In addition to preaching at Mars Hill on Sunday and teaching at ReTrain over the weekend, Ed agreed to do a very special free event for everyone at Mars Hill and in Seattle. On Friday night Ed will be spend an evening educating us on mission. In my opinion, there are few better people to learn on this topic from, so if you go to Mars Hill or live in Seattle, then please come join us this Friday from 7-9pm at the Ballard campus.

Dr. Stetzer has planted, pastored, and revitalized numerous churches. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two master’s degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USA Today and CNN.

Ed is Visiting Professor of Research and Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Visiting Research Professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at fifteen other colleges and seminaries. He also serves on the Church Services Team at the International Mission Board. He is one of the leading thinkers on the earth in the areas of evangelism, church planting, and movements. Ed’s primary role is President of LifeWay Research and LifeWay’s Missiologist in Residence, where he oversees a large team of Christian researchers examining the health of churches worldwide.

The Resurgence

Resources to equip leaders to live for Jesus, teach the Bible faithfully, and reach their cities with the gospel. Visit theresurgence.com for more.

You can watch the sermon in it’s entirety or get the transcript in the Mars Hill Church Media Library.

Mars Hill Global

New campuses, new churches, leadership training, and free resources for churches everywhere. In partnership with Acts 29 and Resurgence.

You can view this sermon in its entirety in the Mars Hill Media Library.

Acts 29 Network

Pastor Scott Thomas leads the Acts 29 Network, which exists to start churches that plant churches. More information at the Acts 29 website.

In light of the Raymond Jessop and Yearning For Zion cult, Pastor Mark addressed the question of whether or not polygamy is Biblical.

Various cults, aberrant sects, and perverts make the case that the Bible does mention polygamy and so it is biblically acceptable. However, they fail to acknowledge that the Bible speaks of human sin from beginning to end to show the evil horrors of sin. Therefore, just because something is in the Bible does not mean that God approves of it, as is the case with the rapes, murders, and adulteries reported throughout Scripture.

There are many biblical and practical reasons why polygamy is sinful and harmful.

You can read Pastor Mark’s response in it’s entirety over at The Resurgence.

Giving at Mars Hill

For more information about giving to the church–why and how–visit our secure giving page and check out Pastor Mark’s Generous series.

3. God Is Omniscient
Number three. She says that God is what we’ll call omniscient, which means all knowing. She says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.” What she says is, “My God knows everything. My God knows that I’m young. My God knows that I’m poor. My God knows that I’m pregnant. My God knows that I don’t have a lot of resources at my disposal. My God knows that my reputation is going to be destroyed. My God knows that my life is going to be difficult and complicated. My God knows.”

Friends, this is where your view of God is so incredibly important. So incredibly important. Some say, “Oh all religions teach basically the same thing.” No they don’t. No they don’t. See, pantheism, panentheism, vague spirituality—God’s not a person, he’s a force; he doesn’t pay attention to you, it’s just an energy that endows you. See, our God is personal. He’s alive. He’s living. He’s personal. He thinks, he feels, he speaks, he loves, he knows. God knows every hair on your head, the Bible says. God knows every longing of your heart. He knows every day of your life. God knows it all. And do you know what, he pays attention. There are a lot of people, but God knows everyone by name. And he pays attention to the exact circumstances of their life. And he’s a Father who is attentive in detail to all of his sons and daughters. That’s what she says.

Mars Hill iPhone App

Instant access to the entire Mars Hill media library—and the Mars Hill Blog. Get the Mars Hill iPhone app for free at the iTunes store.

Mars Hill Church is looking to hire a general counsel in their Central Operations branch. If you practice law and have a heart for the church, please see the entire job description and qualifications at Marshillchurch.org.

Here is a summary of the role we are looking to fill:

The General Counsel will work in the Central Operations Branch, which fulfills the church-wide administrative and logistical functions, such as finance, HR, legal, and technology. The General Counsel will manage all legal issues for Mars Hill Church and will provide senior management with effective advice on organization strategies and their implementation. This person will provide legal, tax and business, operations, and ministry-related advice, representation and oversight to and for Mars Hill Church. The General Counsel will work closely with the Central Operations leadership team and report to the Executive Pastor.

The Central Operations branch also has job openings for a content manager and a front end web developer. For job descriptions and how to apply, please go to our job opportunities page.

This is a post from the Lake City campus pastor, James Harleman, that originally appeared on the Lake City blog.

Let’s just confess: I like to dress up. As a drama geek in high school and an actor in college theater, it was inevitable. My wife and I even met in a production of Brigadoon, so wearing costumes – even a kilt – is not really that strange to us. Our wedding reception was a masquerade ball, and our Tenth Anniversary party year has a Venetian Carnivale theme. ANY excuse to wear curious or atypical garb has an allure (as the pictures in the post will attest to).
Obviously then, our participation with a holiday like Halloween becomes a necessary conversation. WILL we participate? If so, HOW will we participate? Every year, we ask congregants at Mars Hill Church to do the same. The following examination provides good fruit for discussion, discernment, and decision-making on this second-hand issue.

It’s the time of year when leaves die and trees turn to skeletons. The garden stops providing. An evening stroll changes from bright sun and chirping birds to dark night and the howling wind. As Halloween approaches, the fact that we begin to consider death and ghost stories is not inherently pagan. It’s human. It’s what we do with those thoughts that matters.

The issue of Halloween and whether Christians should observe this holiday invariably rises from the grave each October. More to the point, most Christians do observe it, but differ in the level of participation or acceptance of it. Evangelist Jack Chick, for instance, the man famous for “Chick Tracts” naively depicts Halloween as a night when ancient Celtic Druids raped and sacrificed virgins, leaving carved pumpkins on the doorsteps of households that gave up their daughters (never mind the fact that pumpkins were a New World plant exported and only grown in Europe recently). Other Christians offer the opposite but equally naive defense of “it’s no big deal”, sending their kids out to eat candy and legitimize American obesity statistics.

Halloween has a long and complex history; following the meandering chain linking a pagan harvest festival to toddlers dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is not simple. Christian and secular historians keep finding layers of revisionist history that try to wrap the origins of this holiday up in a nice little bow (perhaps so it can go under the Christmas tree? The decorations come out early enough). Before addressing the Christian’s response to this holiday, let’s look at what little we do know.

Halloween 101
Ancient Celts celebrated a holiday called Samhain (essentially “end of summer”), where they would extinguish their hearth fires and host large ceremonial bonfires, sacrificing animals and crops. This didn’t occur on October 31 but around the same time, depending on the phases of the moon. It marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of a season where the people would be dependent on food stores and shelter from the elements. Superstitious Celts associated winter with death and thought that the season’s transition was marked by the close proximity of spirits; they believed this thin veil would help their Druid priests make prophecies, enabling them to survive the harsh winter. There is an accrued mythology that Druids also wore masks on this night and went from door to door, but historical evidence does support this theory; it seems more like creative fiction manufactured to explain the evolution of modern customs. While not a bad educational supplement, something is not history simply because it appeared on the History Channel.

The name of our present-day holiday, Halloween (or “All Hallows’ Eve“), actually stems from a celebration for saints formed by the early church. A celebration day for all saints emerges in church history as early as the 4th century, but it was originally set in May or the day following Pentecost (some records suggest this also paved over a similar Roman day of the dead). It was the Germans who initially shifted the custom to November 1st, and whether or not this had to do with the practices of the Irish Celts is questioned by historians to this day.

In the 8th century, Pope Gregory III universally changed the date to mirror the German date in conjunction with the consecration of the chapel in St. Peter’s. “All Hallows’ Day” or “All Saints’ Day” would later become a day not only to recognize official Catholic Saints, but also to commemorate the dead and visit the cemetery to reflect on family or friends who had passed away.

Several hundred years later, November 2nd would become “All Souls’ Day” in Catholic tradition. All Hallows’ Eve simply marked the night before, much like Christmas Eve. A focus on cemeteries and the dead had as much to do with Catholic as Celtic traditions, and the accrued traditions and superstitions are a mixed bag stretching up into our own early American immigrant traditions of harvest festivals, and the way Mexican culture turned All Saints’ and Souls’ Days into the “Day of the Dead” festival.

Despite myth and folklore imposed in retrospect on this holiday, recent study reveals that trick-or-treating is a fairly new convention that didn’t become significant until 1930 in the United States. Europe and other countries co-opted the practice, caught up in our merchandising and global influence. Forms of costumed begging have existed for centuries in Christianized Europe, called “mumming” or “guising” and usually involve singing or performing a short play in exchange for food or drink. Wassailing is another grand tradition of singing and going from house to house.

One of the closest similarities we find with a loose connection to trick-or-treating appears in the Middle Ages on All Souls’ Day (November 2nd), where the poor would go from home to home and offer prayers for those in purgatory in exchange for food. However strong evidence suggests that childish mischief and vandalism on the 30th and 31st in early 1900s America (particularly vicious in Detroit, where October 30, the day before Halloween, became known as “Devil’s Night”) gave rise to organized evening activity to make actual treats replace the increasing abundance of tricks.

If Christianity did not successfully pave over this holiday (much as Christmas paved over the Roman Saturnalia), Americana certainly did. This has been punctuated visibly with our indigenous pumpkin replacing the original “Jack-O-Lantern”, originally an Irish turnip. If Halloween itself was a pumpkin, however, there would truly be nothing left to carve. The seasonal change has been celebrated by pagans and Christians for centuries, taking on the customs of a dozen cultures along the way. Its present incarnation receives disdain not only from many Christians but also from professing witches and wiccans. The former feel that it’s intrinsically tied to satanic beliefs and the latter group sees it as a distorted mockery of their beliefs.

One of the most interesting anecdotes I found in researching the history of Halloween is that the one activity many churches do engage in at replacement events like church “Harvest Festivals” is perhaps the one most easily linked to paganism: bobbing or “ducking” for apples was actually a divination ritual related to love and fertility.

To Trick or Not to Treat?
Even if we ascribe church origins to Halloween, the holiday does differ from Christmas. Some will offer that the week in December when we commemorate Christ’s birth was once a Roman festival celebrating Saturn, and may have even involved both gift-giving and evergreen decor. They make the case that Christmas is compromised by paganism just like Halloween. They will also mention that most Christians call the day Jesus rose from death “Easter“, which has roots in pagan fertility rituals (hence the rabbit and those horribly delectable Cadbury Cream Eggs).

As Christmas and Easter have overrun and co-opted various trappings, however, there is for Christians a clear, central focus on Jesus’ incarnation. Halloween may not be inherently evil, but it also has no central, specific focus on the Lord we love. Whether we see Halloween as pagan practices, Catholic traditions, or good old American, candy-coated commercialism, none of these offers great inspiration to participate.

At Mars Hill Church, we don’t believe in the deities worshipped by the Celts or the rituals used to appease or summon them. We do, however, recognize that there are evil spirits that confuse and lead people astray from relationship with the one true God. We recognize that the Bible calls all Christians “saints” and we don’t believe in the Catholic extra-biblical concepts of sainthood or purgatory. Many of the ideas and rituals that have contributed to the Halloween mish-mash aren’t congruent with our beliefs. However, setting aside times to remember or honor those we love that have passed away (hopefully to be with our Savior Jesus) is not a bad idea. On a less somber note, wearing Spider-man costumes, making funny faces on vegetables, and engaging in neighborhood activities where one can both give and receive hospitality is not something we oppose. Fictional fantasy tales of monsters and elves even scary ones are not wholly inappropriate either, whether punctuated on this particular weekend or sprinkled throughout the year in classic tales from authors including Tolkien and Lewis. We regard Halloween as a second-hand issue and ask that every Christian examine their response to the modern-day Halloween celebration in our culture.

Some members of Mars Hill opt to avoid Halloween altogether because portions of its mixed up history prick their conscience. Others see it as a truly americanized holiday, not specifically Christian but essentially “American” like Thanksgiving or Presidents’ Day, and have no conscience issues participating. Others still draw various lines in between; some don’t go out and actively participate, but remain in their homes and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters so that they can offer hospitality to their neighbors and community. Others gather together to hold festivities that exclude the more overtly creepy or questionable elements.

For those who have shunned Halloween because they were simply told it was evil, or for those who have participated and never bothered to weigh its appropriateness, your pastors would encourage the employment of godly wisdom, discernment, and a sense of our shared mission as Christians. Our abstinence or participation in regard to Halloween should not be derived from fear, misinformation, or pressure but rather from a sincere love of Jesus; every response to our culture and its festivals is a way to point to the God we love and serve.

Lastly, for parents, don’t forget that gluttony is a sin. Be careful not to force your kids to learn this the hard way: lying on an altar of plastic wrap and tin-foil, holding their bulbous stomachs. If you participate in Halloween, it might be the perfect time to introduce the concept of moderation.

Another Halloween Fact:
October 31st is also “Reformation Day“, commemorating the day in 1517 when Christian reformer Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses challenging the doctrine of penance, the authority of the pope, and the usefulness of indulgences. Dressing up the kids like Reformers and handing out doctrinal challenges, however, might not be the wisest form of cultural engagement. The period outfits are cool, though.

As we stepped off the plane, God’s grace was overwhelming, and the experience brought tears to our eyes. I can think of at least nine specific reasons why:

Pastor Dave Bruskas

Mars Hill Albuquerque is blessed with a humble, gifted servant-leader in Pastor Dave. He is a wise and gracious man of God with an incredible vision and passion to reach the men who are leaving a tragic mess of broken homes and families in their city.

Pastor Dave’s Family

Pastor Dave’s four girls are funny, gracious, and they adore their dad. His wife Kara is awesome, an exemplary woman of God. We stayed with the Bruskases, and they are a fun, uniquely gifted family that loves Jesus very much.

Regional Connections

I met one guy at the campus who had driven over from Arizona where he shows Mars Hill sermons at a prison. He was visiting Albuquerque to see what God is doing in Southwest and how he can continue to partner with Mars Hill. He said the men in prison are responding profoundly to Pastor Mark’s teaching. Prison campuses? I love it.

Family Baptisms

About two dozen people got baptized on the first official day of Mars Hill Albuquerque. I saw a father baptize his four kids—three daughters and one son. It was beautiful to see a whole family that loves Jesus and kids who are serving him from a very young age.

Pastor Dave’s Dad

Tom Bruskas is the nicest, most helpful greeter I’ve ever met. He opens the door for everybody who shows up, and he was there to lend a hand before and after service as the first to arrive and the last to leave. He needs to run a training program for greeters because I’ve never seen anyone do it better.

Families from Seattle

I met one family who moved to New Mexico from Washington. They were at the Bellevue campus one week, and in the Albuquerque congregation the next, already blessed with community in their new home.

The Press

Launch day provided many opportunities to talk about Jesus and connect with the local media. God’s favor was abundant.

Sunshine, Chile, Lighting…

Though many cultural parallels exist between Albuquerque and Seattle, it was great to experience a taste of what makes New Mexico unique. It’s always a tough choice between red and green chile, sometimes I can’t decide and settle for both—what the locals call “Christmas.”

The Lobo Theater

The venue for Mars Hill Albuquerque is a very cool space with a fascinating history. I love seeing what used to be a theater where segragation was practiced now be a place where God is reconciling the nations to himself through the work of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’m looking forward to many more fond memories of Albuquerque as God builds his church throughout the region.

Find Pastor Jamie on Facebook and Twitter.

Mars Hill Global

New campuses, new churches, leadership training, and free resources for churches everywhere. In partnership with Acts 29 and Resurgence.

Pastor Mark’s sermons were downloaded over 4.4 million times last year – expository sermons on books like Genesis, Nehemiah, Ruth, and Ephesians; and topical sermons like the Doctrine, Vintage Jesus, and Religion Saves series.

But did you know there’s a whole other source of Biblical truth and theology available at Mars Hill?

Some of the greatest hymns were written by theologians. Martin Luther, John Wesley, Isaac Watts, and John Newton took the incredible Biblical truths that captivated them and created Gospel-centered hymns that we still sing today – songs that still guide our worship and inform our views of God hundreds of years after they were written.

We’re excited to announce a new resource from Mars Hill Church that we hope will serve all of you – those in Mars Hill’s campuses and those in our global audience – as well as Pastor Mark’s sermons.

Pastor Tim Smith is launching a podcast that will deliver the newest songs from Mars Hill Church’s bands straight to your iPod. Here is his description:

The Mars Hill Church: Worship podcast will highlight worship leaders and songwriters from across the church as well as brief insights into the theology of worship and why we respond to God the way we do at Mars Hill Church. There will also be new songs with every installment. Join me for the first episode, which includes an interview and new song from Cam Huxford of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle and another song from my band Ex Nihilo.

Download the Mars Hill: Worship podcast and subscribe to the feed to get all future content. We hope you enjoy it and let Pastor Tim know what you think on Twitter at twitter.com/pastortimsmith.