Mars Hill’s public response seemed insincere precisely because they presented themselves as beleagured by bloggers and journalists who didn’t want to find out the facts while the church was taking significnat measures to prevent basic details of Andrew’s story from being investigated.during the time that Andrew Lamb’s story became a news item.Amid a blogosphere and press eager to reduce every controversy related to Mars Hill about Mark Driscoll the actual controversy, concerns about incompetence, malice and unchecked authority in the biblical counseling/pastoral counseling branch of Mars Hill, were overlooked in favor of critics attempting to make the controversies about Driscoll.Mars Hill advocates, for their part, simply accepted at face value whatever leaders said about former members or staff with no demonstrable interest in investigating matters further.When Mars Hill PR said that they regretted that bloggers and journalists did not contact them to confirm the facts about Andrew’s case this was just that, public relations.Had Mars Hill not undertaken a massive information purge no one in the press would have needed to bother finding out whether or not Andrew’s story was reliable because they could have worked out which divorced-then-remarried pastor had a stepdaughter who could have been involved with Andrew.Critics supposed that Driscoll had to be the subject of discussion as often as not.

You may recall that we used this situation as a basis for discussion last year, and then decided to leave further discussion to others who were better informed.

The story of Lance (a pseudonym) was another story of church leadership taking a stern stance against a romantic pairing.

What was lost in the coverage for and against Mars Hill was that these controversies were not swirling around because of executive pastor Mark Driscoll, the controversies surrounded the competence and good will of what are called biblical living pastors.

(See “MPT Posts on Church Discipline — And I Suggest a Better Way,” “Thoughts on Church Discipline and Relational Wisdom,” and “Grace Means Saying, ‘I’m Sorry.'” I also encourage you to check out his riff on Martha’s post on the abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, in which he applies her observations that there were cultural factors contributing to the problems in Ireland and helps us see some of the cultural factors affecting Mars Hill and other Neo-Reformed bastions that provide context for their scandals. WTH has some extremely important things to say, not just about Mars Hill and their shortcomings, but also about the biases and failures of the Christian blogosphere and other Mars Hill critics. * * * In early 2012 Mars Hill Church in Seattle made headlines over the disciplinary procedures made in the case of former church member Andrew Lamb.

Andrew’s story was shared by Matthew Paul Turner and told a story of a young man who was dating a pastor’s daughter, engaged in behavior he regretted, confessed the behavior to his girlfriend, and the confession catalyzed the gears of the Mars Hill disciplinary apparatus.