Mars Hill Sammamish meets in a building that must be sold to satisfy debt and thus has no place to meet as of December 31. Currently, despite resistance from some involved, leaders at Sammamish are in talks with Bellevue Church to merge. Today, lead pastor Alex Ghioni posted this on The City:
From Pastor Alex Ghioni:
Last week the news was released that Mars Hill Church will be dissolving as an organization by December 31, 2014. Each of the Mars Hill local churches will have the opportunity to become an independent church in the area where they are meeting. As you already know, our building is being sold and we will no longer have access to meet here after December 31, 2014.
Our elder team has been working tirelessly to explore other options in light of these circumstances. Currently we are in discussions with the pastors in Bellevue exploring an opportunity for our two churches to join together and establish one new independent church on the Eastside. We want to take the helpful things we learned from our years at Mars Hill and leave behind what was broken, ineffective, and ungodly. We believe the Eastside has room for another solid gospel church, that holds to a high view of the scriptures, supports the bold preaching of the gospel, reformed theology, missional mindset, and loving community. This could be one of the great redemptive works that God brings about from our current difficult circumstances. The elders want to enlist you to pray along with us that God “…may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified…” (2 Thess 1:11-12 ESV). We’ll be communicating our progress as quickly as we have new information.
We realize that others of you will perhaps be looking for a church closer to where you live. The elders want to help you and pray for you as you make those plans and decisions. We love you and want God’s best for you and your family.
In any event, we are hoping that we will remain together as a family until the end of the year. God has done great things in our lives individually and collectively. It makes sense that we take the time together to remember and celebrate his work in and through our church. We hope you’ll stick with us as we honor Jesus and encourage one another over the next 8 weeks.
Toward that end, we have decided that for the duration of the year we are going combine our services into one Sunday morning service at 10am. The heart behind this change is to give some additional time for you to connect and enjoy the relationships that God has built throughout our church family here in Sammamish. I look forward to seeing you and celebrating our Savior together with you in the weeks to come as we wait for what God has for us next.
With the affection of Jesus,
Pastor Alex
The building Sammamish is meeting in was given to Mars Hill by the former church owners. I wonder if they ever imagined that their building would help pay for severance pay for the executive elders of Mars Hill Church.