Mars Hill Church was a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch, founded in 1996 by Mark Driscoll, Lief Moi, and Mike Gunn. It was a multi-site church based in Seattle, Washington and grew from a home Bible study to 15 locations in 4 U.S. states. In addition to services offered at its 15 locations, the church also published content of weekend services, and of conferences, on the Internet, with more than 260,000 sermon views online every week. In 2013, Mars Hill had a membership of 6,489 and average weekly attendance of 12,329. Following controversy in 2014 involving founding pastor Mark Driscoll, attendance dropped to 8,0009,000 people per week.
At the end of September 2014, an investigation by the church elders found "bullying" and "patterns of persistent sinful behavior" by Driscoll. The church elders crafted a "restoration" plan to help Driscoll and save the church. Instead, Driscoll declined the restoration plan and resigned. On October 31, 2014, lead pastor Dave Bruskas announced plans to dissolve the church's 13 remaining campuses into autonomous entities, with the option of continuing, merging with other congregations, or disbanding, effective January 1, 2015. The Mars Hill network dissolved on January 1, 2015.
History
Early years Mars Hill Church was founded in spring 1996Driscoll, Confessions, p 38. by Mark Driscoll, Lief Moi and Mike Gunn.Driscoll, Confessions, p 54. The church started at the rental house of Driscoll and his wife Grace with the blessing of Antioch Bible Church and the exodus of about 30 of its students. They outgrew the apartment and started meeting in the youth rooms of another church. The church had its first official service October 1996, with 160 people attending;Driscoll, Confessions, p 76: "Between 160 and 200 had shown up for our big kick off service." attendance quickly fell to around 60 because of discussions about the visions and mission of the church.Driscoll, Confessions, p 82-83: "Though our church was brand-new, we had already lost focus of our mission ... Our attendance had declined to about sixty or seventy people ..."
In the spring of 1997, the church expanded to two evening services. The transition to two different congregations resulted in some anxiety and stir by members who didn't want the church to grow bigger, but it resulted in growing attendance.Dricoll, Confessions, p 93: "Since we still could not find a Sunday morning location, we decided to split our 6:00 p.m. service into two services ... When I told our people that we were going to grow beyond 150 people and expand to two services, some of them freaked out." Later that same year Mark Driscoll was invited to speak at a pastors' conference in California. Driscoll's speech influenced the emerging church movement, and changed the focus from reaching Generation X to reaching the postmodern world.Driscoll, Confessions, p 98: "And it shifted the conversation from reaching Generation X to the emerging mission of reaching postmodern culture." The speech resulted in media coverage of Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll,Driscoll, Confessions, p 98: "I was not prepared for the media onslaught that came shortly thereafter. Before I knew it, National Public Radio was interviewing me, Mother Jones magazine did a feature on our church, Pat Robertson's 700 Club gave me a plaque for being America's "Church of the Week" and did a television story on us, other media outlets started asking for interviews, large denominations were asking me to be a consultant ..." and put Driscoll in connection with Bob Buford's Leadership Network.
The church continued growing. Inspired by Alan Roxburgh, Driscoll settled on an emerging and missional ecclesiology,Driscoll, Confessions, p 108: "I began wrestling with his basic concept and came up with the following emerging and missional ecclesiology, which has governed our church ever since." and a complementarian view on women in ministry. The church installed the first team of elders and they took over much of the work teaching classes, counseling and training new leaders.Driscoll, Confessions, p 110-111. Furthermore, the church started a course for new members, called the Gospel Class, to ensure that members were focused on the mission of the church and that they agreed with the central doctrinal statements of the church. The class had been running every quarter since.Driscoll, Confessions, p 112: "The Gospel Class is anA series of Bible studies that I taught to ground our people in our essential doctrines and missiology ... The class has run every quarter since it began." In the fall of 1999 the church had grown to 350 in attendance every week and was able to pay Driscoll full-time. Prior to 1999, Driscoll operated as an unpaid pastor for three years.Driscoll, Confessions, p 113-116.
Multisite church
In 2003, Mars Hill Church moved into a renovated hardware store in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. In 2006, in an effort to reduce the overcrowding at its services, Mars Hill opened its first satellite campus in Shoreline a few miles north of Seattle. This change also marked their transition to a multi-site church, using video sermons and other multimedia improvements to the church's web site to connect the campuses. Later in 2006 Mars Hill acquired two new properties in West Seattle and Wedgwood, which became their West Seattle and Lake City campuses.
Since then, new Mars Hill locations were added using a multi-campus "meta-church" structure, connecting Driscoll's sermons via high-definition video to the remote campuses during weekly worship services. This format allowed each location to retain local leadership and ministries while under the leadership of the main campus. A fourth and fifth Mars Hill location opened in 2007, and in 2008 a sixth location was added in downtown Seattle. A seventh campus, in Olympia, Washington, opened in Fall 2008 and an eighth campus, the first outside of Washington state, opened in Albuquerque, New Mexico in Fall 2009. The church launched four new churches on January 15 in Portland (Oregon), Rainier Valley (Seattle), Sammamish (near Seattle), and Orange County (California), the same day as the first sermon in the "Real Marriage" sermon series, based on Mark and Grace Driscoll's book, Real Marriage.
On October 16, "black-clad demonstrators" gathered in front of the Mars Hill Church in Southeast Portland to "protest the church's stance on homosexuality." Approximately 20 protesters, "some of whom wore kerchiefs to cover their faces, shouted profanities at adults and children," and briefly blocked the entrance of the church. Mars Hill Church Portland lead pastor Tim Smith expressed disagreement with the conduct of the protesters, but expressed defense of their right to free speech.
In 2008, the church launched an online community-building network, called The city, to improve communication on all levels in the church. The city was purchased by the Christian publishing brand, Zondervan, before Christmas 2008.
Growth and influence
In 2013, The Church Guide released a list of the "Top Churches to Watch in America". The link ranked churches according to how much churches could learn from the ranked churches on particular topics. They ranked Mars Hill Church as #3 to learn from about church growth, #3 for innovation, #2 for church planting, and #4 overall. The list considered data from Outreach magazine's annual lists from 2004 to 2012 and other sources.
In 2006, Mars Hill Church claimed $31,110,000 in assets.
Acts 29 Church Planting Network
Acts 29 Church Planting Network is an interdenominational network of pastors and churches from around the world founded by David Nicholas with funding from Spanish River Church planting network but with a substantial early association with Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. Their focus is to assess and equip qualified leaders, plant new churches, and rejuvenate declining churches. The current president of Acts 29 is Brian Howard. The offices and leadership of Acts 29 moved from Mars Hill Church in Seattle to The Village Church in Texas in March 2012. In August 2014, Acts 29 removed Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from the network.
Church leadership controversies Dealing with dissent
As a result of the large growth of the church, its bylaws were rewritten more than once. The outcome of this process led to changes in leadership organization in November 2007. The new bylaws installed lead pastor Jamie Munson, preaching pastor Mark Driscoll, and pastors Scott Thomas and Tim Beltz as "executive pastors" who led the objectives of the church "under the authority of the Board of Directors," on which the executive pastors also served as directors. This change precipitated the firing of two pastors.
Mars Hill leaders said in forum postings that one fired pastor was removed, in part, for "displaying an unhealthy distrust in the senior leadership." They said the other was removed for "disregarding the accepted elder protocol for the bylaw deliberation period" and "verbally attacking the lead pastor" — charges the fired pastor denied, the leaders added.
Church leadership instructed members of the congregation to shun the two former elders as unrepentant. Former Mars Hill Church elders and members have criticized the church for its harshness in dealing with dissent within its leadership. Additionally, members who openly questioned or dissented with Mars Hill leaders were asked to leave the church. This policy of church discipline was discussed during a lecture given on April 20, 2009, by Mark Driscoll for The Gospel Coalition.
In early 2012, the church once again became a source of controversy over shunning and disciplinary proceedings when a young man under discipline released documents from his disciplinary contract to blogger and author Mathew Paul Turner. The documents included a discipline contract and an email from church leaders to the congregation directing them to shun him.
ResultSource contract for the Real Marriage Book On March 5, 2014, evangelical magazine World published an article claiming that Mars Hill Church paid a $25,000 fee to marketing firm ResultSource, to manipulate sales numbers of Mark Driscoll's book Real Marriage and thereby attain a place on the New York Times bestseller list. ResultSource accomplished this objective—the book briefly reached #1 in the "Advice How-to" category—by buying 11,000 copies of the book, using $210,000 of Mars Hill Church's money, from a variety of online sources and payment methods.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability stated that buying a place on bestseller lists violates its ethical standards, but that because this happened before Mars Hill Church joined they were unable to take action. Christianity Today described the arrangement as "ethically questionable", and Carl Trueman of religion journal First Things decried the revelation, writing, "the overall picture is one of disaster" and "[it] has raised questions not simply about personal integrity but also the very culture of American Evangelicalism."
Driscoll had used the apparent success of Real Marriage to negotiate a multi-book deal with Christian publisher Tyndale House. The first book under Driscoll's "Resurgence" imprint was A Call to Resurgence, with plans to publish five to seven books per year. Tyndale House defended Driscoll's alleged plagiarism in A Call to Resurgence, and affirmed their continuing relationship with Driscoll.
Mars Hill Church responded with a statement, writing, "while not uncommon or illegal, this unwise strategy is not one we had used before or since, and not one we will use again." Mars Hill also claimed that the "true cost" of the effort was less than "what has been reported."