Dance Party!!!

We have been hosting our Friday night dinners for the past 10 months.  During that time we have had many visitors attend our house.  I'd say we've made contacted with over hundred people over the course of time.  It seems like every Friday is dinner.  We have had as many as 35 people and other times small crowds.  It's been cool to see people hanging out and getting to know one another, they really have been an important part of our community.  This past Friday was a first.  It was Halloween and we decided to dress up in our costumes.  We had Sarah Palin, a white jimmy Hendrix, a crazy basketball player, a baseball player, and of course Clark Kent/Superman.  We started out the night eat sugary foods and walked downtown to see the Thriller reenactment.  We walked backed home, plundered more food at the Wesley Foundation and headed back to the house.  When we came to the house some of us shared how we enjoyed dancing.  Someone said we should have a dance party.  Everybody thought it would be fun to do so we got the music going and turned it up loud.  We had a great time and the fun part was something we did not expect.  Cars were stopping outside and asked if we were having a party.  If I would have known I would have invited them in but told them we did not have alcohol.  Since last Friday night was a big hit we are talking about revamping Friday night into dinner, board games, and a dance party.   We are simply trying to contextualize our evangelism strategy to the neighborhood. 

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Celebrate Recovery

This past Saturday 8 people from embrace went to the Celebrate Recovery training at Southland Christian Church.  Celebrate Recovery is spreading churches by storm encouraging Christ-centered recovery for hurts, hang-ups, and addictions.  Many of the people that are coming to Embrace deal with some sort of addiction.  If you think about it we are all addicts, we are addicted to sin.  CR does not only deal with chemical/alcohol addiction but a whole host of other problems such as insecurities, fear, anxiety, and food addictions.  We are hoping to start a pilot group soon to help believers overcome some of the things that hold us back.  I think that I would encourage all the people in at Embrace to be involved in CR or work through the steps.  I see first hand how addictions affect a person's day-to-day life.  People in our communities are slowly killing themselves physically and spiritually.  Unfortunately this includes believers who love God as well.  Our desire to be an authentic community means to be open with others and share our joys and struggles.

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I walked into Starbucks the other day and it was a long line but in front of me was my old neighbor from Mentelle Park.  I lived there only a few months before a great flood (flooding of my basement) delivered me to Columbia Ave.  My neighbor Ryan was a nice guy and we became better acquaintances when my friend backed into his old car with my rented U-Haul.  Anyway, Ryan thanked me how U-Haul took good care of him and how I went out of my way to make sure everything was all right.  Ryan knows I'm a pastor starting a church.  He asked me how it was going and said that he wanted to check it out once we were meeting on Sunday mornings.  After a brief exchanges he started asking me theological questions, one particular that his son was asking him.  Ryan explained how his son's grandparents told him that there should be no musical instruments in church.  Off the top of my head I was able to point Ryan to some Scripture and emailed him with more.  Ryan wanted to educate his son when it came to worshipping God which I thought was very interesting considering Ryan is not really devout in his faith (based on the interactions I've had with him).  At the end of our conversation Ryan commented how it was not a coincidence that we saw each other.  He said, "I was definitely on my way to the Richmond Rd Starbucks but for some reason I felt that I should come here."  I am never surprised anymore because I sort of expect things like this to happen.

The Body of Christ

People have been sharing with me how they look forward to Tuesday nights. Transitioning from only having Friday night dinners to house worship has not been difficult but has felt like the right decision. The past few weeks I have started a preaching series on Embrace Values. The core values of what it means to be a Christian at Embrace. Our first week we talked about extravagant generosity and meeting needs in our community. It was from that first week one of our friends; Aaron mentioned a need that a couple had in our immediate community. The couple is struggling financial because they are going through a lot of transitions. Aaron and Jason brought up the idea of collecting money for a gift card so they could buy groceries. I was amazed at how Embrace, a young church, stepped up and gave to this cause. The couple has come to our dinners a few times and has pointed their Christian friends to us. The couple has been severely burnt by Christians in the past and we wanted to be sensitive to their hurts. I wanted to be prayerful about the manner in which I delivered the gift card. I did not want them to feel obligated to come to Embrace or treat them as objects but simply as God's people: my brothers and sisters. When the man opened the door I told him how Embrace wanted to give them something to help out with the transition. The man was blown away and was literally speechless. Our interaction was very brief. A few days later his wife stopped by Friday night dinner. As she started thanking us she broke down and cried. We were able to tell her how much we loved her and her husband and how we pray for them on a weekly basis. I look forward to the day that the family worships with us.

For Such A Time As This

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a get-together with Lexington UM clergy along with our new Bishop, Lindsey Davis. Bishop Davis shared his "vision" for the Kentucky Conference and on the very top of his list was church planting. Bishop Davis has been a bishop for twelve years and previously presided over the North Georgia conference where 98 churches were planted under his episcopacy appointment. Bishop Davis led North Georgia as one of the largest and fastest growing UM conferences across the country. Also, Bishop Davis chairs the episcopacy committee on the Path 1 initiative to plant 650 new churches over the next ten years across the U.S. Needless to say many are excited at Bishop Davis' arrival in Kentucky!

Supporting his case for church planting Bishop Davis stated a recent study done by Lovett Weems. Weems researched two UM conferences, Virginia and North Carolina. Over the past twenty years the Virginia Conference has declined by 20% and the North Carolina Conference had grown by 8%. Weems reported both conferences share many similarities and are almost identical. However the one underlining difference was Virginia spent too much time trying to revitalize existing, declining churches and didn't emphasize planting new churches while North Carolina did the opposite.

A second concern for Bishop Davis is similar to his first priority of church planting. It's simple; we are not reaching young people between the ages of 18-35. Many of our KY churches have failed to show any professions of faith according to the 2007 Conference report. That means one of two things, either evangelism is not being done or the methods are not being contextualized for today's mission field. These concerns for the Bishop are on the hearts of Embrace UMC. First, we want to launch services in January but also be a Christian faith community that is reproducing itself. So, that means in a few years we hope to send out church planters to start a new Christian faith community. Second, we desire to reach out to people who don't know Christ or have an existing relationship with a Christian faith community. Based on our location, the demographics show a majority of our immediate population is the age group that Bishop Davis is concerned about reaching for Christ.

Please continue to pray that we would stay the course. I believe God has brought all this together not as a simple coincidence but orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. God is bringing all this together for such a time as this that people would be reached with the Good News.

A Worshipping Community

Last night we had our biggest Tuesday night house worship. It was exciting to see everybody crowded in the living room. If we had any more people we probably wouldn't be able to fit them in. We are continuing to have Friday night dinners but are emphasizing Tuesday night a lot more. Fridays have been a good time for people who are new to our community or are looking to meet new people but Tuesdays has been more of a "next step." On Tuesday we worship through songs, prayer, testimonies, tithe/offerings, preaching, and Holy Communion. We feel that it is important to establish that we are a worshipping community into the churches DNA before our launch service on January 18th. Last night was especially cool because a Starbucks friend of mine came for the first time. We have formed a friendship going back to about a month ago. Our conversations are not trivial at all because we discuss the existence of God, sin and the established church. I was thrilled that he came. We continued our series on core values by talking about mature faith development. Last week we talked about extravagant generosity. Going along with the topic we recognized a need in our community that we could contribute to. We began to collect for it and the next day I was surprised to find $90 in my mailbox. We continued to collect last night and are able to buy a grocery gift card for a family in our community. As a pastor it is the best feeling in the world to see a group of believers taking their faith seriously.

Freedom

As a church planter many of my friends and people I meet ask me what I do during the day since we haven't launched services yet. I tell them it's simple, I go where the people are. One of my hangouts has been Starbucks at Ashland Plaza, which I believe; strangely enough is the epicenter of the community. There are many different people who come to Starbucks, it doesn't matter how much money or lack of money they have. People don't necessarily come for the $ 3 or $ 4 specialty drink but come for a place to sit, read, and be around people. It's the new therapy or small group setting. Despite the economic hardship our country is facing it seems not to affect the Ashland Plaza Starbucks.

I meet many different people at Starbucks, which range from young professionals, older professionals, blue-collar workers, and college students. Over the past three months I formed a friendship with a young woman. The first time I met her she came and sat down next to me. I told her I was a pastor and she started to talk about all her problems. When she started talking I took my laptop and put it away because I knew our conversation could last a while. Since then I have seen her periodically or in passing. My interaction last week with her broke my heart. She has experienced a lot of pain in her life with her father's death coupled with being in and out of rehab facilities for eating disorders. Due to her lack of eating she has metabolic damage due to insufficient calories. She told me her number one priority in her life is to stay thin. She only eats between 400-600 calories a day! On top of it she is a college student, working part-time, and workouts a few hours a day. She is quitting her part-time job so she isn't so stressed. I was able to speak truth to her in love even though it wasn't received. I told her she needs to go speak with a nutritionist, eat more, and that she was slowly killing herself. It still wasn't received. I told her she was a slave to wanting to stay thin; she was a prisoner to the false expectations placed on her by others and herself. I then asked her a question that popped right into my head, "do you want to be free?" She looked at me point blank and quietly said, "no." I politely told her I was only concerned and was not trying to tell her what to do. This interaction has troubled me for days. She is not the only one walking in bondage but there are some many people I see on a daily basis who are slaves to something. Jesus came to set the captives free the only problem is that people don't know that they can be free or simply don't want to be free.