Tag: Mars Hill Global

Former Mars Hill Church Members Speak Out About Church Finances

I recently talked with a couple who were members and leaders at Mars Hill Church from 2003 to 2012.* The couple was involved in leading Community Groups and the wife served as a Deacon in the counseling ministry. While there, they donated to the both the Global Fund and the General Fund and assumed that much of the money given to the Global Fund was going to support international mission efforts. The wife told me:

We definitely had an expectation that our gifts were going to global missions. My husband and I have always had a heart for missions. We have adopted from Uganda and for years tried to encourage the church to start an adoption or orphan care ministry. I started my career in international development and now work in social enterprise. We were always trying to encourage the church to do more in the area of mercy and justice. So when they announced the global fund we were hopeful it was the beginning of something.

When Sutton Turner introduced the Ethiopian ministry to the church in 2012, many assumed the Global Fund was going to be the international mission outreach of the church (just as the church said on its website). And as I have demonstrated with Mars Hill’s own video promotions, the leaders told the members that Mars Hill Global was the church’s ministry for international missions. It is no surprise that the members took that at face value. One former staffer in the finance department went on the record to say that the fund was a restricted fund. However, the church has not made an accounting of those funds available to donors or the media.
The couple had other concerns as well. The wife said they had questions about transparency around the church’s finances:

When we joined Mars Hill, there was an open book policy regarding church finances. We felt comfortable giving both because we trusted the Elders at the time and because we knew we could see how money was being spent if we had questions. This all changed. By the time we left the church in 2012, we felt upset about the secrecy surrounding Executive Elder salaries and spending on music videos, world travel, music and video production equipment, not to mention the promotion of Mark Driscoll’s books. We were frustrated that the church was cutting support for programs that were meeting real needs in our community, such as coat drives for the homeless.
At Mars Hill, we were taught that everything we have belongs to God and we are called to be stewards. This is how we try to live our lives, and we assumed our church would be doing the same. We feel both sad and discouraged as we discover more about how church has spent money from both the General Fund and the Global Fund.

The couple referred to a story I continue to explore. Multiple sources have told me that one Seattle campus was discouraged from holding a drive to donate coats to homeless individuals because other core functions were insufficiently met in the eyes of the executive pastors. Of course, Mars Hill won’t comment and those who have first hand knowledge prefer not to go on the record. However, the story is one I frequently hear.
Currently, members are being asked to give more to help make up for a financial short fall. The church is blaming the decline on “negative media attention.” However, in addition to problems which are now documented, I suspect giving is suffering because some members wonder where their donations are being used. In addition, I recently spoke to three current members who simply asked their pastors for a copy of the church by-laws. According to these members who remain anonymous because they fear retaliation, their request was refused. This is difficult to understand, and probably does not inspire confidence or enthusiastic support financial or otherwise.

*Due to concerns about a conflict of interest involving a current employer, the couple prefers to remain unnamed.

Current Mars Hill Pastors Express Concerns About Issues Covered By ECFA Guidelines

In the letter released today by nine current Mars Hill pastors (actually one former pastor, and 8 current; one was let go today – more on that later today), the pastors referenced concerns about the handling of the Mars Hill Global Fund, among several other issues of transparency.

…there is no dearth of examples in the last two years of very questionable transparency and truth-telling, including the Mars Hill Global Fund, Result-Source, Strange Fire, ghost-writing/plagiarism, explanations for staff transition, the resignations of BOAA members, etc.

Knowing that current pastors question the church’s handling of the fund and the transparency surrounding several issues raises anew questions about the value of accreditation by the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability. The ECFA’s Guideline 5 states:

Every organization shall provide a copy of its current financial statements upon written request and shall provide other disclosures as the law may require. The financial statements required to comply with Standard 3 must be disclosed under this standard.

An organization must provide a report, upon written request, including financial information on any specific project for which it sought or is seeking gifts.

There is also Guideline 7.1, Truthfulness in Communications:

Current. An appeal for charitable gifts should only contain information that is specifically relevant to the purpose of the appeal. Using pictures, videos, descriptions, narratives, or other information from prior projects or events—which suggests a misleading relationship with the current appeal—is a violation of this standard. The prospective giver will assume that all of the information presented relates to the specific appeal. It is inappropriate to use “old” information in a current appeal simply because it might bring a “better” response from a giver.

And then:

Summary.  Questions about truthfulness in communication can best be answered by asking these questions:

  • “Will all of the text, photographs, videos, or other information included in this appeal lead the prospective donor to a current, complete, and accurate understanding of the facts surrounding the appeal?”

  • “Does this appeal communicate all of the information I would want to know if I were a prospective donor deciding whether or not to respond to the appeal?”

  • “Does this communication bear witness that we are trusting God to move in the hearts of our supporters, and we are not trying to manipulate their feelings by the way we portray our work or report its outcomes?”

The current pastors are not specific but include the Global Fund in their list of not very transparent, not very candid items. Clearly, people watching the Global videos in late 2012 through 2014 would have thought the money was going to Ethiopia and India since 22 of 25 pertained to mission work.
At least one former staffer has gone on record with questions about adherence to the guidelines, now we have current pastors expressing their lack of confidence in the public presentation of a variety of issues which are relevant to the ECFA guidelines. Perhaps the call for transparency should extend beyond Mars Hill Church.

Whatever Happened to the Mars Hill Church Jesus Festival? And the $3 Million?

Wenatchee the Hatchet asked the question on August 1, but I don’t see an official answer anywhere. Asking around, a former member who was in training to become a Community Group leader told me the Jesus Festival (slated for August 22) was canceled in the Spring after the news broke about Mark Driscoll’s New York Times scandal.  I can find no official announcement but there has been no publicity about the event since Spring. The Jesus Festival was one of the reasons why Mars Hill needed to raise $2 million “over and above” tithes at the end of 2013. According to Mars Hill website:

During these 40 days of prayer and 5 days of fasting, we are praying for $2 million over and above our donors’ tithes to fund these endeavors in 2014. We believe Jesus has given the vision, so we trust that he will graciously provide the means to do it through his people. If the Holy Spirit leads you to give during these focused days of prayer, please visit marshill.com/give.

What were the endeavors?

1) MARS HILL GLOBAL

Pastor Mark first met church planter Pastor Arjuna Chiguluri in 1998, and Mars Hill Church has been working with and supporting Pastor Arjuna and Vision Nationals in India since 1999. In the last couple of years, we have expanded our Global efforts and are privileged to support church planters and evangelists in Ethiopia who have shared the gospel with over 11,000 people, of which 890 people have been saved. Over the next decades, we want to see Mars Hill Church grow into a worldwide movement and see 1,000 churches planted throughout India and Ethiopia. This is an ambitious goal, but as Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). For more information, go to Marshill.com/global.

The page linked here is the Mars Hill Global page. In this description of Mars Hill Global, there is no mention of church plants in the United States, just India and Ethiopia. In fact, mention of Mars Hill expansion comes later in the appeal. If the money was always supposed to go to Mars Hill expansion in the U.S., then why not mention it here?

2) JESUS FESTIVAL

In the summer of 2014, Mars Hill will be hosting an evangelistic, outdoor outreach, aptly titled The Jesus Festival, at Marymoor Park in Seattle. This will be a family friendly event with activities for the kids, music, and amazing gospel preachers. This will be a great opportunity for outreach in the community and to build unity among the Bible-teaching churches in the Seattle area.

Apparently, the money came in (closer to $3 million), but the festival is off, called off months ago. Shouldn’t the people have been consulted? They gave toward a festival but didn’t get one. As late as February, Mark Driscoll was still promoting the festival as a free event. In a February 5 email to the church, Driscoll wrote:

From Pastor Mark Driscoll: Heaven is going to be a party and we need to practice for that party. Over the next few months, you’ll be hearing a lot more about our first-ever Jesus Festival, August 22 at Marymoor Park near Seattle. Everyone at Mars Hill churches far and near is invited for this unique opportunity to grow together and evangelize within the surrounding community. We’ve never done anything quite like this event, but picture a huge outdoor celebration with live bands, food trucks, fun stuff for the kids, open-air gospel preaching, baptisms, and a summer night filled with the worship of thousands of brothers and sisters praising Jesus together. Pastor Dustin Kensrue will be leading us in worship, and as the date gets closer we’ll announce some special guests who will be joining us as well. Thanks to your generosity as a church, the whole thing will be free, which will make it very easy to invite non-Christian family and friends.

Keep on picturing.

3) LEADERSHIP TRAINING The two key missional distinctives of Mars Hill Church are planting churches and making disciples. In order to reach the world with the good news of Jesus, we need biblically literate, gifted leaders. In order to train these leaders, we need a school. In the fall of 2014, we are hoping to offer a 1-year Bible certificate program. Eventually, it will be a fully accredited Bible seminary to help train future leaders and to grow existing leaders in knowledge of the Bible and sound theology

This apparently is going to get underway this Fall. Nonetheless, this is a puzzle. Why does the church need money for this since the schools are supplying the professors and Mars Hill has the space. Presumably they are getting rent. If anything, this should be a money maker for Mars Hill Church.

4) 5 MARS HILL CHURCH PLANTS/REPLANTS

In the new year, our Mars Hill family will be replanting churches in Olympia, Tacoma, Everett, and Huntington Beach to move them into bigger and better buildings, and we are planting a brand new location in Phoenix. Our hope is that thousands will come to meet Jesus at these churches and become disciples.

According to the Mars Hill website, Mars Hill Global Fund helped pay for these campus expansions. Everett and Tacoma have sent “thank you notes” to the Global Fund, and the Fund FAQs also mention funding for Phoenix, Bellevue, and Spokane. So the $2 million went to these churches too?

5) OUR MOST EVANGELISTIC CAMPAIGN

As the Western World becomes more secularized, the Church is becoming more ostracized. Simply put, Christianity is a threat to many of the sacred cows in American culture. Pastor Mark is currently working on a sermon series and book that will tackle many of these issues, including gay marriage, the exclusivity of Jesus, the authority of scripture, etc. This series springboards from an extensive sociological study on thousands of Americans’ opinions on Christianity that was conducted by a top research firm, and will focus on the objections that real people really have.

This must be a reference to the now-postponed book, The Problem with Christianity. The book was slated to be released in the Spring, then it was pushed back to the Fall and now there is no date for release while Tyndale is waiting for “the best season.” The research for this book was done in Spring 2013 and already paid for by the time of this appeal so it is unclear to me how this campaign would require additional donor funding. If anything, according to the messaging about Mark Driscoll and his books, the sales of the books should provide additional income to the church. Unless they don’t.  In any case, this isn’t happening this year either. All in all, I suspect the main beneficiary of these donations (as with the Global Fund) was U.S. expansion of video franchises.

Former Staffer Says That Mars Hill Church’s Global Fund Was Restricted

A week ago, I posted an anonymous statement from a former staff member in the central office at Mars Hill Church. Today, I can offer you another statement from the same staffer. I received this quote from Rachel M, a former staffer in Mars Hill finance department.  Here is her quote.

I believe that Mars Hill leadership knew from the start that donations to the Global Fund were restricted and could not be used for unrestricted purposes. In fact, there was a separate account for Global in the books to note this distinction. During my time in the Finance Department, there was a pointed emphasis to be sure that restricted funds were not co-mingled with general funds. I believe that among the Financial Leadership Team (which includes multiple CPA-level staff, who would know all the ins and outs of restricted and unrestricted donations), there was a clear awareness that any restricted funds could not be directed to the general fund.  Without a doubt in my mind, Mars Hill leadership knew what they were doing.

This statement pulls back the curtain a bit on the situation and indicates some conflict between at least some members of the finance team and the executive elders. The concern expressed here by Rachel is understandable given the solicitations for Ethiopia and India in the Mars Hill Church services. Those solicitations should have triggered a more vigorous reaction from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. According to a ECFA publication written by president Dan Busby, video promotions like the following signal to donors that their donations to a specific fund will be used in keeping with the solicitation.

Busby’s guidance on how to determine donor intent is important and reproduced below: ECFARestrictedFundBusby makes it clear that donors signal donor intent, not the organization who received the donation. Mars Hill Church has it backward. In a recent World article, church spokesman Justin Dean said, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.” First, Dean implies that donations to the Global Fund were given by the “global family” (podcasters, non-members). However, much evidence presented here and in other posts demonstrates that members were asked to give to the Global Fund. Second, Dean assumes Mars Hill’s leaders know the intent of the donors. Busby’s article places donor intent with the donor, not the organization.  To discern donor intent, according to Busby, the organization can look to explicit and implicit expression of donor intent.

As the videos demonstrate (see also the image at the end of the post), Mars Hill Global, during 2012-2014, was promoted as the arm of Mars Hill Church dedicated to international missions. However, as Mars Hill now admits, very little of that money actually went to international missions. I have provided a wealth of information in prior posts to demonstrate that the Global Fund and Mars Hill Global became the missionary outreach fund of Mars Hill Church from 2012 to 2014.

Donors to Mars Hill Global Fund explicitly signaled their intent by checking Global Fund on the website when they gave. The implicit intent can be gleaned by donor response to the videos of Sutton Turner in Ethiopia asking the church members (not just podcasters) to give “above and beyond” their tithes in order to support Ethiopian evangelists. Before May 2o14, the church website clearly gave donors the option to choose Global Fund explicitly over the General Fund. If the donations were always intended to go to the General Fund as Mars Hill Church now claims, then why have two funds?

Busby’s guidance is clear but not being followed by Mars Hill Church:

Once the donor had indicated the intent for which the donation was given, and the charity has accepted the gift, it is the responsibility of the charity to fulfill that intent. The charity could have chosen not to accept the gift if the fulfillment of the donor restriction was in question.

In most cases the donor is responding to a specific appeal. The appeal itself generally identifies the purpose for which donations are sought. If the donor simply responds to the appeal, it should be assumed that the donor’s intent is that the funds be used as described in the appeal.

Another important point is that once the gift is given and the church accepts it, the church must honor donor intent. Donors can change their mind but donors should not have to jump through an additional hoop to inform the church how the money should be spent.

In my opinion, based on the assumption that the Global Fund was restricted, Mars Hill Church’s current policy is backward. Currently, they are requiring Global donors to contact the church to designate (again) that donations go to missions. However, as I understand ECFA guidance, the church should be requiring donors who want to redesignate their donation for the General Fund to contact the church to authorize those funds for general purposes.

Those Ethiopian and Indian evangelists should have gotten millions in support. Instead they only got a tiny fraction.  The “preponderance” of the money went to church plants in the United States and who knows what else. In my opinion, for Mars Hill to remain accredited, the ECFA should require the church to honor donor intent, expressed explicitly by the selection of “Global Fund” and implicitly by the responses to the constant promotion of Ethiopia and India via videos, the annual report, and the church website.
MarshillFAQGlobal       More articles on Mars Hill Global

You Tube Restores Mars Hill Global Videos; Mars Hill Church Backs Away From Copyright Claim

Apparently Mars Hill Church is not going to sue me to keep sections of their deleted Mars Hill Global videos from public view. After the 10-14 day waiting period for Mars Hill to file suit, the church did not do so and You Tube restored the video of Mark Driscoll and Sutton Turner promoting Mars Hill Global as an international mission outreach.
Watch: [youtube]http://youtu.be/XFiD7XkYtPk[/youtube]
Those excerpts came from three videos Mars Hill Church deleted from their You Tube account. The videos are important because they conflict with what Mars Hill Church is claiming about Mars Hill Global between 2012-2014. In a recent World article, church spokesman Justin Dean said, “Since donations given by the Mars Hill Global family were never intended to be designated solely for international efforts, we don’t provide an itemized accounting of those funds.” The problem with this statement is that churches cannot designate or restrict funds after they are donated. If the church pitches a fund as going toward a specific purpose then the church must honor that purpose. The videos make it clear that Mars Hill members were informed that the Global Fund was the way Mars Hill church does missions and that such gifts were to be given above and beyond their regular giving to the church. Thus, the donors were not only “Mars Hill Global family” and the donations were given to a fund that church leaders said was used for international missions. 
(Note: An earlier version of this post had more information about the Global Fund as a designated fund. I decided to present that information in a separate article)