Blessings in the Ashes of Our Mars Hill Experience — Nicole O'Meara

The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, a podcast by CT Magazine, took the evangelical world by storm last year. My readers already know I think it’s excellent. Now that the podcast is finished, I’ll go so far as to say I think this should be mandatory listening for all seminary students, both as a cautionary tale and as a way to initiate thoughtful discussion about personal ministry styles, goals, and callings.

Our story with Mars Hill isn’t relevant so I haven’t written about it in this space. Then, CT released a Bonus Episode: Paint the Beauty We Split. It’s a side story detailing the radically different worship music culture at Mars Hill, a music culture representative of how Mars Hill distinguished itself from other churches in America at the time. The episode, a conversation between host, Mike Cosper, and Mars Hill worship leader (and leader of King’s Kaleidoscope) Chad Gardner, caused me to rethink my silence. Thus, today’s blogpost.

After 17 podcast episodes recounting trauma and spiritual abuse from many angles, this episode highlights a positive affect of Mars Hill. There are hints of the positives throughout the podcast: marriages, salvation stories, baptisms. The blessings are reminders that while man’s tendency is to make a mess of things, God’s will is unstoppable. We cannot thwart God’s redemption plan. Amen!

Paint the Beauty We Split

In the bonus episode, Chad recounts the illogical reasons why he was chosen to be a worship leader in a mega-church as a very young man. He also mourns the lost of some of his band members because of spiritual abuse. Still, Chad is quick to recall that his own years at Mars Hill were beautiful. Yes, leaving before the full meltdown at Mars Hill cost him the rights to his own music, the loss of community for he and his wife and the loss of a steady paycheck. But for Chad, leaving Mars Hill didn’t mean the loss of his faith.

Chad tells the story behind the podcast theme song, his own Paint the Beauty We Split. It was written with a band member who was struggling to understand the hurt he experienced at Mars Hill. For Chad, it was a way to connect with this band member through a shared experience. He saw that as a blessing, a silver lining.

Chad saw how God used Mars Hill to develop his own musical gifting. He was given the freedom to write music, experiment with different styles, and get immediate feedback from the congregation. Those are priceless gifts. King’s Kaleidoscope continued after Mars Hill was no more, a testimony to God’s blessing on Chad and his calling as a songwriter.

Chad’s story reminded me that good things and painful things can happen at the same time.

Beauty in the Flames

How often do we consider suffering as singularly hard, only counting it “good” when the suffering goes away or, to use a churchy word, when it is redeemed? Maybe there’s another way to look at it. The Bible promises God will work beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). We limit our understanding of God’s character when we believe God waits until the fire of suffering burns down to ashes before he swaps the ashes for a crown of beauty. God is more compassion than that. He is more active than that. While we suffer, he suffers. (The Hebrew word for “co-sufferer” is sunpathesai. See Hebrews 4:14-16.) He enters into our pain, and not passively. He is at work in and through our suffering. He can create beauty even while the flames of the fire are still burning.

Our experience with Mars Hill was brief and tangential. It barely merits mentioning. I’ll briefly touch on it now only to share what I learned through it. We were involved in a church in the Acts 29 Network, a church-planting ministry created and led by Mark Driscoll. Every episode of Rise & Fall affirmed our experience at that small church. The stories told by the disenfranchised of Mars Hill paralleled our story. When our understanding of God became in conflict with the understanding of the church leaders, we too were “thrown under the bus.”

Oh the hours Chris and I spent rehashing each episode and how the dysfunction in Seattle trickled down to our little church. In a way, the podcast was cathartic for us. Honestly, when we were “thrown under the bus,” we were shocked and saddened. Now, after listening to the podcast, and with the space of many years, we only feel grateful. We can see how God graciously pulled us out of that church before we were hurt more, or even worse, before we were used to hurt others. From sadness to gratitude. “Oil of joy for mourning.” Silver lining.

More importantly, we learned to trust the way God guides us through his Word and through the Spirit’s confirming actions in our lives. It built our faith to be treated harshly for following God’s CLEAR instructions over and against the guidance of the leaders in that church, a situation I had not experienced before. It could have caused me to doubt my faith. Instead, it solidified it. Silver lining.

The truth is, our faith needed solidifying. Our foundation needed to be placed in God alone, Soluss Christus. We had difficult trials ahead of us in life and we needed a firm foundation to survive. This reminds me of the words of Elisabeth Elliot, a woman who understood suffering: I’d rather walk with God in the dark than alone in the light. We needed to learn who was walking with us before we entered real darkness. Our Mars Hill experience was dim compared with the darkness we would walk though with my health crises. My heart longs to hug Jesus and gush “Thank you” for the training this experience gave us. Suffering is never for nothing.

The Fire of Chronic Illness

Our Mars Hill suffering was limited for a short time. The physical suffering I live in now is ongoing and I won’t be released from it until Jesus takes me home to Heaven. It is the suffering of an undiagnosed disease and chronic illness. Like those who suffered at Mars Hill, my physical suffering has come with personal losses and faith challenges.

It took 17 episodes for CT to recount the losses at Mars Hill, and surely they only scratched the surface. Yet Chad’s story is different. His story recounted losses and blessings. His story challenged me to consider the blessings, not just the losses, that have come through the fire of chronic illness.

If I were to list the blessings from my chronic illness, that list would include:

• the making of new friends
• the joy of having my son home and available for an extra semester
• the privilege of helping my children trust God through hard emotions
• finding beauty in small victories
• reconsidering priorities and the pace of life
• discovering different ways and people to serve
• …. the list goes on…

The silver lining of chronic illness is learning there is a purpose we cannot see in the pain we cannot escape. When our faith is founded on a right understanding of God’s character, we can trust God is at work even when we can’t see or feel him. Blessings exist even in the midst of suffering and maybe the blessing in your suffering is how it is building up of your faith.

Build Up or Deconstruct

For some, the Mars Hill story is a tragedy. Their faith was desconstructed and never built back up — yell at someone long enough under the guise of discipling them will confuse a person — they may even lose their faith. For others, the mess at Mars Hill was a blessing because it revealed where their faith was anchored, in Christ or in the appealing speaker on the stage. For the people who received the mess as a warning to build their faith on the rock of Christ alone, the Mars Hill story is a redemptive story.

The challenge for us is to not look at Mars Hill and think, Surely God wasn’t at Mars Hill — it was too much of a mess for anything good to come from that. Instead, the challenge is to look within our own hearts and ask, How have I misunderstood God’s good will for my suffering? Where is the silver lining of blessing even in this mess?

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