When I kiss my sweet daughter’s curls, I am reminded of the lengths God went to in order to make me a part of his family.
— Sara, member of Mars Hill Downtown Bellevue on her adopted daughter from Uganda
For 15 years, God has been at work at Mars Hill Church—and we're excited about what he has in store in the future. In 1996, Pastor Mark Driscoll and Grace planted Mars Hill in their living room in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood. Today, Mars Hill Church sees over 12,000 people each Sunday in ten churches in two states, Washington and New Mexico.
But more than just numbers, each person—just like Sara—has a unique story of God's grace at work in their life. In the series "God's Work, Our Witness," we'll celebrate what God has done, is doing, and will do at Mars Hill Church.
The story of the Bible is one of redemption. We reject and run from God—and God loves, pursues, and adopts us as his sons and daughters. In his plan of redemption, God sent Jesus to die a brutal death for our sins and defeat death through resurrection.
Today, Jesus works through his church to save and redeem sinners who rejected God, giving them new life in him—and God is working through Mars Hill to bring many to him. We celebrate what God is doing and what he will do at Mars Hill Church.
In “God's Work, Our Witness,” we'll explore in depth the four distinct ways God works at Mars Hill Church by studying what the Bible says about them and explaining them in practical ways.
At Mars Hill, we're all about Jesus: who he is, what he said, and what he did. Jesus is the hero of history and the centerpiece of the entire Bible. Jesus is the Word, the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end.
The call to a gospel-centered theology is really one to a gospel-centered life. Jesus should be the center of our marriages, our families, our work, and our play. There is nothing that doesn't belong to him, and we seek to glorify him in all we do.
Central to the gospel is that we rejected God but he did not reject us. In love, he sent Jesus to die for our sins and heal our broken relationship with him. Out of gratitude we live for him and for his glory.
God has a plan for his creation, and part of that plan is the way in which men and women interact. We believe that men and women are equal. We also believe that they have different roles in God's creation.
Men are to be hard workers who lead their family well and lay down their lives to be tough in protection and tender in provision. Women lovingly come under one man's authority—her husband's—to help him as he leads and provides.
In this there is both equality and diversity by God's design. We believe healthy marriages make for healthy churches and societies. At Mars Hill we call men and women to love each other well and in the context of God's plan for relationships.
Whether we know it or not, we all desperately need the Holy Spirit. We have God’s infallible, inspired, authoritative Word in the Bible, but without the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t make sense. We may have incredible preachers and churches, but without the Holy Spirit there is no real change of heart. We have the tremendous gift of prayer—talking directly to God—but without the Holy Spirit we don't know what to say.
The Holy Spirit does not just come alongside our efforts to please God and make us more effective. Through the Spirit, we live a new and different life. To become a Christian is to experience true death and resurrection—not gradual change through our own efforts. We must die to ourselves and be born again by the Spirit.
As we begin to understand that the Holy Spirit is a person and not an "it," we grow in our love for him and our dependence on him, just as Jesus depended on the Holy Spirit for his earthly ministry. We are no better than Jesus. We must be filled with the Spirit.
Many people think of mission as some grand and often dangerous adventure to another country to preach Christ. But at Mars Hill, while we love overseas missions we also believe we're all on mission for God in our families, neighborhoods, and work places.
We are all missionaries in our own context. Jesus is the center of all we do. So naturally we joyfully talk about Jesus, live as he calls us, and share the good news of Jesus in every situation—and in ways that show the relevancy of the gospel to those who don't know Jesus.
Every interaction and situation in your life is an opportunity to serve, love, and proclaim Jesus. That is what it means to be missional.
I’m grateful that the Creator of the universe invites me to join him. He is faithful, always.
— Thomas, member of Mars Hill Ballard
The Bible is clear that anything good we do comes from his generous hand by grace. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." We praise God for the good he does through us—and sometimes despite us—at Mars Hill. And we desire to be good witnesses to all that he is doing.
Numbers are important, not because we're about numbers but because they represent people whose lives are changed by God's grace. Our prayer is that more people would know Jesus, more lives would be changed, more leaders would rise up, and more churches would be planted.
Here are just some of the things God has done at Mars Hill in 2011:
This is God's work, not ours.
The call of every Christian is to serve Jesus and serve people. As a church, we're launching a number of projects to better serve people who need to meet Jesus, our members, and those who look to Mars Hill for resources and teaching.
We're asking you to give in support of God's work at Mars Hill Church to see more lives changed, more people healed, and more places reached with the Gospel of Jesus.
Pastor Nick Bogardus leads the charge to plant the first Mars Hill Church in California in Orange County, where he grew up and has a passion to see Jesus glorified. As Pastor Nick says, Orange County is “one of the darkest places in America,” and, “a frontier of self-fulfillment.” Mars Hill Orange County's mission is to see people freed from the bonds of the sin that they hide in the dark and to bring people from bondage to freedom, death to life, from enemies or traitors of God, to loved sons and daughters of God.
Pastor Tim Smith leads our plant in Portland, Oregon, his hometown and where he first met Jesus. The city of Portland is known for many things, but the gospel of Jesus is nowhere on the list. It's home to world-class restaurants and street food, musicians and artists, and tremendous natural beauty. Portland also looks to sexuality for fulfillment with a thriving sex industry. It's an intensely independent city whose people desperately need the true freedom found in Jesus.
Seattle's Rainier Valley is one of the most diverse and vibrant neighborhoods in the city with roughly an equal split between blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos. Mars Hill Rainier Valley will be the first church plant out of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle and will be led in the initial stages by that church's lead pastor, Tim Gaydos.
Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives
Mars Hill Sammamish is the result of a joining of Evergreen Christian Fellowship and Mars Hill Downtown Bellevue. In a city where wealth is prevalent, technology is abundant, and the only rival to the many beautiful homes is the magnificence of the Cascade Mountains that frame them, people’s greatest need is often obscured in Sammamish. The real need is not for more of what people already have but rather real community, real friendship, and the real hope we can only find in Jesus. By God's grace, we hope to meet that need through Mars Hill Sammamish, led by Pastor Alex Ghioni.
We love kids at Mars Hill. And we want to help parents in their responsibility to raise them to know Jesus. We're completely retooling Mars Hill Kids to serve parents and kids better. Our new children’s ministry will be complete with a fully animated cartoon series and revamped children’s spaces at our churches. Chrissie Wright, a national award-winning teacher, along with a professional animation team, is spearheading this effort.
In conjunction with the new Mars Hill Kids, Chrissie Wright, Jesse Bryan, and the animation team are creating a 13-episode video series that mixes live action with animation to be part of our curriculum to teach kids the truths of the Bible and about Jesus. We hope this will be a valuable resource not just for our families and ministries but also for churches around the world.
As part of a broad vision to expand Mars Hill Music, we're building a new music studio to record the great work of our talented musicians and equip other churches with gospel-centered music resources. Jonathan Dunn, the former director of A&R for Tooth & Nail and Solid State Records, is leading these efforts. Our goal with this project is that you would hear a few of our 30-some bands on the radio, see them on tour, and hear their songs in churches around the world.
Over the next six months, we'll completely relaunch the Mars Hill website to better serve the people who call Mars Hill their home church and those who don't yet know Jesus. Our hope is to make the site easier to use, a more useful tool for discipleship, and a welcoming point of contact for those trying to learn more about Jesus and Mars Hill Church. Ultimately, our goal is for the site to foster personal interaction, not just be a wall of technology that gives you the answers but no human contact. As such, the goal of the site will be to connect people with those who lead our ministries and Community Groups.
Help us raise $6.4 million in the next two months.
Orange County, CA 
Portland, OR 
Rainier Valley, WA 
Sammamish, WA 
All-New Mars Hill Kids 
A 13-Episode Kids Video Series 
Revamp of Mars Hill Music 
Marshill.com Relaunch