Mars Hill Day 4...
Yesterday was a huge day.
We woke up very early to go to the Mars Hill Covenant Members meeting. They are in process of rewriting their constitution and explaining the vision of where the church is going down the road. I had a hope of what I thought they would say during the meeting, and Rob said it.
I will take another post to explain it (it will take a little while), but in the end there was a line drawn, and Rob mentioned that the American population is 6% of the world's population, and then rattled off some statistics:
-Over 2100 verses in the Scripture are on the poor and oppressed.
-8% of the world population has a car.
-1.2 billion have no clean water
-800 million are living in extreme poverty (*thanks John for the correction).
-America consumes 40-50% of the world's resources.
After this, he mentioned how much of the American church serves this little part of the line (the American population), but what about the rest of the line? Rob then said that they believe Mars Hill is in the midst of writing sacred history as they are going to do something about the rest of the line. This is who they are, this is what they will do.
Don Golden, the lead pastor, then gets up and asks a pretty good question, "Who are the oppressed?" They didn't explain too long because they are doing a teaching series on this, but eventually said everyone is oppressed. He then put a phrase Word and Deed, and said, "Which one of these three words is the most important?" I heard people crying out "deed" with a few "word." Don then says, it's the word and.
I was in tears. This is exactly what we have been searching for for 8 years. I am getting a sense of something that I didn't think was going to happen, but it's very exciting. We had a chance to meet Don afterwards, and talked to Rob some more (who remembered our names oddly, although I guess when you come from 12 hours away to vacation at the church word gets around).
We then traveled to the Emergent West Michigan Cohort, and met some more great people and talked about "What is church?" Many great conversations. We met Randy Buist and Steve Argue, whose blogs I have read before. Randy took us out to lunch afterwards at "Bite," which is a fabulous restaurant in downtown Grand Rapids (and where the Cohort met, we just stayed there). Awesome organic foods and very affordable, with a very trendy and inviting atmosphere (lots of nice couches and colors). We realized Randy was yet another close friend of Lilly Lewin's, which was refreshing. Obviously Lilly is connected pretty heavily up here. I feel kinda bad name dropping Lilly. I mean I guess she would say I'm a friend, although we really don't know each other too well, other than me spending time with them at their house a couple of months ago till 1am talking life and such. Randy is planting a church called Waters' Edge, and doing some great things. We also met Elizabeth Potter, whose blog I've run across from time to time. I was mostly glad to see my wife get to go to a cohort meeting, and she participated fully in the conversation!
Lastly, we went to one of the house churches that night for dinner (we were invited by the greeters we met at the 9am service), and was just a beautiful time getting to know some more stories from Mars and what they were doing in living life together. It was refreshing to see.
It was just a fun-filled day of great conversation, as well as clarity on some huge issues Julia and I have been facing. Tomorrow will be a very huge day as we meet with Denise Van Eck and some Community Life staff at Mars Hill, and with Steve Carter, the Jr. High pastor, then off to the book signing for Craig Gross of xxxchurch.com, where we will go for breakfast on Friday morning. He has invited us to eat at his place before we head back to Ohio to get our daughter.
It has been a very slow, relaxing, refreshing time so far, everything we hoped our vacation would be. Praise God!
Tags: Mars Hill, Rob Bell, Emerging Church, Emergent, Emergent West Michigan, personal
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