March 2015 – Page 3 – Warren Throckmorton

How Did Church Leaders List Get Mars Hill Church's Email List?

Initially, the story of Craig Gross buying an email list from Church Leaders List seemed like a marketing story gone sideways. However, there appears to be much more to the matter.
At the end of Christianity Today’s article on this, Bob Smietana wrote:

On Tuesday, Dean apologized for his part in the drama over the list. He admitted that he’d been involved the initial sale of the list to churchleaderlist.com (screen cap of page now removed from the web).

Now Justin Dean’s website is down (and his Twitter page has been removed) and so that statement is not available (except via Google cache) and screen cap below.

According to Craig Gross’ explanation, Dean’s involvement may have been that Dean was churchleaderlist.com. I asked Dean yesterday and today about his dealings with Church Leaders List but have not heard back from him. Gross wrote:

I found it interesting that as soon as I posted this that Justin Dean posted a blog on his website that he somewhat apologized for distributing the list to me. Lets be clear, he sold the list to me. He didn’t broker a transaction. He sold me the list along with several other people who paid $1350-$1500 for the list.

I asked the lawyer that was in charge selling the assets for 100k earlier in 2014 and he said that no one has purchased the rights to sell these assets yet.

I have seen communications which indicate to me that Mars Hill Church has not sold The Resurgence email lists. Thus, if the lists have not been sold by Mars Hill Church, then how did Church Leaders List get them?
From my conversations with former Mars Hill staff, I believe there is a limited group of people who have access to the lists.
Mars Hill Church is still a viable entity but has not responded to repeated requests for information or comment. Given the non-profit status of the church, the public and former members still have an interest in their operations. If the church is selling member emails without permission, then they should come forward and acknowledge this. If not, then the question remains, how did Church Leaders List get that information?

Blood Moon Movie to Rise Again

So Monday night, John Hagee’s Blood Moon movie aired around the country. According to promoters, it was so popular that they are bringing it back in April.
Unless, of course, the world ends before that.
A breathless press release gives the details:

Read the rest here.
There is at least one sentence in the press release that I bet the writer would like to take back.

It is rare that science, history and scripture align with each other, yet the last three series of Four Blood Moons have done exactly that.

If scripture is true, then such alignments should be common place. In fact, believers shouldn’t fear science or history. Instead believers should be wary of other believers who think they have everything in science and history figured out.
As a sidebar to this “docu-drama,” World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah took on John Hagee’s claim that he discovered the Blood Moon alignment, using words like “plagiarism” to describe Hagee’s book and movie (see this for example). Since Farah published another book by Mark Blitz on the Blood Moon deal, he has some skin in the game. Be interesting to see how that plays out.
If nothing happens, probably no one will care much about who was wrong first.

Lifeway Pulls All Heaven Tourism Books

To Baptist Press, Lifeway yesterday announced that all heaven tourism books will no longer be sold in their stores.

LifeWay Christian Resources has stopped selling all “experiential testimonies about heaven” following consideration of a 2014 Southern Baptist Convention resolution on “the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife.”

This snowball started rolling when Lifeway pulled the book The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven. When the subject of the book, Alex Malarkey, publicly retracted his story of being in heaven, Tyndale House also pulled the book from the shelves. The situation was noteworthy in that Tyndale House knew for at least two years that the child listed as a co-author and the boy’s mother did not have full confidence in the story. I covered this story extensively in January.
Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven is about to come out as a movie. The announcement from Lifeway was prompted by a question about Piper’s book.

UK Evangelical Blog Calls for Forgiveness for Mark Driscoll

Sunday, Threads, a young looking UK evangelical blog, posted a call from Alex Willmott for people everywhere to forgive Mark Driscoll.
Mr. Willmott wants forgiveness for something he did so he naturally thought of Mark Driscoll. Or something like that.
It is pretty funny actually. To wit:

Time to make some enemies now. Mark Driscoll. He brought the Bible to life for millions of people. He said some really important things. He then said some really stupid things. He caused a lot of hurt. He then said sorry. He probably is sorry. It doesn’t matter though. He may as well have shot a thousand dolphins out of a cannon made of elephant tusks while wearing a SS Gestapo uniform with the words ‘I’m glad Mufasa died’ written all over it.
We’ve written him off. Yes, we believe that Peter could be forgiven for denying Jesus three times. Yes, we believe that King David could be restored despite pretty much breaking all of the commandments. Yes, we also believe that we can all be forgiven for all the horrible things we’ve placed on the throne of our lives. But him?! That vile dolphin shooting bastard. Not a chance. He’s a sexist!

Oh my, can I forgive him for defining the Mars Hill situation so poorly? If only that is what Mark Driscoll and his friends did.
Willmot then confesses he is using poor unforgiven Mark Driscoll for his own purposes.

As you can tell by my bullish, sarcastic tones, this is a subject that is close to my heart. And the reason for this is because I’m currently awaiting forgiveness. It’s a weird place to be in. I wrote something that offended a large part of a charismatic community. I’ve since been written about, gossiped about and I’m currently being avoided at all costs by a few people who once called me a close friend. Sadly, the word ‘Sorry’ doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. Driscoll has proven that; that Mufasa-murdering, unschooled churl of a man. I too have seen my attempts of an apology cast to one side like gone off fruit. I’ve tried, and I’ll try again.

In this paragraph we find that Driscoll didn’t just wear a tee-shirt, he actually killed Mufasa.
Writing an article people disagree with is not necessarily an offense. I don’t know what to do with an article like this except say that it seems to be more about the author than the subject and I hope Mr. Willmott* finds willing forgivers among any people he has actually wronged. Having talked to numerous people who live in Seattle, I feel confident that Mark Driscoll would find willing forgivers if he asked.
*I corrected the spelling of Mr. Willmott’s name, hope he will forgive me.

Craig Gross and Justin Dean Speak about The Mars Hill/Resurgence Mailing List Story

UPDATE: Just a bit ago, Craig Gross updated his post with the following information:

I asked the lawyer that was in charge selling the assets for 100k earlier in 2014 and he said that no one has purchased the rights to sell these assets yet

That lawyer is Steven Goodspeed and Gross is referring to this information about the sale of The Resurgence website and related email lists. If these assets have not been purchased, then how did Church Leaders List get the email list?
UPDATE 2: Wenatchee the Hatchet just posted a screen cap of Justin Dean’s Ministry Communicators Association with an ad for Church Leaders List on his MCA Facebook page.
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Last night, I noted that Craig Gross, director of xxxchurch.com, sent out an email to a mailing list he purchased from a now missing-in-action website called Church Leaders List. The email included former Mars Hill Church members and those who had signed up for information from Mars Hill’s training ministry, The Resurgence. Gross received a backlash from supporters of Mark Driscoll because the email included critical remarks about Driscoll. Read the entire email here.
Now Craig Gross has provided his perspective on the matter at his blog and Justin Dean has done the same on his website.
Dean’s statement to me in full is as follows:

I issued an apology here: http://justinjdean.com/craig-gross-the-real-story/. I regret my involvement in distributing the list and am deeply sorry. While I was not involved in Craig’s email, I’m equally at fault. Although I think it’s a shame that your story isn’t about Craig Gross’s misuse of the list to spread gossip, and his unapologetic attitude towards doing so.

Craig Gross sent a link to his website as well.
From start to finish, here is how I see it.
Someone took out Churchleaderslist.com as a domain on March 3, 2015. A twitter account was established at about the same time. Not long after that, the website was live and twitter activity began advertising the sale of a mailing list of Christians and church leaders. See screen caps below. First the twitter account:

The website is no longer available but a screen capture of the cache is below:

Justin Dean said he believed the mailing list would be used for spreading the gospel. The website recommended by Dean indicates that the list can be used to promote books, events or products.
The pitch for the website says the lists were compiled from churches, websites and conferences. Apparently, some or many of those addresses have been used without permission.
According to Craig Gross, Justin Dean pitched the mailing list (Gross says Dean pitched The Resurgence list) to Gross’ staff on March 15 (see his post for a screen cap of the text). Dean says in his post that he was “involved in distributing a list of church leaders to a couple of people who I assumed would only use it to spread the gospel and bible teaching.”
Gross then purchased the list and sent the email which stirred intense reaction from Mark Driscoll supporters yesterday afternoon. Sometime afterwards, the Church Leaders List website and twitter accounts were pulled. Gross received a refund for his purchase from Church Leaders List.
Gross then asked Dean if Dean sold the list. Gross noted that the media templates for Dean’s new Doxa Media company and Church Leaders List phone # is 678-829-4458, Dean’s phone # is 678-829-4455 (also uses 678-829-4450). A call to the Church Leaders List doesn’t get an answer.
According to Gross, Dean denied owning the list, saying instead that he was “involved” in distributing it.
This may blow over quickly but there are some important issues raised. Why did Church Leaders List close down as soon as former Mars Hill people started to complain? Who was/is behind Church Leaders List and where did they get those email addresses? Are the current leaders of Mars Hill Church selling emails of former members? If so, I wonder how Mars Hill Church members feel about this use without permission.
Additional information: It is curious that Marshill.com, Theresurgence.com, and a bunch of other related websites are registered to Justin Dean. Did Mars Hill Church sell them to him? Did they give them to him?