Mars Hill (Part 1)- Background and Worship at Ballard

Wow, not only do I have two services to write about and some Seattle background to give, I also have two entire 50-minute sermons to cover too!  This might take a while, but Seattle convenience stores carry Vanilla Coke, so here goes nothing.

Introductory Note: I Am Not Jim and Casper

(or “Why I Respect Church Rater but Stopped Contributing”)

I’ve alluded to this once or twice before, but I think that I want to go ahead and state it again going into the Mars Hill analysis (especially given Jim Henderson’s rather antagonistic relationship with Mark Driscoll).  I often reference the book Jim & Casper Go to Church both in my research and in explaining my project to people, but I want to make it clear that I’m not those guys or even affiliated with those guys.  While Jim & Casper is a great book that should be on every pastor’s shelf, my motives and methodology are very different.  Jim and Casper’s study was to determine how a well-informed atheist would react to various worship settings, whereas I am looking more at how churches relate to their communities and how they talk about issues like homelessness and poverty in a worship setting.  Plus, I’m allowing myself a good bit of personal reflection in the process as I prepare for ordination.  On a deeper level though, I am not looking to rate churches, and the more I think about it, the more problems I have with trying to assign a numerical value to something so profoundly spiritual and subjective.  When I visited Summit, I posted my analysis on churchrater.com (Jim and Casper’s website) at my friend Tyler Mahoney’s behest, and I had no qualms about assigning the church a mid-level rating at the time.  However, once I visited New Song and felt so spiritually moved there and experienced the church as more than just a spectator, I knew that I could no longer contribute to churchrater.  There are some experiences that can’t really be quantified, and after thinking about it and praying about it, I really believe that church is one of those.

Mars Hill logo.

There is just too much at play in a church experience, too much that cannot be explained and must be felt, too much that will appeal to some people and not to others.  It’s not like reviewing a movie or a restaurant or a book.  I will sometimes offer a criticism or even a recommendation in my analysis, but my mission is not really to critique and certainly not to judge (with the possible exception of Westboro’s hate speech).  I’m an observer and a learner, not a critic.  That being said, I greatly respect what Jim and Casper endeavored to do with their book, but their write-up of Mars Hill bordered on abusive and was a little painful for me to read.  I understand that criticism can help us grow, but that chapter was just downright harsh and pretty much kicked Mark Driscoll to the curb without looking for any redeeming value in the service, in the sermon, or in the man who preached it.  They dismissed him as a verbal pugilist and offered almost no other feedback, and as much as I loved that book, that’s just not good enough.  I understand that Pastor Mark is very much a mixed bag, and I will have to raise a few concerns myself based on what I saw at Mars Hill, but I’m not here to make fun of the church’s pastor or its mission, and I feel like Jim and Casper’s commentary bordered on that.  Please, buy their book and read it cover-to-cover.  Learn from it.  Loan it to friends.  Let it teach you to see your church through fresh eyes (which it will certainly do).  Still, I’d advocate skipping the Mars Hill chapter, and remember that, while Jim and Casper were part of the inspiration for this journey, I’m not looking to imitate them.

Also, I realize that the churchrater website does a lot more than just critique churches.  There are some great resources available there-- articles, blogs, church databases, church self-assessment tools, and even Jim and Casper themselves.  In fact, after I submitted my Summit analysis to the website and shared a little about my journey this summer, Matt Casper sent me an incredibly encouraging message.  They’re good guys.  Still, if I learned anything from Mars Hill this weekend, it’s that you can’t let church devolve into a numbers game, whether it’s membership or budget or your rating on a website.  So yeah, read Jim & Casper, check out churchrater.com, and explore the resources they have to offer, but remember: I have a slightly different objective in mind, and it would be impossible for me to quantify my experiences this summer.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s my Mars Hill experience.  There was a lot that made me smile and a little that made me cringe, but I learned a lot and encountered a very interesting approach to local outreach.

Setting

Seattle is a pretty interesting city, and it’s been helpful having my buddy Mike Vander Sys to show me around.  Between the city’s thriving hipster culture and its history of musical innovation over the past few decades, it’s an impressive cultural center, and as Mark Driscoll explained in Confessions of a Reformission Rev., it also has one of the largest unchurched young adult populations in the country.  The city is laid out across a series of hills, with each hill being a fairly distinct neighborhood, some of which even started as their own unique cities before being engulfed by urban sprawl.  Mike lives on Capitol Hill directly across from Seattle University with fairly easy access to downtown and not too far from Ballard, the location of Mars Hill’s flagship campus.  From what I can tell, Ballard seems to be a fairly upscale neighborhood with a perpetually-increasing residential population.  It started as a shipping community but has since been absorbed into the larger Seattle metropolitan area, and the city of Seattle has worked to build Ballard into a high-density housing area in order to combat the rampant growth of suburbs beyond the city’s reach.  The result has been a tremendous influx of young professionals and bohemians-- Mars Hill’s target demographic.

We weren’t exactly late to the service, but as we arrived with only about ten minutes to spare, I didn’t get a ton of time to look around and take notes at this location.  It helped having Mike there as an extra set of eyes and ears-- less time there, but twice the observational capabilities in the time we had.  Mike and I met at Emory University’s Youth Theological Initiative (YTI), where we were roommates in the summer of 2004, and the two of us have stayed close friends over the years.  Mike has a lot of the same theological sensitivities I do and has shared some similar worship experiences despite a very different church background from mine.  Prior to his move to Seattle, we used to joke that he was the last Roman Catholic in Utah, surrounded by the LDS influence much in the way that I often felt surrounded by Southern Baptists in Memphis.  Since Seattle U began as a Jesuit institution, it is considerably more Catholic-friendly than Utah, and Mike attends regular mass.  Still, he has attended Mars Hill once or twice with friends, so he knew his way around the place.

For the most part, the Mars Hill Ballard campus didn’t seem that different from a lot of the other contemporary megachurches I’ve visited.  In fact, facilities-wise, it had quite a bit in common with the other Mars Hill back in Grand Rapids, but the two are in no way affiliated.  In fact, Mark Driscoll has actually criticized Rob Bell on numerous occasions for everything from his theology to his style of dress.  This Mars Hill Church was in a rather nondescript building that sort of resembled a small black warehouse from the outside.  Mike and I actually drove right past it before noticing signs for Mars Hill parking and locating a space.  Young couples were roaming around the area, and the church doors were wide open, with a handful of greeters in official-looking black polo shirts welcoming people into the building.  Inside, the place was . . . well, trendy.  The walls were painted in vibrant colors, and the information desk was staffed by a small number of greeters, but there were also public computers for learning more about the church.  It sort of reminded me of the Apple Store.  We were handed bulletins on our way in (consisting of a few prewritten sermon notes and announcements), and while people were friendly, no one really engaged me in conversation.  Of course, I had a friend with me and was lost in note-taking, so I guess I wasn’t that inviting a sight.  I tried to locate Steve (the security guy from earlier at Federal Way), but I couldn’t find him, so Mike and I sat down in one of the rows of black fabric/metal chairs about halfway back in the sanctuary.  Mike looked around in the lobby for a bit and assessed the restrooms for me (industrial deco feel, well-cleaned, paper towels-- goal seemed to be both to impress and to comfort), while I took notes on the sanctuary itself.

The sanctuary had blank walls that were illuminated in different colors by a series of recessed lights high in the exposed rafters of the industrial-looking room.  Bare beams supported the ceiling and obscured our view a bit, but a series of screens throughout the room projected what was happening on the stage on the far wall.  The stage had an elaborate set on it consisting of a partially-constructed wall with a large metal cross visible behind it, and various images could be painted onto the wall depending on the topic of Pastor Mark’s sermon.  In this case, there was a stenciled money sack, as Pastor Mark was going to be talking about “Investing in Jesus.”  For the most part, this room looked like it could easily house a dance club, but there was one really subtle architectural touch that I noticed that seemed to set this sanctuary apart as a holy place.  Hanging from the ceiling were a set of cylindrical fabric lanterns designed to mimic traditional chapel chandeliers.  In the otherwise-modern room, it was a throwback to tradition, and it made for a nice, aesthetically-pleasing contrast.

Regarding the congregation itself, this was one trendy crowd, but it wasn’t completely what I had expected.  Yes, there were quite a few young adults sporting black-rimmed glasses and skinny jeans and scarves and other various prerequisite hipster paraphernalia, but I was surprised to see a number of older folks as well.  There were quite a few middle aged couples with teenage children and even a few senior adults, and given that Pastor Mark’s ministry is supposed to be geared toward 20- and 30-somethings, this caught me a little off guard.  I mentioned it to Mike, and he commented that there would likely be a higher concentration of younger adults at the evening service.  After all, our age group does like to sleep in on Sunday mornings (sometimes to recover from Saturday nights).  I also noticed that the gender split seemed pretty even here, and that surprised me a bit too.  Pastor Mark has said openly that he is more interested in bringing in men to be disciples because he feels that they are less targeted by the mainline church and more natural leaders.  Of course, I had heard a rumor that, in an ironic twist, it is actually women who prefer to attend Mars Hill for reasons I’m not totally sure I understand.  I welcome any female reading this to explain to me how a male-centered theology/ecclesiology can appeal so widely to women because I don’t completely get it, and I don’t really buy the argument that they’re “just here to meet good Christian husbands”-- they’ve got christianmingle.com for that.  I digress.  In this particular service, it seemed that neither gender was really in the majority; the breakdown looked roughly 50/50.  Of course, there was one very notable gender difference that set Mars Hill apart from any of the other churches I’ve visited so far: a female worship leader.

Worship and Family Dedication

The lights dimmed to signal the start of the service, and the female worship leader came on stage and introduced herself as Jessica.  In her appearance and voice, I was reminded a bit of Regina Spektor.  She played an electric guitar and was backed by an otherwise-male band comprised of keyboard, drums, bass, and a guy with a computer running loops and effects.  The band kicked out a slow, rhythmic, drum-heavy beat (one of the louder bands I’ve heard so far), and Jessica sang out over the crowd largely unaccompanied:

Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation
Oh my soul praise Him for He is thy health and salvation
All ye who hear now to His temple draw near
Praise Him in glad adoration

Praise to the Lord who doth prosper thy work and defend thee
Surely His goodness and mercy he daily attend thee
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do
If with His love He befriend thee

Praise to the Lord O let all that is in me adore Him
All that hath life and breath come now with praises before Him
Let the amen sound from His people again
Gladly for aye we adore Him

It seemed to me that there weren’t a ton of people singing along, and it was a rather slow opening number.  Still, the objective was to bring the congregation into a mentality of worship.  People filtered into the back of the sanctuary slowly throughout the first few songs, and quite a few continued to socialize a bit as they came in, welcoming one another to church.  The stage lighting changed from song to song, as did the lighting on the walls around the room, making it a little hard to see people’s faces in the crowd at times.  I noticed a young man with Down syndrome several rows in front of us, and a few passing church members were stopping to greet him warmly.  After seeing all the programs available at Resurrection and with the incident at Elevation a week ago, the treatment of people who are differently abled or have special needs has been weighing on my mind a lot lately.  Even though I didn’t find anything on Mars Hill’s website about a specially focused ministry, it was good to see someone with different needs being so openly accepted in worship.  The next song got a little more participation and a few raised hands.

Pastor Bill Clem

There is a Redeemer,
Jesus, God's own Son,
Precious Lamb of God, Messiah,
Holy One,

Thank you oh my Father,
For giving us Your Son,
And leaving Your Spirit,
'Til the work on Earth is done.

Following these songs, Pastor Bill Clem came up onto the stage.  He was a friendly but tired-looking man, slightly heavier set with a gray beard and eyes like Santa Claus.  He seemed to radiate a sort of warmth despite sounding just a bit exhausted.  He welcomed us and said that he knew Father’s Day was a time of joy for some and a time of grief for others, but he called on us to focus on our Heavenly Father, rather than just our earthly ones.  Bill invited a group of families to come out onto the stage so that the church could welcome and dedicate their newly born babies.  Each set of parents had selected a verse or two ahead of time, and they went down the line, introducing themselves and reading the verses.  I noticed that there were no single parents in the group, and a few of the families were quite large.  Mike and I were both a little amused by some of the overly-trendy baby names: Opal, Liesl, Xavier, etc.  I’ve forgotten some of the other ones, but several of them sort of sounded like the baby had been preordained to grow a soul patch and write angsty poetry.  (And I’m allowed to make that joke because these are very much my people.)  For some reason, I was also a little surprised that the vast majority of the dedication verses were from the Old Testament.  One father was even daring enough to have found a reading in Numbers.  Either this was a very biblically-literate congregation, or the campus’s pastors had been very active in helping the church members find verses.  Either way, it’s still impressive.

The families said a covenant together to love the children as Christ had loved them, and the congregation pledged to support the children.  Bill also asked the church if they would pray for the children, and I went ahead and gave the affirmative along with the congregation.  I may not remember all the trendy names, but I can still keep those families and that church in my prayers.  Bill prayed that the children would be a blessing to the church and thanked God for making the church a part of their lives.  Bill also went ahead and asked that fathers present in the room stand up and wave, and I found it interesting to see the wide range of ages among the parents.  Some were middle aged, and others were not much older than myself (and dressed just as fashionably).  Bill prayed a traditional Celtic blessing over them, and now it was time for the sermon.