Criticism
Some have criticized the church for its harshness in dealing with dissent within its leadership, citing as an example an incident during the church reorganization in 2007 where two elders disapproved of and suggested revisions to a draft version of the rewritten bylaws, which they viewed as consolidating power in the hands of Mark Driscoll and his closest aides. Both elders were subsequently disciplined and fired shortly thereafter. Church leadership instructed members of the congregation to shun the two former elders as unrepentant. Additionally, members who have openly questioned or dissented with Mars Hill leaders have been asked to leave the church. This policy of church discipline was discussed during a lecture given on April 20, 2009 by Mark Driscoll for The Gospel Coalition.
In early 2012 the church once again became a source of controversy over shunning and disciplinary proceeding when a young man under discipline released documents from his disciplinary contract to blogger & author Mathew Paul Turner. The documents include a discipline contract as well as an email from church leaders to the congregation directing them to shun him.
In 2012 The Stranger ran an article on Mars Hill Church based on interviews with former members. The article questions some of the church's practices, which, it claims, are more typical of a cult than of a congregation.
The church subsequently responded with a series of posts on its blog, "Church Discipline in the Bible," "A Response Regarding Church Discipline," and "A Call for Reconciliation."
Read more about this topic: Mars Hill Church
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)