By Crystal Griffin

Nearly a year ago, when I found out that Mars Hill would be opening a campus in West Seattle, Pastor Mark told me the story of the pastor and his congregation who once occupied the building our church would soon move into.

It was an incredible story-with heroes and heroines, some villains, tumultuous conflict, and only a somewhat-appeasing resolution. There weren’t any swordfights or high-noon showdowns (at least as far as I know), but there was back-breaking labor and fundraising, lawsuits and foreclosures. Merely his mention of the Supreme Court of the United States, and I was hooked. I just had to meet one of the characters in person: the old pastor’s widow, Ethel, who has been at the West Seattle church for over sixty years.

She told me her story: how she went from a non-Christian twenty-something to the church secretary and eventually the pastor’s wife. For the details she couldn’t remember-those that age had stolen from her-she gave me old photos, bulletins, news articles, and even her sister-in-law’s autobiography to fill in the gaps.

Only after delving deeper and deeper into the story did I find out about an Irish preacher and evangelist, the Titanic, Seattle’s first megachurch pastor, and a clandestine wedding. I learned about a faithful family, a faithful pastor and his wife, and a faithful flock. I read dusty church bulletins of a congregation that grew from a home Bible study to two thousand members, and then receded to a only handful of members again. I dug through filing cabinets at the downtown Seattle Public Library (in the Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room, to be exact), searching for anything about the West Seattle church on 7551 35th Avenue SW.

With each memory Ethel shared with me, each anecdote I read in “The Hillcrest Presbyterian” bulletins, and each news clipping that outlined the growth and eventual decline of the church, each character became more alive to me. I could see the Duff family sailing across the Atlantic to their new home in America. I could see Mark Matthews dedicating the first building on the church property. I could see Haldane Duff leading the church through their greatest joys (like an exploding kids’ ministry and Sunday school) and through their greatest sorrows (like losing the church buildings to the denomination after paying for them in full).

Now, their story is being published as a history of the West Seattle Campus (coinciding with its grand opening on Easter Sunday). If you get a chance to read it, I hope you remember (and I hope it reveals) that their story is more than just attendance numbers, dollar amounts, or building projects. Yes, those facts do shed light on the colorful history of the campus, but numbers can only dimly reflect what these people actually lived through. I hope that as you read their story, you meet the characters that I got to meet, some in person and some only on paper. (Characters, I might add, that I can’t wait to meet in the eternal kingdom.)

Ultimately, I pray that the work of the Main Character, Jesus Christ, will be most evident, and that you will praise Him as I do every time I read the story He wrote-and continues to write-in West Seattle.

Crystal Griffin, a deacon at Mars Hill, is Pastor Mark Driscoll’s research assistant. Her book, “A Great Cloud of Witnesses: A History of Mars Hill Church’s West Seattle Campus,” will be available at all campuses starting Easter Sunday.