Driscoll - Confessions...8 (Chapter 6)

So far, through the book Confessions of a Reformission Rev. - Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church we have read repeatedly the hardships and crisis that Pastor Mark Driscoll, his wife (Grace), and Mars Hill Church have gone through to get a church planted, started, and sustained in the "least churched city in the nation." Every time, just as things looked up, they quickly headed downhill and in a rather grandiose large-scale fashion. Satanic influences undoubtedly, maybe some bad management and or decision making as well. Nevertheless, as we already know since this is the "story of" Mars Hill, they always tied up their bootstraps and climbed out of it. In this chapter things are different. Mars Hill owns their church building (and the Paradox), has a full-time staff, Mark and his wife have a growing family, there was money in the bank, and Mark was "sleeping like a Calvinist at night because things were under control." (page 140) Then Mark goes and blows it all up. On purpose.

Realizing that church must stay innovative to grow he goes on a "rampage." He starts to fire people, reorganize the elders and deacons, bring in new leaders, they fire more people and reorganize more programs and projects, and collectively they shut down their multiple buildings and move into one building to coordinate the church from there. They shut down the men's home and women's home they had started. They started encouraging solid married couples to open their homes (and/or buy bigger homes), bring in renters (preferably non-Christian), and start small community groups. On and on the list goes. They literally blew Mars Hill up and started it over.

The difference being that there were leaders and some finances in place to undertake this endeavor. As would be expected, Mars Hill lost members and staff members and elders as they made these proactive changes. Some of the staff members and elders that left did not really leave though. They just did not move into the one central building. They stayed where they were and started new church plants. An excellent alternative, which Mark did not count on but was very happy for. (page 148)

The "new" building they moved into was a 20-year-old 40,000 sq. foot former hardware store. They had no seats for their first service there and people had to bring their own. As they moved forward with the reorganizing, church members began coming forward with money and gifts for the church (someone donated $20,000 for chairs, that person remains anonymous to this day), another family gave $500,000 worth of sound gear to the church. A sound engineer during this time also became a born-again believer and he designed the sound system for Mars Hill.

As they moved into the one building and had four different Sunday services, in addition to the now "awesome" sound and lighting productions, a buzz began to grow about Mars Hill Church. The Seattle Times did a 12-page article on the church. This really but a buzz into the city and as word grew, Mars Hill found itself going from 1,200 people in that first service in the old hardware store to now having 4,000 people a week in attendance. Mark admits that a third of them are actual members to Mars Hill church. The rest are made up of non-Christians, people checking them out, tourists, other Pastors looking for a fresh perspective, and other potential members who want to see if Mars Hill is right for them.

Mark explains that his priority shift was to develop leaders to work in the church so he could work on the church and plan for future growth (something he also mentions in Chapter 0). Through some extensive research and conversations with some of the pastors of the largest church's in America, Mark points to ten principles:

1. I needed to transition from caring for all the people to ensuring they were all cared for by raising up elders, deacons, and church members.
2. I needed to transition from being everyone's pastor to being the missiologist-preacher who led the church from the Bible in the pulpit.
3. I needed to stop doing most of the work I was doing and deploy more elders and deacons to manage church members who would do the work of the ministry.
4. I needed to transiton from working both in the church and on the church to almost exclusively working on the church, continually making plans to connect the Bible with our culture.
5. Our internal and external church communication needed to transition from informal and oral to written and formal, which include me writng lots of email templates, booklets, and position papers to inform our people.
6. We needed to transition our people from a survivalist mentality that focused on the present to a settler mentality that focused on a lasting legacy.
7. We needed our people to accept that we would be a very large church.
8. We needed to ensure that in the tension bewteen caring for Christians and reaching non-Christians, evangelism continually remained our highest priority.
9. We needed to accept the fact that some people would feel less connected to my family and me, experience displacement, and leave the church.
10. My wife and I needed to reserve the right to select our own friends without feeling personally obligated to everyone in the church.

These principles are what Mark established before he went cutting a swathe through Mars Hill church. It was provacitive and maybe a little arrogant (to say the least) but the initiative seems to have paid off as Mars Hill enjoys over 4,000 people in attendance a week while staying true and grounded in the Gospel of Jesus.

The last chapter remains.