Comments

1
What I find really embarrassing about all this is how easy it is to buy your way onto the NYT best seller list. Or, I would find it embarrassing if I hadn't known for decades that bestseller lists and album charts are all tools of the major publishers and bear little relation to reality. Still, embarrassing to have it revealed how they do it.
2
Did anyone else read "We are confident that God is preparing Pastor Mark and the ministry of Mars Hill Church for a great harvest of souls in the days ahead" and immediately want to go buy a bulletproof vest?

Seriously - is this "great harvest of souls" coming up SOON? Should I be avoiding large public spaces in the next few weeks?
3
... a great harvest of souls? I think they lifted that line from Diablo 3. Terrifying.
4
"...a great harvest of souls in the days ahead."

Halloween-style or Shivers II?
5
"...harvest of souls."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
6
Twenty-plus years ago I was working for a small publishing company in NYC as an editorial assistant. Our publisher had "close" relationships with people at the NYT and PubWeekly (he's slept with them), so he knew which bookstores reported to the list. He sent me to every bookstore in lower Manhattan to buy up all available copies of a book we had out on the JFK assassination. (This was when the Oliver Stone movie came out.) We managed to get to #9 on the list, for one week, which earns you the right to print "NYT Bestseller!" on all subsequent editions of the book
7
@3

And the dialogue in that game was TERRRRIBLE too.
8
Having been raised Baptist/Evangelical I know what the whole "harvest of souls" thing is supposed to refer to, but I still can't help picturing god as one of the aliens in the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man"
9
I don't play tennis. But you know what? Other people playing, clubs that create courts for them to play, books on tennis- they don't bother me. I just don't talk about, go to the courts or buy the books. I don't even mind that some taxpayer money goes to teaching kids tennis in school or building courts in public parks.

Your hatred of a church is understandable, given the kinds of people who write for or like the Stranger. Evil always hates and fears good, after all. But it would seem a simpler solution to ignore it than obsess on Mars Hill.
10
They have a "Board of Advisors & Accountability"! Hilarious! And yet this kind of shit still happens.

It says that Mars Hill is a member in good standing of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability since September 2012. That's a good thing. What about before the sixteen years before that? It sounds like they joined ECFA at a time of significant upheaval and turnover -- times when churches are liable to turn into Miscavige-style cults -- call them "purges" if you like.

Of course, the Christian Broadcasting Network, home of the hopelessly corrupt 700 Club and all its associated criminal enterprises, is an ECFA member, too. So I guess having a "Board of Advisors & Accountability" is going to be good enough.

@9, would you still be happy if large amounts of public money went to a tennis organization that cooked its books and fixed tournament results?
11
Why would anybody believe a church should be above board and ethical? The idea is absurd. Religion is all a big fucking con-game.
13

Apologies. Describing Stranger readers (though I stand by it with regard to staff who knowingly proselytize immoral, destructive and evil lifestyles or policies) was both provocative and more importantly inaccurate. Vice hates virtue would have been accurate, and if provocative only because, well, vice hates virtue.

@10

Nope.

Good thing large amounts of public money don't go to churches, I guess.
14
That's some Scientology-level shit the got going over there at MH.
15
@12

I knew someone who liked phrases incorporating the word boner once.

Course, we were both 12 at the time...
17
@16

Whatever.

Have a nice evening.
18
We are confident that God is preparing Pastor Mark and the ministry of Mars Hill Church for a great harvest of souls in the days ahead.


Someone call the Feds, the members of Mars Hill are planning a mass murder, and they just admitted it.

@16: Oh, fuckin' zing, man. *Internet high-five*
19
It makes me question whether the Bible is the big bestseller they've always claimed.
20
@13, church tax exemptions must be hundreds of billions of dollars that would be well-spent elsewhere. They, or at the very least ones like Mars Hill, are clearly commercial enterprises.
21
People have been buying their way onto the NYT bestseller and Amazon bestseller lists for years. No surprise there.
22
"...harvest of souls"?

Creepy.

Anyhow, yeah, this guy is pure scum and sadly, I'm not surprised by this. I'm mildly interested in reading his book for purely entertainment purposes, though in doing so my head would probably explode.
23
"...harvest of souls"?

Creepy.

Anyhow, yeah, this guy is pure scum and sadly, I'm not surprised by this. I'm mildly interested in reading his book for purely entertainment purposes, though in doing so my head would probably explode.
24
Here is the answer to your article:
http://renuemag.com/2014/03/16/an-open-l…

Please wait...

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