Sometimes I blog and sometimes I write and it is coincidental, at times, that these two spheres of activity overlap. This has been one of those times where there is not necessarily any real overlap.
Longtime readers know there's things in store for some ongoing projects. There's a lot more coming along for that project, if you know what the project is.
There's not much planned for the real estate series because documenting real estate acquisitions gets tedious after a while.
I'm aware of a story involving some claims about demons that has been posted. I have seen that a few people reflexively stake out the axiom that there are two sides to every story but what they really mean by that is there is only one side they want to take seriously.
Appropos of nothing, perhaps, I would suggest all those people go pop in Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon in which multiple people provide conflicting accounts and none of the accounts add up to a simple narrative. Yeah, folks, it's kinda like that.
The Ecclesiastes allusion is deliberate because I've finished a fantastic commentary on Ecclesiastes I hope to blog about later. But right now I'm more interested in writing stuff that doesn't necessarily end up here. I'm excited to be working on some new chamber pieces for some combinations of instruments that are exceedingly rare in one style of music as they are common in another.
I have not forgotten about Chamber Music Week 2 but there's a time to blog and a time to write and a time to hang out with family and friends and watch movies. So comparatively speaking I have not done a lot here and have not been in any rush to do too much in connection to the blog at the moment. Sometimes you want to have a fun 4th of July week and just tinker with a post or two rather than crank out a lot of posts.
Friday, July 06, 2012
HT Mockingbird: Trickle Down Distress
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/trickle-down-distress-how-americas-broken-meritocracy-drives-our-national-anxiety-epidemic/259383/
... When using meritocracy calculators to assess achievement, we often overlook or dismiss how much luck can affect lives. If any good has come of the current economic crisis, it's how much harder doing that has become. "Merit hard liners downplay the effects of luck," says McNamee. "But the imperfections and ultimate uncertainty of both the stock market on Wall Street and the labor market on Main Street add an undeniable element of luck into the mix." And while the U.S. government does have a history of passing laws aimed at equalizing opportunity and eliminating discrimination, it has simultaneously encouraged great economic disparities. "Major structural changes in the U.S. economy such as de-industrialization, automation, and globalization have displaced workers quite independent of the merit of individuals," says McNamee. "The historical decline in self-employment and the concomitant rise and dominance of large oligarchic corporations (including chains and franchises) have created barriers of entry for starting and sustaining small businesses and sharply reduced the entrepreneurial path to mobility."
This kind of meritocracy can be considered the core of not just various forms of prosperity teaching that uniquely thrive in the United States, it may also be seen in an incipient form in a misunderstanding of the nature of the Wisdom literature itself. If you read the book of Proverbs as a series of life-rules for prosperity at any level that is in part because that's where Proverbs goes. A broader question of what role the Wisdom literature has within the canon is a topic I have not seen rank and file Christians discuss nearly as much as textual scholars. If Proverbs is offset by both Job and the book of Ecclesiastes that is a pretty significant caveat to how strictly and broadly to apply concepts spelled out in a few proverbs.
Years ago I heard a preacher propose that a new revival of Christian teaching and practice might emerge from immersion in Wisdom literature. I would suggest that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a revival of any Christian piety of any kind anchored to any wisdom literature. Without regard for the Lord and a recognition of inscrutable providence Wisdom literature leads to despair or to a prosperity gospel. For instance, let's say you're a never-married man and you have that proverb about how he who finds a wife finds what is good and has favor from the Lord. By itself that's just a proverb. Your being married or unmarried does not in fact prove anything about whether you have pleased the Lord. God killed Nabal, after all, and Abigail was a prize of a wife, right? King Saul had a wife and some solid kids but was rejected by the Lord. A failure to read the Wisdom literature in the broader context of the canon can lead a person to mistakenly propose that the Wisdom literature will show you how to live a more successful life.
Back in 2010 I blogged about the liberation of being average. Wendy, over at Practical Theology for Women, blogged about the prosperity gospel of conservative evangelicals.
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2010/01/prosperity-gospel-of-conservative.html
Seeing as I finished a fascinating commentary on Ecclesiastes all of these articles discussing meritocracy and anxiety will provide some set-up for future blog entries about Shields' fascinating take on Ecclesiastes. Let me set the stage a bit on that one by proposing that the reason Job and Ecclesiastes ended up in the canon was at least in part due to a realization that the temptation to misapply wisdom literature into a mechanistic prosperity system is so likely that there needed to be two books to correct against that. Job shows us a case study in which a godly man was struck by disaster in a way that had nothing to do with his righteousness. Ecclesiastes shows us the musings of the greatest sage of his time remarking that wisdom is useless and ineffectual in the long run, and that wisdom is unable to answer the important questions of life and unable to deliver what people think it promises.
But it's best to save some of that stuff for the sequels.
... When using meritocracy calculators to assess achievement, we often overlook or dismiss how much luck can affect lives. If any good has come of the current economic crisis, it's how much harder doing that has become. "Merit hard liners downplay the effects of luck," says McNamee. "But the imperfections and ultimate uncertainty of both the stock market on Wall Street and the labor market on Main Street add an undeniable element of luck into the mix." And while the U.S. government does have a history of passing laws aimed at equalizing opportunity and eliminating discrimination, it has simultaneously encouraged great economic disparities. "Major structural changes in the U.S. economy such as de-industrialization, automation, and globalization have displaced workers quite independent of the merit of individuals," says McNamee. "The historical decline in self-employment and the concomitant rise and dominance of large oligarchic corporations (including chains and franchises) have created barriers of entry for starting and sustaining small businesses and sharply reduced the entrepreneurial path to mobility."
This kind of meritocracy can be considered the core of not just various forms of prosperity teaching that uniquely thrive in the United States, it may also be seen in an incipient form in a misunderstanding of the nature of the Wisdom literature itself. If you read the book of Proverbs as a series of life-rules for prosperity at any level that is in part because that's where Proverbs goes. A broader question of what role the Wisdom literature has within the canon is a topic I have not seen rank and file Christians discuss nearly as much as textual scholars. If Proverbs is offset by both Job and the book of Ecclesiastes that is a pretty significant caveat to how strictly and broadly to apply concepts spelled out in a few proverbs.
Years ago I heard a preacher propose that a new revival of Christian teaching and practice might emerge from immersion in Wisdom literature. I would suggest that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a revival of any Christian piety of any kind anchored to any wisdom literature. Without regard for the Lord and a recognition of inscrutable providence Wisdom literature leads to despair or to a prosperity gospel. For instance, let's say you're a never-married man and you have that proverb about how he who finds a wife finds what is good and has favor from the Lord. By itself that's just a proverb. Your being married or unmarried does not in fact prove anything about whether you have pleased the Lord. God killed Nabal, after all, and Abigail was a prize of a wife, right? King Saul had a wife and some solid kids but was rejected by the Lord. A failure to read the Wisdom literature in the broader context of the canon can lead a person to mistakenly propose that the Wisdom literature will show you how to live a more successful life.
Back in 2010 I blogged about the liberation of being average. Wendy, over at Practical Theology for Women, blogged about the prosperity gospel of conservative evangelicals.
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2010/01/prosperity-gospel-of-conservative.html
Seeing as I finished a fascinating commentary on Ecclesiastes all of these articles discussing meritocracy and anxiety will provide some set-up for future blog entries about Shields' fascinating take on Ecclesiastes. Let me set the stage a bit on that one by proposing that the reason Job and Ecclesiastes ended up in the canon was at least in part due to a realization that the temptation to misapply wisdom literature into a mechanistic prosperity system is so likely that there needed to be two books to correct against that. Job shows us a case study in which a godly man was struck by disaster in a way that had nothing to do with his righteousness. Ecclesiastes shows us the musings of the greatest sage of his time remarking that wisdom is useless and ineffectual in the long run, and that wisdom is unable to answer the important questions of life and unable to deliver what people think it promises.
But it's best to save some of that stuff for the sequels.
HT Mockingbird: Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/your-money/redefining-success-and-celebrating-the-unremarkable.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/your-money/redefining-success-and-celebrating-the-unremarkable.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
A couple of years ago I wrote about the liberation of being average:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2010/10/liberation-of-being-average.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2010/11/liberation-of-being-average-part-2.html
The prospect of having to be special all the time can be a miserable expectation and it may be fitting this NYT article showed up in the weeks after Pixar's new film Brave got released. Let me playfully suggest that the fantasy setting of the new film can be held to correspond to the fantasy futures parents often envision for their children, futures that often can't exist because the world into which the children are hoped to grow up will never materialize.
This week is more of a week of links.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/your-money/redefining-success-and-celebrating-the-unremarkable.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
A couple of years ago I wrote about the liberation of being average:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2010/10/liberation-of-being-average.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2010/11/liberation-of-being-average-part-2.html
The prospect of having to be special all the time can be a miserable expectation and it may be fitting this NYT article showed up in the weeks after Pixar's new film Brave got released. Let me playfully suggest that the fantasy setting of the new film can be held to correspond to the fantasy futures parents often envision for their children, futures that often can't exist because the world into which the children are hoped to grow up will never materialize.
This week is more of a week of links.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Sandunsky verdict provides opportunity for punditry and metapunditry
http://oldlife.org/2012/07/the-gloating-coalition/
By D. G. Hart | Published: July 2, 2012
The news of Jerry Sandusky’s conviction for child molestation has some Christians beating their breasts over their faith’s influence on western civilization. Joe Carter, one of TGC’s aggregators, has a quotation from a piece at the Catholic World Reporter that argues Sandusky would not have been found guilty in the ancient worlds of Greece or Rome:
If Sandusky would have lived 2000 years ago, he would not have been found guilty of anything. He would not even have been noticed. His actions would have been entirely unremarkable. There would have been no disgust, no anger. The verdict would have been innocent, and in fact, the notion that he was guilty of anything would have been unintelligible.
Carter jumps on the bandwagon:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/07/02/60-second-summary-why-is-jerry-sandusky-guilty/
For 2,000 years, the influence of Christ has had a profound—yet underestimated—influence on all aspects of Western culture. We often take for granted that without the “salt and light” of Christianity, behaviors that we consider disgusting and taboo would be accepted and commonplace. But what will happen if the influence of Christ and his followers continues to wane?
Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone connected to the Gospel Coalition in some way had used this kind of argument from history. I was less than thrilled when someone in Seattle came up with a comparable argument in 2005:
http://marshill.com/media/christ-on-the-cross/unlimited-limited-atonement
See, after church tonight you will go home and you will eat chicken, not human, because of the spread of Christianity. You think I’m kidding, go to a country that hasn’t had the spread of Christianity. They’re having human for dinne
This is not exactly the best case. A lot of things did change with the development of Christian thought and ethics in the West. Some very good and some very bad came of ideas within early Christian teaching and thought. Let's not give the Enlightenment the decidedly less credit a lot of contemporary evangelicals want it to get credit for in the realm of proposing better circumstances for people. Yes, I know the arguments that the Enlightenment developed within Christian this and that. it was possible for elements of the Enlightenment as well as more conventional Christian belief to coexist in someone like Edwards. None of that is to suggest that today you and I don't eeat human today for dinner because of the Christianization of the West. It's a big stretch to say that only those societies that were influenced by Christianity do not have taboos about cannibalism. It's not as though the Donner Party situation didn't play out in a setting where people were informed by Christendom.
That Sandunsky is guilty has been established. What has also been established is that protecting the peace and reputation of the institution is not considered worth the silencing or slighting of those who have experienced ineffable harm. It can't be said of a university that no person, no matter how badly harmed or sinned against, has no right to speak regarding injustice and abuse. If this is true about a university it may prove to be the case about churches as well and yet there is a very real possibility that within evangelicalism that this observation will become the subject of special pleading.
It may be well and good that a university or a Catholic church does not have the right to pass over or ignore the abuse and harm experience by others at the hands of abusive power systems but that's because those are worldly institutions are not really Christian churches. When the shoe is on the other foot the reputation and peace of the institution may prove to be worth more than the ruined lives of any number of people who were sacrificed at the altar of the peace and reputation of an institution. If moral equivalence applies then it applies across the defense of institutions at the expense of people who have shared stories of abuse. Avoiding a theology of Job's comforters does not just entail avoiding a defense of God's reputation it can also involve refraining from defending what Protestants would normally proclaim to be a fallible church in the wake of a series of disasters.
By way of observing a comment it can be established that even within the pre-Christianised West cannibalism was considered off the table for insults. Or at least such is the case made by David No in the following comment. If accurate it would suggest that there's no reason to suppose the only reason we in the West have chicken instead of human for dinner was because of Christianity.
http://oldlife.org/2012/07/the-gloating-coalition/#comment-51426
Are there any citations for this quote: “If Sandusky would have lived 2000 years ago, he would not have been found guilty of anything”? I don’t find any on the TGC page. Or this one: “In Rome, as in ancient Greece, homosexuality was completely acceptable.” It’s a gross over-simplification of these societies and their customs.
Standard operating procedure in Roman politics and oratory is to demonstrate the guilt of one’s opponent for action A by first demonstrating their depraved character. Depraved character leads inexorably to depraved actions. The typical charges to prove one’s opponent has a debased character are: 1.) alcoholism; 2.) homosexuality and pederasty 3.) incest. The one charge that neither Greeks nor Romans seem to have touched is cannibalism (made them too ‘Eastern’ and was connected to human sacrifice).
If the article’s author wants to see that he is mistaken about Greek and Roman culture, if he has those cultures in mind, he could read Cicero’s Catilinarian speechs, his speeches against Verres and the Philippics against Mark Antony, as well as Demosthenes first and second Philippics. If he has the stomach, he could also read the Roman poet Catullus, in whose works the charge of homosexual behavior is that which you use to mock someone, in very lurid detail.
It’s true the Greeks, though not Romans, tolerated aberrant sexual behavior more than we, but it is false that they would not have seen Sandusky’s actions as wrong or that the moral category of pederasty would have been “unintelligible.” It’s an uncharitable thing to say about the dead whose morals were often better than ours.
Rather than scoring points about how the West has supposedly developed to a point where Sandunsky would be considered guilty of something we should consider the implications such a ruling may have for those who would place the defense of an institution's reputation above the safety and welfare of minors and other individuals. Evangelicals should beware that on this subject we are not pots calling kettles black.
Finally, Hart links to the following article for those who might want to follow that thread of thought which states that the pursuit of happiness is in any way commensurate with the path of a Christian.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/103952/happyism-deirdre-mccloskey-economics-happiness
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Fearsome Tycoon on "The Great Emergence"
Funny enough to be worth replicating in its entirety. Plus I've linked to fascinating comments or amusing comments from the BHT from years ago that don't exist any longer.
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2012/07/01/the-great-emergence/
Here are my running thoughts:
1. Any time you talk about what’s happening in “the Church,” and you’re talking about some sliver of Western Protestantism, you are being historically, geographically, and culturally unaware. Most Christians are Catholic. Whatever you think about Catholicism, that’s a numerical fact. Period. Are you changing Catholicism? If the answer is “no,” you’re not a major movement in “the Church.”
2. The Emergent Church is an insignificant movement. Let’s put it this way–Martin Luther changed pretty much everything. To belong to a church in the 21st century is still, to this day, to belong to an organization decisively shaped by the ideas of Luther, whether acceptance, rejection or modification of them. Same with Gregory. You can’t be a Christian today without being fundamentally affected by Gregory’s assertions of papal supremacy, whether you are Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, or Lutheran. I’m just not seeing that kind of effect happening due to the Emergent movement, because I don’t see them making some kind of fundamentally earth-shaking assertion that hasn’t been made already.
3. There is no such thing as “post-Protestant.” If you are Protestant, the only way to stop being Protestant is to join a communion that either (a) predates the Reformation, (b) split off from a pre-Reformation communion, or (c) isn’t recognizably Christian. If neither (a) nor (b) nor (c) hold, you are a Protestant, like it or not. So you read Aquinas and think he’s smart. BFD, so did John Calvin. Do you think the pope is infallible? No? Hi, you’re a Protestant, welcome to the club you never left.
4. “Gettiing rid of Christian exclusivism” is not new. It’s not unique. It’s called “liberal Protestantism” and is old, boring, and busted. It’s got a really short organizational half-life because people stop waking up early and donating money to a church body if there’s no eternal significance to anything.
5. No one is impressed by you reclaiming bits of liturgy from the 4th century. The vast majority of practicing Christians already do that. Let me bring you down to earth, Emergents. There are about 2,265 million Christians. Over half of them are Catholic. Add in the Orthodox, and you’re up to 62%. Throw in the Lutherans and Anglicans for good measure, and now we’re up to around 70% of Christianity. Really, truly, we think it’s nice that you’ve discovered some value in the heritage your Calvinist and Anabaptist forebears threw out. But the Emergent discovery of the Kyrie is no more revolutionary than some guy in Idaho discovering that rice can be cooked and eaten.
UPDATE:
Good thing I included the body of the post here because it looks like the Boar's Head Tavern has experienced another one of its semi-annual site crashes!
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2012/07/01/the-great-emergence/
Here are my running thoughts:
1. Any time you talk about what’s happening in “the Church,” and you’re talking about some sliver of Western Protestantism, you are being historically, geographically, and culturally unaware. Most Christians are Catholic. Whatever you think about Catholicism, that’s a numerical fact. Period. Are you changing Catholicism? If the answer is “no,” you’re not a major movement in “the Church.”
2. The Emergent Church is an insignificant movement. Let’s put it this way–Martin Luther changed pretty much everything. To belong to a church in the 21st century is still, to this day, to belong to an organization decisively shaped by the ideas of Luther, whether acceptance, rejection or modification of them. Same with Gregory. You can’t be a Christian today without being fundamentally affected by Gregory’s assertions of papal supremacy, whether you are Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, or Lutheran. I’m just not seeing that kind of effect happening due to the Emergent movement, because I don’t see them making some kind of fundamentally earth-shaking assertion that hasn’t been made already.
3. There is no such thing as “post-Protestant.” If you are Protestant, the only way to stop being Protestant is to join a communion that either (a) predates the Reformation, (b) split off from a pre-Reformation communion, or (c) isn’t recognizably Christian. If neither (a) nor (b) nor (c) hold, you are a Protestant, like it or not. So you read Aquinas and think he’s smart. BFD, so did John Calvin. Do you think the pope is infallible? No? Hi, you’re a Protestant, welcome to the club you never left.
4. “Gettiing rid of Christian exclusivism” is not new. It’s not unique. It’s called “liberal Protestantism” and is old, boring, and busted. It’s got a really short organizational half-life because people stop waking up early and donating money to a church body if there’s no eternal significance to anything.
5. No one is impressed by you reclaiming bits of liturgy from the 4th century. The vast majority of practicing Christians already do that. Let me bring you down to earth, Emergents. There are about 2,265 million Christians. Over half of them are Catholic. Add in the Orthodox, and you’re up to 62%. Throw in the Lutherans and Anglicans for good measure, and now we’re up to around 70% of Christianity. Really, truly, we think it’s nice that you’ve discovered some value in the heritage your Calvinist and Anabaptist forebears threw out. But the Emergent discovery of the Kyrie is no more revolutionary than some guy in Idaho discovering that rice can be cooked and eaten.
UPDATE:
Good thing I included the body of the post here because it looks like the Boar's Head Tavern has experienced another one of its semi-annual site crashes!
Saturday, June 30, 2012
more and more writing
Did a lot of writing about cartoons. By a lot I mean thousands of words. It's not all for posts that will get published here. In fact it may be none of it gets published here but I can note that writing is happening.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Brooks actually posts at City of God blog
http://www.cityofgodblog.com/2012/06/when-pastors-actually-pastored/
It seems The Brooks only posts once a month but he posts and this one is worth linking to.
By way of associative linking here's Jim West on a question about what a megachurch pastor is.
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/answering-your-letters-22/
... a mega-church is any church which is so large that the Pastor doesn’t know the names of every person who regularly attends. Such Pastors aren’t truly pastors – they are merely functionaries, public speakers. Pastors know their flock just as shepherds know their sheep. It is no accident at all that the early Church seized on the analogy of the Pastor as shepherd.
And he expounds a bit in a comment.
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/answering-your-letters-22/#comment-40783
shepherds don’t watch over flocks they can’t manage. those sheep are placed in another flock. look, let’s face it, larger churches are more about egos than christianity. why must large churches have multiple ‘campuses’ (i loath that terminology)? what theological justification is there for it? why don’t these large churches plant churches in other areas, other neighborhoods. why, in short, don’t they divide and multiply rather than simply just add.
go to your church board and ask them- ‘hey, why, instead of collecting all of these resources and people, don’t we send half the members to small house church plants and let them begin new work in new areas where they live’. see what excuses they make for not.
It seems The Brooks only posts once a month but he posts and this one is worth linking to.
By way of associative linking here's Jim West on a question about what a megachurch pastor is.
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/answering-your-letters-22/
... a mega-church is any church which is so large that the Pastor doesn’t know the names of every person who regularly attends. Such Pastors aren’t truly pastors – they are merely functionaries, public speakers. Pastors know their flock just as shepherds know their sheep. It is no accident at all that the early Church seized on the analogy of the Pastor as shepherd.
And he expounds a bit in a comment.
http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/answering-your-letters-22/#comment-40783
shepherds don’t watch over flocks they can’t manage. those sheep are placed in another flock. look, let’s face it, larger churches are more about egos than christianity. why must large churches have multiple ‘campuses’ (i loath that terminology)? what theological justification is there for it? why don’t these large churches plant churches in other areas, other neighborhoods. why, in short, don’t they divide and multiply rather than simply just add.
go to your church board and ask them- ‘hey, why, instead of collecting all of these resources and people, don’t we send half the members to small house church plants and let them begin new work in new areas where they live’. see what excuses they make for not.
"The difference is women agonize over the menu and men just order and live with it"
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/22/anne_marie_slaughter_s_atlantic_cover_story_and_having_it_all_a_chat.html
Dahlia Lithwick:
An awful lot of Slaughter’s piece is as urgently important for men as for women. All of us work too hard. We all shortchange our kids. We all buy a lot of stuff we don't need. We are all pretty much a mess when it comes to balance. The difference is women agonize over the menu and men just order and live with it. Jan Rodak and I wrote a piece a few months ago that argued that as long as women see life as a sum of choices they will always fret and regret. Slaughter is right that for most women the juggle just FEELS worse. As one of those 4-a.m.-train moms who missed my sons star turn as "Monkey No. 2" last week at the camp play, I am aware that most of the guilt and regret are self created. But Traister is so right that anyone who tries to have it all has a problem: That's the stuff of Disney and soap commercials. We need to make it easier for women at every level to balance work and home. But balance isn't about constantly weighing what you have against what you don't have. That isn't balance—it’s a recipe for a life spent longing for all the things you bargained away.
I think there is some truth to this but there are plenty of men who agonize over the menu, particularly about the price of some of the options and on how the options on the menu got selected, which doesn't seem so different from women agonizing over the menu in some ways, does it? I mean, sure, it is different for all sorts of reasons but the decisions of people who have the financial, social and cultural capital to buy the more popular and common items on the menu will have a different set of anxieties and concerns than those who realize they have ended up in the restaurant and they don't have enough money to order anything. :)
There is a problem with having it all, whatever "all" may get defined as. The author of Ecclesiastes, well, Koholeth anyway, declared that he had it all and did it all and it all became as nothing to him because he realized everyone dies and nothing lasts. The problem with having it all is that when you die you lose it all, sometimes you lose it all even before you die.
I'm particularly struck by the final sentences in what I cited, that balance isn't about constantly weighing what you have against what you don't have, because that is nothing but a recipe for spending your life longing for everything you bargained away.
If men order from the menu and live with it then perhaps what this means is that men, for whatever reasons, get some kind of message that there are opportunity costs to anything you choose to do, want or be.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
a question--has anyone written a sonata form that includes the banjo?
You don't have to guess too hard why I would be asking this question. Surely someone has written a work for the banjo that makes use of sonata allegro form, right? Maybe a duet? Maybe a solo banjo sonata?
I've got an idea taking shape for a sonata for banjo and guitar. I've been thinking of writing one for a couple of years but this year I've finally got some ideas to play with. If anyone knows of a bona fide sonata form written for banjo or that includes banjo comment away. I'm curious.
I've got an idea taking shape for a sonata for banjo and guitar. I've been thinking of writing one for a couple of years but this year I've finally got some ideas to play with. If anyone knows of a bona fide sonata form written for banjo or that includes banjo comment away. I'm curious.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Brave. a review in the works
Longtime readers know that I write about cartoons and Brave is one of those Pixar films I was going to make a point of seeing. I want to write about the film but the actual review will have to wait until I have some time to collect my thoughts about themes and character arcs. The movie has been out for a short-time but since this is Wenatchee The Hatchet if you've read my reviews of Pixar films in the past or my writing about cartoons you'll know that I write very spoilery reviews. As in spoilers may appear in the first paragraph. So if you haven't seen Brave yet, read my blog, and don't want spoilers you may want to catch the film in the next couple of days. ;-) You can trust me that it's a sweet, endearing film with more stuff to chew on thematically than the princess tropes and adventure set-pieces might initially suggest.
Hinns reconciling, remarrying
http://charismanews.com/us/33672-benny-hinn-announces-wedding-plans
over at The Boar's Head Tavern this was announced as the one actual healing associated with Hinn.
Justin considers this kind of cool and wonders if his cynicism has been waning with time.
I don't really know what to think about that myself but a reconciliation does seem like a good thing in principle. I make no secret that I've never been a fan of Benny Hinn at any level but if he and his wife are able to put their marriage back together then my regards. May they stay together and have a healthy relationship.
over at The Boar's Head Tavern this was announced as the one actual healing associated with Hinn.
Justin considers this kind of cool and wonders if his cynicism has been waning with time.
I don't really know what to think about that myself but a reconciliation does seem like a good thing in principle. I make no secret that I've never been a fan of Benny Hinn at any level but if he and his wife are able to put their marriage back together then my regards. May they stay together and have a healthy relationship.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Cinemagogue: Prometheus, Panic and Hubris
http://cinemagogue.com/2012/06/19/prometheus-panic-and-hubris/
James Harleman admits to having always thought it was dumb when characters ran in a straight line. What lazy scripting? But wait, you mean to say most living sentient creatures get into this mindless flight path? Oops.
It's a short but worthy little read about realizing that there are times when you sit back in judgment thinking "who is really that stupid?" only to discover that sometimes it's you. I just wrapped up Daniel Kahneman's fascinating book Thinking Fast and Slow and there's a lot of research that tells us that our brain is great at jumping to conclusions too quickly with too little information and that there are times when our brains answer the simpler question and make the intuitive judgment call that turns out to be tragically wrong.
And from a story-telling standpoint this explains why the only sorts of characters that don't reflexively run straight away from danger tend to be characters who have trained that out of themselves through years of self-discipline ...
like Batman. :-)
Sorry, couldn't resist that one.
James Harleman admits to having always thought it was dumb when characters ran in a straight line. What lazy scripting? But wait, you mean to say most living sentient creatures get into this mindless flight path? Oops.
It's a short but worthy little read about realizing that there are times when you sit back in judgment thinking "who is really that stupid?" only to discover that sometimes it's you. I just wrapped up Daniel Kahneman's fascinating book Thinking Fast and Slow and there's a lot of research that tells us that our brain is great at jumping to conclusions too quickly with too little information and that there are times when our brains answer the simpler question and make the intuitive judgment call that turns out to be tragically wrong.
And from a story-telling standpoint this explains why the only sorts of characters that don't reflexively run straight away from danger tend to be characters who have trained that out of themselves through years of self-discipline ...
like Batman. :-)
Sorry, couldn't resist that one.
Mars Hill Church Update "... it's just that we had an economic model that wasn't sustainable for our future".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhb3erNZbX0&feature=endscreen&NR=1
"... it's not that anybody has sinned, or done anything wrong, or is in trouble it's just that we had an economic model that wasn't sustainable for our future."
Back in 2008 I privately shared a few concerns. I left on mutually good terms, as longtime readers already know. One of my concerns was about the lack of clear and consistent precedent and procedure in church discipline. If that didn't get worked out there might come a case that blew up into a local scandal. To put it mildly that came to pass in the form of Andrew's case.
Another concern I had was about the competence and good will of counseling pastors (long since called "biblical living pastor"). It wasn't clear to me whether some of the men installed as counseling pastors of various sorts were actually qualified for that work. In the interest of not being too detailed let me just say that some folks seem to have been canned and at least one of them was in the biblical living division. Two things I warned about in 2008 have, in 2012, turned into areas where Mars Hill found itself some trouble.
Another thing I shared was my worry that the constant pursuit of meteoric growth was a problem for Mars Hill. Gaining campus after campus is not gaining assets but liabilities. If you commit to expanding into site after site without being careful to sustain and cultivate a donor base sufficient to keep each campus operational you'll end up with an institution that runs on systemic deficits rather than having a long-term viable economic paradigm.
What has Driscoll just recently announced since June 12, 2012? Curiously this third concern I privately shared with Mars Hill leadership has turned out to be a problem, too. Folks, that's three for three on things I didn't want to see continuing at Mars Hill. It took a while for me to see these as systemic risks between 2006-2008. I shared my concerns and it seems that those concerns did not register with Mars Hill. I'm just one person so it's understandable my concerns might not matter much for an institution as big as Mars Hill. Still, I gotta admit that this is still three for three on things I privately warned were risks that Mars Hill leadership did not seem to be taking seriously enough in the 2007-2008 period.
Last year Driscoll said Munson was always above reproach. Okay ... but what's with this stuff about how Mars Hill has had an economic model that is unsustainable for the future? Who formulated that economic model? Whose vision put into place an economic model that turned out to be unsustainable?
If Mars Hill leadership can admit the economic model was not sustainable is this conceding a possibility of bad stewardship? If Mars Hill leadership had budgeted for actual revenue on a weekly basis earlier rather than banking on the year end "bonus" could systemic lay-offs about every year have been avoided? I don't know, I just remember that about every year people got laid off. Some people I've known got jobs at Mars Hill only to get laid off eight months later! And Mars Hill is a non-profit that I'm not sure has ever paid into unemployment. If you've ever been laid off by a 501(c)3 you'll discover that in many cases you're not eligible for unemployment and related social safety net benefits. What if a single woman has worked on staff at Mars Hill for years and gets laid off? She's stuck. Take it from a single guy who got laid off by a non-profit a few years ago, it's a bad spot and unless the non-profit pulls out the stops and has an amazing (for a non-profit) severance package things can get ugly.
A word of advice to folks in non-profit settings, it may behoove you to rarely ever take vacation and to not get sick, particularly if both sick leave and vacation pay get paid out in your severance package.
To those of you who may be Mars Hill staff, keep this in mind if you're reading this. To those of you who were Mars Hill staff and got cut loose because the leadership at Mars Hill have been working from an economic model that has been unsustainable, you're in my prayers. I know exactly how bad it sucks to get laid off from a non-profit and I'm not gonna lie, I think I was laid off from a far better and more accountable non-profit than I'm afraid Mars Hill is likely to be. My hope is that you're able to land some work soon, where ever and who ever you are. This is not a good economic time for non-profits by a long shot. Development work is likely to be saturated. A lot of places are hiring part-time no-benefits jobs. You may be stuck trying to find work within the Martian and Acts 29 orbit. Given the economic model that scene has had be prayerfully cautious about taking more work there. I've known guys who have served faithfully for years who never had the same job for very long. My hope is that you and your families are safe. I don't have any way to help you myself because I'm in a perilously tight financial season of my own but I can certainly pray for you.
"... it's not that anybody has sinned, or done anything wrong, or is in trouble it's just that we had an economic model that wasn't sustainable for our future."
Back in 2008 I privately shared a few concerns. I left on mutually good terms, as longtime readers already know. One of my concerns was about the lack of clear and consistent precedent and procedure in church discipline. If that didn't get worked out there might come a case that blew up into a local scandal. To put it mildly that came to pass in the form of Andrew's case.
Another concern I had was about the competence and good will of counseling pastors (long since called "biblical living pastor"). It wasn't clear to me whether some of the men installed as counseling pastors of various sorts were actually qualified for that work. In the interest of not being too detailed let me just say that some folks seem to have been canned and at least one of them was in the biblical living division. Two things I warned about in 2008 have, in 2012, turned into areas where Mars Hill found itself some trouble.
Another thing I shared was my worry that the constant pursuit of meteoric growth was a problem for Mars Hill. Gaining campus after campus is not gaining assets but liabilities. If you commit to expanding into site after site without being careful to sustain and cultivate a donor base sufficient to keep each campus operational you'll end up with an institution that runs on systemic deficits rather than having a long-term viable economic paradigm.
What has Driscoll just recently announced since June 12, 2012? Curiously this third concern I privately shared with Mars Hill leadership has turned out to be a problem, too. Folks, that's three for three on things I didn't want to see continuing at Mars Hill. It took a while for me to see these as systemic risks between 2006-2008. I shared my concerns and it seems that those concerns did not register with Mars Hill. I'm just one person so it's understandable my concerns might not matter much for an institution as big as Mars Hill. Still, I gotta admit that this is still three for three on things I privately warned were risks that Mars Hill leadership did not seem to be taking seriously enough in the 2007-2008 period.
Last year Driscoll said Munson was always above reproach. Okay ... but what's with this stuff about how Mars Hill has had an economic model that is unsustainable for the future? Who formulated that economic model? Whose vision put into place an economic model that turned out to be unsustainable?
If Mars Hill leadership can admit the economic model was not sustainable is this conceding a possibility of bad stewardship? If Mars Hill leadership had budgeted for actual revenue on a weekly basis earlier rather than banking on the year end "bonus" could systemic lay-offs about every year have been avoided? I don't know, I just remember that about every year people got laid off. Some people I've known got jobs at Mars Hill only to get laid off eight months later! And Mars Hill is a non-profit that I'm not sure has ever paid into unemployment. If you've ever been laid off by a 501(c)3 you'll discover that in many cases you're not eligible for unemployment and related social safety net benefits. What if a single woman has worked on staff at Mars Hill for years and gets laid off? She's stuck. Take it from a single guy who got laid off by a non-profit a few years ago, it's a bad spot and unless the non-profit pulls out the stops and has an amazing (for a non-profit) severance package things can get ugly.
A word of advice to folks in non-profit settings, it may behoove you to rarely ever take vacation and to not get sick, particularly if both sick leave and vacation pay get paid out in your severance package.
To those of you who may be Mars Hill staff, keep this in mind if you're reading this. To those of you who were Mars Hill staff and got cut loose because the leadership at Mars Hill have been working from an economic model that has been unsustainable, you're in my prayers. I know exactly how bad it sucks to get laid off from a non-profit and I'm not gonna lie, I think I was laid off from a far better and more accountable non-profit than I'm afraid Mars Hill is likely to be. My hope is that you're able to land some work soon, where ever and who ever you are. This is not a good economic time for non-profits by a long shot. Development work is likely to be saturated. A lot of places are hiring part-time no-benefits jobs. You may be stuck trying to find work within the Martian and Acts 29 orbit. Given the economic model that scene has had be prayerfully cautious about taking more work there. I've known guys who have served faithfully for years who never had the same job for very long. My hope is that you and your families are safe. I don't have any way to help you myself because I'm in a perilously tight financial season of my own but I can certainly pray for you.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
a word about coming attractions
Despite the realization that probably 90% of people who read this blog are only reading for one general topic I am looking forward to blogging about other things for a while. I'm much closer to finishing the engrossing and informative book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I have not been in a position to splurge on things like books most of the time and so I borrow.
I admit I did splurge and spent a small sum of money on Martin Shields' commentary on Ecclesiastes because Jim West plugged for it the week there was a fantastic sale on the book at Eisenbrauns. So I've starting reading Shields' commentary on Ecclesiastes.
Longtime readers who actually care about the writings of Adolf Schlatter will understandably be annoyed I have done no blogging about his daunting and amazing commentary on Romans. I admit I'm still back somewhere around page 40 or so and rereading the first 100 pages. I hope to comment more on Schlatter in the future but confess that as a layman who's never gone to seminar and only studied the most rudimentary elements of koine Greek this is a book that puts me at the outer limits of my reading abilities. I'm able to work things out by slow and careful reading where as I blitzed through Moby Dick in about a month. I read Heart of Darkness in a single night between midnight and 7am, which was arguably the perfect time to read Joseph Conrad's bleak little masterpiece.
And for all four of you who bothered to read everything in Chamber Music Week there are plans for Chamber Music Week 2. I'll admit now what I didn't let slip then, I liked the idea of doing a Chamber Music Week series for the impudence of it. I'd begun to notice all my traffic was about things Martian. Honestly, that's pretty lame. I write about a lot of other things. That this blog got known as some kind of blog that's an "other side" blog is the result of some misinformation. :) Really, go look at that Ruth Graham Slate article, come back and actually read what was linked to here at Wenatchee The Hatchet and establish whether or not I ever actually talked about Driscoll in that post.
In fact if Graham hadn't been so sloppy in her work I might not have felt nearly so inspired to dig up so much. Call it getting upset at the failure of mainstream media to cover religion in an informed or thoughtful way. Now whether or not anyone at Mars Hill appreciates all the blogging I've done to correct misrepresentations of my writing or inaccuracies that I detected in Slate's coverage is not something I can divine. But my point for this post is that that stuff gets boring.
So I have more stuff I hope to blog about music by Ferdinand Rebay and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. I realize I didn't get around to providing an overview of the recordings of the d'Amore Duo, either.
I have sometimes blogged about comics and cartoons and that has not happened for a while I admit that offline realities have thrown a monkey wrench in my plans but a good kind of monkey wrench. Still, I've been overdue to get more of Part 5 done for the Mockingbird series. Part of me isn't sure if I want to just knock out Part 5 or wait until The Dark Knight Rises because if at night all cats are gray the newest cat may be something to consider. There's also that new Spiderman movie coming out and a Pixar movie opening this weekend. Wenatchee The Hatchet has been overdue to write about films and cartoons, hasn't he?
In other brief news I have finished a couple of giant musical projects this year. By giant I mean that just one of them is at least two hours long. Yes, the giant contrapuntal cycle for guitar is done and now there's yet more work to be done in mapping it out for more than one instrument. I also finished a number of chamber works this year.
On top of that I have been working on preparing a number of works for filmed performance, which is not easy.
So perhaps this weekend I may manage to write at least a little bit about some cartoons. We'll see.
I found the podcast of a pastor I used to be taught by decades ago. He's still able to go through the Bible and share things I didn't know before. I appreciate that in a pastor. It's nice to be able to hear things from a pastor from the Scriptures you didn't know before even for passages you know. I like that better than knowing in advance what a pastor is going to say about a text because the sermon is really about a bunch of hobby horses.
But I have to stop right there because that's going into topics I don't feel like blogging about. Cartoons, on to cartoons. And music.
I admit I did splurge and spent a small sum of money on Martin Shields' commentary on Ecclesiastes because Jim West plugged for it the week there was a fantastic sale on the book at Eisenbrauns. So I've starting reading Shields' commentary on Ecclesiastes.
Longtime readers who actually care about the writings of Adolf Schlatter will understandably be annoyed I have done no blogging about his daunting and amazing commentary on Romans. I admit I'm still back somewhere around page 40 or so and rereading the first 100 pages. I hope to comment more on Schlatter in the future but confess that as a layman who's never gone to seminar and only studied the most rudimentary elements of koine Greek this is a book that puts me at the outer limits of my reading abilities. I'm able to work things out by slow and careful reading where as I blitzed through Moby Dick in about a month. I read Heart of Darkness in a single night between midnight and 7am, which was arguably the perfect time to read Joseph Conrad's bleak little masterpiece.
And for all four of you who bothered to read everything in Chamber Music Week there are plans for Chamber Music Week 2. I'll admit now what I didn't let slip then, I liked the idea of doing a Chamber Music Week series for the impudence of it. I'd begun to notice all my traffic was about things Martian. Honestly, that's pretty lame. I write about a lot of other things. That this blog got known as some kind of blog that's an "other side" blog is the result of some misinformation. :) Really, go look at that Ruth Graham Slate article, come back and actually read what was linked to here at Wenatchee The Hatchet and establish whether or not I ever actually talked about Driscoll in that post.
In fact if Graham hadn't been so sloppy in her work I might not have felt nearly so inspired to dig up so much. Call it getting upset at the failure of mainstream media to cover religion in an informed or thoughtful way. Now whether or not anyone at Mars Hill appreciates all the blogging I've done to correct misrepresentations of my writing or inaccuracies that I detected in Slate's coverage is not something I can divine. But my point for this post is that that stuff gets boring.
So I have more stuff I hope to blog about music by Ferdinand Rebay and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. I realize I didn't get around to providing an overview of the recordings of the d'Amore Duo, either.
I have sometimes blogged about comics and cartoons and that has not happened for a while I admit that offline realities have thrown a monkey wrench in my plans but a good kind of monkey wrench. Still, I've been overdue to get more of Part 5 done for the Mockingbird series. Part of me isn't sure if I want to just knock out Part 5 or wait until The Dark Knight Rises because if at night all cats are gray the newest cat may be something to consider. There's also that new Spiderman movie coming out and a Pixar movie opening this weekend. Wenatchee The Hatchet has been overdue to write about films and cartoons, hasn't he?
In other brief news I have finished a couple of giant musical projects this year. By giant I mean that just one of them is at least two hours long. Yes, the giant contrapuntal cycle for guitar is done and now there's yet more work to be done in mapping it out for more than one instrument. I also finished a number of chamber works this year.
On top of that I have been working on preparing a number of works for filmed performance, which is not easy.
So perhaps this weekend I may manage to write at least a little bit about some cartoons. We'll see.
I found the podcast of a pastor I used to be taught by decades ago. He's still able to go through the Bible and share things I didn't know before. I appreciate that in a pastor. It's nice to be able to hear things from a pastor from the Scriptures you didn't know before even for passages you know. I like that better than knowing in advance what a pastor is going to say about a text because the sermon is really about a bunch of hobby horses.
But I have to stop right there because that's going into topics I don't feel like blogging about. Cartoons, on to cartoons. And music.
some context for "a call for reconciliation", "there's a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus"
Andrew's disciplinary case within Mars Hill made headlines at the start of 2012. The subsequent blogging and coverage eventually inspired Mars Hill to publish this.
http://marshill.com/2012/03/02/a-call-for-reconciliation
Mars Hill has not reported how many (if any) people took up that call for reconciliation or if Mars Hill conceded that they had done or said anything harmful. Many people interpreted the Call for Reconciliation as a desire to get people to stop going public with stories that make the church look bad. The same weekend that the "Call" went up Driscontinuity went down, not exactly the most encouraging coincidence even if it is quite likely it was just a coincidence.
If there are people at Mars Hill who sincerely want reconciliation that's nice, really, but the institution has been purging information and excising anecdotes from Driscoll sermons that have been points of controversy in 2012. You're not going to find that woodchipper anecdote Driscoll shared about an executive elder from the September 2007 sermon "the Man" over at Acts 29. It's tough for Mars Hill to look like their primary goal is reconciliation if they're purging their audio archives of asides and comments Driscoll has made from various pulpits that make him sound bad. It's tough for Mars Hill to be taken seriously about reconciliation when they've been purging anything that makes the president of Mars Hill sound bad. Despite all the talk over the years of the "kingly gifts" of men like Jamie Munson or Sutton Turner in terms of a legal statement of presidency, Driscoll is the real king, the real president.
Or at least someone told the Secretary of State of Washington State that Mark Driscoll is president (so much for talk of Sutton Turner's "kingly gifts" seeing as he's listed as treasurer and secretary):
http://mobile.www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
If Mars Hill tells the public and its members that Sutton Turner has "kingly gifts" and has a kingly role then how does that fit with Driscoll being the president in the eyes of Washington state? Doesn't this seem like a discrepancy?
Could there be a discrepancy between what is publicly stated by Mars Hill leadership about disagreements and what has privately been shared with the in group? It may be so, to put it mildly. This week Chris Rosebrough at Fighting for the Faith posted this:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2012/06/mark-driscoll-brags-about-pile-of-bodies-behind-mars-hills-bus.html
Not that former members and attendees don't already know this is how things went, they got thrown off the bus or were run over by the bus already. If Driscoll could joke that there's a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and that by God's grace it will be a mountain by the time they're done; if the options are get on the bus or get run over by the bus; then Mars Hill leadership can't feign ignorance of how many people were thrown off the bus or run over by the bus. Joking about a pile of dead bodies becoming a mountain "by God's grace" may give us an alarming insight into what god and by whose grace the bus may be driving. It could suggest that the president of Mars Hill is in the driver's seat and was not necessarily interested in sharing the steering wheel.
But the president of Mars Hill's chuckle also suggests something else, something that Mars Hill leaders are probably either all too aware of or cannot concede. The chuckle sounds like a warning that in Mark Driscoll no real or sincere interest in reconciliation may have ever existed. The truth is no one may know beyond all doubt if that's the case but that chuckle and those words don't provide encouragement to anyone who has been thrown off of or under the Mars Hill bus.
A call for reconciliation that does not concede just how many people were thrown off of the bus and under the bus is not an attempt at reconciliation at all. A call for reconciliation that does not concede that the chuckle happened is not a call for reconciliation, is it? At one point I had hoped a shot at reconciliation was actually possible. Hearing the "Mars Hill bus" audio I realize it may be that no real opportunity for reconciliation ever existed. If that audio was really the day after Meyer and Petry were fired there's no sound in Driscoll's voice that suggests there was any possibility of reconciliation. The finality with which Driscoll said " ... now they're unemployed" seems to predate by more than a week the words of Scott Thomas to a member saying a "conciliatory process" had just been completed with Petry and Meyer. That sounds like a firing that was never going to be undone.
That Mark Driscoll could chuckle as he talked about the pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus no one at Mars Hill should be so naive as to think that people who have been thrown off and under the bus, who have been villified as being divisive, were only ever people who couldn't respect spiritual authority. Some of the people who were thrown off the bus said those same kinds of things about other people before them. You don't know, Mars Hill reader, whether you might get thrown off or under the bus this year yourself. All it takes is not being on mission, whatever that may be, and you can be off and under the bus, too. You don't know what may happen. All it takes is yet another ceiling of complexity and you, too, may be out of a job or be told you lack the kingly gifts to move Jesus' church to the next level. There may be a painful period of pruning but you have to take it. It would seem that in October 2007 Driscoll made things clear, you're either on the bus or get run over by the bus.
Piles of dead bodies emerge after slaughter and conquest. Piles of dead bodies also appear outside temples where sacrifices are made to gods. If Jesus really offered Himself as a sacrifice so no more sacrifices needed to be made exactly why does there need to be a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus? Why does it need to grow into a mountain? If Driscoll chuckled talking about a pile of dead bodies why should Mars Hill be surprised that people who have been run over by the bus doubt the sincerity of the call for reconciliation?
http://marshill.com/2012/03/02/a-call-for-reconciliation
Mars Hill has not reported how many (if any) people took up that call for reconciliation or if Mars Hill conceded that they had done or said anything harmful. Many people interpreted the Call for Reconciliation as a desire to get people to stop going public with stories that make the church look bad. The same weekend that the "Call" went up Driscontinuity went down, not exactly the most encouraging coincidence even if it is quite likely it was just a coincidence.
If there are people at Mars Hill who sincerely want reconciliation that's nice, really, but the institution has been purging information and excising anecdotes from Driscoll sermons that have been points of controversy in 2012. You're not going to find that woodchipper anecdote Driscoll shared about an executive elder from the September 2007 sermon "the Man" over at Acts 29. It's tough for Mars Hill to look like their primary goal is reconciliation if they're purging their audio archives of asides and comments Driscoll has made from various pulpits that make him sound bad. It's tough for Mars Hill to be taken seriously about reconciliation when they've been purging anything that makes the president of Mars Hill sound bad. Despite all the talk over the years of the "kingly gifts" of men like Jamie Munson or Sutton Turner in terms of a legal statement of presidency, Driscoll is the real king, the real president.
Or at least someone told the Secretary of State of Washington State that Mark Driscoll is president (so much for talk of Sutton Turner's "kingly gifts" seeing as he's listed as treasurer and secretary):
http://mobile.www.secstate.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
If Mars Hill tells the public and its members that Sutton Turner has "kingly gifts" and has a kingly role then how does that fit with Driscoll being the president in the eyes of Washington state? Doesn't this seem like a discrepancy?
Could there be a discrepancy between what is publicly stated by Mars Hill leadership about disagreements and what has privately been shared with the in group? It may be so, to put it mildly. This week Chris Rosebrough at Fighting for the Faith posted this:
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2012/06/mark-driscoll-brags-about-pile-of-bodies-behind-mars-hills-bus.html
Not that former members and attendees don't already know this is how things went, they got thrown off the bus or were run over by the bus already. If Driscoll could joke that there's a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and that by God's grace it will be a mountain by the time they're done; if the options are get on the bus or get run over by the bus; then Mars Hill leadership can't feign ignorance of how many people were thrown off the bus or run over by the bus. Joking about a pile of dead bodies becoming a mountain "by God's grace" may give us an alarming insight into what god and by whose grace the bus may be driving. It could suggest that the president of Mars Hill is in the driver's seat and was not necessarily interested in sharing the steering wheel.
But the president of Mars Hill's chuckle also suggests something else, something that Mars Hill leaders are probably either all too aware of or cannot concede. The chuckle sounds like a warning that in Mark Driscoll no real or sincere interest in reconciliation may have ever existed. The truth is no one may know beyond all doubt if that's the case but that chuckle and those words don't provide encouragement to anyone who has been thrown off of or under the Mars Hill bus.
A call for reconciliation that does not concede just how many people were thrown off of the bus and under the bus is not an attempt at reconciliation at all. A call for reconciliation that does not concede that the chuckle happened is not a call for reconciliation, is it? At one point I had hoped a shot at reconciliation was actually possible. Hearing the "Mars Hill bus" audio I realize it may be that no real opportunity for reconciliation ever existed. If that audio was really the day after Meyer and Petry were fired there's no sound in Driscoll's voice that suggests there was any possibility of reconciliation. The finality with which Driscoll said " ... now they're unemployed" seems to predate by more than a week the words of Scott Thomas to a member saying a "conciliatory process" had just been completed with Petry and Meyer. That sounds like a firing that was never going to be undone.
That Mark Driscoll could chuckle as he talked about the pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus no one at Mars Hill should be so naive as to think that people who have been thrown off and under the bus, who have been villified as being divisive, were only ever people who couldn't respect spiritual authority. Some of the people who were thrown off the bus said those same kinds of things about other people before them. You don't know, Mars Hill reader, whether you might get thrown off or under the bus this year yourself. All it takes is not being on mission, whatever that may be, and you can be off and under the bus, too. You don't know what may happen. All it takes is yet another ceiling of complexity and you, too, may be out of a job or be told you lack the kingly gifts to move Jesus' church to the next level. There may be a painful period of pruning but you have to take it. It would seem that in October 2007 Driscoll made things clear, you're either on the bus or get run over by the bus.
Piles of dead bodies emerge after slaughter and conquest. Piles of dead bodies also appear outside temples where sacrifices are made to gods. If Jesus really offered Himself as a sacrifice so no more sacrifices needed to be made exactly why does there need to be a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus? Why does it need to grow into a mountain? If Driscoll chuckled talking about a pile of dead bodies why should Mars Hill be surprised that people who have been run over by the bus doubt the sincerity of the call for reconciliation?
"The Man" and Driscoll's insistence on the inward desire to be an elder as a qualification
From the Raleigh, NC sermon on 1 Timothy 3, "The Man" Driscoll remarked on how it was necessary for a man to sense an inward calling toward ministry. The man needed to want to be an elder or he wouldn't be qualified.
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/the-man/
Driscoll even went so far as to say that "we" will know men are called to be elders because they desire to be one. It's not just someone who is qualified and meets needs in a local church. He has to be someone who wants to be an elder. However that desire comes forth that desire has to be there. Within an Acts 29 or Mars Hill context this may mean that guys nominate themselves and if they don't nominate themselves they may not want to be elders and thus lack an important qualification for ministry as Driscoll interprets 1 Timothy 3.
However, there's no persuasive textual basis for reasoning that simply because it is good to desire the office of overseer/bishop/pastor/shepherd that one is thereby qualified for the role. After all false teachers will want the role even though they are not fit for it. A person might meet most of the qualifications for pastoral office in 1 Timothy 3 yet still be a Pelagian or an Arian, if you stop and think it through for a few seconds.
For instance, did Augustine of Hippo want to be a priest or a bishop?
A little summary here--
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/50.html
If Driscoll's exegesis and application have any validity at all (and I'm not suggesting they do) the Augustine of Hippo, one of the most legendary and celebrated Christian thinkers, pastors and theologians of the Western church, has to be called unqualified. Almost everything about Augustine's ordination could be seen as a counterexample of what Driscoll proposed 1 Timothy 3 said. A more careful reading of the text shows that on a few points Driscoll's reading of 1 Timothy 3 in "The Man" doesn't really hold up on textual grounds and there are counterexamples of important Christian leaders who ended up in jobs for which they did not nominate themselves.
If your sermon leads you to a conclusion that requires you to say Augustine shouldn't and couldn't have been a pastor if you consistently apply the principles you outline from your text that may suggest that the interpretation of the text itself is problematic and that it flies in the face of how the early Church understood the text.
It's one thing for Driscoll to approvingly cite Chuck Smith's axiom that it is better to train the called than to call the trained but it is no sure thing that these two things are necessarily in opposition. It's strange if you think about it because if Driscoll applied his own explication of 1 Timothy 3 to one of his theological heroes he'd have to say Augustine wasn't qualified because he didn't nominate himself. Of course that was five years ago that this sermon got preached.
Given the controversies that seem to have brewed up in Chuck Smith's neck of the woods in the last few years maybe there are flaws to the practice of "training the called", too.
If the Holy Spirit moves in ways we truly cannot perceive or identify then it's not a sure thing that just because a man nominates himself that he's fit for eldership. Now if that were actually true, if it were true that the Holy Spirit calls and reveals who is fit for ministry, and they need to nominate themselves, then if the Spirit gifted pastors in this way (and Mars Hill only ever hired people who demonstrated they were called, correct?) then why have pastors been fired from Mars Hill at all? If you believe the Holy Spirit calls and gifts men for ministry and that central to this is that the man must nominate himself or he's not qualfiied how can you justify firing anyone? Obvious sin, obviously, but what constitutes obvious sin? An implication in this ecclesiology is a problem, if you fire a pastor who is self-nominated (as he must be) and was only installed because he demonstrated the Spirit's calling and gifting then if you fire him for something that isn't an indisputable sin you're second-guessing the Holy Spirit, aren't you? Do you want to be in a position to declare that against previous demonstations of calling and gifting that the Holy Spirit was wrong? And if that could be the case about one pastor at Mars Hill it could very easily be the case about all of them, couldn't it?
I'd propose hopefully that this sermon "The Man" was five years ago. Maybe things have changed. I'm not sure if a Q school is a change for the better or not but it is, at any rate, a change.
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/the-man/
Driscoll even went so far as to say that "we" will know men are called to be elders because they desire to be one. It's not just someone who is qualified and meets needs in a local church. He has to be someone who wants to be an elder. However that desire comes forth that desire has to be there. Within an Acts 29 or Mars Hill context this may mean that guys nominate themselves and if they don't nominate themselves they may not want to be elders and thus lack an important qualification for ministry as Driscoll interprets 1 Timothy 3.
However, there's no persuasive textual basis for reasoning that simply because it is good to desire the office of overseer/bishop/pastor/shepherd that one is thereby qualified for the role. After all false teachers will want the role even though they are not fit for it. A person might meet most of the qualifications for pastoral office in 1 Timothy 3 yet still be a Pelagian or an Arian, if you stop and think it through for a few seconds.
For instance, did Augustine of Hippo want to be a priest or a bishop?
A little summary here--
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/50.html
If Driscoll's exegesis and application have any validity at all (and I'm not suggesting they do) the Augustine of Hippo, one of the most legendary and celebrated Christian thinkers, pastors and theologians of the Western church, has to be called unqualified. Almost everything about Augustine's ordination could be seen as a counterexample of what Driscoll proposed 1 Timothy 3 said. A more careful reading of the text shows that on a few points Driscoll's reading of 1 Timothy 3 in "The Man" doesn't really hold up on textual grounds and there are counterexamples of important Christian leaders who ended up in jobs for which they did not nominate themselves.
If your sermon leads you to a conclusion that requires you to say Augustine shouldn't and couldn't have been a pastor if you consistently apply the principles you outline from your text that may suggest that the interpretation of the text itself is problematic and that it flies in the face of how the early Church understood the text.
It's one thing for Driscoll to approvingly cite Chuck Smith's axiom that it is better to train the called than to call the trained but it is no sure thing that these two things are necessarily in opposition. It's strange if you think about it because if Driscoll applied his own explication of 1 Timothy 3 to one of his theological heroes he'd have to say Augustine wasn't qualified because he didn't nominate himself. Of course that was five years ago that this sermon got preached.
Given the controversies that seem to have brewed up in Chuck Smith's neck of the woods in the last few years maybe there are flaws to the practice of "training the called", too.
If the Holy Spirit moves in ways we truly cannot perceive or identify then it's not a sure thing that just because a man nominates himself that he's fit for eldership. Now if that were actually true, if it were true that the Holy Spirit calls and reveals who is fit for ministry, and they need to nominate themselves, then if the Spirit gifted pastors in this way (and Mars Hill only ever hired people who demonstrated they were called, correct?) then why have pastors been fired from Mars Hill at all? If you believe the Holy Spirit calls and gifts men for ministry and that central to this is that the man must nominate himself or he's not qualfiied how can you justify firing anyone? Obvious sin, obviously, but what constitutes obvious sin? An implication in this ecclesiology is a problem, if you fire a pastor who is self-nominated (as he must be) and was only installed because he demonstrated the Spirit's calling and gifting then if you fire him for something that isn't an indisputable sin you're second-guessing the Holy Spirit, aren't you? Do you want to be in a position to declare that against previous demonstations of calling and gifting that the Holy Spirit was wrong? And if that could be the case about one pastor at Mars Hill it could very easily be the case about all of them, couldn't it?
I'd propose hopefully that this sermon "The Man" was five years ago. Maybe things have changed. I'm not sure if a Q school is a change for the better or not but it is, at any rate, a change.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Fighting for the Faith discusses Driscoll's "Blessed Subtraction"
http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2012/06/mark-driscoll-brags-about-pile-of-bodies-behind-mars-hills-bus.html
Chris Rosebrough at Pirate Christian Radio has found an audio clip of an October 2007 Acts 29 event of some kind in which Mark Driscoll said:
"I'm all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies under the Mars Hill bus [chuckles] and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus. Those are the two options. But the bus ain't gonna stop. And, uh, I'm just a guy who's like, "Look, we love you. But this is what we're doing."
"There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus. They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off, because they want to go somewhere else. ...
... I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed."
I notice that this audio is mentioned as something in early October 2007. Driscoll says in the audio that two pastors were fired "last night" but this audio, if it's in any way affiliated with Acts 29, doesn't correspond to anything you can download at the actual Acts 29 Network site.
Which October 2007 event was this? Well if the event was "yesterday" that Driscoll was referring to in early October 2007 there's this sermon that was preached at the end of September 2007.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/driscoll-09-30-2007-sermon-clips.mp3
from "Fathers and Fighting" in the Nehemiah series.
http://marshill.com/media/nehemiah/fathers-and-fighting
But if those two guys getting fired was the first time pastors had been fired in the history of Mars Hill then who is this other guy Driscoll is referring to at minute 40 in Q&A with Mark Driscoll from February 2008?
Who were the "we" Driscoll refers to in the audio clip Rosebrough makes reference to? Well, if this email signed by then Lead Pastor Jamie Munson can inform us "we" seems to have been Mark Driscoll, Jamie Munson, Bubba Jennings and Mark Driscoll.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-01-2007-email-from-jmunson.pdf
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-02-2007-important-message-from-the-lead-pastor.pdf
So it sure seems like the event referenced was the firings of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer. But was that the first time elders were fired at Mars Hill? Driscoll said it was the first time such a thing had happened but the audio for that event doesn't leap out of the Acts 29 Network website. You're not going to find a whole lot of Driscoll audio connected to Acts 29 for October 2007 these days.
You can, however, find a Q&A from February 2008 where Driscoll describes the first guy he had to fire from pastoral work at these two places.
http://theresurgence.com/2008/04/07/question-and-answer-with-mark-driscoll-video
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/qa-with-mark-driscoll/
(starts at 00:31:52)
Q. How do you lead staff who are your best friends?Do you want the honest answer or should I punt?
... You can't. ... you can't.
I hate to tell you that. ... Deep down in your gut you know if you're best friends and someone works for you that changes the relationship. Right? Because you can fire them. Of course you want to be friends with your elders and the people you work with. I mean, we're a church. I mean you wanna, you NEED to love the people you work with. But one of the hardest things, and only the lead guy gets this. Nobody else on staff even understands what I'm talking about. When you're the lead guy you wear multiple hats. Say it's someone who works with you and they're a good friend. You wear the "Hey, we're buddies" hat. We're friends. We go on vacation. We hang out. We do
dinner. We're friends.
But you also wear the "I'm your boss" hat "You need to do your job or I might have to fire you" hat, and you also wear the "I'm your pastor. I love you, care for you, and I'm looking out for your well-being" hat. Those three hats are in absolute collision. Because how do you fire your friend and then pastor them through it? Right? I mean that is very complicated. I love you, you're fired, can I pray for you? That is a very .. what are we doing? I think if you're going to have your best friends working with you they need to be somewhere else on the team but not under you or the friendship really needs to change.
And what happens is when people are your friend ... I don't think that many do this intentionally but they want you to wear whatever hat is at their best interest at the time. So they didn't do their job, they're falling down on their responsibility, and you talk to them and say, "Look, you're not getting this done." They put on the "hey buddy. Yeah, I've been kinda sick lately and my wife and I are going through a hard time." and they want the friend hat on. And as a friend you're like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, dude." But then you put your boss hat back on and you're like "Yeah, but we pay you and we need you to get the job done."
And then they want you to put the friend hat back on and keep sympathizing.
And you're totally conflicted. ...
I have very good friends in this church. I have elders that are very dear friends, but when you have to do their performance review, when you have to decide what their wage is, when you have to decide whether they get promoted, demoted or terminated it's impossible to do that because you can't wear all three hats at the same time.
First guy I fired, he was a dear friend. A godly man, no moral or doctrinal sin whatsoever, he just wasn't keeping up with what we needed him to do. And it wasn't `cause he didn't try and wasn't working hard. And he had a wonderful wife and a great family and to this day I think the world of this guy. And if my sons grew up to be like him, I'd be proud. And I'm not critical of this man at all.
But I remember sitting down at that first termination. First I put on the friend hat. I said, "I love you, I appreciate you. I value you." Then I put on the boss hat, "I'm gonna have to let you go. Here's why." And then I put on the pastor hat, "How are you feeling? How are you doing?" And he was really gracious with me and he said, "This is just the weirdest conversation I've ever had." And I said, "Me too, `cause I'm not sure what hat I'm supposed to wear."
Does that make any sense? The best thing is if you have a best friend maybe the best thing to do is not have them work with you. Or if they do have them work under someone else. And to also pursue good friendships with people outside of your church. Some of my dearest friends today are not at Mars Hill, they're also pastors of other churches. Darrin Patrick is here, Vice-President of Acts 29. I love him. He's a brother. He's the guy I call. ... He's a pastor to me, you know? Matt Chandler is here. I count as a friend. By God's Grace, C. J. Mahaney, I count as a friend. ...
...
Driscoll went on to explain how and why it was beneficial to resign as legal president and has head of the elder board and to give those jobs to Jamie Munson. Driscoll explained that in so doing he no longer had "all those conflicts of interest".
Joyful Exiles has presented enough documentary and audio evidence to establish beyond all doubt that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry were fired at the end of September 2007. Thousands of members were notified of the firings. Who was this unnamed other guy Driscoll referred to in the February 2008 Q&A? If he was the first person to get fired then why did Driscoll use the wording he used about the two men who got fired? There's no question about the "off the bus" or "under the bus" part. It's the "first time" part that is a puzzle.
Well, it's tough to know for sure who this person Driscoll fired might actually be. Driscoll had referred to Lief Moi as a good friend but the thing is was Moi fired? By Moi's account he was asked to step down and told he lacked the kingly gifts for running a campus the size of Ballard.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Page 7 of 145
A letter from Pastor Lief Moi
November 9, 2007
Dear Mars Hill Members
The following is a brief account and explanation of what has transpired with me and Mars Hill Church over the past few months. I hope this gives comfort and answers to those of you who have been concerned.
In June of this year I was asked to step down from the executive team and the role of campus pastor at Ballard. The primary reason, and I believe a valid one, was that I do not have the administrative skills to run a campus the size of Ballard. Although I agreed with the assessment of my lack of Kingly skills, I felt that I was being removed from a role that God had called me to and as a result I resigned from the elder board. There were many elders who spoke with me and asked me to reconsider, but at the time my heart was hard and I was not interested. After much contemplation, prayer and speaking with Pastor Mark, I asked to be reinstated as an elder and the vote was unanimous with one abstention to reinstate me.
Because of a major role change and the re-org, it was determined that my salary was to be cut by almost 40%. At that time I told Pastor Jamie that I would not be able to stay on full time would consider a part time position so I could work on other means of providing for my family.
So as of today I am working 20 hours a week in Ballard counseling on Sundays and Wednesday evenings. I need you all to know and I ask your forgiveness for times during this process that I have not thought about the gospel first but considered my feelings most important and therefore have sinned. This has been one of the most difficult times of my life but am now looking to the future with my hope in Jesus and trust in the elders of Mars Hill to leada us into what Jesus would have us do and be. And it is this that I would ask you to do as well. These men love Jesus and they love you. We might not always agree on the method but we can always agree on Jesus.
Blessings
Pastor Lief
There is a summary of Lief Moi's time at Mars Hill in 2007 that can also be found here, later in the same document:
From Appendix B (page 115 of 145)
Mars Hill Re-organization document, previously sent to members on June 23, 2007
...
Initially, Pastor Lief Moi was uncomfortable with the transition plans and uncertain that his conscience would allow him to continue as an Elder of Mars Hill Church. This precipitated several tense and difficult meetings for us as an Elder team, striving for unity but also the most effective way to organize and lead our church. After a few weeks off with his family to think and pray, Lief Moi resigned from his position on staff as well as his office as Elder of Mars hill Church. Loving our brother and unwilling to olet this matter go without every possbile effort for reconciliation Pastor Mark, and Pastor Bill Clem spent hours laboring over Lief's concerns and frustrations. Following the extremely fruitful meeting with Pastors Mark and Bill, Lief sought reconciliation with several pastors who felt they had been wronged in the matter by him, and submitted himself humbly for restoration as an Elder of the church. The Elders assembled, discussed the matter soberly, and after much prayer and discussion voted to restore Lief as an Elder of Mars Hill Church and a member of the Ballard Campus team. Lief will continue to employ his unique gifts, which many of our members have been blessed by for years, to strength faith, fortify marriages, and equip the saints for acts of service as we love our city with Jesus. This process put many of our men's faith, endurance, constitution, and their trust in Jesus to the test. It drove many men deep into God's Word for wisdom, seeking His discernment and leading through prayer. Despite sleepless nights and frayed nerves, we are a truly a stronger Elder body because of this incredible labor God has shephered us through. In His wisdom, He has made us bear this weighty issue as we move to a structure that distributes and delegates authority and mandates more trust and confidence in one another. Praying together as 24 men united by our love of Jesus and His great commission, it is evident He has uniquely tempered us for the coming season as a lovingly unified yet honest and effective team.
Here is an answer Driscoll gave a member who had questions about when Moi might preach again.
page 23-24/145
This is from the section Pulpit and Preaching
responses submitted by Pastor Mark Driscoll
Q. Will we get to hear Pastor Lief preach again some time soon? I haven't heard him preach since the Mother's Day sermon and while I can understand why that sermon got pulled I hope he gets to preach some more in teh future if he's in better health (I read the prayer request that said he was in bad shape and his wife was not in good health, either). My hope is that we get to hear at least a little preaching from all our pastors at some point. I haven't heard a sermon from Pastor Tim Smith in a while or from Pastor Bubba at all and Pastor Bill's sermons on Jude were fantastic.
A. First, please do pray for the health of my friend and brother Pastor Lief. He has had very painful back problems for many years and he still stuffers from constant pain. ...
Back problems for many years, suffers from constant pain? Told he did not have the kingly gifts to manage a campus the size of Ballard? Was this the man Driscoll was talking about in the Acts 29 February 2008? If the first guy Driscoll fired (per his Q&A on February 2008) was someone he considered a dear friend then what is the meaning of the audio of Driscoll Chris Rosebrough found from October 2007 explaining how "Yesterday we fired two guys for the first time in the history of Mars Hill." Was the first firing of the one man just a firing from a specific job and not from pastoral work at Mars Hill altogether? Was that the first pastor Driscoll really fired? What about the two pastors (who seem nearly beyond all doubt to have been Bent Meyer and Paul Petry) who Driscoll said were the first pastors fired in the history of Mars Hill in October 2007, apparently an address Driscoll gave the day after the firings happened? Was that the first time pastors had been fired in the history of Mars Hill? In what sense? If Moi resigned then that doesn't seem like it would count as a firing, would it?
The February 2008 story Driscoll shared about the first time had to fire a guy sounds pretty different from the first time pastors had to be fired that Driscoll recounts in the October 2007 Acts 29 event, whichever one it was, Rosebrough has found audio for. Perhaps the best way to account for this or, to put it a bit more starkly, reconcile these two accounts is to say that the first guy Driscoll fired maybe wasn't a pastor, but the question Driscoll answered was how you could work with friends in ministry, the sort of question which would presuppose, you would think, the condition that a man like Mark Driscoll was working in ministry with his best friends. It was blogger Jared C. Wilson who first alerted me to this video/audio talk and mentioned some things about it he found troubling over at his blog.
Joyful Exiles has presented enough documentary and audio evidence to establish beyond all doubt that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry were fired. Thousands of members were notified of the firings. Who was this unnamed other guy Driscoll referred to in the February 2008 Q&A? If he was the first person to get fired then why did Driscoll use the wording he used about the two men who got fired? There's no question about the "off the bus" or "under the bus" part. It's the "first time" part that is a puzzle. How can the first time a pastor (or two) got fired at Mars Hill alternately be a story about just one man Driscoll considered a dear friend in February 2008 when asked about how he led friends in ministry, and yet earlier in October 2007 the first firings in the history of Mars Hill mentioned were that of two guys who ended up under the bus because "they weren't on mission"?
I don't know where Rosebrough found that audio from early October 2007 where Driscoll said that "yesterday" two guys were off and under the bus but however he found it I can't help but have questions about how that account from Driscoll doesn't quite fit the February 2008 story of the first guy he fired, and vice versa. It is a puzzle.
Chris Rosebrough at Pirate Christian Radio has found an audio clip of an October 2007 Acts 29 event of some kind in which Mark Driscoll said:
"I'm all about blessed subtraction. There is a pile of dead bodies under the Mars Hill bus [chuckles] and by God's grace it'll be a mountain by the time we're done. You either get on the bus or get run over by the bus. Those are the two options. But the bus ain't gonna stop. And, uh, I'm just a guy who's like, "Look, we love you. But this is what we're doing."
"There's a few kind of people. There's people who get in the way of the bus. They gotta get run over. There are people who want to take turns driving the bus. They gotta get thrown off, because they want to go somewhere else. ...
... I'm doing it right now. I'm doing it right now. We just took certain guys and rearranged the seats on the bus. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They're off the bus, under the bus. They were off mission so now they're unemployed."
I notice that this audio is mentioned as something in early October 2007. Driscoll says in the audio that two pastors were fired "last night" but this audio, if it's in any way affiliated with Acts 29, doesn't correspond to anything you can download at the actual Acts 29 Network site.
Which October 2007 event was this? Well if the event was "yesterday" that Driscoll was referring to in early October 2007 there's this sermon that was preached at the end of September 2007.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/driscoll-09-30-2007-sermon-clips.mp3
from "Fathers and Fighting" in the Nehemiah series.
http://marshill.com/media/nehemiah/fathers-and-fighting
But if those two guys getting fired was the first time pastors had been fired in the history of Mars Hill then who is this other guy Driscoll is referring to at minute 40 in Q&A with Mark Driscoll from February 2008?
Who were the "we" Driscoll refers to in the audio clip Rosebrough makes reference to? Well, if this email signed by then Lead Pastor Jamie Munson can inform us "we" seems to have been Mark Driscoll, Jamie Munson, Bubba Jennings and Mark Driscoll.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-01-2007-email-from-jmunson.pdf
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/10-02-2007-important-message-from-the-lead-pastor.pdf
So it sure seems like the event referenced was the firings of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer. But was that the first time elders were fired at Mars Hill? Driscoll said it was the first time such a thing had happened but the audio for that event doesn't leap out of the Acts 29 Network website. You're not going to find a whole lot of Driscoll audio connected to Acts 29 for October 2007 these days.
You can, however, find a Q&A from February 2008 where Driscoll describes the first guy he had to fire from pastoral work at these two places.
http://theresurgence.com/2008/04/07/question-and-answer-with-mark-driscoll-video
http://www.theresurgence.com/mark_driscoll_2008-02-27_video_tnc_qa
http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/qa-with-mark-driscoll/
(starts at 00:31:52)
Q. How do you lead staff who are your best friends?Do you want the honest answer or should I punt?
... You can't. ... you can't.
I hate to tell you that. ... Deep down in your gut you know if you're best friends and someone works for you that changes the relationship. Right? Because you can fire them. Of course you want to be friends with your elders and the people you work with. I mean, we're a church. I mean you wanna, you NEED to love the people you work with. But one of the hardest things, and only the lead guy gets this. Nobody else on staff even understands what I'm talking about. When you're the lead guy you wear multiple hats. Say it's someone who works with you and they're a good friend. You wear the "Hey, we're buddies" hat. We're friends. We go on vacation. We hang out. We do
dinner. We're friends.
But you also wear the "I'm your boss" hat "You need to do your job or I might have to fire you" hat, and you also wear the "I'm your pastor. I love you, care for you, and I'm looking out for your well-being" hat. Those three hats are in absolute collision. Because how do you fire your friend and then pastor them through it? Right? I mean that is very complicated. I love you, you're fired, can I pray for you? That is a very .. what are we doing? I think if you're going to have your best friends working with you they need to be somewhere else on the team but not under you or the friendship really needs to change.
And what happens is when people are your friend ... I don't think that many do this intentionally but they want you to wear whatever hat is at their best interest at the time. So they didn't do their job, they're falling down on their responsibility, and you talk to them and say, "Look, you're not getting this done." They put on the "hey buddy. Yeah, I've been kinda sick lately and my wife and I are going through a hard time." and they want the friend hat on. And as a friend you're like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, dude." But then you put your boss hat back on and you're like "Yeah, but we pay you and we need you to get the job done."
And then they want you to put the friend hat back on and keep sympathizing.
And you're totally conflicted. ...
I have very good friends in this church. I have elders that are very dear friends, but when you have to do their performance review, when you have to decide what their wage is, when you have to decide whether they get promoted, demoted or terminated it's impossible to do that because you can't wear all three hats at the same time.
First guy I fired, he was a dear friend. A godly man, no moral or doctrinal sin whatsoever, he just wasn't keeping up with what we needed him to do. And it wasn't `cause he didn't try and wasn't working hard. And he had a wonderful wife and a great family and to this day I think the world of this guy. And if my sons grew up to be like him, I'd be proud. And I'm not critical of this man at all.
But I remember sitting down at that first termination. First I put on the friend hat. I said, "I love you, I appreciate you. I value you." Then I put on the boss hat, "I'm gonna have to let you go. Here's why." And then I put on the pastor hat, "How are you feeling? How are you doing?" And he was really gracious with me and he said, "This is just the weirdest conversation I've ever had." And I said, "Me too, `cause I'm not sure what hat I'm supposed to wear."
Does that make any sense? The best thing is if you have a best friend maybe the best thing to do is not have them work with you. Or if they do have them work under someone else. And to also pursue good friendships with people outside of your church. Some of my dearest friends today are not at Mars Hill, they're also pastors of other churches. Darrin Patrick is here, Vice-President of Acts 29. I love him. He's a brother. He's the guy I call. ... He's a pastor to me, you know? Matt Chandler is here. I count as a friend. By God's Grace, C. J. Mahaney, I count as a friend. ...
...
Driscoll went on to explain how and why it was beneficial to resign as legal president and has head of the elder board and to give those jobs to Jamie Munson. Driscoll explained that in so doing he no longer had "all those conflicts of interest".
Joyful Exiles has presented enough documentary and audio evidence to establish beyond all doubt that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry were fired at the end of September 2007. Thousands of members were notified of the firings. Who was this unnamed other guy Driscoll referred to in the February 2008 Q&A? If he was the first person to get fired then why did Driscoll use the wording he used about the two men who got fired? There's no question about the "off the bus" or "under the bus" part. It's the "first time" part that is a puzzle.
Well, it's tough to know for sure who this person Driscoll fired might actually be. Driscoll had referred to Lief Moi as a good friend but the thing is was Moi fired? By Moi's account he was asked to step down and told he lacked the kingly gifts for running a campus the size of Ballard.
http://joyfulexiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/elders-response-to-questions-11-9-07.pdf
Page 7 of 145
A letter from Pastor Lief Moi
November 9, 2007
Dear Mars Hill Members
The following is a brief account and explanation of what has transpired with me and Mars Hill Church over the past few months. I hope this gives comfort and answers to those of you who have been concerned.
In June of this year I was asked to step down from the executive team and the role of campus pastor at Ballard. The primary reason, and I believe a valid one, was that I do not have the administrative skills to run a campus the size of Ballard. Although I agreed with the assessment of my lack of Kingly skills, I felt that I was being removed from a role that God had called me to and as a result I resigned from the elder board. There were many elders who spoke with me and asked me to reconsider, but at the time my heart was hard and I was not interested. After much contemplation, prayer and speaking with Pastor Mark, I asked to be reinstated as an elder and the vote was unanimous with one abstention to reinstate me.
Because of a major role change and the re-org, it was determined that my salary was to be cut by almost 40%. At that time I told Pastor Jamie that I would not be able to stay on full time would consider a part time position so I could work on other means of providing for my family.
So as of today I am working 20 hours a week in Ballard counseling on Sundays and Wednesday evenings. I need you all to know and I ask your forgiveness for times during this process that I have not thought about the gospel first but considered my feelings most important and therefore have sinned. This has been one of the most difficult times of my life but am now looking to the future with my hope in Jesus and trust in the elders of Mars Hill to leada us into what Jesus would have us do and be. And it is this that I would ask you to do as well. These men love Jesus and they love you. We might not always agree on the method but we can always agree on Jesus.
Blessings
Pastor Lief
There is a summary of Lief Moi's time at Mars Hill in 2007 that can also be found here, later in the same document:
From Appendix B (page 115 of 145)
Mars Hill Re-organization document, previously sent to members on June 23, 2007
...
Initially, Pastor Lief Moi was uncomfortable with the transition plans and uncertain that his conscience would allow him to continue as an Elder of Mars Hill Church. This precipitated several tense and difficult meetings for us as an Elder team, striving for unity but also the most effective way to organize and lead our church. After a few weeks off with his family to think and pray, Lief Moi resigned from his position on staff as well as his office as Elder of Mars hill Church. Loving our brother and unwilling to olet this matter go without every possbile effort for reconciliation Pastor Mark, and Pastor Bill Clem spent hours laboring over Lief's concerns and frustrations. Following the extremely fruitful meeting with Pastors Mark and Bill, Lief sought reconciliation with several pastors who felt they had been wronged in the matter by him, and submitted himself humbly for restoration as an Elder of the church. The Elders assembled, discussed the matter soberly, and after much prayer and discussion voted to restore Lief as an Elder of Mars Hill Church and a member of the Ballard Campus team. Lief will continue to employ his unique gifts, which many of our members have been blessed by for years, to strength faith, fortify marriages, and equip the saints for acts of service as we love our city with Jesus. This process put many of our men's faith, endurance, constitution, and their trust in Jesus to the test. It drove many men deep into God's Word for wisdom, seeking His discernment and leading through prayer. Despite sleepless nights and frayed nerves, we are a truly a stronger Elder body because of this incredible labor God has shephered us through. In His wisdom, He has made us bear this weighty issue as we move to a structure that distributes and delegates authority and mandates more trust and confidence in one another. Praying together as 24 men united by our love of Jesus and His great commission, it is evident He has uniquely tempered us for the coming season as a lovingly unified yet honest and effective team.
Here is an answer Driscoll gave a member who had questions about when Moi might preach again.
page 23-24/145
This is from the section Pulpit and Preaching
responses submitted by Pastor Mark Driscoll
Q. Will we get to hear Pastor Lief preach again some time soon? I haven't heard him preach since the Mother's Day sermon and while I can understand why that sermon got pulled I hope he gets to preach some more in teh future if he's in better health (I read the prayer request that said he was in bad shape and his wife was not in good health, either). My hope is that we get to hear at least a little preaching from all our pastors at some point. I haven't heard a sermon from Pastor Tim Smith in a while or from Pastor Bubba at all and Pastor Bill's sermons on Jude were fantastic.
A. First, please do pray for the health of my friend and brother Pastor Lief. He has had very painful back problems for many years and he still stuffers from constant pain. ...
Back problems for many years, suffers from constant pain? Told he did not have the kingly gifts to manage a campus the size of Ballard? Was this the man Driscoll was talking about in the Acts 29 February 2008? If the first guy Driscoll fired (per his Q&A on February 2008) was someone he considered a dear friend then what is the meaning of the audio of Driscoll Chris Rosebrough found from October 2007 explaining how "Yesterday we fired two guys for the first time in the history of Mars Hill." Was the first firing of the one man just a firing from a specific job and not from pastoral work at Mars Hill altogether? Was that the first pastor Driscoll really fired? What about the two pastors (who seem nearly beyond all doubt to have been Bent Meyer and Paul Petry) who Driscoll said were the first pastors fired in the history of Mars Hill in October 2007, apparently an address Driscoll gave the day after the firings happened? Was that the first time pastors had been fired in the history of Mars Hill? In what sense? If Moi resigned then that doesn't seem like it would count as a firing, would it?
The February 2008 story Driscoll shared about the first time had to fire a guy sounds pretty different from the first time pastors had to be fired that Driscoll recounts in the October 2007 Acts 29 event, whichever one it was, Rosebrough has found audio for. Perhaps the best way to account for this or, to put it a bit more starkly, reconcile these two accounts is to say that the first guy Driscoll fired maybe wasn't a pastor, but the question Driscoll answered was how you could work with friends in ministry, the sort of question which would presuppose, you would think, the condition that a man like Mark Driscoll was working in ministry with his best friends. It was blogger Jared C. Wilson who first alerted me to this video/audio talk and mentioned some things about it he found troubling over at his blog.
Joyful Exiles has presented enough documentary and audio evidence to establish beyond all doubt that Bent Meyer and Paul Petry were fired. Thousands of members were notified of the firings. Who was this unnamed other guy Driscoll referred to in the February 2008 Q&A? If he was the first person to get fired then why did Driscoll use the wording he used about the two men who got fired? There's no question about the "off the bus" or "under the bus" part. It's the "first time" part that is a puzzle. How can the first time a pastor (or two) got fired at Mars Hill alternately be a story about just one man Driscoll considered a dear friend in February 2008 when asked about how he led friends in ministry, and yet earlier in October 2007 the first firings in the history of Mars Hill mentioned were that of two guys who ended up under the bus because "they weren't on mission"?
I don't know where Rosebrough found that audio from early October 2007 where Driscoll said that "yesterday" two guys were off and under the bus but however he found it I can't help but have questions about how that account from Driscoll doesn't quite fit the February 2008 story of the first guy he fired, and vice versa. It is a puzzle.
Has Mark Driscoll's "The Man" been circumcised?
This year Andy and Wendy Alsup reviewed Mark and Grace Driscoll's book Real Marriage. In their review Wendy in particular made reference to an Acts29 boot camp teaching held in Raleigh, NC on September 20, 2007, called "The Man". This teaching was an overview on 1 Timothy 3 and the textual discussion of elder qualifications for church planters. This sermon is where Wendy Alsup wrote the "woodchipper" anecdote was shared. That is to say in this sermon Driscoll said he had recently put one of the executive elders through the woodchipper. It's not clear which executive elder was put through the woodchipper in September 2007. By October 1, 2007 the executive elders were Mark Driscoll, Jamie Munson, Scott Thomas and Bubba Jennings but it isn't known which executive elder Driscoll put through the woodchipper by September 20, 2007.
For that matter if you download "The Man" now and listen to it you won't be able to find any reference to the wood chipper incident referred to in the Alsup review.
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2012/02/our-review-of-real-marriage-by-mark-and.html
Tuesday February 12, 2012
I recently put (a Mars Hill executive elder who remains at the church) in the wood chipper in my church. ... He was the guy, he had to nitpick at everything; he had to resist everything, he had to look at the other side. … you'd ask him why, he’d be like, well, I just wanted to make sure we've looked at everything, and everybody is considering all the angles. … I'll tell you what, when you despise your elders, at that point you have no safe place in the world from which to do ministry. ... there's always one guy there who's just like a fart in an elevator, and I'm just counting the minutes till I can get away from this guy. You can pray for me. You may say, “It seems like he's dealing with this right now.” Yes, I am. I'm thinking of certain people. If it weren't for Jesus I would be violent.” (Mark Driscoll, “The Man,” Acts 29 Bootcamp, Raleigh, NC, September 20, 2007)
In March 2012 the website Re:Fund went up. The website has a post dated March 10, 2012 which appears to include an even longer excerpt from "The Man", an excerpt that would appear to have been excised from the sermon as it currently exists.
The excerpt reads as follows and would appear to be a continuation of a thought Driscoll expresses beginning at about 56:39 in the sermon
http://refundamentalism.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/mark-driscoll-despised-his-elders/
Mark Driscoll TRAINING PASTORS at an Acts 29 session in Raleigh NC, September 20, 2007:
“…not contentious. You ever meet a guy, it doesn’t matter what the issue is, he’s always gonna play the other side. Those guys are the worst elders in the history of the world. And it doesn’t matter what you’re talk, I had a guy like that; I recently put him in the wood chipper in my church. Seriously. I could say hey, we’re all going to get suckers. He’s be like, what flavor? Whatever flavor you want. Is it sugar free? If you would like. Well, I didn’t say I wanted a sucker. You, you know, you need to die. You know. He just was the guy, he just, he had to nitpick at everything; he had to resist everything, he to look at the other side, if everyone was for something he felt obligated to be the e-brake pulling everything. And you’d ask him why, he’d be like, well, I just wanted to make sure we’ve looked at everything and everybody is considering all the angles. Its like, dude, you’re playing the devils advocate, which is not good. I don’t want anybody for the devil on my team. You know? But there’s some guys like that. It just, they’re contentious, it doesn’t, they’re always fighting, always arguing. There’s, I’ve had guys in eldership, where, in the meeting, everything’s going fine, and they’ll say, I got something, I got something I need to say. And everybody’s head does this; everybody looks like they just got kicked in the sack. You know, I mean literally, they just the air comes out of their body, they just fold in half, because you know, here he goes again, here he freaking goes again. You know. That guy on an elder board, robs the board of any joy at all, and you already got enough criticism and people and work, when you get together with your elders, you don’t all men to be yes men, but at the same time, somebody who’s just contentious, and a neatnick and e-brake puller, I mean those guys, I mean all of a sudden you despise your elder’s meetings, and I’ll tell you what, when you despise your elders, at that point you have no safe place in the world from which to do ministry. Elders meetings stink, people are shooting me, everything’s hard, and I go to meet with the guys, and there’s always one guy there who just, he’s just like a fart in an elevator, and its just, you know, I’m just counting the minutes till I can get away from this guy. You can pray for me, you may say, it seems like he’s dealing with this right now, yes, I am. I’m thinking of certain people. If it weren’t for Jesus I would be violent.”
A person who listens to "The Man" now won't hear any of this in the audio. Yet the Alsups make reference to this segment of the sermon and Re:Fund was apparently able to get access to the sermon and produce an even longer excerpt of words that you won't hear in the sermon if you downloaded it today. It would appear that as sermons go "The Man" got circumcised some time since early March of 2012. For whatever reason, if the sermon cited at both Practical Theology for Women and at Re:Fund originally had the wood chipper anecdote that wood chipper anecdote has been excised from the sermon.
There are however things Driscoll refers to in the sermon as it still is that may be pointers to details from the church leadership in 2007.
From 26:36-28:10 we get the following:
So, in relation to family, husband of one wife. That means you and the other men you appoint have to be a one woman man. That's literally what it say. This doesn't necessarily mean that a man who was ever divorced is disqualified. One of the elders on my team, he was married young, divorced young, became a Christian years later, married a godly woman and they've got a wonderful marriage. Some would say, "Well, if you got divorced as a non-Christian that disqualifies you." I'm like, "Okay, so what if you got drunk as a non-Christian? What if you were someone who was a lover of money as a non-Christian?" All the other qualifications we also can,you know, disqualify ourselves preconversion. The question is have you had a fruitful long number of years as a person who is faithful to Jesus in these ways.
Husband one wife. What that doesn't mean, as well, is just that he's never committed adultery on his wife. It does mean that but it means more than that, that he's a one woman man. Like Job 31:1 says I made a covenant with my eyes not to look on a woman lustfully. This is a guy who's not looking at porn, this a guy who's not flirting with chicks. This is not a guy who, after the sermon is working the floor hoping that nice women come up with flattering comments for his gospel-based sermon on humility. Right?
This is a guy who is a one woman man. He's not lusting after other women, comparing his wife to them. He's not a man who's telling his wife, "Why can't you be like her?" He's a one woman man. Meaning that his eyes and his heart and his hands and his words and his motives and intentions and dollars and days are focused exclusively on being a good, loving husband to just one woman. And the only way, gentlemen, to really know whether or not you're purely a one woman man is ask the woman.
Now when Driscoll referred in the sermon to a man who married young, divorced young, came to faith years later, and married a godly woman was he referring, perhaps, to James Noriega?
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Mission-s-free-legal-clinic-grows-helping-1146192.php
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Mission-s-free-legal-clinic-grows-helping-1146192.php#page-2
This article refers to Noriega's pre-Christian life including felonies and methamphetamine addiction. Noriega married his high school sweetheart but the marriage ended in divorce, which sent Noriega into a tailspin. He eventually ended up at the Union Gospel Mission and got off drugs. He also eventually met and married a woman through a Christian dating site and the marriage took place, according to the Seattle P-I, on New Year's Eve 2003. By November 2004 Noriega was an ordained pastor. By 2006 he was a pastor at the Acts 29 Network church plant Doxa with Pastor Bill Clem.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Path-through-despair-and-redemption-led-to-1160587.php
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Path-through-despair-and-redemption-led-to-1160587.php#page-2
Now in "The Man" Driscoll noted that there is no minimum length of time after which a man make be considered called to be a pastor. It has remained an open question, given Driscoll's public teaching on the biblical qualifications for eldership exactly how and why a felonin the newlywed years of his second marriage and with a new stepdaughter had demonstrated that he had managed his household well enough to qualify as a pastor in an Acts 29 Network church plant (Doxa) and later in Mars Hill. Driscoll made a point of saying that Acts 29 guys are the best guys around, better than the others. All right, we'll take that as given and ask how Noriega was demonstrably ready to be a pastor. Keep in mind that Driscoll played a foundational role in both Acts 29 as well as Mars Hill. In "The Man" Driscoll describes Acts 29 as coming out of Mars Hill church. This means the question of who assessed how qualified Noriega was begins and ends with the leadership culture and structure Driscoll has spearheaded in ministry over the last fifteen years, wouldn't it? Driscoll has said that headship means its your responsibility even if it isn't your fault? Did Driscoll know about Noriega's felonies and recently new marriage in 2004 and 2006?
Was Noriega the pastor on staff in 2007 that Driscoll had in mind when he explained in "The Man" that a man who was divorced in his pre-Christian life is not necessarily disqualified from ministry?
What is apparent was that Noriega seemed to play an increasingly significant role:
http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians/one-body-many-parts
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility
http://marshill.com/2010/10/07/when-mars-hill-became-multi-campus-church-2006-present
http://marshill.com/2011/04/27/amanda-god-has-called-me-to-lead-mars-hill-internship-stories-3
Then some time in later 2011 Noriega vanished from the leadership rosters in Mars Hill. It admittedly took the Mars Hill clarification on church discipline to jolt into my mind the reality that after years of being referred to in various ways Noriega had stopped being mentioned and was apparently no longer a pastor. In one of those paradoxes Mars Hill's PR team attempting to explain why what happened to Andrew wasn't unfair included an apparently irrelevant reference to staff being let go months earlier for overstepping spiritual authority.
As I have noted elsewhere at this blog references to Lief Moi have been scrubbed out. References to family members and spouses of many Mars Hill pastors have been scrubbed out. The campus blogs and associated archives have been suspended, likely indefinitely. A week after I documented Pastor Tim Beltz' reference to Noriega's biblical counseling materials on February 28, 2012 in a post about Noriega it turned out that Beltz was moved from Mars Hill West Seattle to Mars Hill Downtown. Why, frankly, is not particularly something I could figure out nor is it relevant to my observations here. When Driscoll made reference in 2007 to a man on pastoral staff at Mars Hill who was divorced as a non-Christian the best case to be made from external coverage in tandem with Driscoll's own preaching would be James Noriega. Should you at some point download "The Man" and find there is no reference to a man who was pastor on staff at Mars Hill who was divorced as an unbeliever then, well, "The Man" will have been further circumcised. It seems to have been trimmed a bit already if the quotes from Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund are accurate.
It is evident from the pulling of the Edinburg 2007 sermon on Song of Songs Driscoll preached in November 2007 that Driscoll has had sermons from 2007 pulled completely. It's not beyond consideration that Mars Hill and Driscoll's associates could have decided to excise from "The Man" the parts cited by Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund. It is also possible that Acts 29 leadership could have pulled or never recorded a talk that, somehow, got into the hands of Pirate Christian Radio.
So if "The Man" was circumcised (which seems at least plausible given the separate documentation of Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund what was the incentive to cut the woodchipper anecdote? Was that more troublesome than the joke Driscoll made that Baptists would probably be fine with him if he was gay just as long as he didn't have beer?
POSTSCRIPT: It wasn't Noriega, just took a little bit of remembering the other guys to recall who it was.
For that matter if you download "The Man" now and listen to it you won't be able to find any reference to the wood chipper incident referred to in the Alsup review.
http://www.theologyforwomen.org/2012/02/our-review-of-real-marriage-by-mark-and.html
Tuesday February 12, 2012
I recently put (a Mars Hill executive elder who remains at the church) in the wood chipper in my church. ... He was the guy, he had to nitpick at everything; he had to resist everything, he had to look at the other side. … you'd ask him why, he’d be like, well, I just wanted to make sure we've looked at everything, and everybody is considering all the angles. … I'll tell you what, when you despise your elders, at that point you have no safe place in the world from which to do ministry. ... there's always one guy there who's just like a fart in an elevator, and I'm just counting the minutes till I can get away from this guy. You can pray for me. You may say, “It seems like he's dealing with this right now.” Yes, I am. I'm thinking of certain people. If it weren't for Jesus I would be violent.” (Mark Driscoll, “The Man,” Acts 29 Bootcamp, Raleigh, NC, September 20, 2007)
In March 2012 the website Re:Fund went up. The website has a post dated March 10, 2012 which appears to include an even longer excerpt from "The Man", an excerpt that would appear to have been excised from the sermon as it currently exists.
The excerpt reads as follows and would appear to be a continuation of a thought Driscoll expresses beginning at about 56:39 in the sermon
http://refundamentalism.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/mark-driscoll-despised-his-elders/
Mark Driscoll TRAINING PASTORS at an Acts 29 session in Raleigh NC, September 20, 2007:
“…not contentious. You ever meet a guy, it doesn’t matter what the issue is, he’s always gonna play the other side. Those guys are the worst elders in the history of the world. And it doesn’t matter what you’re talk, I had a guy like that; I recently put him in the wood chipper in my church. Seriously. I could say hey, we’re all going to get suckers. He’s be like, what flavor? Whatever flavor you want. Is it sugar free? If you would like. Well, I didn’t say I wanted a sucker. You, you know, you need to die. You know. He just was the guy, he just, he had to nitpick at everything; he had to resist everything, he to look at the other side, if everyone was for something he felt obligated to be the e-brake pulling everything. And you’d ask him why, he’d be like, well, I just wanted to make sure we’ve looked at everything and everybody is considering all the angles. Its like, dude, you’re playing the devils advocate, which is not good. I don’t want anybody for the devil on my team. You know? But there’s some guys like that. It just, they’re contentious, it doesn’t, they’re always fighting, always arguing. There’s, I’ve had guys in eldership, where, in the meeting, everything’s going fine, and they’ll say, I got something, I got something I need to say. And everybody’s head does this; everybody looks like they just got kicked in the sack. You know, I mean literally, they just the air comes out of their body, they just fold in half, because you know, here he goes again, here he freaking goes again. You know. That guy on an elder board, robs the board of any joy at all, and you already got enough criticism and people and work, when you get together with your elders, you don’t all men to be yes men, but at the same time, somebody who’s just contentious, and a neatnick and e-brake puller, I mean those guys, I mean all of a sudden you despise your elder’s meetings, and I’ll tell you what, when you despise your elders, at that point you have no safe place in the world from which to do ministry. Elders meetings stink, people are shooting me, everything’s hard, and I go to meet with the guys, and there’s always one guy there who just, he’s just like a fart in an elevator, and its just, you know, I’m just counting the minutes till I can get away from this guy. You can pray for me, you may say, it seems like he’s dealing with this right now, yes, I am. I’m thinking of certain people. If it weren’t for Jesus I would be violent.”
A person who listens to "The Man" now won't hear any of this in the audio. Yet the Alsups make reference to this segment of the sermon and Re:Fund was apparently able to get access to the sermon and produce an even longer excerpt of words that you won't hear in the sermon if you downloaded it today. It would appear that as sermons go "The Man" got circumcised some time since early March of 2012. For whatever reason, if the sermon cited at both Practical Theology for Women and at Re:Fund originally had the wood chipper anecdote that wood chipper anecdote has been excised from the sermon.
There are however things Driscoll refers to in the sermon as it still is that may be pointers to details from the church leadership in 2007.
From 26:36-28:10 we get the following:
So, in relation to family, husband of one wife. That means you and the other men you appoint have to be a one woman man. That's literally what it say. This doesn't necessarily mean that a man who was ever divorced is disqualified. One of the elders on my team, he was married young, divorced young, became a Christian years later, married a godly woman and they've got a wonderful marriage. Some would say, "Well, if you got divorced as a non-Christian that disqualifies you." I'm like, "Okay, so what if you got drunk as a non-Christian? What if you were someone who was a lover of money as a non-Christian?" All the other qualifications we also can,you know, disqualify ourselves preconversion. The question is have you had a fruitful long number of years as a person who is faithful to Jesus in these ways.
Husband one wife. What that doesn't mean, as well, is just that he's never committed adultery on his wife. It does mean that but it means more than that, that he's a one woman man. Like Job 31:1 says I made a covenant with my eyes not to look on a woman lustfully. This is a guy who's not looking at porn, this a guy who's not flirting with chicks. This is not a guy who, after the sermon is working the floor hoping that nice women come up with flattering comments for his gospel-based sermon on humility. Right?
This is a guy who is a one woman man. He's not lusting after other women, comparing his wife to them. He's not a man who's telling his wife, "Why can't you be like her?" He's a one woman man. Meaning that his eyes and his heart and his hands and his words and his motives and intentions and dollars and days are focused exclusively on being a good, loving husband to just one woman. And the only way, gentlemen, to really know whether or not you're purely a one woman man is ask the woman.
Now when Driscoll referred in the sermon to a man who married young, divorced young, came to faith years later, and married a godly woman was he referring, perhaps, to James Noriega?
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Mission-s-free-legal-clinic-grows-helping-1146192.php
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Mission-s-free-legal-clinic-grows-helping-1146192.php#page-2
This article refers to Noriega's pre-Christian life including felonies and methamphetamine addiction. Noriega married his high school sweetheart but the marriage ended in divorce, which sent Noriega into a tailspin. He eventually ended up at the Union Gospel Mission and got off drugs. He also eventually met and married a woman through a Christian dating site and the marriage took place, according to the Seattle P-I, on New Year's Eve 2003. By November 2004 Noriega was an ordained pastor. By 2006 he was a pastor at the Acts 29 Network church plant Doxa with Pastor Bill Clem.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Path-through-despair-and-redemption-led-to-1160587.php
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Path-through-despair-and-redemption-led-to-1160587.php#page-2
Now in "The Man" Driscoll noted that there is no minimum length of time after which a man make be considered called to be a pastor. It has remained an open question, given Driscoll's public teaching on the biblical qualifications for eldership exactly how and why a felonin the newlywed years of his second marriage and with a new stepdaughter had demonstrated that he had managed his household well enough to qualify as a pastor in an Acts 29 Network church plant (Doxa) and later in Mars Hill. Driscoll made a point of saying that Acts 29 guys are the best guys around, better than the others. All right, we'll take that as given and ask how Noriega was demonstrably ready to be a pastor. Keep in mind that Driscoll played a foundational role in both Acts 29 as well as Mars Hill. In "The Man" Driscoll describes Acts 29 as coming out of Mars Hill church. This means the question of who assessed how qualified Noriega was begins and ends with the leadership culture and structure Driscoll has spearheaded in ministry over the last fifteen years, wouldn't it? Driscoll has said that headship means its your responsibility even if it isn't your fault? Did Driscoll know about Noriega's felonies and recently new marriage in 2004 and 2006?
Was Noriega the pastor on staff in 2007 that Driscoll had in mind when he explained in "The Man" that a man who was divorced in his pre-Christian life is not necessarily disqualified from ministry?
What is apparent was that Noriega seemed to play an increasingly significant role:
http://marshill.com/media/1st-corinthians/one-body-many-parts
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility
http://marshill.com/2010/10/07/when-mars-hill-became-multi-campus-church-2006-present
http://marshill.com/2011/04/27/amanda-god-has-called-me-to-lead-mars-hill-internship-stories-3
Then some time in later 2011 Noriega vanished from the leadership rosters in Mars Hill. It admittedly took the Mars Hill clarification on church discipline to jolt into my mind the reality that after years of being referred to in various ways Noriega had stopped being mentioned and was apparently no longer a pastor. In one of those paradoxes Mars Hill's PR team attempting to explain why what happened to Andrew wasn't unfair included an apparently irrelevant reference to staff being let go months earlier for overstepping spiritual authority.
As I have noted elsewhere at this blog references to Lief Moi have been scrubbed out. References to family members and spouses of many Mars Hill pastors have been scrubbed out. The campus blogs and associated archives have been suspended, likely indefinitely. A week after I documented Pastor Tim Beltz' reference to Noriega's biblical counseling materials on February 28, 2012 in a post about Noriega it turned out that Beltz was moved from Mars Hill West Seattle to Mars Hill Downtown. Why, frankly, is not particularly something I could figure out nor is it relevant to my observations here. When Driscoll made reference in 2007 to a man on pastoral staff at Mars Hill who was divorced as a non-Christian the best case to be made from external coverage in tandem with Driscoll's own preaching would be James Noriega. Should you at some point download "The Man" and find there is no reference to a man who was pastor on staff at Mars Hill who was divorced as an unbeliever then, well, "The Man" will have been further circumcised. It seems to have been trimmed a bit already if the quotes from Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund are accurate.
It is evident from the pulling of the Edinburg 2007 sermon on Song of Songs Driscoll preached in November 2007 that Driscoll has had sermons from 2007 pulled completely. It's not beyond consideration that Mars Hill and Driscoll's associates could have decided to excise from "The Man" the parts cited by Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund. It is also possible that Acts 29 leadership could have pulled or never recorded a talk that, somehow, got into the hands of Pirate Christian Radio.
So if "The Man" was circumcised (which seems at least plausible given the separate documentation of Practical Theology for Women and Re:Fund what was the incentive to cut the woodchipper anecdote? Was that more troublesome than the joke Driscoll made that Baptists would probably be fine with him if he was gay just as long as he didn't have beer?
POSTSCRIPT: It wasn't Noriega, just took a little bit of remembering the other guys to recall who it was.
Monday, June 18, 2012
HT Mockingbird: Why Smart People are Stupid
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html
Although Kahneman is now widely recognized as one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, his work was dismissed for years. Kahneman recounts how one eminent American philosopher, after hearing about his research, quickly turned away, saying, “I am not interested in the psychology of stupidity.”
The philosopher, it turns out, got it backward. A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology led by Richard West at James Madison University and Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto suggests that, in many instances, smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors. Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias—that’s why those with higher S.A.T. scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes—it can actually be a subtle curse.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html#ixzz1yCvrA4wz
The results were quite disturbing. For one thing, self-awareness was not particularly useful: as the scientists note, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” This finding wouldn’t surprise Kahneman, who admits in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that his decades of groundbreaking research have failed to significantly improve his own mental performance. “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy”—a tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task—“as it was before I made a study of these issues,” he writes.
Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves. Although the bias blind spot itself isn’t a new concept, West’s latest paper demonstrates that it applies to every single bias under consideration, from anchoring to so-called “framing effects.” In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html#ixzz1yCwcZkVz
Contributors to scripture were apparently aware of this bias. Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding, eh? The heart is deceitful above all things and who can understand it? Though the truth about God can be known it is distorted by those who do not wish to see it, maybe? Now of course unbelievers will point out that these reflect biases, and they would be right, and yet the sad truth about humans is that merely being able to identify the cognitive biases in others does not make us any better at identifying them in ourselves.
There's a proverb that may cover these points, too--do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There's more hope for a fool than for him. It may well be that the quips of certain minor celebrities withstanding it is either impossible to be educated beyond your intelligence or you're just as likely to have the same stupid mental shortcuts as the people who you assume have been educated beyond their intelligence. No matter how smart we may think we are we are all capable of being spectacularly dumb and the smarter we think we are the less likely we are to realize just how dumb we can be.
Although Kahneman is now widely recognized as one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, his work was dismissed for years. Kahneman recounts how one eminent American philosopher, after hearing about his research, quickly turned away, saying, “I am not interested in the psychology of stupidity.”
The philosopher, it turns out, got it backward. A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology led by Richard West at James Madison University and Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto suggests that, in many instances, smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors. Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias—that’s why those with higher S.A.T. scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes—it can actually be a subtle curse.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html#ixzz1yCvrA4wz
The results were quite disturbing. For one thing, self-awareness was not particularly useful: as the scientists note, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” This finding wouldn’t surprise Kahneman, who admits in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that his decades of groundbreaking research have failed to significantly improve his own mental performance. “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy”—a tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task—“as it was before I made a study of these issues,” he writes.
Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves. Although the bias blind spot itself isn’t a new concept, West’s latest paper demonstrates that it applies to every single bias under consideration, from anchoring to so-called “framing effects.” In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html#ixzz1yCwcZkVz
Contributors to scripture were apparently aware of this bias. Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding, eh? The heart is deceitful above all things and who can understand it? Though the truth about God can be known it is distorted by those who do not wish to see it, maybe? Now of course unbelievers will point out that these reflect biases, and they would be right, and yet the sad truth about humans is that merely being able to identify the cognitive biases in others does not make us any better at identifying them in ourselves.
There's a proverb that may cover these points, too--do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There's more hope for a fool than for him. It may well be that the quips of certain minor celebrities withstanding it is either impossible to be educated beyond your intelligence or you're just as likely to have the same stupid mental shortcuts as the people who you assume have been educated beyond their intelligence. No matter how smart we may think we are we are all capable of being spectacularly dumb and the smarter we think we are the less likely we are to realize just how dumb we can be.
HT Mockingbird: The make of VeggieTales repents
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18626?CFID=1201670&CFTOKEN=f433564e61709e6e-7375275E-B176-65B7-12B61551AA0A4879
A fascinating piece on Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales. The company that made the films has since gone bankrupt and Vischer talks with WORLD magazine about what he believes he did and thought wrongly over the last ten years.
The lead is telling ans intriguing, "Make no small plans" was Vischer's motto. Big Ideas went bankrupt in 2003. When budgeting began to be based on projected revenues rather than actual revenue things began to tip southward.
Vischer's observation that in ten years he taught moralism than Christianity is striking. He sounds like a man who wishes he could take back what he invested his life in both in terms of what films he made and how he went about pursuing that vision. When he speaks about how Christians have co-opted a Disney style "follow your dream" praxis he sounds like a man who has seen that fail and seen that pursuit cause him to lose the thread of core elements of Christian life. What is striking and (to me) encouraging is that he's able and willing to talk to someone at WORLD magazine about this. He's willing to talk about failure. Anyone else sense a resonance in this theme of failure as process of discovery with, say, Conan O'Brien's 2011 commencement address at Dartmouth? Maybe it's just me.
When Vischer talks about how Americans are a people who walk away from marriages and abandon children to pursue dreams I think he's got his finger on the pulse of something problematic in American culture and yet it is something he describes Christians being able to do. They may not do this in the same way but sacrificing people and principles for the sake of a vision and a dream can certainly be something Christians do. Vischer touches on something obliquely that I have been thinking about directly that as Christians vision casting and pursuit of a dream or goal should not be predicated on human sacrifice. We're too modern and sophisticated and too well-fit with our Christian American practice to admit that human sacrifice is something we're capable of, but we're more than capable of it.
Wanting, as Vischer put it, to develop the Coca-Cola or McDonald's of evangelicalism to create something so big and sure that it can't fail is not necessarily Christian even if it can be highly effective. Vischer nearly seems to phrase things that the Oprah sort of god is to pursue impact, of following your dream and being the right kind of Christian so God will bring about your awesome dream. In a time when certain Christians sincerely believe that ambition needs to be rescued or something that will inevitably appear it is useful that people like Vischer can speak so plainly about failure. A failure to realize your ambitions in their substance or to realize that the success you attained was at the expense of pursuing what you originally set out to do is not an easy thing to discuss even privately, let alone with a newspaper. I never really watched VeggieTales. It didn't catch or keep my attention and I was not in a situation to have any incentive to seek it out. Some people have remarked on problems in VeggieTales in the past and I have no wish to rehash those observations. Vischer's own confession that seeking impact was part of how he veered off course fascinates me. At this point this blog entry may be longer than the interview itself. Take a gander at the article if you're so inclined.
A fascinating piece on Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales. The company that made the films has since gone bankrupt and Vischer talks with WORLD magazine about what he believes he did and thought wrongly over the last ten years.
The lead is telling ans intriguing, "Make no small plans" was Vischer's motto. Big Ideas went bankrupt in 2003. When budgeting began to be based on projected revenues rather than actual revenue things began to tip southward.
Vischer's observation that in ten years he taught moralism than Christianity is striking. He sounds like a man who wishes he could take back what he invested his life in both in terms of what films he made and how he went about pursuing that vision. When he speaks about how Christians have co-opted a Disney style "follow your dream" praxis he sounds like a man who has seen that fail and seen that pursuit cause him to lose the thread of core elements of Christian life. What is striking and (to me) encouraging is that he's able and willing to talk to someone at WORLD magazine about this. He's willing to talk about failure. Anyone else sense a resonance in this theme of failure as process of discovery with, say, Conan O'Brien's 2011 commencement address at Dartmouth? Maybe it's just me.
When Vischer talks about how Americans are a people who walk away from marriages and abandon children to pursue dreams I think he's got his finger on the pulse of something problematic in American culture and yet it is something he describes Christians being able to do. They may not do this in the same way but sacrificing people and principles for the sake of a vision and a dream can certainly be something Christians do. Vischer touches on something obliquely that I have been thinking about directly that as Christians vision casting and pursuit of a dream or goal should not be predicated on human sacrifice. We're too modern and sophisticated and too well-fit with our Christian American practice to admit that human sacrifice is something we're capable of, but we're more than capable of it.
Wanting, as Vischer put it, to develop the Coca-Cola or McDonald's of evangelicalism to create something so big and sure that it can't fail is not necessarily Christian even if it can be highly effective. Vischer nearly seems to phrase things that the Oprah sort of god is to pursue impact, of following your dream and being the right kind of Christian so God will bring about your awesome dream. In a time when certain Christians sincerely believe that ambition needs to be rescued or something that will inevitably appear it is useful that people like Vischer can speak so plainly about failure. A failure to realize your ambitions in their substance or to realize that the success you attained was at the expense of pursuing what you originally set out to do is not an easy thing to discuss even privately, let alone with a newspaper. I never really watched VeggieTales. It didn't catch or keep my attention and I was not in a situation to have any incentive to seek it out. Some people have remarked on problems in VeggieTales in the past and I have no wish to rehash those observations. Vischer's own confession that seeking impact was part of how he veered off course fascinates me. At this point this blog entry may be longer than the interview itself. Take a gander at the article if you're so inclined.
Mars Hill selling The City an overview of the role of Zack Hubert in Mars Hill
http://marshill.com/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-humility#transcript
November 4, 2007
Pastor Mark Driscoll
Third man I’ll tell you about is Zack Hubert. He’s working at Amazon.com. I think he has a master’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in theology. He’s smart. He was making very significant money writing code and doing programming for the Amazon.com website. Loves Jesus. We approached him. He was an Elder candidate. Said, “Would you take over all of our web development at Mars Hill Church? To do that, you would need to finish the eldership process. You would need to resign your job. You need to take a significant pay cut. And Mars Hill has a nice website, but it’s not nearly as cool on your resume at Amazon.com. And it will come to you and your family at the expense of your life’s earnings. Millions of dollars – you will give up millions of dollars.”
Here’s what he said. “It’s best for Mars Hill Church. That’s my church. I love that church. I’d love to do that.” Resigned, walked away from a prominent job, millions of dollars, to humbly serve at Mars Hill. We make him an Elder at the level of Director. Why? Because God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble. That’s how he works.
Zack Hubert designed what is now The City.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/zhubert
Zack Hubert's Experience
Founder
The City
Public Company; 11-50 employees; NWS; Computer Software industry
November 2008 – April 2011 (2 years 6 months) Greater Seattle Area
Founded and built The City (www.onthecity.org), a social network for churches. Built part of every aspect of a Facebook-like social network with hundreds of thousands of active users.
The City was acquired by Zondervan/HarperCollins/NewsCorp in 2008 and I remained through 2011 leading product development and as a VP within Zondervan. I spent about 80% of my time actively writing code.
The City has continued to grow and remains number one in this social networking niche.
Pastor of Technology
Mars Hill Church
Nonprofit; 51-200 employees; Religious Institutions industry
March 2007 – November 2008 (1 year 9 months) Greater Seattle Area
Following the incredible experience at Amazon, I wanted to take a position where I could dedicate my background towards the common good. Mars Hill was a great fit as it's similar to Amazon in it's high rate of change and innovative drive, being ranked as one of the fastest growing and most innovative churches in the country for several years running.
In my time there, I led a multidisciplinary team through many technology projects ranging from IT to Software Engineering while also serving on the Board of Directors.
You can go read up the rest at his profile if you like. Now when he stopped being a pastor was in November 2008. For those who didn't hear the news at the time, this was because Mars Hill sold The City to Zondervan and Hubert left to join Zondervan. The sale of The City
http://marshill.com/2008/11/24/zondervan-takes-on-the-city
Zondervan Takes On The City
By Pastor Jamie Munson
November 24, 2008
The City began last spring when we introduced the custom online network to Mars Hill members. Pastor Zack Hubert built The City as a resource for our church community, a way to enhance the real relationships within our ministries, staff, and congregation. Last week, Zondervan purchased The City and plans to make it available to churches throughout the world. On Thursday I sent out a letter to the Mars Hill Church congregation (PDF) to announce the news and explain some of the details. In addition, Zondervan distributed a press release that has been published by many news outlets, including MarketWatch and Yahoo! Finance. At Mars Hill, we’re excited that The City now belongs to somebody who will be able to improve this useful resource for the benefit of the greater church. Visit OnTheCity.org for more information about the vision and purpose of The City.
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/449118717.html
Driscoll mentioned that the 2008 year was the year they didn't make budget.
According to the FY09 Annual Report total income were $10,788,624 and total expenses were $10,880,067. That's a negative $91,443. So they didn't make budget but in a budget in the zone of $10.78 million failing by 90k might not be too bad, would it? Given all the controversies about firings and leadership decisions and property purchases that wasn't much more than a drop in the bucket.
In the 2008-2009 numbers from the FY09 report, even discounting revenue from the sale of The City, things seemed to be looking fine.
Still, it seemed that the sale of The City to Zondervan was considered a helpful thing.
http://marshill.com/media/generous/generous-part-2b#transcript
Part 4 Generous (Part 2B)
December 21, 2008
Pastor Munson:
So, a couple things I want to hit. You guys are all familiar with The City. Anyone not familiar with The City? That’s our custom, social, online network that Pastor Zack Hubert developed. This is real exciting. We were able to build this in-house. It’s a custom network for Mars Hill. It allows us to communicate. To interact as a community. To reinforce the community that is Mars Hill Church – the daily life of the church.
We set out to build this, ‘cause some of our old systems were just not working for us.[emphasis added] And never set out to sell the thing, but in God’s grace, a couple months ago, as we’ve been using this, a bunch of people have taken interest. Zondervan, a big company, a big Christian media company, came to us and said, “Hey, we’d like to buy that.”
What problems those were Munson doesn't explain. There was that press release sent off by someone to The Stranger but The City was getting brainstormed before any of that came up. It may simply have been that entrepreneurial spirit carried the day for Hubert, who had also made a fantastic site called Re:Greek. If there were problems with the old platforms known as Midrash, a php discussion forum, it was often that virtually none of the moderators seemed all that genuinely interested in moderating discussions that sometimes got out of hand. At least one pastor at the time would know I thought this because I told that pastor this was what I considered to be the problem. Rather than have pastors take more initiative to moderate on a php setting perhaps it just worked better to have a top down access point. Okay, fair enough.
If one of the problems was a belief that documents were getting leaked and that The City was going to be a way to tamp down on that then Andrew's disciplinary case in 2012 showed us that didn't work.
For that matter ...
http://prayingheart.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/mark-driscoll-was-blindsided-by-sin-within-mars-hill-church-elders/#comment-482
Jeremy Echols says:
October 18, 2008 at 2:50am
...
Just go read it. If this guy was a Mars Hill member in 2008 what he wrote should feel a bit awkward to read. If this guy was a real person I hope he's become a different sort of person than the sort of guy he was when he made that comment. If it was posted on The City rather than announced in some other Mars Hill associated setting that "might" have been a tip-off that they wanted that news to remain undiscussed.
Now with that out of the way, back to Munson explaining the sale of The City.
So, we started working with them, negotiating with them, figuring out, “Okay, what would this look like? How do we make this work?” Tons of details. We wanted to make sure that the church is protected in it. That it’s not something where we’re selling our data, or anything like that, but that they want to take the tool and leverage it for other churches to go use.
This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in terms of a church developing a piece of technology that a for-profit company is then coming in and purchasing.
We get to continue to use it free as a church. It’ll continue to be private. Our data is not being sold, nothing like that. We’re not gonna have banner ads.
It’ll exist how it is, plus they’re putting a lot more staff into it than we were able to. We had Zack and another part-time – or a couple employees that were working very part-time on The City.
They’re gonna build a staff in Seattle of about 15 people that Zack’ll go and oversee and work with. And they’ll make the tool even better. So, we get to use it. In that, we’ve been given $4 million to steward. It’s a gift that’s come to Mars Hill Church, and we want to share with you what we’re going to do with those funds.
So, we’ll walk through this quickly. The escrow and potential taxes – 1.6 million. There’s a chance the proceeds will be taxed. Our accountant doesn’t think so, but we want to be sure. We want to be safe. We want to put some money in the bank that can just earn interest, that can protect us. In case it is, we’ll have that money set aside.
So, we’ll know that in the next few months. But for – in the meantime, we’re just gonna safeguard and put that in the bank. In addition, we’re gonna bolster up our cash reserves. We always have a cash reserve to float us in times of lean giving. To float us in times of seasonal giving, when the summer’s down or the winter’s up. It allows us just to continue to operate.
Later in the presentation Munson mentioned:
Next piece--what is our economic plan for 2009? We want to finish 2008 as close to being on budget as possible. We had a $200,000.00 deficit going into December. We'd like to make that up if possible. Given the weather, given the economy, we're not sure that we will, but we'd like to. That's what we're praying for.
If we don't, and regardless of we're reducing our budget and scaling back for 2009, just running as lean, as tight, as nimble as we possibly can, Ballard is going to take the biggest hit on that. And so, you guys are gonna have to step up more than ever to serve, to get involved, to give, to just be a part of what's going on.
Our base budget will be about $210,00 a week. And in that, we'll continue to give 10 percent of the money away to church planting and Vision Nationals, which is the orphanage minsitry and church planting ministry in India.
I don't know if any of you were ever actually on The City in 2008 but it honestly was not that cool. Compared to the Re:Greek website Hubert had been working on around the time he seemed to be working on The City, The City was just an insider Christian hybrid variant of MySpace and Facebook. Its bells and whistles were that it was invitation only and allowed for top-down information access and control. If Hubert had fun designing it and it's useful to churches that's great. I found it to be mostly useless and of virtually no value. If one of the big disciplinary moves regarding Andrew was to block him from The City he didn't lose anything of the slightest value.
To go by the annual reports the financial pinch of `08 wasn't a disaster if you just look at income over expenses. Why I'd end up hearing reports of layoffs and so on in subsequent years is a puzzle to me. What exactly were people at Mars Hill doing that people would get laid off as soon as eight to ten months after being hired? For those who have read about how Mars Hill prepares video relay preaching red cameras are not exactly cheap, are they? The sale of The City was a boon for Mars Hill but I admit I'm not sure what was so big about the financial crunch Mars Hill faced just going by annual reports. Was it possible they were just expanding faster than they had budgeted for or something? I don't know.
In case readers may have wondered about how I manage to dig up so much information, no, The City isn't of any relevance to the research I've done. For instance, I figured out Noriega stopped being employed by looking at publicly accessible campus pastor listings and the general pastor listing (which some may have noticed can't be linked to from some in-process MH sites). A great deal can be found out simply by considering transcripts of Driscoll sermons; some consultation (in the past) of the now-suspended campus blog archives; and a lot of digging around the internet for external coverage; much of which can make reference to primary sources. That and Mars Hill pastors love to blog and tweet. They can't help themselves apparently. If you have the interest and patience for a lengthy discussion of that topic ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/05/mars-hill-andrew-in-2012-and-idol-of.html
Now Hubert doesn't seem to be a pastor anywhere and he doesn't even seem to be employed. The economy has been rough so I hope he's gainfully employed somewhere or at least not in bad financial straits. Yes, people may think that this is a blog that writes critical this and that but I don't want fellow believers in financially bad spots. I don't get why anyone would have thought The City was actually cool but I have written a lot of stuff that a lot of people don't find interesting so different strokes.
Zack Hubert, like James Noriega, appears to be one of the men Driscoll mentions in the "Joy in Humility" sermon who doesn't appear to be employed in any way by Mars Hill and whose whereabouts are largely of no concern for public discussions and presentations by Mars Hill leadership. When he designed The City and the sale of The City got Mars Hill a substantial sum of money there was some mention of him. But how's he doing now? How's Noriega doing now?
With this post I have covered three of the four men mentioned in "Joy in Humility" from 2007. I don't know much of anything about Steve Tompkins. He's still pastor at the Shoreline site and that for a surprisingly long time, maybe five or six years? Each of the four men were described by Driscoll as men who were seeking humility. It seemed that seeking humility meant doing things for Mars Hill at the expense of their previous careers, at least the way Driscoll seemed to tell it. I can only guess as to whether or not Zack Hubert, James Noriega, Steve Tompkins and Tim Beltz can all look back on the last five years and say everything they did was totally worth it and what was best for Jesus was exactly what Driscoll and Mars Hill leadership suggested it was. Was it? Honestly I don't really know.
I'm sure there are plenty of stories people would like to share. Hubert played an apparently tiny role in the story of Paul Petry's firing mentioned over at Joyful Exiles. I'm aware of people who ended up afoul of him. This post is mainly about The City and Zack Hubert's role in that and handling website stuff for Mars Hill, apparently at the request of Mark Driscoll and others. "Joy in Humility" is another sermon from "The Rebel's Guide to Joy" that doesn't seem to offer a whole lot of exegesis or even much application. On the other hand, as a testament to the life and times and anxieties and boasts of Mark Driscoll the Phillipians series remains a fascinating and highly informative excerpt of Mars Hill history if you're willing to cross reference a few sentences in sermons to correspondence, documents and testimony from Mars Hill members from that time.
Well, where ever Zack Hubert may be I hope he's gainfully employed or is so soon. It's a miserable job market out there. Just because I have had had a few concerns I'm willing to blog about doesn't mean I want fellow Christians or just fellow humans in general stuck in a jobless rut. It's not a good place to be.
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