I wrote a recap of our first Pre-Launch meeting with Pastor Mark over at the Mars Hill Orange County site. We had prayed for 300 people but God blew apart our expectations and nearly 700 showed up to hear about Jesus, the Gospel, and God’s mission. I got to meet a ton of people passionate about people meeting Jesus in Orange County and heard great stories about people bringing Muslim families and people who left the church to hear the Gospel. I can’t wait to see where God leads all of this.
For the past two years, I’ve served on Mars Hill Church’s Media & Communications team as the PR/Media Relations director. On Monday, my wife, daughter, and I are flying to California to plant Mars Hill Church Orange County. The list of things I’m thankful for from being on this team feels endless but I wanted to share seven things I’ve learned from the fine men and women I’ve served alongside.
The Gospel is sufficient. The good news of reconciliation to the Father through Christ on the cross is central to everything Mars Hill. It is easy for Christians, pastors, churches, heck even whole denominations, to veer from the sufficiency of the Gospel in the name of cultural accommodation. As incredibly talented and media-savvy as each person on this team might be, the Gospel is central in every team meeting, new hire, blog post, or video.
Jesus is the hero. This is a result of the Gospel being primary. Because the Gospel proclaims Jesus as the hero of our salvation and of history, we make him the hero. If Jesus isn’t the hero of the video, testimony, graphic, or anything else, we don’t do it. The glory doesn’t go to an individual or even the church; it goes to Jesus.
Christ and Culture aren’t mutually exclusive. I came here after ten years in the music industry and thought I understood a lot about culture, and I did in a sense, but what I lacked was an understanding of Christ and culture. As culture makers, we aren’t to accommodate Christ to culture, pit him against it, or see him as deistically aloof to it, but to see how he transforms it. Christ and culture aren’t mutually exclusive and they aren’t synergistic. Instead, as Christians, we are to be faithful messengers of the Gospel in whatever role God has called us. It was the presence of thousands of faithful Christians, speaking and living the Gospel to those around them, that led to over 700 being baptized on Easter.
Service to the church is primary. Some of these guys on this team did work at the church long before they ever got were paid for it. They painted walls, emptied trash, swung a hammer, and volunteered countless hours because they loved seeing people meet Jesus and wanted to play whatever role they could in that. That same servant’s heart permeates their approach to their work now. It is constantly humbling.
Challenge the creative ones. In many corners of the church, the creative people in the church are catered to and sought after. In the case of Mars Hill, the creative people are challenged. They are challenged to serve and to be faithful where they are. Mars Hill’s culture is simultaneously encouraging because “creative” and “Christian” aren’t seen as mutually exclusive, but it is also challenging because it isn’t pandering.
Know your priorities. While service and creativity are high values, they never subsume biblical priorities. We’re called to be faithful 1) Christians, 2) husbands and wives, 3) and fathers and mothers before anything else. I’ve learned more about being a good man, husband, and father than I could’ve imagined. The men here have shaped me and changed my life, marriage, and family in numerous ways. The first thing they do is to challenge me to love God first, my wife second, my daughter third, and everything else (including myself) after that.
Influence comes through humility. In summary, I’ve learned from a department made up of people who are Gospel-centered, Jesus-focused, missiological in their approaches, have servant hearts, and are immensely talented, but who keep the first things first. Simply by osmosis and the demonstration of their character, they’ve made me a better man and have played a crucial role in my development as we prepare to plant Mars Hill Church in Orange County. It is immensely humbling and we’re grateful every day that God brought us to Seattle.
Many today who are becoming interested in the interrelationship of the gospel to broader doing-mercy-type deeds tend to run the stereotypes like this: “The previous generation came down either on the social-transformation side or on the gospel-fidelity side, and we want to put together both.” These stereotypes don’t work. Do not get yourself in the place where you are thinking self-righteously about those who have come before you. It’s so easy for any generation to start saying, “They did it this way wrong and this way wrong, but we’ve got it right.” Avoid casting what you’re trying to do on the background of a stereotype in which everybody else has got it wrong. It’s not good for you spiritually, and it’s not fair historically.
In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin, and forgiveness, death and life.
What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?
J. Gresham Machen, Christian Faith in the Modern World, 57
