Mars Hill Church Recants

Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church in Seattle has publicly apologized for sending a cease-and-desist letter to a church named Mars Hill in Sacramento, California:

When cases like this arise in the business world, it’s customary for a law office to send a notice asking the other organization to adjust their branding to differentiate it. This is commonly referred to as a cease and desist letter. On September 27, 2011, our legal counsel sent such a letter to these three Mars Hill churches requesting that they change their logo and name. In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians. On Friday we spoke with the pastor of Mars Hill in Sacramento to apologize for the way we went about this. We had a very productive conversation and look forward to continuing that conversation in the days and weeks ahead. [READ THE REST]

But if you find this case interesting — and troubling — please see the comments on my earlier post.  There, you will find some humorous comments, some intrepid googlers who found very old Mars Hills, and, most interesting to me, the guy who planted another Watermark, before Watermark (who says that they looked everywhere to make sure there was no other church named Watermark before they named their church Watermark).