Coaches and Leaders,
Now that we’ve finished the Doctrine Series, here are some helpful documents explaining the new membership process. Be sure you are familiar with this information, as many in your groups will be going through membership and may have questions.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask your coach, head coach, or CG Pastor.
Read the Introduction from Pastor Mark below. Curriculum from the text will be posted weekly here.
From Pastor Mark Driscoll(see trailer here)
Jesus was a rebel, outlaw, renegade, and hardcore, sanctified troublemaker. He never sinned, but He lived His life by a set of rules that His culture did not approve of, especially the stuffed-shirt religious types. Examples include healing on the Sabbath, throwing over tables in the temple, eating with godless sinners, and not washing His hands before eating. Clearly, Jesus was no coward who conformed to social pressure.
Jesus was ultimately murdered in an attempt to stop Him from literally turning the world upside down, which was as effective as blowing on the head of a dandelion to exterminate it. Nonetheless, Jesus endured the cross, as Hebrews 12:2 says, “for the joy that was set before him” and never lost His joy even in the midst of betrayal, poverty, injustice, loneliness, pain, suffering, slander, and even death. Jesus was single-minded in His mission to pursue God’s glory in heaven and our salvation on earth. Jesus lived without those things that we would typically associate with joy, such as health, wealth, sex, and comfort, yet He is the freest and happiest person who has ever lived. Jesus is the most joyful person who has ever lived because He was the most obedient, God-glorifying, humble, sacrificial person who has ever lived. Paradoxically, He had joy despite being a “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3).
Following his conversion, Paul patterned his life after Jesus and also lived as a rebel, outlaw, renegade, and hardcore, sanctified troublemaker. He too was single, broke, often homeless, and so hated that he got run out of more than a few towns after taking a good beating. Paul writes Philippians while he is sitting on the floor of a filthy Roman jail (Philippians 1:1317)-a brutal place and nothing like the Paris Hilton Camp Cupcake Clubhouses that we see today. Alone in his jail cell, flat broke, tired, hungry, sick, abandoned, and facing the prospect of a brutal death, Paul sat down to write a letter to his friends in Philippi, who enjoyed one of the few churches written to in the New Testament that did not sound like it had been taken over by drunk carnival workers.
Founded by Paul in roughly 50 AD, the church at Philippi was the first church in Europe. The church began when the team of Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke met with some Jewish women at their place of prayer in Acts 16. Their first converts were a wealthy upper class Asian businesswoman, Lydia, and her family; a demon-possessed lower class Greek slave girl; and a middle class Roman jailer and his family. Despite racial, economic, gender, and political differences, the church grew to be very healthy and filled with joy as they grew together in their love for and service of Jesus Christ.
If you’re like me, you probably ponder over seemingly trivial and ordinary stuff. You may ask yourself why certain things are the way they are.like how M&M’s chocolate candy got it’s name or why moss only grows on the north side of trees. Have you ever wondered why the majority of Mars Hill Community Groups meet on Tuesdays?
Through sharing my journey through the community group family tree, I hope to shed light on why Tuesday is such a popular night of the week.
In August 2003 I started attending Mars Hill Church and joined a community group during my first week of school at the UW. We met on Tuesday nights in the U-District. One reason why I plugged into this community group so quickly was because is was small at the time. I was blown away by the passionate discussion about Jesus and the bible as well as the valued prayer time, fellowship, having meals together, etc. It was something I had never quite experienced before. It was real community! No wonder why our group grew so fast! Within one school year, we had already replicated twice. Replication was bittersweet. Parting with half the group was sad, but I understood it was essential for healthy hospitality and growth. Since then, I’ve been through 4 additional group replications, one of which replicated three ways. All of these groups continued to meet on Tuesday nights. It is my observation that replicated groups tend to keep to the same meeting time/day as it’s former group.
While it may be overwhelming to see 7-8 Tuesday Greenlake/Greenwood Groups on the web listings, I am encouraged. This means that groups are replicating so that they can welcome many more into community. Hmmm, if my assumption is correct, I wonder if the first community group at Mars Hill met on Tuesdays? It is also exciting to see Wednesday and Thursday groups grow in number too. Let’s keep the new groups coming!
Some of you may be wondering what was up with the tags on our last round of rosters. I have fielded a few questions and responses to the new tags and it seams that some clarification would be helpful. So let me lay out what we are doing, why we are doing it, and possibly the most important. what we are not doing.
What we are doing:
Lets start with what I am talking about. On the latest roster (Census) form there was a section called Tags, with following options:
Men Only
Women Only
Singles-college
Singles- career
married-young
married-seasoned
Kid Friendly
meals
With instruction to tag all that apply. The purpose is to describe your current group not define your current group. By describing the group you are merely saying this is who is here, you are not restricting it to other demographics. You may only check one box if that is all that applies, however most groups will be made up a mix of people from different life stages and will check multiple boxes. So of your group is ” women only”, you would check that box but also check the boxes that describe the women in that group, single, married, ect.
Why we are doing it:
Tags serve a couple of purposes. The first is to help us understand who is in groups and who is not. We can simply look at this information to determine what life stages are engaging in community.
The most significant reason however, is to help us to assimilate new people into groups. If a single mom with kids is looking for a group, the tags help us quickly identify what groups are set up to welcome kids. As well, if an older couple is looking to mentor young single folks they may look for groups that have those particular tags. The reality however is that most people are looking for a community of people feeling the same pressures and having the same interest as themselves. That is a reasonable desire and although we would love to see groups that are made up of folks that span across different life stages, we realize that is not always attainable.
What we are not doing:
We are not attempting to separate or define groups by these tags. If groups naturally develop an affinity identity we are not going spend energy trying to “diversify” that group, however, and our expectation is that any such group would still be open to people of any life stage.
So. please take the time to check the tags that apply to your group so we can better help plug people into the community of Mars Hill Church.
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