Fourteen Long, Good, Hard, Glorious, Painful, Amazing, Frightful Years
They say that dogs age much faster than humans. This month Mars Hill is fourteen years old in human years, and roughly seventy in dog years, which is what it really feels like.
In January of 1996 we had the first informational meeting for Mars Hill Church. Grace and I were both twenty-five years of age and had been married since we were twenty-one-year-old college juniors. I had been a Christian for six years, we did not yet have any children, and she was working for a large communications and advertising firm while I was working at a bookstore, raising support, and trying to launch the church. We were both pulling very long hours, leading a Bible study in our home multiple nights a week, preparing lots of engaged couples for marriage, and doing a lot of counseling with new young Christians and abuse victims. A few families were with us also helping out, but to be honest, we should not have been planting a church.
First, I needed more training and should have waited a few more years. Had I to do it over again, I would not have given up looking for a godly older pastor to help sand off my rough edges and help me get ready not just to start a church, but lead it well for a lifetime. I had tried a few older men and each relationship went badly, so I gave up trying to be rebuked, mentored, and trained. But I should have persevered in that effort.
Second, we did not have the financial support to pull off a church plant. With Grace and I both working jobs in addition to planting and funding most of the ministry out of our own pocket, we were beyond stretched. I should have raised more money but felt guilty doing so.
Third, I did not consider Grace’s needs as I should have. The pressures of a high-stress corporate job and the church plant caused serious medical complications for her that ultimately led to me repenting to her and pulling her out of work so that we could start our family. Thankfully, her health improved immediately and has been great ever since.
Fourth, we did not have enough mature, healthy leaders to carry the load for the little church plant. We had a few families with us, but we needed a lot more. I greatly underestimated the amount of work it would be to really care for and counsel the kind of broken, abused, addicted, and lost people we were attracting. Without enough help, our lives, homes, extra bedrooms, and schedules were filled with some of the most painful life horror stories imaginable. And some of the most glorious redemption you can dream of.
Nonetheless, in January 1996 we started meeting in an upstairs youth room at a Seattle-area church that to this day still has the same gold shag carpet that was salvaged from the ark once the flood waters receded. Our first media set up was a grumpy overhead projector that did not always work, a soundboard we “borrowed” from another church, and, yes, actual home speakers from some single guy’s apartment. We did not really have any regular musicians at the time, so anyone who wanted to give it a shot got to try during our evening service, which can only be described as American Idol audition–esque. On occasion we even had hand drums and a didgeridoo, which I highly recommend you didgeridon’t.
Things really bottomed out on Super Bowl Sunday 1996 at our core gathering service. If memory serves me correct, that night I preached to seventeen people and the offering was $137. As I locked up the building, cleaned up the trash, and folded up the chairs, I had serious doubts if Mars Hill would ever launch as an actual church, much less in October 1996, like we were praying and laboring for.
But God was gracious. That’s the whole story. That’s the real secret. That’s the full truth. God was, is, and will be gracious.
Looking back, it’s odd. This is the only church I’ve ever actually been a member or pastor of. By all accounts it seems that I will give my life, which I pray has forty or fifty years left, to one church. That is an incredible joy for Grace and me. Fourteen years later, our passion for Jesus, one another, and Mars Hill Church burns hotter than ever. I want to publicly thank Jesus for all his grace, thank Grace for being an agent of his grace, and thank the people who have called Mars Hill home over the past fourteen years for the deposits they have made. And, just for fun, I wanted to share a few old photos that I recently found when cleaning out some old boxes in my office.
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