In this episode Christianity Today interviews several of the people that worked with Mark in the mid 90's that helped him find his platform online and focus his brand. The internet brought new insights through data. You could see how many people listened to his podcasts and his YouTube channel. When Mark made aggressions those numbers went up so if the ends justify the means then making more aggressions in your sermons meant more people listening and therefore more people "hearing about Jesus" and therefore more people accepting Jesus.
“Did I give Mark his first hit of heroine by platforming him because he didn’t have the maturity to handle it?”
The internet has less gatekeepers to pursue fame. There's less cost, investment, maturity or track record required to get your content published. People can get big over night before they are really ready for it.
Mark surrounded him self with people that came out of the media industry in Seattle and had an eye for branding and creating quality content. “If you are always repackaging movies like "Jesus is the real Superman" and adding some Christian flare to it you are always going to be 3-4 years behind culture at best sucking its tailpipe. You’re just mimicking a culture when you should be creating a culture and you’re doing a disservice to the original artists. It’s lazy and I hate it so much.”
Over time more and more of the church resources stopped going to ministries that supported the local church members and local community and started going to Mark’s platform and external facing media channels. If the media team asked for it, they got it. More cameras, more staff, and more production gear. Mars Hill content was consistently trending #1 in the religion category in podcasts and YouTube. They had 3 "RED Cameras". These were the same cameras The Lord of the Rings were shot on. At the same time, the whole organization of NBC only had 2 RED cameras. At this time the media team grew to 60 staff and they built a studio and original scores written for their content etc.
Mark used his platform to get into the conference speaking circuit. Older more mature pastors knew they had to recognize him because of his following online, but he made the older pastors worry because of the wild stuff he would say. They hoped by welcoming him into their circles they could have an influence on him and he would mellow out a little. But Mark didn’t want mentoring because he had outgrown them before he ever met them. His church was bigger and therefore he had nothing to learn from them. He was only interested in learning from people who had more. More absolute power within their churches, more people, and more money. And that's when he met James McDonald from Harvest Bible Chapel.