I was a bit surprised to open Overcast and see a new episode of Rise and Fall of Mars Hill (R&F from here on out) in my feed. I knew there was going to be a new upload schedule, but I didn’t expect it on a Tuesday? Most of my conversations regarding the podcast series hosted by Mike Cosper have been offline and have varied from those outraged and think it’s a form of “failure porn” to those who think it’s groundbreaking and a net gain for fixing systemic issues in the American church. For me, I’ve taken a more cautionary approach, but there are a couple of reasons for that which I’ll disclose now before getting into the episode.
Back in the late 2000s, I worked at a church that hosted Mark Driscoll on multiple occasions. I’ve interacted with Mark in person and also online and always found him to be cordial, helpful, and encouraging. Back in 2011, a sermon series he was doing stopped me from turning in my ministerial credentials after a church I interviewed at asked me if I was gay since I was not married. I’m indebted to Mark for the encouragement he provided through that message. Those experiences with Mark initially made me skeptical of R&F and I imagine they could still taint how I interact with it today. I’ll let you be the judge, dear reader.
I did have a few bad experiences but they did not come from Mark directly. Instead, it came through those who introduced me to him. I remember a men’s group I was a part of that passed along the infamous “How Dare You!” sermon to the leaders at our church.
I remember telling the pastor who passed it along to me that while I thought he was right to be outraged he came off as abusive and I didn’t appreciate the approach. A couple of days later the pastor asked me not to come to our men’s breakfast where the sermon was going to be shown because they didn’t want my negativity to interrupt what they viewed as a “prophetic” message for the men of our church. There were other bad experiences I could get into, but I chose this one because it aligns most with what I think Mike Cosper was getting at in this latest R&F podcast.
Preface
I don’t plan on doing a recap of these episodes. There’s a lot of great bloggers doing recaps and breakdowns so I don’t really feel like I can add anything to the great work they’re doing. However, what I am interested in interacting with is Mike’s main points and how he extrapolates that as a lesson we as the church can learn from the downfall of Mars Hill. That is the stated goal of these podcasts and why he does not believe this is “failure porn”. Does he succeed in prophetically speaking to the church at large or is this just cherry-picking a failed church to prove some type of hidden agenda? All of that interests me and that’s what we’ll dive into.
Media as Median
“I think we’ve failed to see how media has become a barrier to community…The churches unapologetic and unexamined embrace of these mediated ways of connecting have made it complicit in creating isolated and lonely culture.” – Mike Cosper
When I first started blogging, way back on MySpace, people immediately took to my writing and would approach me at school about what I had posted. This was a new experience for me because I was hearing from people I never really interacted with about what they thought about my thoughts. It was actually pretty cool and led to new relationships that I still have to this day and my blog broke the ice. I wish I could say that all of my experiences went this way, but sadly, it more often than not went to dark places.
I soon found out that people purposefully misread you or misrepresented you. That some would have no problem pigeon-holing you to a specific viewpoint you didn’t hold because you quoted someone who did. For many years I was a part of a ministers group for those under 40 and a few female ministers got a hold of a blog I did on Mark Driscoll’s marriage series. In the blog, I shared my experience at one of his marriage seminars at the church I worked at and explained my conclusion that we should have reservations about some of the content presented. But because I posted a few good takeaways I was fraternizing with the enemy and some of these women told other women in the group that they should no longer interact with me publicly because I could not be trusted.
Because of these experiences (and unfortunately other experiences like this), I really resonated with Cosper’s question about our uncritical embrace of media and whether or not we are contributing to the isolation and lonely culture rampant in our society. When I was blogging regularly one of the most isolating feelings in the world was how people thought they knew me solely based on my online persona. They had a caricature of me already made up and treated me in person based on this. Undoubtedly, I bear responsibility for poor editorial choices, falling into ideological political punditry, or presenting us/them conclusions that made people feel “othered”. Yet, that still does not excuse the reductionist view of me that so often followed being a content creator. We have to weigh both of these problems in having an online presence and especially when it comes to church we have to go deeper into these problems because it’s not *our brand* we’re hurting but Christ’s reputation. I don’t know the answer to this yet (because obviously, I’m still blogging), but I definitely appreciate the questions and will be thinking about them more.
Predators
This therefore makes us vulnerable to church cultures which offer transcendent experiences through production and hype and sets us up to follow predatory leaders because they speak to our deep unmet desire for belonging and purpose. – Mike Cosper
When I first heard about the scandals surrounding Ravi Zacharias in the middle of 2014 I immediately thought someone was trying to ruin him. This was Ravi after all. He was a mentor to me (from a distance) and if you scratch the surface of my thinking at all you’ll likely find a Ravi quote not that far down. That circle-the-wagons reaction to accusations is at the heart of what the #MeToo movement, at its best, pointed out as problematic and rightly said we could no longer allow. So when the rest of the allegations came to light after Ravi died in 2020, I no longer wanted to defend “my guy” but I listened and heard what was being said by his accusers. I also repented for my poor reaction the first time.
My first reaction to the accusations towards Ravi is exactly what Cosper is bringing to light in his second point of this podcast. Ravi filled a mentorship void for me. I’ve had pastor after pastor fail morally while mentoring me but Ravi’s podcast filled the void left by those experiences while also engaging my intellect, my emotions, and ultimately presenting a faith that I resonated with more than my Pentecostal experiences had given me. I did not know Ravi personally and never heard him speak in public. My vouching for him was based solely on a tightly monitored media presence and lectures. But yet, I was immediately willing to defend him? Why?
This is a very uncomfortable question. Cosper is brilliant for making us ask it. Have we allowed our apologists, our pastors, our evangelists to be a baptized versions of celebrities? Are we violating the “partiality” rule present throughout Scripture with our favorite preachers or apologists? Have we adopted and been taken captive by worldly ways of viewing people in power? Are parts of us craving the power and spiritual authority we see manifested by those we look up to?
Man, I’m not sure if I have the answers to these questions yet? But, kudos to Cosper and the Christianity Today team for making us ask them. May we seek answers together to represent Christ better to our world. Selah.