Power of Prayer

God continues to confirm Embrace Church is meant to be downtown. When we started our prayer was, God, why do you need this church? The answer we received was for the city, specifically the broken and hurting people of Lexington. A pastor of a larger church told me he had been praying for a church presence in the Kentucky Theatre for the longest time. Again, it was confirmed to me on Monday night when I talked to a gentleman who has participated in a prayer group that meets on Wednesday afternoons in the Kentucky Theatre. He was excited about what Embrace was doing and felt that the prayer of he and his friends really made away for us. I couldn’t have agreed more!

Skateboard Park

At our Sunday service a young man came up to me that I recognized. It hit me when I saw his face. I met him in the skate park at Woodland Park. Scott and I went out handing bottled waters on a really hot day when we met him. I gave him a flier for a concert a few months ago and didn’t see him to he showed up to Embrace. He told me about stumbling out of bed and finding an old flier fall out his wallet. This young man has not been to church in 7 years until he came to Embrace. I told him with a smile on my face we started Embrace precisely for him.

The Big Day

My thoughts have still been racing in my head since Sunday. My team was ready to kick tail early that morning. Gentry, Scott, and Brady picked up the horse trough and spent a lot of time filling it. Everybody else had everything under control. As time got closer to service I did my walk down to Phoenix Park with Scott and Lacy. We invited our homeless friends to come. One woman, Anna, was hesitant because she didn't want to leave her cart. I didn't blame her because I wouldn't leave all my belongings out in the middle of nowhere. I really wanted her to come so she let me push it down the street. Lacy walked with her while I walked ahead with the cart. I never in my whole life imaged I would be pushing a cart filled with a woman's belonging down main st! However this is the call and now I embrace it. It's funny because one week I'm enjoying a meal downtown at an established restaurant and the next week I'm walking in the opposite direction.

As the service started you could feel the energy in the room. The Holy Spirit brought so many different groups of people together. The worship in song was awesome. Brady gave his testimony and it went wonderfully with the sermon. 2 people made decisions to follow Jesus and our friend Sierra was baptized in a horse trough! It was a special time and probably the first of many baptisms in the Kentucky Theatre.

After service people hung around for a while and about 50 of us went to lunch. Lunch was hosted at Lexington's first non alcoholic bar, "bar none." We are grateful for all God has done so far and look forward to the future.

Embrace the Collision

When Jesus was born, God became a man. He was to part man and part God; he was completely human and completely divine. Before Christ came, people could know God partially. After Christ came, people could know God fully because he became visible and tangible in Christ. Christ is the perfect expression of God in human form. The two most common errors people make about Jesus are to minimize his humanity or divinity. Jesus is both God and man. Jesus could have easily been sent as a man to do his 3.5 ministry but he wouldn’t have fulfilled his purpose. The incarnation was like an indescribable collision between God and man. And I thought about this last year when Andrew and I were watching pro football with the New England Patriots vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers. The patriots leading receiver was attempting to catch a pass in the middle of the field when Steelers safety Ryan Clark collided into him knocking Welker out of the game. The collision caused a huge sound because it was helmet on helmet. Everybody immediately stopped playing and they kept replaying the highlights. I believe the incarnation was an indescribable collision between Jesus as human and divine and also Jesus coming into contact with us. It had the ability of stopping people in their tracks and still does today!

We too are supposed to live within this collision as Bill Hughes pointed out today. When the Holy and worldly collide it makes a sound. Things go haywire. However this is precisely how people’s lives are changed! We must live as a people who will Embrace this holy collision as we interact with our friends/family/culture who do not know Jesus Christ or are apart of a Christian faith community. Embrace the Collision!

The Missional Church

After one of our city-wide preview services on Sunday morning we all walked down to Phoenix Park which is close to the library. It's a place known for where a pocket of homeless people gather in their community. Often times people give them food when walking by. We wanted to do a little bit more by throwing an Embrace cookout. We fed many of our Embrace folks along with 175 of our closest friends! One person commented to me how they enjoyed the service but questioned what we were doing afterwards. They asked me if we were going to be like of those "missional churches"? My response was "is there any other church?" I believe all churches should be missional reaching out beyond the four-walls of a building structure.

The Same Team

I recently had the opportunity to visit a church. I enjoy these opportunities greatly because I can sit back, receive and learn. I am a firm believer that you can learn something from everybody. The church I visited was fairly large and established to say the least. I had the priviledge of being introduced to the pastor. I told him about Embrace meeting in the Kentucky Theatre and his eyes lit up! I didn't know why his eyes would lite because here was a prominent pastor of a large church getting excited about something starting out. The pastor shared with me for the past few years how God had placed it on his heart to pray that a church would someday meet in the Kentucky Theatre! Right after he said that he put his arm around me and started to pray. He told me that he would point put who live downtown to come to our church because we are on the same team.

Community Garden

As many of you know the Columbia Heights Neighborhood Association was granted permission by the University of Kentucky to plant a community garden in the vacant lot of 544 Columbia Avenue. Despite getting a late start due to rain delays the tilling of the land was done toward the end of June. I believe it rained for two weeks straight! We were under a time crunch and knew we had to get a move on it. On our tilling day we had wonderful participation! We had many neighbors, community volunteers, and Embrace Church volunteers work in tilling and planting together. Though I myself am not a gardener, I knew that if we had the land that the people with experience would come and they sure did! Maureen Saxon was the first person from our neighborhood that contacted me. She has been gardening for several years along with Embrace member Steve Fisher. Also, students from UK who were agriculture majors such as Russ Caldwell became involved immediately. Because of their wealth of knowledge the rest of us would automatically default to them. Our tilling day was quite humorous because many of our volunteers have never used a tiller before. Once we figured out how to turn it on we had to practically wrestle it where we wanted it to go. So again we’d cry for help to our more experienced gardeners for some pointers. I would have to say that this was actually the toughest part of the gardening process, but the most fun and humorous as well!

Russ Caldwell made our wonderful sign to promote our garden. There has been a lot of word of mouth about the Columbia Heights Garden, especially in the garden community in Lexington. As I was on the Lexington Garden tour a few weeks back I heard our garden mentioned a few times. I’m currently having conversations to have the Columbia Heights Garden on the garden tour for next year.

Since our tilling and planting day many still come out once a week on Tuesday evenings at 7pm to pick weeds and other general maintenance. As we have seen the garden grow we too have seen relationships grow between all our volunteers and the beautification of our neighborhood. Presently we are seeing a harvest of yummy vegetables such as corn, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers to name a few.

Members from Embrace church provided the tillers, fencing and along with community members we had many seeds donated to the garden. This first season of the community garden was a trial run and we are hoping that next year will even be bigger. We are hoping to expand the plot and get more involvement from our neighborhood.