Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has confirmed that his dicastery will not comment on the dubia expressed by four cardinals on the Pope's Apostolic Letter "Amoris Laetitia", which focus on the possibility of granting remarried divorcees access to the sacraments, in some cases and after a process of discernment. In an interview with Kathpress, the German cardinal explained that the former Holy Office "acts and speaks" under the Pope's authority and cannot be a party to "a clash of opinions". Müller also said he sees a danger of "polarisation" in the Church. Pope Francis touched on this issue in the homily he gave on the occasion of the Consistory, celebrated on 19 November of this year: "The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting. We are not immune from this and we need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts".
The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith went on to explain that the five "dubia" were sent to the Pope in person prior to publication and stated that Francis could still task the Congregation with quelling the tension. "Right now," he added, "it is important for each of us to stay focused and objective and not be dragged into controversies, much less trigger these". Müller chose not to comment on the parts of the "Amoris Laetitia" that caused "confusion" according to the four cardinals.
So the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which speaks under the authority and with the approval of the Pope, has not adopted a position. What remains are texts of the synodal proposals and the post-Synodal Exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" published by the Pope, which cautiously opens up to the possibility – not as a right, nor indiscriminately – of conceding the sacraments in certain cases and after a profound process of discernment.
Finally, in the interview, the cardinal expresses his personal opinion on the issue, recalling that as far as communion for remarried divorces is concerned, in 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had denied three German bishops this possibility.


Learning to read play testers is a tough skill. Heck, taking proper, and full advantage of play tests is a very tough skill. I've seen a lot of developers tackle this problem in a lot of different ways. Some keep a note pad of scores, and stats. Others, play the game with the testers, and don't ask for any feedback. They know what they think of how things went, and that's all they care about. Some will quiz the testers mid game, and after the game. I tend to fall in the later category. Well, I use to do it more, but that was to help me get a true understanding of what the testers were thinking, and feeling.
My point is I've gotten better at spotting the red herring reaction testers will give you sometimes, so I focus a bit more on what I thought of the game than I use to, but true to my nature I'll still ask questions post game. This brings me to the next problem. Sometimes your testers will not agree on what is best for the game. "I think it should be faster", "I think it should be longer", "I think it should be more random", "I think it should be less random", and every other idea can be tossed out, when this happens it's easy to want to listen to the guy you tend to agree with. "Oh you loved the game? Great! Clearly your opinion matters more!" is not the best plan.
So what do you do when this happens? (And it happens.) How do you stay objective? And how do you give each tester equal time to give feedback, and consider their suggestions with the same weight?
Beyond that the rest is actually easier still. You find out what their comments have in common. A great example of that came up when I tried two different versions of a rule. One tester liked the first rule, the second tester liked the second rule. I decided the best course of action was to see why each of them preferred one variation of the rule over the other. I eventually realized they each felt the version of the rule they preferred helped them manage resources better. The solution was then pretty easy, pick the version of the rule I liked, and find an alternate way to address the problem that actually bothered them.
I think in the end this is one of those things that isn't a big a-ha revelation, as much of a "If you say it out loud then you're more likely to use it." and that is OK. That's why I'm saying it out loud, so in the future I'm more likely to remember this path, and that's why I'm sharing it because I'm sure it applies to more than just game design, and now you've heard me say it too.
About a decade ago I decided to play more board games. This was partly inspired by a party game I bumped into called Loaded Questions. If you haven't heard of Loaded Questions it's an underrated gem. Think of it like this Loaded Questions is to Cranium as Settlers of Catan is to Monopoly. I loved Loaded Questions, so much so that I spent the next 3 or 4 years trying to find a new game that lived up to it. In the meantime we played Loaded Questions so much that we started to see the same cards pop up over and over again. I was so excited when they finally released an expansion… and it wasn't very good.
That wasn't the last time I got an expansion to a game, and it under performed, or made me feel like I was better off not buying it. Heck, there are a few expansions I've purchased where I opened the box, read the rules, and thought "Nope this will just make the game play longer without adding any real value." That's why when I heard someone say a few weeks back "Expansions for board games never work out, and just aren't needed." I was quick to agree with him. However, after a moments thought, I was also just as quick to disagree with him, mostly.
That is to say, he's right a lot of the time expansions don't add enough value to a game, turn the play time up, sometimes make old weaknesses in the game that much bigger, and any number of things that just make it not worth playing. (Say "New Caprica" to a board gamer, and watch them instantly develop tourettes.) Heck, be honest, how many games do you play so much that you really needed an expansion? Not many. I know guys who buy every expansion for a game they've played. I guess if you're a collector that's OK, but that's not to my taste, and so for me, it's not worth it.
Smash Up is a game that was built to have expansions, and that is partly what helps get it around the general rule of bad expansions. If you haven't played Smash Up it's a great light weight card game that says "deck building takes too long, just smash two piles of cards together, and play with those." It also, wisely, creates the awesome theme of having every awesome theme. By that I mean you can Pirates, Ninjas, Robots, Dinosaurs, Aliens, Wizards, and so much more. It's a game designed to have expansions. Oddly, the expansion falls a little short in that they almost instantly start digging up some strange entries like "bear cavalry", and "killer plants". I mean I know the source material that inspired those choices, but they are a bit more niche than the broad appeal of ninjas. Still, the expansion just makes the game that much better, and it's a stand alone mini version of the game. It also introduces the badly needed score tokens. In short, the expansion expands the fun, and value, not the play time.
King of Tokyo is a crazy example of an expansion done right! For starters the game didn't need an expansion. It was a solid game that pretty much perfectly did what it needed to do. Light, dice rolling, fun flavor, fast. It was so good that last sentence is OK being incomplete. Anyway, if ever a game didn't need an expansion it was King of Tokyo… and the expansion made it better. This is kind of the board game equivalent of what I was talking about with Secret Wars last week. The introduction of monster specific mutations, and leveraging the heart die facing for more effect take the game to a whole new level. Also, giant panda.
If Smash Up is a game that was built for expansions, Dominion is the justification for all game expansions ever. Not only is Dominion the best game ever [Citation not needed], but it gets better with every expansion. Yes, this includes the Alchemy expansion (No bias on this site.) if you use it correctly. For those of you who don't know Dominion welcome to board games! It turns out there are other games than Monopoly, and they are actually good.
Honestly, not everyone loves Dominion, (I'm still confused by that one.) but the base game actually falls flat pretty quickly without expansions. It's like all the core cards you need to fill basic roles are in the base game, and you need to them make the expansions better, and the expansions make them better. They are reflexively as a whole better than their parts.
Deck builders as a genre lend themselves nicely to expansions. There are exceptions to this as well, but I'll avoid other deck builders in this list.
Dixit is an interesting party game. It seems to be that game that sounds super easy, like a party game should be, but causes more pauses, and ums than you might expect. Once you get your mind in the mode to play Dixit well it can be quite fun. The only problem is you see all of the cards every game. The rules of the game make it so it replays nicely but, in your mind you eventually want to see new cards. Because of this Dixit not only begs from an expansion, it just feels better when you finally have one. Additionally, the art in Dixit can be so surreal and wonderful that having new pictures to look at can be a great visual treat.
For those of you paying attention I've just put my own game on a list of awesome stuff. I know that doesn't sound very objective of me, but this game was designed to be expanded. Not only that it was designed to be fully functional, and to create a fully enjoyable experience, if you never get the expansion. Still, you might say, there are a lot of games designed with that in mind, but they don't live up to that potential, and that's part of the problem. How can you safely say that about Prophecies? I can't. However, I did something odd when I made Prophecies. Part way through play testing I started making expansions for the game, and I included them in the play test without telling the people that were playing the game. They just assumed these new heroes, monsters, treasures, and scenarios were all part of the core game, a very large core game, and it turns out the feedback was universally positive. Still, you might continue, it's still bad taste to include your own game in a list. Yes, I might add, but this is the only game I can make this kind of comment on. Perhaps, these other games went through a similar process, I can't say, so I'm forced mention my own game. Good excuse right? Took me a second to come up with it.
Sentinels is a great game, and you can tell by the manual, the inclusion of dividers, and other artifacts that they most likely did what I just talked about with Prophecies. The thing is you don't mind. Sentinels, as a base game, is awesome, and has an incredible amount of reply, but that doesn't stop you from instantly wanting more, and they deliver. The best part is the game engine is very elegant, so expansions feel like they were always meant to be there.
Now, there are definitely more than 6 games that I could mention that include wonderful, meaningful expansions. Some of them I've only ever played with expansions, so I can't comment on the contrast, I haven't played enough, they are close enough to items on this list, I haven't played them at all, or haven't even heard of them. The point is I'm glad expansions exist, but they are like sequels to a movie, you never know what it will do to the series.


Abstract: This thesis explores the analysis of English adjectives and adjectivals, in particular those which are properly translated as one-place predicates. The intent is both to review earlier analyses and to expand the fragment of English which is-accounted for in a Montague grammar. The presentation is in three parts. The first, comprising Chapters 1 to 4 explains and defends the analysis of some adjectives as predicates of individuals. Much of the discussion is devoted to measure adjectives like big and tall and evaluative adjectives like good and skilful. The second part, comprising Chapters 5 and 6, introduces adjectives and other categories at, proposition level; these include modal adjectives like necessary and possible and ' parenthetical. adjectives like odd and strange. Finally, Chapter 7 presents rules, and definitions to account for predicative adjectives and other categories at property level; notably Tough adjectives and 'human propensity adjectives' like wise and stupid. A number of other adjective classes and related phenomena are treated in the course of the discussion, including passive participles, present participles and adjectives taking various complements A generalised theory and formalisation of nonrestrictive modification is also provided.


"The entire proposal that is being submitted by Ashfield Land is appalling. It not only will destroy the area that I have lived in for most of my life, but will vastly deteriorate the natural beauty that our village and the surrounding villages currently enjoy.
B) The noise that the development will produce over a 24 hour period 7 days per week will have a profound effect upon our lives and to all people living within the affected areas.
C) DIRFT is literally a few miles up the road, located on a distinctly quieter junction/link to join the M1 than J15. This site has the potential to be increased dramatically and contains all of this activity to one area. The links for both road and rail lines is ideal here (the West Coast Mainline and Northampton Loop) are by far more suitable than what is proposed here.
D) Developments of this size and magnitude will literally destroy the character and appeal of the surrounding villages. It is wholly unacceptable to consider that is is justifiable and ethically correct. This area is not an industrial estate and should not be turned into one purely to satisfy the financial desires of land owners who do not live in this area and see this purely as a financial transaction as opposed to trying to develop the site in the name of reducing highway freight demand.
With all of this in mind, I Strongly disagree and oppose the development that is being proposed!


text:
from __future__ import unicode_literals

from django.db import models, migrations
import sorl.thumbnail.fields

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.CreateModel(
            name='KImage',
            fields=[
                ('id', models.AutoField(verbose_name='ID', serialize=False, auto_created=True, primary_key=True)),
                ('key', models.CharField(unique=True, max_length=100, verbose_name=b'Key')),
                ('value', sorl.thumbnail.fields.ImageField(default=b'', upload_to=b'uploads/kway/images/', verbose_name=b'Value', blank=True)),
            ],
            options={
                'ordering': ['key'],
                'verbose_name': 'Image',
                'verbose_name_plural': 'Images',
            },
        ),
        migrations.CreateModel(
            name='KText',
            fields=[
                ('id', models.AutoField(verbose_name='ID', serialize=False, auto_created=True, primary_key=True)),
                ('key', models.CharField(unique=True, max_length=100, verbose_name=b'Key')),
                ('value', models.TextField(default=b'', verbose_name=b'Value', blank=True)),
            ],
            options={
                'ordering': ['key'],
                'verbose_name': 'Text',
                'verbose_name_plural': 'Texts',
            },
        ),
    ]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
← Local legend in the NY Times
A little site my friends and I put together in August →
On responsibility
Posted on August 1, 2009 by jbj
Selena Roberts has the "Point After" column again in Sports Illustrated this week, and she uses it to check in on the widow of Korey Stringer, the Minnesota Viking who died of heat stroke during a preseason practice. It turns out that Kelci Stringer is doing terrific educational work, drawing attention to the importance of hydration, even within the macho world of football.
In soccer, we're pretty good about the hydration thing. On hot days, we limit activity–we even called a practice once because of heat, which I can't remember *ever* happening when I was a kid in the South–and all coaches call formal water breaks during practices. And the handout that all parents receive lists a water bottle as one of the mandatory things your child needs in order to play. (Last season, a sponsor even donated water bottles for all the kids.) So we take it pretty seriously.
I think that's why this paragraph rubbed me the wrong way:
"I'll never forget it," says Kelci. "Kodie came home from practice [last summer] and said, 'Oh, Mom, we didn't have water today.' I'm trying not to be the spooked widow mother, but I asked a coach, 'Why didn't he have water?' You wouldn't believe what he said to me: 'Why didn't you give him any?' I'm thinking, How many other coaches think this too?"
Um, I think this! It is amazing to me that parents will send their kid to a sports practice without water. (Kids in my league are old enough to know better, too.) And yet, every practice or game, at least one or two kids won't have anything to drink.*
You cannot seriously tell me that it is my job to provide water for my whole team. Do I always have an extra water bottle or two? Yes, of course. But I can't be expected to bring water for 10-14 kids, 3 times a week. (Six times a week if we add in baseball here.) Obviously we're talking about youth sports here–once you get to high school, things are different.
Coaches have the responsibility to:
Set the expectation that players will recover and hydrate during practice. (Or, "rest and drink," as I would've said before getting certified.)
Reinforce that expectation by regularly providing water breaks, by making sure that kids drink during said breaks (because "I'm not thirsty yet" is what that kid over there with heat exhaustion said), and by *never* withholding water as a disciplinary mechanism.
Monitor the physical well-being of their players during practice.
Players, even in an under-8 league, have the responsibility to:
Know that a full water bottle is something you bring to practice as automatically as your soccer ball or your cleats.
And parents are responsible for:
Making sure their kid has water, because kids will be kids, and might forget. And your volunteer coach has a dozen other kids to look after.
Watching practice closely enough to notice if your kid seems lethargic.
It's possible Stringer meant that her son's coach didn't give them a water break, which would in fact be crazy. But it seems like she means "the coach didn't provide water."
This entry was posted in coaching. Bookmark the permalink.
4 Responses to On responsibility
Bill Wandless says:
I've admittedly got my own axe to grind, but I'm not much inclined to join the Stringer family fan club. Has the case of Stringer helped to raise awareness about an underacknowledged health issue and a conflicted, punitive culture? Absolutely. Are the measures that have arisen to correct corresponding problems in youth sports valuable and commendable? Absolutely. Do I sympathize with Stringer himself, a player who was crushed between the paradoxical imperatives that seemingly govern the lives of supersized athletes–the drive to become enormous and somehow slim at the same time? Absolutely.
The Roberts report, however–specifically Kelci Stringer's criticism of coaches, which raised your own dander–seems to fall in line with a pattern of displacement that has characterized the Stringer family's "advocacy" efforts since litigation in the case of the father began. All the good that has arisen from the case appears to me to be incidental: the family is still in the process of exploring every option for monetizing the death of Korey Stringer–they've just hatched a suit against Riddell, the maker of helmets and shoulder pads, for their part in his death–and the investment in youth sports seems less like a disinterested effort to protect kids in general than to protect the family investment in the promising younger Stringer.
Roberts seem to think that Stringer's work is a cry for institutional accountability. That would be true if the suits against the NFL and the Vikings were unequivocally corrective efforts–attempts to challenge the militaristic macho culture that denies 350-pound men water and shade to toughen them up and force them to make weight.
When those same legal efforts are directed against a company that makes protective equipment, however, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a different set of underlying imperatives is at issue.
jbj says:
Fair points all–I haven't been following the Stringer story particularly closely since he died, and so focused on the low-hanging fruit, as it were.
I had a fairly active interest in the story because I was taking the product that allegedly contributed to Stringer's death. Even though toxicology reports did not find ephedrine in his system (in a peculiar twist, no one is 100% sure if the examiner tested for the substance), the effort by the Vikings to pin the blame on ephedrine (and thus minimize their own legal liability) was enough to snap that particular branch of the nutraceutical industry. A casual search for details of the case will still dredge up articles that lay the blame for his heatstroke squarely at the door of Twinlab, the makers of the ephedra-laden Ripped Fuel, no matter that the only initial connection between Stringer and the product was that a teammate swore that Stringer said he took it on the day he passed away.
The irony–and part of the reason for my umbrage against the surviving Stingers–is that the removal of ephedra (which still lives on in a variety of synthetic forms approved by the FDA) from the shelves would strike me as a legitimate response to the tragedy. Ephedra indeed elevates heart rate and core temperature, which is why the Ripped Fuel bottle used to be half-covered with warnings and strong guidelines for dosage. I can see that knee-jerk reaction, and I'm about 90% sure that the Stringers made an initial attempt to sue the manufacturer before their ambitions changed. Kelci Stringer herself later would admit that Korey Stringer used Ripped Fuel, although she wasn't sure he did on the day he died.
In the course of their climb up the chain of potential defendants, however, the Stringers actually tried to rule out the ephedra link, since that would stand in the way of suits against the Vikings and the NFL. Along the way they attempted to sue two coaches, a team athletic trainer, a team doctor, the practice where the team doctor worked, the attending doctor at the hospital where Stringer was treated for heatstroke, and now the makers of shoulder pads and helmets.
Kelci Stringer claimed all along that she just wanted to know what happened to her husband. The pattern of litigation suggests to me that her quest for knowledge overshot that particular mark.
You might appreciate the new variation on the theme written by Rick Reilly over at ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4406915

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Projects of the Advanced Directing Class. Students of the Advanced Directing class present their final projects. This one act play festival is an eclectic bag of zany and thought-provoking works with something for every taste. Hawes Studio Theatre Series is free; however tickets for the productions are available online at rutheatretickets.com or at the Porterfield Box Office during the week of the show.
An evening of exploratory dance, Student Choreography Showcase highlights the voices of emerging choreographers enrolled in the Department of Dance's Choreographic Studies II class. Free admission.


Thank you very much Robo! See comments for details.
I don't have my own printer, yet, so I'm not able to test this model myself. Feel free to modify anything so we can have a printable, working cube.
When the cube is functioning mechanically, perhaps we can distinguish between the sides without colors? See corner_color for an example.
My 3D background is from image and animation rendering, where it's important to maintain quads and avoid many edges meeting in a vertex. I don't know if it matters much in 3D printing? The flat sides on the pieces are 20 Wings unit wide/high/deep, which should equal to 20mm.
EDIT: I split the side and the corner (diagonally) in two parts to make it printable, but it needs to be glued together afterwards. Files updated.
EDIT2: "v2" New side and corners, resting on side. Scaled 10x from before.
EDIT3: "v3" Side piece turned the right way this time. Raft and flat bottom version of axis. All new objects combined in one Wings3D file for less clutter.
EDIT4: April 17. 2010 - Robo printed the first working cube!
EDIT5: "v4" Updated the corner piece with smaller connection part and beveled edges/smoothing (polygons went from 67 to 3432). Would love feedback and thoughts on this.
Modeled in Wings3D http://www.wings3d.com original sources files included. cube_WIP.wings features a assembled cube for test fitting the pieces.
The challenge is to deal with overhangs, find a good solution for the screws and springs and of course make it rotate well.
I've made individual files for every part, some cleanup, smoothing and drilling is probably required.
The screws needs to have threads only in the part which screws into the axis, so the center pieces can rotate freely. Perhaps it's possible to file off the upper threads one some screw? Springs is not critical for the basic mechanical function. See the attached picture for original screw, as well as an idea that might work without filing.
You need the following number of parts.


text:
Q: problem on returning value of function as a list using if today i was writing a function for my project using mathematica that gives a line equation in form of $y=mx+b$ and a circle equation in form of $x^2+y^2=r^2$ and finds the intersection point which is on the left side of circle($x<0$)
intersectionPoint[eqLine_, eqCircle_] :=
Module[{eq1 = eqLine, eq2 = eqCircle, pts, x1, x2, a},
    pts = NSolve[eq1 && eq2, {x, y}];
    x1 = x /. pts[[1, 1]];
    x2 = x /. pts[[2, 1]];
    if[x1 < 0, a = pts[[1]], a = pts[[2]]];
    a
 ];

So for a input like this
b = intersectionPoint[y == 0*x + 4, x^2 + y^2 == 25]

I expect b should be equal to this
{x -> -3., y -> 4.}

but instead it returns
{x -> 3., y -> 4.}

I read the wolfram If reference and in Generalizations part there was something like this
In[1]:=x = -2;
If[x < 0, y = -x, y = x]; y
Out[1]= 2

I can't understand why my function does not give me my expected result.

A: I found a couple typos in your code, the most glaring being the lower-case if.  This seems to work,
intersectionPoint[eqLine_, eqCircle_] :=
  Module[{eq1 = eqLine, eq2 = eqCircle, pts, x1, x2, a},
         pts = NSolve[eq1 && eq2, {x, y}];
         x1 = x /. pts[[1]];
         x2 = x /. pts[[2]];
         If[x1 < 0, a = pts[[1]], a = pts[[2]]];
         a];

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Tjuleni ist der Name folgender Inseln:

 Tjuleni-Insel im Ochotskischen Meer
 Tjuleni-Inseln im Kaspischen Meer

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
September 30, 2022 by unknown
Lief Moi
Tagged Lief Moi
June 19, 2022 by unknown
The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill – Episode 18
CHRISTIANITY TODAY Bonus Episode: Everything is Still Falling Apart
Building an institution on celebrity power, charisma, and a spirit of grandiosity attracts a lot of people, money and a certain kind of cachet for everyone involved. It helps them all to feel like they're part of something that's big — a movement providing a sense of meaning and purpose. But too often, these movements crumble, and those inside are crushed by the process. — Mike Cosper
LINK: The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill – Bonus Episode: Everything is Still Falling Apart
Tagged Acts 29, Brandon Thomas, Christianity Today, elders, evangelical, Hannah Arendt, Jimmy Evans, Jon Phelps, Jonna Petry, Josh McPherson, Larry Osborne, Lief Moi, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, megachurch, Mike Cosper, NPD, Paul Petry, Randall Taylor, Robert Morris, Roger Berkowitz, Russell Moore, The Trinity Church, Trinity Church, Yuval Levin
Podcast: The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill
WHEN MARS HILL CHURCH was planted in Seattle in 1996, few would have imagined where it would lead. But in the next 18 years, it would become one of the largest, fastest-growing, and most influential churches in the United States. Controversy plagued the church, though, due in no small part to the lightning-rod personality at its helm: Mark Driscoll. By 2014, the church had grown to 15,000 people in 15 locations. But before the year was over, the church collapsed. On January 1, 2015, Mars Hill was gone… — Mike Cosper
LINK: The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill – New Podcast Series
Tagged Christianity Today, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, Podcast
April 15, 2015 by unknown
Hillsong conference should not give Mark Driscoll a platform, say campaigners
For all those who care about the Church, the Bride of Christ, and believe Mark Driscoll should truly acknowledge and repent before he is given another platform, please consider writing Pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston of Hillsong Church with your concerns and signing the petition. It might be easier to ignore this and not care, it's all been so disheartening, but what does love demand? The most loving gracious acts call us to acknowledge ourselves, our weakness and our great need for the love and forgiveness of the Savior – and this includes owning our wrongdoing toward others and working to make things right. — Jonna Petry
CHRISTIAN TODAY – By Mark Woods
A campaign aiming to persuade Hillsong to rescind its decision to have the disgraced former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle at its Europe conference has been launched with an online petition.
Mark Driscoll resigned from the church he founded last year, following a string of revelations about his leadership style, which was said to be bullying and coercive. The church, which had grown to be one of the largest congregations in the US, folded at the end of last year, with its different campuses either closing, merging or becoming independent. It is facing a possible racketeering lawsuit arising from allegations that it misused funds given for church-planting work.
Hillsong's invitation to Driscoll to take part in its conference at London's O2 Arena (July 22-24) pre-dated his resignation from Mars Hill, and he will be interviewed by Hillsong founder Brian Houston rather than delivering a platform speech.
However, the petition says that allowing the invitation to stand is "both disappointing and of great concern to many across the UK and internationally"…
…While it says that people can be restored and forgiven, the petition says that Driscoll has not repented of the damage he has done to many former Mars Hill members and leaders. "It has been only six months since Mark Driscoll resigned and to give him such a platform as the O2 arena does not represent the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness, but that of cheap grace," it says. Hillsong is "both endorsing and legitimising Mark's messages about women and ignoring the concerns being repeated by many across the US and UK about his abusive behaviour, which has been corroborated by ex-members and ex-leaders of Mars Hill Church".
Link to article HERE.
Tagged abusive, Brian Houston, Hillsong, Hillsong 15, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, repentance
November 3, 2014 by unknown
Seven Years Later: 18 Mars Hill Elders Issue Letter of Confession to Bent Meyer, Paul Petry, and the Church
Letter of Confession to Bent Meyer and Paul Petry
Dear Paul and Bent,
We want to publicly confess our sin against you regarding events that took place at Mars Hill Church back in 2007. We were wrong. We harmed you. You have lived with the pain of that for many years. As some of us have come to each of you privately, you have extended grace and forgiveness, and for that we thank you. Because our sin against you happened in a public way and with public consequences, we want to make our confession public as well with this letter.
On September 30th 2007, you were both terminated from your employment as pastors at Mars Hill Church. Your status as elders of the church was suspended, according to the church's bylaws at the time, pending an investigation of your qualification for eldership. It's hard to imagine just how disorienting and painful this experience must have been for you. That night, Bent, you called Mike Wilkerson, your direct supervisor, to let him know that you'd been terminated. Within hours, Paul, you emailed all of the elders to notify us of what had happened to you that night. We had the opportunity and the responsibility to intervene, to care, to listen to you, and to make sure that any harmful treatment against you was corrected. Instead, we allowed the process of your investigation and trial to continue unimpeded and we participated in it. By failing to intervene and by participating in that process without protest, we implied to the members of Mars Hill Church, to each other, and to you and your families that your termination was above reproach. We stood by as it happened, and that was wrong.
We now believe that you were grievously sinned against in that termination. We believe that the termination meeting's content and tone was abrupt, one sided, and threatening. Hearing each of you recount your experiences of this meeting is shocking and sad. By failing to intervene, we enabled a growing trend of misuses and abuses of power and authority that would be feared and tolerated by the rest of the church's eldership. We now understand that these sorts of overpowering actions against elders were some of the very concerns that you had each expressed regarding some of the pending proposed changes to the bylaws. It is tragic that you were proved right by your own experiences. The harm permitted by our failure to protect you has had a devastating and lasting impact on you, your families, Mars Hill Church, and the watching world.
Paul, On October 15, 2007, all twenty-three elders at the time—including most of us signers of this letter—voted that you were in violation of the biblical qualifications of eldership. The alleged violations included a "lack of trust and respect for spiritual authority". All but two of the elders then voted to remove you from eldership based on these perceived violations.
We now believe our decisions were invalid and wrong. The entire investigation and trial process was skewed by the implication that your termination was above reproach and for just cause. If there had been sin in your life that might have warranted a warning about possible disqualification from eldership, we should have patiently, carefully, and directly addressed it with you before the matter became so extremely escalated. By reporting our wrongheaded assessment to the church, we put doubt about your character in the minds of church members, though you had done nothing to warrant such embarrassment and scrutiny. By doing this, we misled the whole church, harmed your reputation, and damaged the unity of the body of Christ.
Bent, On October 29, 2007, all twenty-three elders at the time—including most of us signers of this letter—agreed that you were guilty of "displaying an unhealthy lack of trust in, and respect for, the senior leadership of Mars Hill Church". We also unanimously approved that, based on your repentance, you would remain an elder of the church on probation.
Bent, we were wrong to have called you guilty of lacking trust and respect for the senior leadership of the church when you had good reasons for challenging the church's senior leadership. We were wrong to have insisted that you repent of this lacking trust as a condition of your continued eldership, because it was not sinful on your part in the first place.
Bent and Paul, you each had every right as an elder to openly express your strong concerns about the bylaws and to influence our thinking so that we might have made the most informed decision possible. You also had good reason to contact the church's attorney about those bylaws. These were not sinful acts of mistrust on your part, but reasonable acts of due diligence. We needed to learn from you at that time and we should have trusted you and respected your spiritual authority as elders of the church to educate us about potential problems with those bylaws. Instead, we silenced your voices through our complicity in your terminations and our decisions to remove Paul as an elder and keep Bent on probation instead of examining the issues more closely.
Paul, On December 5th, 2007 those of us who were elders at the time voted to instruct the members of Mars Hill Church to treat you as an unrepentant believer under church discipline after you had resigned your membership from the church. This treatment was to have included "rejection and disassociation" in the hope that you would "come to an acknowledgment of [your] sin and repent." This instruction was given with the weight of all twenty-seven elders at the time. This disciplinary rejection led to great loss to your family in extreme financial hardship, sudden loss of long standing friendships, spiritual and emotional trauma to your family, and the public shaming of your character. We share responsibility for those losses due to our participation in the vote.
A church disciplinary act of this magnitude is extreme. It's perhaps the most powerful that can be enacted upon a pastor. We now think that motion was hasty and harmful. We should have challenged the motion rather than approving it. Instead, we used our voting power as elders in a way that resulted in further harm to you. Further, we brought disrepute on the Church and its responsibility to exercise church discipline in a godly, loving and redemptive way. We failed to love you as a fellow elder and brother in Christ.
Confessing our sins against you has been a process that has taken us some time. We have engaged in self-examination, challenged our memories of what happened by reviewing the documents and interviewing one another, and spent time listening to you and your wives tell your heartbreaking stories. Many of us have met personally with each of you over the years to confess our sin and to seek forgiveness for our sinful actions and inaction. We don't intend to convey by this letter that we are the only elders or former elders who've come to similar conclusions, and we hope that in time, the others will join us in public confession. Our desire is to clear the reproach from your names.
We hope that our confession also brings healing to the many past and present members of Mars Hill Church whose hearts were broken for you and your families as a result of our sin. As part of our commitment to walk in repentance, we invite anyone who has been impacted by our sins against you to contact any of us so we can continue to walk in repentance by listening, confessing, and asking for forgiveness.
Paul and Bent, we are sorry for our sinful behavior toward you, for harming you, and for bringing shame to Christ's church. We hope that you will forgive us. May the peace and grace of our Lord heal our hearts.
Mars Hill Elders as of October, 2007
—Scott Thomas
—Dave Kraft
—Gary Shavey
—Steve Tompkins
—Brad House
—Phil Smidt
—Mike Wilkerson
—James Harleman
—Adam Sinnett
—Jesse Winkler
—Zack Hubert
—Tim Reber
—James Dahlman
—Dick McKinley
Additional Mars Hill Elders as of December 5th, 2007
—Jon Krombein
—Joe Day
✠
LINK to the letter: HERE
Tagged 7, abuse, AJ Hamilton, Bent Meyer, Bill Clem, Bubba Jennings, bylaws, Christianity Today, church discipline, confession, elders, excommunication, forgiveness, James Noriega, Jamie Munson, Jonna Petry, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Paul Petry, repentance, seven, shaming, shunning, spiritual abuse, Tim Beltz, Tim Gaydos, Tim Quiring, Tim Smith, trial
October 31, 2014 by unknown
The darkest, most destructive and most hurtful aspect of Mars Hill's ministry culture: the "ad hominem narrative"
The Letter of Pastor Steve Tompkins
Steve Tompkins served as an executive elder of Mars Hill Church, Executive Director of the Acts29 network, lead pastor of the Mars Hill Shoreline campus, and just before the collapse of Mars Hill served as the Director of Mars Hill Schools, a partnership between Western Seminary (Portland OR) and Corban University (Salem OR). Steve wrote the following letter on October 27, 2014, which he emailed directly to many former members of Mars Hill Church.
Dear Former Members and Attenders of Mars Hill Church, especially those of you for whom I have had shepherding responsibility at Mars Hill Shoreline:
I am deeply sorry that so many people have experienced profound hurt over the years at Mars Hill. It breaks my heart that many continue to live with deep emotional and spiritual wounds, even long after leaving the church.
I also realize that in my role as an elder, including as Lead Pastor at Shoreline, I share responsibility and complicity in some of the ways you have been hurt, disappointed, and sinned against at Mars Hill. For me this has been an ongoing process in which the depth of conviction and realization of my own sin seems to grow almost daily as does my sorrow over how people have been hurt. This has especially been so as I have had opportunity to sit down and hear people's stories directly. My purpose in this letter is to share some of the ways my perspective has changed, to confess my sin, to spell out my ongoing process of repentance, and perhaps – should God allow – play some role in his work of healing.
Let me tell you a bit about the journey bringing me to write this letter. Eight or nine months ago as I was reflecting on Revelation 2-3 (the letters to the seven churches), I began to feel that Jesus was placing Mars Hill under discipline and calling us to repent. Over the course of these past months this text of scripture, especially the first and last letters (those to Ephesus and Laodicea), have consistently formed the paradigm through which I have come to view events, attitudes, and decisions at Mars Hill.
In these letters we see Jesus walking among his churches. He knows what is happening. He speaks his words of commendation as well as rebuke. He calls the churches to have ears to hear. He calls them to repent, and puts them on a timeline of his choosing. If they prove to have ears to hear, choose to humble themselves, confess their sins and repent, then the corporate outcome is joy and fruitfulness. If however, they fail to repent then the consequences are serious and severe, including the removal of the lampstand of his presence and his light. What strikes me as significant is that our sovereign King places the outcome in the hands of the church itself. This has profound implications.
First of all it means that what has been happening at Mars Hill is the work of Jesus in our midst. It means that the root of the problem is not satanic opposition or attack, nor is it social media or vocal online critics, nor is it the members or attenders of the church (past or present). Nor is it elders, deacons, staff and leaders who have called for change from within. In fact the root of the problem has been the leadership of the church who have been blindly committed to maintaining the status quo as if we simply need to push through what has so frequently been referred to as a "difficult season."
All such attempts at crisis management and damage control are futile, foolish, and in fact create more harm since they are the polar opposite of repentance. I am convinced that Jesus is bringing his word of rebuke to the leadership (including me) through the Spirit. This is his word of loving discipline. In Rev 3:19 Jesus says, "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent." I personally must have ears to hear and a heart to respond.
I have been at Mars Hill for over 12 years, on full time staff for more than 11, a pastor for 10, and served as Lead Pastor of MH Shoreline for more than eight years. Jesus' call to repentance therefore is spoken to me as much as anyone at Mars Hill, for I have helped to build and perpetuate the culture of this church. Through sins both of commission and omission at various times I have been complicit. Recognizing this, I have been seeking over the last eight months to respond diligently and humbly. I have been asking Jesus to reveal my sin and show me where we have gone wrong as a church. He has proven faithful, progressively removing blinders and exposing my own MH-specific blind spots. He has been giving me new eyes and I now look back on my years at MH very differently. I see my sin in ways that previously I simply did not. It has been simultaneously painful and good.
For example, if the leadership and ministry culture at Mars Hill has been marked by arrogance (and it has), then I am coming to see how I have been marked by that same arrogance, and how I was blind to it, both in others and in myself. I now see how my own sin of arrogance within our arrogant culture therefore went unrecognized and unchallenged. In saying this, I am in no way blaming my sin on others or on the culture. On the contrary, my sin is my own sin which I freely confess. That is what I am now seeing with painful clarity.
The same is true with the sin of domineering leadership. In fact, if you mix ministry arrogance together with top-down domineering leadership along with idolatry of church growth and numbers, then inevitably you create a ministry culture where many end up hurt, burned out, feeling used. I see this now, and I see how I helped to build such a culture. In fact, I am now beginning to see how my own idolatry of performance and ministry "success" played so well at Mars Hill. Again, I do not blame my sin on others or our culture. Rather, I am now seeing how I contributed to the hurt of faithful and trusting members, attenders and leaders. Please forgive me.
But there is another – and related – area of great sin and blindness that I need to address. In fact, I would say I consider this to be the darkest, most destructive and most hurtful aspect of Mars Hill's ministry culture by far. I call it the "ad hominem" narrative.
Ad hominem is the Latin term for a tactic used when facing off with an opponent over an issue, whereby one seeks to win by attacking and discrediting their opponent rather that honestly debating the issue at hand. In one form or another, ad hominem narrative (which can sound very reasonable, especially because it can contain elements of truth), has been consistently used for years to discredit voices of dissent and to silence accusation of wrongdoing and sin.
What I have seen on multiple occasions is that when a leader raises an issue with Mars Hill or Mars Hill leadership, they themselves soon become the issue rather than the issue they raised. What they said, for example, is invalidated by how they said it, or because they did not follow proper procedure or protocol. Then, almost inevitably it is not long before they are gone from their position, their job, or the church itself. Often, their integrity was then slandered and their character maligned.
Resorting to ad hominem narrative as a response to conflict is horrible and devastating in the extreme. Ad hominem narrative is essentially to defend one's own righteousness rather than to trust the righteousness of Another. It never confesses or takes responsibility for sin. It is inconsistent with humility. It resists repentance at any cost. It is therefore antithetical to the gospel. Sadly, I confess that I bought into this narrative in many ways and for too long. I trusted our leadership and sincerely believed their words. I sincerely led others to believe their words. Perhaps our leadership believed their own words, but this consistent narrative over the years became woven into the core of the culture of the church. It is profoundly dark and ugly. I see that now, but for a long time I was blind to it. I am so sorry.
I have frequently chosen, when things get hard, to put my head down with my eyes forward, and simply to work hard. As a result I have had almost no rear view mirror, which I now realize contributed to my blindness. There are so many things I frankly did not see.
Looking back prayerfully however, I now realize there were also a few situations where I did see but did not speak up or stand up when I should have. My silence in those situations was sinful and cowardly. In our coercive culture of fear I gave in to fear of man. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. May God have mercy on us. With blind Bartimaeus I continue to call out, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (see Mark 10:46-52). May God bring true repentance, redemption and healing to me, the church, and indeed all of us.
Some may wonder why I have stayed at Mars Hill if indeed these are my convictions. The answer is quite simple and brings me back to Revelation 2-3 where Jesus calls – not just individuals – but entire churches to repentance. And if Jesus is calling Mars Hill to repent, then it is incumbent upon the elders to lead the way as those who must give an account. Therefore, I must repent as an elder in the office of elder taking responsibility for my sin as an elder. I must also seek to lead repentance and call others – especially among the elders – to join me every chance I get. This is what I am doing within Mars Hill as Jesus graciously continues opening my eyes.
In addition, I have felt conviction before Jesus that I need to apologize and repent personally, face to face when possible, to former members, leaders and staff. I have therefore been revisiting situations that are years old as well as recent. I have been seeing them with new eyes and coming face-to-face with my own sin. This includes, for example, the events in 2007 ensuing from the (what I now believe to be the unjust and unfair) firing of pastors Paul Petry and Bent Meyer. I was involved in the subsequent events which included the official investigation process, the trial conducted by the elders, and the official shunning of the Petry family which followed.
These events were profoundly devastating and damaging to both the Petry and Meyer families. I deeply regret my actions. I sinned against them through my participation as an elder, and desire to publicly redress these wrongs. I have recently reached out and apologized, repenting to them and seeking the beginning of reconciliation. From them I have received only grace and forgiveness. I am so grateful and humbled.
In many ways I feel like I am late to the table, but I am grateful to be here now. I have been reaching out to and meeting with a number of other former members, leaders, and staff as part of this ongoing process. God's grace has been profoundly present each time. Recently, I had the chance to stand on the stage at MH Shoreline, shoulder to shoulder with my fellow elders in front of gathered members as we each expressed our own repentance. I therefore intend to continue as an elder at Mars Hill as long as the process of repentance continues moving forward, and as long as there is hope for a more biblical and healthy plurality of elders to arise.
In light of Mark Driscoll's resignation I believe this is a crucial time, representing an opportunity to truthfully acknowledge the destructive elements of the legacy of Mars Hill's leadership. Leaders need to confess sin specifically, taking full responsibility. Apologies need to be given in person where possible. Now is the time for genuine open-hearted face-to-face repentance. I would love to see healing come to thousands of former and present members, attenders and leaders so that we can all embrace a more healthy and joyful future. We have hope for this through him alone who is our loving and risen Savior. For this reason I intend to continue down this road inviting others to join me. It is because this is so important that I have decided to put my thoughts in writing at this time. I intend to personally send this letter to as many people as I can. I freely give you permission to forward this to other former members and attenders of Mars Hill.
Brothers and sisters, I humbly ask your forgiveness for my sin in my role as a Mars Hill elder. I am deeply sorry for your suffering, and pray that Jesus will grant emotional, spiritual, and relational healing. I do realize that this letter represents a blanket confession, which in and of itself is inadequate.
I do realize that confession and repentance needs to be specific and personal. So, I want you to know that I am not simply asking for blanket forgiveness from a distance as if that will result in the healing grace you need and long for. I do hope to reach out personally to as many as I can, but please know that you are welcome to contact me directly, or through someone you trust (just drop me a line on Facebook). I would be happy to speak with you or meet with you as soon as our schedules allow.
Tagged Acts 29, ad hominem, ad hominem narrative, Bent Meyer, confession, Corban University, elders, family, forgiveness, Grace, healing, idolatry, Laodicea, leadership, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, members, MH, narrative, pastor, repentance, shepherding, shunning, status quo, Steve Tompkins, Western Seminary
FRONTPAGE: The Seattle Times
"There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus…"
— Mars Hill Pastor Mark Driscoll
Audio clip HERE.
Tagged BOAA, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, Paul Tripp, plagiarism, Result Source, Seattle Times
New Disclosures By Former MH Pastor/Elder Bent Meyer
The unfolding distortions of power, authority and obfuscation of factual information now seen at Mars Hill Church were identified by many going back to 2000. It was experienced by just a few then, since the church population was small and not enough instances of deception, bald-faced lying and hiding salient information had been exposed to determine a pattern.
In subsequent years there were statements made by Mark Driscoll in which he was aware of his need to be restrained and accountable to others locally. He would speak about structures implemented to maintain accountability. He would also complain. He feared the power those around him had to censure him and even dismiss him. He knew in those days restraint was real and he did not like it. There were long stretches of time that Mark was hedged in.
Mark Driscoll, however, maintained the power to frame the message and hide his behavior. His attitudes leaked constantly in his sermons. He isolated his victims from others. He held messaging jealously. As long as he could frame the communication, he could spin events, characterization of people, and his own actions to appear innocent through blame shifting.
The one being dismissed or characterized never had the same access to venues of communication. Mark held and kept the microphone.
Those of us who labored both behind the curtain and on the floor with congregants did see and experience Mark Driscoll's behaviors and attitudes. Some of us spoke at various times to Mark about his behavior and language, but far too infrequently. We allowed an environment in which Mark could intimidate and insist on control of vision, and the means of building that vision. We allowed Mark to become progressively more outrageous and dysfunctional. When it was too much it was also too late to shift the inertia.
I for one, would ask for a meeting with Mark, knowing full well that I might enter his office like Nathan entering David's chamber to confront him about Bathsheba. Nathan feared for his life. Well, I didn't fear for my life, but I did for my livelihood.
When dismissed or fired, some believed fervently, as I did, that it was important to not complain in the public media. They sought instead opportunity to speak to peer authorities, who would address Mark's character failures. The silence that subsequently followed from Acts 29 or other networks was vacuous: they appeared to be totally impotent in exercising, if it had ever crossed their mind, 1 Corinthians 6. The result? Those harmed were silenced, lonely, and wounded, not trusting their own ability to discern perpetrators of abuse from those that are kind guides. Far too many have today no trust for church servants/authorities. Still countless others will not darken the door of an organized church for fear of what they already have come to know.
The attitudes and behaviors Mark Driscoll exhibits, as well as those of too many of his staff, trickle down to community group leaders and into every crevice of the church. Great numbers of people come out with new accounts revealing abuse of power. Cash flow is an important fuel for Mark's ambitions. The insistence, humiliating rants and threats associated with people's giving practices are unbiblical. For people of the Book to not understand the principle of not being under compulsion to give related to amount or destination is appalling. Does anyone there read Corinthians?
By 2007, proposed new bylaws were presented to the elders, who at the time had real power to stop what we have now witnessed. The elders at the time, surrendered to threats, intimidation, and manipulation that I and Paul Petry resisted coming from Mark Driscoll's office. Yes, threats, intimidation and manipulation happened to me. Some of the stories of members and former elders have now been disclosed for all to read. The chorus is large now and the patterns are clearer. The people who experienced Mark Driscoll's violence were alone in the past, but not now.
What made Paul Petry's and my dismissals different from others that happened afterwards? It happened to us both at the same time, in the same room, with the same people. We were witnesses together. Unbeknownst to either of us until much later, we each independently of the other wrote contemporaneous transcripts of the dialogue during that meeting – of the words spoken to us before they would evaporate from memory. Our quotations of the dialogue are almost verbatim. The others in the room were also witnesses. Some are now talking.
Our experience represents the testimony of two witnesses. Jamie Munson told me later that he and the other executive elders had learned a lesson: 1) never to fire two people at the same time, and, 2) the process of a trial would never happen again. Of course not, since the adopted new bylaws set in place, for the first time, "at will employment."
The issue at the time related to the consequential nature of the proposed bylaw changes. The issues were technical, a little on the boring side at the time to read and think about. I remember some of the elders admitted not reading the proposal and wondering why I was making so much fuss. Two of them told me, "Just trust Mark."
I diagrammed the reporting structure spelled out in the proposal and ran many scenarios to test them to see what ways abuses of power could happen. I discovered many. I talked about it, but I was not taken seriously. For my part, I had enough experience with Mark Driscoll to identify his mode of operating. The proposed bylaws would implement an organization that gave Mark near absolute reign.
None of the other elders appeared to have understood Mark's feet of clay, except Paul Petry and me. To me a major power grab was happening, which stripped away the last vestige of accountability and real balance of authority to restrain Mark Driscoll from self-destruction and the church with him. In my estimation, this was not healthy for Mark, or anyone else associated with Mark. The emerging dilution of brilliance Mark spoke of possessing, he had actually come to believing. Mark was sliding ever more, headlong into foundational character erosion. His existing belief in his entitlement, grandiosity, exploitiveness, demeaning nature and rageful vengeance, were already present and needed consistent restraining by those around him.
Mark would talk about "accountability," but that was to geographically distant people like John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, or Paul Tripp. To me that was less than credible, and not at all Biblical, since distance insulated Mark from being experienced in everyday life by those he would be accountable to. Mark again would have control of framing the message and blame shift without those distant knowing what was going on. Those close in proximity were marginalized. Those who saw and knew would have no voice. They would have no authority. They were under threat. They came to know they could be fired, for any reason or no reason at all, with no venue of appeal or redress. They would no longer be Biblical peers (elders), but were employees, hirelings. All power would be possessed in as few as three men and ultimately in Mark Driscoll alone.
Now it is clear, finally, my voice can be heard. If I had released the following source documents seven years ago, I would be dismissed as a "bitter" former employee out for revenge. I have held on to these documents hoping those left behind in Mars Hill leadership left would wake up and confront Mark Driscoll and correct the misstep of agreeing with the reorganization without accountability or balance. I also hoped those at the Acts 29 Network would pressure Mark to restore authority balance. I hoped other alliances would do the same. None have, with the recent exception of Acts 29 which recently ousted him from their association. I despaired of those associations as they did not handle I Corinthians 6 well. In their hands it would not work – not because St. Paul was wrong, but because the evangelical church leadership too often operates unbiblically when it comes to inter-church discipline.
I have had to change my assessment, since the Acts 29 announcement of not only their removal of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church from the network, but also their direct instruction to Mark that he seek professional (my word not theirs) help and surrender the microphone to someone else. This is an important move for the members of Mars Hill Church to recognize and insist on. To not take this seriously, exposes the likely reality that they are more enamored with their ears being tickled than really taking seriously the instructions regarding lying, abuse, intimidation, dereliction of fiduciary duty, hostility and slander directed toward fellow believers, freedom of people to associate and give via the dictates of their conscience, etc.
For everyone's sake, Mark Driscoll needs to step away forever being in the post he now occupies. I say this because what ails Mark is very much like being addicted to opium or alcohol. Mark does not know how to handle communications honestly, simply because he cannot be honest with himself. Shame is too much for him to experience without employing minimization and denial. He cannot be in a position of power, since for him, it is an elixir to fuel his fantasies of grandiosity. He cannot be in a position which places him in authority, since his firm stance on entitlement will emerge again. In such an environment, everyone in his surroundings will be beneath him.
Having stated the above as background, I am releasing these documents to give historic context to patterns of abuse of power wrought by Mark Driscoll and those closely associated with him. You can examine them and see the workings of these moments in time. What happens on stage in the public setting is entirely different from the intrigue behind the curtain. Hopefully, for the reader, these documents will open up the curtain a bit. It is, of course, from my perspective and dated. It also reveals as much of my shortcomings as anyone else's. I stand with all the others, soiled, and culpable for not firmly hedging Mark in for his good and the good of all. I stand with the others as one timid, and putting financial wellbeing over confronting Mark on many occasions in elder meetings with witnesses.
The other reason for releasing these documents is that many Acts 29 startups adopted the Mars Hill model bylaws and membership agreements wholesale as their own church governance documents. Both are profoundly flawed and do not follow a biblical pattern of leadership, authority, or freedoms to give generously without compulsion. They need to be examined and revised in line with biblical boundaries.
I have been confined by professional responsibilities and ethical restraints as a therapist to exercise caution related to my public communication, since I have had to consider the possibility that future clients might be current members or past members of MHC. In that context it is not ethically appropriate to influence or convolute my experience with theirs. Thus, publishing must consider the unintended consequence to clients who struggle with their conflict and their wellbeing, not mine.
The impingement has been very difficult in light of the continual refrain of abuse of power and control and the suffering of so many. I have consulted on the matter of disclosure as it relates to professional ethics and I have been told it is not unethical to tell my own story publicly, or to advocate for the marginalized. Thus I am now releasing the following material as a historical set of documents which others may analyze and come to their own conclusions.
I have been approached by many in the media for my account, but have held to the notion that my communication needs to be penned by my hand, not someone else's. I have had too much reframing of my words and intentions to have it happen again for someone else's agenda. What I write, I am responsible for.
Let it be known, the existence of a binding non-disclosure agreement did not exist in 2007. There was no demand or threat of legal consequences if I publish correspondence between myself and others or publish internal documents. Further note that Mark Driscoll said, in the presence of a witness, that he put no restraint on me publishing documents (see the transcript at the end of this set of documents, page 107). The restraint has been mine and in consideration for my profession and clients and keeping the resolution of these matters within the Christian community.
I have given this set of documents to Paul Petry to publish via "Joyful Exiles." It makes sense to have my set of documents with Paul's, since together a fuller picture can be discerned. I have been advised that there are many typos, grammatical errors and sentence constructions that are awkward or hard to understand. As embarrassing as it is to leave them as they are, in my mind it is not important, since changing them for my comfort would be to change history to avoid personal shame and embarrassment. With few exceptions, the documents are as they were.
I have obscured one executive elder's email content from the documents. He added a non-disclosure paragraph at the end of each email. I will honor this. I have, however, provided the sense of the content in my own words. I have also obscured some salary information, since it has little import to the controversy the documents reveal.
Speaking of embarrassment, I regret one document that I wrote to gain a transfer of membership in good standing from Mars Hill (see page 101). Experience as a pastoral counselor provided a shift and discovery of what God has likely equipped me for over the course of my life to date. The experience introduced me to being a licensed therapist in the larger community, for which I am grateful. But I regret the casting of the letter I wrote for two reasons:
1. I wanted to leave MHC without complications, so I made statements that subsequently fed into what I came to know would be spun to obscure the real issues.
2. I did not want any more attacks on my character, which happened anyway.
I betrayed Paul and Jonna Petry. Their brutal, unjust excommunication was not resolved and was further obscured by my framing of the letter. The statements I made appeared to endorse the practices embedded in MHC, which would envelop the actions taken to scapegoat the Petrys as justifiable. This was done for my personal gain without regard for Paul and his family. It was plain wrong! Paul and I have long since resolved this and are good friends today.
Bent Meyer
Tagged Acts 29, Bent Meyer, bylaws, community groups, counseling, elder, elders, excommunication, Jamie Munson, John Piper, Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill, Mars Hill Church, membership, MHC, Paul Petry, Paul Tripp


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It's now not lengthy prior to Talia's head over heels for Jake—and his little woman. yet Talia needs to face her earlier ahead of they could either obtain the reward of a destiny jointly and a life of chuffed vacation seasons.
While Jack Valentine used to be rejected by way of his father, he headed to long island and made billions. Now the proud Valentines want his cash, so he returns to London, together with his relied on assistant, to make or holiday the kin. till London, Maddie loved a qualified dating along with her boss. Now something's various.
Upon her grandmother's loss of life, Izzy Fontaine unearths herself in ownership of a Wild Goose Chase development duvet that supposedly ends up in a good treasure. after all, as soon as the remainder of the relations unearths out concerning the "treasure map," they're made up our minds to have a cross on the treasure themselves. And, if that were not sufficient, Max Logan, an area museum curator, contacts Izzy and says that Grandma Isabella promised him the cover.
'Brilliantly humorous' Paige Toon'I enjoyed it! ' Louise PentlandA marriage ceremony in Manhattan…and someone's conserving a mystery. The day her husband Alex alternatives up a backpack and is going traveling, Angela Clark can provide to stick out of difficulty and hold either Louboutins at the floor. So while her top friend's boyfriend confides in her, it can't damage to aid him choose a hoop at Tiffany's definitely?
Small Victories, probably the most liked cookbooks of 2016, brought us to the stunning Julia Turshen and her mastery of show-stopping domestic cooking, and her moment booklet, Feed the Resistance, moved a state, profitable Eater Cookbook of the 12 months in 2017. In Now & back, the follow-up to what actual uncomplicated referred to as "an inspiring addition to any kitchen bookshelf," greater than a hundred twenty five scrumptious and possible recipes and 20 inventive menu principles aid chefs of any ability point to assemble family and friends round the desk to percentage a meal (or many!


RE: filmscanners: Canon FS2710 - any good?
Subject: RE: filmscanners: Canon FS2710 - any good?
>         I can't find any reference to CanoScan FS2740. Is this a typo?
> Chris of FS2700 fame.
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What:Shares ofTextura Corp.fell as much as 23.6% early Tuesday, and traded down 19.5% as of 11:30 a.m. after the construction collaboration solutions provider announced mixed third-quarter results and disappointing guidance.
So what:Quarterly revenue climbed 38% year over year to $22.5 million, driven by a 42% increase in activity-driven revenue to $18.4 million, and 20% growth in organization-driven revenue to $4.1 million. Billings also rose 39% year over year to $26.1 million, 7% of which is associated with multiyear deals.
Trending toward the bottom line, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $3.1 million, compared to a $1 million adjusted EBITDA loss in the year-ago period. Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), Textura's net loss narrowed to $2.5 million from $7.5 million in last year's third quarter. On a non-GAAP (or adjusted) basis -- which adds perspective by excluding things like share-based compensation and expenses related to acquisitions -- Textura achieved net income of $1.8 million, or $0.07 per share, compared to an adjusted net loss of $0.07 per share in the year-ago period.
Analysts, on average, were expecting higher revenue of $23 million, but lower adjusted net income of $0.06 per share.
Now what: For the current quarter, however, Textura expects revenue in the range of $23 million to $24 million -- or 31.5% growth at the midpoint -- and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.06 to $0.09. By contrast, analysts' models called for higher fourth-quarter revenue of $25.7 million, and earnings at the top end of Textura's range.
Specifically regarding foreign exchange, after having no negative influence on results in the first half of the year, Canadian currencies are now expected to negatively impact 2015 revenue by roughly $500,000.
But arguably more concerning for investors is Textura's slower growth both internationally and from those two solutions outside the CPM (construction payment management) industry. For now, while it might be tempting to dive in after today's drop, I'm still content watching Textura over the next quarter or so to see whether both these potentially temporary issues show signs of abating.
The article Why Textura Corp. Stock Dropped Today originally appeared on Fool.com.


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The Heart of a Woman
Maya Angelou's Womanism in "The Heart of a Woman"
July 8, 2019 by Essay Writer
Maya Angelou's series of seven autobiographies collectively captures the various sections of her enthralling and turbulent life. The Heart of a Woman (1981), as her fourth autobiography is an account of the beginning of her writing career, her encounters with several political figures, her active involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, and her relationship with her son Guy. "Maya Angelou concentrates on the biography sub-genre as a vital tool of self-expression at the personal level as well as the collective levels" (Kolawole 190). Through a description of her personal experiences and relationships, Angelou manages to draw out a number of social, political, and cultural issues pervading the environment which serves as the backdrop of her memoir. This particular volume is possibly the most political of her autobiographies as it touches on the period of her life where she was an active member of the Civil Rights Movement and was also involved in the African struggle for freedom. However, the text differs from a historical text in that it is able to focus on the personal experiences and relationships of the author amidst all the socio-political turbulences. According to Mary Kolawole, "(b)y drawing attention to her personal experience, Angelou, like many African-American writers, deploys individual reality to give expression to the collective awareness" (190). The stress is on the experience of motherhood, especially that of a black mother. Though almost all her works undoubtedly have feminist leanings, the type of feminism that Angelou explores is more identifiable as a 'womanist' approach.
The term 'womanism' was coined by Alice Walker who describes a womanist as "A black feminist or feminist of colour"(xi), and on its relationship with feminism, she says: "Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender"(xii). This is suggestive of the inclusion of the term 'womanism' and 'feminism' under the same collective umbrella. The term is a result of the belief that 'feminism' does not encompass the perspectives of black women, prompting the need to create a specific type of feminism that is inclusive and focused on black women. It leans toward a preference for "women's culture, women's emotional flexibility, and women's strength… Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female" (Walker xi). It accounts the relationship of black women with the men in their lives, as well as with other women and often touches on the ways in which black women support and empower black men. It does not necessarily represent any political standpoint and values other than the honoring and appreciation of black women's strength and experiences. According to Deborah King, "the connotation of 'women' within the black community have become positive ones, asserting and affirming the value in female of adult qualities such as ability, independence, creativity, loving, and strength"(1486). Thus, Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, which explores the experiences of womanhood, the strength and resilience that helped her through a perplexing and complex life as a black woman can pass as a remarkable womanist text. Moreover, Angelou herself quite perfectly fits Alice Walker's description of a womanist who "Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the folk. Loves herself. Regardless"(xii).
The novel unfolds as a multifaceted story of a woman who is struggling with her career, with motherhood, with her love life, as well as with the socio-political issues of her time. In the book Angelou describes her journey of shifting her career from singing to writing, her intricate and perplexing relationship with her son, her dynamic love life and difficult marriage, her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement under Martin Luther King Jr., and her relocation to Egypt and Ghana, exploring her heritage. In the memoir, Angelou commences her narration in 1957, when the United States was "a-moverin' to, fro, up, down and often in concentric circles"(Angelou 1), when the relationship between the blacks and the whites was "a maze of contradictions"(Angelou 1). The beginning alone foreshadows the rather political vein that will run throughout the text. It manages to serve as a remarkable historical text touching on the most significant social and political events of the time and the socio-political atmosphere is vividly perceivable through the lens of the author's experience. But apart from this focus on the social level, her personal and individual experiences took precedence, distinctly identifying the book as a personal memoir rather than a historical record.
Angelou's relationship with her son serves as possibly the most important, 'the heart' of the memoir. Her son, Guy Johnson was coming of age around the time this volume is set. With the outset of the American Civil Rights Movement calling for a particular brand of child rearing, motherhood for Angelou was intense and complex. Though Guy himself is not depicted as being a difficult child or in need of any sort of special nurturing, there was still a certain level of anxiety in Angelou, maternal anxieties that were both universal and exclusively African-American. Some anxieties like that over the absence of a father-figure in her child's life prove universal as it is a common phenomenon amongst single-mothers. When she develops romantic ties, she always seeks for a possible father figure for Guy apart from her personal satisfaction. This need she feels enables her to bear the alienation and detachment she feels when Guy develops a friendship with her husband Vus and is no longer dependent on her as much as he used to be. When she detects this change in their relationship, she simply says, "I yearned for our old closeness, and his dependence, but I knew he needed a father, a male image, a man in his life" (Angelou 238). Putting aside her own selfish desire and possessiveness over her son, she manages to accept what she believes to be in her son's best interest. The power of motherhood and the reflection of a maturity and emotional strength on the part of the womanist author prove significant. The intense sense of responsibility of a mother is highlighted when she recalls the accident her family met with when Guy was seven, and laments in self-blame: "we had not caused the accident… But I was the mother, the most powerful person in his world who could make everything better… I could have prevented the accident" (264). Motherhood, in Angelou's case, motivates and drives her to strive for seemingly impossible and unachievable qualities, consequently resulting in a self-actualization and awareness of potentialities.
As a black mother, Angelou is faced with a very complicated responsibility where she needs to make his son aware of the true condition of the limitations that comes with his skin colour, but at the same time encourage him not to submit to racial prejudices. According to Angelou, "the black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion… within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door or a ring of the telephone can be exposed as false. In the face of these contradictions, she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged"(44). Achieving the balance between instinctive maternal nurturing and a need to let them achieve maturity and awareness happens to be a difficult task for the author. Despite these difficulties, she manages to raise a mature young man, who, towards the end of the volume, speaks of his wishes for her mother to "grow up"(Angelou 345) . This role reversal serves as a pleasant reminder of the impressive work the author had done in bringing up her child despite the turbulent condition of their lives and despite his coming of age in the midst of social upheaval. This relationship between black mother and child adheres to the features of womanism, both in the aspect of its preference for women's culture through motherhood, as well as its portrayal of a black woman's relationship with a black man, the former supporting and empowering the latter.
This volume also draws out the strength of the author through her professional career and political activism. Despite never receiving proper education and always having pursued her career in the field of performance art, Angelou manages to be a resourceful worker and motivated writer. As the book talks of the initiation of Angelou's writing career, we get to see that even great and prolific literary icons like the author herself had initially faced harsh criticisms. With striking courage combined with an intense awareness of her cultural heritage, she talks of her determination: "If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to overcome was black people's honorable tradition"(52). Even after her writing was not so well received by the members of the Harlem Writers' Guild, she did not give up and had now earned a position in the pantheon of American literature. The remarkable resilience and determination she reflects can be held accountable for the success and recognition she had received. Even when it comes to political activism she was determined and courageous. Though she is not familiar with the type of work or knows how to type, she accepts the position offered to her as coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Black solidarity, a significant component of womanism, is also drawn out multiple times, serving as a weapon against the atrocities of the racial subjugation imposed by the whites. When she attended the Harlem church where Dr. King made an appearance, she noticed that those in the church were "one people, indivisible in the sight of God, responsible to each other and for each other"(Angelou 69). Here she voices her belief of championing this unity over the white community's hatred towards them, she proposes, "we the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love"(Angelou 69-70).
Angelou explored the resurgent interest in African culture that was prevalent during the Civil Right Movement. Partly as an act of awareness and assertion of her ancestral roots, she marries an African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make but this act proves unfulfilling and complicated as the husband turns out to be philandering and economically irresponsible. His complete upholding of African values in conjugal administration is also problematic as the author is not given any space for self-assertion and awareness while playing "the cared-for housewife", "the role marriage had forced upon (her)"(261). Though she courageously and determinedly tried to assume the role of the traditional African wife as housekeeper, cook, and lover as homage to her African heritage, she could not completely depend on anyone else but herself. Hence, she sought for a job with the help of an African-American journalist David Du Bois even with her husband's disapproval. Though she was well aware of her African heritage she also revealed that realignment with ancestral practices is not positively suited to the modern world.
Angelou opens her book thanking her sisters/friends whose love encouraged her to spell her name 'W O M A N', attesting to the significance given to networking with other people for her own self-growth and maturity. Throughout the book we are introduced to a number of figures who play such integral roles in the life of the author. The progress and growth in the life of the author is narrated in light of a firm recognition of the importance of collective unity and power for individual growth. Angelou celebrates the love and integrity amongst the black community in which she plays an active part. According to Deborah King, "a womanist is spirited and spiritual, determined and decisive, committed to struggle and convicted of victory. A womanist acknowledges the particulist experiences and cultural heritage of black women, resists systems of domination, and insists on liberty and self-determination of all people"(1487). Through a study of The Heart of a Woman, we see that Angelou in the book, through her celebration of her relationships with black men and other black women, her strength, maturity, and resilience, and her intense awareness of cultural heritage, undoubtedly fits the description of a womanist.
Works Cited Angelou, Maya. The Heart of a Woman. London: Virago Press. 1981. Print. Gillespie, Marcia. Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration. New York: Doubleday. 2008. Pdf. Higashida, Cheryl. Black Internationalist Feminism. Urbana: University of Chicago Press. 2013. Print. King, Deborah K. "Womanist, Womanism, Womanish" . Women's Studies Encyclopedia:Q-Z. Vol. 3. Ed. Helen Tierney. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. 1999. Pdf. 1486-1487. Kolawole, Mary Ebun Modupe. Womanism and African Consciousness. Trenton: Africa World Press Inc. 1997. Pdf. Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mother's Garden. London: The Women's Press. 1984. Pdf.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
The Highwayman
The Histories
The History Boys
The History of the Franks
The History of Tom Jones a Foundling


A vibrant and diverse evening of Vivaldi at Wigmore Hall with the Akademie für Alte Music Berlin.
If there's one glowing aspect missing from the burgeoning classical music scene in Istanbul, it is chamber music. The city has been a host to an increasingly diverse range of musical performances and festivals in the last few years, thanks to rather effective sponsorship arrangements, as well as small organizations, and sometimes even individuals, taking charge in organizing concert series.
On 19th November 1714 the Habsburg court in Vienna celebrated the nameday of Holy Roman Empress Elisabeth Christine with an operatic pastiche, L'Atenaïde, for which three court composers (Marc'Antonio Ziani, Antonio Negri und Antonio Caldara) each wrote an act.
Eine moderne Inszenierung der Spätbarock Oper Dafne von Antonio Caldara liefert das Landestheater Salzburg zum Abschluss der Saison und zeigt, dass hier sowohl sängerisch wie inszinatorisch das beste tatsächlich zum Schluss kommt.


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Jhene Aiko Bares All For PETA's 'Rather Go Naked' Campaign
Delenda Joseph
Life Writer
After making PETA's 'Sexiest Vegan/Vegetarian Celebrity' list this past summer, Jhene Aiko finally bares all for the animal rights organization as part of their famous "Rather Go Naked" campaign. The 28-year-old songstress now joins the long list of stars who have declared they would rather wear absolutely nothing than ever wear fur.
The striking picture, which sees Jhene completely naked while only covering the NSFW areas of her body with a blanket, was debuted at PETA's "Naked Ambition" exhibit in Los Angeles Monday night. Jhene was more than happy about her decision to bare all, posting on Instagram, "I am honored to be a part of @peta 's naked campaign [prayer hands emoji]."
DROP THE FUR!! I am honored to be a part of @peta 's naked campaign 🙏🏼 thank you @brianbowensmith for the great shots!!
A post shared by Chilombo (@jheneaiko) on Dec 5, 2016 at 8:29pm PST
"Animals have feelings, they have souls, they have emotions, and the way that they are killed for fur is very inhumane," says Aiko in an exclusive video interview. "They're electrocuted, they're beaten, they're drowned, they're skinned alive. And once you know that, it's, like, how could you think wearing fur is cool? … [I]t's not."
Jhene's "Rather Go Naked" ad is the second time the singer has partnered up with PETA. The Sailing Soul(s) songstress spoke about her love for cats with peta2, the largest youth animal rights group, in 2014. "I think cats are super smooth with everything they do. I move in silence, but when I feel threatened I get real feisty like a cat," Jhene said in a video encouraging animal lovers to adopt rather than buy.
Take a closer look at Jhene's "Rather Go Naked" ad below.
TAGSJhene AikoPETA


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Gathering family histories from migrants and the women left behind: A methods perspective
As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled Gathering family histories from migrants and the women left behind: A methods perspective by Grascious Ncube (Development Studies, University of the Witwatersrand).
Within the growing scholarship on transnational migration, the methodological approaches and time perspective employed in these studies have received some criticism. One of the major critiques is that research tends to focus more on the transmigrants (those who move) and neglects those who remain behind. In addition, studies have failed to trace processes of intergenerational flows in migrant families over multiple generations, thus failing to incorporate family migration trajectories from a historical perspective. Indeed, relatively few migration studies are anchored on tracing the historical interactions and dynamics of migrant families and some criticisms have been levelled against the methodological approaches used by these studies. For example, these have been criticised for proffering situational realities based on individuals' narratives whose standpoints are fluid and shaped by the continual changes in their context. This issue questions the adequacy, authenticity and epistemological validity of the reality presented in these family history accounts. This presentation addresses some of these criticisms through the use of multi-sited ethnography to incorporate the realities of those who migrate as well as those who stay behind. The research gathered histories from left behind family members in Tsholotsho in the Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe – the majority of these are women – and migrant members from Tsholotsho residing in Johannesburg, South Africa , to assess the contemporary changes and historical continuities within families in the context of sustained cross-border migration. Grascious reflects on the methodological implications derived from gathering these family histories from both sides of the transnational continuum. She discusses the different ways of conceptualising families, from the perspectives of the women left behind and from the migrants' perspectives. In doing so, she argues that reconstructing family history in the context of transmigration requires not just an account of one history but of many histories emanating from intersections of different families all conglomerated to form one family through the eyes of the history teller. Family history perspectives on migration challenge the patrilineal configuration of families. Methodological challenges associated with family histories in the context of migration need to address the spatial dimension of those who have moved and those left behind.
Gracsious Maviza (nee Ncube) is a registered PhD Fellow in the department of Development Studies, Wits. Her research focus is on assessing the contemporary changes and historical continuities within families in the context of sustained cross-border migration in the Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe. She is also a Research Fellow with the Institute of Development Studies of The National University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe. She has a number of publications in the fields of migration, livelihoods, gender, food security and local economic development in peer reviewed journals. She holds an MA in Development Studies majoring in Local and Regional Development from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in The Hague, The Netherlands and a BSc honours in Sociology from the University of Zimbabwe.
Date: Tuesday 3 April 2018
Time: 12.30 -13.30
Venue: ACMS Seminar Room 2163, South East Wing, Second Floor, Solomon Mahlangu House, University of the Witwatersrand East Campus
International Migration Conference 2018
ACMS awarded ARUA Centre of Excellence for Migration and Mobility