|giv| 2020

For most of the Bible, God’s people were seen as an exiled people. Life was far from how they imagined or hoped, as they were constantly reminded of the brokenness and sin around them. And yet, amidst their exile, God reminded them that good news was on the way.

This year has been far from how anyone of us would have imagined or hoped either. We’re reminded in the headlines and in our daily lives that we are still a people in exile. So during this Christmas season, we want to once again remember that good news has come through Jesus, and one day He is coming back.

So every year, we take 3-4 weeks to intentionally focus on our hope in Jesus through growing in generosity. We take this time to think about how God has given us undeserved grace while we were still sinners and continues to grow us as his people.

Listen to sermons & download LifeGroup resources.

Week 1: Jesus, God With Us - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Transcript)

Week 2: Jesus, Our Shepherd King - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Transcript)

Week 3: Jesus, Our Comforter - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Transcript)

1. Sign up to Tithe

We consider tithing a spiritual practice that helps develop a lifestyle of sacrificial generosity. We are encouraging members of our church to set up a recurring tithe because the gospel transforms us not just to be generous around the holidays, but throughout the entire year. It’s also specifically how we fund and fuel all that we do as a church in our city.

SET UP RECURRING GIVING HERE

2. Attend the Personal Finance Class

We want to equip our church family to be spiritually healthy by stewarding the financial resources that God has entrusted to us. On Sunday, January 24, January 31, and February 7, we’re hosting a class that consists of practical training to manage your finances, pay off debt, invest well, and practice biblical generosity. The class will be hosted virtually from 2:00-3:30pm.

SIGN UP FOR THE CLASS

3. LifeGroups partner with a Serve the City Organization

Due to the pandemic we’re postponing our annual Serve the City Weekend to a later date; however, we want every LifeGroup to select a Serve the City organization to partner with over the next year to serve. Through LifeGroups regularly serving alongside our STC organizations year-round, we’re able to sustainably love and serve the most vulnerable and marginalized in our city.

PARTNER WITH STC

4. Give to Agape Children's Ministry

Give to Agape Children’s Ministry - Agape Children's Ministry is an orphan reunification ministry that seeks to reunite street children in Kenya with their biological families when possible through family rehabilitation. The executive director of Agape is the father of a Missionary Member at Lexington, and their efforts in Kenya have been very successful in a much-needed and often-neglected area of orphan care. Their ministry serves approximately 1500 families and they are seeking to establish a new arm of their ministry in the city of Nakuru. We are seeking to raise $20,000 for Agape, and those funds will serve approximately 56 additional children from rescue to reintegration (including follow up care for 5 years).

FIND OUT MORE

GIVE HERE

To help us prepare our hearts for the Christmas season, we wrote a brand new five-week-long Advent devotional guide for you and your LifeGroup to work through during this season. Iif you haven’t received a hard copy yet, you can pick up a copy at any of our on-campus events. The guides are first come first serve and the suggested donation is $6 per copy.

DONATE HERE

|giv| 2019

Every year, we take 3-4 weeks to intentionally focus on growing in generosity. We take this time to think about how God has given us undeserved grace while we were still sinners and continues to grow us as his people. We like to call it our |giv| series.

During the series, we will walk through the first two chapters of Matthew to prepare our hearts to celebrate God’s greatest gift to the world: Jesus. As Christians, because it’s far too easy to just get caught up in everything else so we want to make sure that we approach this season thoughtfully. Each week, we’ll look at different aspects of Christ's coming that ought to shape the way we think, feel and react to the Christmas season.

Listen to sermons & download LifeGroup resources.

Week 1: Jesus’ Resume - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Kids’ LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Jesus’ Mission - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Kids’ LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: Jesus’ Kingdom - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide) (Kids’ LifeGroup Guide)

1. Start Tithing

We want our first step of ongoing generosity to be towards the mission of our church. By financially supporting our church together, we set ourselves up for a stable and sustainable ministry for years to come. We are encouraging our family to set up a recurring tithe because the gospel transforms us not just to be generous around the holidays, but during all seasons of our lives.

2. Sign up for Serve the City Weekend

The gospel transforms us to be generous with not only our finances, but our time and energy as well. We are coming together to serve our seven partner organizations and their clients at Serve the City Weekend from January 18-20, 2020.

3. Raise $22,000 for our Serve the City Partnerships

We want to fund Serve the City events throughout the next year and continue to do things like feeding Epworth students each Wednesday night at Student Groups.

4. Attend the Personal Finance Class

We want to equip our church family to be spiritually healthy by stewarding the financial resources that God has entrusted to us. On Sunday, January 26, February 2, and February 9 from 9:00am - 11:00am at our Downtown church, we’re hosting a class that consists of practical training to manage your finances, pay off debt, invest well, and practice biblical generosity.

|giv| 2018

Every year, we take 3-4 weeks to intentionally focus on growing in generosity. We take this time to think about how God has given us undeserved grace while we were still sinners and continues to grow us as his people. We like to call it our |giv| series.

Listen to sermons & download LifeGroup resources.

Week 1: Mercy - Its Source & Motive - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 2: Grace Givers - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

Week 3: A Test of Genuine Faith - (Sermon) (LifeGroup Guide)

1. Start Tithing

We want our first step of ongoing generosity to be towards the mission of our church. By financially supporting our church together, we set ourselves up for a stable and sustainable ministry for years to come.  We are encouraging our family to set up a recurring tithe because the gospel transforms us not just to be generous around the holidays, but during all seasons of our lives.

2. Sign up for Serve the City Weekend

The gospel transforms us to be generous with not only our finances, but our time and energy as well. We are coming together to serve our six partner organizations and their clients at Serve the City Weekend from January 18-21, 2019.

3. Raise $21,000 for our Serve the City Partnerships

We want to fund Serve the City events throughout the next year and continue to do things like feeding Epworth students each Wednesday night at Student Groups.

Stretch goal - Any money we raise beyond the $21,000 will be put towards renovating and installing a full kitchen in our unused building on Barnwell St. This will allow us to serve meals as part of our ministry to the homeless, use the facility to save money on food cost for future events, and utilize the building as an event rental space.

4. Attend the Personal Finance Seminar

We want to equip our church family to be spiritually healthy by stewarding the financial resources that God has entrusted to us. On Saturday, January 26 from 9:00am-3:00pm at our Downtown church, we’re hosting a seminar that consist of practical training to manage your finances, pay off debt, invest well, and practice biblical generosity.

|giv| The Advent of the Son of God

Every year, we take 3-4 weeks to intentionally focus on growing in generosity. We take this time to think about how God has given us undeserved grace while we were still sinners and continues to grow us as his people. We like to call it our |giv| series.

During the series, we will study passages of Isaiah to prepare our hearts to celebrate God’s greatest gift to the world: Jesus. We want to make sure that we approach this season well as Christians because it’s far too easy to just get caught up in everything else. Each week, we’ll look at different aspects of Christ's coming that ought to shape the way we think, feel and react to the Christmas season and stir our affection and longing.

1. Sign up to tithe

We are encouraging our family to set up a recurring tithe because the gospel transforms us not just to be generous around the holidays, but during all seasons of our lives. Regular tithing from our Midtown family enables us to more strategically plan and budget to continue to be Jesus-centered family on mission with Him in Columbia and the world.

2. Sign up for Serve the City Weekend

The gospel transforms us to be generous with our finances as well as with our very lives. Our Serve the City Weekend is a great chance to be generous with our time and energy by serving marginalized and vulnerable people groups in our city. Serve the City Weekend will be during MLK Weekend from January 12-15.

3. Raise $15,000 for our Serve the City Partners

The goal of this year's |giv| project for our Downtown church is to raise $15,000 to support our Serve the City Partners. For each partnership, we are committed to serving their staff and their clients on a monthly basis. Some of our events are really big like STC weekend and some of our events are as simple as serving breakfast for the committed staff of each organization. Your giving this year will help us: 

• Host red carpet events for inpatient kids at Palmetto Health Children's Hospital.

• Repair houses for widows in our city who cannot pay for or complete the repairs on their own.

• Provide a stable church family atmosphere and moments of relief and joy for the orphaned kids of Epworth.

• Engage in relationship with the homeless of our city who are living at Transitions Shelter.

ADVENT Guide

To help enrich our understanding of the Advent season, we've created an Advent Guide for you to use with your family or your LifeGroup. Inside, you'll find daily readings, weekly devotionals, family discussion questions, and study guides for your LifeGroup.

Listen to sermons & download study guides

Week 1: Grace for Our Sin - (Get the Study Guide)

Week 2: Hope for Our Suffering - (Get the Study Guide)

Week 3: Peace for the World - (Get the Study Guide)

Week 4: Joy for Eternity - (Get the Study Guide)

|giv| 2014

Every year around the holidays, we participate in something we like to call |giv|. We spend time talking about what God did in |giv|ing us Jesus, and then spend time |giv|ing in return. Through the years, we’ve looked for needs in our city and our world, and then partnered together to help meet those needs. Through the years, we’ve done things like…

• |giv|ing shoes to people without them
• |giv|ing money to plant churches in India
• |giv|ing hoodies to people in the cold in Columbia
• |giv|ing Christmas presents to kids in the Yucatan peninsula
• |giv|ing safe houses to children rescued out of sex slavery
• |giv|ing to plant a church in inner-city Columbia.

Because He gave, we |giv|. It’s that simple.

(Part of the Luke series)

Sermons:

|giv| 2013

Giving something means taking what is yours and giving it to others, free of charge. Christmas is the celebration of how God gave his one and only son so that we could be forgiven, free of charge. So each year for Christmas, we rally together to respond to what God has given us:

• by |giv|ing shoes to people without them
• by |giv|ing money to church planters in India
• by |giv|ing hoodies to people in the cold in Columbia
• by |giv|ing Christmas presents to kids in the Yucatan peninsula
• by |giv|ing safe houses to children rescued out of sex slavery
• much, much more.

Because He gave, we |giv|. It’s that simple.

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Sermons:

|giv| 2012

The holiday season is generally marked by consumerism, consumption, and materialism. But God sees Christmas in a whole different light. Leaving the comforts of heaven, He came to earth as the man Jesus, on a rescue mission to seek and save what was lost. Each year, we take a few weeks to talk about Jesus' incarnation, and its implications on our lives.

Alongside each year's |giv| series, we all rally around a project to be generous to, in response to Jesus' generosity to us. In past years we've given shoes and jackets to Columbia's homeless population, built safe houses for boys and girls rescued out of India's sex slave industry, translated the bible into the Huba language, and given Christmas gifts to kids in the Yucatan peninsula.

Sermons: