E44 "Reflections of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill E10 Part 1"

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the conference they attended in Colorado, NCYM, and some of the things they walked away thinking about.

"Untended fires soon become nothing but a pile of ashes" -Jim Burns
Is the church just supposed to convict people and then walk away? Or should we always follow up with mentoring and discipleship?

Daniel and Nate also feel the pain of seeing peers in ministry burning out and leaving ministry because they didn't feel supported or able to keep pace with the busy hustle that the culture demands. How is hurry effecting the church, its members, its pastors, our children?

"Beware of the barrenness of a busy life" John Mark Comer
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer
To Hell with the Hustle by Jefferson Bethke

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss Nate's experience at the Tennessee Local Food Summit. Jeff Poppen aka "The Barefoot Gardener" started the local food summit  for local and organic growers to come together annually and share stories and resources to further the cause. Tennessee is loosing gardens, farms, and land under production at an alarming rate. It's heartbreaking to see developers wreck the creation with greedy, shortsighted, ugly, and cheap construction that creates a domino effect of short term and long term negative consequences. So, how can we reimagine how to use land in a way where humans have a beautiful, efficient, and sustainable space to live in. How do we create really high density housing that is still surrounded by green and living spaces? Here's our thoughts.  

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the recent documentaries and docuseries: The Way Down, Class Action Park, The Vow, The Anarchists, Scientology and the Aftermath, The Dropout, Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed. Why do humans have such a deep longing for belonging? What will we endure and overlook to belong and fell like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. What is a cult technically and are we are all in one by definition? Is the point to never be a part of a cult or to make sure the cults we are a part of are doing good in the world? 

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the recent Matt Chandler controversy, whether christian men and women can be friends, the topic of wisdom and truth, how do you define wisdom, and what wisdom looks like, sounds like, and acts like.  

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss traveling to Iceland, the realizations that island life brings, the wonder of the water cycle, what are your wildest kingdom dreams, Wolf Hilbertz, mineral accretion, Biorock, Seacrete, Brendon Grimshaw buying an island and restoring it for endangered species, how to use sunlight and ocean water to grow natural concrete that will emerge from the water as a new island, and what you would do if you were in charge of your own growing island. What plants would you plant? What animals would you bring to the  island? What would you build homes out of? What type of culture and society would you like to form? What would be your requirements for new citizens to live on your island? All that and more on today's episode!

In this episode Daniel and Nate wrap up their reflections on the story of Mars Hill. There are so many lessons to be taken away from the Mars Hill story and we hope that our discussions have helped you process this information along with us.  We hope that it helps us all reflect on what a truly godly leader looks like and our own obsession and attraction to celebrity, power, and pride. Power corrupts and and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let's all remember that as we build communities of faith and make decisions about systems of accountably.  Churches can do so much damage and there can be a legacy of dead bodies under and behind the bus, but that's not what we are called to, and by the grace of God I hope we can slow down, value people over organizations, value faithfulness over efficiency, and be people whose fruit ultimately is Jubilee, freedom, and shalom. 

Episode 11: The Tempest

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the end of Mars Hill and how things started to unravel in the staff and in the congregation as a whole. How could something that was growing so fast and was so big come unraveled in just 12 months time? The cracks in the foundation caused by past misdeeds and mistreatments of people were starting to show and the weight of the large staff and mega church they built upon that foundation caused everything to crumble and fall quickly. 

Episode 10 “Red Sky at Morning”

This is the 3rd act of the Mars Hill play. The “Resurgence” was the blog/website that Mars Hill ran and recruited big name pastors and christian authors to write articles for. Now that Mars Hill had defined and built the brand it was time to learn how to distribute the brand.

"Brand implies value. You’re as good as the person you’re standing beside." 

How has technology changed our ecclesiology?  Our Worship? In the new era of internet tech, Mars Hill wasn't confined by how big a building they could build or how many services you could preach on one Sunday. They could preach to the whole world through the internet and the whole world could attend recorded services throughout the week. 

Technology has always shaped the church. From amphitheaters in classical greek times to the printing press and the Reformation to circuit riding preachers in the wild west to radio, tv, internet, and now Holograms, technology has allowed us to communicate with more people across space and time. The ability to stream sound and video to other locations has led to "Multisite Churches", a preachers have become little “a”apostles that have influence on many congregations. But this leads to the question, what's the difference between an audience and a congregation? When the preacher isn’t there in person and the praise team isn't there in person and you're walking into a room with a big screen that everything comes through, is that still church?

Mars Hill's plan was to stream Mark out to the new satellite campuses and put their branded media all over social media, track the numbers, and open new campuses in towns that had over 1,000 weekly listeners, and repeat. Mark wanted to use this strategy to get to 50K members, and for a time it was working. 

Episode 10 “Red Sky at Morning”

This is the 3rd act of the Mars Hill play. The “Resurgence” was the blog/website that Mars Hill ran and recruited big name pastors and christian authors to write articles for. Now that Mars Hill had defined and built the brand it was time to learn how to distribute the brand.

"Brand implies value. You’re as good as the person you’re standing beside." 

How has technology changed our ecclesiology?  Our Worship? In the new era of internet tech, Mars Hill wasn't confined by how big a building they could build or how many services you could preach on one Sunday. They could preach to the whole world through the internet and the whole world could attend recorded services throughout the week. 

Technology has always shaped the church. From amphitheaters in classical greek times to the printing press and the Reformation to circuit riding preachers in the wild west to radio, tv, internet, and now Holograms, technology has allowed us to communicate with more people across space and time. The ability to stream sound and video to other locations has led to "Multisite Churches", a preachers have become little “a”apostles that have influence on many congregations. But this leads to the question, what's the difference between an audience and a congregation? When the preacher isn’t there in person and the praise team isn't there in person and you're walking into a room with a big screen that everything comes through, is that still church?

Mars Hill's plan was to stream Mark out to the new satellite campuses and put their branded media all over social media, track the numbers, and open new campuses in towns that had over 1,000 weekly listeners, and repeat. Mark wanted to use this strategy to get to 50K members, and for a time it was working. 

Episode 9 “The Bobby Knight Problem”

Pastor Ted Haggard from the Documentary "Jesus Camp" got caught doing meth with a male prostitute. 

Why pastors have sexual moral failings? Mark said it was because pastors' wives let themselves go and weren't willing to have open  and exciting sex with their husbands. 

Do the ends justify the means? Is it better to lose or to hold onto our morals and ethics? Bobby Knight normalized abusive behavior. Building fear keeps people from coming against you. James McDonald lost his job for domineering and bullying just as Bobby Knight did. 

The modern expectation of what we are getting from a church… for the church to be big enough to deliver on our evangelical expectations of “church”, the people who believe that they can deliver on those expectations and can endure what it takes to grow an organization  to that point are often the most unhealthy people.

If Bobby Knight will throw a chair across a basketball court with everyone watching and it being taped, what would he do behind closed doors? And if Mark Driscoll is willing to say wild stuff during a sermon on a Sunday morning, what do you think he’s like behind closed doors when not everyone gets to hear what he has to say?

The Latin word for media just means the middle and that’s what media is; it’s the thing that stands in the middle that everything gets interpreted through, like a lens, and there’s not a major church in America today that doesn’t mediate and show a certain version of itself and is it really good at that. A lot of people say the hardest person to hire for a mega church is the media person. Churches are firing youth staff so they can hire more media people. What does that say about a church? They know the dangers of people not really knowing you and what social media can do to people but at the end of the day they still upload their sermon every Sunday and push send.

How has our mediated way of connecting and communicating with people added to the culture of isolation that we are part of?

Everyone wants to be princess Diana and everyone wants to be Mother Theresa. Anyone can be Mother Teresa but not everyone can be Diana and marry a prince, but the reason we won’t be the next Mother Theresa is because we don’t want the suffering and humiliation that comes along with affecting peoples lives through the Jesus way because that way and path involves suffering.