Happy Sabbath!
In previous Arise classes, they have worked with a local church on efforts to reach the local community. This year, however, after being asked many times by the Oregon Conference, Arise and Light Bearers and the Conference are starting a church plant in Eugene, just a few blocks away from the University of Oregon. Today was the "soft launch" of the church plant. Apparently the official launch date is September 13th. For a soft launch (and this is what I'm calling it), we had 93 people attend. This is an amazing number considering no announcements were made about the church plant. Ty says he was only expecting maybe 10 additional people outside of our class and the staff. There was already talk among the guests about transferring membership. If any of you are in the area, I invite you to the official opening on Sept 13th.
After a simple song service and welcome, Ty Gibson gave the Sabbath message. I don't know if there was a title...He started off talking about the perspective that we are all part of a story, a story of love that became broken due to sin, and His attempts to get back that love-relationship that existed before sin.
God created others, in His likeness, who could love like He loves. Then sin entered the world and causes a relational breakdown. As a result, God launches a plan to heal the brokenness and create an environment where His love can be restored and impact the whole world with the image of God and restoration. Through Abraham and Moses (and many others), God was calling His people out of sin (i.e. Ur/Babylon, Egypt) and to an environment with God, an ekklesia (Greek, meaning church, called out ones).
He moved on to ask the question, "What is church?". He defined it as an atmosphere in which grace and love is applied to human hearts and what happens to a human when they are genuinely loved. Ty summarized everything I this manner: Ekklesia is a social unit, in which our violations are forgiven and healed...an incubator for growing humans like God loves...a climate in which a combination of elements are applied to facilitate healing...a community in which the vertical relationship individuals have with God bleeds over into the horizontal relationship we have with one another. And this is the purpose of this church plant. Amen.
Fellowship potluck followed the service and there was so much food! Met several families and individuals who will be retuning the next Sabbath. I have a feeling as word gets out, the Unitarian church we are renting will not be large enough. Pray for the U of O students we will be reaching.
After a brief meeting on how the first service went, we returned to campus, and as I was working on the previous post, I fell asleep. Vespers is coming up shortly. I guess I should get something to eat.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share. Happy Sabbath!
In previous Arise classes, they have worked with a local church on efforts to reach the local community. This year, however, after being asked many times by the Oregon Conference, Arise and Light Bearers and the Conference are starting a church plant in Eugene, just a few blocks away from the University of Oregon. Today was the "soft launch" of the church plant. Apparently the official launch date is September 13th. For a soft launch (and this is what I'm calling it), we had 93 people attend. This is an amazing number considering no announcements were made about the church plant. Ty says he was only expecting maybe 10 additional people outside of our class and the staff. There was already talk among the guests about transferring membership. If any of you are in the area, I invite you to the official opening on Sept 13th.
After a simple song service and welcome, Ty Gibson gave the Sabbath message. I don't know if there was a title...He started off talking about the perspective that we are all part of a story, a story of love that became broken due to sin, and His attempts to get back that love-relationship that existed before sin.
God created others, in His likeness, who could love like He loves. Then sin entered the world and causes a relational breakdown. As a result, God launches a plan to heal the brokenness and create an environment where His love can be restored and impact the whole world with the image of God and restoration. Through Abraham and Moses (and many others), God was calling His people out of sin (i.e. Ur/Babylon, Egypt) and to an environment with God, an ekklesia (Greek, meaning church, called out ones).
He moved on to ask the question, "What is church?". He defined it as an atmosphere in which grace and love is applied to human hearts and what happens to a human when they are genuinely loved. Ty summarized everything I this manner: Ekklesia is a social unit, in which our violations are forgiven and healed...an incubator for growing humans like God loves...a climate in which a combination of elements are applied to facilitate healing...a community in which the vertical relationship individuals have with God bleeds over into the horizontal relationship we have with one another. And this is the purpose of this church plant. Amen.
Fellowship potluck followed the service and there was so much food! Met several families and individuals who will be retuning the next Sabbath. I have a feeling as word gets out, the Unitarian church we are renting will not be large enough. Pray for the U of O students we will be reaching.
After a brief meeting on how the first service went, we returned to campus, and as I was working on the previous post, I fell asleep. Vespers is coming up shortly. I guess I should get something to eat.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share. Happy Sabbath!
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