Mars Hill - Ballard

I went to a service at Mars Hill this week as an experience for one of my worship classes at TWU. They are one of the fastest growing churches in the nation right now and are led by Mark Driscoll. Before I went to the church, I wrote down some thoughts as to what I thought the church service and congregation would look like so if this looks like a critique, unfortunately right now it is. This is just so I can begin my paper, but I wanted to share what I thought with you and also that my predictions of waht to expect before I got there were pretty accurate.

Mars Hill is an Mega Church which appeals mainly to sarcastic, artistic students who are looking for some help as they are on spiritual journey searching for some kind of truth. THough Mars Hill helps students find their way through this, it is a very cold church. Nobody seems friendly, the music is loud (am I getting old?!?), their is no eye contact from the stage - the list goes on and on. When I first walked in, I sat for an hour in thier foyer and nobody said hello or anything; not even the people at the information kiosk!

THe message was filled with sarcasm and talked poorly about other religions and other philosophies - Islam, Mormons, and New Age - and called them stupid; even making a joke that he was "sweating like Mike Tyson in a spelling bee" and when not a lot of people laughed he said that he thought that joke would get "a few more laughs than that". He also talked about how if he wasn't a christian, he would turn the church into a strip club, drink a lot and jump the walls of the playboy mansion - which I didn't think was offensive, but he kept dwelling on this point for at least ten minutes too long. I thought that the most ironic part of his sermon was when he told us that "never follow a white guy from the midwest who says he has a religion (mormons)", and later gave us the history of Mars Hill and told us how he started Mars Hill from 12 people in his home and had grown it to thousands and they were adding a new venue in west Seattle. The direct correlations were somewhat humorous.

There is a pressing for theology in the church, which I did like. It was evident in his talk as his sermon revolved around christ's death, his ressurection, and his eventual return and what will happen afterwards; not your normal mega church seeker sensitive message material. The church also has a film theology club where they watch movies and search for the correlations within the movie and christian theology. Also in the Mars Hill monthly magazine, there was an article about Martin Luther which said to me that this church pressed education amongst the people. But it was ironic how this church had zero participation from teh congregation. As the many books that I want to write ten years too late said, "welcome to the new reformation".

The one thing that I applaude Mars Hill for is that they know their audience. THey know who they are talking to and they are relevant with their talks...but I think that's about all that I could applaud them for.

ron

This Weeks Soundtrack

U2-How to dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Counting Crows-Recovering the Satelites
Busta Rhymes-When Disaster Strikes
Jars of Clay-Redemption Songs
Stone Temple Pilots-Purple
Patsy Cline-Heartaches
Prince-THe B-sides (Disc 3)
The INN-Empty I Come