Saturday, January 09, 2016
okay, so let's see if 2016 can be the year to get back to blogging about Ferdinand Rebay again
There's been a number of recordings released of Rebay's music for guitar in the last year that will be worth mention. Also overdue would be discussing the solo guitar sonatas. There's commercially available recordings of two of the seven but not, as yet, of the whole set.
Wednesday, January 06, 2016
so Jimmy Witcher shared a story about helicopters and the press at the Driscoll house. Driscoll himself never mentioned multiple helicopters and Russ Bowen was told on air "wrong address". Link to KOMO coverage
some of Jimmy Witcher's account of the last year or so to do with Mark Driscoll.
The "internal things" ... was that the conversation on air in 2013 Mark Driscoll had with Janet Mefferd in which the term "plagiarism" came up? Was it "internal things" that World Magazine reported that Mars Hill used Result Source to secure a place on the New York Times bestseller list for Real Marriage? As Driscoll's been making the rounds he's at times shared that there was this conflict, see, and it didn't really come to the public knowledge until the last year of Mars Hill ... but Paul Petry published content at Joyful Exiles starting in March 2012, more than an entire year before the Mefferd interview in 2013. Now some internal correspondence got leaked, to be sure, something kind of like former BoAA member named Tripp describing Mars Hill as one of the most abusive ministry cultures he'd ever seen. But Tripp's resignation from the BoAA was public, too. The idea that there were "internal things" seems to reflect a profound ignorance (deliberate or otherwise) of what was going on.
But enough of those general observations.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/01/06/mars-hill-churchs-demise-referred-to-as-some-internal-things-in-mark-driscolls-intro-at-zion-2016/
...
And you know, many of us go through hard times in our life, but not all of us have to do it very publicly. And Pastor Mark had to go through a very difficult, kind of almost a public trial, uh, with the media on his front lawn, helicopters flying overhead, his every move being discussed in blogs and on social media. And you know, as often is the case, you know, with the media, and I know they, they sometimes try, uh, but they get about a third of the information right, you know. And so he and his family were living in this, in this difficult time of making this decision, and he had resigned.
And it was literally just within days, probably a couple of weeks later that I got to meet him at a pastor’s conference. And Pastor Mark had known it was time for him to step down, and he knew that God was calling him to move on and go into another season, but he knew that he needed to get some things “in his quiver,” if you will. He needed to, to learn some things, and develop some characteristics, and some things in himself that he hadn’t had before. And one of the things that he knew he needed, is he needed some spiritual fathers. He needed folks that would come in and speak fatherhood to him.
... a third?
So how could the media be on the front lawn when the house was behind a gate and some gravel and some road?
Since when was there more than one helicopter? Mark Driscoll told stories about there being ONE helicopter that I can recall documented. Never any mention of helicopters in the plural.
Driscoll by the time Russ Bowen came calling had withdrawn from the public eye and wasn't preaching. The notion that blogs and social media were watching his every move seems virtually impossible to substantiate.
Let's not forget that according to Robert Morris' Gateway account it was he who advised Driscoll to step away from ministry for a while.
So far it seems that if Jimmy's trying to say bloggers and the media get about a third of the facts right his account can be shown to not even be a third accurate based on statements made by none other than Mark Driscoll himself and video footage from coverage in 2014.
Helicopters? Plural? Based on what? The Woodway house was kind of gated. Russ Bowen went up and rang the intercom up.
Someone had a question over at Throckmorton's blog.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/01/06/mars-hill-churchs-demise-referred-to-as-some-internal-things-in-mark-driscolls-intro-at-zion-2016/#comment-2443234556
The closest thing I ever saw to media on Driscoll's front lawn was that hapless KOMO TV news reporter who parked his car near a huge wall and spoke to a voice through an intercom. The voice sounded just like Mark, but told him he had the wrong house. Sadly that video isn't out there anymore.
Well, we all knew a new narrative of Mark's life would be spun, and now we see it coming together. Father Mark, the dad you never had.
Go to this link, start playing the video, it starts at about 0:54
http://komonews.com/news/local/mars-hill-pastor-let-go-after-criticizing-church-leader
As we've discussed at some length here, for Mark Driscoll to concede a helicopter flew by and that the press was outside the house he's basically got no choice but that his 2015 testimony to that effect showed that whoever that dude was who said "wrong address" was lying to Russ Bowen while camera rolled.
Now by 2014 the house in Woodway had been gifted to Melanie Thompson but then in that case, was it even an entirely accurate story to share that it was Mark Driscoll's house the press was visiting if it had been gifted to Melanie Thompson back in 2013? That's the thing about the stories, it's tough to eat your cake and then have it, too.
The word about how things from the past will come forward into the future? Well, okay, there might be something to that, seeing as there's a publishing agreement from the past available to read in the present and by extension the future. That bit had already come to pass as of January 4, 2016, depending on how you take this
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/01/an-agreement-from-february-28-2011.html
At the moment it appears that who Mark Driscoll "is" is a guy who's still recycling all the content back from the "who he was" years. He had a sermon here and there warning people against those kinds of guys.
Then there's this bit about how Driscoll needed spiritual fathers? Because back in the early days Doug Busby wasn't good enough? Or Ken Hutcherson? Or David Nicholas? Or Driscoll's own father-in-law Gib Martin?
The "internal things" ... was that the conversation on air in 2013 Mark Driscoll had with Janet Mefferd in which the term "plagiarism" came up? Was it "internal things" that World Magazine reported that Mars Hill used Result Source to secure a place on the New York Times bestseller list for Real Marriage? As Driscoll's been making the rounds he's at times shared that there was this conflict, see, and it didn't really come to the public knowledge until the last year of Mars Hill ... but Paul Petry published content at Joyful Exiles starting in March 2012, more than an entire year before the Mefferd interview in 2013. Now some internal correspondence got leaked, to be sure, something kind of like former BoAA member named Tripp describing Mars Hill as one of the most abusive ministry cultures he'd ever seen. But Tripp's resignation from the BoAA was public, too. The idea that there were "internal things" seems to reflect a profound ignorance (deliberate or otherwise) of what was going on.
But enough of those general observations.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/01/06/mars-hill-churchs-demise-referred-to-as-some-internal-things-in-mark-driscolls-intro-at-zion-2016/
...
And you know, many of us go through hard times in our life, but not all of us have to do it very publicly. And Pastor Mark had to go through a very difficult, kind of almost a public trial, uh, with the media on his front lawn, helicopters flying overhead, his every move being discussed in blogs and on social media. And you know, as often is the case, you know, with the media, and I know they, they sometimes try, uh, but they get about a third of the information right, you know. And so he and his family were living in this, in this difficult time of making this decision, and he had resigned.
And it was literally just within days, probably a couple of weeks later that I got to meet him at a pastor’s conference. And Pastor Mark had known it was time for him to step down, and he knew that God was calling him to move on and go into another season, but he knew that he needed to get some things “in his quiver,” if you will. He needed to, to learn some things, and develop some characteristics, and some things in himself that he hadn’t had before. And one of the things that he knew he needed, is he needed some spiritual fathers. He needed folks that would come in and speak fatherhood to him.
... a third?
So how could the media be on the front lawn when the house was behind a gate and some gravel and some road?
Since when was there more than one helicopter? Mark Driscoll told stories about there being ONE helicopter that I can recall documented. Never any mention of helicopters in the plural.
Driscoll by the time Russ Bowen came calling had withdrawn from the public eye and wasn't preaching. The notion that blogs and social media were watching his every move seems virtually impossible to substantiate.
Let's not forget that according to Robert Morris' Gateway account it was he who advised Driscoll to step away from ministry for a while.
So far it seems that if Jimmy's trying to say bloggers and the media get about a third of the facts right his account can be shown to not even be a third accurate based on statements made by none other than Mark Driscoll himself and video footage from coverage in 2014.
Helicopters? Plural? Based on what? The Woodway house was kind of gated. Russ Bowen went up and rang the intercom up.
Someone had a question over at Throckmorton's blog.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2016/01/06/mars-hill-churchs-demise-referred-to-as-some-internal-things-in-mark-driscolls-intro-at-zion-2016/#comment-2443234556
The closest thing I ever saw to media on Driscoll's front lawn was that hapless KOMO TV news reporter who parked his car near a huge wall and spoke to a voice through an intercom. The voice sounded just like Mark, but told him he had the wrong house. Sadly that video isn't out there anymore.
Well, we all knew a new narrative of Mark's life would be spun, and now we see it coming together. Father Mark, the dad you never had.
Go to this link, start playing the video, it starts at about 0:54
http://komonews.com/news/local/mars-hill-pastor-let-go-after-criticizing-church-leader
As we've discussed at some length here, for Mark Driscoll to concede a helicopter flew by and that the press was outside the house he's basically got no choice but that his 2015 testimony to that effect showed that whoever that dude was who said "wrong address" was lying to Russ Bowen while camera rolled.
Now by 2014 the house in Woodway had been gifted to Melanie Thompson but then in that case, was it even an entirely accurate story to share that it was Mark Driscoll's house the press was visiting if it had been gifted to Melanie Thompson back in 2013? That's the thing about the stories, it's tough to eat your cake and then have it, too.
The word about how things from the past will come forward into the future? Well, okay, there might be something to that, seeing as there's a publishing agreement from the past available to read in the present and by extension the future. That bit had already come to pass as of January 4, 2016, depending on how you take this
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/01/an-agreement-from-february-28-2011.html
At the moment it appears that who Mark Driscoll "is" is a guy who's still recycling all the content back from the "who he was" years. He had a sermon here and there warning people against those kinds of guys.
Then there's this bit about how Driscoll needed spiritual fathers? Because back in the early days Doug Busby wasn't good enough? Or Ken Hutcherson? Or David Nicholas? Or Driscoll's own father-in-law Gib Martin?
Monday, January 04, 2016
Driscoll marketing strategy doc from 2011 spelled out goal with respect to Real Marriage, "In short, the goal is to sell books around preaching campaigns ... ."
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-blast-from-past-mark-grace-driscoll.html
From "Mark and Grace Driscoll Marriage Book Marketing Plans", 2014
... The campaign will begin at Mars Hill Church with invitations to the more than 400 Acts 29 churches Pastor Mark leads in the US alone plus those churches he leads in 12 other nations through Acts 29 as well as an open invitation for any church/ministry in the world to join us. In short, the goal is to sell books around preaching campaigns in a way that has never been done with multiple levels of resourcing and state of the art media technology. ...
The magnitude of that might need some spelling out. The marketing plan presents Mark Driscoll as if he were somehow, personally, leading 400 churches through Acts 29 and additionally churches in twelve other countries besides the United States.
Let's keep in mind that based on the Acts 29 web presence during July 2011 Mark Driscoll was the "founder and lead visionary" but was not actually president of the organization. He wasn't even one of the vice-presidents or a secretary to Acts 29 in the middle of 2011 when Result Source was being discussed and plans to promote Real Marriage were getting written about. Now to be sure the A29 board came to be at a point where about two thirds of the board consisted of people who had been or were executive leaders at Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/08/in-consideration-of-recent-events-blast.html
Matt Chandler at one point was even talking about how it was sometimes difficult to know where Mars Hill ended and Acts 29 actually began.
But still, on what basis could anyone say that Mark Driscoll was actively or even indirectly leading 400 churches affiliated with Acts 29 in the middle of 2011? Or even the entire year of 2011?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2012/04/chandler-on-mars-hill-a29-was-so-kind.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20110721085150/http://www.acts29network.org/about/leadership/
Now it's worth revisiting some things reported by Warren Throckmorton about when it seems Mars Hill leadership got some idea of what Result Source was and toward end its strategy could be employed.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/11/16/why-did-resultsource-need-david-jeremiahs-ministry-to-help-get-mark-driscoll-on-the-new-york-times-best-seller-list/
In June 2011, Kevin Small wrote to then Mars Hill Church executive elder Jamie Munson to provide details about how ResultSource could get Mark Driscoll on the New York Times best-seller list. He gave him the details of what later was reduced to writing in the contract signed by Sutton Turner on behalf of Mars Hill Church.
...
The marketing strategy lately published here at Wenatchee The Hatchet featured mention that it was desired by the Driscolls that pre-sales be channeled into Acts 29, Mars Hill, and Resurgence in way that would provide incentives for purchases that could count toward the New York Times bestseller list.
Of course we can recall that inside MH leadership there were some concerns raised about the wisdom of the arrangement prior to the contract signing in October 2011.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/22/realmarriagememo/
According to sources aware of the situation, the Mars Hill communications staff raised questions with the executive elders (Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner and Dave Bruskas) about the wisdom of the ResultSource agreement prior to October 2011. The above memo was written in September 2011, prior to the ResultSource contract dated October 13 and signed by Sutton Turner, apparently on October 17. In May 2014, I posted October 18, 2011 invoices from ResultSource which were addressed to Mark Driscoll.
[also presented here at]
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2016/01/revisiting-old-mars-hill-memo-in-light.html
This document is designed to show the two main questions that will help Pastor Mark decide whether he would like to proceed with the Real marriage giving campaign. It is one of our goals to serve Pastor Mark the best--we believe in him as a leader and want to increase his influence for the good of the church and the Kingdom.
That wording seems peculiarly passive voice. There's uses for the passive voice, of course, but the meaning of the wording is hard to escape. The memo was formulated as seeking to help Driscoll decide whether HE would like to proceed with the Real Marriage giving campaign. The goal of the team that presented the memo, as stated, was to serve Pastor Mark the best, wishing to increase his influence for the good of the church and the Kingdom, whichever Kingdom was meant may remain open to debate.
Then the questions, already discussed recently, as to the effectiveness of Mars Hill having to foot the bill for 11,000 copies of a book that coud be purchased at a lower cost if purchased by On Mission.
It's owrth remembering that based on a sermon he gave in the 1 & 2 Peter sermon series, the side company to manage book royalties was something Mark Driscoll explicitly said he had not set up because though pastors did that it was a sign of selfish greed for gain.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/02/mark-driscoll-in-2009-i-didnt-start.html
http://marshill.com/media/trial/humble-pastors/prophets-priests-and-kings#downloads
Prophets, Priests and Kings
Trial: 8 witnesses from 1 & 2 Peter
May 3, 2009
1 Peter 5:1-5
... So in all of this, as well, I've had people ask, "So what about the book sales?" Here's how it works, I didn't start a separate company. One of the ways that guys work this, they become a leader in a church and they have a company on the side and they use the church to funnel business into their side company and I didn't start a side company (like a lot of guys do) for my book writing. Instead I publish under Mars Hill.
So the way it works, I don't get all the money. Mars Hill gets a huge take. Mars Hill gets all the marketing dollars, they get paid by the publishers. Mars Hill gets half of all the royalties so the books that I publish, about 75% of the revenue goes to Mars Hill Church, not me. Not me. Because I'm worried about this issue, greed, shameful gain. Just using Mars Hill as a platform so I can start a business to rake in massive dollars. I don't think it's a sin for a pastor to get a salary but we're now at the point where the books and the marketing, that a huge portion of my salary is covered by income that I generate. And, I'll be honest with you, I hope one of my books pops or I get enough books on the shelf, titles in print , I'd love to see the day where I'm basically working for free and that the book sales and royalties and such let me generate enough money for Mars Hill that I can work free of charge. That's my hope and my goal. I don't know if we'll get there but that's what I'm trying to do.
Well, a few years later a side company was set up. The more documents have been shared the more it begins to look as if a side company got set up, and the church could be construed easily as having been moved in the direction of promoting book sales for a book owned by the pastor's side company.
It's also worth noting that while Mark Driscoll said he published "under Mars Hill" he registered the copyright for his books to himself and/or his side company that he said he didn't have and hadn't made back in 2009.
Now back in 2009 perhaps it was possible that Mars Hill got half the royalties and 75% of the revenue went to Mars Hill. But what about moving forward from 2011? And who can actually prove whether any of these claims made in 2009 were even the case in 2009? Anyone?
The part that sticks out now was the "I hope one of my books pops ... where I'm basically working for free ... "
What working for free by being able to live of f of royalties can sound more altruistic than it might always be. After all, anyone who can live entirely off of the royalties of books is someone who's capable of being completely independent of any disciplinary overtures taken by a board.
Taken together it seems that while the memo that raised questions about the wisdom of the Result Source campaign got written, the leadership at Mars Hill ultimately decided to go with the plan. Initially Mars Hill leadership and PR discussed how it wasn't that unusual, really, within the industry.
If Driscoll didn't know about the Result Source plan, as has at times been proposed, then why did the mid-summer 2011 marketing strategy stress that pre-sales get channeled into contexts where they could count toward the New York Times bestseller list? Why would that matter? The memo with the two questions suggests at least someone inside Mars Hill had questions as to why Mars Hill had to get 11,000 copies for a giving campaign that didn't seem set to net the church much of a net profit. It could all, were it discovered, look sort of like an entire church apparatus being directed to the benefit of an individual.
It does seem to look like that at times, doesn't it?
It does seem to look as though some of the writing suggests that the plan was to channel the resources and technology and people of not just Mars Hill but also Acts 29 and Resurgence toward the sale of a book owned by the kind of side company Mark Driscoll said in 2009 he didn't have and hadn't set up because, well, it kinda sounded like he thought rigging an entire church culture toward promoting and selling apastor's book was a sign of selfish greed for gain.
Which makes it all the more striking to review the sum of documents associated with the promotion and publication and sale of Real Marriage.
asdf
an agreement from February 28, 2011 between On Mission, LLC and Thomas Nelson regarding A NEW MARRIAGE WITH THE SAME SPOUSE, better known as REAL MARRIAGE
presented without comment
is ...
the 19-page
....
publishing agreement
between ...
On Mission, LLC
and ...
Thomas Nelson
after ...
the break.
asfas
is ...
the 19-page
....
publishing agreement
between ...
On Mission, LLC
and ...
Thomas Nelson
after ...
the break.
asfas
2016, a new year, and the MH re-plants share their respective histories ... or not, an overview of which MH spin-offs have leaders who were on the BoE that was investigating Driscoll
sadf
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-shoreline-to-sound-city.html
http://soundcitybiblechurch.com/about-us/history/
In 1996, a pastor named Mark Driscoll started a new church in Seattle called Mars Hill. Mars Hill Church grew rapidly, and in 2006 decided to plant its very first remote campus, a video location called Mars Hill Shoreline. The pastor who launched the new location, Steve Tompkins, put it this way: “God kept bringing more people to hear the gospel. Even five Sunday services [in Ballard] back-to-back didn’t address our need for more space.”
God did many amazing things in and through Mars Hill Shoreline: people were saved, hundreds were baptized, families were started, lives were transformed. However, there were also many issues that built up over the years which all came to a head in 2014, a year of great difficulty for the church. Facing mounting criticism as the church investigated formal charges against him, Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as vision and preaching pastor on October 14, 2014. Shortly afterward, it was announced that each local campus of Mars Hill would have the opportunity to launch out as their own fully independent church.
After much prayer and discussion, the elder team of Mars Hill Shoreline did make the decision to re-plant Mars Hill Shoreline as Sound City Bible Church. The elders made the commitment to learn from the sins and mistakes of the church in the past while focusing on a fresh vision to help people hear the good news of Jesus all throughout the north end of the greater Seattle area.
Sound City Bible Church is not simply Mars Hill carrying on under a new name. It is a new church with a new elder team, a new doctrinal statement, a new mission and a new set of values. This church has been through some difficult times, but through it all is more convinced than ever that Jesus truly is the one who is worth placing ultimate hope in. We hope and pray that God would give us many years together to glorify God by proclaiming Jesus, receiving grace, being disciples, and making disciples.
Trinity West sort of doesn't have a history page
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-west-seattle-to-trinity.html
http://www.trinityws.com/
Some of these churches are starting from scratch and disconnected from Mars Hill so it might make sense to not have a history that states up front the Mars Hill lineage while formally declaring a different set of goals is in order. Now Fairchild was not on the BoE, for those who remember what the Board of Elders was.
But ... if your church says one of its core values is "legacy" then not mentioning a legacy connected to Mars Hill becomes more puzzling.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-tacoma-to-resurrection.html
http://www.resurrectionchurch.com/about/
For those who don't remember, Bubba Jennings was not just on the Board of Elders, he was also an executive elder around the time the 2007 firings and trials occurred.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-3-pastor-bubba.html
So he may not only be able to answer questions about investigation into Mark Driscoll from 2014, he is one of the only people who had a connection to the termination and trials of Meyer and Petry from 2007 that has not publicly recanted/repudiated involvement of any kind in that process.
Redemption in Spokane indicates their story as connected to Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-spokane-to-redemption.html
http://redemptionspokane.com/whoweare/
Redemption Spokane is a new church planted in the heart of the Inland Northwest with the mission to see the work of redemption impact Spokane, seeing many people’s lives changed by the power of the Gospel. Our founding pastor, Miles Rohde, and a large number of our original core members had a heart to see a new church planted in the heart of Spokane that would reach the entire region. Originally beginning with the vision of being a church connected to Mars Hill Church, in the fall of 2014 a decision was made to become a fully independent church with our soft-launch in January 2015.
The church building, located on the corner of 2nd Ave and Division Street, has been a bastion of the gospel in Spokane since the first church building was constructed at this important crossroads in downtown Spokane. Having moved into this church building, right in the heart of Spokane, Redemption Spokane desires to continue the legacy of the Gospel being faithfully preached to all.
As a church, we had our official launch at our Easter service in 2015.
For those who may have forgotten ... somebody was on the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Driscoll, if memory serves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-7-pastor-miles.html
One would already have to have known that the Rainier Valley Church had a Mars Hill history to observe it's still at the Union Gospel Mission site.
http://www.rainiervalleychurch.com/about-us/
Given the obscure but swift disappearance of Willie Wilson from its leadership that this church even still exists at all could seem like a feat of community cohesion.
Choi was also mentioned as a member of the BoE
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-1-pastor-ed-choi.html
Former Mars Hill Portland is now Redeemer in Portland and has nothing much to say about its history. They will, however, be nominating deacons soon (and may possibly have already)
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-portland-to-redeemer.html
http://redeemerpdx.com/about/leadership/
...
The Elder board of our church currently consists of: Pastor Eric Appleby, Pastor Jon Crist, Pastor Kevin Kelly, Pastor Ryan Mount, Pastor Dan Ortega, Pastor Tim Smith and Pastor Jim Swanson. Two of the Elders of Redeemer Church are also paid staff. They are: Tim Smith, in the role of Lead Teaching Pastor and Kevin Kelly, in the role of Executive Pastor.
God has called all of these men to lead by example and to serve with love, humility and grace, placing care and service to the flock over their own interests. Should you wish to speak to any of our Elders, please email redeemer@redeemerpdx.com indicating whom you wish to speak with and they will get back to you promptly.
Since Tim Smith was one of the members of the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Mark Driscoll maye an elder can lead by example by answering questions about what was in the report/investigation from later 2014?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-8-pastor-tim-smith.html
or maybe field questions about statements made about Mark Dunford?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/mark-dunford-releases-statement.html
https://www.facebook.com/dunford.mark/posts/10152930946657345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zjdmzp7wr060f5/StatementFromTheDunfords.pdf?dl=0
Olympia ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-olympia-to-harbor-church.html
http://www.harborolympia.com/leadership/
Not a whole ton of history there to share. Although Mars Hill Olympia was where the Mars Hill Military Mission was once based, which was a ministry that basically distributed Mars Hill authored books to soldiers. The Military Mission was shut down in early 2012 after having been moved, for reasons not necessarily clearly explained, from Olympia to central HQ or thereabouts. As discussed at this blog, the book distributional aims of the defunct Military Mission could have made sense as an easy way to handle the bulk orders for the bulk order side of the Result Source strategy.
There are churches that were once Mars Hill that clearly believe it's best to lead up front with the line of descent. Other chuches seem eager to avoid this still unavoidable element of their history, at least for now.
For those who don't remember the name of Matt Rogers, who was pastor at Mars Hill Bellevue in 2014 and on the BoE and eventually appointed to the BoAA ...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/26/is-matt-rogers-the-newest-member-of-the-mars-hill-church-board-of-advisors-and-accountability/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-6-pastor-matt.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-bellevue-to-doxa-church.html
http://doxa-church.com/servant-leaders
There's not a lot of evidence he's connected to Doxa Eastside lately. There's no trace of him if you do a search for his name on their site. Given Rogers' role on both the BoE and the BoAA and what he was willing to say about public criticism of Mark Driscoll a hard reboot without him might seem beneficial. The hard reboot might also extend to not really sharing much by way of establishing the historic connection between Doxa and the former Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
http://crossandcrownseattle.com/home/about/
4554 12th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Cross and Crown has left the Ballard site and taken up at what was once the U-District Mars Hill site.
It has, if memory serves, taken on people from the sites that were formerly Mars Hill Downtown, Ballard and the U-District. As reported a while back by Wenatchee The Hatchet and Warren Throckmorton some of the campuses had been losing attenders or members in the months running up to Driscoll's formal resignation. Consolidating those who were left at some of the campuses to what used to be Mars Hill Ballard made some sense. In a way the consolidation process was a kind of mirror to the 20007 dispersion process in which people were sent out to launch campuses for the multi-campus process. And it's tough to forget that the multi-site approach became appealing as Mars Hill central leadership realized the second campus idea for what became the central headquarters was either impossible or wildly impractical. In th ehistory of Mars Hill it is worth stressing that when we consult the talks of Mark Drsicoll about multi-site compared to what he published in Confessions of Reformission Rev about a decade ago, the entire multi-site approach was a kind of epic Plan B.
So, anyway, Cross and Crown does not have a very detailed history for itself yet.
Then there's the somewhat shortlived Mars Hill Albuquerque.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-albuquerque-to-north.html
Not only does there not seem to be any history for the church you can't even tell who the leaders are as you can with just about any of the other churches, unless you go digging up the sermons.
You can learn more if you fill out a form, though.
http://northchurchabq.com/connect/
So, having reviewed a few of the sites that were once Mars Hill and having noted which applicable names showed up in the Board of Elders ... let's revisit a statement quoted by Warren Throckmorton.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. [emphasis added] Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
The elders of Mars Hill Church acknowledge as we’ve gone through all of this investigation, and heard all of these stories, we acknowledge that we have personally led in some of the same ways that demonstrate some of the same ways that Pastor Mark had. And those things require repentance and forgiveness and restoration. We realize that there are ways that we have led as elders in ways that have been domineering, sometimes arrogant and sometimes boastful and at least for my part, I want to say I deeply regret those sins and I ask for your forgiveness. We want to lead you into the future in a way that displays more grace, more love as we speak the truth to each of you. If there are people that I have offended in ways I have pastored this church, I would welcome that you come to me and speak with me to allow me the opportunity to reconcile with you.
At this time Mars Hill Church is going to move ahead under the Board of Overseers established plan for transition. Pastor Dave Bruskas will serve as the teaching and preaching pastor during an interim period of time until we establish a direction we are going as a church. The Board of Advisors are going to be working in the weeks to come on a plan for moving forward and for how that will unfold, what the next steps are, there are a lot of things to consider. As we discover what those things are, what the spirit shows us, then we want to communicate clearly to you and transparently to you what’s happening, the directions and the changes that will be taking place.
2016 is a new year but even if there's a new man, to borrow an apostolic epistletory idiom, the old man isn't completely dead yet.
No, actually, we can be pretty literal about this. The corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church is still technically listed as "Active" even today by the Washington Secretary of State website.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
It still lists Dave Bruskas as President and Caleb Walters as Vice-President even though Kerry Dodd's been describing himself as President for a while and describes himself thus as of ... right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-dodd-a4174712
Recognized by who for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities? Would whoever recognized Kerry Dodd for this clarify for the record they recognized this?
and ... Caleb Walters is still mentioning he's Chief Operations Officer for the potentially still existing Mars Hill.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
Who was on the board of directors since the resignation of Driscoll that seems implicit in Dodd's verbiage? Who's been on the transition team? While many a person has assumed that things were "over" the dissolution of the company is the period in which stuff gets sold and assets get distributed. This was/is the period in which to actually pay more rather than less attention to what may be going on. Sure, Driscoll's got a church he's aiming to start up but there's no need to forget that Mars Hill hasn't ceased to exist as a corporate entity just because a celebrity threw in the towel rather than comply with a restoration plan proposed by a board.
So as 2016 moves forward we'll get to see which of the 11 spin-offs prospers or not. It remains to be seen. They may all make it but we don't know yet.
Meanwhile, we know which churches seem to feel comfortable enough to explain in their public web presence where they've come from and which aren't yet.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-shoreline-to-sound-city.html
http://soundcitybiblechurch.com/about-us/history/
In 1996, a pastor named Mark Driscoll started a new church in Seattle called Mars Hill. Mars Hill Church grew rapidly, and in 2006 decided to plant its very first remote campus, a video location called Mars Hill Shoreline. The pastor who launched the new location, Steve Tompkins, put it this way: “God kept bringing more people to hear the gospel. Even five Sunday services [in Ballard] back-to-back didn’t address our need for more space.”
God did many amazing things in and through Mars Hill Shoreline: people were saved, hundreds were baptized, families were started, lives were transformed. However, there were also many issues that built up over the years which all came to a head in 2014, a year of great difficulty for the church. Facing mounting criticism as the church investigated formal charges against him, Mark Driscoll submitted his resignation as vision and preaching pastor on October 14, 2014. Shortly afterward, it was announced that each local campus of Mars Hill would have the opportunity to launch out as their own fully independent church.
After much prayer and discussion, the elder team of Mars Hill Shoreline did make the decision to re-plant Mars Hill Shoreline as Sound City Bible Church. The elders made the commitment to learn from the sins and mistakes of the church in the past while focusing on a fresh vision to help people hear the good news of Jesus all throughout the north end of the greater Seattle area.
Sound City Bible Church is not simply Mars Hill carrying on under a new name. It is a new church with a new elder team, a new doctrinal statement, a new mission and a new set of values. This church has been through some difficult times, but through it all is more convinced than ever that Jesus truly is the one who is worth placing ultimate hope in. We hope and pray that God would give us many years together to glorify God by proclaiming Jesus, receiving grace, being disciples, and making disciples.
Trinity West sort of doesn't have a history page
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-west-seattle-to-trinity.html
http://www.trinityws.com/
Some of these churches are starting from scratch and disconnected from Mars Hill so it might make sense to not have a history that states up front the Mars Hill lineage while formally declaring a different set of goals is in order. Now Fairchild was not on the BoE, for those who remember what the Board of Elders was.
But ... if your church says one of its core values is "legacy" then not mentioning a legacy connected to Mars Hill becomes more puzzling.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-tacoma-to-resurrection.html
http://www.resurrectionchurch.com/about/
For those who don't remember, Bubba Jennings was not just on the Board of Elders, he was also an executive elder around the time the 2007 firings and trials occurred.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-3-pastor-bubba.html
So he may not only be able to answer questions about investigation into Mark Driscoll from 2014, he is one of the only people who had a connection to the termination and trials of Meyer and Petry from 2007 that has not publicly recanted/repudiated involvement of any kind in that process.
Redemption in Spokane indicates their story as connected to Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-spokane-to-redemption.html
http://redemptionspokane.com/whoweare/
Redemption Spokane is a new church planted in the heart of the Inland Northwest with the mission to see the work of redemption impact Spokane, seeing many people’s lives changed by the power of the Gospel. Our founding pastor, Miles Rohde, and a large number of our original core members had a heart to see a new church planted in the heart of Spokane that would reach the entire region. Originally beginning with the vision of being a church connected to Mars Hill Church, in the fall of 2014 a decision was made to become a fully independent church with our soft-launch in January 2015.
The church building, located on the corner of 2nd Ave and Division Street, has been a bastion of the gospel in Spokane since the first church building was constructed at this important crossroads in downtown Spokane. Having moved into this church building, right in the heart of Spokane, Redemption Spokane desires to continue the legacy of the Gospel being faithfully preached to all.
As a church, we had our official launch at our Easter service in 2015.
For those who may have forgotten ... somebody was on the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Driscoll, if memory serves.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-7-pastor-miles.html
One would already have to have known that the Rainier Valley Church had a Mars Hill history to observe it's still at the Union Gospel Mission site.
http://www.rainiervalleychurch.com/about-us/
Given the obscure but swift disappearance of Willie Wilson from its leadership that this church even still exists at all could seem like a feat of community cohesion.
Choi was also mentioned as a member of the BoE
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-1-pastor-ed-choi.html
Former Mars Hill Portland is now Redeemer in Portland and has nothing much to say about its history. They will, however, be nominating deacons soon (and may possibly have already)
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-portland-to-redeemer.html
http://redeemerpdx.com/about/leadership/
...
The Elder board of our church currently consists of: Pastor Eric Appleby, Pastor Jon Crist, Pastor Kevin Kelly, Pastor Ryan Mount, Pastor Dan Ortega, Pastor Tim Smith and Pastor Jim Swanson. Two of the Elders of Redeemer Church are also paid staff. They are: Tim Smith, in the role of Lead Teaching Pastor and Kevin Kelly, in the role of Executive Pastor.
God has called all of these men to lead by example and to serve with love, humility and grace, placing care and service to the flock over their own interests. Should you wish to speak to any of our Elders, please email redeemer@redeemerpdx.com indicating whom you wish to speak with and they will get back to you promptly.
Deacons
As a new church, we will soon nominate Deacons who will be responsible for taking various day-to-day burdens of service from the Elders, in order that they may focus on prayer, teaching and general oversight of the church. Redeemer Church will have both men and women Deacons, as supported by scripture.Since Tim Smith was one of the members of the Board of Elders assigned to investigate Mark Driscoll maye an elder can lead by example by answering questions about what was in the report/investigation from later 2014?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-8-pastor-tim-smith.html
or maybe field questions about statements made about Mark Dunford?
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/mark-dunford-releases-statement.html
https://www.facebook.com/dunford.mark/posts/10152930946657345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0zjdmzp7wr060f5/StatementFromTheDunfords.pdf?dl=0
Olympia ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-olympia-to-harbor-church.html
http://www.harborolympia.com/leadership/
Not a whole ton of history there to share. Although Mars Hill Olympia was where the Mars Hill Military Mission was once based, which was a ministry that basically distributed Mars Hill authored books to soldiers. The Military Mission was shut down in early 2012 after having been moved, for reasons not necessarily clearly explained, from Olympia to central HQ or thereabouts. As discussed at this blog, the book distributional aims of the defunct Military Mission could have made sense as an easy way to handle the bulk orders for the bulk order side of the Result Source strategy.
There are churches that were once Mars Hill that clearly believe it's best to lead up front with the line of descent. Other chuches seem eager to avoid this still unavoidable element of their history, at least for now.
For those who don't remember the name of Matt Rogers, who was pastor at Mars Hill Bellevue in 2014 and on the BoE and eventually appointed to the BoAA ...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/26/is-matt-rogers-the-newest-member-of-the-mars-hill-church-board-of-advisors-and-accountability/
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-boe-members-part-6-pastor-matt.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-bellevue-to-doxa-church.html
http://doxa-church.com/servant-leaders
There's not a lot of evidence he's connected to Doxa Eastside lately. There's no trace of him if you do a search for his name on their site. Given Rogers' role on both the BoE and the BoAA and what he was willing to say about public criticism of Mark Driscoll a hard reboot without him might seem beneficial. The hard reboot might also extend to not really sharing much by way of establishing the historic connection between Doxa and the former Mars Hill.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-ballard-to-cross-and.html
http://crossandcrownseattle.com/home/about/
4554 12th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105
Cross and Crown has left the Ballard site and taken up at what was once the U-District Mars Hill site.
It has, if memory serves, taken on people from the sites that were formerly Mars Hill Downtown, Ballard and the U-District. As reported a while back by Wenatchee The Hatchet and Warren Throckmorton some of the campuses had been losing attenders or members in the months running up to Driscoll's formal resignation. Consolidating those who were left at some of the campuses to what used to be Mars Hill Ballard made some sense. In a way the consolidation process was a kind of mirror to the 20007 dispersion process in which people were sent out to launch campuses for the multi-campus process. And it's tough to forget that the multi-site approach became appealing as Mars Hill central leadership realized the second campus idea for what became the central headquarters was either impossible or wildly impractical. In th ehistory of Mars Hill it is worth stressing that when we consult the talks of Mark Drsicoll about multi-site compared to what he published in Confessions of Reformission Rev about a decade ago, the entire multi-site approach was a kind of epic Plan B.
So, anyway, Cross and Crown does not have a very detailed history for itself yet.
Then there's the somewhat shortlived Mars Hill Albuquerque.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/08/from-mars-hill-albuquerque-to-north.html
Not only does there not seem to be any history for the church you can't even tell who the leaders are as you can with just about any of the other churches, unless you go digging up the sermons.
You can learn more if you fill out a form, though.
http://northchurchabq.com/connect/
So, having reviewed a few of the sites that were once Mars Hill and having noted which applicable names showed up in the Board of Elders ... let's revisit a statement quoted by Warren Throckmorton.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/10/19/mars-hill-church-board-of-elders-mark-driscoll-resigned-instead-of-enter-restoration-plan-to-deal/
The investigation of formal charges against Mark Driscoll has revealed patterns of persistent sin in the three areas disclosed in the previous letter by the Board of Overseers. In I Tim 5:20, it requires that an elder be rebuked for persistent sin. Our intention was to do this while providing a plan for his eventual restoration to leadership. The Board of Elders in agreement with the Board of Overseers are grieved, deeply grieved, that any process like that was lost to us when Mark Driscoll resigned in position and left the church. Now is the time to move on and consider what God is calling us to next as a church as we participate in Jesus’ mission to make disciples in His name. [emphasis added] Today begins a new chapter in the history of our church which has proceeded in one direction under one leadership for many years now, but I want you to understand this, God is our Father. That does not change. Jesus is the chief shepherd of the church and that has not changed.
The elders of Mars Hill Church acknowledge as we’ve gone through all of this investigation, and heard all of these stories, we acknowledge that we have personally led in some of the same ways that demonstrate some of the same ways that Pastor Mark had. And those things require repentance and forgiveness and restoration. We realize that there are ways that we have led as elders in ways that have been domineering, sometimes arrogant and sometimes boastful and at least for my part, I want to say I deeply regret those sins and I ask for your forgiveness. We want to lead you into the future in a way that displays more grace, more love as we speak the truth to each of you. If there are people that I have offended in ways I have pastored this church, I would welcome that you come to me and speak with me to allow me the opportunity to reconcile with you.
At this time Mars Hill Church is going to move ahead under the Board of Overseers established plan for transition. Pastor Dave Bruskas will serve as the teaching and preaching pastor during an interim period of time until we establish a direction we are going as a church. The Board of Advisors are going to be working in the weeks to come on a plan for moving forward and for how that will unfold, what the next steps are, there are a lot of things to consider. As we discover what those things are, what the spirit shows us, then we want to communicate clearly to you and transparently to you what’s happening, the directions and the changes that will be taking place.
2016 is a new year but even if there's a new man, to borrow an apostolic epistletory idiom, the old man isn't completely dead yet.
No, actually, we can be pretty literal about this. The corporation formerly known as Mars Hill Church is still technically listed as "Active" even today by the Washington Secretary of State website.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/search_detail.aspx?ubi=601677819
It still lists Dave Bruskas as President and Caleb Walters as Vice-President even though Kerry Dodd's been describing himself as President for a while and describes himself thus as of ... right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-dodd-a4174712
President and General Manager
Mars Hill Fellowship, Inc.
- Keen management to daily operations to guarantee proper handling of all legal affairs and creditor obligations
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
- Tactical administration to the liquidation of real property and other assets; along with the distribution of net assets
- Recognition for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities by separating the organization from its 15 operating locations
- Appointment as corporate president of the board of directors; as well as promotion to general manager, in charge of leading the transition team in settling the affairs of the corporation toward the distribution of net assets and dissolution
Recognized by who for the successful launching of 11 new independent entities? Would whoever recognized Kerry Dodd for this clarify for the record they recognized this?
and ... Caleb Walters is still mentioning he's Chief Operations Officer for the potentially still existing Mars Hill.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwalters
Who was on the board of directors since the resignation of Driscoll that seems implicit in Dodd's verbiage? Who's been on the transition team? While many a person has assumed that things were "over" the dissolution of the company is the period in which stuff gets sold and assets get distributed. This was/is the period in which to actually pay more rather than less attention to what may be going on. Sure, Driscoll's got a church he's aiming to start up but there's no need to forget that Mars Hill hasn't ceased to exist as a corporate entity just because a celebrity threw in the towel rather than comply with a restoration plan proposed by a board.
So as 2016 moves forward we'll get to see which of the 11 spin-offs prospers or not. It remains to be seen. They may all make it but we don't know yet.
Meanwhile, we know which churches seem to feel comfortable enough to explain in their public web presence where they've come from and which aren't yet.
Sunday, January 03, 2016
on the Driscoll marketing plan strategy for Real Marriage to Thomas Nelson, how to transform a church into a fully integrated multimedia marketing platform to sell a book
The five page document is published at the following post. The observations and comments in this post presuppose you have read the entire five-page document at the available link:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-blast-from-past-mark-grace-driscoll.html
With that out of the way, it seems overdue to discuss what seems to be the core of what the Driscolls referred to as ..
The Big Idea
Pastor Mark Driscoll was named one of the 25 most influential preachers in the past 25 years by Preaching magazine. [link omitted] ... Driscoll was the youngest on the list by over a decade, and they said, "Driscoll is a model for thousands of young pastors who read his books and listen faithfully to his podcast sermons. Driscoll may well be an example of how preachers will influence other preachers in the 21st century." Driscoll now wants to do just that by building a large global multi-church campaign around a preaching series with multiple supplements to help pastors, churches, and ministry leaders do a world-class job of Bible preaching and teaching with equipping from Mars Hill Church. Also, since all of this content, including the books, will be available for years to come this will also give each book a long tail as ministries can use the content at any time in the future. The campaign will begin at Mars Hill Church with invitations to the more than 400 Acts 29 churches Pastor Mark leads in the US alone plus those churches he leads in 12 other nations through Acts 29 as well as an open invitation for any church/ministry in the world to join us. In short, the goal is to sell books around preaching campaigns in a way that has never been done with multiple levels of resourcing and state of the art media technology. [emphasis added]
Right there is the summation of the goal of a campaign, and the campaign is defined as a fully integrated multi-media project, a campaign completely integrating every conceivable level of media activity undertaken by a church toward the end of ... selling books. Release the book before the campaign begins, and the campaign is a preaching series that uses the book as well as provides an occasion to market and sell the book. This campaign took the people and resources of Mars Hill and integrated it toward the end of selling Real Marriage and this campaign proposal was formulated by a Driscoll or two in the middle of 2011 to go by the dates mentioned in the whole document.
We can't just skip past that bolded statement. The goal, in short, was to sell books around a preaching campaign in a way that Driscoll believed had never been done before, with multiple levels of resourcing and using state of the art technology. Why do such a campaign?
WHY A CAMPAIGN
By publishing a book before a campaign and building significant free support resources to support ministry leaders there are numerous benefits to churches and leaders including ...
[from 1] ... Participants will receive over 100 pages of research on sex and marriage compiled by a team of PhD professors in sociology and statistics that helps their own preaching/teaching on marriage and sex. It is all footnoted and will be emailed for use by those in the campaign free of charge. Participants will also receive summaries of good and bad Christian marriages. This content is not in the book and will help them for illustrations in their preaching and teaching.
3. The resources of one of America's largest churches for any church.
4. Literally more than a million dollars of gear, studio, and staff time are used to provide the free resources of the campaign. This includes a video team that has shot a full length mainstream Hollywood feature film, and graphic designers awarded by HOW magazine as some of the best in their field. One example are the state of the art Red Cameras used by no other church in the world but used for such films as District 9 on for any church wanting to use any of the sermons for their church free of charge.
[from 14] Posting of the sermon in audio and hi-def video download along with transcript in both English and Spanish after it has been preached live at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. These sermons will be edited to 40-45 minutes each and able to be used in any church or ministry that is interested in allowing pastors to take some or all of the Sundays of the series of as needed.
Summarily, by doing a fully integrated campaign churches willing to buy into the campaign could expect a ton of freebies and content not available in the book Real Marriage as a supplement to preaching or broadcasting the content, it seems. If you've read the whole marketing strategy what stands out is how given it was that Mars Hill's sum of personal and technological resources could be brought to bear in an integrated promotion of the sale of the book.
But then, who were those PhDs that put the material together that pastors could get for free by signing on to that Real Marriage campaign? Anybody know?
That point 3. Mars Hill Church got dissolved so signing on for the Real Marriage campaign NOW (if that's possible) will not avail people to all those resources, will it? Wouldn't the Red Cameras go up for sale? Those aren't cheap cameras. Where might the money for the sale of Mars Hill Church's Red Cameras have gone? Who knows?
The elegance of the campaign is that it's a fully integrated multi-media blitz which organizes every level of the activity of a church. A church that commits to the campaign commits to buying truckloads of the book and workbooks and video and so on associated with the campaign. To sign up for such a project, in a sense decides that an entire church or multi-site church is, if you will, a kind of captive audience for the duration of using the campaign, maybe a quarter of a year give or take skipping this or that chapter or lengthening the campaign by featuring workbook stuff or extra stories and material derived from the supplemental materials that would come with the campaign.
There may be those who would say that the royalties of the book would have or did go to Mars Hill. Are those people sure? The book Real Marriage, for instance, was copyrighted to On Mission, LLC. Royalties would have gone to On Mission, LLC whose members sure seem to have been Mark and Grace Driscoll, rather than to mars Hill. "If" the royalties of the book sales went to Mars Hill the proof would need to be provided by either officers of Mars Hill or by the Driscolls themselves. Because there's no reasonable basis, so far, for supposing that the royalties for books that were copyrighted to Driscoll rather than Mars Hill would ever go to Mars Hill, or even be donated to Mars Hill, is there?
What seems evident from the first draft of the marketing plan proposed by the Drsicoll team (subsequent drafts have not necessarily come to light) reads as a summary of how to organize every level of the life of Mars Hill Church around a campaign whose goal was to sell books.
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-blast-from-past-mark-grace-driscoll.html
With that out of the way, it seems overdue to discuss what seems to be the core of what the Driscolls referred to as ..
The Big Idea
Pastor Mark Driscoll was named one of the 25 most influential preachers in the past 25 years by Preaching magazine. [link omitted] ... Driscoll was the youngest on the list by over a decade, and they said, "Driscoll is a model for thousands of young pastors who read his books and listen faithfully to his podcast sermons. Driscoll may well be an example of how preachers will influence other preachers in the 21st century." Driscoll now wants to do just that by building a large global multi-church campaign around a preaching series with multiple supplements to help pastors, churches, and ministry leaders do a world-class job of Bible preaching and teaching with equipping from Mars Hill Church. Also, since all of this content, including the books, will be available for years to come this will also give each book a long tail as ministries can use the content at any time in the future. The campaign will begin at Mars Hill Church with invitations to the more than 400 Acts 29 churches Pastor Mark leads in the US alone plus those churches he leads in 12 other nations through Acts 29 as well as an open invitation for any church/ministry in the world to join us. In short, the goal is to sell books around preaching campaigns in a way that has never been done with multiple levels of resourcing and state of the art media technology. [emphasis added]
Right there is the summation of the goal of a campaign, and the campaign is defined as a fully integrated multi-media project, a campaign completely integrating every conceivable level of media activity undertaken by a church toward the end of ... selling books. Release the book before the campaign begins, and the campaign is a preaching series that uses the book as well as provides an occasion to market and sell the book. This campaign took the people and resources of Mars Hill and integrated it toward the end of selling Real Marriage and this campaign proposal was formulated by a Driscoll or two in the middle of 2011 to go by the dates mentioned in the whole document.
We can't just skip past that bolded statement. The goal, in short, was to sell books around a preaching campaign in a way that Driscoll believed had never been done before, with multiple levels of resourcing and using state of the art technology. Why do such a campaign?
WHY A CAMPAIGN
By publishing a book before a campaign and building significant free support resources to support ministry leaders there are numerous benefits to churches and leaders including ...
[from 1] ... Participants will receive over 100 pages of research on sex and marriage compiled by a team of PhD professors in sociology and statistics that helps their own preaching/teaching on marriage and sex. It is all footnoted and will be emailed for use by those in the campaign free of charge. Participants will also receive summaries of good and bad Christian marriages. This content is not in the book and will help them for illustrations in their preaching and teaching.
3. The resources of one of America's largest churches for any church.
4. Literally more than a million dollars of gear, studio, and staff time are used to provide the free resources of the campaign. This includes a video team that has shot a full length mainstream Hollywood feature film, and graphic designers awarded by HOW magazine as some of the best in their field. One example are the state of the art Red Cameras used by no other church in the world but used for such films as District 9 on for any church wanting to use any of the sermons for their church free of charge.
[from 14] Posting of the sermon in audio and hi-def video download along with transcript in both English and Spanish after it has been preached live at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. These sermons will be edited to 40-45 minutes each and able to be used in any church or ministry that is interested in allowing pastors to take some or all of the Sundays of the series of as needed.
Summarily, by doing a fully integrated campaign churches willing to buy into the campaign could expect a ton of freebies and content not available in the book Real Marriage as a supplement to preaching or broadcasting the content, it seems. If you've read the whole marketing strategy what stands out is how given it was that Mars Hill's sum of personal and technological resources could be brought to bear in an integrated promotion of the sale of the book.
But then, who were those PhDs that put the material together that pastors could get for free by signing on to that Real Marriage campaign? Anybody know?
That point 3. Mars Hill Church got dissolved so signing on for the Real Marriage campaign NOW (if that's possible) will not avail people to all those resources, will it? Wouldn't the Red Cameras go up for sale? Those aren't cheap cameras. Where might the money for the sale of Mars Hill Church's Red Cameras have gone? Who knows?
The elegance of the campaign is that it's a fully integrated multi-media blitz which organizes every level of the activity of a church. A church that commits to the campaign commits to buying truckloads of the book and workbooks and video and so on associated with the campaign. To sign up for such a project, in a sense decides that an entire church or multi-site church is, if you will, a kind of captive audience for the duration of using the campaign, maybe a quarter of a year give or take skipping this or that chapter or lengthening the campaign by featuring workbook stuff or extra stories and material derived from the supplemental materials that would come with the campaign.
There may be those who would say that the royalties of the book would have or did go to Mars Hill. Are those people sure? The book Real Marriage, for instance, was copyrighted to On Mission, LLC. Royalties would have gone to On Mission, LLC whose members sure seem to have been Mark and Grace Driscoll, rather than to mars Hill. "If" the royalties of the book sales went to Mars Hill the proof would need to be provided by either officers of Mars Hill or by the Driscolls themselves. Because there's no reasonable basis, so far, for supposing that the royalties for books that were copyrighted to Driscoll rather than Mars Hill would ever go to Mars Hill, or even be donated to Mars Hill, is there?
What seems evident from the first draft of the marketing plan proposed by the Drsicoll team (subsequent drafts have not necessarily come to light) reads as a summary of how to organize every level of the life of Mars Hill Church around a campaign whose goal was to sell books.
revisiting an old Mars Hill memo in light of the marketing strategy proposed for Real Marriage by Driscoll.
This is old news, of course, the one page memo in which two questions were raised about proceeding with the Result Source plan.
And this isn't short.
But there are some things that are worth revisiting.
In case you haven't seen the memo over at Warren Throckmorton's blog ...
here it is again
after the break. As with similar docs collapse the menus on the right hand for a better read.
And this isn't short.
But there are some things that are worth revisiting.
In case you haven't seen the memo over at Warren Throckmorton's blog ...
here it is again
after the break. As with similar docs collapse the menus on the right hand for a better read.
Saturday, January 02, 2016
a lookback on 2015, a year where we finally got back to some formal musical analysis of guitar music
Maybe someone would say it wasn't particularly deep or detailed, but at least it was finally able to happen.
There have been those who have visited Wenatchee The Hatchet over the years and have had the comment "All this blog does is talk smack about Mars Hill and Pastor Mark." Ahem, no. Maybe for those who have overidentified their personal sense of identity and narrative with Mark Driscoll and/or Mars Hill as an extension of his narrative it could "seem" as though all Wenatchee The Hatchet has done is discuss that topic. But in 2015 there was some musical analysis.
There was actually a series of posts on Matiegka's Grand Sonata I for solo guitar, for instance, even featuring an optional cadenza that could be used in a performance and a discussion of things we guitarists can consider in putting together a cadenza--we can consider the thematic catalog of a movement, the nature of its form and consider what developmental outworkings of that catalog were NOT present in the written score as a way to develop a cadenza.
I proposed, perhaps speculatively, that if Matiegka assiduously avoided inversions of themes this could be a limitation in his conceptual approach or ... more charitably, that in a performance idiom where improvisation was still a factor that he'd keep certain developmental possibilities in reserve for the optional cadenza. Given Matiegka's interest in the work of Haydn and given Haydn's penchant to continue thematic development even within his recapitulations this seems like a reasonable inference.
And if you want to read all of that in its details ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-preliminary-issue-in-discussing-first.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-1-first-movement.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement_14.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement_23.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-recapitulation.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-optional.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-full-first.html
If you want to watch a video performance of a fun take on Matiegka's Grand Sonata I, go over here for footage of Gideon Whitehead's recital.
http://whyy.org/cms/onstageatcurtis/graduation-recital-by-guitarist-gideon-whitehead/
He keeps the first movement very lively, observes the repeating exposition, and he takes the finale at a spritely tempo. Now while many an older guitarist has complained that kids these days play too much music way too fast I think there's a case to be made that Matiegka's Grand Sonata needs to be taken at a brisk tempo so that it doesn't drag. Sure, we could suggest that central slow movement could have been more laid back (to better contrast with the outer movements) but, hey, the recital was a few years ago and anyone willing to champion Matiegka's Grand Sonata I is worth noting.
Another avenue of exploration in 2015 was the etudes from Op. 29 of Fernando Sor, exploring ways he hybridized sonata form in a C major etude and the way he wrote a sonata form in E flat for another of the etudes. This eventually culminated, after a long interval, in some observations about themes in early 19th century guitar sonatas more generally, how with some slight modifications guitar sonata themes from the early 19th century masters could be transformed into the basis for ragtime strains. There's even a light-hearted ragtime canon on a theme by Sor in one of the posts:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/sor-op-29-5-aka-etude-17-in-c-major.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/03/sor-op-29-10-aka-etude-22-brief.html
and ... a playful comparison of a shared melodic contour in an early Sor etude and a hit song performed by Johnny Cash
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/10/just-because-comparing-sors-op-6-etude.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/some-general-thoughts-on-triviality.html
There were plans to write more about the music of Ferdinand Rebay but ... life happens. Here's hoping that in 2016 Wenatchee The Hatchet can get back to blogging about Rebay's music because there are some fine recordings of his work that have become available in the last year or so. And for those who are regulars, Koshkin's cycle of preludes and fugues for solo guitar has been moving toward a publication/release date. Don't know when that date is but the plan is to get the score and any/all associated recordings.
Contrapuntal cycles for solo guitar are, to put it mildly, rare. It has been a mistake of the guitar community to imagine that neither the fugue nor the sonata form are "practical" for the guitar. There's a wealth of evidence to demonstrate otherwise since, oh, 1802, whether we're talking sonatas by Molitor, Matiegka, Carulli, Diabelli, Giuliani, Sor, Adam Darr, Georg Luckner, Turina, Rodrigo, Jose, Ponce, Gilardino, and a few others we'll just not name by name here. Sonatas are all over the place for those with a genuine interest in sonata forms. Fugues, those ARE rare, but they exist.
IF there's a case to be made for why non-guitarist music journalists and musicologists don't take the guitar to be "serious" and don't consider it primarily part of the "literate music" tradition, it's because guitarists, as Matanya Ophee has pointed out, tend to not be taken seriously within the classical world. One idea, in light of trends since 1800, could be that the guitar has not been treated as "serious" is the lack of works that are well-known that feature the 18th century forms broadly known as sonata and fugue. There's actually a significant body of sonatas for solo guitar and the number of fugues for guitar looks set to increase. Now we could also point out that there's not necessarily any reason guitarists "have" to write sonatas and fugues to be taken seriously. That's completely true. That said, some of us have fun with sonata and fugue for the guitar. There's no reason those of us into those forms can't write as many o fthem as we want.
What guitarist composers may have an opportunity to do is exploit a weakness (not being considered a notable part of what Taruskin's called the literate music tradition, i.e. of printed music scores) and leveraging that into a potential strength. The potential strength can be this, if we're talking about an instrument that has already been marginalized within academic musicology then it means we're not obliged to think and write in terms of what has been considered "in" or "out".
At precisely a stage in Western musical history where pianists don't want to be bothered writing sonatas and fugues because all that's been done guitarists have an opportunity to tackle these traditional forms but in light of a musical vocabulary we can share in common with popular idioms. As Charles Rosen wrote long ago about Haydn and Mozart, they synthesized scholastic formal approaches with popular idioms. We guitarists have an opportunity to give that a shot for our instrument. There's literally no reason you can't start a sonata allegro movement with a twelve-bar blues on a guitar. There's no reason you can't compose a fugue on a subject that's a blues riff. There's no inherent reason you can't compose sonatas that are tributes to Hank Williams Sr. or Johnny Cash.
Perhaps one of the great advantages guitarist composers may have is a problem guitarist performers in the classical world find so frustrating, that we're not taken completely seriously, or maybe even taken seriously at all. That could be an advantage. But it will potentially only be an advantage to us if we embrace both popular and scholastic music traditions equally, which it seems a lot of guitarists you can meet actually kind of already do. Maybe not "enough" of them, but we also live in an era where the potential contribution of a few guitarists committed to what a commenter at George Sandow's blog called an "anti-chauvinist" perspective, that is a perspective that does not look down on popular musical styles while still demonstrating a commitment to what's been known as "art music" or "classical music", can still be a net positive. The internet can create dangerously insular echo chambers but it can also create social dynamics in which people can have an influence they could not have if the only measure of social influence was the meet-and-greet in-person approach.
Matanya Ophee's proposal, going back to his Repertoire Issues lecture (I read a transcript of that lecture back in 1999 and it changed my life) is that we guitarists should commit to chamber music. He discussed playing chamber music and I try to do that when I can but I took it as a challenge to WRITE chamber music. If we want other musicians to take us seriously we should take them seriously. Don't look down on the tuba, for instance. The Samuel Jones Tuba Concerto is a great recent piece of music. Penderecki's Capriccio is fun, too. Don't look down on ANY instrument. As far as humanly possible don't look down on a style of music. That's not to say you can't decide you hate the music of this or that popular musician, but that you can consider that the problem is not necessarily that style as a whole in which that annoying pop musician works. Just because I hope to never again hear a song by Toby Keith doesn't mean I can't love songs by Johnny Cash or Hank Williams Sr. or Merle Haggard. It doesn't even mean I can't be open to country songs written by people born during the Nixon administration. There are moments in Haydn string quartets that I can imagine being country songs. I've taken animation seriously as a narrative art form since I was a kid so it's not just classical guitar music that I'm into that I've seen critical and academic establishments not take seriously as an art form.
Well ... that ramble has been enough for one post. For those who may still labor under the misapprehension that "all" this blog has done is discuss a narrow set of topics confined to a local megachurch those people are probably going to persist in their potentially willful misunderstanding. For everyone else, it was nice in 2015 that WtH could get back to being a blog that discusses music.
There have been those who have visited Wenatchee The Hatchet over the years and have had the comment "All this blog does is talk smack about Mars Hill and Pastor Mark." Ahem, no. Maybe for those who have overidentified their personal sense of identity and narrative with Mark Driscoll and/or Mars Hill as an extension of his narrative it could "seem" as though all Wenatchee The Hatchet has done is discuss that topic. But in 2015 there was some musical analysis.
There was actually a series of posts on Matiegka's Grand Sonata I for solo guitar, for instance, even featuring an optional cadenza that could be used in a performance and a discussion of things we guitarists can consider in putting together a cadenza--we can consider the thematic catalog of a movement, the nature of its form and consider what developmental outworkings of that catalog were NOT present in the written score as a way to develop a cadenza.
I proposed, perhaps speculatively, that if Matiegka assiduously avoided inversions of themes this could be a limitation in his conceptual approach or ... more charitably, that in a performance idiom where improvisation was still a factor that he'd keep certain developmental possibilities in reserve for the optional cadenza. Given Matiegka's interest in the work of Haydn and given Haydn's penchant to continue thematic development even within his recapitulations this seems like a reasonable inference.
And if you want to read all of that in its details ...
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-preliminary-issue-in-discussing-first.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-1-first-movement.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement_14.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-first-movement_23.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-recapitulation.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-optional.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/matiegka-grand-sonata-i-full-first.html
If you want to watch a video performance of a fun take on Matiegka's Grand Sonata I, go over here for footage of Gideon Whitehead's recital.
http://whyy.org/cms/onstageatcurtis/graduation-recital-by-guitarist-gideon-whitehead/
He keeps the first movement very lively, observes the repeating exposition, and he takes the finale at a spritely tempo. Now while many an older guitarist has complained that kids these days play too much music way too fast I think there's a case to be made that Matiegka's Grand Sonata needs to be taken at a brisk tempo so that it doesn't drag. Sure, we could suggest that central slow movement could have been more laid back (to better contrast with the outer movements) but, hey, the recital was a few years ago and anyone willing to champion Matiegka's Grand Sonata I is worth noting.
Another avenue of exploration in 2015 was the etudes from Op. 29 of Fernando Sor, exploring ways he hybridized sonata form in a C major etude and the way he wrote a sonata form in E flat for another of the etudes. This eventually culminated, after a long interval, in some observations about themes in early 19th century guitar sonatas more generally, how with some slight modifications guitar sonata themes from the early 19th century masters could be transformed into the basis for ragtime strains. There's even a light-hearted ragtime canon on a theme by Sor in one of the posts:
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/04/sor-op-29-5-aka-etude-17-in-c-major.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/03/sor-op-29-10-aka-etude-22-brief.html
and ... a playful comparison of a shared melodic contour in an early Sor etude and a hit song performed by Johnny Cash
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/10/just-because-comparing-sors-op-6-etude.html
http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2015/05/some-general-thoughts-on-triviality.html
There were plans to write more about the music of Ferdinand Rebay but ... life happens. Here's hoping that in 2016 Wenatchee The Hatchet can get back to blogging about Rebay's music because there are some fine recordings of his work that have become available in the last year or so. And for those who are regulars, Koshkin's cycle of preludes and fugues for solo guitar has been moving toward a publication/release date. Don't know when that date is but the plan is to get the score and any/all associated recordings.
Contrapuntal cycles for solo guitar are, to put it mildly, rare. It has been a mistake of the guitar community to imagine that neither the fugue nor the sonata form are "practical" for the guitar. There's a wealth of evidence to demonstrate otherwise since, oh, 1802, whether we're talking sonatas by Molitor, Matiegka, Carulli, Diabelli, Giuliani, Sor, Adam Darr, Georg Luckner, Turina, Rodrigo, Jose, Ponce, Gilardino, and a few others we'll just not name by name here. Sonatas are all over the place for those with a genuine interest in sonata forms. Fugues, those ARE rare, but they exist.
IF there's a case to be made for why non-guitarist music journalists and musicologists don't take the guitar to be "serious" and don't consider it primarily part of the "literate music" tradition, it's because guitarists, as Matanya Ophee has pointed out, tend to not be taken seriously within the classical world. One idea, in light of trends since 1800, could be that the guitar has not been treated as "serious" is the lack of works that are well-known that feature the 18th century forms broadly known as sonata and fugue. There's actually a significant body of sonatas for solo guitar and the number of fugues for guitar looks set to increase. Now we could also point out that there's not necessarily any reason guitarists "have" to write sonatas and fugues to be taken seriously. That's completely true. That said, some of us have fun with sonata and fugue for the guitar. There's no reason those of us into those forms can't write as many o fthem as we want.
What guitarist composers may have an opportunity to do is exploit a weakness (not being considered a notable part of what Taruskin's called the literate music tradition, i.e. of printed music scores) and leveraging that into a potential strength. The potential strength can be this, if we're talking about an instrument that has already been marginalized within academic musicology then it means we're not obliged to think and write in terms of what has been considered "in" or "out".
At precisely a stage in Western musical history where pianists don't want to be bothered writing sonatas and fugues because all that's been done guitarists have an opportunity to tackle these traditional forms but in light of a musical vocabulary we can share in common with popular idioms. As Charles Rosen wrote long ago about Haydn and Mozart, they synthesized scholastic formal approaches with popular idioms. We guitarists have an opportunity to give that a shot for our instrument. There's literally no reason you can't start a sonata allegro movement with a twelve-bar blues on a guitar. There's no reason you can't compose a fugue on a subject that's a blues riff. There's no inherent reason you can't compose sonatas that are tributes to Hank Williams Sr. or Johnny Cash.
Perhaps one of the great advantages guitarist composers may have is a problem guitarist performers in the classical world find so frustrating, that we're not taken completely seriously, or maybe even taken seriously at all. That could be an advantage. But it will potentially only be an advantage to us if we embrace both popular and scholastic music traditions equally, which it seems a lot of guitarists you can meet actually kind of already do. Maybe not "enough" of them, but we also live in an era where the potential contribution of a few guitarists committed to what a commenter at George Sandow's blog called an "anti-chauvinist" perspective, that is a perspective that does not look down on popular musical styles while still demonstrating a commitment to what's been known as "art music" or "classical music", can still be a net positive. The internet can create dangerously insular echo chambers but it can also create social dynamics in which people can have an influence they could not have if the only measure of social influence was the meet-and-greet in-person approach.
Matanya Ophee's proposal, going back to his Repertoire Issues lecture (I read a transcript of that lecture back in 1999 and it changed my life) is that we guitarists should commit to chamber music. He discussed playing chamber music and I try to do that when I can but I took it as a challenge to WRITE chamber music. If we want other musicians to take us seriously we should take them seriously. Don't look down on the tuba, for instance. The Samuel Jones Tuba Concerto is a great recent piece of music. Penderecki's Capriccio is fun, too. Don't look down on ANY instrument. As far as humanly possible don't look down on a style of music. That's not to say you can't decide you hate the music of this or that popular musician, but that you can consider that the problem is not necessarily that style as a whole in which that annoying pop musician works. Just because I hope to never again hear a song by Toby Keith doesn't mean I can't love songs by Johnny Cash or Hank Williams Sr. or Merle Haggard. It doesn't even mean I can't be open to country songs written by people born during the Nixon administration. There are moments in Haydn string quartets that I can imagine being country songs. I've taken animation seriously as a narrative art form since I was a kid so it's not just classical guitar music that I'm into that I've seen critical and academic establishments not take seriously as an art form.
Well ... that ramble has been enough for one post. For those who may still labor under the misapprehension that "all" this blog has done is discuss a narrow set of topics confined to a local megachurch those people are probably going to persist in their potentially willful misunderstanding. For everyone else, it was nice in 2015 that WtH could get back to being a blog that discusses music.
Friday, January 01, 2016
Acts 29 affiliated North Valley Church advertises upcoming Jan 3, 2016 Mark Driscoll speaking engagement, Acts 29 public statements calling for Driscoll resignation
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/august/acts-29-removes-mars-hill-asks-mark-driscoll-matt-chandler.html
8/8/2014 reporting by Ruth Moon
...
Hoping that "the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored," the Acts 29 church planting network founded by Mark Driscoll has removed the Seattle pastor and his Mars Hill megachurch from membership.
Well that online statement mentioned by Moon is gone. However ... the brief statement can be accessed by way of ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140810083820/http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/a-message-from-the-board-of-acts-29-concerning-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church/
There's a bit more on an expanded form of the announcement over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/acts-29-network-removes-co-founder-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church-from-membership/
Mark,
As the Board of Acts 29, we are grateful to God for the leadership, courage, and generosity of both you and Mars Hill in not only founding the network but also sustaining it through the transition to this board three years ago. The very act of giving away your authority over the network was one of humility and grace, and for that we are grateful.
Over the past three years, our board and network have been the recipients of countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you and what we consider ungodly and disqualifying behavior. We have both publicly and internally tried to support and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when multiple pastors in our network confirmed this behavior. In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter. But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming.
We now have to take another course of action. Based on the totality of the circumstances, we are now asking you to please step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help. Consequently, we also feel that we have no alternative but to remove you and Mars Hill from membership in Acts 29. Because you are the founder of Acts 29 and a member, we are naturally associated with you and feel that this association discredits the network and is a major distraction.
We tell you this out of love for you, Mars Hill, Acts 29, and most significantly, the cause of Christ, and we would be irresponsible and deeply unloving not to do so in a clear and unequivocal manner. Again, we want you to know that we are eternally thankful for what you as a man and Mars Hill as a church have meant to our network. However, that cannot dissuade us from action. Instead, it gives added significance and importance to our decision.
We hope and pray that you see this decision as the action of men who love you deeply and want you to walk in the light—for your good, the good of your family, and the honor of your Savior. Shortly after sending this, we will be informing the members of Acts 29, your Board of Advisors and Accountability, and your elders, as well as putting out a public statement on the Acts 29 website. It brings us no joy to move forward in this direction, and we trust that the Lord will be at work in all of this.
In sorrow and with hope,
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
A response from MH's BoAA is recorded over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/mars-hill-church-board-reacts-to-being-removed-from-acts-29-network/
But it will be tricky to find active links at Acts 29's web presence that articulate these points. Acts 29 has not, so far as can be established, rescinded or retracted anything it stated for the public record regarding Mark Driscoll.
That is worth bearing in mind in light of a recent twitter contribution by an Acts 29 affiliated church.
https://twitter.com/NValleyChurch/status/682602249634365440
Join us on Sunday, Jan 3rd, at 9am at Harkins with guest speaker, Pastor Mark Driscoll.#Christ #Gospel
8:40 AM - 31 Dec 2015
Which is also confirmed on the Driscoll side of things
http://markdriscoll.org/events/north-valley-community-church/
NORTH VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH
January 3, 2016
9:00 am
HARKINS THEATRES AT NORTERRA
2550 West Happy Valley Road
Phoenix, AZ 85085
Pastor Mark will be preaching at North Valley Community Church for their 9:00 AM service.
For more information, visit their website.
http://northvalleychurch.org/network
One of the networks the church is affiliated with is ...
http://www.acts29.com/find-churches/#church-6756
Did Mark Driscoll step down from ministry at Mars Hill in October 2014 in a way that was considered sufficiently repentant enough that Acts 29 churches are able to proceed with a green light featuring Mark Driscoll as a featured speaker? Did Acts 29 get some report the public does not yet have access to regarding findings about Mark Driscoll? Does the board of Acts 29 Network consider Mark Driscoll to have resigned in a godly way? Is it okay for member churches of the Acts 29 to feature Mark Driscoll as a guest speaker?
Now the church has a number of networks they associate with but since they are associated with the Acts 29 Network in addition to those networks and it's been more than a year since Mark Driscoll resigned and it's also been more than a year since Acts 29 leadership requested that Mark Driscoll not only step down from ministry but seek help ... would A29 people verify what kidn of help they wanted Driscoll to get? Would they be willing to confirm whether or not Mark Driscoll has sought the sort of help they recommended? Can North Valley formulate an explanation for its apparent invitation to Driscoll to be a featured speaker in light of what was reported as a matter of public record regarding Mark Driscoll's history with Acts 29 and the request on the part of A29 leadership that Mark Driscoll step down from ministry?
8/8/2014 reporting by Ruth Moon
...
Hoping that "the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored," the Acts 29 church planting network founded by Mark Driscoll has removed the Seattle pastor and his Mars Hill megachurch from membership.
“It is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark and Mars Hill in our network,” said Acts 29 in an online statement signed by Matt Chandler and other board members of the network of 500 churches.
Acts 29 came to the drastic decision "with deep sorrow," according to the statement. "In taking this action, our prayer is that it will encourage the leadership of Mars Hill to respond in a distinctive and godly manner so that the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored."
Well that online statement mentioned by Moon is gone. However ... the brief statement can be accessed by way of ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140810083820/http://www.acts29network.org/acts-29-blog/a-message-from-the-board-of-acts-29-concerning-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church/
A Message from the Board of Acts 29 concerning Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church
It is with deep sorrow that the Acts 29 Network announces its decision to remove Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from membership in the network. Mark and the Elders of Mars Hill have been informed of the decision, along with the reasons for removal. It is our conviction that the nature of the accusations against Mark, most of which have been confirmed by him, make it untenable and unhelpful to keep Mark and Mars Hill in our network. In taking this action, our prayer is that it will encourage the leadership of Mars Hill to respond in a distinctive and godly manner so that the name of Christ will not continue to be dishonored.
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
There's a bit more on an expanded form of the announcement over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/acts-29-network-removes-co-founder-mark-driscoll-and-mars-hill-church-from-membership/
Mark,
As the Board of Acts 29, we are grateful to God for the leadership, courage, and generosity of both you and Mars Hill in not only founding the network but also sustaining it through the transition to this board three years ago. The very act of giving away your authority over the network was one of humility and grace, and for that we are grateful.
Over the past three years, our board and network have been the recipients of countless shots and dozens of fires directly linked to you and what we consider ungodly and disqualifying behavior. We have both publicly and internally tried to support and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when multiple pastors in our network confirmed this behavior. In response, we leaned on the Mars Hill Board of Advisors & Accountability to take the lead in dealing with this matter. But we no longer believe the BoAA is able to execute the plan of reconciliation originally laid out. Ample time has been given for repentance, change, and restitution, with none forthcoming.
We now have to take another course of action. Based on the totality of the circumstances, we are now asking you to please step down from ministry for an extended time and seek help. Consequently, we also feel that we have no alternative but to remove you and Mars Hill from membership in Acts 29. Because you are the founder of Acts 29 and a member, we are naturally associated with you and feel that this association discredits the network and is a major distraction.
We tell you this out of love for you, Mars Hill, Acts 29, and most significantly, the cause of Christ, and we would be irresponsible and deeply unloving not to do so in a clear and unequivocal manner. Again, we want you to know that we are eternally thankful for what you as a man and Mars Hill as a church have meant to our network. However, that cannot dissuade us from action. Instead, it gives added significance and importance to our decision.
We hope and pray that you see this decision as the action of men who love you deeply and want you to walk in the light—for your good, the good of your family, and the honor of your Savior. Shortly after sending this, we will be informing the members of Acts 29, your Board of Advisors and Accountability, and your elders, as well as putting out a public statement on the Acts 29 website. It brings us no joy to move forward in this direction, and we trust that the Lord will be at work in all of this.
In sorrow and with hope,
The Board of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Matt Chandler
Darrin Patrick
Steve Timmis
Eric Mason
John Bryson
Bruce Wesley
Leonce Crump
A response from MH's BoAA is recorded over here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/08/08/mars-hill-church-board-reacts-to-being-removed-from-acts-29-network/
But it will be tricky to find active links at Acts 29's web presence that articulate these points. Acts 29 has not, so far as can be established, rescinded or retracted anything it stated for the public record regarding Mark Driscoll.
That is worth bearing in mind in light of a recent twitter contribution by an Acts 29 affiliated church.
https://twitter.com/NValleyChurch/status/682602249634365440
Join us on Sunday, Jan 3rd, at 9am at Harkins with guest speaker, Pastor Mark Driscoll.
8:40 AM - 31 Dec 2015
Which is also confirmed on the Driscoll side of things
http://markdriscoll.org/events/north-valley-community-church/
NORTH VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH
January 3, 2016
9:00 am
HARKINS THEATRES AT NORTERRA
2550 West Happy Valley Road
Phoenix, AZ 85085
Pastor Mark will be preaching at North Valley Community Church for their 9:00 AM service.
For more information, visit their website.
http://northvalleychurch.org/network
One of the networks the church is affiliated with is ...
http://www.acts29.com/find-churches/#church-6756
Did Mark Driscoll step down from ministry at Mars Hill in October 2014 in a way that was considered sufficiently repentant enough that Acts 29 churches are able to proceed with a green light featuring Mark Driscoll as a featured speaker? Did Acts 29 get some report the public does not yet have access to regarding findings about Mark Driscoll? Does the board of Acts 29 Network consider Mark Driscoll to have resigned in a godly way? Is it okay for member churches of the Acts 29 to feature Mark Driscoll as a guest speaker?
Now the church has a number of networks they associate with but since they are associated with the Acts 29 Network in addition to those networks and it's been more than a year since Mark Driscoll resigned and it's also been more than a year since Acts 29 leadership requested that Mark Driscoll not only step down from ministry but seek help ... would A29 people verify what kidn of help they wanted Driscoll to get? Would they be willing to confirm whether or not Mark Driscoll has sought the sort of help they recommended? Can North Valley formulate an explanation for its apparent invitation to Driscoll to be a featured speaker in light of what was reported as a matter of public record regarding Mark Driscoll's history with Acts 29 and the request on the part of A29 leadership that Mark Driscoll step down from ministry?
Nostalgia and the Anxieties of Empire: Toward a unified theory of American sci-fi movie nostalgia
Whether it’s a Noah Berlatsky to the left or a Ross Douthat
to the right the complaint has been that American sci-fi seems plagued with a
lack of imagination of a different kind of future. We keep coming back to the
same stuff and reviving or rebooting the same old franchises. Some franchises, like the Terminator franchise, have never even
really been allowed to go dormant. For
those who only heard of the Michael Bay films the Transformers franchise has
been rolling out in one form or another since the first Reagan administration. Sure,
Scooby-Doo’s been running from guys in monster outfits since the 1960s but it
seems bitter pill for film critics and cultural pundits to swallow that our
“science fiction” seems so warmed over. We’re talking about a Star Wars revival and
not the Flash Gordon that inspired it.
Over at the Atlantic Monthly Ta-nehisi Coates (who’s working on stories for Marvel’s Black Panther) has an understandably more generous take: “I think this assessment doesn’t spend enough time considering three very important phrases. Those phrases are: Episode I, Episode II and Episode III. However one feels about The Force Awakens, it is—in fact—a film. The aims of the heroes are coherent and accessible.”
Teachout, of course, has noted how derivative Episode 7 is and that it’s a remake of a film that was a derivative homage back in 1977. But if Star Wars is a franchise that truly embodies the post-modern era and was always pastiche, perhaps we should bear in mind it has a weakness which could also be a strength that reflects the time and place in which it was made. If the sins of contemporary cinema are that films are derivative now that film is a century old, the sins of older generations of film included adaptations of books that were bought a place on a NYT best-seller list, like the John Wayne vehicle True Grit.
Even if Episode 7 is a derivative nostalgia trip with a sentimental nostalgia a case could be made that at least there are worse ways to rig the game in advance for a film than literally rigging a spot for the source book so the film has a bit more prestige. Everyone, by now, has some idea who and what George Lucas was cribbing from when Episode 4 came out. We may be witnessing a generational gap between film critics and moviegoers old enough to remember what Lucas cribbed from firsthand and those who aren’t.
Let’s bear in mind that feature-length cinema is now more than a century old, folks. The likelihood that things will get repeated is high. As author, pastor and film reviewer James Harleman put it in his book Cinemagogue, the problem with saying Hollywood has run out of ideas is making the mistake of thinking they ever had their own ideas to begin with.
Still, it’s worth asking why we keep coming back to the franchise we keep coming back to. I would propose that in the case of Star Wars its pop culture wealth comes from a tension between its text, subtext, and the metanarratives we, as audiences, impose upon the franchise. Lucas used to say the Empire was the United States and that the Rebellion was the Vietnamese military fighting against the United States. If that was the intended subtext for what has become Episode 4, it probably couldn’t last longer than it took for Ronald Reagan to refer to the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire. It could also scarcely withstand American self-mythologizing on the matter of a rebellion against royal empire.
And yet we can have College Humor make a joke on Storm Troopers talking about the destruction of the Death Star in Episode 4 as if it were the twin towers from 9/11/2001. It would appear that at a dark, jokey level we CAN see ourselves in the Empire and it may be that the aspirations and anxieties of empire are why America can’t give up on Star Wars just yet. To say that that story is over is, in some strange cultural way, to admit that our story is over.
But it’s not just Star Wars we keep coming back to. Let’s consider Star Trek, the franchise Abrams may or may not have successfully revived a few years back. A central criticism of Abrams’ handling of the franchise was that he betrayed the spirit of the franchise. But what was that spirit? It may help to understand Star Trek as mid-20th century American optimism about the inevitability of a secular liberal democracy being the paradigmatic approach to all of human society. One day we would move beyond waves of nuclear dread into an age where money is no object and we can breach the barrier of light speed. To the extent that Abrams’ rebooted franchise imagined that beyond the evil of Khan Noonian Singh was an evil general in the Federation Abrams did betray the optimism of Star Trek by revealing we live in a post-Cold War era, an era in which we are less sure we can believe in the indisputable rightness of the empire we have. Star Trek depends on assuming that the way modern progressive Western thought sees things is the one right way.
But some franchises have never quite gone away. Take the Terminator franchise. The first film emerged in the wake of the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative. James Cameron’s dystopian sci-fi film could imagine that the super-weapons invented during the Cold War could become self-aware enough to war against humanity. Cameron decided to make a sequel in defiance of the inexorable logic of a narrative in which John Connor could only be born, paradoxically, because someone impregnated his mother who came from the future to stop Skynet from killing Sarah Connor—John Connor can only exist in a time-loop where there is already a Skynet. But Terminator 2 featured John Connor declaring “There’s no fate but what we make!” Whether the sci-fi franchise we come back to is Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, or Robocop, we come back to the anxieties and aspirations of empire, we come back to an America that is determined that whether it’s to light or darkness that ultimately nobody but us makes the fateful decision.
It can seem that the common thread in all the sci-fi franchises America keeps coming back to is that whether the future is a utopia or a dystopia there is no fate but the one WE make.
POSTSCRIPT
As a playful contrast/comparison consider James Bond and Doctor Who as genre franchises dedicated to exploring the self-awareness of an English empire in undeniable decline, helpless to ultimately change the fate of the world or the British empire, but perhaps still able to do some good somewhere along the way. It may be the thread for the West in keeping Cold War franchises alive is that we're clinging to a self-understanding.
However, instead of just lamenting that we keep telling the
same stories over and over in Hollywood (as if Hollywood ever had its own ideas
to begin with), why don’t we ask why we keep coming back to the particular
franchises we keep coming back to? Has
anyone else noticed there tend to be clusters?
Take Planet of the Apes and Star Trek, these date from the 1960s. Star
Wars and The Terminator franchises date chiefly from the 1980s. It can seem as if the clusters of endlessly
retooled science fiction franchises come from the Kennedy/Johnson decade and
the Reagan decade. These were eras in
which fear of America sparking a global nuclear war and ambitions of ushering
in a new era of prosperity ran high, depending on which party you were for. It
can seem as if the franchises we come back to cluster around the decades in
which we were alternately confident and terrified of our capacity as the
world’s global superpower to make or break life on earth as we know it. We keep coming back to the sci-fi franchises
that most explicitly explore our anxieties and aspirations as a nation that can
change the planet for good or ill. Think
of it as nostalgia not merely for sci-fi franchises but for the franchises as cultural
emblems of mythological red-state and blue state Camelots and the respective
aspirations and anxieties of partisans from those eras.
But let’s consider a few opinions on the recently awakened
Force, shall we?
Terry Teachout summed up his not-very-impressed-and-didn’t-have-fun
experience of Episode 7:
Over at the Atlantic Monthly Ta-nehisi Coates (who’s working on stories for Marvel’s Black Panther) has an understandably more generous take: “I think this assessment doesn’t spend enough time considering three very important phrases. Those phrases are: Episode I, Episode II and Episode III. However one feels about The Force Awakens, it is—in fact—a film. The aims of the heroes are coherent and accessible.”
Teachout, of course, has noted how derivative Episode 7 is and that it’s a remake of a film that was a derivative homage back in 1977. But if Star Wars is a franchise that truly embodies the post-modern era and was always pastiche, perhaps we should bear in mind it has a weakness which could also be a strength that reflects the time and place in which it was made. If the sins of contemporary cinema are that films are derivative now that film is a century old, the sins of older generations of film included adaptations of books that were bought a place on a NYT best-seller list, like the John Wayne vehicle True Grit.
Even if Episode 7 is a derivative nostalgia trip with a sentimental nostalgia a case could be made that at least there are worse ways to rig the game in advance for a film than literally rigging a spot for the source book so the film has a bit more prestige. Everyone, by now, has some idea who and what George Lucas was cribbing from when Episode 4 came out. We may be witnessing a generational gap between film critics and moviegoers old enough to remember what Lucas cribbed from firsthand and those who aren’t.
Let’s bear in mind that feature-length cinema is now more than a century old, folks. The likelihood that things will get repeated is high. As author, pastor and film reviewer James Harleman put it in his book Cinemagogue, the problem with saying Hollywood has run out of ideas is making the mistake of thinking they ever had their own ideas to begin with.
Still, it’s worth asking why we keep coming back to the franchise we keep coming back to. I would propose that in the case of Star Wars its pop culture wealth comes from a tension between its text, subtext, and the metanarratives we, as audiences, impose upon the franchise. Lucas used to say the Empire was the United States and that the Rebellion was the Vietnamese military fighting against the United States. If that was the intended subtext for what has become Episode 4, it probably couldn’t last longer than it took for Ronald Reagan to refer to the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire. It could also scarcely withstand American self-mythologizing on the matter of a rebellion against royal empire.
And yet we can have College Humor make a joke on Storm Troopers talking about the destruction of the Death Star in Episode 4 as if it were the twin towers from 9/11/2001. It would appear that at a dark, jokey level we CAN see ourselves in the Empire and it may be that the aspirations and anxieties of empire are why America can’t give up on Star Wars just yet. To say that that story is over is, in some strange cultural way, to admit that our story is over.
But it’s not just Star Wars we keep coming back to. Let’s consider Star Trek, the franchise Abrams may or may not have successfully revived a few years back. A central criticism of Abrams’ handling of the franchise was that he betrayed the spirit of the franchise. But what was that spirit? It may help to understand Star Trek as mid-20th century American optimism about the inevitability of a secular liberal democracy being the paradigmatic approach to all of human society. One day we would move beyond waves of nuclear dread into an age where money is no object and we can breach the barrier of light speed. To the extent that Abrams’ rebooted franchise imagined that beyond the evil of Khan Noonian Singh was an evil general in the Federation Abrams did betray the optimism of Star Trek by revealing we live in a post-Cold War era, an era in which we are less sure we can believe in the indisputable rightness of the empire we have. Star Trek depends on assuming that the way modern progressive Western thought sees things is the one right way.
But some franchises have never quite gone away. Take the Terminator franchise. The first film emerged in the wake of the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative. James Cameron’s dystopian sci-fi film could imagine that the super-weapons invented during the Cold War could become self-aware enough to war against humanity. Cameron decided to make a sequel in defiance of the inexorable logic of a narrative in which John Connor could only be born, paradoxically, because someone impregnated his mother who came from the future to stop Skynet from killing Sarah Connor—John Connor can only exist in a time-loop where there is already a Skynet. But Terminator 2 featured John Connor declaring “There’s no fate but what we make!” Whether the sci-fi franchise we come back to is Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminator, Planet of the Apes, or Robocop, we come back to the anxieties and aspirations of empire, we come back to an America that is determined that whether it’s to light or darkness that ultimately nobody but us makes the fateful decision.
2016 and Mark Driscoll Ministries--a year to re:cycle and re:launch re:purposed content
So it would appear that Mark Driscoll's got more old books coming back in revised forms. It's said that Doctrine is going to make a comeback as It's All About Jesus. Two basic questions about that:
1) will the copyright be in just the name of Mark Driscoll?
2) will Driscoll finally excise the Breshears content entirely, which featured the wildly inaccurate and soundly beaten down foolishness asserted about the Targum Neofiti that was disproven by scholars Robert Cargill and Christian Brady?
It may be worth revisiting the fact that since the dawn of this millennium the only substantial works Breshears published were co-authored with Mark Driscoll. What Breshears' future writing projects may include, if anything, remains to be seen.
Doctrine would not be the only book from the past of Mars Hill that has been given a spot for retooling. Radical Reformission appears to have been de-radicalized and issued as Reformission. If someone can confirm who owns the copyright on that re-issued book feel free to contrinbute a comment that goes into the moderation queu.
This would appear to be an all new year in 2016, a year in which Driscoll 's ministry continues to re:cycle and re:vive intermittently re:dacted contact that;s being re:issued while Mark Driscoll and company solicit donations.
There was a time long ago when Driscoll warned people from the pulpit against those guys in ministry who preach their handful of sermons, pull of stakes, and go somewhere to some other place where they haven't preached before and start recycling all their greatest hits. The irony in Driscoll having preached that message is how thoroughly he now embodies what he so fervently preached against. .
1) will the copyright be in just the name of Mark Driscoll?
2) will Driscoll finally excise the Breshears content entirely, which featured the wildly inaccurate and soundly beaten down foolishness asserted about the Targum Neofiti that was disproven by scholars Robert Cargill and Christian Brady?
It may be worth revisiting the fact that since the dawn of this millennium the only substantial works Breshears published were co-authored with Mark Driscoll. What Breshears' future writing projects may include, if anything, remains to be seen.
Doctrine would not be the only book from the past of Mars Hill that has been given a spot for retooling. Radical Reformission appears to have been de-radicalized and issued as Reformission. If someone can confirm who owns the copyright on that re-issued book feel free to contrinbute a comment that goes into the moderation queu.
This would appear to be an all new year in 2016, a year in which Driscoll 's ministry continues to re:cycle and re:vive intermittently re:dacted contact that;s being re:issued while Mark Driscoll and company solicit donations.
There was a time long ago when Driscoll warned people from the pulpit against those guys in ministry who preach their handful of sermons, pull of stakes, and go somewhere to some other place where they haven't preached before and start recycling all their greatest hits. The irony in Driscoll having preached that message is how thoroughly he now embodies what he so fervently preached against. .
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