Li'l Help Please

Family: We have a fantastic problem: a lot of people come to our Gatherings. In particular, a lot of people come to our 7:00pm Gathering at Devine Street. We've always had a lot of college students coming around, and 7:00pm tends to be the most optimal time for college students to attend. The reason that it's a problem is that we have limited seats at that Gathering. The past few weeks, we've had anywhere from 10-30 more people than we have seats.

So here's what we want to ask of you: if you normally attend the 7:00pm Gathering at Devine Street, please consider attending the new 5:00pm at Main Street. Our new Main Street Campus opens this Sunday, and for the first time in a long time, we have room to grow. But in case you're still hesitant, here's 4 reasons you should attend Main Street this week:

1. It's closer to campus. As I mentioned earlier, our 7:00pm is largely made up of college students. If you're a USC student, our new Main Street Campus is actually closer to campus for you. Google Maps lists the trip to Devine Street as a 7 minute drive, while the drive to Main Street is a 4 minute drive. Get to the Gathering faster by going to Main Street.
2. The building is beautiful. We have seriously been blown away by how incredible the Main Street building is. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you look at the photos or take the video tour.
3. Opening up seats is missional. If the 7:00pm Gathering is our most popular service, then you going to Main Street could be opening up a seat for someone who needs to hear about Jesus. You going to Main Street may be more effective for the kingdom than you realize.
4. Grab dinner with people afterwards. Attending an earlier Gathering frees you up to grab dinner with people you meet at the Gathering, or go to the Gathering with. As we mentioned in Party Jesus, meals are great opportunities to build relationships with people. A 5:00pm Gathering makes going to dinner afterwards and inviting people to go with you a more natural thing to do.

Some of you still don't want to go to Main Street because your friends don't go there. Good news: go to Main Street, and bring all your friends there with you. That would help even more!

Thanks in advance for helping us open more seats at a more ideal time so that we can together reach more people for Jesus. You can always find all our Gathering times and locations on our Gathering page.

For Jesus' Glory, Adam Gibson Devine Street Campus Pastor

Parking at Devine Street

Our parking situation at our Devine Street Campus is a little unique. Because of the amount of people attending our Gatherings, and the limited amount of spaces behind our building, parking is graciously provided by local businesses in the area. In an effort to keep your car from getting towed, and in order to love our neighbors well, we drew a map to help you know where to park for our Devine Street Campus.

[button label="View the map here" link="http://goo.gl/maps/p0l4m" shape="default"]

Want to sign up to help our family park at Devine Street? Sign up here.

5 Ways a Marriage Series is Helpful for Single People

In our city and in our church family, the probability that you are not married is as good if not better than the probability that you are married.  Those who are single in college, single out of college, single living at home, lifelong singles, divorced, widows, and those dealing with same sex attraction make up a majority of our urban community. We want to make a few things extremely clear:  Our decision to do a series on marriage is in no way an attempt to make you feel unloved, ostracized, excluded, or out of place in our church family.  Your marital status does not dictate your identity or your value.  A wedding is not graduation into a more valid status of life.  Marriage is not heaven.  It’s not our hope for the good life.  Jesus is.

At the same time, marriage is a gift (Proverbs 18:28) and throughout the Scriptures, God uses marriage as an incredible picture of the gospel. So, for a number of reasons we are excited to see God use this series to sanctify our entire church family, including those who are married and those who are not (a.k.a. you).

“How?!  In what ways can I possibly grow from a ten-week series on marriage when I’m not married?  It doesn’t apply to me!  You guys must hate me and don’t care about me!”  That is simply not the case.  Here are five ways this series applies to you:

1. Understanding marriage helps you understand the gospel. The marriage relationship is used over and over throughout the Bible to describe Christ’s relationship to the church.  What that means is that whether you are married or not, properly understanding God’s design and intentions for marriage helps you understand how Jesus loves, leads, forgives and walks in relationship with His bride, the church.
2. Understanding marriage helps you understand other relationships. Marriage is the first human relationship that God ever invented.  As such, it serves a specific role in informing all of our relationships.  Marriage is a microcosm stage where the friendship, tensions, conflicts and reconciliations we experience in all of our relationship gets played out on a daily basis and in extraordinary ways.
3. Understanding marriage helps you interact with married people. Whether you are married or not, you are likely to either already have or to have in the future close friendships with people who are married.  Understanding, studying and praying about what God and His Scripture have to say about marriage allows you to interact with married people (neighbors, parents, coworkers) in an informed and helpful way.  It’s interesting here to note that much of the teaching about marriage that we’ll be looking at comes from Paul and Jesus, neither of whom was married.
4. Understanding marriage helps you live on mission. Marriage is one of the most prevalent and clear pictures of how we live in a good world gone bad.  Broken marriages are in the news.  It’s in the tabloids.  It’s in our family histories.  It’s in our personal histories.  And no one believes that the brokenness of marriage in our society is how it was designed to work.  Everyone knows that marriage has been skewed since sin entered the world, whether or not they would use those words to explain it. So, the more you understand how Jesus loves to repair broken marriages, the more equipped you are to offer a uniquely Jesus-centered and hopeful position to the people in our city.
5. Understanding marriage equips you in the event that you get married.  We intentionally left the most obvious reason for last.  Statistics show that some 87% of all people will be married at some point in their lives.  That’s almost nine out of every ten people. Some have accused the church of rounding this number up and treating it like one hundred percent.  We don’t want to do that.  But we also don’t want to fail to prepare and equip the 87% of people who will statistically get married.  So if you turn out to be one of the 87% of people who get married at some point in the future, we hope this series goes a long way to equip you now in terms of preparation.  If you are single and turn out to be part of the 13% who don’t get married, refer back to reasons 1 through 4.

(This post was adapted from the Campaign Resource Guide)

Campaign Resource Guide

(Update 9/7/12: The PDF has been updated to include editable fields in place of blanks.) As we gear up for our new sermon series, A Marriage You'd Actually Want, our desire is for the series to be as helpful as possible, especially to the LifeGroups of our church.

As a resource to our LifeGroup leaders and members, we've published a Campaign Resource Guide to help learn and apply the teaching from the series. The guide walks through additional content for each week and includes discussion questions for you to discuss with your group, whether you're single or married.

Want to begin preparing you and your LifeGroup for the series?

[button label="Download the Campaign Resource Guide" link="http://midtowncolumbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/AMYAW_LGBook_Editable.pdf" shape="default"]

A Marriage You'd Actually Want (a Poem)

http://vimeo.com/48293839  

Marriage.  Holy Matrimony.  Your fairy-tale romance is set to begin because you’ve found that one and only. So, now the two of you are off to live happily ever after With days filled with smiles, hugs, kisses, and laughter. 

But the state of marriage today is really pretty saddening Half of all marriages end in divorce; and half of the rest don’t seem happy The news is reporting that only 50% of adults today are married, That’s down from about three-forths in 1960. Hey why is this happening?

It seems our culture is looking at marriage like, “No thanks, I think I‘ll pass.” It’s not worth the risk. Besides, marriages really don’t last. So, I’ll just spare myself the pain from the old ball and chain Just to have my marriage eventually crash… 

And burn. And, because of divorce, there are some who, as children, were burned. Things got heated, people got mistreated, and you just heeded the lesson learned. The lesson: Don’t touch a hot stove because when you do, it leaves scars that last. Especially if you still have the scars of a divorce that happened in the past

Or maybe you’re in a marriage and its not what you hoped. There’s dysfunction and bitterness, and you don’t know how to cope. You’re trying to hang on, but you feel like you’re at the end of your rope. But what if you could have a marriage you’d actually want?

What if the husband loves his wife the way he loves himself, And she responds to his love with much love and respect? And what if the two were so struck by the love shown on the cross That they gave their lives to serve each other, no matter the cost? And what if the primary purpose of marriage is to display the Gospel of Christ, Showing each other genuine love and grace demonstrating his sacrifice?

What if you truly treasured your marriage, and your best friend was your spouse And the two of you could not wait for the next time you could have a night out.

So many have given up on marriage.  Here’s hoping that you don’t. What if, through in Jesus, you could have a marriage you’d actually want.

A Video about the Marriage Series

Teaching pastor Jon Ludovina shares a little about the upcoming sermon series, A Marriage You'd Actually Want. http://vimeo.com/47876161