Mars Hill: Kicking Up the Dust with the Sign of the Fish

Monday, August 29, 2005
At Mars Hill Church, purple hair is OK, but 'dogging it' at work isn't

By JOHN IWASAKI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Kate Justus recently professed her faith in a public way, getting dunked at sunset by pastors in wet suits as part of a mass baptism organized by Mars Hill Church.
The 22-year-old heard about the Ballard congregation through a friend who initially considered it "a really weird place," before telling her this: "It is actually very cool. They are OK with drinking as long as you don't get drunk, they are OK with dancing, and they really like sex as long as you are married."

Niki Desautels / P-I

Erin and Todd Robertson embrace during a song at the Mars Hill Church on Sunday. The Robertsons have been attending Mars Hill for more than four years. Music worship isn't always sedate. Church bands have a variety of styles: emo, rockabilly, low-key piano, traditional rock and acoustic.

Mars Hill, a hotbed of twentysomethings searching for God and meaning in life, started with a dozen people in a Bible study group almost a decade ago. Attendance is now nearing 4,000, triple the number in 2003, with people coming from as far as Everett and Redmond. At its current annual growth rate, Mars Hill projects attendance to reach 10,000 by the end of the decade, if not sooner.

Its growth would be remarkable for a church anywhere, but is especially notable in an "unchurched" city like Seattle, smack in the "None Zone." More people in the Northwest say "none" when asked their religious affiliation than in any other region in the country, researchers have reported.

The church is renovating its 40,000-square-foot building and recently bought a similar-sized facility a block away, with plans to use both sites for services by late 2006. The two buildings encompass the first two phases of Mars Hills' growth plans.

"Phase three," pastor Mark Driscoll quipped, "is world domination."

Verse-by-verse teaching, punkish-indie and eclectic music, art exhibits, a coffee bar, cool aesthetics and a subtly lit, high-tech sanctuary are features that distinguish the church. The name refers to a hill in Athens, the center of enlightenment in the ancient world, where the New Testament says the Apostle Paul spoke to the intellectuals of his day.

"It's very Seattle," Kari Laurvick, 26, said after the first of four services Sunday. "It very much adopts the culture of Seattle."

But it's Driscoll, 34, who most strongly sets Mars Hill apart.

"I don't leave a lot of things open-ended theologically," Driscoll said. "I believe there's one God. I believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I believe we're all sinners. I believe in a real hell and a real heaven. So I'm a Bible guy, for sure. I don't make any apologies about that."
His theologically conservative teaching is delivered in a rapid-fire mix of scripture -- paraphrased to make ancient texts more accessible -- humor and contemporary application.
For all of Mars Hill's hip appeal, Driscoll "won't budge on biblical issues," said Jodie Wisniew, 27, a member from the beginning. "He doesn't say (you're wrong) if you dress a certain way, have tattoos or purple hair; that's not a biblical issue."

Driscoll talked Sunday about the life of Joseph, the Hebrew slave who rose to a powerful position and saved Egypt from famine. Modern society tends to equate the rich with evil and the poor with virtue, thinking "it's good because we've stuck it to 'The Man' and gave it to the other man," he said.

Niki Desautels / P-I


Keisha Brown cools down lunch for her daughter Malia Brown, 13 months, in the designated Cry Room behind the main auditorium of the Mars Hill Church in Ballard on Sunday.

But Joseph's leadership shows it's not that simple, Driscoll said, teaching that the real issues regarding income and job are righteousness and unrighteousness. Don't be "dogging it on Fridays," he said. "Don't steal. Don't cheat. Be good representatives of Jesus in the workplace."
By engaging the culture, the church has drawn in artists, musicians, high-tech employees, restaurant workers, college students and others. It also is attracting affluent empty-nesters who are moving into expensive downtown Seattle condominiums. It is those people who are "floating the boat" financially for Mars Hill, Driscoll said.

Mike Urban / P-I


Mars Hill pastor Steve Tompkins, left, with the help of pastor Bent Meyer, baptizes his son Sam Tompkins, 9, in the chilly water at Golden Gardens Park.
On Aug. 23 at Golden Gardens Park, pastors in wet suits baptized 57 people following a barbecue attended by several hundred people.
Tisha Sandhop, 31, was baptized with her husband, Marty, also 31. She said the attraction to Mars Hill is simple: "The focus is on Jesus and the Bible."

That, more than the outreach to a young adult audience, explains the church's demographics, said Jeff Keuss, associate professor of Christian ministry at Seattle Pacific University.
"Mars Hills says, 'That's what the Bible says, and that settles it.' It's appealing to a younger age group that wants boundaries," he said. "The challenge for Mars Hill in the future is retaining those young people when they're 40 and 50 years old.

"Usually, when you hit a point of crisis -- you divorce, you lose a child to cancer -- all of a sudden, the certainty of 'yes' and 'no' becomes quite complex. You're willing to move to churches that are larger than 'yes' and 'no.'"

Driscoll said that conclusion ignores the reality of Mars Hill: "Just because people are young doesn't mean they haven't been through hard times."

The church offers recovery groups for younger people who have been sexually abused or addicted to drugs and alcohol. Some attendees have been abandoned by their parents.
"Joseph comes from a broken, confused home," he said in a sermon. "It may look messed up like your family."

Mars Hill is considered by some to be an "emerging" church, a movement various defined as a protest against institutional Christianity, a desire to be more culturally relevant and a way to live the Christian faith with greater authenticity.

Members can participate in one of dozens of "community groups" that meet weekly to share food and fellowship.

The church's performance space -- The Paradox -- has been a venue for all-ages concerts for years, mostly for secular bands.

Church worship bands are largely composed of professional musicians who have a variety of styles: emo (Team Strike Force), rockabilly (The Mars Hillbillies), low-key piano (The BCG), traditional rock (The Parsons) and acoustic.

Older church members are offered earplugs for the high-volume worship music. At the other end of the age spectrum, the church averages two weddings and three births per week.
"When my 55-year-old folks were all excited -- and my 13-year-old child -- I knew it was different," said Jen Thomas, 34.

Driscoll said he received his calling to ministry while praying during a Christian retreat in 1990. Mars Hill, which has never done marketing, rented other churches' buildings in different downtown or North Seattle neighborhoods for years before moving to Ballard.

The church's Internet site www.marshillchurch.org with its free downloads of worship music and sermons -- Driscoll's messages were accessed more than 1 million times last year -- is designed to make Mars Hill appeal to tech-savvy visitors. The site has "doctrinal commitments, for sure, but the traditional faith seems approached in a more open, hip, creative, searching way. Even the (wavy neon) graphic on their Web site ... suggests edgy," said Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who has studied the spiritual lives of teenagers.

The church has lost some members who have found Driscoll's teachings too limiting when it comes to women, however. Only men are pastors at Mars Hill, a position Driscoll defended in a 2003 campus debate with Robert Wall, professor of Christian scriptures at Seattle Pacific University. Both men based their arguments on different interpretations of scripture.

"Women lead worship, women teach, women baptize, women serve Communion, women get paid to be in ministry," Driscoll said. "We have hundreds of women from SPU who are leaders in our church."

Wall said it would be "a mistake to characterize (Driscoll's) position as one opposed to women in ministry. It's opposition to women in the leadership role of pastor or elder of a congregation. It's more of a political issue than a spiritual one."

He said his differences with Driscoll should not obscure what is of greater significance.
"The life of Mars Hill is more complicated than what some outside are saying," he said.
"Relationships are happening there. People are finding God in that congregation. Mark speaks with great humor and is a winsome, charismatic person. But at the root, what he says makes sense to people. He gives them a vision for how to live their lives. At the end of the day, one has to admire what is happening there."

P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com.

Then came this "Letter to the Editor" in response on the P-I's op/ed pages a few days later:

Fawning piece has no place on the front page It's highly inappropriate for a daily newspaper to publish a front-page article on a church. This is especially true when there isn't any real news to report about the church. Monday's fawning piece on the Mars Hill Church was essentially a promotional vehicle for this congregation and its fundamentalist theology.
The Mars Hill Church is not a big story. Like most growing fundamentalist churches, Mars Hill's leaders extract small segments of the Bible and interpret those with their own ultra right-wing spin. A perfect example is their minister's emphasis on chastising the poor and exalting the rich. Anyone who has actually read the first four books of the New Testament would see how Jesus said exactly the opposite on such matters.
The P-I shouldn't be giving this or any church free publicity, particularly when its agenda is clearly more about politics than religion. -Steve Nesich Seattle

Urbane Analysis: Since this article has been "archived" at the P-I and is no longer freely accessible, it was appropriate to keep it "out there" via this blog. Here's my take: The "Letter to the Editor" is quintessentially Seattle-on-religion: you are wrong THEREFORE you don't deserve to be seen or heard, and those that even talk about you are equally culpable. Another example of Liberal Fundamentalism - a daily fact of life in Seattle. But hey, what's your take? About Mars Hill, the thing about not allowing female pastoral leadership is their Achilles Heel, to be sure. But what Professor Jeff Keuss says is just flatly off the mark - I would give his student paper on Mars Hill a "C- "for being so blatantly speculative. Oh, that and my closing-in-on-the-BIG-Five-Oh firsthand observations from Mars Hill are 180 degrees different from the perspective of his ivory tower speculation. Mars Hill is real community, and consists of a community of believers who are WAY MORE than Christ Followers looking for a yes/no kind of on/off switch doctrine to their faith.

And that's putting it lightly. What I would like to do with Professor Keuss is attend worship there together, say three or four times - and be guests at a similar number of small group get-togethers of Mars Hill members. And then do the same thing at his church (and my church too, if he wants to). Then discuss what we saw. And pray about it, if he is up for that.

I am confident, after going through that exercise, the good professor will do an about-face on his opinion about Mars Hill. Why is that? Because when you actually get to know people at the Mars Hill community, one quickly learns that it is the focus on healing our brokenness and imperfection through reaching out to accept the love of Jesus Christ - that sets that place apart from merely "going to church" - that is the Mars Hill difference. For more on that, see a Seattle Times profile on Mark Driscoll here. I know a couple dozen members and have been there maybe ten times, and even I could figure that out! My frustration has been in getting my fellow denominationally-based Christians to come to grips with what they need to do to grapple with that reality. Most "mainstream" Christians are in comfortable denial about this, as I suspect the good professor is. Bottomline, if Mars Hill had accepted women as Pastoral Leaders and Elder-Leaders, I would have joined with them a couple years ago. And if they persist in this, sooner or later that community will lapse into conflict and schism, because that is the unfortunate reality of our human existence on this planet. And exactly why we need to reach out to our Creator, who created everything, including the Big Bang and Evolution - with loving Intelligent Design. The Creator who tells us humans to work on some stuff during our time here on earth, like loving and caring for each other as the way to get closer to our Creator. Mars Hill has got a role to play in that, to be sure. That's my take, I would appreciate hearing yours and welcome your comments.