With so many thinking that there is a church on every corner, it is fair to ask why any young church should exist. Because of that, a purposeful church should have a purposeful rationale for its existence. Otherwise, just let some other church do the job. So, in light these truths, Evident Grace launched based upon these verses: Titus 2:11-14 For the grace of God has been made evident, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and…
Many churches this time of year hold membership or partnership classes. In fact,Evident Grace Fellowship, will be hosting one soon. Culturally, however, one notion that continues to gain popularity is whether or not church membership, affiliation, or partnership is biblical. There is a popular notion that church membership is an option for the believer. So, is it? I bump into this idea that the structured, organized church is broken and can sufficiently be discarded for such reasons as style. So then, is…
Have you ever been to a restaurant and seen a dish on the menu that interested you? Of course, but the way most restaurants work is that you don’t get a taste ahead of time to find out if you really like it. Your choices are either taking a risk and ordering the dish or skipping it for something that you know you will like. The problem is that you will just never know if the dish you skipped was…
This is our second post of worship observations. You can find our first here. This week, we talk about when things don’t go well – a common challenge for young churches. – At Evident Grace, we have been meeting for a year and a half. For church planters and church plants, a year and a half feels like five regular years. Each Sunday, you feel like you are taking giant leaps forward as you become more efficient in everything from…
On Sept 7, Evident Grace begins its new series, “Journey to Worship – a Study of Ezra”. As Ezra is not an often studied book, an extended preview might be helpful, so towards that end, here is the text of an important portion of the sermon. – You know how we grow in comfortable skepticism? We like to say things like, “Well, I know God can do anything, but I doubt anything is going to happen.” Or we will say,…
Excitedly, on Sunday, September 7th, Evident Grace Fellowship is launching its new sermon series, Journey to Worship – A Study of Ezra. Why would a young church, or any church for that matter, endeavor to study, what for some might be, an obscure Old Testament book? There are several reasons. Ezra is a book about a community returning to their homeland to reestablish the worship of God after a period of time where worship had been forbidden. Those that remained…
I had a wonderful conversation with someone from EG this week, and we were discussing how many churches (and our denomination specifically) have a hard time comforting and caring for folks when they suffer. He described it in this way. Most churches do not know how to enter into people’s hurts. What an incredible statement…and sadly true. We spent the next hour or so discussing the problem. We came up with an analysis, and I hope in this small post…
As Evident Grace moves into the second half of summer 2014, we are launching a 6-week sermon series entitled “Life Together” on July 27th. “Life Together” will give a clear picture of what it looks like for us to live out our 3 distinctives: Community, Worship, and Service. Our series is going to give us the opportunity to explore these “Life Together” distinctives in two different ways. We are going to explore Community, Worship, and Service by celebrating. As we…