I recently came across this link: Is Your Church Interested in Becoming A Part of Mars Hill and upon reading the content, realized that this was a hack on their site, either done as a simple prank, or as a malicious attempt to discredit this very godly organization. Either way, I knew the only right thing to do was to let them know. Please follow the above link to read their original post and then read my email to them below:

I just wanted to let you guys know that your site has been hacked. Someone broke in and wrote this off the wall post about churches becoming part of Mars Hill. I thought it might be a real opportunity at first but as I read on I knew it must be a hack because there were so many unbiblical elements to it. I have noted a few:

Point number two states that churches are closing. I am not sure how a group of people, the biblical definition of a church, can close. I knew that the leaders at Mars Hill wouldn’t make a mistake like referring to an organization or building as a church.

Point number three seems to equate success with numbers of converts. By this standard the dozen disciples that appeared to be dedicated to Jesus would seem like quite a ministry failure. Mars Hill has far too much respect for Jesus to ever imply such an absurd notion.

Point number four is clearly written to make people feel like Mars Hill is focused on name dropping. We all know that humility and submission are the things most valued by Christ, so Mars Hill would never take an entire paragraph to promote their cause by sharing names of their top leaders.

Point number five is where I really started to realize that this must be some attempt to discredit Mars Hill because it seems to imply the laughable idea that churches are like businesses and pastors are like managers of those businesses. The idea that a pastor would be bogged down with “website, finances, human resources, real estate negotiations, technology” is obviously ridiculous, as we all know that, biblically speaking (as Mars Hill is a Bible based church) pastoring is about ministering to others, not silly things like finances and websites and land negotiations.

Point number six is another absurd one, as it seems to indicate that Mars Hill is concerned about the welfare of their organization. For a business it would be quite imprudent to get involved with another business without all the legalities being fulfilled, but for a church, a body that demonstrates Christ’s love, there is no danger, as there is no concern for their own well being. We all know there is no room for self-concern when we demonstrate Christ’s love. This was how I knew Mars Hill could not have written this.

Point number seven’s focus on resources and professionally trained specialist who can offer official establishment of local church leaders is so preposterous that I finally decided I had to let you folks know about the hack. I felt it would not be right to leave Mars Hill open to the condemnations that would surely come when others saw this falsified page on your site.

I hope this helps.

Thanks.

Dan

UPDATE: I sent this to Mars Hill via their online contact form and an email address on their post. That was over two weeks ago. I’m sure that they received several similar emails and messages. I’m sure many of them were more articulate and intelligent than mine. I don’t know if they replied to all those other ones, but they have not, as of yet, replied to mine.