a few years later and the corporation dying has led to some uncertainty as to who's really doing what where.

The speed of change at Mars Hill ... as Driscoll used to say.

So maybe Bruskas is heading back to New Mexico from whence he came?