by Nadia previously in the August 2006 Vox Pop.

I’m laughing remembering my days of taking the Gospel 101 class. I can’t believe what a dork I was. I wouldn’t talk to anyone because I was too proud and too shy at the same time. I didn’t meet anyone at all. Same on Sundays-I considered my fellowship quota fulfilled if I happened to be laughing at one of Pastor Mark’s jokes loud enough for the person next to me to hear. I think I was so new I just assumed everyone else there knew what they were doing and I was too intimidated to even say hello, in case I gave away my Mars Hill naivety.

When I had my member interview (more…)

By Nadia 

Sunday morning I woke up and everything in me started screaming.

“Get your laundry washed!”
“Clean your bathroom!”
“Vaccuum! The floor is filthy!”
“Go for a run!”
“Get to Mars Hill and get your work done!”

The deal IS, however, I have decided to take Sabbath seriously. Seriously. It’s in the freakin’ 10 Commandments, and I’ve willfully ignored it since highschool. And after a nervous meltdown this summer (more…)

by Nadia 

 A few nights ago I spent some quality girl time watching movies with two of my favorite friends, Sarah and Chloe. Mars Hill isn’t our connection, but Sarah does attend services pretty regularly. Chloe has visited with her husband, but attends another (smaller) church that suits her better.

In the midst of our shamefully giggly and girly conversation, I mentioned that if they wanted, they could join me at The Breakfast Club on Saturday, since both had expressed prior interest. Suddenly, the conversation then shifted from silly to uncomfortable with Sarah’s joking remark to Chloe about staying away from the evil church, or something to that effect. What ensued was one of those “I’m here, but I’m not here” conversations, where they talked only to each other, but in vague terms so as not to offend me but just the fact they were discussing something negative about my church made me feel awkward anyway.

They said they both share similar misgivings about Mars Hill, and they didn’t want to share them with me because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. “You don’t have to like my church,” I squeaked, unconvincingly. I have a slight problem with allowing others’ opinions to sway my own too easily.

Now, when I am in a stressful situation, my first reaction is always emotional, not rational. However, I am also a control freak, so it wasn’t until I bid Sarah and Chloe goodnight and started trudging through late-night downtown that I allowed myself to react at all. And as I did, I had this huge, sinking feeling. Disappointment. Disenchantment.

The last few weeks I have been so excited to get involved with Mars Hill. Almost giddy. Which I already knew was a ridiculously unsustainable high, but still . . . my elation was so quickly deflated. I felt depressed.

I wondered if I’d been duped into the glim-glam and popularity of Mars Hill and had missed something crucial. Maybe this whole thing is much shallower than I thought. Maybe I’m just one of the thousands, mesmerized by the sermons that make you laugh until your sides hurt, and then punch you in the heart while you’re down.

I kicked a cigarette off a curb, confused and feeling ill. I thought and thought and thought, while I ducked the 11 p.m. gangstas and junkies, while I tromped across the litter-strewn sidewalks to the sketchy bus stop. I should’ve been paying more attention to my own safety but the mental seemed much more threatening than the physical. Besides, I have a cold glare that has never failed to express the “mess with me and DIE” warning. So I pasted it on and continued thinking.

Am I just buying into a “we’re cool, we’re urban, we can cuss and we have Driscoll!” show? Two sirens went by. I kept freaking out mentally. And just as my bus pulled up, my sickening stomach began to settle as some truths resurfaced in the tumult of my shaken mind.

1. Whether or not there is a major presence of the “we are the hippest Christians” mentality among attenders-and even though Pastor Mark himself has flaws-I know I hear God through the messages on Sunday. I know because Mark teaches from the Bible. I know because he talks about Jesus. I know because the Holy Spirit convicts me through the message: a conviction that brings hope and healing, not crippling despair. I leave talking to Jesus, not talking about Mark. Paul’s thoughts to the Philippians also comfort me in this regard. “What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice” (1:18).

2. If the church drastically changed on a technical level like if they painted the auditorium baby blue, or Mark decided he couldn’t take all the hate e-mails anymore and walked away, or the numbers dropped to 200 or surged to 20,000 it wouldn’t change my choice to be here. Because I’m not here for the artsy atmosphere. It’s sure nice, don’t get me wrong. And the sermons may be what drew me in, but seriously, I told you I’m new, and there are billions of sermons I haven’t heard available online. I’m here because this church is founded on Jesus and His Word, and I’m here because I am a part of a believing community and not in a superficial way: I am in a Community Group that is really my church within Mars Hill. So are the people I work with when I volunteer at Mars Hill. That’s why I am here.

3. Actually, if I want to be more deeply honest, I know through my own Bible reading, through an entire summer of prayer and seeking the Lord, that He called me very specifically to pack up my belongings and move into Seattle and be involved with Mars Hill. And I trust Jesus in where he leads me.

4. If they stop telling us about Jesus and admonishing us to go to Him, if they decide the Bible isn’t entirely true anymore, if they cancel Community Groups and start pushing attendance and consumerism over involvement and service, then I will have to move on.

5. I don’t agree with or even appreciate everything Mars Hill does. I have some pretty specific, sharp thoughts about a lot of things. I see problems at Mars Hill. Until the perfect church is created, though, and I can fabricate my way into registering as a perfect member there, I am quite happy here. And is church really about me being happy anyway? Or being obedient to Jesus and loving His people?

I breathed out. I grabbed my notebook right there on the bus and started writing furiously until I had what you see above. Now I don’t have to freak out the next time I hear criticisms of Mars Hill, whether they’re valid or not. I know why I am here. Do you?

Previously published in the Vox Pop here.

by Nadia 

Editor’s note: earlier in 2006, Vox Pop ran a five part series about one young woman’s experience being a newcomer at Mars Hill Church. The ongoing saga of Nadia’s megachurch experience is now online.

Today I have Nice Writer’s Block. This is much worse than regular Writer’s Block, because with regular Writer’s Block, you just deal with an empty page. With Nice Writer’s Block, the reader must bear the brunt of my antisocial, angry, paranoid, and depressed mood.

Vox Pop asked me to write and tell you that I’ve got my own Mars Hill blog, but today I don’t feel like telling you. I don’t want you to know because I don’t really want you to look at my life. I don’t want you to make comments and tell me I’m wrong. I don’t want to have to answer to anybody. I don’t want people I don’t know to know me and my issues. It bothers me a lot. So I don’t want you to know I have a blog. At all.

And another part of me wonders why I would bother being paranoid, because who’s going to read the scrawlings of a spoiled rotten and pouty little girl lost in Mars Hill and trying to grow up just a little, trying to run to Jesus, but falling down over and over again? My words may be printed thousands of times, but I don’t even know if a dozen eyes will look at them. You may be holding my words in your hands, all rolled up, and chuck them into the waste basket on your way out the door without so much as a glance.

And the very tiny part of me that remains has this nonsensical idea that maybe one or two of you are just like me, walking in these doors as a curious and confused loner. You constantly have to fight a judgmental or fatalistic outlook. You teeter between saying nothing and rapid-firing caustic comments. You really want to love Jesus but it’s hard because that means you have to love people, too, and you don’t like people at all sometimes. And you love laughing really hard, for both good and bad reasons. Sometimes you like reading your Bible and sometimes you just don’t.

Recently, Pastor Mark said that sometimes we Christians are fakers because we think Jesus was a faker. And some of us just need to admit we’re having a bad day. So I’m following his advice. I’m having a bad day. If you want to read about my good and bad days with Mars Hill in honest light, you’re welcome. But enter at your own risk!

Previously published in the Vox Pop here.

by Nadia

My car is an obnoxious thing. It stalls every other block. It never stays where I left it last. It’s big and ugly. It smells bad. Basically, my problem is that my car is a bus. And it’s always late.

So my first day volunteering at the front desk was last Thursday, and I was supposed to be there at 9 a.m. I got there at 9:05. I know, it’s not that bad, but for someone who has been scarred by a previous employment experience of getting the riot act for being two minutes late (no joke), it made me edgy.

The “family entrance” area looked dark and empty. Where’s Claudine? I was supposed to check in with Claudine, the deacon in charge of the front desk. I walked over and looked under the desk, just to double-check if I was alone. I know that sounds dumb, because nobody sits under desks, but if you’d grown up in my family, you’d be suspect of every “empty” and “quiet” room,  too. But no, Claudine was not hiding under the desk to scare me.

I sat in the lobby for several minutes and began to contemplate heading up the forbidden stairs to find her. Maybe she expected me to find her, I thought. But I really didn’t want to attempt the stairs.

See, a few weeks earlier, I had been helping with the Breakfast Club, and I had this cool jet-pack vacuuming gig that made me the prime candidate for doing the odd jobs. Like stairs. So I was instructed to vacuum those big stairs in the main auditorium that go up to who-knows-where. “But don’t vacuum the top,” I was told. My mistake was that I heard, “don’t bother vacuuming the top” instead of “don’t set foot on the top.”

So in search of an outlet for my jetpack, I crossed the line into . . . the world of Mars Hill offices. In the ten seconds I was up there, I couldn’t find an outlet, and the paranoid part of me somehow knew what would happen next, so I started heading back down the stairs-where I was jumped by someone who asked me what I thought I was doing. I explained, but I was told in no unclear terms not to go up there again. OK.

During the rest of the Breakfast Club morning, two more badged strangers came up to me to make sure I knew not to go up there again. OK. OK!! It seriously felt like Office Space and the TPS cover sheets deal. The Breakfast Club is really fun, but word to the wise, folks, don’t go upstairs!

So, understandably, I hesitated to go searching for Claudine up in the Forbidden City. Thank goodness she walked in the door a few minutes later so I didn’t have to. The next half-hour was my crash-course, and then I was left to (wo)man the desk and phones. By the way, Claudine rocks. She wears fishnets to church and rides a moped and she knows everything. It was the best thing ever, because even though she was up in her office, we were on Messenger, and every time someone asked me something I didn’t know (meaning every time someone asked me anything at all), I would just type my question and hit “send’ and-BAM!-an answer. Better than Google! So I’ve started calling her Mars Google.

The very first thing I did as a volunteer was flunk at making coffee. And I didn’t even know for hours because the people were too nice to say anything. Doh!

My instructions were clear: I followed the directions. I brought the carafe downstairs. Some unwitting martyrs with very nice manners took their coffee and didn’t say any bad words or spit it out all over the countertop like I did when I eventually tried it. Another word to the wise: Sometimes coffee filters collapse in the machine, and when that happens, hot water drips through and skips the coffee grounds, and a pot of burnt hot water results.

I was also supposed to answer phones.

“ThankyouforcallingMarsHillChurchthisisNadia. How can I help you?”

The thing was, all the callers were in cahoots. They all called each other first and planned to phone within the same 60 seconds. So there would be silence, and I would be cruisin’ the Members’ Website on the computer, and then-BAM!-three lines would all start going berserk.

It wasn’t really fair, but I have to admit, it was fun playing “Receptionist” and asking people to hold and transferring calls. Of course, by the time the seventh batch of simultaneous callers hit the lines, it wasn’t such a novel idea and I contemplated a new game called “Put-Them-All-On-Hold-Then-Call-Claudine-And-Place-Bets-On-Who-Hangs-Up-Last.” However, since there’s a thirty-day probation period for volunteering at the front desk, and I want to keep on playing Receptionist, I decided I should probably wait until day thirty-one for my betting game idea.

In between phone-call bursts, I was supposed to sign-in volunteers and appointments. I had become that same badguy who makes sure no strangers go up the stairs. Contrary to popular (well, my former) opinion, this is not to keep people out of a Mars Hill Pastors’ invite-only kegger. The real reason is much less dramatic, but important: personal information is floating around and private counseling sessions take place upstairs imagine someone walking in on you at such a vulnerable moment!

So the upstairs is closed for privacy and safety. Oh well. I was all pumped about being a bouncer checking backstage passes, but the only exciting thing that happened was when
one guy entered the building while I was on the phone and made a beeline through a door into the big room. I hung up, grabbed the portable line and hunted him down to find him
looking through the lost-and-found for something of his.

Other than that, I just made myself look stupid a lot, since I didn’t have the slightest clue of who were strangers and who were staff and regulars. The staff must’ve thought it was pretty funny when I halted them at the door. Some of them were one step ahead of me and ran for the login board to show me they were supposed to be there before the awkward “hi, who the heck are you?” conversation had to take place.

One lady on the phone really wanted to talk to one of the pastors and I was trying to be all consoling and suggesting she talk to someone else (since the pastors are really busy) and finally the poor exasperated woman said, “well, I’m his WIFE!” Yeah, ok, I guess I can let you talk to him THIS TIME.

Ugh, I felt like such a doofus!

My last blooper to share with you was one that I have experienced from the other side several times. A woman called up trying to get a download of the “Who’s Your Daddy?” talk, and I couldn’t find it just then, either, so I told her I’d e-mail her the info as soon as I could. Well, when I was leaving at the end of the day, I shut down the computer and did NOT save the file with her forgotten address on it. I can’t even remember her name now. She’s probably wondering, “what the heck!” just like I did, when nobody emailed me back. Lady, if you’re reading this, you know who you are and I’m very, very sorry! If you call on a day other than Thursday, you’ll get someone more competent.

At five o’clock, I decided they’d had enough of my havoc for the day, and I sayonarad. What really cracks me up is that they asked me to come back . . .

Previously published in Vox Pop’s June 2006 print edition. 

 by Nadia

Editor’s note: last Saturday, we republished what Nadia wrote about her experience in the Gospel Class. In this Saturday’s “reprint,” the adventure continues as we join her on the “final” step to becoming a Mars Hill member: the interview.

“I want to help serve,” I told my member-interviewer lady.
“We want you to serve, too,” she said.
“I don’t know which area really needs me . . .” I trailed off.
“What kinds of things do you have experience in?” she asked.
“Well, the main thing is that I have a heck of a commute and if I can help out from far away, that’d be best.”

We brainstormed and came up with some ideas that I could pursue from the comforts of my own home. I couldn’t vacuum the church carpets on Saturdays with the Breakfast Club, but I could offer my time doing some paper-based things from home. I’m being specifically vague, in case you hadn’t noticed. I wish to protect the innocent, which is everyone in this story except me.

And my name’s Nadia. But you knew that. Or did you? If not, hello. Welcome to my Vlog (that sounds like a Norwegian dungeon or something terrible like that, but I mean my “Vox Pop log”). Anyway, in this edition, I’m mumbling about my first attempts to communicate with intelligent life in that galaxy of Mars Hill Staff and Volunteers and Email Addresses. May I continue? Where were we . . .

So, my member-interviewer lady person took down my email and said she’d get me in contact with the appropriate persons for serving. She also said I’d get a member packet in the mail in approximately two weeks.

Let me give you the blow-by-blow, but please hold your judgment for the surprise ending: I eagerly await my membership packet. It is the late days of summer and warm optimism reigns supreme. While waiting, I get an email from the interviewer lady, connecting me with someone about serving. I send an email. I get one back directing me to another person. Who directs me to another person.

A few emails back and forth and I am told that my help isn’t needed at the moment. Um, OUCH. But then I am contacted from yet another email address associated with church. Some confusion ensues about serving projects. More emails. More confusion.

Three weeks later, I have some work to do. I complete it, turn it in, and hear nothing back. Nada. Nothing. Zip. (To be painfully honest, I entertained the wishful thinking
that one of the pastors would call back and say, “Nadia! Your work is AMAZING! We’ve never had someone so professional and so intelligent handling this! I don’t know how we even ran a church before this! We are forever indebted to you! Would you mind terribly if we made a statue of you to put out with the pyramids in the lobby?” Ok, maybe that wasn’t the exact hope, but the real one was every bit as ridiculous and self-centered, I assure you.)

In the absence of such flattery, I return my attention to my membership packet. Where is it? It’s been a month. I fume. I pout. I mean, how stinkin’ hard is it to put a packet in the mail with my name on it? But I’ve already been emailing and being obnoxious about my serving project, so I decide to let it slide for awhile, before I’m labeled as the whining member. But not because I don’t want to whine, I just don’t want people to think I whine.

Another month later. I decide to break my silence: I’m planning to move to the Ballard area to be closer to this church, and I don’t know what’s going on and can’t log in to the members’ website. Approximately five emails later (three months after my interview), I’m finally granted access to the members’ website. At this point, a major season of self doubt set in. They probably didn’t like your work. They just didn’t want to tell you and let you down easy. They don’t even know who you are. They don’t really want your help. Something’s wrong with you. You don’t fit. The pity parties were pretty much my favorite part of this season.

But there’s only so many pity parties you can attend before the company is just miserable. There may be no party like the “poor me party,” but the “poor me party” had to stop.

Humor aside, God was teaching me some humility. Life wasn’t all about me. That church wasn’t about serving me and patting me on the head. He was teaching me that I needed better motives for serving than to become popular. That I didn’t need to take things so personally. That I needed to learn persistence and grace. Basically, I learned that I still have a lot of Christian character development to go through over the next sixty or so years. It’s happening now. Slowly, but it’s happening.

In January I laid aside my wounded pride and with slightly less self-saturated motives, I started full on attacking the Mars Hill email system and phone lines to get involved. I didn’t know anybody, I wasn’t involved, I had no community group. But I’d had it with just showing up on Sunday and writing a check.

One Saturday morning I just showed up at the Breakfast Club (I highly recommend it, by the way-great food, low-key, relaxed, and a great way to get chores done and meet people). Now I’m actively involved in volunteering for the church, I have a community group I already feel comfortable in, and I’m making new friends like crazy.

I also just found out today that my original work wasn’t despised after all. It just slipped through the cracks. And these people that work and volunteer for MH are working like mad and overwhelmed. I met a whole bunch of them today-I like them. And I’m not a nice person who likes everyone, remember.

They do need a lot of help from members to serve on Sundays and throughout the week. If you’ve tried to get involved and have had similar experiences to mine, please keep trying. If you haven’t even tried, please do start getting involved. It may take more than a little persistence, but Mars Hill does need help.

It’s booming. You’ve heard Pastor Mark speak about it. Keep trying, and don’t take it personally if you’re not contacted immediately. Don’t waste time like I did.

A week ago at my community group, this girl’s dad visited and shared some deep wisdom. He put into words what God’s been teaching me the last few months. He said that here in America we are highly individualistic, for better or for worse. With that individualism comes a tendency to be wounded and take things personally. We’re big on having and defending our rights. What makes us a good church is not that we don’t hurt one another (because we do), but that we forgive and extend grace to one another, choosing to love instead of becoming bitter. The admonition is so simple, but I completely forgot it:

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other,
just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32).

This obviously isn’t the tirade it may have first seemed - against the people who didn’t answer my emails. But this also isn’t a tirade against those of you who have felt hurt by people in churches - Mars Hill or another. It’s an invitation to extend forgiveness and grace with a tender heart, like Jesus does to us every day. Beginning to live this way, by choice, has freed me up to do what I wanted to do in the first place: to serve and become part of my church for real.

I’m so thankful the girl’s dad shared his sage advice with us that evening-it struck me to the heart. It’s wonderful being in a Community Group where live discussions like that one can happen. Did I mention I love my new Community Group already? I haven’t been there long, but it’s great.

And that, my friends, is for next time. Peace out!