So let me tell you about Chris...

​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