By Bishop Mike Lowry, Special Contributor…
The invitation came (I think from God) while I was standing at an entrance to the famous Pike Place Market in Seattle. I was taking a picture of a coffee shop across the street with a long line outside its door waiting to be served. A young man (early to mid-30s) approached me with a friendly smile and said, “Hey, how come everyone is trying to get into that Starbucks and why are you and others taking a picture of it?”
“Because” I replied, “that’s the original Starbucks. But, there is no way I am waiting through that long a line.”
Bishop Mike Lowry
We both laughed and then he said, “I really like your shirt.” I had forgotten that I was wearing a shirt with the Kairos Prison Ministry logo on it. Somewhat surprised, I replied, “It’s a great ministry.” Enthusiastically he responded that he agreed and had been involved in Kairos himself. A conversation ensued in which we shared where we were from and where we were headed. I asked him if he knew any churches my wife and I might visit the next day for worship. He recommended Mars Hill Downtown.
For those of you who don’t know, Mars Hill Church (named for the site of Paul’s sermon in Athens found in Acts 17) is a multi-site (14) independent Bible church. The theology is more Calvinist and hard-core evangelical than I embrace, but the ministry is vibrant and courageous in the way in which it engages the city.
Somehow, I heard God inviting me to attend in the stranger’s recommendation.
The next morning, Sunday, Jolynn and I checked out of our hotel and stopped to worship at Mars Hill Downtown Seattle. It was full of young couples. There was great ethnic and economic diversity. The welcome was gracious and the worship vibrant. But what caught our attention was a special announcement about a third of the way through the service in which one of the pastors shared the story of a great church in the heart of Seattle.
In 1908, that church dedicated a marvelous huge sanctuary at the heart of the city. At one time they were one of the largest churches on the West Coast. But, gradually, as the Mars Hill pastor put it, the church in the story got busy with other things and drifted away from offering Christ. According to the speaker, amid many good things, they lost a focus on Christ and slowly the congregation dwindled to a few and then relocated.
The great sanctuary was turned into a music hall for the city and renamed Daniels Recital Hall. Now, with the support of city officials, it is being reclaimed for its original purpose—to proclaim Christ and share the gospel of God’s love, grace and salvation. The pastor called it a “replanting.”
“We believe that we are called to serve our city, love our neighbors, and be as active as possible so people see good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven,” says Mark Driscoll, preaching pastor at Mars Hill Church, making a reference to Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:16 from the famous Sermon on the Mount. “We are looking forward to having a building that allows the Downtown Seattle church body so much room to grow. We hope to fill it with people who love Jesus and love Seattle.”
The words “they lost focus and drifted away from offering Christ as their mission” (my paraphrase of what was said) haunted me. Somehow, I think God was speaking to me. They are words that can apply to many churches from a variety of denominational backgrounds. I’ve seen it happen in our area. Without meaning to, we can turn inward and lose sight of our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. I don’t know if this was the case of that church in Seattle.
The name of the original church? First United Methodist Church of Seattle.
Carefully, oh so carefully and with due honor, I did a “Google search” and found a great website sharing the ministry of First UMC in Seattle. They relocated and it appears to be engaged in a wonderful ministry. God clearly had new plans for them. I celebrate the current mission and ministry of both First UMC, Seattle and Mars Hill Downtown, Seattle.
For me, there was a word of warning and admonition that day. Don’t lose focus. Don’t drift away from the primary mission of sharing Christ. Whatever else we do, this needs to stay at the center of what we are about.
Paul’s words must inhabit our interior being and drive our outreaching ministry. “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life—a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” (II Corinthians 5:14-15, The Message)
Bishop Lowry is episcopal leader of the UMC’s Central Texas Conference. The essay first appeared on his blog at www.bishopmikelowry.com and is reprinted with permission.
I know the First UMC Seattle congregation’s story. And it was precisely their focus on their mission that led them sell their expensively aging facility and reinvest in more sustainable ministry to their city. I applaud Bishop Lowry’s admonition to focus on mission, but that focus will sometimes lead different congregations in different directions. First UMC Seattle is a vibrant, growing congregation that is changing lives and changing Seattle through its powerful ministries and outreach.
Bishop Lowry, as a Northwest native and member of LWUMC, I am familiar with 1st UMC Seattle’s plight of their increasingly expensive maintenance of the original building in Seattle. I was very surprised that you took it on hearsay from Mars Church that “they lost focus and drifted away from offering Christ as their mission” in respect to why First Church moved away from their site and relocated. The coverage had been in The Seattle Times about how much money it would cost to update the church, which was one of the primary reasons for relocating. First Church has a very active community of faith, and most definitely has not lost their focus. With all due respect, just looking at a church’s website is not enough to ascertain the truth of someone else’s opinion, and I would hope that you would visit First Church in person to have your own experience there and see the truth of God’s work. Pastor Sandy and the congregation at 1st Church have done wonders with the community in Seattle, and I don’t think that that was a fair comment from the Mars Hill congregant since that individual’s comments were based on a personal bias toward his current congregation.
Maybe it would have been wise to have done a little more research about First UMC -Seattle before commenting on its past. Did you talk with the church pastor? Did you ask anyone about the history of the congregation? Or did you simply rely on what the Mars Hill pastor said? Yes, that’s it. You only heard one perspective and then used that to tell a story that is distant from the facts.
I expect better from a United Methodist bishop.
As a Seattlite, I read with both ironic amusement and deep sadness, Bishop Lowry’s characterization of Mars Hill Church as “vibrant and courageous” as he simultaneously dismissed First United Methodist Church, the oldest congregation in Seattle–a church committed to ministering to the poor, and to providing shelter to dozens of homeless men in Seattle as well as breakfast and other meals for literally hundreds of Seattle’s needy—as having “lost it’s mission.” Since the good Bishop clearly made these remarks from a vantage point at least as far away as the Planet Mars, I thought he might like to hear what the Good Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church has gone on record as standing for from someone who actually lives in Seattle (note: all of the below can be found in the sermon texts and notes on the Mars Hill web site):
1. Driscoll states that women should ‘submit’ to their husbands—husbands rule in all things. And by the way, did you know that the only reason pastors have affairs is if their wives “let themselves go, ” according to a revelation in the local newspapers a few years ago that he eventually had to repudiate at the insistence of the religious community in Seattle. I guess Mark believes the Devil makes them do it.
2. He states that at the beginning of time, the earth went from barren to completely populated in six “clearly literal” days and that evolutionary theory is incompatible with the book of Genesis because “evolution teaches that one species evolves into another species while Genesis 1 says each species had offspring according to its kind,” thus demonstrating a complete, although in Mark’s case, not at all startling ignorance of the theory of evolution, and not-so-startling fundamentalist perspective.
3. Mark opines that Eve is not actually to be blamed for sin in the world, primarily because she was simply too dumb to know what she was doing and that Adam’s sin was in not being enough of a man to “dominate her.” He states that women suffer the pain of childbirth basically because they “try to dominate their husbands instead of submitting to them.”
4. The pastor suggests that dinosaurs don’t exist today possibly because they failed to get on the boat (Ark) and were drowned in the flood. (He does seem to struggle to try to explain the fossil record).
5. He writes that the tower of Babel was God’s curse on us for “relying on technological advancement and the building of a good and decent society, which is simply yet another sin against God.” (Yes, that is a direct quote).
These are just a few of the typical musings of Pastor Driscoll with regard to the Old Testament, and while he studiously avoids the label for himself of “Fundamentalist,” I believe we can all see what is there.
Mars Hill cannot point to a single shelter they have started or maintained, a single group of people they regularly feed, or a needy flock they dedicate any of their considerable funds to tending, except their own congregation. The teachings of that church return repeatedly to the submission of women, (they argue that because they let women teach in the church, their uglier attitudes are not truly “sexist” but reflect the teachings of God), and the ostracizing of homosexuals despite Christ’s rather unequivocal example of ministering to the poor, accepting the outcasts, tending to the less fortunate, and welcoming anyone seeking God’s love.
Give me First United Methodist Church and it’s “lack of mission” over Mars Hill any day of the week.
Gail Van Norman