Two Mars Hill Universes: Repentant Pastor and the Christian Post

Over at the Repentant Pastor website yesterday, 18 former Mars Hill elders posted a letter of confession to Paul Petry and Bent Meyer. In the letter, the pastors confessed being complicit with an authoritarian structure which wronged Meyer and Petry for raising valid concerns. They wrote:

We now believe our decisions were invalid and wrong. The entire investigation and trial process was skewed by the implication that your termination was above reproach and for just cause. If there had been sin in your life that might have warranted a warning about possible disqualification from eldership, we should have patiently, carefully, and directly addressed it with you before the matter became so extremely escalated. By reporting our wrongheaded assessment to the church, we put doubt about your character in the minds of church members, though you had done nothing to warrant such embarrassment and scrutiny. By doing this, we misled the whole church, harmed your reputation, and damaged the unity of the body of Christ.

In this universe, the past with Mark Driscoll generates remorse and repentance.
At the Christian Post today, Alex Murashko focuses on Mars Hill Portland pastor Tim Smith and spokesman Justin Dean. Both Smith and Dean view the past with Mark Driscoll as something to celebrate. In this universe, both had praise for Driscoll and glossed over the investigation of charges and the reasons for his resignation.
When Petry and Meyer were fired, they didn’t get due process like Driscoll did. After they were fired by Driscoll, they were unfairly tried by their peers and found guilty of “displaying an unhealthy lack of trust in, and respect for, the senior leadership of Mars Hill Church.” Petry was considered disqualified and shunned and Meyer was put on probation.
When Mark Driscoll was the subject of a lengthy process of investigation and found guilty of abusing his leadership, he was allowed to resign voluntarily with severance rather than enter a restoration process.
In one universe, Tim Smith voted to find Petry and Meyer guilty and in another universe, Smith lauds Driscoll and fails to sign on to the letter of confession.
 
 

Former Mars Hill Pastors Repent at New Website

A new website devoted to repentance among former Mars Hill leaders has opened up at Repentantpastor.com. Repentant Pastor is about:

We built this site to provide a safe place in which we can confess our sin and share the stories and experiences we had while serving and attending Mars Hill Church. Our hope is to bring about repentance for ourselves and reconciliation with people whom we have hurt. If you are one of those people please connect with us personally through email. You can also comment on the posts. Each one of the people who has written in the confessions section has an email address at this url. The email addresses are [email protected] Thank you for reading our confessions, letters, stories, and apologies.
Each of these posts are confessions from Mars Hill leaders and members who agree that the culture of Mars Hill has many problems, and that more could have been done by each of us to challenge those problematic attitudes and behaviors. In staying at Mars Hill, we were complicit in those structures, and problems whether we employed them or not. We recognize and confess that Mars Hill has hurt many people within the Mars Hill community, as well as those outside the community including those who don’t believe Mars Hill’s religious beliefs, and we want to acknowledge the hurt we may have caused. We humbly ask your forgiveness. These are our individual confessions, letters, stories, and apologies.

With posts all dated today (3/29/14), former Mars Hill Orance County executive pastor Kyle Firstenberg, former Leadership Pastor Dave Kraft, former Mars Hill Everett Pastor Scott Mitchell, and Mars Hill co-founder Lief Moi have provided a powerful call to re-examine events in Mars Hill’s history.  In particular, the change in bylaws and firing of Bent Meyer and Paul Petry take center stage.
On March 17, twenty former Mars Hill pastors approached the Board of Advisors and Accountability with a request for mediation. Thus far, no direct response to this call and those who made it has come.
Firstenberg’s official charges are stunning and can be read here.