Today I am listening to episode 4 of the Christianity Today podcast series, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.” When I read Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994) I was a little offended. I was wrong. Noll was correct. Twenty-seven years later I think he might not have been critical enough.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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Twenty-seven*
Thank you.
You peaked my curiosity. Found a used copy at Thrift Books.com and ordered it. I look forward to seeing what he had to say back then and how many things have been realized since.
piqued but yes.
I have been listening to the podcasts and they keep saying the sudden demise of Mars Hill. At the time all of this was happening I was a pastor in the Seattle area. One key piece of information that the podcasts ignore is the fact that in many ways Mars Hill was a sort of Ponzi scheme. Every year of its existence they would run very large deficits all year long and then Mark Driscoll would spend three months at the end of the year pushing people to give to make up the difference. Every year they were able to keep the scheme going until that last year. With the drop in membership and giving, following the Seattle Times articles, I suspect that Mark knew the scheme was about to implode. It was no surprise he resigned in mid-October just when he was going to have to pound heavy on the giving to make up the deficits for that year.
Ken,
This is interesting.
A lot of this was documented by WenatcheeTheHatchet, the blogger who made so much of the dark side of Mars Hill public. It wass his blog posts that eventually led to the Seattle Times stories.
I just listened to the last of the podcasts by CT and there was no mention of the finances and the role this had in the demise of Mars Hill. As WenatcheeTheHatchet established, Mars Hill was always about how Mark Driscoll was building a church so that he could siphon off millions of dollars for his own benefit. The classic was the time when Mark was pleading from the pulpit that the church was facing large deficits and at the same time Mars Hill purchased him a multi-million dollar home. In my own opinion CT could never explore that aspect of the case because so many that have been associated with the emerging church and neo-evangelicalism have had the same mindset when it comes to the issue of money and its role in the Church.