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Hey everybody…
A quick hello from the road from Sherri and me. We love and miss all of you, but we’re having a great time visiting with our daughter, Dr. Rachel Hish, PharmD, as she graduates today from her first-year residency as a pharmacist at the University of Kentucky (proud and shameless step-dad plug right there). Next up are a couple days chillin’ in the middle of nowhere Ohio, then a family reunion in West Virginia, and then more intentional and blissful nothingness. But before you click delete on this email, I gotta tell you about Phil. And this Sunday. Give it a quick read in Deeper Thoughts below…. But first… · Men… Join us for a light continental breakfast TOMORROW Saturday, June 28 at 8:30 a.m. at the church. Gordon Albert will lead this discussion with our Mt. Hope men to explore possible next steps with our Men’s Ministry. Let’s collaborate about what God has ahead for us! · Teens: Youth Group meets THIS Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp is coming up FAST! Join us for this Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m. each day. BEST NEWS: For Mt. Hope families, the cost is only $25.00 per student! For a whole week of camp!!! Transportation to/from the church is available. To secure our special Mt. Hope pricing, Chris Bowen will be handling your registration individually. Click here to email Chris to RSVP or with questions! · While we are gone, “The Daily Six” videos WILL continue!! Join me for six minutes each morning, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Mark your calendars for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads (but note that she’ll NOT be responding to emails until July 8!) OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who are so giddy that we’re gone… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… One of the things in life that I absolutely love the most is opening the scriptures with you every Sunday morning. It’s probably linked to the fact that *the* single thing in life that I enjoy more than anything else is being in God’s Word. For more than 40 years, I have been consumed with this living and active testimony. To me, it is not some dry, static book about history. It is a living fire that burns inside of me every time I turn my attention to it. Phil is responsible for that. At least in part. You get to meet him Sunday. I met Phil Holliday roughly 41 years ago as my 14-year-old geekish, skinny, awkward self rode my bicycle up to his family’s moving van as they unloaded their life’s possessions into a brand-new home in our neighborhood. Within hours, I became fast friends with Phil’s son Brian, with whom I would commit all manner of shenanigans, pranks, annoyances, and possibly a few misdemeanors around the neighborhood. Phil’s wife, Carolyn, would become a very nurturing “second mom” to me while Phil doled out a little discipline here and there whenever Brian and I took it a bit too far. But so much more than the contagiously joyful and healthy family life that I saw every day at the Holliday house--a stark contrast to the anger and pain I was experiencing in my own home as my parent’s marriage was failing—it was their unmistakable joy at having recently found Jesus Christ that captured my heart. Every single day as I pedaled up to their driveway to see if Brian could hang out, Carolyn met me there with warm chocolate chip cookies and a challenge to be saved. “Hell is a really long time,” she would tell me with a wide smile on her face—not smiling about hell, but rather about the promise of salvation she was absolutely beaming over. Jesus would rescue me for sure if I would just put my faith in him. I’ll shorten up the story to this: I took the Holliday’s challenge and got saved. I trusted Jesus. I fell in love with the Word of God. I began to hear God’s call to invest my entire life in knowing and sharing God’s Word. Years later, as I was now in full time ministry leading teens and young adults to Jesus right here in Ashburn, VA, Phil retired from his senior executive career at Mobil Oil to become my boss as Executive Pastor of Christian Fellowship Church. No longer was my partnership with the Holliday’s committing teenage misdemeanors around the neighborhood, but now for many years Phil and I would share great exploits for the work of God in a great church where we both found Jesus and our life callings. While I don’t get to open the scriptures with you this Sunday, Phil Holliday will. He will be teaching us through the life of Adam and Eve, whom we’ve been studying this week on “The Daily Six” and our Bible readings in Genesis. If you’ve not yet caught up on where we are, click here and grab this week’s Daily Six. Then… come join us Sunday, 10:00 a.m. Let’s see what God has for you from a man whom God used in my life so profoundly. I’m jealous you get to be with him Sunday. Can’t wait to hear how it went! AND… While Sherri and I are gone on, if you have any needs that arise where our Elder Team or others could be a help or blessing to you, please reach out to Kristie Zoller via email ([email protected]) or by text/phone at 703-999-3156. She’ll coordinate response and support for your situation. Sherri and I will NOT be checking our email or texts until Tuesday, July 8, so if we need to know anything, Kristie is your POC. NEXT Sunday, July 6, a Mt. Hope fan-favorite, Pastor Will Cravens, will open the scriptures for us. More on that next week!! Much love to you all… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend
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Hey everybody…
On Monday. Yep. Bailing out. Gone. Off the grid. But… we will be back. Two week later. I think they call the idea “vacation,” though I had to look it up; it’s been a bit of a foreign word to us in more recent life cycles. Here’s the good news: You’ll be in super good hands here at Mt. Hope. But there are a few things you might want to know about—and some thoughts about the revelation of God’s Word this Sunday—in Deeper Thoughts below. But first… · Men… Gordon Albert is gathering with our Mt. Hope men to explore possible next steps with our Men’s Ministry NEXT Saturday, June 28 at 8:30 a.m. Join us for a light continental breakfast at the church and let’s collaborate about what comes next! · Teens: Youth Group meets THIS Sunday 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., snacks, games, testimonies, and the Word! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Kids, middle schoolers, and parents: Furnace Mountain Christian Summer Camp is coming up FAST! Join us for this Day-Camp for age-based experiences, August 4 - August 8, 9:00 – 3:00 p.m. each day. BEST NEWS: For Mt. Hope families, the cost is only $25.00 per student! For a whole week of camp!!! Transportation to/from the church is available. To secure our special Mt. Hope pricing, Chris Bowen will be handling your registration individually. Click here to email Chris to RSVP or with questions! · While we are gone, “The Daily Six” videos WILL continue!! Join me for six minutes each morning, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Mark your calendars for Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24 – a great day of worship, fellowship, southern pot-luck yummies, historical experiences, and gratitude to our God. If you’d like to be involved—especially with helping pull together historical content--click here to email Sherri Eads (but note she’ll NOT be responding to emails June 23 thru July 7!) OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who can’t wait for us to get out of here… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… Sherri and I absolutely love Mt. Hope Church. There are amazing things occurring here. In just the last few weeks alone, I have spoken to so many of you who are engaging the scriptures with meaningful application every single day—and for many, this is the first time that you’ve been consistent with the Word as a daily habit. Others are finding power in prayer and connection with God that is fresh, vibrant, and new. Others are blown away by the warmth and belonging they find in this “friendliest church I’ve ever been to,” as more than one person has called it. Sherri and I are so privileged to get a front row seat to the healing work God is doing in your lives—from self-worth remerging to family hardships finding hope, to mental models being reframed, to clarity on life-direction being discovered, to deep personal wounds being healed. Yeah, we like this place. I think we’ll come back. You do know, though, that the real force behind all these wonderful things occurring at Mt. Hope is Jesus Christ, don’t you? And I don’t just mean in the static sense of the “story of Jesus” is an inspiration for people to see and feel things differently. I mean the very real, very present, very engaged person of Jesus—the resurrected Son of the Living God—is actively at work in each individual at Mt. Hope Church. In real time. With real force. With real power. We often don’t realize it’s happening. An active, substantive, specific, and powerful movement in the spiritual realm is being applied by the very real and living person of Jesus right onto you and your situation. Jesus is doing battle on your behalf with the forces of darkness that would try to hold you down in your self-doubt, your isolation, your pain, your wandering. Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, he is winning. Jesus has been doing this for a very, very long time. You just might not have known about it. This Sunday, we are going to expand our discovery about our Creator by looking at Jesus—but not so much the Jesus you know from the Gospels. We’re going to see the Jesus who you might not have realized keeps popping up in the Old Testament, centuries and even millennia before that manger scene in Bethlehem you have heard about. The scriptures reveal that Jesus Christ—the Son of the Living God—has been around a long, long, long, long time. Bethlehem and a virgin birth came a LOT later into the life of Jesus than most of us realize. A lot later. Let’s explore together this Sunday when all this started, why all this started, what has been accomplished, and how it is relevant to your life and mine. To get queued up for the discussion, maybe you could soak in Isaiah 53 for a bit this weekend. Oh, and see if you can pick up a really obscure phrase in Revelation 13:8 that isn’t even the point of that verse’s subject, but it does reveal something to us about how long Jesus has been up to his Jesus-stuff. Hmmm… this will be good. AND… While Sherri and I are gone on vacation, three things to know: 1) If you have any needs that arise where our Elder Team or others could be a help or blessing to you, please reach out to Kristie Zoller via email ([email protected]) or by text/phone at 703-999-3156. She’ll coordinate response and support for your situation. a. Sherri and I will NOT be checking our email or texts from this Monday until Tuesday, July 8, so if we need to know anything, Kristie is your POC. 2) NEXT Sunday, June 29, I am so jealous that you’ll be here (and I won’t) to be with Pastor Phil Holliday as he will be teaching on Adam & Eve, our next set of Old Testament characters that we are journeying with on “The Daily Six” and in our Bible readings next week. You may recall Phil and Carolyn Holliday are the couple that led me to Jesus as a teenager. There’s no greater man of God I’d love for you to know than Phil. I owe my salvation to his family’s care poured into scrawny little 14-year-old Chris. 3) The following Sunday, July 6, our Mt. Hope fan-favorite, Pastor Will Cravens will open the scriptures for us. BUT… we’re not gone yet, so don’t throw your party too soon. Shall we meet up this Sunday, 10:00 a.m.? Let’s dig deep and discover Jesus… the pre-eternal, Old Testament, before time began Jesus… and why any of this matters to us. Can’t wait… see you Sunday!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey everybody…
I’ve often called God the “Cosmic Taco Bell.” I certainly mean no irreverence by this, but I suppose I’ll have to explain myself in Deeper Thoughts below. I hope you’ll come with me. It will be yummy. But first… · Men… Father’s Day is this Sunday. We want to pray over you and celebrate you! o AND… Gordon Albert would like to get together with our men to explore possible next steps with our Men’s Ministry. After a months-long hiatus from hosting occasional Saturday men’s breakfasts, mark your calendars for Saturday, June 28 at 8:30 a.m. to talk about what comes next for us! More details to come! · Teens: NO Youth Group this Sunday, as you celebrate your dads on Father’s Day. And a huge “thank you” to all our teens who helped out last week at our Summer Kick Off extravaganza! To get plugged into our growing and awesome youth group, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Remember not to miss “The Daily Six” videos as we continue our teaching series called “Knowing God.” Join me for six minutes each morning, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel as we study through the entire Old Testament together. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Our summertime event schedule will stay a little lighter as folks enjoy vacations and such. Big things are ahead, to include Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24! Standby for more news! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who can’t stomach the idea of God owning a Taco Bell… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… It probably has something to do with my time in college. I attended university in a very small town in the middle of nowhere Indiana. To the chagrin of the entire student body’s 20-year-old midnight energy, the only off campus public space in town that was open past 9:00 p.m. was Taco Bell. After we had exhausted whatever shenanigans we could come up with to entertain ourselves at WalMart--which closed at 9:00 p.m.—any festivities that we didn’t want under the watchful eye of our dormitory director had to move over to Taco Bell. And yes, this also meant that any “first dates” with interesting young ladies had to occur at… well, you guessed it… Taco Bell. (Hmmm… this might have something to do with why I graduated college as a single man.) Needless to say, with multiple visits per week to Taco Bell, I became very well acquainted with the menu. According to Mr. Google, Taco Bell serves 77 different items. That’s a lot of mediocre imitation Mexican dishes. But have you noticed? These 77 items are all made with the same nine ingredients: Flour, corn, beef, chicken, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and sour cream. Somehow, Taco Bell has managed to come up with 77 different ways to combine nine ingredients. Talk about creativity! “So, Chris, what does any of this have to do with God, and why have you wasted my time this far?” Because God is just like Taco Bell. You remember the Periodic Table of Elements from Chemistry class, don’t you? There are 118 elements in the universe. That’s it. Everything that exists. Only 118 ingredients. Talk about creativity! The scriptures record that “In the beginning… the earth was formless and empty; darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:1-2). In this context, the Word is not speaking merely of the planet earth, but the whole of the universe. It was formless. Empty. Dark. Nothing was there. And then, the Lord reveals that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2). Since water had not yet been created—in terms of specifically combining two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atom-- “water” in this verse is speaking of the Holy Spirit hovering over all the elements. They just had not yet been put together into anything. Just like the highly talented chefs at your local Taco Bell hover over their nine trays of flour, corn, beef, lettuce, etc. dreaming of how they can slam those ingredients into 77 different semi-delicious combinations, the Holy Spirit was eyeing His 118 universal atoms and concocting a super-robust menu. Trees. Rocks. Dogs. Stars. Crows. Apples. Clouds. Ants. Snakes. Peanuts. Spiders. Cats. Eels. Jupiter. Mars. Fungus. You. Fingernails. Muscles. Eyeballs. Pinky toes. Eyebrows. Skin. Hair (er…for most folks). The list goes on. You get the point. Absolutely everything was made from just 118 ingredients. That’s a LOT of creativity, a lot of careful combinations. And it all started with a Master Chef hovering over His trays of elements and dreaming of how He could slam all those atoms together into a limitless array of beauty and wonder. So why does any of this matter to me? I want to point you to the identity and character of the chef. His motivation for mixing these 118 ingredients—His motivation for mixing you together—is what I believe is relevant. Profoundly relevant. If you missed this Tuesday’s Daily Six, I recommend you click here and pick it up. As I was reading Genesis 1:1-2 with you all, the Holy Spirit revealed something about Himself. When we think of the mysterious reality of the Trinity—One God, three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—the fact that it was the Spirit of God who was the initial member of the Trinity to contemplate creation is important. The Holy Spirit is the aspect of God who relates with us in intimacy. The Holy Spirit is the one who dwells inside of us. He guides us. He speaks to us (even when we aren’t perceiving Him, He is). He comforts us. He convicts us. He supports us. He carries us. In simple terms, the Holy Spirit is the aspect of God who pursues and actuates a spiritual, meaningful, and intimate relationship with us. So why does any of this matter to me? Because when God made the decision to take 118 elements and make you, He did so with one goal in mind: Intimate relationship. You are not a random accident. You are not a minuscule number in a vast and unknown sea of created entities. You are not invisible to God. You are a precise person with whom God wants to relate in profound intimacy. He fiddled around with 118 elements to build endless combinations—one of which is precisely you. SO… can you lean into this purpose with everything you have? “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one [editor’s note: which includes the Holy Spirit]. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). That is why you are here. To be in love with God and God with you. All of you. Shall we lean in this Sunday? 10:00 a.m. Let’s dig deep and discover what we are supposed to do with this… why any of this matters to us. Can’t wait… see you Sunday!! Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend Hey everybody…
How hungry are you? I mean, right now. I’m heading out to dinner shortly. But also, how about Sunday? Do you plan to come to church hungry? Sure… we’ll have a really neat lunch after church (details below). But I’m not talking about that. I mean are you really, really hungry? Like starvation and dehydration level hungry. No? You’re not? Why not? Shouldn’t we be? Let’s talk in Deeper Thoughts below. But first… · HUGE Summer Kick Off extravaganza—food, fellowship, games, relay races, and more. THIS Sunday, June 8, right after church. We will feed you—no need to bring anything. Hot dogs, brats, watermelon, chips, popcorn, veggies, fresh squeezed lemonade, Kona Ice, and more!! o We have tons of ways to be involved: Play games, get to know people, volunteer to help out! · Teens: NO Youth Group this Sunday, as we’ll join in the Summer Kick Off festivities. But… Did you know that God is working in amazing ways in our youth group? There is a lot of growth happening, not only in numbers, but much more importantly in depth and passion for the Lord. To get involved, email Jessica Sauder: [email protected]. · Remember not to miss “The Daily Six” videos as we continue our teaching series called “Knowing God.” Join me for six minutes each morning, Monday through Friday, on our YouTube channel as we study through the entire Old Testament together. If you’d like to receive daily email reminders and you’re not already getting them, click here to sign up! · Our summertime event schedule will stay a little lighter as folks enjoy vacations and such. Big things are ahead, to include Mt. Hope’s 190th Anniversary celebration August 24! More details to come! OK…that’s it today for you email skimmers and you who are stuffed to the gills… BUT… Some Deeper Thoughts… I think you should come to church absolutely starving. And I don’t mean for the hot dogs. Yes, please have a little appetite in you Sunday morning so you’ll want to stick around and enjoy the rich connections, friendship, fellowship, and getting to know your church family better. But you know the drill on that, don’t you? You’ll eat our spectacular Summer Kick Off luncheon, and then by 6:00 p.m. it’ll be as if you never ate. But if you come starving for something else, you can go home on Sunday completely satisfied. And, with just the right dietary plan, you can stay satisfied. God promised so. Oh… and did I mention that it won’t cost you a penny? Isaiah 55:1 (God speaking): “Come, all you who are thirsty, comer to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” Of course, you know what God is talking about here, don’t you? He is not talking about your grocery bill (notice He did not mention cheap eggs). No, God is talking about the satisfaction of your soul. “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2). It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize that we spend a lot of money, time, and energy on activities that drain us rather than fill us. Our souls wither in the heat of all our busyness, pressures, stress, expectations, responsibilities. And traffic. Did I mention traffic? So, most people--even many Christians—find themselves plowing through life just surviving, choked with weariness and burdens that often far outweigh the fun and joy. Spiritual enthusiasm is not commonplace; spiritual vibrancy is rare. Our connection to God can be somewhat distant; perhaps for some, even strained. But you get the point of God’s revelation in Isaiah 55, don’t you? God is promising a satisfaction and enthusiastic joy that far outweighs anything the world has to offer. Tragically, far too few people access this promise. I think our lack of hunger is our primary problem. When the world does indeed satisfy a measure of our hunger—we have a certain level of abundance in our lifestyle, possessions, status, career, and such—we might not even recognize how spiritually hungry we are. It’s like when I eat an entire bag of Chips Ahoy cookies in one afternoon (I actually did that once during the Covid lock down; please don’t judge), I will miss my real need for a robust and healthy dinner. I may think I’ve been satisfied. But I’m not. I might not even realize the fading energy that follows is my blood sugar crashing. A healthy meal would fix it, but I’ll probably rather just collapse on the couch and be miserable. Friends, when we miss the real source of joy and abundance because we are so busy with what we think is joy and abundance, our souls go unsatisfied. And God begs us to come to dinner with Him. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near,” God says (Isaiah 55:6). Come to dinner. Come hungry. Buy from Him. His dinner is amazing. And when we do, we “will go out in joy and be led forth in peace” (Isaiah 55:12). Anyone hungry for real joy and peace? “The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you,” he goes on. Life can be so abundant that it seems like even the granite around us is dancing and singing. But to find this, we have to seek for God. To want to seek for God, we have to be hungry. Hungry enough to go looking for dinner. May I challenge us to come to church this Sunday really hungry? We’ll solve your calorie desires right after church. But beforehand, how about your spiritual hunger? Shall we seek for the Lord with everything we have? Come hungry, y’all. God can’t wait to feed you!! Read all of Isaiah 55 before you come. See if you might want to buy His dinner. It is really, really, tasty. Much love… Chris Eads Mt. Hope Pastor Friend |
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Jesus said, “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, & with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matt. 22:37-39
42507 Mt. Hope Road
Ashburn, VA 20148
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