Jubilee Freedom & Shalom

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the conference they attended in Colorado, NCYM, and some of the things they walked away thinking about. "Untended fires soon become nothing but a pile of ashes" -Jim Burns Is the church just supposed to convict people and then walk away? Or should we always follow up with mentoring and discipleship? Daniel and Nate also feel the pain of seeing peers in ministry burning out and leaving ministry because they didn't feel supported or able to keep pace with the busy hustle that the culture demands. How is hurry effecting the church, its members, its pastors, our children? "Beware of the barrenness of a busy life" John Mark Comer The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer To Hell with the Hustle by Jefferson Bethke Support the Show.

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss Nate's experience at the Tennessee Local Food Summit. Jeff Poppen aka "The Barefoot Gardener" started the local food summit for local and organic growers to come together annually and share stories and resources to further the cause. Tennessee is loosing gardens, farms, and land under production at an alarming rate. It's heartbreaking to see developers wreck the creation with greedy, shortsighted, ugly, and cheap construction that creates a domino effect of short term and long term negative consequences. So, how can we reimagine how to use land in a way where humans have a beautiful, efficient, and sustainable space to live in. How do we create really high density housing that is still surrounded by green and living spaces? Here's our thoughts. Support the Show.

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the recent documentaries and docuseries: The Way Down, Class Action Park, The Vow, The Anarchists, Scientology and the Aftermath, The Dropout, Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed. Why do humans have such a deep longing for belonging? What will we endure and overlook to belong and fell like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. What is a cult technically and are we are all in one by definition? Is the point to never be a part of a cult or to make sure the cults we are a part of are doing good in the world? Support the Show.

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the recent Matt Chandler controversy, whether christian men and women can be friends, the topic of wisdom and truth, how do you define wisdom, and what wisdom looks like, sounds like, and acts like. Support the Show.

In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss traveling to Iceland, the realizations that island life brings, the wonder of the water cycle, what are your wildest kingdom dreams, Wolf Hilbertz, mineral accretion, Biorock, Seacrete, Brendon Grimshaw buying an island and restoring it for endangered species, how to use sunlight and ocean water to grow natural concrete that will emerge from the water as a new island, and what you would do if you were in charge of your own growing island. What plants would you plant? What animals would you bring to the island? What would you build homes out of? What type of culture and society would you like to form? What would be your requirements for new citizens to live on your island? All that and more on today's episode! Support the Show.

In this episode Daniel and Nate wrap up their reflections on the story of Mars Hill. There are so many lessons to be taken away from the Mars Hill story and we hope that our discussions have helped you process this information along with us. We hope that it helps us all reflect on what a truly godly leader looks like and our own obsession and attraction to celebrity, power, and pride. Power corrupts and and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let's all remember that as we build communities of faith and make decisions about systems of accountably. Churches can do so much damage and there can be a legacy of dead bodies under and behind the bus, but that's not what we are called to, and by the grace of God I hope we can slow down, value people over organizations, value faithfulness over efficiency, and be people whose fruit ultimately is Jubilee, freedom, and shalom. Support the Show.

Episode 11: The Tempest In this episode Daniel and Nate discuss the end of Mars Hill and how things started to unravel in the staff and in the congregation as a whole. How could something that was growing so fast and was so big come unraveled in just 12 months time? The cracks in the foundation caused by past misdeeds and mistreatments of people were starting to show and the weight of the large staff and mega church they built upon that foundation caused everything to crumble and fall quickly. Support the Show.

Episode 10 “Red Sky at Morning” This is the 3rd act of the Mars Hill play. The “Resurgence” was the blog/website that Mars Hill ran and recruited big name pastors and christian authors to write articles for. Now that Mars Hill had defined and built the brand it was time to learn how to distribute the brand. "Brand implies value. You’re as good as the person you’re standing beside." How has technology changed our ecclesiology? Our Worship? In the new era of internet tech, Mars Hill wasn't confined by how big a building they could build or how many services you could preach on one Sunday. They could preach to the whole world through the internet and the whole world could attend recorded services throughout the week. Technology has always shaped the church. From amphitheaters in classical greek times to the printing press and the Reformation to circuit riding preachers in the wild west to radio, tv, internet, and now Holograms, technology has allowed us to communicate with more people across space and time. The ability to stream sound and video to other locations has led to "Multisite Churches", a preachers have become little “a”apostles that have influence on many congregations. But this leads to the question, what's the difference between an audience and a congregation? When the preacher isn’t there in person and the praise team isn't there in person and you're walking into a room with a big screen that everything comes through, is that still church? Mars Hill's plan was to stream Mark out to the new satellite campuses and put their branded media all over social media, track the numbers, and open new campuses in towns that had over 1,000 weekly listeners, and repeat. Mark wanted to use this strategy to get to 50K members, and for a time it was working. Support the Show.

Episode 10 “Red Sky at Morning” This is the 3rd act of the Mars Hill play. The “Resurgence” was the blog/website that Mars Hill ran and recruited big name pastors and christian authors to write articles for. Now that Mars Hill had defined and built the brand it was time to learn how to distribute the brand. "Brand implies value. You’re as good as the person you’re standing beside." How has technology changed our ecclesiology? Our Worship? In the new era of internet tech, Mars Hill wasn't confined by how big a building they could build or how many services you could preach on one Sunday. They could preach to the whole world through the internet and the whole world could attend recorded services throughout the week. Technology has always shaped the church. From amphitheaters in classical greek times to the printing press and the Reformation to circuit riding preachers in the wild west to radio, tv, internet, and now Holograms, technology has allowed us to communicate with more people across space and time. The ability to stream sound and video to other locations has led to "Multisite Churches", a preachers have become little “a”apostles that have influence on many congregations. But this leads to the question, what's the difference between an audience and a congregation? When the preacher isn’t there in person and the praise team isn't there in person and you're walking into a room with a big screen that everything comes through, is that still church? Mars Hill's plan was to stream Mark out to the new satellite campuses and put their branded media all over social media, track the numbers, and open new campuses in towns that had over 1,000 weekly listeners, and repeat. Mark wanted to use this strategy to get to 50K members, and for a time it was working. Support the Show.

Episode 9 “The Bobby Knight Problem” Pastor Ted Haggard from the Documentary "Jesus Camp" got caught doing meth with a male prostitute. Why pastors have sexual moral failings? Mark said it was because pastors' wives let themselves go and weren't willing to have open and exciting sex with their husbands. Do the ends justify the means? Is it better to lose or to hold onto our morals and ethics? Bobby Knight normalized abusive behavior. Building fear keeps people from coming against you. James McDonald lost his job for domineering and bullying just as Bobby Knight did. The modern expectation of what we are getting from a church… for the church to be big enough to deliver on our evangelical expectations of “church”, the people who believe that they can deliver on those expectations and can endure what it takes to grow an organization to that point are often the most unhealthy people. If Bobby Knight will throw a chair across a basketball court with everyone watching and it being taped, what would he do behind closed doors? And if Mark Driscoll is willing to say wild stuff during a sermon on a Sunday morning, what do you think he’s like behind closed doors when not everyone gets to hear what he has to say? The Latin word for media just means the middle and that’s what media is; it’s the thing that stands in the middle that everything gets interpreted through, like a lens, and there’s not a major church in America today that doesn’t mediate and show a certain version of itself and is it really good at that. A lot of people say the hardest person to hire for a mega church is the media person. Churches are firing youth staff so they can hire more media people. What does that say about a church? They know the dangers of people not really knowing you and what social media can do to people but at the end of the day they still upload their sermon every Sunday and push send. How has our mediated way of connecting and communicating with people added to the culture of isolation that we are part of? Everyone wants to be princess Diana and everyone wants to be Mother Theresa. Anyone can be Mother Teresa but not everyone can be Diana and marry a prince, but the reason we won’t be the next Mother Theresa is because we don’t want the suffering and humiliation that comes along with affecting peoples lives through the Jesus way because that way and path involves suffering. Support the Show.

Episode 8 "Demon Hunting" Humans have a deep longing to believe in something. We are spiritual beings “made a little lower than the angels” and we seek to put that longing somewhere, but sometimes we want to believe so bad that we choose to overlook red flags. Enter Mark Driscoll saying, “I see things, people committing sins, people being abused, people being raped, I have visions, I had prophetic vision, God told me, the Spirit told me, I had a prophetic dream”. How do you deal with someone who leverages this type of language to back their ideas, the path they want to take, and the path they want you to take with them, when you feel like the things they are saying are not Godly and you are seeing and sensing a lot of red flags. Where do you draw the line? "Demon Trials” or deliverance ministry are approaches to spiritual warfare where a minister would try to confront demons in people's lives that caused various issues. Putting the people and the demons on trial and trying to confront them with confession and truth. Most of the stories Mark would share about demonic possession were about women and he even went so far as to say, "Paul says women are the weaker vessel. Maybe that’s the case. He says women are more easily deceived. I know most feminists don’t like those verses… and if they are true it means those women are deceived haha, which is kinda funny(laughter). Satan didn’t even show up to attack Adam until he was married…” I think if we did a deep dive on the passage from Peter, the original language, the historical and cultural context, and in light of Jesus breaking the curse of sin and death, the power dynamic between men and women, it would show that this assertion is really a stretch, a low blow, and a really convenient mistreatment of scripture that just happens to work in Mark’s favor. Are most of the demonic possession stories in scripture about females? What is the male/female ratio in scripture? Demonic possession verse medical care and medication? Should we find the answer in repenting, prayer, and pastors or meds and therapists? Is all suffering a result of sin? The hierarchy at Mars Hill was children, women, husbands, pastors, Mark, God. there’s always someone between a person and God and I am depending on them to cure me and talk to God for me. Jesus warned about demanding signs but that didn’t stop him from doing them but it did challenge us to find satisfaction in something other than signs and miracles. Support the Show.

“Nehemiah was beating up members of his church. What do we do with that? I’ll tell you what I’d like to do with that. I’d like to follow in his example. There’s a few guys right now, that if I wasn’t gonna end up on CNN, I would go old testament on ‘em. Even men in leadership of this church” -Mark Driscoll speaking to his church family and people laughing the whole time. After this sermon Mark called an impromptu meeting with two pastors who were also elders and fired them on the spot because they looked at the new bylaws and didn’t immediately pass them without reading them. They wanted to read them and make some potential edits, which is what they thought their lobs were as elders. The rules said Mark could fire them as employees but he couldn’t take away their elder status so he tried to intimidate them into resigning or he would open up investigations against both of them hoping they would go away quietly. They refused and welcomed the investigations. They were found innocent and still got kicked out and the church was told to shun them and treat them as an unrepentant unbeliever. Imagine what their kids felt like watching the adults at their church do these things to each other. Accountability vs Speed when it comes to church governance and checks and balances. What’s the best Church hierarchy or structure? Moses model with one guy calling all the shots? Elder run? Complete democracy with all members voting? So many things Mark says in this episode sound so level headed. "I’m just one vote among many. I submit to my senior pastor. This is not a dictatorship. Jesus is our senior pastor. I’m not saying I’m the spiritual leader… you do what I say. I think that’s very abusive. When one person is the spiritual leader”. But that’s exactly who he became and anyone who got in his way got railroaded. So, the question is did he ever mean what he said and he lost his way or was he lying so he could trojan horse the church and seize control when the right time came? Back then Mark’s church was “Elder Ruled” and without denominational oversight. and Mark talked negatively about Pastor as CEO run churches and ripped on pastors who were too big to even know their members. But that’s exactly who Mark became. Mark equated submission to Christ to submitting to the church leadership, which he aimed to take over. Dictators use the ability to declare a state of emergency to centralize power into smaller and smaller circles “until the crisis is over”. For Mark the constant emergency was people going to hell if the church didn't grow. If a church stops growing at 5,000, 10,000 or 15,000 people then people will stop being reached for Jesus. People will stop coming to Christ. As if Jesus or the Kingdom only needed you and your church to reach people. So, if you pumped the breaks on making decisions and weren't making decisions at breakneck speeds you were aiding and abetting Satan and helping him send people to hell. You were the anti-Jesus Antichrist. “too many guys waste too much time trying to move stiff-necked stubborn and obstinate people. I am all about bless and subtraction. there is a pile of dead bodies behind the mars hill bus and by God’s grace it will be a mountain by the time we are done. You either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus, those are the options but the bus ain’t gonna stop. Yesterday we fired two elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill last night. They’re off the bus. under the bus. they were off mission so now they’re unemployed. this will be the defining issue as to whether you succeed or fail. I’ve read enough of the new testament to know that occasionally Paul put somebody in the wood chipper.“ Mark Driscoll speaking at a pastors conference the day after he fired two pastors. Support the Show.

In this episode Christianity Today interviews several of the people that worked with Mark in the mid 90's that helped him find his platform online and focus his brand. The internet brought new insights through data. You could see how many people listened to his podcasts and his YouTube channel. When Mark made aggressions those numbers went up so if the ends justify the means then making more aggressions in your sermons meant more people listening and therefore more people "hearing about Jesus" and therefore more people accepting Jesus. “Did I give Mark his first hit of heroine by platforming him because he didn’t have the maturity to handle it?” The internet has less gatekeepers to pursue fame. There's less cost, investment, maturity or track record required to get your content published. People can get big over night before they are really ready for it. Mark surrounded him self with people that came out of the media industry in Seattle and had an eye for branding and creating quality content. “If you are always repackaging movies like "Jesus is the real Superman" and adding some Christian flare to it you are always going to be 3-4 years behind culture at best sucking its tailpipe. You’re just mimicking a culture when you should be creating a culture and you’re doing a disservice to the original artists. It’s lazy and I hate it so much.” Over time more and more of the church resources stopped going to ministries that supported the local church members and local community and started going to Mark’s platform and external facing media channels. If the media team asked for it, they got it. More cameras, more staff, and more production gear. Mars Hill content was consistently trending #1 in the religion category in podcasts and YouTube. They had 3 "RED Cameras". These were the same cameras The Lord of the Rings were shot on. At the same time, the whole organization of NBC only had 2 RED cameras. At this time the media team grew to 60 staff and they built a studio and original scores written for their content etc. Mark used his platform to get into the conference speaking circuit. Older more mature pastors knew they had to recognize him because of his following online, but he made the older pastors worry because of the wild stuff he would say. They hoped by welcoming him into their circles they could have an influence on him and he would mellow out a little. But Mark didn’t want mentoring because he had outgrown them before he ever met them. His church was bigger and therefore he had nothing to learn from them. He was only interested in learning from people who had more. More absolute power within their churches, more people, and more money. And that's when he met James McDonald from Harvest Bible Chapel. Support the Show.

"The Things We Do To Women" Mark's Vision for Women: if women wanted to have a good life and raise happy and healthy children, she should not work outside the home and should raise her children personally while her husband went out and made a living for them both. Families should buy houses, grow deep roots, and have lots of kids if possible. If women were interested in working outside the home, the advice was to get married, have another kid, and for men to lead their wives better. If a man's wife worked outside of the home, it was a disqualification to be in church leadership or to be an elder. Women were told to drop out of college because their job was to stay home and sexually satisfy their husbands. If they denied their husband it was a sin. Men go to strip clubs is because their wives have not stripped enough for them and they have to get their fill somewhere. If women didn’t keep their husbands sexually satisfied, men would look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. So, if your husband cheated on you, it was really your fault for not being sexually available. This response was an echo of our fight against communism which was anti-family, anti-God, and anti-America and also the sexual revolution, which was also perceived as anti-family. “There is an intense femininity that has crept into Christianity. Islam is a masculine religion. That’s why they run an airplane into the World Trade Center and we meet in Central Park in New York and we get men like Elton John to play the piano and cry. That’s our response as a nation. Gay men with wigs cry because mean men with facial hair beat them." -Mark Driscoll Mark posed everything as a war and conflict. This was not only with the outside world but with the inside world of men and women. Someone had to dominate and men should be the ones. To be a woman meant to except that you would have to submit to a hierarchical structure. “You’d either be dominated by a good man or a bad one“. Mark did seem to have a very genuine care for women. He would drop everything to help a woman in need or a woman who had been abused, but what he put back in its place was being dominated by a good man as opposed to being dominated by an abusive one. Mark screams during a sermon and says, "How dare you! Who the hell do you think you are? Some of you guys are just so frustrating. Some of you guys have been coming here for years and you’re still not praying with your wife. Some of you guys have been coming here for years and you still have your hands all over your girlfriend. Some of you have already whispered in her ear and said, 'I’m sorry. I’ll do better.' Abusing a woman, neglecting a woman, being a coward, a fool, being like your father Adam. Who do you think you are! You are not God! You’re just a man! You’re not an impressive man! Some of you will hear this and your response will be, 'how dare you tell me how to live my life', but that’s the Holy Spirit telling you you need to change, little boy. You shut up, put on your pants, get a job, grow up and maybe one day you can love a woman." He did this at every service that day 5 times. It was planned and rehearsed and meant for tv in hopes to go viral. Mark would say things like, "thank God for my smoking hot wife." Teaching from Song of Solomon, Mark exclaims, "oral sex is Biblical!" "I am glad I was a part of a church that could speak openly about sexuality, but I am ashamed that we were a church that went beyond Scripture, with the same amount of authority, and the damage that it did to marriages and women." -Tim Smith pastor at Mars hill "To me it was a rape culture that was promulgated using Christianity as a means to create a culture where women are subservient sexually in a way that was totally evil." -Jeff Becker Support the Show.

This episode is the 4th of a series where Nate and Daniel are reflecting on the recent popular podcast called "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today. The podcast follows the story of a pastor named Mark Driscoll and it is a cautionary tale about church growth and how celebrity effects people, especially people in power. In order for this episode to be more meaningful, we recommend first listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" episode 4. Nate and Daniel reflect on questions like: William Wallace II was Mark's pseudonym that he used to say really crude things on the church's private chat board, Midrash. He posted saying the guys in his church were acting like male lesbians and needed to be put in dresses, beaten and humiliated. Men had weekly accountability meetings called "Redemption Groups" where men would say, “it’s time for me to go to meeting and take a bat to the head or get kicked in the nuts" because it was a weekly bludgeoning about they need to grow up and be a man and get jobs and take care of their families. What does it say if your church's favorite movie is fight club? What does that reveal about the people in your church, what they are longing for and frustrated about, and what they think are the solutions? Mark was a mixed bag of being able to teach scripture and being very crude and vile. Example: his "Hoe Hoe Hoe" sermons about the 3 whores who are in Jesus' genealogy. Was Mark an agent of chaos just to get a rise out of people? Is that the way we should go about confronting sin in the community or making peoples' faith real to them? Saying crazy stuff and making people confront what they’re hearing even if you don’t agree with what you’re saying just to force people to go through the act of understanding what they believe and how to communicate that back to what they’re hearing. Does this bear good fruit and does your answer change in light of the prophets and how people responded to them? In the Men’s meeting in the gym Mark gave men the "Dad talk" for 2 hours yelling at them saying things like, "You can’t charge the gates of hell with your pants around your ankles, a tissue in one hand, and a bottle of lotion in the other" and that they needed to grow up, work hard at their jobs, and if they weren’t on board with the mission of the church they needed to get out. Where in the Bible does it say men’s jobs are to defend, protect, and kill if need be for their families? I’ve heard this said as a moral imperative and I have never heard it supported by scripture. I’d like to hear the scripture story or commandment that people use to build that view of manhood. What does it mean to “man up”? The Mars Hill answer was to protect wives, be strong, be warriors, be fighters, be providers, be responsible, be employed, be accountable, know your family role, and that was their definition of being servants. Why are these male only roles? And how did Jesus embody these qualities or not? Mark joined a church because the preacher used bow hunting as an story for his sermon and Mark said, “I didn’t have any theological convictions, but if I guy can kill things he can be my pastor“. Why is a violent pastor worth submitting to? Should all pastors be willing to kill to serve effectively? What is the significance of Mark's repeated origin story? And that everyone at Mars Hill could recount it? What is your church's often repeated origin story? Does your church even have one? What do you think the downsides are of not having an origin stories that's often repeated? Is the origin story that is repeated about your pastor, the leadership at your church, or is it about Jesus? ...And much, much more. Support the Show.

This episode is the 3rd of a series where Nate and Daniel are reflecting on the recent popular podcast called "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today. The podcast follows the story of a pastor named Mark Driscoll and is a cautionary tale about church growth and how celebrity effects people and especially people in power. In order for this episode to be more meaningful, we recommend first listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" episode 3. Nate and Daniel reflect on questions like: Do you think it’s good or bad for churches to require ministry staff to have formal Bible or theology degrees? You think that people should be ordained by an organ or be able to ordain themselves and start their own church? "We pray to the sky fairy and say God Bless America, it's just some cosmic piñata we throw prayers at and hope good things come out of. I can be a d*** about this, but anyone who preaches other gospels than Christ crucified or a watered down gospel can go to hell. Most modern philosophers are gay men and we swim in their stream too long we end up wearing pink and singing love songs to God, which is not advantageous when you’re at WAR. There’s a reason why in every major nation of the world and theology more women than men come to church. Your biggest problem is getting your men to give a s***. If you don’t give them biblical masculinity, they will adopt a chauvinism. They’ll drink beer, nail women, pick fights, and they won’t want to come to your church where you’ve got some Will and Grace worship leader and you’ve got a bunch of love songs for the sky fairy... we have to stop trying to be cool and be faithful”. -Mark Driscoll Several ministers in attendance started arguing with Mark because of his statements and eventually walked out of his conference breakout class. But Mark loved being provocative. Him and his staff would go out after moments like this and drink beers and laugh about other's poor theology and how offended they were when Mark spoke. Does a pastor have to assert his dominance and beat the crap out of you verbally and physically to prove he’s a tougher, more violent man before you submit to his authority and his church? Is that how Jesus called his followers? During this time Mark shifted to calling himself reformed. He acted condescendingly towards those who held different theology beliefs. He made an offhand comment at another conference that “this conversation doesn’t really matter, because God made some of you to be matchsticks anyways” It was the elect vs the damned in Marks's mind. That created a riff between mark and non-reform pastors, but also reformed leaders in the emergent movement. Mark was the classic "young restless reform movement" type, but after he left Mars Hill, Mark rejected Calvinism and said it was for “little boys with father wounds”. Was Mark Driscoll just a chameleon or were those changes of mind and theology genuine? Mark would say my adrenals are shot. I’m running on fumes. I’m spent. I’m physically sick and worn down. If this is the fruit of “doing church”, are we going about it wrong? ...And much, much more. Credit to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today for the content of this episode's discussion. Support the Show.

This episode is beginning of a series where Nate and Daniel are reflecting on the recent popular podcast called "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today. The podcast follows the story of a pastor named Mark Driscoll and is a cautionary tale about church growth and how celebrity effects people and especially people in power. In order for this episode to be more meaningful, we recommend first listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" episode 2. Nate and Daniel reflect on questions like: -What is the history that fed into and led to Mars Hill and what other pastors influenced the culture at that time? Robert Schuler had a walk up/drive in church and later the Crystal Cathedral. He started the hour of power tv show and preached “The power of positive thinking”. He was a friend of celebrities and powerful people. Mark Driscoll spoke at Schuler's church and joked about yelling and screaming for an hour and a half when he preached. The Vineyard movement took a page from the McDonald’s playbook and ran with franchising the church model. All nondenominational and no systematic accountability. Willow Creek and Bill Hybels started in a movie theater preached the message of “we are better here and God is doing a special thing here that isn’t going on in other churches”. -Mark Driscoll thought pastors were too feminine and too friendly. In the beginning he didn’t like seeker friendly or seeker sensitive churches and said he wanted to be seeker insensitive. He didn’t want to be a “have it your way” church. “We are hitting 1,000 members now and I’m wondering where my sin has come? It’s my goal not to grow. Church growth is the turning of God into a product to be marketed to a customer.” -Mark Driscoll -Why do mega churches exist where they exist and when they exist? One commonality you find across theology and time is the SUBURBS. Moving into neighborhoods of people that make the same amount of money as you and it looks a lot like you and I have a lot in common with you. TV and radio and air-conditioning, all these technological advances allowed mega churches to become what they are today. Mega church pastors are good at playing to the predictable preferences of people in the demographic field of their suburban neighborhood and they leveraged those demographics please people. Rick Warren started before he planted his church studying demographics around California and narrowed down his plant site to four cities, then down to one city, and finally down to the fastest growing county in the city because he knew that’s where the most growth of the suburbs would be and that’s where the most people would need community and connection and he played off of that. ...And much, much more. Credit to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today for the content of this episode's discussion. Support the Show.

Nate and Daniel are back with Season 2 of the podcast after taking a summer break. In this episode, they spend time reflecting on what they've learned in the past couple months, what they're watching and listening to, and what they're excited to discuss on the show. Welcome back to Season 2 of the Jubilee, Freedom, and Shalom podcast! Instagram: @jubileefreedomshalom YouTube: Jubilee, Freedom & Shalom Support the Show.

This episode is beginning of a series where Nate and Daniel are reflecting on the recent popular podcast called "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today. The podcast follows the story of a pastor named Mark Driscoll and is a cautionary tale about church growth and how celebrity effects people in power. In order for this episode to be more meaningful, we recommend first listening to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" episode 1. Nate and Daniel reflect on questions like: -How does the mission of Mars Hill and several other mega churches match up to the true Gospel? What would Jesus think of that vision? -What made this vision stick and resonate? What within people drew them to that message? -The line, "...but, look at the fruit," comes up often in this story to justify the way people were treated, the way the church was run, and what Mark Driscoll was able to say from the stage; Is the fruit they speak of really fruit? What were they winning people to? ...And much, much more. Credit to "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" by Christianity Today for the content of this episode's discussion. Support the Show.

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