After Mars Hill Church members turned to the internet having exhausted all other attempts to dialog with Mars Hill Church leadership, and after Paul Tripp characterized Mars Hill Church as the “most abusive and coercive church” he had every worked with, and after numerous elders filed charges against Mark Driscoll and called for financial transparency (all in vain), guess what the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was doing?
ECFA was warning that those who criticize the church will anger God.
According to Dan Busby, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), blogging about your local church prevents people from getting to see God.
There is a new wild card today. Until recently, churches did not have to contend with hate websites, scathing blog posts, nasty comments on reader forums, online petitions, or spoof social media accounts. All such attacks on churches and their leaders may be based on scanty facts and occur using code names to hide true identities.
Churches are often left without any positive way to respond to incorrect perceptions—especially in the blogosphere. Attackers generally say they want more transparency, but the more information a church provides, the more it is attacked. This is as close to an unresolvable grievance in God’s work as I can imagine.
Those who make derogatory comments about churches and their leaders apparently haven’t learned what it means to anger God. Want to anger God? Get in the way of people who want to see Him. Want to anger God?” Link
So while former elders of the church call for financial transparency, ECFA pulls out the “God will be angry at you bloggers” card. To the last day of the existence of Mars Hill Church, ECFA continued to certify the church for its integrity, accountability and transparency while former members, elders, and donors were crying out for answers that were not forthcoming because of the church’s determination to avoid transparency – the very thing that ECFA assured donors they would get.
Dan Busby seems to suggest that all internet bloggers and commenters are haters filled with nasty comments. This even though his own comments were from someone’s blog. Busby gives no indication that bloggers and commenters may have good motives and have been perhaps calling for the type of accountability that ECFA is supposed to certify.
Some of the former members of Mars Hill Church have sought to have financial questions answered, but have been thwarted on every attempt. They have tried to meet in private, only to be rebuffed. They have appealed to ECFA via private letter and via petitions, only to be rebuffed. They have appealed using the internet, not only to be rebuffed, but now warned by Dan Busby that to do so will anger God. Watch out, you pesky bloggers, God will get you!
Sadly, the last resort is to appeal to the civil court. It appears that this is the only vehicle that is left hold the leaders of Mars Hill Church accountable – something that their ECFA certification assured its members and donors of. Given the brazen lack of accountability that Mars Hill Church leaders have portrayed, one begins to wonder who ECFA is protecting, the donor, or the defiant leaders of Mars Hill Church?
It seems that Dan Busby has gone a long way toward holding bloggers accountable, putting a heavy burden on their backs while failing to hold churches that are not transparent and who abuse their members and donors accountable. Will ECFA slowly lose its credibility, accountability and transparency in the process?
Musings from under the bus. 
Code names like William Wallace II?
WOW!!! Something about binding heavy loads on others….
I can hear the Pope LeoX now-“Until recently we didn’t have to deal with the hate speech found on the Gutenberg Press.”
What makes God angrier — notifying the parishioners of a church that is misusing funds they may be doing so, or the fact there are those who seek to cover the information up?
Maybe Dan is using the NPH Bible. The New Pharisaical Heretical Bible. You know the version which rips out Jesus railing publically the abusers of sheep. And removes half of the Epistles written by Paul.
Pardon the sarcasm, but brother Dan has never dealt with boards that leak privileged information outside the Church Board Room about the sheep. Or received threats / extortion at work using innocent members of your family because they can’t get anything on you.
The biggest complaint the Catholic Church is that people knew about the scandals and did nothing. Now the Evangelical Church from the Reformed side to the Pentecostal side are involved in all sorts of scandals. They even created their own form of indulgences in the form of the prosperity doctrine.
Sheep don’t have a pulpit. So we pound our complaints as best we can as Martin Luther did with his list of 95 on the church door.
Humbly sub mitted,
Frank
Sheep and recovering Pentecostal