Back when I was working on this story about Mars Hill church and its practices of "church discipline," "shunning," and other things it claims are Biblically sanctioned but, to a 21st-century eye, look a little control-freaky, I wanted documents. I wanted a paper trail. I also wanted testimony from two early leaders of Mars Hill—Bent Meyer and Paul Petry—who, sources said, were squeezed out of the church because they objected to the rewriting of some church bylaws and their families "shunned" as a result. I got enough to run the story, but I didn't get to look inside the vault.

But a new website, Joyful Exiles, puts the docs surrounding that controversy online—emails, counter-emails, membership contracts, church "trial" documents, all kinds of stuff. Dive in.