Resurgent church: Ballard church uses new media, culture to attract about 1,000 UW students

Going to church, for the non-churchgoing, usually summons up images of conservatively dressed older women, church buildings from the ’70s, and coffee and cookies after the service. It doesn’t make one imagine walking through the sketchier part of Ballard past auto repair shops and industrial buildings to get to a church in what looks like a funky art gallery.

Mars Hill Church’s main building is expansive. In the main theater, where services are held, sleek hanging lights cast a dull yellow glow around the otherwise dark room. Instead of a table with cookies and stale coffee, there is a café next to a wall that functions as an art exhibit with rotating artists and a variety of themes — not all of which are church-related.

The services are also modern. Flat-screen monitors and projector screens repeat the teaching pastor’s image throughout the room. The sermons can be found online after the fact. So if you miss church or don’t live in the area, you will still be able to attend the service, so to speak.

“Technology is a great way to connect,” said Matthew Jensen, Mars Hill’s director of college ministry. “It is not our goal to be a horse and pony show. In a city like Seattle, technology fits both the city and the church.”

At the Sunday night college service at the Ballard campus, audience members can text questions to the pastor. They appear on his on-stage television, and he answers them then and there. The anonymity allows people to ask intensely personal questions. During a sermon on sex, one audience member asked, having been a sex offender, if he or she could ever be redeemed and find forgiveness — not a question someone is going to stand up and ask.

“The whole interactive text messaging at the service is great,” UW alumna Linnea Grob said. “I know a lot of people are nervous about asking questions during the service.”

“We also post my preaching online, where a few million people download it through our Web site, [www.MarsHillChurch.org], along with other portals such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and iTunes,” Pastor Mark Driscoll said. “The technology allows the message of Jesus to go out to more people than would otherwise be possible and also allows more people to give feedback that helps us improve what we are teaching and doing.”

TURN UP THE BASS

Music is a large part of the worship culture at Mars Hill and is a new take on what most people think of as church music. Unlike many churches that seek to attract the younger crowd, Mars Hill doesn’t have what we know as Christian rock. Instead, about 17 bands play a wide range of music. One band sounds a bit like Radiohead, and another started out with a song that would have been by The Clash, if the words weren’t right from the Bible.

The music is loud (pressed-against-a-speaker loud), and in the darkened room with a bunch of college students, the worship portion of service feels like an enthusiastic but respectful crowd at an indie rock concert. Images are projected behind the band, and churchgoers can sing along with the help of the words on the television screens.

“I love rock concerts,” said UW senior Katherine Dial, who attends Mars Hill. “[Mars Hill] took a little getting used to, being used to a traditional Baptist church and their music.”

A HUMBLE START

In 1996, Mars Hill started as a handful of people meeting for a Bible study. It has since become a multi-campus group of about 7,000 people.

“[We are] one of the fastest-growing churches in America, in one of America’s least-churched cities,” said Driscoll, 36, who is also the founding pastor.

Driscoll was raised in a Roman Catholic family, and although he found church “interesting and intriguing,” he stopped attending. He became a born-again Christian when he was in college after he started reading the Bible and learning about Jesus. “I looked at other religions and discovered I did believe in Jesus.”

He said that when he first became a born-again Christian, one of the churches he checked out was “like an aerobics class for alcoholics, and it freaked me out.” However, the speaking in tongues and excessive swaying didn’t deter him from his faith. He later found a church where he could learn about Jesus. “I thought, ‘I love church,’” Driscoll said.

“Shortly thereafter God spoke to me audibly and told me to plant a church in Seattle,” Driscoll said in an e-mail interview. “I know it sounds crazy, but that is what happened.”

When he was 25, he started holding group gatherings in his home, and they met in various places until 2003, when the church moved into its Ballard location. By 2006, the church had outgrown its single campus, and over the next two years it opened four new locations. Mars Hill Church now meets in Ballard, Shoreline, Redmond, West Seattle, and Wedgwood and is opening its downtown campus March 16 in Belltown in the former Tabella nightclub, Driscoll said.

Though each campus functions as an individual church — with its own services, pastors and facility — they all broadcast Driscoll’s sermon from the Ballard campus. In this way the church operates under a sort of fractured unity; although broken into manageable pieces, each part follows the flagship campus.

“Mark Driscoll is the primary pastor, but there are other preaching pastors who are in charge of their own mission,” Jensen said.

“At each campus people are in community groups, which meet weekly in homes for dinner, friendship, Bible study and prayer,” Driscoll said. “By breaking our big church down into smaller campuses and groups, our people get the benefits of both a large and small church.”

UW PRESENCE

Mars Hill’s organizational method seems to be working. Not only is the church opening a new campus downtown, it has a strong presence on the UW campus and is hoping to find a space to hold services in the fall of this year.

“Early on, I tried very hard to get as close to the campus as possible,” Driscoll explained. “In the early years we met in Laurelhurst and later met on the Ave. We have a strong desire to serve the students at the UW — we have hundreds of UW students in our church [and] a ministry at the UW, and our next step is to get a campus with Sunday services on or near the campus in the fall of 2008.”

Mars Hill attracts a younger demographic elusive for most churches. The church appeals to both college students and young professionals, whose attendance is generally in decline at other churches.

“We have intentionally put ourselves in a position to welcome younger people who do not typically go to church,” Driscoll said. “Our campuses are at or near the city, our vibe is young and urban, our bands are amazing, and many of our services are on Sunday nights for people who do not like to get up in the morning.”

Mars Hill is such a large organization that those involved in leadership positions within the church do much more than teach. Pastor Bubba Jennings became involved in the church when he moved from the Midwest to Seattle with his wife in 2001.

“The second week we were in town we visited Mars Hill Church,” Jennings said in an e-mail. “This was back when Mars Hill Church ran the Paradox Theatre (an all-ages music venue) in the U-District. We knew immediately that we wanted to be a part of what Jesus was doing at Mars Hill Church. We got plugged in and have been loving it ever since.”

“As a pastor of Mars Hill Church, my role is interesting because I’m very much involved in the big picture and the practical details of what we do,” Jennings added. “I help lead the vision and strategic direction of our church as part of our executive leadership team. I also oversee our Ballard campus and help lead and equip the other campuses.”

He spends most of his time “investing in and equipping leaders,” and he explained the church’s philosophy as “theologically conservative and culturally liberal. This means that we believe Jesus is God and we trust and preach the Bible, but we’re not fundamentalist. We hold fast to the truth of Jesus and make that our focus, but we are still culturally relevant, a reflection of the time and place in which we live.”

Although Mars Hill is young and hip, it still feels like a church. Fun is encouraged in a religious way. You can have tons of sex, but only in traditional marriage, and there’s nothing wrong with drinking, as long as it is not done to get drunk. Though more open than many theologically conservative churches, Mars Hill isn’t morally liberal — there are clear dos and don’ts that are not to be messed with.

The role of women at Mars Hill has been controversial for years. Women are not allowed to be elders (pastors). Though they may serve as deacons who teach and serve in the ministry, they do not lead. In a 2003 debate with Robert Wall, a professor of Christian scriptures at Seattle Pacific University, Driscoll defended this position based on his interpretation of scripture.

“Many students attend Mars Hill and there is a community group in one of the dorms, but these are unofficial relations,” SPU student Heath Salzman said. “The theology of Mars Hill and their view on gender roles are in contention with those held by SPU.”

However, not everyone agrees there’s an issue.

“I feel very comfortable at Mars Hill,” UW senior Linnell Pitt said. “It is very biblical, really rooted in the Word, and I really like the music.”

Though she now attends regularly, Pitt was initially unimpressed. “I didn’t like Mars Hill when I first went as a freshman and sophomore. I don’t know what it was. A lot of people have problems with the music. The Presbyterian traditional style is very different; some people think it (the music at Mars Hill) is too depressing.”

Jensen stressed that Mars Hill isn’t a “stand up if you’re new” type of church. It seeks to welcome newcomers with a low-pressure introduction to church.

In an effort to reach out to UW college students, Mars Hill’s College Ministry group was started last October and is working to become “better equipped and more helpful to the campus,” Jensen said. “It’s in our DNA to have college students with all their creativity and resourcefulness. They are our bread and butter, and we want to be a help. We have some college students from SPU, but they are the slightest of minorities — our [college ministry’s] main goal is to be at the UW.”

“One of the things I’m very excited about is the recent launching of our college ministry,” Jennings said. “Right now the college ministry is part of our Ballard campus, but our hope is to find a permanent home somewhere close to the UW and launch a Mars Hill Church UW campus in the fall of ’08. We are looking for that permanent space and folks to help with this new ministry.”

When asked about mission trips, Jensen stressed that the goal of his college ministry is not to “go do good deeds and come back to selfish lives.”

For college students, Driscoll is one of the main draws of Mars Hill. He is a young, charismatic leader — his preaching style is less fire and brimstone and more sarcasm and cynicism. He preaches in jeans and a sweatshirt — there is little ceremony or pretension surrounding his position.

He frequently elicits laughs from his young audience with a caustic and clever repartee. Though he admitted in a sermon that this style of preaching might cut him off from some of the work Jesus is trying to do, it does play well to a younger audience and a generation that is used to being entertained at all times. Driscoll doesn’t just poke fun at others; he often makes fun of himself.

“I think Mark is a very well-spoken and passionate preacher,” Dial said.

BEYOND SEATTLE

In addition to running a rapidly expanding church and preaching, Driscoll has written a number of books, including Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church, which takes a look at the early days of Mars Hill and Driscoll himself, The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out, concerning the struggle between the message of the church and current culture, and most recently Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions, a book that seeks to get at the truth about Jesus.

Grob said she particularly appreciates the online features offered by the church. “I love the fact that they do the sermons online,” she said. “It is really convenient as a student; you get really busy on the weekends.”

Driscoll isn’t finished building Mars Hill. “I also travel a great deal, and in the next few months will be doing preaching tours in stadiums across England and Australia,” he said. “We also have plans to open Mars Hill Church campuses with my preaching streamed in via satellite to other states and nations in the next few years.”

Some of his work is done through the Acts 29 Network, an organization that “plants” churches that share the group’s view on the gospel in the United States and overseas. Driscoll is a founder, and Mars Hill provides organizational and financial support. Acts 29’s mission is to plant 1,000 new churches in the next 20 years.

Mars Hill Church is truly a product of these times. It uses everything it can to get its message out and in doing so reaches more people than could a church with missionaries alone. People can watch the sermons at anytime, from any place that has the ability to access them. It reaches out to the new generation on its own terms, using language and media that it can relate to. Jennings said, “This would not have been possible years ago.”

[Reach reporter Sarah Greenleaf at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]