Apparently Mark Driscoll now says of Mars Hill "We're not a wealthy church".

It's happened a couple of times before and it's happened again, someone finds something that gets passed along to Wenatchee The Hatchet.  Normally Wenatchee has not seen reason to comment on things that get sent along of this but this, this is a special case. 

Preaching live in Bellevue, Downtown Seattle, and Ballard


From Pastor Mark Driscoll:
Jesus loves this church very much. His grace is on Mars Hill in a way that is very unusual.
Despite geographical, political, and spiritual obstacles along the way, we’re larger than any other church that has grown up in the northwest corner of the country. We’re not a wealthy church. [emphasis added] We’re not an experienced church. We’re not a convenient church. We are a blessed church.

The only reason why this thing called Mars Hill is working is because Jesus loves us. He loves our cities. He loves our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and other people who don’t even know him yet. We’re here for a reason, and it’s certainly not thanks to anything that we can take credit for.

Our multi-site strategy, which now includes 14 locations in four states, was never Plan A. Originally we wanted a nice, big building where we could all gather under one roof. But God had other ideas. He had people he wanted to save in Albuquerque, Orange County, Portland, and around the Puget Sound through our church. This has made our life a lot more complicated, but if it means more people get to meet Jesus, I’m all for it. Should God ever provide us with place where we can establish a Mars Hill hub someday, I won’t argue. In the meantime, however, we’re nothing but grateful for what we’ve got. God is using it in a big way.

Three of our Seattle-area churches are now up over 1,000 people in weekly attendance: Bellevue, Ballard, and Downtown Seattle. For the past year, I’ve been preaching almost exclusively from Mars Hill Bellevue. They’ve got a new building in a great spot and the potential for lots of new locations on Seattle’s Eastside, so I wanted to do everything I could to help make Bellevue strong. Today, it is without a doubt our healthiest church overall. Pastor Thomas Hurst is a great lead pastor, and the people of Mars Hill Bellevue are a huge blessing to the rest of our church in more ways than one.

In God’s providence, my season spent focusing on Bellevue coincided with Angela Hurst’s cancer battle. Since the other senior leaders and I were present on Sundays, this allowed Pastor Thomas to devote more attention to his wife and their boys during a very difficult time. Angela was diagnosed last year, and just recently received a clean bill of health. Praise God!

With Mars Hill Bellevue going strong, we now have a lot of other needs and opportunities throughout the church that could use some extra care. For example, Mars Hill Downtown Seattle is in the middle of a leadership transition and trying to get settled into a new location that’s already been picketed by protestors and picked at in the local press.[emphasis added] We’ve got a lot of seats to fill Downtown and a lot on the line for the reputation of Jesus and his work in Seattle. The stakes are high, and I want to make sure the church is well cared for during this critical season.

As of this month, I’m preaching live in Bellevue and Downtown Seattle. Ballard will join the live schedule this fall with the start of our Ten Commandments series. [emphasis original] Obviously, I can’t preach every single service in person; each location will get a combination of live and video sermons. Since none of our churches will be live 100% of the time, for those currently attending Bellevue, Downtown, or Ballard, I encourage you to pick a location and stick with it. Our churches need members committed to the local mission, and I would hate to see people leave their church and go to another Mars Hill just because they want to see me preach in person. Besides, the live schedule will probably take an air traffic controller to figure out, as we’ll be tinkering with the limits of space and time.

This is all rather complicated, but nobody ever said ministry would be easy. Please pray for me and my family. Since I will be spending my Sundays as a traveling minister preaching morning and evening, chances are Grace and the kids will have to attend church without me some of the time. This is hard for us, but we’ve talked about it a lot and we want what’s best for the Mars Hill family, even if it means a few sacrifices for the Driscoll family.

Thankfully, I’m surrounded by a team of gifted leaders who work hard and love Jesus. I praise God for Pastor Dave Bruskas and Pastor Sutton Turner, my fellow executive elders who help oversee the whole church. Our central operations team is also packed with humble servants who are hashing out the technical details as we speak.

God has given our church a hard job to do. It’s hard because Jesus loves us and he’s sent a lot of people our way. It’s hard because Satan hates us and will oppose every step. But there’s no place I’d rather be than right here serving the church and preaching the gospel. You are worth it, Mars Hill! I love you very much.

For those in Ballard, Downtown Seattle, and Bellevue, I’ll be seeing you soon. I look forward to visiting our other churches as time and schedule allows, and I can’t wait to see what God does on Easter when we get to enjoy live services together as one enormous family. Please join me in praying for 20,000 people to attend Mars Hill and for hundreds and hundreds to be baptized!

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.” Philippians 1:27–28
 

Driscoll mentions the Downtown campus facing picketers and getting picked at by the press. If you go and consult the actual critical coverage of Mars Hill in The Stranger ...

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/14/mars-hill-church-now-conveniently-closer-to-all-the-aids
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/14/mars-hill-we-intend-to-help-the-capitol-hill-aids-victims-with-food-and-jesus
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/14/mars-hill-church-not-actually-volunteering-with-lifelong-aids-alliance
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/03/14/mars-hill-church-pastor-quits

The Stranger spent more time fisking Justin Dean for misrepresenting the level (any) and nature of Mars Hill involvement with Liflong AIDS Alliance than making any sustained complaint about Mars Hill Downtown in particular (beyond the usual jokes about Tim Gaydos' name, I suppose).  Justin Dean wrote a sorta long press release about the grand opening, after all.  Mars Hill clearly wants the attention if they have a PR team.  Let it be noted that though The Stranger dislikes Mars Hill intensely they've been known to show some courtesy to specific pastors.  They didn't rip into Bill Clem when announcing that his wife Jeannie had cancer and even went so far as to suggest that if you're the praying type, to pray for them.

So take Driscoll's comment that Mars Hill Downtown has been nitpicked by critics with a grain of salt, or two.  Some readers have the distinct impression The Stranger had it out for Justin Dean far more than Mars Hill Downtown. 

The change in the schedule of live preaching is vaguely interesting.  For a while the plan seemed to be moving live preaching to just Bellevue and that phase seems to have passed. 

What's significantly more interesting is Driscoll's claim about Mars Hill "We're not a wealthy church." 

Er, excuse me?
Wasn't it on March 28, 2012, no less that Mark Driscoll said this in "What's Next For Me"?

After Easter, We’ll launch a new sermon series called the Seven, looking at Revelation 1–3 and the seven churches to which John writes in those chapters. Most of the series was filmed live on location in Turkey—and it’s epic. We even rented the city of Ephesus for a day.

He did say that, in fact.

If Mars Hill isn't a wealthy church what happened to the church that could rent the city of Ephesus for a day?

Or that still uses Red cameras in its production. Like this old job listing for Assistant Video Editor. The job listing was posted 11.16.2012

If you were working for us, here are some of the things you would have done for us last week:

Captured, edited, and finalized a promotional video.

Edited and exported a sermon front to back, using multicam switching in Final Cut Pro and After Effects.

Edited, exported, compressed, and uploaded clips to youtube.

Communicated with multiple team members via Basecamp about deadlines and deliverables.

Organized a documentary project in Final Cut Pro.

Created a folder structure for a new project and transferred all media from storage devices.

Transcoded Red camera footage in Red Cine.

Light a set for a promotional video.

An old feature on Mars Hill production and their use of Red cameras can be found here.

And over here back on September 21, 2009 Driscoll mentioned the following:


... So, I’ll explain to you what is next from Mars Hill and me:
1.We have upgraded our video cameras to the RED cameras used for major films like District 9. This means that the video experience at a Mars Hill Campus or online is better than live – for free.
2.We have upgraded our media player by creating our own technology to handle the high-definition video content we are now capturing and are giving it all away online – for free.
The high end major film level gear was important enough that it was brought up, at all.  That was 2009 and now in 2013 Mars Hill is not a wealthy church? 

Anyone remember back in 2011 when the Salvation Army food pantry in Port Angeles had a ton of food stolen?  Mark Driscoll made an appeal to Mars Hill members to donate food to the Port Angeles food pantry/  How much food was donated?  Eleven tons. As Mars Hill put it on the MH blog on October 26, 2011:

Yesterday, a crew went to the Port Angeles Salvation Army to drop off the 21,500 pounds of food people at our Seattle-area churches brought in.

That's not exactly a small amount of food.  But now, Driscoll says of Mars Hill "We're not a wealthy church".  Last year for annual reporting stuff Driscoll said last year was their best year ever.  Well, maybe every years is Mars Hill's best year ever but this year Mars Hill isn't a wealthy church even though within the last, say 18 months, Mars Hill has shown that it can throw together eleven tons of food for the Salvation Army Port Angeles food pantry (good for them about that, by the way).  Driscoll could casually mention how epic it was that they were filming in Ephesus, which they rented for a day just about a year ago.  And now this year, somehow, Mars Hill isn't a wealthy church. 

Annual reports, anyone? 


http://marshill.com/annual-report-2012

AUDITED FINANCIALS
INCOME	2012	2011
tithes and offerings	$                24,054,755.00	$                   18,153,776.00
Misc. income and other	$                     609,771.00	$                     1,332,983.00
gains and losses
TOTAL INCOME	$                24,664,526.00	$                   19,486,759.00
EXPENSES
personnel costs	$                12,047,038.00	$                     8,408,764.00
operations	$                  2,938,080.00	$                     3,534,901.00
tech & equipment	$                     836,602.00	$                        859,581.00
administration	$                  1,418,622.00	$                        676,412.00
facilities	$                  3,391,113.00	$                     1,898,844.00
Church planting partnerships	$                     821,182.00	$                     1,764,973.00
interest	$                     562,135.00	$                        647,424.00
depreciation & amortization	$                  1,680,600.00	$                     1,542,266.00
TOTAL EXPENSES	$                23,695,372.00	$                   19,333,165.00
EXCESS REVENUE OVER EXPENSES	$                     969,154.00	$                        153,594.00
ASSETS
ASSETS
cash & cash equivalents	$                  3,369,472.00	$                     5,165,170.00
accounts receivable, inventory & other assets	$                     506,987.00	$                           81,041.00
property, equip, net	$                28,650,133.00	$                   27,099,676.00
lease & other long term assets	$                     173,991.00	$                        361,337.00
TOTAL ASSETS	$                32,700,583.00	$                   32,707,224.00
LIABILITIES
current liabilities	$                  1,931,392.00	$                     3,070,910.00
long-term liabilities	$                13,285,248.00	$                   13,121,525.00
TOTAL LIABILITES	$                15,216,640.00	$                   16,192,435.00
NET ASSETS
unrestricted assets	$                17,364,950.00	$                   16,387,843.00
temporarily restricted assets	$                     118,993.00	$                        126,946.00
TOTAL NET ASSETS	$                17,483,943.00	$                   16,514,789.00
TOTAL LIABILITY AND NET ASSETS	$                32,700,583.00	$                   32,707,224.00

So half the total expenses are personnel expenses. Where's that money going?  Who's getting how much?  What are the housing allowances for staff, particularly lead pastors at campuses and executive elders?  Now, to take a trip down memory lane, let's consider that in Lief Moi's letter from 2007 he mentioned that he stopped being lead pastor at Ballard and as part of the 2007 re-org he received a nearly 40% salary cut.  It's on page 7 of the big 145 page pdf for those who haven't read Moi's letter already.  The nearly 40 percent salary cut was part of the 2007 re-org and what happened to co-founding pastor of Mars Hill Lief Moi during that re-org was he was told he lacked the kingly gifts to run a campus the size of Ballard and he was no longer campus pastor/lead pastor there.  And that would seem like the reason he got the nearly 40% salary cut. That raises a fairly natural question of what the pay grades are lead pastors, executive pastors of campus, and executive pastors for the entire organization that is Mars Hill (i.e. the officers of the church as a corporation).

Compare the  audited financials of Mars Hill Church for their FY2012 and FY2011 to, say, Seattle's Union Gospel Mission or the Salvation Army Northwest Division, both charities Mars Hill has donated money or food to in the last few years.  Some churches don't even own their own buildings, for instance.  Mars Hill managed to put the old Tabella on the market and someone bought that real estate.  Mars Hill also sold the old Lake City campus (some say at a loss).  Mars Hill has a decent amount of real estate holdings within the city where some churches still have to use the space made available in other churches ... kinda like Mars Hill did a very long time ago.  If Mars Hill isn't a wealthy church what is it?  Poor?  That seems a bit hard to believe.  :)

jamiemunson.com is here

http://www.jamiemunson.com/

http://www.jamiemunson.com/books/

So the book on money is rebranded from Re:Lit to Jamie Munson with a bow and arrow logo. 

It's curiously apt that Munson's new book is on authority. Authority was considered a big concern on Munson's part when he circulated reasons for the immediate termination of two employees of Mars Hill back in 2007.

Munson was, at least officially, promoted to Lead Pastor and according to the by-laws he'd drafted, he was considered president.  Who was listed with the Secretary of State of Washington as the actually legal standing president of Mars Hill during that time would be something someone can go look up.  It's worth nothing that as an executive elder Munson confirmed the appointment of Scott Thomas to head the elder investigative taskforce.  This was something Munson conveyed to Paul Petry directly, as well as to Mars Hill members. The October 16, 2007 letter Munson sent to members did not exactly explain what had transpired beyond formalities. Munson wrote the following about Elder Investigation Taskforce members Scott Thomas, Dave Kraft, Garey Shavey, and Steve Tompkins on October 16, 2007:

These men had the unenviable task of investigating two fellow pastors and reporting their findings to the entire Elder Council. They spent significant time in silence and solitude, reading and meditating on Scripture, repenting of personal sin, and praying for God's wisdom ...

So what were these men doing during the investigation process?  Any of them can feel free to speak on record when they like.  Scott Thomas, for instance, was explaining to Petry that there was no need for Petry to attend his own trial on October 10, 2007.  Scott Thomas then turned around and told a member of Mars Hill church that a conciliatory process had just been completed on October 11, 2007. What personal sins Scott Thomas was repenting of, according to Jamie Munson's letter, might be interesting for Munson to elaborate on now, since he was apparently confident enough to say the four members of the EIT spent the investigative process repenting of personal sin.

Munson conveyed to members that Petry needed to be shunned in December 2007, saying that the elders had repeatedly attempted to reconcile with Petry and that these reconciliation attempts were rebuffed.

In later correspondence in early 2008 with Paul Petry, Jamie Munson seemed pretty convinced that neither he nor other executive elders or elders at Mars Hill generally, had done or said anything questionable.

http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ltr-munson-01-26-2008.pdf
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/01-29-2008-munson-ltr.pdf
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/01-30-2008-munson-ltr.pdf

There's more that you can read about Munson's role within the real estate history of Mars Hill if you like.  He shows up in posts tagged "governance" and "real estate and Mars Hill". 

Munson's currently still a pastor at Mars Hill and on a few boards. 

Whether or not Jamie Munson was actually the legal president of Mars Hill on record with the Washington Secretary of State's office records while Mark Driscoll was, by his own account, no longer legal president, might be worth investigating.

http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_results.aspx?search_type=simple&criteria=all&name_type=contains&name=Mars+Hill+&ubi=

http://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819

MARS HILL CHURCH

UBI Number	601677819
Category	REG
Profit/Nonprofit	Nonprofit
Active/Inactive	Active
State Of Incorporation	WA
WA Filing Date	12/22/1995
Expiration Date	12/31/2013
Inactive Date
Duration	Perpetual
Registered Agent Information
Agent Name	JOHN SUTTON TURNER
Address	1411 NW 50TH ST
City	SEATTLE
State	WA
ZIP	98107

Vice President	Bruskas, Dave	1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107
Secretary	TURNER, JOHN SUTTON	1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107
Treasurer	TURNER, JOHN SUTTON	1411 NW 50TH ST SEATTLE, WA 98107
President	Driscoll, Mark	1411 NW 50th Street SEATTLE, WA 98107

POSTSCRIPT:
It's interesting how accusation of distrust and disrespect for executive elders included specific claims of a lack of trust or respect for Jamie Munson.  Munson apparently never stopped to consider that simultaneously being the accuser and being able to appoint a committee might involve a conflict of interest in organizational terms.  Driscoll in early 2008 once remarked (documented elsewhere here)
that having Munson as president meant Driscoll no longer had to deal with conflicts of interest.  What those were never got explained, but it was significant that Driscoll characterized (for whatever reason) his own role as legal president of Mars Hill as characterized by conflicts of interest.

When Driscoll preached in later 2007 in Nehemiah he made it sound like he had particular grievances with particular elders. Then on 10/01/2007 Driscoll was using some kind of royal "we" to say that two men had been fired from being pastors for the first time in the history of Mars Hill. If by that Driscoll meant terminated in some process that involved documentation of end of employment, okay, but it can't have literally been the case that no one had been fired from employment at Mars Hill at any point between 1996 and September 2007, can it?  In any case, it sounds (literally) like Driscoll said something about his issues with specific leaders within Mars Hill in 2007 and along the way of leaders being terminated it stopped being personal and started to be more of a "we" thing, a "we" thing that at various points involved Jamie Munson.

Something fun from Get Religion about the problems in using political language in religion reporting

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/getreligion/2012/02/the-curates-egg-political-language-in-religion-reporting/

Spotted this over at the BHT courtesy of Justin.

The piece is a useful case study of why attempting to use the political jargon of left and right to describe Christian faith and practice can be hazardously misleading.  It is, in a way, one of the reasons Wenatchee The Hatchet has some distrust the theological left and right in the United States and the punditry classes that have emerged from within them.  A tablespoon or so of salt has to be applied all across the spectrum.

music posts coming soon (again)

Wenatchee The Hatchet accumulated a few recordings over the last few months, some of which will get little write-ups here at the blog.  The temptation to write at great rambling depth about some of the recordings is great and it shall be better to be brief and informative in most cases.  We haven't seen some serious discussion of music here at the blog in a while and that should change. 

For that matter ... now that I'm thinking of it, those Justice League essays sure won't write themselves, either.  There's a few things in the off-line world that have taken precedence over writing quite so much these days.  Still, we can see what can be done.  There's some fun music recorded and released by esteemed acquaintences at home and abroad to be written about!  Keep your eyes peeled for reviews of the following to show up here before too long:

Airoso, Field & Franz duo (guitar and viola)
Autoportrait, the first solo guitar recording by Atanas Ourkouzounov!
Ferdinand Rebay: Sonatas for flute and guitar, Maria Jose Belotto and Gonzalo Noque
Twenty-four Preludes, music of Bryan Johanson, Michael Partington
An Intimate Evening with the Bish/Thompson duo, Anthony Thompson and Greg Bish
(this is an album of music for trumpet and classical guitar and so far as I know the only one of its kind!)

So those are the ones where I want to do at least brief write-ups.  I'll need to go dig up a discography for Ourkouzounov's recordings because I have nearly all of them and he's one of my favorite living composers.  Plus he's coming to Seattle in a couple of months. 

There are other recordings I'd like to write about but I realize that brevity and timeliness may be best by now.  Still, having blogged a post saying exactly which albums I plan to review gives me something concrete to aim for. 

Mars Hill Church (Seattle), trademarks, logos and names--a domain to keep tabs on

For folks who didn't read this,

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/12/mars-hill-trademarklogo-clarification.html

This summarized the Mars Hill official public clarification that they had not sued any churches and would not sue any churches.  They also stated that they had not and would not ask any churches to remove Mars Hill from their name. 

So ... here's a domain to keep tabs on, for a church that has nothing to do with Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

http://www.marshillchurch.net/

Although, having said that, it'd be a shame if it turned out that at some point Mars Hill Seattle people got in touch with this church at any point and actually did ask them to change their name, give up their domain name or anything like that, because that would be sketchy in light of the bold and unequivocal public statements MH PR made in 2011 in the wake of the trademark and logo controversy. If that "did" ever happen in some fashion with this or any other church with Mars Hill in the name since the 2011 kerfuffle, then it'd mean that some folks at Mars Hill couldn't even keep track of their own public statements on name and logo issues. 

because I actually like the book of Leviticus, couldn't resist linking to Alastair Roberts on it

http://bigbible.org.uk/2013/03/lessons-from-leviticus-zugzwanged-bigbible/

Worth reading, as is the book of Leviticus.  It's those chapters and chapters of genealogies in Numbers that I usually skip. 

What does repentance look like? A rabbi's perspective

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/11/before_i_was_a_rabbi_i_was_a_mean_girl.html

What part of me is still a mean girl? I carry this question with me every day. I am a rabbi, so I consider what is, for me, one of Judaism’s most poignant teachings—repentance is never complete until, given the chance to sin again in the same way, we refuse.

 

Thoughts? As in thoughts about this definition of repentance, not about the woman as rabbi part.  Not interested in complementarians and egalitarians hashing things out over that stuff here.  This is a short summation of what a definition of repentance is. 

Matt Redmond on the new Pope, Luther, and our need to take aim at ourselves

http://mattbredmond.com/2013/03/15/the-new-pope-luther-and-our-need-to-take-aim-at-ourselves/

... The reason I was ill at ease about evangelicals making light of the papal process and then using Luther to defend it was this. Luther was taking aim at his own tradition. Not the tradition of his neighbor alone. Luther was not trying to start a new religion or denomination or sect. He was trying to reform the church already there. Luther was Roman Catholic, if you will. not Lutheran.

And of course they wanted to kill him. So his criticism and strong language should be seen in that light.

Here is what I think, you wanna be like Luther? Set your aim on all the silliness with evangelicalism. The legalism. The celebrity. The concerts disguised as worship. The worship disguised as concerts. The marketing ad nauseum. The legalism. The calls for radical living from pastors with iPads and iPhones who live in the suburbs with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Set your aim on the cover-up of sexual abuse. The legalism. Set your aim on a theology that questions everything and stands for nothing. The pastor as CEO. The pastor as rock star. The legalism.

Making fun of the conclave given the task of selecting the Pope is easy while living in the evangelical enclave. You lose nothing and get some laughs. Luther took on the church from within. And not for a laugh but because he genuinely sought God and cared for people.

There's more that could be said, of course, but the closing thought I'll add is to note that if we do what Matt suggests we should remember that none of the prophets whose books ended up in the Bible succeeded.  In an evangelical eagerness to show how Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets we have to remember that it wasn't just the Law that failed to bring about the loving obedience of the people.  If the OT is any indication the more prophetic you are the more spectacularly you'll fail to have a ministry that catalyzes the repentance of God's people.  What was Isaiah told WOULDN'T happen when people heard the words he was supposed to say ... ?

Transitions at Mars Hill Downtown Seattle and Bellevue, aka departure of Tim Gaydos

Sometimes stuff just turns up here at Wenatchee The Hatchet. 

Ballard | New Discussion Topic

Transitions at Downtown Seattle and Bellevue

From Pastor Alex Early: Mars Hill Ballard, There’s a lot going on here at Ballard and across all of our churches. I really believe the best is yet to come! I want to let you know about some changes that occurred recently at Mars Hill Downtown Seattle that affect our church family, particularly the Ballard family as we are so close to Downtown and have many friends who attend there as well. As you will read below from the Executive Elders, Tim Gaydos, Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle feels that he and his wife Brittany are being called into a new season of ministry away from Mars Hill. We love Tim and we are excited for his future, but this transition has come as a surprise to the elders. In order to care for the church continue God’s mission, the Executive Elders have put together a interim plan as they look for a replacement Lead Pastor. Below is a message that was posted to the Downtown Seattle church, and I wanted to share it with you so that you are up to speed as well. Please be praying for our brothers and sisters at Mars Hill Downtown Seattle, as well as for our Executive Elders. Pastor Alex -—————————————————————— Dear Mars Hill Downtown Seattle, If you were able to join us for the Member’s Meeting tonight, thank you for giving us your time on such short notice. We wanted to share the following statements from Tim Gaydos, the Downtown Seattle Elders, and the Executive Elders for those of you who were unable to make it. From Tim Gaydos: For the past seven years it has been a great joy and privilege to be a part of what God is doing at Mars Hill Church. These last few weeks Brittany and I have spent a great deal of time praying and discerning God’s call upon our lives for the future and what would be the best use of my gifts and skills. It is bitter sweet as we announce that we believe God is moving us on to something new. Therefore, I have decided to resign my position as Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle. We believe God has made it clear to us that we have a new season of life and ministry ahead of us. This was a very hard decision for Brittany and I, as we do love the people of Mars Hill so dearly. Although we are very confident that you will continue to be cared for by the leadership at Mars Hill. We are praying about the next steps for us, and as we step out in faith we are asking God to walk with us through this next season. I know that God has great things in store for you in the future, and I know we will always treasure the years we had together. We are very grateful for the relationships and friendships that God has provided for us over the years. I know it may be hard for some to understand our decision, and maybe some of you have had those moments in your life where something seemed so illogical, but you know it’s something you have to do. We will miss you all very much. – Tim Gaydos From Pastor Jamie Munson, on behalf of the Downtown Seattle Elders: As elders of the Downtown Seattle church, many of us who have known Tim and Brittany for many years, we are saddened to hear about Tim’s decision to step down as Lead Pastor. We are so grateful for what God has done at Downtown, and for the amazing ways he’s worked through his people and through Tim Gaydos. This church has grown from just a few hundred, to more than 1500 under Tim’s leadership. It continues to grow and we look forward to the day when we will soon fill every seat in this beautiful building. One thing that we want to make clear is that Tim Has not committed any sin, or done anything that would disqualify him as an elder. Tim has been a great leader, and a great friend. He will be missed, and we will have a hard time filling his shoes, but we are very confident that God will continue to bless this church. – Pastor Jamie Munson and the Downtown Seattle elders From the Executive Elders: Mars Hill, we are also very sad to see our good friend Tim move on from Mars Hill. It is not our desire for Tim to leave, as we love the Gaydos family very much, and we believe Tim is well suited for this job. We would prefer that Tim remain as the Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle indefinitely, especially in light of the recent relocation to the heart of downtown, the growing influence of the church, and our big Easter celebration broadcasting live from the Downtown church in just a few weeks. However, Tim believes it is time for him to move onto something else. While Tim offered to stay on staff until a replacement is found, the executive elders met with Tim and made the decision that it would be in the best interest of the church for his resignation to take effect immediately, and the Downtown Seattle elders concurred with the decision. We love him and his family and we don’t want them to suffer through this transition, so we have offered him 3 months of severance, and will continue to pay for his medical benefits through the birth of their new baby. The news of Tim Gaydos leaving Mars Hill was unexpected and unforeseen, so we’ve put together an interim plan to care for you as we seek a new leader. As a church family, this is a very important time for us to care for each other and not be divisive, as we seek a leader who can lovingly and firmly lead this church towards embracing the mission and vision of Mars Hill, and what God has in store for one of our largest churches. As we consider the best candidate to lead the Downtown Seattle church, Pastor AJ Hamilton has accepted the responsibility to step in as the interim Lead Pastor of Downtown Seattle. Pastor AJ is a trustworthy and hardworking pastor that recently relocated to Bellevue from Mars Hill Albuquerque to lead our Community Groups ministry across all 14 churches. Pastor AJ was lead pastor of Mars Hill Albuquerque, so you are in very good hands. To provide support for Pastor AJ, Pastor Jason Skelton from our Bellevue church has joined the leadership team at Downtown Seattle as Executive Pastor. Our Bellevue church has been blessed with very gifted leaders and is one of our strongest and most stable churches. Lead Pastor Thomas Hurst will remain at Bellevue and has a wonderful team of elders to support our mission on the Eastside. We believe these changes will provide you with a very strong leadership team to help care for the church during this transition. It is our desire to find a permanent Lead Pastor as soon as we can. Mars Hill, we love you very much and we encourage you to stand strong during this season. This is a great time to step up to leadership, take on a serving role, or become a member of the church. We need faithful servants and humble leaders to carry the mission forward. Please pray and consider where God may have you serve. To come and serve Downtown, Pastor Mark will also begin preaching live from Downtown Seattle more often, as well as preaching live from Bellevue. We hope that these leadership changes are encouraging to you, as we have been very blessed with gifted leaders who love this church very much. Lastly, we know that transitions like this can be unsettling, particularly within a church that loves it’s elders as much as the people of Mars Hill do. Please join us in praying for our church to stay strong and continue to grow through this season. We believe a revival is coming to Seattle, and there’s nothing the enemy wants more than for our church to turn on itself or flee when there’s any sign of difficult times. We look forward to the amazing things God has in store for our church, particularly Mars Hill Downtown Seattle, and we’d like to encourage each of you as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. For God’s glory, Pastor Dave Bruskas, Pastor Sutton Turner, and Pastor Mark Driscoll

	View this topic on The City » UPDATE: For The Stranger's coverage, go here. Allegedly Will Little has resigned, according to comments identifying a "Will" but unable to identify a last name.  Will Little would fit the recent roster, if the report is true that a "Will" is leaving.

and Tim Gaydos, former lead pastor of Mars Hill Downtown, is gone

He had a relatively long run as campus pastors go but Tim Gaydos appears to be out of Mars Hill Downtown.

For a very brief bit of background

http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
p 107/145

10.31.07 Member Communication - Oct 29 meeting
Pastor Jamie Munson
... On October 29, the elders approved and commissioned five new pastors of Mars Hill, with three more men awaitin gapproval and commissioning in the next few weeks.  As of Monday, Tim Beltz, Tim Gaydos, jon Krombein, Matt Johnson and Tyler Powell are official elders/pastors of Mars Hill Church. 

And here's a brief bit about his educational background.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-gaydos/6/271/51a

Lead Pastor - Mars Hill Church Downtown Seattle
Mars Hill Church
Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry
October 2007 – Present (5 years 6 months)
...

Tim Gaydos' Education


The Master's College and Seminary
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), History
1994 – 2001

Now Gaydos' educational background is interesting because ...

http://www.masters.edu/abouttmc/president.aspx
... In 1985, John [MacArthur] became president of The Master's College (formerly Los Angeles Baptist College), an accredited, four-year liberal arts Christian college in Santa Clarita, California. In 1986, John founded The Master's Seminary, a graduate school dedicated to training men for full-time pastoral roles and missionary work.

During the years when John MacArthur ratcheted up his public fulminations about Mark Driscoll Mars Hill Church could point out that one of the men serving in a pastoral office inside the church had been educated at none other than The Master's College and Seminary.  How bad could the place be, one could propose, if a graduate from the college MacArthur had helmed was on board?

Whether or not Gaydos was canned or voluntarily resigned is not likely to be readily known.  There were mass layoffs in 2012 and Gaydos didn't seem to be among them.  He was around long enough to help the transition from the old Tabella to the new location.  So Mars Hill Downtown has a couple of things of note going on this last week, Munson's got his book on authority out and Gaydos is no longer lead pastor at Mars Hill Downtown.

Tomorrow will be a year after this incident, where David Drury was disinvited from participating in a screening of Holly Rollers at the Mars Hill Downtown campus.

So time will tell where Gaydos moves on to from here.  Regular readers will know that we got an update on Bill Clem's whereabouts in the last few weeks. 

UPDATE:

For folks who want to keep tabs on who's where, this may still be good for a while.

HT Matthew Johnson at the BHT, "It's like reports don't even try to be objective"

I did, as an Eastern Orthodox layman, wonder a bit about this historical summary:

The accession of a new Pope is always cause for wonderment — if only because the papacy of the Roman Catholic Church has managed to survive more trials than almost any other kingdom in history. No other institution can claim to have withstood Attila the Hun, the ambitions of the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, in addition to Stalin and his successors. Every new Pope faces fresh crisis and challenges. And in the 21st century, he does so at the head of a spiritual empire that touches more than 1.2 billion souls and whose influence crosses borders and contends with other great powers.

No other institution, other than the papacy, has survived Attila, the Ottomans, Hitler, Stalin, etc.? Speaking only as a member of an Antiochian Orthodox parish, I am sure that our patriarch in Damascus (a deadly serious place right now, once again) would consider that editorial statement questionable, at best.

I have relatives who are Antiochian Orthodox and so, even as a Protestant, I can agree that claiming the papacy alone has withstood all the above is questionable, at best.

As Matthew's observation goes, it's also like bloggers don't even try to be objective, either.  :)  I don't happen to think that objectivity is something that can even really be attained or, to put it another way, the most we can mean by objectivity is that our quest to discover the facts in a situation overtakes our desire to come to a snap judgment based on the information we've found.  Objectivity is no more than our best attempt to overcome the mental shortcuts our cognitive biases and heuristics within our brains usually lead us to.  If even scientistis can be overcome by these despite employing the scientific method then it should be a warning to all of us that no one is immune, particularly people who think they actually are.

"Doing Less Well", expectations for women in evangelicalism, and my breezy consideration of the Prov 31 woman being isolated from Prov 31 as a whole

http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2013/03/doing-less-well.html

... I attended a small Christian college with a fairly rigid social structure. All the cool kids volunteered in off-campus ministry, sung in an on-campus performing choir, participated in intramural sports, and performed in various plays on campus. I tried to keep up with these star students who seemed admired by both teachers and other students. My second semester, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I was in debate (actually won the intramural debate championship that semester because, well, I like to argue) and participated in a play that presented the gospel in sign language. I was keeping my grades up and participating in off-campus ministry too. I was sleep deprived and stressed trying to juggle all the things I thought I needed to juggle. And I just broke. It was horrible (and embarrassing). But it was the best thing that could have happened to me – breaking down and learning a hard but necessary lesson before I had a family depending on me keeping it together.
Since what is called "biblical womanhood" has been a point for discussion and debate for years now it's interesting that Wendy describes a struggle to be all things to all people as something she had to get over.  I don't know if Christian women deal with this all the time but it can seem as though the ideal to shoot for is to be lovely to all possible people at all possible points. 

Guys seem to get a different set of cultural instructions in explicit and implicit terms.  Roy Baumeister has written that men are considered men when they produce more than they consume.  He has also written that respect in male social systems tends to be a zero-sum game.  You have to prove you deserve to be in the club before you get in the club and then once in the club you have to establish that you're indispensible in order to keep your place in it. 

If women are admonished to be as lovely as possible to all possible people men are admonished to "know your role" and to be useful.  Even if you're useful in some capacity that is ultimately expendable (like the common foot soldier) you still need to be a specialist to have long-term viability in a social or economic system.  Guys tend to be urged to specialize in something. 

I'm not any different in this, I've got a local specialization.  As a guitarist once told me over dinner, I'm the guitarist where you can come up with some crazy, obscure combination of instruments that involve classical guitar and the odds are pretty good I know at least one piece composed for that combination.  That's one of my hobbies.  I've had the pleasure of reading two dissertations on bassoon and guitar literature because this one of those things I do.  I'm not an official scholar at any academic place but my love of chamber music is such that if you want to know what music has been written for bassoon and guitar I at least know of a handful of pieces. 

One of the things about the proverbial Proverbs 31 woman is she's presented as, in some sense, all things to all.  That there's a literary frame in which this woman is presented as a wife suitable for a king seems to get cast off quickly by a lot of commentaries and teaching I've heard.  There's more emphasis on women needing to shoot for this ideal without much corresponding consideration of whose wife she's described as being good for.  Let's remember Lemuel was getting advice from his mother.  Even if we propose the entire segment is an idealized fiction it's still a mother giving advice to her son.  One of her bits of advice is that it's not for kings to chase after women. 

The famous poem in Proverbs 31 may be taken as a caveat that if a king is going to get married that there are concerns about what kind of woman to marry and what the wife of a king should look like.  Or at least that's been my lasting impression about the gap between what evangelicals see in the Proverbs 31 woman as an isolated text and what I see in that text as part of the larger literary unit that Proverbs 31 is.  I have met guys who were looking for the Proverbs 31 woman and I have wondered if they considered whether they were Proverbs 31 men enough for that woman to accept their marriage proposal.  Not that I'm ever going to say who those guys are in some blog post, that would be uncalled for.  I do think that many a guy has to delude himself into thinking he's a better catch than he is in order to have any shot at being married at all, though.  That may explain why guys feel men and women can't be friends, because somewhere in the back of their minds the men think something might happen even when there's no chance of it.  :)

Just throwing that out for some consideration, in case anyone might be interested.

Practical theology for women: Secular perspective that reinforces biblical truth of walking in the light

http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2013/03/secular-perspective-that-reinforces.html

Ten years ago, my young husband's heart valve broke around the time we moved to Seattle. We were in the fortunate situation of having access to a very good heart surgeon at a very good hospital. After the surgery, the surgeon came out to talk with us and was upfront about a mistake he had made. While trying to repair the flap of the heart valve, he lost a piece of tiny equipment he was using to secure the flap. He was never able to find the missing piece in the heart and ended up having to completely replace the heart valve with an artificial heart valve instead of the more desired outcome of repairing my husband's own heart valve. He explained the problem clearly along with the potential concerns. We were just glad at that point that my husband was stable. However, about an hour after the doctor left us, my husband crashed and had to be raced back into surgery. I recount some of this in the opening of Practical Theology for Women. It's likely that the lost piece of equipment caused a heart attack, but even after the 2nd surgery, the doctor was still unable to find it. My husband was in critical condition for a bit, but he eventually recovered.

In all of that, it never occurred to me to even consider malpractice. When the surgeon made a mistake while trying to do the best for my husband, he was open and honest with me about it. We remained on the same team, even during his mistake. Years later, while reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, I understood a bit of the psychology of what happened in that moment. In Blink, Gladwell discusses malpractice rates and the momentary decisions doctors make that tend to lower their rates of malpractice. The basic thing Gladwell notes that predicts malpractice rates is the length of time doctors spend explaining situations to their patients, even negative situations of the doctor's own causing. The longer doctors spend with patients and more open they are about potential and actual problems, the lower the malpractice rates against them. That was exactly my experience. Our doctor was open and honest about potential problems as well as his own actual mistake, and that up front transparency on his part reinforced that we were on the same team with the same goals. I would go back to that doctor in a heartbeat (no pun intended) if we were in a similar situation. ...

There's quite a bit more in the above article that I won't quote much.  That's the big open for your consideration.  Wendy discusses that transparency about flaws and mistakes goes a long way to establishing trust. As some people have put it about political history and conspiracy it isn't always the crime itself that brings down an administration but the cover-up. 

Alastair Roberts: If the theologian of the 16th century was a laywer, the theologian of the 21st century is an ad man

http://alastairadversaria.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/rob-bell-and-don-draper-the-ad-mans-gospel/

... If the theologian of the 16^th century was a lawyer, the theologian of the 21^st century is an ad man.
For this is what Rob Bell is. If we are to understand Bell, it is imperative that we recognize the sort of movement in Christian discourse that he exemplifies.

The ad man doesn’t persuade his customer by making a carefully reasoned and developed argument, but by subtly deflecting objections, evoking feelings and impressions, and directing those feelings and harnessing those impressions in a way that serves his interests. Where the lawyer argues, the ad man massages.

Yep

As Don says, ‘You are the product. You, feeling something.’

The ad man knows this secret, and so do many contemporary evangelicals. Much of the time Bell isn’t trying to communicate a particular abstract theology to people. Rather, he elicits desirable emotive states from his audience and connects those with a heavily chamfered theology while tying undesirable emotive states to opposing viewpoints. All of this can be done without actually presenting a carefully reasoned and developed argument for one’s own position, or engaging closely with opposing viewpoints.

The evangelical teacher who takes this approach becomes the product or maybe this doesn't go far enough, such an evangelical teacher makes you the product by seeming authentic enough that you relate to the teacher. 

As he's done before, Alastair quotes from this succint observation about different styles of reading.

Then there’s this other type of person. As nearly as I can tell, they seem to create collages in their mind as they read. Turns of phrase here and individual metaphors there get thrown into different places in the collage until they have what appears to them to be a fairly complete picture, then they react to the picture in more of a qualitative way (this reaction is usually emotional since they don’t really do “critiquing logic” or “refuting ideas”). This sort of person really doesn’t do very well at all with complex writing, especially writing that goes in directions they’re not used to. In my experience, explaining what I wrote to a person like this is a lost cause. I inevitably find myself repeating ideas over and over, quoting my own text, and dissecting my own grammar to prove to this sort of person that I said what I actually said. If your audience is this sort of person, you need to be extremely careful in how you choose your individual words and phrases, or you will set off a negative emotional reaction that makes further communication impossible.

For those of us who actually keep track of what a person says or argues at point A all the way to point Z this other type of reader can be difficult to account for.  The internet seems to have spawned, in the last two decades, some kind of reader who responds to their emotional reaction to the gestalt they constructed from what they felt when they read something rather than what was actually written.  This sort of reader will seize upon a single word and his/her emotional reaction to that one word, regardless of authorial intent, and build an entire response to that and apparently just that.  Writers can be sloppy and need rewriting but even accounting for that there's no stopping a reader of the sort Fearsome described from misreading what was written. 

Alastair observes how Rob Bell's approach is that of the ad man and the way he described Bell's approach as a speaker and a theologian I found myself thinking, "This whole approach seems kinda familiar."  It's fascinating to consider that whether the evangelical left or right both guys credited with founding two very different kinds of Mars Hills could end employing more or less the same set of rhetorical tricks to win big audiences. 

Alastair Roberts refers to Rob Bell's Oldsmobile, I'll refer back to Mark Driscoll building a case that Esther was not a very godly woman in a sermon that hinged on, among other things, appealing to the moral intuition of Mark Driscoll's teenaged daughter Ashley.  There were a few sloppy references to OT literature that don't add up but the zinger for personal impact was Driscoll mentioning his conversation with his daughter.  The point was about the emotional sell rather than the substance in both cases, far as I can tell.  Object to Bell's whole approach and you're in favor of the Oldsmobile.  Object to Driscoll case that Esther was somehow not that godly a woman, and that he's not only poisoned the well by saying that your view of Esther as a godly woman makes Esther as a book "worthless", but has also thrown in an anecdote about his sweet daughter Ashley to boot then you're objecting to the competence and sentiments of a teenage girl.  Well, okay, since we know that the opinions of teen-aged daughters of celebrity pastors always and automatically come armed with a mastery of biblical languages and ancient Persian and Jewish social conventions ... .

Or we could point out that both Bell and Driscoll are selling junk but saying that ad men are just selling something has the protection of those who have already bought the sell, which is the ad man feeling something.  The same thing works in reverse these days, when once someone has decided they see through the ad man's persona and techniques nothing is acceptable, because the halo effect and the sunk cost emotional investment work in both directions, both for and against. 

Mockingbird on loving Jennifer Lawrence and hating Anne Hathaway--what's the underlying law of feminine appeal here?

http://www.mbird.com/2013/03/jennifer-lawrence-anne-hathaway-and-authenticity-witchhunts/

DZ has been noting for weeks that there are people digging Jennifer Lawrence and hating Anne Hathaway.  I'm okay with both actresses myself.  Lawrence had a pretty thankless role as a young Mystique in X-Men: First Class but anyone who saw that film would have realized it was hardly her fault there was little for her to do. When I saw the film with my brother a few years ago he said she wasn't that memorable or good.  I opted to be more generous, I said that if someone gave her a real character and an actual story she could do some good work.  Well, take that brother, apparently she's been given some better material! 

As for Hathaway, I frequent comic book discussion forums enough to remember the Hatha-hate revolving in part around Hathaway not being "sexy" enough to play Selina Kyle. Those were moments when I remembered a long-ago quote from comics author and artist Andi Watson in which he said that comics would look different if more comics artists had ever touched a real, living woman even once in their lives.  But I'm in danger of digressing again, I spotted over on Slate that an author quoted Howard Stern on Hathaway with the sentiment, "She tries too hard."

Whether we're talking about the tomboy or the glamorous princess apparently the big put-down is if the effort shows.  Now this may be a useless, sweeping generalization but men seem eager to show off how much they work at something. Even when a guy makes light of how effortlessly he did or said something the underlying point, for many a guy, is you know the guy is saying that he has paid his dues and he has earned the respect you should be giving him now.  Men are supposed to be able to conspicuously earn whatever they get.  Women, it seems, are expected to be so naturally and effortlessly lovely and charming that letting slip the amount of ambition and effort going into being whatever kind of woman you are is a betrayal of some underlying law of idealized femininity, "Thou shalt not be seen as working at being a woman."  If this were really some hegemonic patriarchal impulse, though, there shouldn't be any women in any context hating on Hathaway, should there? 

That in as enlightened an age was we're supposedly in that there's any "Hatha-hate" at all suggests that we'll never be that enlightened.  There's going to be some visceral lizard-brain reaction if, as DZ and others have put it, someone is considered not-pretty-enough or too-pretty.  The women who are considered too-pretty under normal circumstances will get a pass if enough people have decided "Well, she's not conspicuously working at it, so she must be okay."  These kinds of status assessment games don't stop getting played just because we tell ourselves we're above them. 

The things we sing about and the things we don't

If someone were to corner me about why I love classical music (not that anyone has or likely will) I'd say I love the musical invention involved in the tradition.  There's folk music I like but I've always been willing to admit that folk music is often not quite as interesting to me.  Even when I was a kid I remember Handel's famous chorus more than the folk songs I heard.  I loathed "Old Dan Tucker" as a kid because the melody was grating and the lyrics didn't make any sense.  I also intensely disliked "Turn, Turn Turn" because even as a ten or eleven-year old boy I had read just enough of Ecclesiastes to object that "a time for war" really was in that text.  Yeah, maybe I always had a pedantic and earnest side to me. :)

I do enjoy some popular music.  I like a bit of jazz, rock, pop, country if it's written by people born before 1960 (ergo Hank Williams Sr, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard are all fun and I ignore Garth Brooks and beyond).  I like blues in measured doses and particularly like pre-World War 2 blues more than post-war blues in my listening habits.  But most of what I listen to is, no surprise, classical music. I've listened to way more of Beethoven's piano sonatas in the last few months than I've listened to Portishead or even Stevie Wonder (and I love Stevie Wonder's music and have since I was in my early teens). 

But Beethoven sonatas, you know that gets to the other thing, I love instrumental music and I have met people for whom music that doesn't include the human voice is just not interesting for them.  I find it fascinating and for me it's partly because instrumental music is capable of doing more than just expressing feelings, which all kinds of music can do most of the time.  Vocal music can express feelings and talk about ideas but instrumental music works at another level, where there are feelings but the musical ideas as ideas are what your mind has to engage.

Now if I were to describe a typical sonata allegro form in a Beethoven sonata (with the repeats observed) I could point out that the exposition, development and recapitulation resemble a Tin Pan Alley song.  You have an exposition that repeats and in this exposition you have your first group in one key and your second group in another key mediated by a transition.  Verse, chorus.  This repeats, so you get verse, chorus, verse chorus.  The development section is where the ideas of the exposition are subjected to fragmentation, extension, expansion and, in a word, development.  Take me to the bridge.  The recapitulation is where your thematic groups are brought back and all the groups are in the same key (normally).  Thus the final verse and chorus in your Tin Pan Alley song format.

Classical snobs may not admit the resemblance but Beethoven and Haydn piano sonatas, properly observed for their structural repeats, are writ large anticipations of a fairly straightforward structural approach in American popular music.  But I'm derailing my own topic as I often do.

Back to songs, the actual sung sorts of songs. 

People sing about the things about which they are very engaged.  Songs are exaggerations, distillations of feelings and that means that for any topic to make its way into song it must be a topic with which a person obsesses long enough to turn into song.  A lot of songs in the last sixty years are not about "Yeah, the harvest is here and we didn't die of a famine during the last winter!  Go, go sweet potatoe!"  You don't hear songs like that.  Anyone remember that category of song from folk tradition called the work song?  How many o fthose do you hear in your cubicle?  Right, that's kinda my point.  In the last half century songs about the day job tend to come in a few generic categories: 1) working for the Man 2) the daily grind of being a rock star and 3) satires of people who have jobs we disdain.  Maybe there's a fourth category praising working class heroes or something like that but that category is more political than a discussion of the actual nature of the day job.

There's always sex, drugs and rock `n roll but after thirty years of hearing that it sounds pretty self-reflexive.  Part of why I enjoy classical music in general and instrumental music in particular is that I am simply not going to hear phrases like "ooh baby", ever, in a Beethoven piano sonata.  Better yet, I won't hear in a string quartet a line like "She's just sixteen years old, `leave her alone', they say."  If you want to know one of the lines from a pop song that has never failed to fill me with loathing and revulsion over the last twenty years, well, there you go.  The line stirs me up with feelings of wanting to do violence to some stupid punk who wants to hit on my younger sister.  If you don't know what song that quoted line is from be thankful.

I haven't listened to radio in twenty years so maybe these days rock and roll and pop is all about bad daddies and lazy mommies and "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" (one of the few songs by Alan Parsons I can remember some two decades later for its acrid but compelling brevity).  But if the Beatles and Bob Dylan are still touchstones of songwriting the falling-in-love and the fell-out-of-love song will still more or less dominate.  For many, many people that's something they relate to because, as a famous song discussing love at first sight has it, "I'm certain that it happens all the time."  Well, not for me, and so many songs about true love and its inevitable end are difficult to find relatable because, while those may be subjects I'll care about ardently enough to write songs about down the road it's been a while since I was at that spot and I don't even know if I'll be at that spot. 

If you've ever sat through a mandatory pep assembly for a high school sports team then perhaps you know the awkward feeling of hearing hundreds or thousands of people around you singing their hearts out over some cause that is completely inexplicable to you.  In that sense I think I can imagine how atheists must feel visiting church services because my inability to grasp why anyone would sing cheers or chants about athletic events has persisted for decades.  I don't get cheering for or singing about athletic achievement.  Then again, I've never been an athlete and probably never will be.  I'm a musician, sometimes, and a composer. 

So it might be a surprise to share that I loathe songs about the power of music.  I don't think the art of music should be employed in some narcissistic self-congratulatory ode to itself.  As beautiful as music is surely it can beautiful enough that nobody has to write songs extolling the power of music to bring us together.  If I hear a solid love song (and Stevie Wonder has written many) I can appreciate the music and the music can help me appreciate what it can feel like to be in love or feel betrayed by someone you gave your heart to.  But even as a composer and a musician I detest songs praising the power of song.

That was supposed to be more clearly thought out than I'm sure it was.

Jamie Munson has a book out about ... Authority

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BDA0WTA/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00BDA0WTA&linkCode=as2&tag=jamimuns-20

There was some mention of plans for a book mentioned when Munson resigned from being Lead Pastor.  This appears to be the book. 

Slate features an article about that Facebook math problem and changing conventions in mathematics

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/03/facebook_math_problem_why_pemdas_doesn_t_always_give_a_clear_answer.single.html

I learned the old approach to order of operations and wasn't aware how it was possible for conventions about order of operations and interpretations of symbols could have changed in mathematics in the last thirty years.  After all, math is math and not amenable to any changes, right?  Well, as the article explains, the math part isn't but our slippery use of symbolic language has. 

This is why we need pedants on the subject of language and usage, isn't it?  Somebody has to care about exactly how words get put together and that's why all writers need editors who edit.  :) 

Elephant's Debt Update: Harvest Bible Church and a possible lack of disclosure to a Romanian church about its pastor's income

http://theelephantsdebt.com/2013/03/06/recent-updates-27-february-2013/#more-1577

For those who are aware who James MacDonald is he's sounded off in hyperbolic terms about how congregational church polity is of the devil.  Now I'm not a Baptist and I'm not in a church with congregational polity but I have no problem with congregational polity.  :)  It's going to sound trite in the extreme but some of my favorite bloggers have been Baptists.  Longtime readers probably already know which Baptists, for that matter, have been my favorite bloggers to read. 

Without further ado:

... On the 11th of February, 2013, The Elephant’s Debt was contacted by an individual with strong ties to Harvest. According to this source, a member of Harvest Metanoia (Romania) had recently translated The Elephant’s Debt from English into Romanian; and was passing the site around within the local congregation. According to other sources that are active in the congregation, Metanoia’s Senior Pastor, Christian Barbosu, attempted to calm the growing storm by preaching a sermon on the topic of MacDonald’s character. According to these sources, the congregation was reportedly distressed over MacDonald’s admission of gambling and his excessive salary.

Compounding the problem was the fact that Metanoia had only two years prior discovered that their senior pastor, Christian Barbosu, was being compensated from the United States. What made this particularly troubling to the conservative, Eastern European congregation was that they had been sacrificially giving so that their pastor might have an average salary according to Romanian standards of living. They knew nothing of Barbosu’s support coming from the United States; and were greatly troubled by their pastor’s failure to inform them of this practice.

Transparency in finances is important in any organizationand if a group of people sacrifically give to a project or a person's salary only to discover at length there was a lack of full disclosure about something that betrays trust.  There are going to be things that are on a need-to-know basis, I suppose, but if true this situation is one where that wasn't one of those times.  Getting compensation from the US while Romanian Christians give money they don't always have to spare is bad.  After a few years in some places Wenatchee finds it nearly impossible not to be skeptical about anyone who urges that people "give sacrificially".

But that aside having been written and set aside, there's an update at The Elephant's Debt in case you're curious.

Sex & Power and a self-diagnosed epidemics in religious community

IN VIEW OF THE PRESENT CRISIS ...

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/sex-and-power-an-irish-perspective-on-the-abuse-scandal-in-the-catholic-church

While Internet Monk is running a series of pieces on scandals in the contemporary church this is not necessarily about those scandals.  Instead this is a sidelong rumination on conditions that are described as setting the stage in social and economic terms for certain kinds of scandals in a specific church.  While Christians will obviously and understandably want to frame the scandals in spiritual terms there are things that will ensue that can be framed in social and economic terms and it is those timebound and placebound elements that are of interest because different Christian communities define different things as a scandal or a crisis.  While some of Wenatchee's blogging associates have written extensively about the crisis of sexual abuse that is not reported among the neo-Reformed churches in the last decade Wenatchee has noticed that when given the time to voluntarily air grievances about what they consider to be a crisis the neo-Calvinists have, often enough, considered the problem with today's culture (over the last ten years) to be ... some kind of epidemic of singleness.  Let's get to that after a lengthy digression on some historical background to church careers and family options in Ireland over the last few centuries, though, shall we?

Martha of Ireland has written at some length on the subject of abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.  She provides a lengthy (if still curtailed) history of the Irish Catholics in relationship to England.  One of the things she mentions is the Catholic Emancipation Act. This act, in 1829, opened doors for middle-class Catholics to hold public office. Catholics could leave property to heirs instead of subdividing estates before death. 

When the Great Famine of the mid-19th century hit  Martha writes a bit about the significance of the famine and I'll quote selectively.

... Now, what is the point I am trying to make here in relation to the reeking mess of scandal in latter-day Ireland? It’s this: due to political and social circumstances, in pre-Famine Ireland the tendency was for early marriages and high fertility, particularly amongst the lower orders and the poor. Since Catholics could not inherit or will property from or to other Catholics, if a man had a farm or any sizeable amount of land, he would divide it up amongst all his sons. They, in turn, would further sub-divide what they had amongst their children and so forth. Because of the high yield food crop – the potato – this made it feasible for a man to marry and raise a family on a small patch of land; if you had an acre of potatoes and a pig, as the saying went, you could make a living. It wasn’t sustainable, of course, but the system staggered along pretty well until a crisis hit – a crisis like the Great Hunger.

After the Famine, this all changed. The poor, the farm labourers, the landless, were the ones who suffered most. This meant that those who had land wanted even more land for economic security. A farm had to be a certain size to be viable. And since Catholics could now inherit property, a man could leave all his land to his eldest son upon his death instead of sub-dividing it during his life. It also meant that to be marriageable, a woman had to bring a dowry with her.

What this meant was that one son (and maybe only one daughter, who had a dowry to marry on) were provided for. The rest of the children? There was always the emigrant ship, since there wasn’t the industrialised base to absorb their labour.

Or there was religion. Yes, I’m finally tying it all together.

Remember, Irish Catholicism has become very respectable in response to pressure of political and public opinion from the British government and public. Couple that with a tendency in 19th century Irish Catholicism towards Jansenism, which meant a very rigid and rigorous and unforgiving parade of public piety, and the fact that some earnest British officials did actually blame the Famine as the just punishment of a rebellious and ungrateful (and even worse, papist) Irish populace by a wrathful God, and the urge to prove our probity and respectability and innocence of wrongdoing was even more pressing.

So any kind of slip, any kind of perception of sin, was not just dishonouring yourself, it was bringing disgrace on your family and on your nation. It was proving that the Irish were drunken, lecherous, criminal, rebellious types whose only hope of salvation was to turn towards becoming good British subjects and adopting the Protestant religion. Poverty was not a misfortune, it was a crime. And crime itself –- unforgiveable!

On the other hand, having a priest or a nun or a religious brother in the family brought good repute, gave the family high standing in public respect, and was a pledge of virtue in this life and heavenly reward in the next.

So a combination of lack of opportunity, lack of a mature understanding of sexuality, and social pressure meant that a lot of men and women who were not suited for the religious life entered monasteries and convents and teaching orders and seminaries. If they found, in the middle of their novitiate, that they were unsuited, there was little they could do. The disgrace of leaving – of being a “spoiled priest” or a nun who dropped out – meant that their families would be shamed and that they would have to emigrate anyway, with little or no formal education or trade to fall back on. So by default, they stayed where they were.

And since the State was not operating the range of social services we now expect them to run under the umbrella of public service, it was the Church and the religious orders who took up the slack. So untrained people were given responsibility and authority that they didn’t know how to handle in a culture where suffocating social conformity and outward respectability was the norm, and any deviation was seen as meriting firm discipline.

I don't mention these things to revisit the interminable Protestant/Catholic debates. I bring it up as a matter of observation about the economic opportunities and restrictions Catholics dealt with in Ireland in certain areas of land options and marriage.  And here's why.

It's hard to escape the observation that among various types of Reformed bloggers and cultural pundits that in the last ten years no shortage of blogging and bloviating about the "epidemic of singleness" happened.  In many cases the diagnosis is that young men just won't "man up" and go take wives to the glory of Jesus.  Maybe feminism will get blamed for giving women unrealistic expectations about their biological clocks and the degree of career options they want before they try to have a baby in a panic as middle-age looms.  I've seen that happen, but for the most part it gets back to the young men having this need to man up.  As a certain preacher liked to put it if you get the young men you get everything, the culture, the women, the children, the money, the power to shape the future legacy in your area and if you don't get the young men you get nothing.

So that epidemic of single guys in their 20s or 30s who won't grow up is a big old crisis that has to get remedied.  How?  Well, you just tell them they're the problem and that they need to fix it already.  They know the solution because you tell them it's to love Jesus, get a real job, take a wife and make babies for Jesus' fame.

Curiously enough the middle-aged guys who are most likely to get on this soapbox benefited from the lending practices and housing market of a decade ago.  Building your stump speech on what you got to work before the housing bubble is building your stump speech on a set of circumstances that don't exist anymore. 

Ten to fourteen years ago the big spiel at Mars Hill was living in community.  What that meant was a bunch of young couples with foundational influence in the nascent church bought houses they probably couldn't have afforded on their two incomes, rented out every possible spare room to singles in the church, and used the revenue of that rental matrix to cover basic expense of the mortgage while the newlyweds built a nest egg to meet expenses on their own terms once babies emerged and the single tenants could be sent on their merry (and ideally married) ways.  Living in community was in some practical sense a shorthand for dispersion of costs that young couples couldn't afford more than a decade ago.  It was all good because over time earning power would grow. That was then, now is now.

And now is after the real estate bubble of 2008.  When economic times get rough the age of first marriage gets later and later.  Correlation doesn't always indicate causation but has any Christian cultural pundit noticed that the last time the age of first marriage got so late was during the Great Depression?  That might be worth noting.  It's not that people don't find each other attractive, personally appealing, and sexually desirable.  It happens, it's just that marriage and attaining that nuclear family has become more and more financially difficult.  In the early years of Mars Hill the Driscolls were known to rent their spare rooms to three or four single guys.  Wenatchee has met a few of them, for what that's worth. 

The "epidemic of singleness" or "adultescence" may not simply be because young guys won't "man up" but because there are more young people than jobs for them to do in the American economy.  What if a generation that got used to living on credit and trading tomorrow for today sunk a chunk of the jobs that today's young people could have had?  Whatever the moral problems of whatever "hook-up culture" is are not mutually exclusive to an economic climate in which people find each other sexually desirable but probably can't go build nuclear families without help from a panoply of programs that have existed since The New Deal.  Some of the middle-aged pundits who are opining about men in their 20s not manning up now may not realize that when they were that age they benefited from a set of lending and real estate options that today's young guys won't have access to.

Over generations Protestants and some progressive Catholics have proposed that if priests were simply allowed to marry that sex scandals would disappear.  Doubtful.  Anyone who has kept track of the scandals associated with sex in evangelical settings would find it improbable that merely letting Catholic priests marry would prevent sexual abuse from happening.  Many sexual predators may be married and have marriages that are a suitable cover from which to prey upon others.  The Eastern Orthodox permit a man to marry before taking orders and that may help some but it's impossible that the Orthodox scene is completely without sex scandals, either. 

But Wenatchee's not going to deal with that, rather Wenatchee's considering that sex scandals are no less legion in evangelical Protestantism in some parts.  What the difference is between institutional suppression in one realm and a lack of documented abuse in another may simply be a difference of the Catholics having better bureaucratic tools to measure what's already there that Protestants may sweep under the rug.  Sexual abuse can happen in any institution, whether schools or the military or hospitals.  It's more scandalous when it happens in settings where people are steadily enjoyed to flee fleshly lusts because while a person may like to have a lot of sex and work in the medical profession the requirements to manage risks doesn't include eternal reward or punishment in a lot of medical settings.

Here's an idea for consideration for the neo-Calvinists, go dig through economic histories and ask to what degree the American middle-class nuclear family and "working class" family existed prior to the New Deal.  To what degree has the American suburban family come about through the panoply of New Deal programs set in place before the Second World War?  What about removing the gold standard?  What about fiddling with interest rates?  What about these things existing in tandem with fractional reserve banking?  What about the G. I. Bill for education?  What about the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act, give or take wording in the title?  During the last few years in which Wenatchee has done job hunting it was an interesting discovery how much of the welfare net exists for families.  It's not as though I've never come across people even inside MH who were on food stamps or needed state assistance. I've heard of a case or two in which a family man could not seriously consider taking a job at Mars Hill because if he did he'd end up on food stamps, he didn't want that, and so he looked for work somewhere else.  At the tippy top where Black Dynamite fights Richard Nixon money may be plentiful but on lower rungs in the employment ladder non-profits are not places where employees roll in money. 

And as I've intimated and hinted at throughout this blog the idea that 20-somethings can get married and start nuclear families is not economically realistic in most cases.  It wasn't even how things played out in the earliest days of Mars Hill and this many of us saw directly as the church was taking shape.  It was the expanded informal approach of extended family in which blood and friendship might overlap that a lot of marriages were able to thrive while the 20-something men and women got their footing secure enough to really own their houses and not just live in houses that were only financially feasible for couples who were renting every spare room to whomever they felt they could trust. 

In the neo-Calvinist scene I'd hear it said that Paul's instructions about marriage in 1 Cor 7 are conditional on a time of persecution, most likely.  We don't know for sure, so the presentation went, but the praxis is that unless you're smuggling Bibles into China you should be married.  But what if the "present distress" was a famine?  Then Paul's argument becomes a practical consideration, if you live in a time and place where financial resources and food are in short supply it may be wise to not marry unless you absolutely cannot prevent yourself from "coming together".  Some people abstain from sex not because they haven't given any thought to married life or attraction but because it wouldn't be financially responsible to seek marriage or appropriate certain famous privileges within married life in a given economic setting. 

In light of sex scandals even among neo-Calvinist churches that have come to light in the last few years it hardly seems like the most besetting epidemic to be dealt with in the new Calvinist scene has really been the old epidemic of singleness.  The last ten years the neo-Calvinists may have been barking up the wrong tree.

Internet Monk: Radical Enough? Part one

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/dan-jepsen-radical-enough-part-one

Just a link will suffice here, seeing as the link tells you what's to come.  As a former Pentecostal I saw more than my share of sentiment that said that if you just cut loose and got on fire for the Lord that amazing things would happen.  I grew up in a cultural setting in which revival was the official big goal and hope for America, if revival came along America would be better.  In my teens I took that pretty seriously, or so I thought.  By my twenties as I did a bit more of a survey of church history I began to distrust revivalism not only in terms of Second Great Awakening figures and their theology but also the frequently political aims that seemed to be the subtext of a lot of revival talk.  If God was used as a means to an end then the real goal was not revival so much as what revival was expected to lead to.

As D. G. Hart has proposed in at least one book evangelicals may imagine that dedicated evangelicalism would lead to voting for certain types of Republicans but historically this is not demonstrably true.  Anyone still remember Mark Hatfield?  Native Oregonians probably, the rest of you may understandably have never heard of him.

Anyway, I make no bones about saying that i grew up in a setting where being radical and sold out was valuable and now I tilt more toward what some might call the God of the Mundane (though I haven't read that book yet, discretionary income being at enough of a premium that there's a backlog of things that aren't music for this composer/guitarist to explore at the moment).

HT Jim West: Tom Verenna reviews Candida Moss' book The Myth of Christian Persecution

http://tomverenna.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/book-review-candida-moss-the-myth-of-persecution/

Moss has recently published a book laying out a case that stories of ancient universal Christian persecution are largely myth.  This isn't a case that early Christians weren't persecuted but that the stories of persecution widely accepted by many Christians now are narratives for which evidence is scanter than frequently supposed.

Jim West has apparently reviewed the book but I can get to the review from the links provided in-site over at his blog.  Maybe the review isn't up yet.  Been a bit busy preparing some new material for this blog, after all.  Anyway, wanted to link to the review.  Identifying public criticism as persecution is something some Christians find very, very easy to do, even when public criticism can actually be based on legitimate claims and concerns so a book from a scholar exploring whether or not the ancient persecutions to which modern-day self-labeled persecution is often compared (as opposed to actual present or past persecution) could be a useful study.

Another HT to Jim West: John Collins on The Dead Sea Scrolls and their controversies

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-collins-dead-sea-scrolls-and-controversy-20130310,0,562776.story