Tag: Mars Hill

Lighten your burden

Granddad and Grandma waiting for his surgery
My grandparents waiting for Granddad's surgery | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

Shane Hipps shares in the latest Mars Hill podcast…

When his grandmother was in her 70s and her husband was in his 90s she had done all she could to care for him at home, but eventually it was to difficult. So they moved him to a nursing facility near by. Shane’s grandmother had never had a drivers license, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

So every morning she would get up and walk 2.5 miles to the nursing home to sit by her husband’s side. There wasn’t much she could do, but she would sit with him and be present.

Every night when visiting hours were over, she would walk 2.5 miles home.

Each day (seven days a week) walking five miles – for two years.

When asked what it was like she said, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life but it was my joy to be with him and I would have done it as many years as God would have let me.”

There was a levity to her burden because of love.

re: Tribal faith

Listening to Rob Bell share some great thoughts and ideas on Tribes (taken from Phil 3).

A great thought ::

“Sometimes when some people say ‘the gospel’ they’re really talking about tribal identity masquerading as the gospel… and Jesus is bigger than any tribe.”

“Beware of dem dawgs!”

Don’t let the tribe come between you and The Gospel or Jesus.

Brian McLaren speaks at Mars Hill

Former pastor and author Brian McLaren spoke at Brian McLaren’s church, Mars Hill, this past week.
He spoke on the six different narratives we find ourselves trapped in from time to time.
Much of it is similar to what he writes in “Everything Must Change.”

Very good stuff.

Our Father, above us and all around us,
May your unspeakable Name be revered.
Here on earth may your kingdom come … on earth as in heaven
may your will be done.
Give us today our bread for today.
And forgive us our wrongs as we forgive.
Lead us away from the perilous trial,
But liberate us from the evil.
For the kingdom is yours and yours alone, the power is yours and
yours alone, and the glory is yours and yours alone, now and
forever. Amen.

Listen.
View the notes.

Texting in church

Mars Hill Church in Seattle has begun welcoming Txt messaging during their Sunday morning services as part of a Q&A with pastor Mark Driscoll. This is also something they’ve been doing at several conferences the church has been a part of or hosted.

We’ve discussed txt messaging at encounter but haven’t quite put into effect yet. I love the idea of interaction between the congregation/lay people and the pastor during the service and the interaction between each person in the congregation.

We had a unique experience yesterday at encounter (no video/audio/picture archives were made) where we sat up 3 unique rooms with chairs all facing inward so we were “forced” to look at one another rather than simply stare at a stage or screen where someone talks and sings “to us.”

I loved it. Felt very community like. Fit right in with the taking of the Eucharist or communion (coming together in union). We moved from room to room as Brian spoke about the blood and body of Christ and in the final room we sat gathered around a cross where Brian spoke of Christ freeing us from our bondage. He offered an opportunity for folks to share what this freedom in Christ meant to them.

Usually when we have times for response we get limited numbers of response but something about yesterday really encouraged the interaction. We had people from all sides of the room speaking out and sharing their thoughts. Several even played off one another.

I think this type of interaction is vital to our churches. I hope we can see more of it.

Related ::
HT: Monday Morning Insight
Mars Hill
Mars Hill :: Text Life
Mars Hill :: Live Texting
Twitter at church
SSL :: Social Networking and the church

Generating ideas :: where do ideas come from

photo by desiitaly

The latest podcast from Mars Hill is a discussion on Creative Theology. Jeanette Banashak and Don Perini discuss… including many of the places creative people generate their ideas. Don says the list comes from an ever changing list by Charles Thompson.

Don suggests that creative people try to utilize these times every chance they can. Look over the list and make note of the places where ideas come for you.

  • Taking a bath or shower
  • Driving
  • Sitting on the toilet
  • Falling asleep or waking up
  • During a boring meeting
  • Reading
  • Exercising
  • Waking up in the middle of the night
  • Listening to a church sermon
  • Manual labor

Ideas are gold

Once you realize where many of your creative ideas come from, come up with a capturing machine. Create a system for capturing your ideas wherever you are. If you know where your ideas come from, always be prepared to write your ideas down in those situations. Whether that’s soap chalk for writing in the shower, or a 3×5 card for writing down ideas while driving (please pull over first :-)) be sure and capture your thoughts.

Some other great ideas are in the podcast, such as activities to help improve creativity.

Where do you tend to come up with great ideas?

Related ::
Mars Hill
Mars Hill podcast feed
Creative Theology podcast
Creative Theology notes/slides

re: Social networking and the church

the city

Found some more info on Mars Hill’s social network, The City:

The site is being built around physical communities not as much as around online communities.

One of the design principles of The City, which has guided virtually every decision we’ve made, is that the physical is more important than the virtual. This subtle but significant difference provides the foundation for understanding how this new thing is going to work…

On my Facebook page, I’ve got dozens of friends. Of those friends, I would imagine that about one third are actually in the Seattle area. The other two thirds are people literally all over the world. While there is a certain cool factor in having a virtual Rolodex of everyone I’ve ever known, is there anything more to it than that? Sure, if I’m planning a trip out to one of the areas where they will be, it’s rather convenient, and I get to find out that my college friend is eating a ham sandwich (a la Twitter), but that doesn’t change my life or their life for that matter. When you’re trying to build an intentional community, Facebook just doesn’t cut it. There are too many off topic, off mission sorts of diversions that the game aspect of the site dominates any mission it could try to carry.

Now, Facebook can be incredibly missional for the 1% that choose to use it as a mission field and network specifically with that in mind, but I’m trying to think along the lines of how you get the 80% to that level. The framework will either make a compelling community, or it will not. I don’t believe Facebook ever will do that for the 80%.

More specifically they’re building the site around physical neighborhoods.

Simply, your neighborhood is everyone that lives near you. Pretty basic eh? So why is this a cool concept? Let’s look at a concrete yet fictional example.

John is a community group leader in Ballard; he hosts his group just a little down the road from the public library off Market. He’s got a relatively new group with just five folks in regular attendance. He invites people to his group regularly, but they live all over the place! Ballard draws people from all over Seattle (and beyond), and finding the right people has been tough.

Jim is new to Mars Hill. He attended his first service, stopped by The City kiosk afterwards, and signed up to be “connected”, whatever that means. The volunteer that helped him was nice enough, but Jim doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. He lives near the old firehouse on Market, in fact, he works as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach at the studio there. If only John knew Jim was in his backyard…

This is where the ‘neighborhood’ thing I checked into the code this morning comes into play. John would see in The City that a new guy showed up in his neighborhood (without having to dig for it), maybe The City would even say, “hey, you’re the closest community group!” and John could reach out to Jim with a couple of clicks.

Love it!