Pastor Mark has just completed his ‘holiday’ in Australia, and he’s now ramping up for an intense speaking tour. Southern Cross, the largest Christian magazine in Australia, has published:

• A cover story on Pastor Mark.
• A feature on their website.
• A video interview.

The magazine reports on Pastor Mark’s Australian adventure to date:

He’s enjoyed the time with his family in a city which he says has a lot in common with New York, London, and Los Angeles, where he’s been recently.

“What I’m finding is it doesn’t matter what city you are in, there are many similarities. Young, heavy technology, heavy gay population, lots of social issues, pornography, lot of abused people sexually. The cities are very, very similar in terms of who’s living there and what they’re struggling with.”

The “Changed by Jesus” series features stories about how Jesus is working through the ministry of Mars Hill Church to change lives. If God has used Mars Hill to transform your life, email your story to testimony[at]marshillchurch.org.

This story is told to us by Andrew Pack, our Lake City campus administrator. It was also published in our 2007-2008 Annual Report (PDF).

Life Out of Death — Changed by Jesus #8

By Andrew Pack

Oscar Torres took two gasps of air, rocked to his knees, and with his last breath praised Jesus and went to sleep. He was thirty-two and newly married when he died.

It is common for a man to use his dying days to be a light to others, yet last Thanksgiving, in the grip of terminal illness, Oscar told his brother Cesar, “I would rather be sick and with Jesus than healthy and without him.”

These words haunted Cesar, a man living in his flesh, just as he pleased. What kind of God would allow a young, faithful man to be inflicted with full-blown lung cancer? But Jesus showed his mighty power to Cesar through Oscar’s weakness; it would be Oscar’s faithful words in suffering that Jesus would use to call Cesar from death to life.

Cesar had grown up Catholic and never given much thought to Jesus. Jesus was the figure on the cross that accompanied ritual and ceremony. Jesus was “not personalized,” as Cesar says. With Oscar’s death imminent, however, Cesar’s heart was stirred. He came to Mars Hill, compelled to find a church where he could learn about the gospel and about the Jesus that Oscar knew. At the Mars Hill Men’s Training Day last winter, Cesar responded to the altar call and gave his life to Jesus.

The weekend before Oscar went home to be with Jesus, he instructed Cesar in how to address their family with regard to the cancer. “I don’t have room for doubt,” Oscar said. “I need you to speak life.”

Cesar did just that when he eulogized his brother in Spanish to three hundred non-Christian relatives. He told the story of how, as children, he had saved Oscar’s life—but in his brother’s death and testimony, Jesus used Oscar to save Cesar’s soul. Cesar didn’t want to waste his brother’s death. When you love Christ, Cesar said, “you want that for everyone else.”

Oscar was a drink offering poured out to save Cesar from himself—from partying and immorality, from death to life. In memory of his brother, Cesar cites Romans 5:3, we rejoice in our sufferings. “I witnessed my brother live this verse,” he says. “Now I have that hope.”

When I interviewed Cesar for this story, he praised Jesus for giving him just one day to become a Christian. This past Easter, it was our pleasure to baptize Cesar at Mars Hill Lake City. His account of who he was apart from Christ was simple and straightforward, “I was a wretch,” he said, followed by “it’s all about Jesus.”

In addition to starting new campuses, Mars Hill Church is busy starting new churches through the work of the Acts 29 Network.

The Acts 29 Network is a ministry supported by Mars Hill Church that helps start churches around the world by providing theological, relational, missional, and pastoral support. For many church planters, Acts 29 provides crucial fellowship with like-minded brothers and encouragement in what may be the loneliest and hardest calling for a man and his family. Pastor Mark Driscoll serves as the president of Acts 29 and I serve as the secretary, treasurer, and chairman of the board.

During the last twelve months, Mars Hill Church gave over a million dollars to Jesus’ work across the nation and around world. Here’s a glimpse at how we’re working together to spread the gospel.

• Over the last year, 39 new churches were started through Acts 29.
• Acts 29 has over 138 member churches in 32 states from various traditions, including Baptist, Presbyterian, Assembly of God, EFCA, and nondenominational—all united by Jesus.
• Currently, 56 more church plants have been approved and are completing the membership requirements. An additional 211 applicants are in the pipeline.
• In all, over 35,000 people are worshipping at Acts 29 Network churches across the United States every Sunday.
• Mars Hill Church helps fund Acts 29 churches in strategic locations where cash flow is a perennial obstacle despite faithful and generous members.

As one example of the relational and pastoral benefits of Acts 29, a few months ago Mars Hill Church hosted one hundred eighty people in Vail, CO, at an annual retreat where lead planter couples could relax, be encouraged, and be strengthened by each other for the upcoming year.

In the past year, we provided church planter coaching to new Acts 29 pastors. We have trained forty-six pastors as certified church-planter coaches. This coaching increases the effectiveness of the church plant and encourages the church planter by providing wisdom to make proper decisions.

We hosted five Acts 29 “Boot Camps” in the past year:

• Raleigh, NC (September 2007): Sold-out attendance of over 350
• Chicago, IL (January 2008): Sold-out attendance of 240
• Seattle, WA (February 2008): Sold-out attendance of over 1,100 (in conjunction with Text & Context)
• New York, NY (April 2008): Dwell NYC. Attendance of 470
• London, UK (July 2008): Attendance of 200 with representatives from 12 different nations

Acts 29 Boot Camps focus on 1) The Man (his character, calling, competency, and courage); 2) The Message (of Jesus and reformed theology); and 3) The Mission (to plant reproducing, gospel-centered churches). Most Boot Camp content is available for free on the Acts 29 website.

Thank you for your care and support, Mars Hill Church. With your faithful stewardship and devotion to the mission of our local church, you’re helping thousands of people around the country and around the world to know and love Jesus.

Visit acts29network.org for more about church planting and Acts 29. Read this article in the 2007-2008 MHC annual report.

Four of Mars Hill Church’s seven campuses are new within the past twelve months. The most recent (Olympia, WA) represents a different brand of expansion: grassroots, low-budget, and well outside Seattle city limits.

Mars Hill Olympia has been gaining local attention as the core group grows, and we’re carefully learning from the whole experience in hopes that we can use it as a model for future growth. This year’s annual report provided a glimpse into some of these lessons with thoughts from some of the new campus’s leaders:

How is the Olympia campus unique?

Gary Shavey (Olympia Campus Pastor): It is operating very much like a church plant; in the absence of seed money, we’re raising almost all of our own funds. That means all we have for now is the wise counsel of existing campuses, the strong preaching of Pastor Mark, and a lecture room at South Sound Community College. We watch the sermons on one-week DVD-delay to keeps costs low. In the book of Acts, church leaders rise from within the community; in Olympia, there is room for leaders to arise as the campus grows. The reality is we have no full-time staff dedicated to the campus, so a lot of work is done by the people of the church, which creates an incredible sense of ownership and a model that we hope to emulate with future campuses.

How did the new campus begin?

Kimball Parker (community group leader): My wife Elizabeth began considering Mars Hill membership in spring 2006. We thought hard about what membership in a church would look like when the church was over an hour away from our house. In the end, we decided that it would only make sense if we could start a community group in our West Olympia home. I introduced myself to one of the Mars Hill elders and explained the scenario to him. Our idea was to show the video of the sermon from the week before in our home. We would have people over for dinner and they would eat during the video of the sermon. After the sermon, we would serve dessert, and then have a discussion about the sermon and how it applied to our lives. This was officially started in October of 2006.

Over the course of the next few months, we had people coming from Olympia, Dupont, Lacey, Rochester, and Centralia. In January 2008, our group of about fifty began meeting on Sundays at a local restaurant/pub as a “gathering of community groups.” Last spring, Mars Hill became more involved and helped guide us toward becoming a campus. As of July 1, we became official.

Jenny Matthews (children’s ministry leader and community group host): We hoped to position ourselves to be a trial campus—we are close enough to work with, but far enough from Seattle to be a good test site for future more distant sites. Part of this process was showing our faithfulness to Mars Hill leadership. It seemed reasonable that if they were to create a campus opportunity, they would need to be convinced of our sincerity. We looked for any opportunity to build relationship with leadership. In addition to faithfulness, Mars Hill would need to see resourcefulness, flexibility, and integrity.

What advice do you have for people hoping to start a Mars Hill campus in their city?

Bruce Ensign (community group leader): My advice is to always seek God’s will, be patient, and do what you think he is directing you to do even if it doesn’t make complete sense to you at the time. Do it and look expectantly to what God will do. Finally, do all you can do and leave the outcome to God.

Final thoughts from Pastor Gary…

Olympia is in a strategic location as a hub for the South Sound region. It’s a diverse city with a conservative side, a vocal liberal side, a military side, a New Age side, an obvious political side, and a neo-pagan side. There is a lot of work ahead.

Please pray for our missionaries in Olympia. For more details about the campus, visit the Olympia campus website. For more details about campus and church planting, email Pastor Scott Thomas.

I grew up in Montana as an avid fan of the outdoors. I still love the opportunity to get outside and enjoy God’s amazing creation, and last week I had a great time to do just that while staying at a friend’s beach house on the Puget Sound. I was there to get twenty-four hours of silence, study, and solitude as I prepare to preach Jonah 3 and 4 at our Shoreline campus in the coming weeks.

Sitting near the water, reading the book of Jonah, considering the mysteries of sea life, I watched the following scene unfold…

Little flies hovering above the water were being snatched up by dozens of jumping fish. A sea lion floated by, trolling for the fly-fed fish in between breathes of air. An eagle landed on a boat lookout fifty yards offshore. He considered the view and prepared for his own attempt to insert himself into the aquatic food chain below. Less graceful was the dumb seagull that also wanted in on the action. He paddled onto the scene with no tact whatsoever, lurching after countless jumping fish—striking about eight seconds too late every time. Eventually, he took off for Ivar’s where the fish are already fried and personally served from the hands of excitable tourists.

As the world in front of me and the world of Jonah coalesced in my mind, I was just waiting for this living biology tableau to explode in a mountain of whitewater as some gnarly sea beast from the deep emerges to consume the flies, the jumping fish, two sea lions, the eagle, and a handful of seagulls all in one gulp. It never happened.

Nonetheless, it was an interesting setting for studying a book that deals with God’s hand in nature. If you’d like to study alongside Mars Hill Church as we learn from the book of Jonah, Crossway has a unique resource available online. Their ESV Study Bible is still on pre-order, but you can already get free advance samples online, including the full book of Jonah and all associated commentary. Download the PDF and visit the official website for more info.

My friends at Crossway books have been great to work with on all of my recent and forthcoming publishing projects. What I have particularly appreciated is their ethic as a ministry; their main commitment and first priority–even above business–is to distribute sound Bible teaching. Therefore, they have proven to be incredibly gracious with content. For example, every book purchased from their website comes with a free PDF version.

In their generosity, Crossway is now giving away a free PDF chapter from each of my books to anyone who might benefit from the material or anyone interested in blogging about the content. You can download these chapters on Resurgence.

Also, if you want to see an amazing presentation of a chapter from the forthcoming book on the cross, called Death by Love, the guys in my Preaching and Theology branch at Mars Hill Church created an online version that you can read here.

Of course, all of these books are available for purchase in their entirety.

The “Changed by Jesus” series features stories about how Jesus is working through the ministry of Mars Hill Church to change lives. If God has used Mars Hill to transform your life, please consider emailing your account to testimony[at]marshillchurch.org.

This week’s story is a little different. Arjuna is not a member of Mars Hill Church, but we are all members of his ministry, Vision Nationals, through longstanding support and partnership. Read more about Vision Nationals in our Annual Report (PDF), or visit visionnationals.org.

Christ Alone — Changed by Jesus #7

By Arjuna Chiguluri, founder of Vision Nationals

I was seventeen when my father, a devout Hindu believer, came to Christ after a miraculous healing from paralysis. From that time on he studied the Christian Scriptures and vowed that all of his family would serve Jesus Christ as the only God. Despite the miracle, I was not about to trade the gods and scriptures I had loved since my childhood for a Western religion. I could not deny Jesus was a god; he had healed my father, after all. But by no means would I serve Christ as the only God.

Angry at my father’s conversion and convinced that the Bible would affirm a plurality of gods, I pored over the Bible my father had given me, looking for the evidence I needed to convince him that the Bible was consistent with our Hindu beliefs. What I found instead was: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them…know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Ex. 20:4–5; Deut. 4:39).

Still angry, unconvinced, and certain that plural gods must be affirmed in the Bible somewhere, I studied the Scriptures for six months looking for the answer I wanted. Then one morning I awoke a Christian. To this day I cannot explain what happened. I remember waking up. My room looked strange. The colors were literally brighter. I looked out my bedroom window at the people walking by and thought, “Man, they need Jesus!” And so it began that, from the moment he saved me, God burdened me to plant churches to reach people with the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.

As reported in our recent publication, here is a picture of Mars Hill Church by the numbers:

• Average weekly attendance for 2007-2008 = 5,771
• High attendance for 2007-2008 = 8,070 (Easter Sunday)
• Number of new campuses in 2007-2008 = 4 (Lake City, Bellevue, Downtown Seattle, Olympia)
• Number of community groups = 195
• Number of new bands = 13
• Over the last 3 years, giving increased an average of 42% and attendance increased an average of 26% (per year).

For more details, download a PDF version of the annual report.

Numerical growth is relatively easy to measure. Church health, on the other hand, does not lend itself to quantification. To paraphrase 1 Samuel 16:7, men tally service attendance and financial contributions, “but the Lord looks on the heart.” How can we know that we’re a people growing in our faith and not just keeping busy? The Lord looks on the heart, and only the Lord truly knows what’s there, but he’s given us things like prayer, the Bible, and each other to align our hearts with his.

What’s more, pastors are burdened with a special responsibility for the care of the congregation in their charge (Heb. 13:17). We have been commissioned by God to shepherd you (our local church) well—which means we must take time to reflect on the way things are going, which in turn means we must agree on measures to assess progress, which in turn means we must identify the indicators (if not quantifiers) of church health and fruitful ministry.

Our intent in all of this record keeping is not to reduce the Great Commission to a raw numbers game. These indicators are merely one way to monitor the general state of our church and keep track of the direction in which we’re heading to ensure that it’s faithful and sound. We share all of this information because we love our church family and we desire the faithful to be knowledgeable and united, that we may continue forward together, for the sake of the gospel and Jesus’ glory.

At Mars Hill, we want to be a big church because we want a lot of people to meet Jesus. We also want to be a healthy church where people learn to love Jesus, receive new hearts from Jesus, and bank their past, present, and future on Jesus.

The website is now live.

Olympia’s daily newspaper, The Olympian, visited our newest and southernmost campus on the day of their official launch.

Pastor Scott Thomas, who is on the planning committee and helped launch the Olympia campus, said [the church's appeal is] because Mars Hill teaches straight from the Bible. He said there are no outdated rules or hesitation to address real-life issues such as sexuality — the topic Driscoll will address this fall.

You can read the full article online on The Olympian’s website.