God is triune, Father, Son, and Spirit. Therefore, as His image bearers, we want and need Community in order to reflect Him to the world. Jesus even says that the world will know about His love through our unity (John 17:23).

What are some words that come to mind when you think of Christian Community? I have both positive and negative ones:

Negative: Hypocritical, judgmental, gossipy, awkward, fake, forced, stagnant, draining…

Positive: Authentic, transformational, encouraging, transparent, real, helpful, refreshing…

These terms may seem separate, but in my experience, in Gospel Community they seem to happen all at the same time.
Who hasn’t been a hypocrite, or judgmental, a gossip, or fake? I know I have been, and it’s in Community that these things really come to light. (more…)

  Last night, I had the opportunity to visit the University of Central Florida’s “Summer Cru,” Campus Crusade for Christ’s summer meeting at UCF.

The crowd, dressed in Rainbow sandals, J. Crew shorts, and Polo tees, was over one hundred strong.  The flavor was that of just about any Christian student gathering across the south:  The leaders roll into an empty auditorium an hour or two before the start of the service; A temporary stage is rolled out and assembled; the sound system is installed, drums put together, guitar on stage, microphones in hand, and a sound check begins; the music team practices their worship songs.  In the back of the auditorium, a pr­ayer room is set up; in the lobby, a merchandise table.  As people start to trickle into the lobby, the leadership team prays, checks off any last-minute tasks, and finally opens the doors to unleash the crowd. (more…)

When I hear the word “missionary,” I sometimes think of awkward families that are leaving the country as “missionaries,” or dudes riding on bikes in black ties with name tags.

But when we think about Missionaries, Jesus should be the first thing that comes to mind. Jesus is the Missionary God, sent to earth as a Missionary (John 1: 14; 20:21). Therefore, a Disciple of Jesus is a Missionary, sent as He was sent.
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The College Ministry wants to make disciples that Worship Jesus out of their identity in Him.When people say the word “worship,” I sometimes think in terms of music and production. I think of the weird shows on TV called “Praiseathons” or stuff like that. Not to knock on “Praiseathons,” but singing is not the only way we Worship Jesus.  The way we think about Worship really matters. 

So if I were to say “I really like the worship” at so and so church, I’m really isolating the word “worship” to something that happens on Sunday. When in fact, Worship is something we do 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So the question is, what are we Worshiping and how?

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The very essence of what it means to be human is that we bear the image of God. When God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” He tells us fundamentally why He is making man – to bear His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). Therefore, our most base-level Identity is “image bearer of God.”

Everyone is an image bearer of God and everything we do in life is either accurately portraying what God is like or (more…)

Disciples

As we begin to plan for next year, the College Ministry leaders are going back to the fundamentals to see why we do what we do.

When Mars Hill thinks through what its College Ministry is all about, we think about Jesus and making Disciples of Him. God brings man in on His story in Genesis, creating men and women to fill the earth with His image and, therefore, the glory of God. Tragically, the image of God in man is distorted because of our sin.

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