E45 "Reflections of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill E10 Part 2"

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. 

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