Hey All…
Have you ever walked in on your family that was halfway through watching a movie? You step right into the most thrilling action scene. The hero is swinging hard against the evil villain. The background music is intense and energetic. Victory is starting to emerge. Frankly, just jumping in here, you might find the movie quite enjoyable, even though you have no idea who these people are and what their backstory is. That’s precisely what we’ve been doing over the last three Sundays with the Book of Romans. And we’ll do it again this Sunday too. There’s a real purpose to this method of madness. I’ll tell you all about it in Deeper Thoughts below… But first…three things you need to know (and only two if you’re a fella…)… 1. Ladies: We are launching a brand-new, seven-week-long evening Women’s Small Group starting this next Tuesday, January 30 at 7:00 p.m.! Led by Tracey Schlitzer, this group will focus on hearing God and discovering our identity in Christ. Click here for more information and to RSVP! 2. Men and Women: Don’t forget one of our other brand-new small groups is open to anyone who wants to explore the “Basics of Faith.” Join Sherri and me at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday nights upstairs at the church. Click here to let us know you’re interested! 3. We are carefully exploring an expansion to our church facility. We discussed all the details last Sunday night, and our Covenant Partners (voting members) voted unanimously to take a few next steps. Here’s what you need to know: o We are considering a direct expansion to our sanctuary that would occur in two phases: First, taking the east wall (facing Belmont Ridge) and moving it seventeen and a half feet towards the street; and then secondly, doing the same to the west (towards the brick education building) sometime much later. Each phase would provide us 70 new seats per side and can be completed in a fiscally responsible manner. o The next steps are to engage JTC Consulting to manage the architectural design phase of the project (with congregational input and approval) and handle zoning issues with Loudoun County. Maintaining the historical beauty, architecture, woodwork, culture, and appearance of the sanctuary (and its exterior) is a non-negotiable first priority, following the example of our church forefathers in their previous expansion of the sanctuary in 1898. o To get caught up on all the details, click here for the PowerPoint presentation that goes with it. o As always, our door (and email inbox) is wide open to any questions, thoughts, concerns, or ideas! OK, that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who only care about the exciting action scenes. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… The New Testament book called Romans is perhaps the most comprehensive and important explanation of Christianity in all the Bible. It starts out with bad news. Very bad news. So bad, in fact, that if you don’t read it with the good news in mind, you’re likely to get up and walk out of the movie. I’ve only walked out of two movies in my life. The reason: They were both painful beyond repair. They were so bad, so offensive, and I didn’t know where they were going. I stuck with them for a little while to see if the value would improve. But at about the 20-minute mark, with no clarity that anything was going to turn the least bit worthwhile, I bailed. There are a lot of people doing this with Christianity. Instinctively, people dislike the pain that our story begins with. If we are to be really honest, the first 20 minutes of our story doesn’t sound very hopeful. A hapless couple blows it for the entire human race. They lost the perfect garden that God had created for us all. Then, sin infects every one of us before we were born. It becomes a nasty “body of death” hanging around each of our necks. We get stuck in this up-and-down, success-and-failure cycle over and over again. We know God wants--even expects—better for us. But we end up battling immense amounts of guilt and shame as the sin just keeps rolling on and on and on and… Ugh. So, society bails. Who wouldn’t? Without the hope promised in Romans chapters 5 - 8, all the world sees in Christianity is a negative message of sin, guilt, shame, and damnation. Now, I know you all can handle the tough word we find at the beginning of Romans. In fact, we do need to face it squarely, as there’s some bad news that we need to recognize about ourselves that might even include a few present-tense patterns among us. And we will do that NEXT Sunday. But just not yet. Why? Well… here’s what I want for every one of you, and what I believe God wants for you: That you would be so well-versed in the Gospel narrative of victory that when we square up on the bad news, you are fully armed and ready to be the hero demolishing all the evil villains in your life. Those robust action scenes you love in the movies? How did the hero get so well-equipped to face the enemy with such creative, instant, and skillful battle? They prepared. They became a master of their battle-craft. And that’s what we are doing with Romans. Can you become a master of the Gospel promise, so that when we square up with what we need to know about the bad news, we are armed, ready, enthusiastic, and prepared to joyfully do the right thing with it? We only have one more Sunday to get this right before we turn to the bad news. Get the master-craft down tight this week, will you? Believe with clarity and resolve what the Gospel promises you, and how the Gospel defines you. Put your faith down fully upon it. Reject the outright lies about your identity that the enemy is flaunting. Grasp firmly and forever the weapon of Truth found in this Gospel narrative. We will lay it out one more time this Sunday, cycling carefully and in ever-widening fashion from that core promise of Romans 8:1—that “there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” Spend some time digging around Romans 6 this week. Compare it to what we’ve read and studied thus far in Romans 7 and 8. Then, let’s hammer it. God’s promise in the Gospel is your identity, which to so many of us is an “Uncharted Territory: Taking Life Where You’ve Never Been.” Can’t wait!! See you Sunday… in-person (yay!!) or online livestream (ok…I guess…um…but wanna come in person???)… 10:00 a.m. Much love to you all! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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Hey folks…
Can you picture the swelling, foreboding music on the cable newscast and the “Breaking News!” banners excitedly flashing across the screen? If you’re like me, you’re instantly skeptical of another round of advertising-motivated media hyperbole. Oh…and it is guaranteed to be 100% negative (‘cuz we Americans never pay attention to “breaking news!” about warm fuzzy things like kittens and puppies…). Well… please forgive me… I have some Mt. Hope Church “Breaking News!” that if I had swell music bumper and a bold-colored kairon graphic to share, you’d be getting it. I really want you to tune in on this news… in Deeper Thoughts below… But first… · Please don’t miss THIS Sunday night, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. for an all-important church vision and prayer night! We have some important (not quite breaking, but super-important nonetheless) news to share with you, get your feedback and reactions, and most vitally to pray about. We have a new proposal about a modest expansion to our physical worship space that is within our reach to responsibly consider. We need to read you in on this, and we want your reactions and ideas shared with the construction project manager who will be in attendance Sunday night. o All are welcome (even newbies to Mt. Hope…please come!)… and you official voting church members (Covenant Partners), this meeting will also serve as our quarterly business meeting. o Snacks and Cider are coming, too, and they must go home inside your bellies. o Youth group is meeting at the same time downstairs, so parents, c’mon out and bring your teens! · Ladies: don’t forget your 2024 Vision Board event tomorrow, Saturday, January 20, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the church. Click here for more details and to RSVP! · Youth: THIS Monday, enjoy your day off from school with bowling! Grades 6-12 (bring friends!) are invited to join Chris Bowen and the youth at The Branch bowling alley in Leesburg, 11:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Cost is $4.00 plus tax. Yep!! How cheap is that?? (Bring some additional money for snacks/food.) Click here to email Chris Bowen to let us know you’re coming—or text him at 240-422-6287. · We have a great snow removal team, so the parking lot will be clear, the sidewalks awesome, the coffee hot, and the heat running on Sunday. So, c’mon out! OK…that’s it for today for you email skimmers and you who would rather dodge important news that might change your life… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… Here’s the banner headline: “You are not at all who you think you are.” As the bumper music pounds in the background, your anchor shares the news with somber face: “Reports have been uncovered revealing that everything you have thought about yourself is no longer true, experts say…” And then, in true manipulative ad-selling fashion, we cut first to a commercial break… <<< Cue the Mt. Hope “Breaking News!” lead-story commercial break; read with a smooth, calming, yet enthusiastic voice: You’ve noticed, have you not, that things around Mt. Hope are getting a little crowded? This is a good problem—coming from Holy Spirit-empowered momentum and joy in our church family. New people are coming super-hungry for the community, authenticity, openness, and enthusiasm we are all experiencing here. Many are bringing their doubts, fears, challenges, and needs to the forefront quickly because of the obvious love that our church displays to one another. And best of all, God is meeting these new folks—and all of us—with healing, spiritual strength, freshness, and power. It's a good problem to have. But it is still a problem. This has happened before at Mt. Hope. In 1897 (um…127 years ago for you historians) this little country chapel in the rural farmlands of Waxpool, VA (before it was known as Ashburn) had outgrown its space. God was at work. The original church built in 1853 was bursting at the seams. So, they gathered some humble resources, met for a while in “a grove of trees” out back, and expanded the chapel into what you know today… including those ornate (if not slightly stiff) pews recovered from an old and dying church in Washington, D.C. Following the example of our church family multiple generations ago, we are exploring the possibility of expanding this sacred chapel once again to accommodate the movement of God and to prepare for the future in our now-not-so-rural Loudoun suburbs. BUT…we need your help. We will brief you on the potential project THIS Sunday night, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m., and then ask for your wisdom, reactions, ideas, and desires. Please join us for this super-important vision and prayer night! <<< Dramatic voiceover: “And now…back to ‘Breaking News!’” You. You are not who you think you are, experts say. When it comes to spiritual matters, most of us have a rather dismal view of ourselves. It may be a specific guilt or gripping shame about some dark corner of our past (or present). But more generally speaking, even for those who are living the good life, optimistic, and joyful most of the time, there is this subtle nagging belief that we’re just not that good at spiritual things. When viewed through the lens of more traditional approaches to religion, we hear the fiery preacher and see his boney finger pointed out across the congregation. “Sinner!!” he declares, almost gleefully. We don’t like shame. It is painful. That fiery preacher yelling “sinner” rings in our head—and we instantly see all those terrible things we do (or have done) that confirms the dismal diagnosis. And then we look to scripture and see very clearly that we fall short of God’s ideal in so many ways…and even the scripture declares that “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23), and that “there is no one who is good.” At all. (Romans 3:10). So, it seems the verdict is in. Since shame is painful, our society has decided to just eliminate shame altogether by suggesting that nothing the Bible declares as sinful actually is, and instead celebrates sin under warm ideals such as “acceptance” and “tolerance.” (Tragically, many in the Church have bought into that cultural strategy…something Romans will deal with us in a few weeks…) But God has another solution to shame. He designed shame as a positive inner emotional “nervous system” to alert us to destructive behavior. It was designed to show us our limitations, establish boundaries, and warn us where the dangerous cliffs in life are. But He never intended for that system to define you. Did you catch that? The devil is called the “accuser” who accuses us “day and night” (Revelation 12:10). Being the “father of lies…he speaks his native language” (John 8:44) and tells us shame is not merely a behavioral boundary, but it is our identity. “Sinner!” he defines us—and we own it as an identity rather than a behavioral status. This Sunday, we will continue our study of the Book of Romans taking us into “Uncharted Territory.” We will discover that our success with God is not a matter of keeping up with the "do's and don'ts" of religion, but rather an identity to be understood—a right-standing with God (righteousness) that comes by faith in HIS work, not ours. Operating from this new identity, we can live without shame and condemnation, AND in true right-ness with God and others. Nose around Romans 3 and Romans 8 beforehand if you can. I truly love you all and am looking forward to a great Sunday with much great (breaking!) news…will you join me? Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey Folks…
No, I don’t mean this Chris… though I hope by now you all know that I try to be an “open book” with you to share the raw and honest picture of who I really am. It’s one of the things about Mt. Hope that Sherri and I love so much: We are a family where we can each be real, be loved, and be transformed. But I digress. No, I want to tell you about another Chris you’re going to get to meet this Sunday. More on this in Deeper Thoughts below… But first…just three quick reminders: · “Really Big Deal” Mt. Hope Family Meeting and Worship Night – Sunday, January 21, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. We have some exciting and significant vision to discuss with you and pray together about, to include some important developments in our pursuit of expanded capacity on our church campus. Mark your calendars and plan to attend! (For our “Covenant Partners” (official church members), this will also serve as our quarterly business meeting.) · We need new Small Group Hosts and Facilitators! Would you be willing to learn more about what is involved in helping create and facilitate small group life at Mt. Hope? No commitment implied by attending—and DO NOT think you’re too unqualified—but we’d love for you to join us THIS Sunday after church for a discussion (11:45 – 12:30 or so) to share with you the vision, purpose, and process of leading or hosting a small group. Click here to let us know you might be interested! · Ladies: To kick off the new year, we will be creating individual “Vision Boards” for 2024 with goals or aspirations we each have for the new year. Saturday, January 20, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the church. Click here for more details and to RSVP! OK, that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who don’t want to know anybody new. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… I met Chris Campbell when I was 23 years old. He had just been stood up by someone I knew, and the jam he was in got passed along to me. I was a brand-new young adult pastor serving at my alma mater’s campus church out in northeast Indiana. (Those were great years: I got an extra four years of the fun side of college life…I moved out of the dorm on graduation week, carried my junk across the parking lot to a small church parsonage, and got to hang out and goof off with college kids for four more years…all while being paid!) My boss called me into his office late one Wednesday afternoon and asked if I could clear my schedule for the weekend and make a quick trip to the middle of nowhere West Virginia--some ten hours away—to bail out some youth pastors whom I had never met. Seems that at the very last minute, a buddy of ours from another church had cancelled his commitment to speak for this gaggle of West Virginia youth groups at their winter ski trip. They called my boss desperate. I got drafted. I wrangled another of my buddies to go with me to lead the singing and off we went to what we assumed was going to be pure hillbilly territory deep in the Appalachian hollers. We city-slickers may have mouthed the “Deliverance” theme song and giggled more than once on our ten-hour drive. What we found there was one of the most amazing groups of Christ-followers I have ever met. Chris Campbell and the other youth pastors I encountered there became fast friends. Not only that, but Chris also became one of those brothers I looked to as a profound peer-mentor of sorts. We’re just about the same age, but there was a layer of wisdom and authentic spirituality about him that far exceeded my own spiritual maturity. I’ve always felt that about him—that he exemplifies a unique angle of the character of Christ that very few men I’ve met possess. I’m sure he will disagree with me, and he’ll probably be chapped that I am telling you this. (Let’s keep it between us, shall we?) But you see, that’s the character part I’m talking about. Chris has a humility and biblical meekness that Jesus teaches that makes him shy away from applause and recognition. But true meekness--Jesus kind of meekness—is anything but weak. It is the very strength of God powerfully at work within a brother who knows from Whom he draws his capabilities. After many years of friendship and sharing together almost annually at his West Virginia youth camps and retreats, I had the tremendous privilege to invite Chris to co-pastor with me a church we had planted just one mile from Mt. Hope back in the early 2000’s—CrossCurrent Ministries, which is now known as “Acacia Church” in Ashburn. Chris served four years alongside me in that role before he moved back to West Virginia to earn his professional licensure as a clinical therapist and open his now-thriving clinical practice in central WV. I’ll spare you all the other details—and Chris the embarrassment he’d be feeling right now if he were on our email distro list. But this Sunday, you’re going to get to meet Chris as he comes to lead Part Two of our new teaching series, “Uncharted Territory: Taking Life Where You’ve Never Been.” We are engaged in a 20-week journey studying the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians that he wrote in 57 AD. This letter is the New Testament’s most comprehensive promise to each of us of our profound identity as adopted and beloved children of God. Our identity--when fully rooted in Christ Jesus—will truly set us free to live a life of abundance, a life of personal righteousness, and the life-altering power of walking and living by the Holy Spirit. If you missed last Sunday’s kick-off teaching, click here to take it in before this week. We laid the foundation for the victory available to us from this terrible “Cycle We Cannot Seem to Break”—that up and down, good and bad, healthy and unhealthy life we all experience in our flesh. Then, this Sunday, Chris Campbell will launch us into the uncharted territory of resetting our minds to live by the Holy Spirit in such a way that it changes everything about how we live. Oh… and we’ll tell you about a special program called “Freedom in Christ” that Chris hopes to come back and walk us through later this spring. You won’t want to miss it. Dig around Romans 5:1-11 and 8:5-11 before you come. I can’t wait to share my dear friend with you… See you Sunday, 10:00 a.m.!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey All…
When was the last time you smacked your forehead and said, “Why did I just do that?” Or clenched your teeth with rising emotions you just couldn’t seem to control? Or worse…looked in the mirror through your tears and said with desperation, “what is wrong with me?” For some of us, it might have been a while; for others it was just earlier today. But we ALL have faced these questions of why we can’t seem to do or be what we wish we were. There is victory over this cycle we cannot seem to break, but it seems that very few have found this treasure promised in scripture. I’ll tell you more about it in Deeper Thoughts below. But first…a few important new year’s items: · “Really Big Deal” Mt. Hope Family Meeting and Worship Night – Sunday, January 21, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. We have some exciting and significant vision to discuss with you and pray together about. Mark your calendars and plan to attend! (For our “Covenant Partners” (official church members), this will also serve as our quarterly business meeting.) · We need Small Group Hosts and Facilitators! Would you be willing to learn more about what is involved in helping create and facilitate small group life at Mt. Hope? No commitment implied by attending, but we’d love for you to join us NEXT Sunday, January 14th for an after-church discussion (11:45 – 12:30 or so) to share with you the vision, purpose, and process of leading or hosting a small group. Click here to let us know you might be interested! · Ladies: To kick off the new year, we will be creating individual “Vision Boards” for 2024 with goals or aspirations we each have for the new year. Saturday, January 20, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the church. Click here for more details and to RSVP! · Oh… and winter is here! The weather forecast this weekend has some cold rain, slush, and a bit of snow late on Saturday, but it looks like it will all be clearing overnight before Sunday. We will have the parking lot and sidewalks treated, the heat on, and the coffee hot for church, so c’mon out! IF the weather turns significantly, we will send an email and post on our website any updates to our status by 7:00 a.m. on Sunday. (If you decide to hunker down at home (boo!!), don’t forget we are online-livestream at 10:00 a.m… and be sure to say “hi” in the chat so we can connect with you!) OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who have absolutely perfected your life. BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… I know you are just like me. If you claimed you weren’t, I would think you were lying. (Gosh…did I start that off a little too blunt??) There are tons of things in my life that I regret, and many that I do not. I’ve done some really stupid things, and others have been brilliantly positive moves. I have tripped up in relationships, compromised my values, and disappointed God, others, and myself. And then, I have stepped up and been a fantastic friend, I’ve followed Jesus with integrity, and have been blessed by God. You? There is a cycle to it, isn’t there? It is up and down. Good and bad. Consistent and inconsistent. Righteous and unrighteous. Godly and ungodly. Holy and sinful. We see it in our workplace: Sometimes we are easy to work with and make others feel fantastic; other times we are a total grump and alienate everyone around us. We see it in our emotions: Sometimes we have a settled confidence and joy about us; other times we feel the rage or fear or nastiness boiling uncontrollably inside us. We see it in our morals: Sometimes we are the most honest, stable, gentle soul we know; other times we are well aware we’re cutting corners and compromising, but we just can’t seem to stop ourselves. We see it in our relationships: Sometimes we are loving, patient, attentive, and true; other times we are selfish, abrasive, hurtful, and stupid. So, go ahead and smack your forehead right now, won’t you? Let’s say it out loud together: “What is wrong with me?” There is something wrong, but it may not be what you think it is. If you’re like me, when you are on the upswing and things are going well, you quickly pride yourself with your success. You enjoy a confidence that you’re a pretty good guy [gal], you’ve got things nicely figured out, and you’re not that bad after all. And then the downswing comes. Circumstances come unglued again, or the bad behavior pops up out of nowhere, or you realize the choice you just made was not nearly so brilliant as it seemed an hour ago. In those moments—if you are like me—you probably consider yourself to be the worst of the worst… the dumbest, weakest, ugliest… [you fill in the blank…]. And you certainly consider yourself to be a terrible Christian, do you not? The Apostle Paul—arguably one of the holiest, most devout Christians to ever live—revealed his own up and down cycle that looks an awful lot like ours: “I do not understand what I do,” Paul wrote, set down his quill, and smacked his forehead. “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” He goes on: “I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:15-19). He even expresses that chilling despair I know you have said at least once in your life, and I have too: “I know that nothing good lives in me…” (Romans 7:18). Theologians have been debating for oh… roughly 1,967 years ever since Paul wrote this down in the early spring of 57 AD. It just cannot be, they say, that the apostle whom God chose to write the majority of the New Testament and reveal the core of the Christian life to us was also a man who couldn’t keep his act together. But a quick dive into the original Greek language Paul was writing reveals that he chose his words carefully in the immediate present tense. This is him. This is real. This is just like you and me. But thanks be to God, we are not trapped in this cycle. And neither was Paul (see Romans 7:24-25). This Sunday, we are going to embark on a 20-week journey as a church studying every inch of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. We are going to discover an incredible “Uncharted Territory: Taking Life Where You’ve Never Been.” We are going to discover the unbelievable promise of how we break free of the cycle we cannot presently seem to stop. We are going to see the path of faith to a day-by-day victory that Paul was discovering and presenting to us. We will orient our small groups around this study. We will provide you with resources and midweek content. We will empower you to understand the strength of God for your life that is far beyond what you ever imagined. We will discover together the door that stands wide open for you and me to step through into a brand-new way of living. You in? Let’s start this Sunday… 10:00 a.m. Dig around Romans 7 and 8 before you come! Much love to you all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend |
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