Seth MacGillivray 2003-11

Your Name

Seth MacGillivray

Gender

Male

Which describes your role at Mars Hill?

Group Leader (any leadership role)

What Mars Hill location(s) did you attend?

Ballard, Bellevue

What years were you involved / attending?

2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

Which describes you?

I left Mars Hill prior to closure.

Please write anything else you'd like to add.

I wrote this on my Facebook page in November of 2014, a couple of days after it was announced that Mars Hill was officially closing down as a church. I think it still speaks to how I feel about my time there.

Eleven years ago, I walked into a dimly lit former warehouse with crazy art hung up everywhere, tattooed and pierced guys and girls handing out pamphlets, hard rock reverberating through the dark-painted walls, and a short, kinda thick guy up on stage yelling at everyone. The place was called Mars Hill Church. I was a new Christian, and had a view of most Jesus-followers as a cross between Ned Flanders and high school girls who listened to DC Talk. Here was something new, at least to me: an ultra-orthodox view of the bible combined with a liberal view of the world.

We weren't a small church by the time I joined – probably a thousand or so weekly attendees at that point- but we were still small enough to be the young rebel in town, and we all felt like we were a part of something special. We wanted to change the world, one person at a time; not just by our message, but by the way we lived our lives. Be the best tippers, be the best employees and bosses, be the best neighbors, be friends with everyone. Engage – rather than judge – the world around us. Be light, and be love. Be like Jesus.

We had gays and jocks and hipsters and nerds. We had the homeless who wandered in, grabbed a cup of coffee and a pastry, and wandered back out. We had former (and current) junkies, unmarried couples who were still sleeping together even though they got yelled at every week by Mark, atheists and agnostics who loved to argue but still came every Sunday, and even those Christians who listened to Christian radio. We were mostly young, and though we were full of hubris and the arrogance that can only come from those who feel like they're traveling paths never traveled before, we loved and revered the few older couples and families who (always) sat in the front, and the elder statesmen of our faith like John Piper, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul.

Once I was asked if, were something to happen to Mark, Mars Hill Church would survive. It would, I said, because of other elders we had at the time: men like Lief Moi, and James Harleman, and Scott Thomas, and Paul Petry.

I remember meeting people that became friends that I still have today. I remember learning to love to read my bible, and debate theology, and learn old Christian hymns arranged in new ways. I remember plenty of dates that didn't go so well, and I remember meeting my wife in a Starbucks when she overheard me talking about my church. I remember conversations where friends, much wiser than I, told me to grow up and be a better man than I was. I remember outdoor baptisms, and I remember two college girls walking by in West Seattle, hearing about Jesus, and getting dunked, fully clothed, in freezing-cold water with tears streaming down their faces. I remember crying myself, at every single baptism I ever witnessed.

We all know by now the recent history: the consolidation of power, the public lying, the financial malfeasance, the exorbitant salaries, the character assassination of anyone who ever spoke out, the shady book deals, the growing call from former and current members and elders for change, and the last, final betrayal from a man who refused to submit to the very discipline he always preached was necessary as a Christian.

It seems, at this point, that Mars Hill Church will be only a memory in a few years.

Ten years ago, I saw a former heroin addict OD in the lobby of Mars Hill in Ballard. One of our volunteers knew how to care for him, and while we called 911, he attended to him. The medics showed up soon after, and carried him out on a stretcher, still unconscious but breathing. Two weeks later, that same man was back, carrying trash bags from the bathroom to the dumpster. He was there because he was loved by us, and he loved us in return. He was there because he was home.

Mars Hill Church may be but a memory in a few years, but that's the memory I'll hold on to.

Member - Albuquerque 2011-14

Gender

Male

Which describes your role at Mars Hill?

Member

What Mars Hill location(s) did you attend?

Albuquerque

What years were you involved / attending?

2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

How did you first hear about Mars Hill?

roommate's coworker

What was the circumstance of your first time attending Mars HIll?

Visited evening service to check it out

What were your first impressions?

"This video sermon thing is weird, but the sermon was really good, firmly rooted in the Gospel, and these people are pretty welcoming"

Why was Mars Hill your church home?

The people there wanted me to be a part of their community, more so than at the other churches I had visited

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a positive impact on you?

Community Group led to some very good relationships, friendships where sin was exposed and grace was extended. People didn't have to put on an act.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a negative impact on you?

Very little, it honestly felt like the healthiest congregation I've ever been a part of (I have probably been actively a part of 4 other congregations in my life). Some of the bureaucracy was annoying (I was a volunteer in the Kids ministry), and some of the leaders were a little full of themselves, but neither of those things were worse than other places I'd been. The disbanding of the church was an emotionally stressful time, but I wouldn't even consider that as having a negative effect, because I feel like our congregation is stronger and healthier after having worked through all that.

What would you like to have changed about Mars Hill?

I wish that the church would have embraced infant baptism. I didn't appreciate the church moving our pastors to other churches. I would liked to have seen more preaching pastors developed, although I had the impression that there was such an initiative until the church disbanded.

Which describes you?

I stayed at Mars Hill through closure.

Please describe why you stayed at Mars Hill and what that experience was like.

The main reason I stayed was because of the relationships I had within the community at the church. I had built some really strong friendships with people who actually cared about me, whereas at other church I visited when I moved to the city, it was very difficult to get plugged in even though I tried. Pastor Mark's preaching was a secondary reason. I had never heard preaching like his, preaching that was solidly based in the Bible, but didn't feel stuck to political dogmas that the evangelical denominations have adhered to for most of the last century. It was the best I had heard of solid doctrine that was culturally aware.

How would you describe the reason for Mars Hill's closure to an outsider.

"Our pastor was a great preacher, but the growth of the church outpaced his ability as a leader. People on the inside got too ambitious and that led to internal rivalries and eventually the leadership started stabbing each other in the back and we had to disband. It got kind of ugly. People were gossiping to these bloggers online who just love to destroy things. That part was kind of painful because these bloggers made it sound like we were a church full of abuse victims, which totally wasn't true. A lot of us were really blessed by the church and were really sad to see it fall in such an embarrassing way. I think the leaders were envisioning a vast church that would spread far and wide, which was easy to imagine given the pace of growth that we had seen, but in doing that they lost sight of taking care of the local communities."

What's changed for you since your time at Mars Hill came to an end?

I think we had a good amount of pride that we were forced to confront, and ultimately that has been a huge blessing. One of the things we had to wrestle with was if what Pastor Mark said about Jesus ruling His Church was true, why would this church be brought down like this? I think the answer most of us have accepted is that there were a lot of people who idolized Mark, and that idolatry needed to be destroyed. A lot of us still have a lot of affection for him and are genuinely sorry about what he got put through. Ultimately though, Mark isn't that important for the health of our congregations, which is a truth that comes out of his own preaching.

Please write anything else you'd like to add.

I see such a discontinuity between the church that the bloggers describe and what it was like in our congregation. Granted, Albuquerque is very removed from Seattle, so maybe our perspective is different from the rest of the church, but it was kind of painful to read some of these jerks online flaming us out. I don't really know the situations associated the handful of people who actually do claim to be wronged, but I don't really feel like I buy all of their stories. They seem just like a bunch of angry people who were willing to nitpick apart anything associated with Mark or the church in order to find something worthy of blowing up and embarrassing us in public. I think that part of the reason Mark left without going through the "restoration process" was that he knew that as long as he and the Mars Hill name stayed around, our ability to be a Jesus-glorifying church would be compromised. I think he knew that Jesus didn't need him or the Mars Hill name to keep doing work, so he gave it up. Ultimately things are better now than they were before, and I think that my faith has been strengthened because of it. Mark's ultimate message was right, it is all about Jesus, and nothing the bloggers or pundits write is going to change that.

Robb S. - Ballard 2003-07

Your Name

Robb S.

Gender

Male

Which describes your role at Mars Hill?

Member

What Mars Hill location(s) did you attend?

Ballard

What years were you involved / attending?

2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

How did you first hear about Mars Hill?

From a friend at Antioch Bible Church who said it was a place where "everyone cool" was going to church.

What was the circumstance of your first time attending Mars HIll?

I was a college freshman and had just moved to Seattle from Redmond.  I rode the bus from U-District to Ballard with my neighbor (it was also her first time).  

What were your first impressions?

I loved the atmosphere, silent and dark.  I loved how simple everything was—just some music, a sermon that felt more like an engaging lecture, and communion.  Everything was so introspective and thoughtful, and because of the simplicity, what stood out were the words from the sermon and the songs.

Why was Mars Hill your church home?

Mars Hill felt like home to me because it felt like a church without all the cultural cruft of previous generations of American Christianity.  The music of a much higher caliber than any other church I had seen, and so disconnected from the manufactured Christian contemporary genre.  I felt like I was learning so much about the Bible from the sermons that I had never heard in my years growing up in the church and attending Christian schools.  I had a strong Christian community that ended up mostly joining the church after me so all of my close friends became my core community at the church.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a positive impact on you?

Mars Hill introduced me to Reformed thinking which I still feel is a helpful framework to work in, even though I have some heterodox beliefs that would probably be shocking to those who are strictly Reformed.  Mars Hill showed me the potential for what "Christian" art and music could be at its best.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a negative impact on you?

Around the time I left Seattle, I noticed that the sermons began to become more and more devoid of scriptural content, and more and more filled with anecdotes and stories from Mark Driscoll's life.  The worship service started integrating strange things like live video of the musicians performing as background for the lyrics, extensive and colorful stage lighting, and moving picture backdrops.  The aesthetic of the service had gradually pushed in a new direction that was displeasing to me and felt commercialized.  The firing of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer left a sour taste in my mouth since I had worked with Paul Petry praying for people after the services, and Bent was a close friend of a friend.  I was going to ask Paul if he would officiate my wedding.  When the 100+ page document answering everyone's questions about Paul, Bent, and the bylaws came out, I was impressed with the church's response.  Only later did I find out it was very deceitful.  This combined with a couple of close friends having extremely negative interactions with church leadership led to me having a very poor impression of the church after the fact.  At the time I attended, I didn't see much wrong, but in the years after I left Seattle, I realized the many problems that had been lurking in the background all along.

What would you like to have changed about Mars Hill?

Mars Hill before 2008 was in a relatively good place though some in the leadership were willing to lie and make moves to gain tighter control.  The bylaws dispute was obviously the major turning point where there was no going back.  The only thing that could have prevented the long slow demise would be the leadership being held to a greater level of accountability by the congregation.  This also would have required greater openness to the congregation, not the half-truths that were spun out by the leadership whenever they were caught doing something that was a PR disaster.

Which describes you?

I left Mars Hill prior to closure.

Please describe why you left Mars Hill and what that experience was like.

I left Mars Hill because I decided to go to grad school in the Midwest.  I had been in my new city for a couple months when I called the church office to tell whoever was there to put in their records that I lived in a different state and was resigning my membership.  It felt extremely anticlimactic at the time.  It was right before the membership "re-up" so they would have taken me off the rolls regardless shortly after.

How would you describe the reason for Mars Hill's closure to an outsider.

Mars Hill's senior leaders were abusive to their employees and volunteers.  They made selfish decisions regarding their own compensation, branding, marketing, etc. They ran the church less like a church and more like a corporation, using things like non-disclosure agreements, non-compete agreements for pastors, unethical bestseller list campaigns for book sales, etc.  After all these things enough people had had enough and the senior leaders were called to account.  Rather than admit they were in the wrong, they walked away.

What's changed for you since your time at Mars Hill came to an end?

I have become very liberal politically, but my religious beliefs are only slightly more progressive than before.  By all accounts I would still be considered a theological conservative and I am a member of a church that has a similar theological framework as Mars Hill did.  The church is much smaller though and I don't think I would ever attend a megachurch again.  I'm glad to give up "better" music and "better" teaching to be in a place where I can know others and be known.

Rick Gutierrez 2011-14

Your Name

Rick Gutierrez

Gender

Male

Which describes your role at Mars Hill?

Regular Attender

What Mars Hill location(s) did you attend?

Orange County / Huntington Beach

What years were you involved / attending?

2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

How did you first hear about Mars Hill?

Heard about Mark Driscoll first, through videos shown at our church, and consequently discovered Mars Hill.

What was the circumstance of your first time attending Mars HIll?

My wife and I attended the first exploratory meetings for Mars Hill OC at a church in Irvine.

What were your first impressions?

Well-balanced with an excellent focus on community and mission. There was a strong impression that the leadership had everything together.

Why was Mars Hill your church home?

We (my wife and I) decided after much prayer and discussion to leave our current church to join the mission and take the opportunity to be in community close to our home.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a positive impact on you?

There were times where we experienced love and prayerful support from many that we were in community with. We also experienced conviction through the preached word often.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a negative impact on you?

It became quickly apparent through conversations with CG leaders that there was clearly a target demographic to be reached. It meant practically that our city (La Mirada) was only deemed worthy of attention because it was home to Biola University. We also slowly became aware of a lot of "branding". Things we'd taken to be impactful, were repeated so often as to become "mantras" or slogans.
As our family grew and our responsibilities increased outside of church, we felt kind of left behind, perhaps because we weren't contributing tangibly to the mission. While giving faithfully, church services never missed an opportunity to aggressively solicit more and greater contributions. We were also made to feel that cuts to newly hired staff who'd given up their other employment to serve the church were directly the result of our lack of generosity. When things started to unravel, our questions and concerns were turned on us, and when we persisted, our leaders seemed like they were being forced to deflect and divert us from those concerns by entreating us to trust those shepherds who were over us, though they also seemed confused and frustrated, even while toe-ing the party line. My wife and I waited and waited for someone in leadership to show some courageous support for people's concerns, but no one stepped out from under the umbrella. Also, we never heard what felt like a true, uncomfortable raw acknowledgement of the struggles that we the church were dealing with. Everything was so couched in soft, slippery language. It was so heartbreaking and frustrating.

What would you like to have changed about Mars Hill?

What's to be changed? Sadly repentance was never proclaimed, and very few if any took real responsibility for their actions and behavior. God saw fit to tear down a business pretending to be a "church-facilitating structure". God saw fit to expose abuse and misappropriation of tithes and offerings. He saw fit to expose pride and wordy ambition. He rescued those that are His from being led astray. I'm thankful for that. He taught me what it looks like when career is to be more valued than the gospel. By His grace, may I never find myself there.

Which describes you?

I left Mars Hill prior to closure.

Please describe why you left Mars Hill and what that experience was like.

Our experience was more of a gradual lack of enthusiasm for attending. The insistence that we sing our hearts out when there was such a heaviness attached to everything without a real acknowledging the validity of the heaviness. Yes, Jesus was and is bigger than those issues, but we did not experience any comfort from that truth. As many things were being revealed about the goings-on at the administrative level, our prayer was for leadership to repent and for God to be glorified through it. What better, more amazing way for God to be glorified than through the repentance of such influential leadership? Wouldn't we be willing to lose an empire AND the influence that comes with it in order to repent and bring glory to God? It became clear that it wasn't going to happen, though we never stopped praying for it. We knew we were done with Mars Hill though. We felt abandoned by our shepherds. We began to question our own understanding of what "church" should be. We'd been seeking "the right way" for so long, and had fallen short, perhaps by leaning on our own understanding, who knows. Now we just don't know anymore, and have grown weary with trying. We are no longer sure of much in the way of modern church culture, and are currently unaffiliated with any brick and mortar meeting.

How would you describe the reason for Mars Hill's closure to an outsider.

A dynamic personality with the ability to preach to a particular need in the culture found a niche that grew into an empire of modern church business. As ambition for more growth became the goal, the undergirding motives were exposed. God brought judgement on the people and practices that brought the name of Christ into disrepute.

What's changed for you since your time at Mars Hill came to an end?

Since we left Mars Hill, we've been very tentative about where to attend. We've resolved that we will find a church that serves our local community, where we can be truly involved in sharing life with one another. We're definitely trying not to be douchebags about our theological bent. We've been forced to acknowledge that many people who don't have the same understanding as us theologically are far more submitted to loving Christ and others. All I know right now is that I don't know much. I realize how trite that sounds, but it can't be more truly stated than that.

Please write anything else you'd like to add.

We are a bit fearful of being taken in by another dynamic personality or attractive system. I think we've learned that appearing to do everything so well as a "church" is no affirmation of its true affiliation with Christ. Things are broken. And people are broken. Life is broken until Jesus returns to make it new. Until then, perhaps we're given just enough to get by. Our sinful selves can't handle much more than that without screwing it up.

Kevin Potts - Ballard 2000-07

Your Name

Kevin Potts

Gender

Male

Which describes your role at Mars Hill?

Member, Group Leader (any leadership role)

What Mars Hill location(s) did you attend?

Ballard

What years were you involved / attending?

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

How did you first hear about Mars Hill?

A friend of mine in Dallas had found the church for me online. I was living in Everett at the time, and she didn't realize that Seattle was as far south from Everett as it was, but she had found the website when I'd mentioned I was looking for a church to attend.

What was the circumstance of your first time attending Mars HIll?

I walked in around January of 2000 when the church was meeting at First Presbyterian in downtown Seattle. It immediately felt like home: dim lighting, good music, dynamic preaching, and at the time there were enough people there to make it feel populated without it feeling overwhelming like the larger (several hundred) church I'd left in northern Washington

What were your first impressions?

I loved the focus on art, on cultural relevance, and the lack of how "churchy" it felt. I was involved in a writing workshop within a couple weeks, and had joined as a member within 3 months of first walking in.

Why was Mars Hill your church home?

I felt welcomed, I could involve myself, I liked the people, and I liked that it engaged with culture at the time instead of hiding from and vilifying it like so many other churches I'd gone to. I could be the guy who could talk about listening to heavy metal, I could show up in a t-shirt and jeans, and the people were engaging, intelligent, and not steeped in the subculture of Christianity.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a positive impact on you?

I came away from my time there with a greater appreciation for legitimate Bible study, and not merely topical sermons. The focus on "Meaning, Beauty, Truth, Community" resonated with me, because they were all things I wanted from life, and there were legitimate efforts being made in the early days at incorporating all those elements into daily life through the lens of the Bible.

What about your time at Mars Hill has had a negative impact on you?

The bombastic growth led to a shattering of a sense of community. The abuses of authority by not only Mark Driscoll but other leaders soured me on the idea of top-down authority. Being told to be quiet and take what we were spoonfed instead of questioning everything rankled. I remember at one point watching Mark lose his temper when people were waiting for the service to start, and some production staff were playing foosball in the green room at the Ballard location. He blew up for no reason I could see, and immediately retreated to being upset that there were a couple ladies who were standing while some guys were seated, as he couldn't really zero in on anything else to justify his outburst (in reality I think he just wanted some quiet, but the band's green room isn't the best place to find that...). When I went to my production lead (I was a stage manager) and told him that it was rude the way Mark had talked to the people who worked under me, and that if he had some concerns they should be brought to me, my lead came back a service later with the statement that Mark was in the right, and we just needed to do what he said.

It was at that point I realized things started to go south. From there, things only got worse, culminating in the abomination that was the firing of Paul Petry and Bent Meyer, and the awful way the church handled that scenario, and subsequent events surrounding discipline contracts, unquestioned authority, and the ever-growing beast that was Mark Driscoll's P.R. machine.

What would you like to have changed about Mars Hill?

I think in retrospect that there isn't a lot of good that can come from churches once they reach a certain size, aside from greater resource availability. I think in order for leadership to remain humble and involved in their congregants' lives, their congregations need to be smaller than any given campus at Mars Hill was at the time of its closure. I think in retrospect Mars Hill should have considered making the individual campuses autonomous church plants instead of satellites within a network that just received content streamed from first Ballard, then Bellevue. If that centralized authority hadn't existed, shored up by the cult of personality surrounding Mark, I think a lot of the problems could have been ameliorated or even removed entirely without it ending in shambles and damage the way it did.

Which describes you?

I left Mars Hill prior to closure.

Please describe why you left Mars Hill and what that experience was like.

I left Mars Hill at the end of 2007, just prior to the start of my 8th year there. Mark had started an "Ask Anything" site with voting and anonymous commentary capabilities, with the intent of taking the top 8 most highly-voted questions and using them for a sermon series. Some people were using the comments section to make anonymous comments expressing concern over how the Petry/Meyer situation had been handled.

Concurrently, on the password-protected member's site, discussion was happening over that same situation, and someone noted that it would "be a shame if leadership had to start looking at IP addresses of the comments on the Ask Anything site and compare them against IP addresses of people logging into the member's site to figure out which members were being divisive and hiding behind anonymity." I implored them in that discussion to do nothing of the sort, noting people were upset with some leaders at that point, and doing something like that wouldn't engender the trust the leadership would require to be able to resolve the situation peacefully and completely.

One of the pastors had asked me if I was a particular individual posting on the Ask Anything site as "Concerned". I indicated I wasn't. He came back and said that he believed I was, as that individual's posts echoed comments I had made in my exit interview from the production department (I was transitioning from Ballard to the Lake City campus). In that interview, I had noted dissatisfaction with how the Petry/Meyer situation had been handled, and said, "It would be easy to cause division with how well-connected I am in the church, but I have no interest in doing that." That got reported to the leadership as "Potts is going to cause division in the church."

Those two things together resulted in my membership being suspended by the pastor who didn't believe me when I said I wasn't the individual on the "Ask Anything" site who was posting the commentary they didn't like. This pastor had indicated that he and two other pastors had concluded I was "in sin" (without anyone having spoken to me about it to give me a chance to explain/defend myself). After much thought and prayer, I concluded they weren't interested in the truth, they were interested in me acknowledging their authority and saying I was wrong, so they could save face and not have their authority undermined by having to admit they'd made a mistake. I chose to leave. Interestingly, Driscoll was my landlord at the time; not trusting him or his assistant to do the right thing, I had begun quietly moving my possessions to a storage unit so I could be out of the house within 24 hours if that scenario came to pass (it didn't; Driscoll later merely chose to try to sell the house out from under the tenants by getting people to voluntarily sign away their leases, and merely giving 20 days notice-to-vacate to those who were on month-to-month arrangements).

How would you describe the reason for Mars Hill's closure to an outsider.

Mars Hill closed because a pastor started believing his own hype and started behaving as though the church was about him. When people tried to lovingly correct him and bring things back under control, he dug in, and eventually, when the leadership finally acknowledged it was time to put him under a formal discipline/restoration program, he left instead of face those consequences of his actions. The sad thing is he was right: he *was* Mars Hill, and once he was gone, the church folded.

What's changed for you since your time at Mars Hill came to an end?

I came perilously close to becoming an atheist, and even made a couple of statements to that effect. I don't trust church authority, though that's slowly changing. I refuse to join as a formal member at any church (though I'm now attending one again).

I believe it's more important to just be in relationship with people in your life, and let the Gospel work through that according to Jesus' timing and supernatural intervention. He can change hearts, man can't, no matter how much we try. Instead of spending time with people because you attend a Bible study together, I'd rather just be friends with people I'd be friends with regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs, and let the Gospel work itself out as Jesus wants through that. I believe far too often the greatest obstacles to people wanting to hear the Gospel are the people who are trying to preach it by shoving it down peoples' throats and using it as a hammer to make others behave as they want or think people should. I can't be that person, and actively work not to be.

I have an inherent distrust and dislike of the formal subculture of Christianity, for a variety of reasons too nuanced to communicate well in written form, without writing a novel (as though this one isn't already). I want nothing to do with it. I want to see people living their lives, coming to Jesus when they answer His call to their hearts and minds, in His timing, not mine. If I'm given the honor and blessing of being the person who leads them to Christ, all the better, but one way or the other, I'm here to live my life and be involved in theirs as long as they want me to be, and to peacefully leave if they don't.

That period of anger is past, and the period of mental and spiritual exhaustion in its wake is passing.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm fairly confident again that it's Jesus.