E38 "Reflections of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill E4"

Jubilee Freedom & Shalom

This episode is the 4th of a series where Nate and Daniel are reflecting on the recent popular podcast called "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today. The podcast follows the story of a pastor named Mark Driscoll and it is a cautionary tale about church growth and how celebrity effects people, especially people in power. In order for this episode to be more meaningful, we recommend first listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" episode 4. Nate and Daniel reflect on questions like:

William Wallace II was Mark's pseudonym that he used to say really crude things on the church's private chat board, Midrash. He posted saying the guys in his church were acting like male lesbians and needed to be put in dresses, beaten and humiliated. Men had weekly accountability meetings called "Redemption Groups" where men would say, “it’s time for me to go to meeting and take a bat to the head or get kicked in the nuts" because it was a weekly bludgeoning about they need to grow up and be a man and get jobs and take care of their families.

What does it say if your church's favorite movie is fight club? What does that reveal about the people in your church, what they are longing for and frustrated about, and what they think are the solutions?

Mark was a mixed bag of being able to teach scripture and being very crude and vile. Example: his "Hoe Hoe Hoe" sermons about the 3 whores who are in Jesus' genealogy. Was Mark an agent of chaos just to get a rise out of people? Is that the way we should go about confronting sin in the community or making peoples' faith real to them? Saying crazy stuff and making people confront what they’re hearing even if you don’t agree with what you’re saying just to force people to go through the act of understanding what they believe and how to communicate that back to what they’re hearing. Does this bear good fruit and does your answer change in light of the prophets and how people responded to them?

In the Men’s meeting in the gym Mark gave men the "Dad talk" for 2 hours yelling at them saying things like, "You can’t charge the gates of hell with your pants around your ankles, a tissue in one hand, and a bottle of lotion in the other" and that they needed to grow up, work hard at their jobs, and if they weren’t on board with the mission of the church they needed to get out.

Where in the Bible does it say men’s jobs are to defend, protect, and kill if need be for their families? I’ve heard this said as a moral imperative and I have never heard it supported by scripture. I’d like to hear the scripture story or commandment that people use to build that view of manhood.

What does it mean to “man up”? The Mars Hill answer was to protect wives, be strong, be warriors, be fighters, be providers, be responsible, be employed, be accountable, know your family role, and that was their definition of being servants. Why are these male only roles? And how did Jesus embody these qualities or not?

Mark joined a church because the preacher used bow hunting as an story for his sermon and Mark said, “I didn’t have any theological convictions, but if I guy can kill things he can be my pastor“. Why is a violent pastor worth submitting to? Should all pastors be willing to kill to serve effectively?

What is the significance of Mark's repeated origin story? And that everyone at Mars Hill could recount it? What is your church's often repeated origin story? Does your church even have one? What do you think the downsides are of not having an origin stories that's often repeated? Is the origin story that is repeated about your pastor, the leadership at your church, or is it about Jesus?

...And much, much more.

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