Welcome to the Church in the Grass. We’re glad you are here. Tonight is a bit different than our regular gathering format. If you are a member of the Church in the Grass, set aside what you are used to. Tonight is more like a party than a church service. Although there will be some of what you are used to.
Come back next week for our “normal” format.
Tonight we are celebrating our RE-LAUNCH.
Let me explain that if you are unfamiliar. We are one church in two locations. In the warm weather months we are here. When it gets cold — and on weeks this summer when it rains — we meet in the Old Eggleston School building down the street.
So this Re-launch party is simply our way of celebrating the fact that God has blessed us with another season in this beautiful sanctuary.
This party is also an outreach to the community — to Walnut, and East Street, to Third, Fourth, Spring, Aleunbach Ave. and to Madison and Jefferson County at large — to remind you that we are here to serve the community and if this is your first introduction to us, this is a event where we’ll tell you what we’re about.
But first and foremost, we want you to enjoy some great food, we’ve got 20 pizzas, we’ve got great music from Saving Vegas and we’re hoping this will be a great time of fellowship and community. Dance and sing and talk and just enjoy this beautiful night that God has given us and after a few songs, I’ll have a short message that will highlight our mission as the Church in the Grass and who we are here to serve and that whole bit.
Let’s get things moving now. Go grab some pizza if you haven’t already and here is Saving Vegas…
…Okay, we are going to give Saving Vegas a few minutes to breathe then we’ll have more music.
In the meantime, if I could have you all gather around. I want to talk for just a few minutes about the Church in the Grass. We just want to let you know a little bit about who we are, about our DNA as a church. This is not your typical sermon; it’s just our way of expressing what we are all about. Everything we do is shaped and informed and dictated by what we see in the Bible. Most of the time we go through a lot of scriptures. If you can’t find what I’m saying in the Bible, then don’t believe it. That goes for any preacher.
Tonight, because this isn’t a typical sermon, we won’t be reading a lot from the Bible, but we will talk quickly about the biblical principles that guide us. So, if you don’t have your Bible here tonight, don’t sweat it, just come back next week.
And, we’re going to roll through this pretty quickly, so if you have any questions, get with Andy or me after this and we’d be glad to answer anything we can answer.
First let me answer the two questions that we always get.
We are a church, a real church. We worship God every week in song and in the preaching of the Word of God, the Bible. We share communion every month and, though we haven’t been blessed to have any baptisms yet, we will do that when the chance arises.
So, although we meet in an un-traditional location and we don’t play dress up, we are an actual church. I’m an ordained minister, we are registered with the state and feds, and we’re a 501c3 and all of that.
The next question that we get from church people and non-church people is about out denomination. We are non-denominational. The people who are a part of this church come from a wide range of backgrounds, some Methodist, some Presbyterian, a person from the Christian church, and other non-denominational churches.
We have nothing against denominations; we just don’t tag any of their labels on this, on the Church in the Grass.
Now, that hopefully covers those questions.
Let me quickly tell you about our mission and then we’ll get back to the music.
The Church in the Grass is here to:
— Simply express God’s message of Salvation
— Show the importance of a church family for the life of EVERY believer and
— To push all believers OUT into the mission fields that God already has you in.
When we say that we want to simply express God’s message of salvation, we mean just that. We are what you might call a Gospel SATURATED church. No matter what the subject matter that we preach on, we believe that it all ties back into the cross of Christ, to His death, burial and resurrection, which defeated sin and death for everyone who comes to a saving faith in Jesus.
And as Jesus told His crew after the resurrection, all the Scriptures are about Him. We just unpack that truth as we go.
We believe that the Gospel saves people, so it HAS TO PREACHED for that reason.
But salvation isn’t the end of the story.
The Gospel also keeps us as new and long time believers firmly rooted in the faith that preserves us and allows us to hold fast when the storms of life come at us. And The Gospel preached consistently and repeatedly in a million different ways, keeps us on track as believers who get to participate in God’s kingdom mission.
And if you keep coming back we try to keep getting that message across every week. We say it in different ways and it seems to sink into people’s hearts at different times and in different ways, but that’s a core focus for the church in the Grass. The Gospel.
And I know we have a lot of believers here, but if you’ve never heard the Gospel before here it is at a very simple level: We’re broke and separated from God because of sin. Jesus came and took our punishment, took our sins away and covered us in His righteousness. He saved us by going to the cross and taking all of our sin on His shoulders.
He lived the sinless life that we couldn’t live and died the death that we should have died for our sin and in that death; Jesus adopted us into the family of God.
The Good News is that if you place your faith in Jesus Christ and what He did for you, you are then made right with God. Jesus takes your sin and transforms you from an enemy of God to a son or daughter of God.
Now, after we come to faith in Christ, we believe that we need to be plugged in and participating as a part of a local church. I used to say this, “I am a believer, but my faith is private, I don’t need to go to church and get into all of that mess.”
And I hear this from other people all the time and the only problem with that are the Scriptures themselves.
The importance of a church family is made clear throughout the Scriptures. God designed the church to be where we go to be encouraged when things are rough. It is where we go to be equipped for the work He has called us to as individuals and as a group. Jesus tells us that it is in a church context that we are to correct our brothers and sisters when they fall into sin AND it is where we are supposed to be intimate enough and trusting enough to receive correction and rebuke when we fall into sin or begin to drift from God.
According to the Bible, being a part of the church is VITAL to your faith walk. So we hit that point constantly.
And on a side note, we don’t try to twist a person’s arm to make them join this church. If this outdoors stuff is weird to you and you want something more traditional, then praise God! We can help you get connected at another Gospel centered church in the area.
Our mission is not to build our Kingdom, it is to build God’s Kingdom, one person at a time, and you are a part of that. If you are a believer, we want to get you into the family so that you can grow in your faith and so you can help others do the same thing.
We’re almost done, and then back to the music. The last piece to our mission at the church in the grass is this: As Christians, we believe that we are failing at our primary mission if we are not pushing the Gospel out into the world, starting with our own neighborhoods, workplaces, families and in the places that we congregate — coffee shops, restaurants, bars, grocery stores, parks — wherever you are is your mission field.
You, you, you and I, if we are believers, are called out of our sin by God, and out of our old ways of doing things, but we aren’t called out so that we can hide in little Christian bubbles, reading Left Behind books until Jesus finally rescues us from the heathens.
We are saved and we are still alive with hearts beating and breath in our lungs in order to become the light in the darkness. We are showered with the love of God, so that we can then love Him back and love others, love believers and love the lost in such a way that our identity in Jesus draws other people to Him.
When people are struggling in the darkness of their sin, we are called to be the light that they can go toward in order to find salvation, in order to find peace in a turbulent world and in order that they can be transformed by the Gospel, connected to a local church and then sent back out into the darkness as a new candle, as a new beacon of hope.
That’s the plan. That’s how God designed us to function as believers.
That’s what we are all about as the Church in the Grass. If you are not already a part of a church — whether you consider yourself lost or found, or even if you don’t know where you land in your faith — we would love for you to join us here. We want you to come back whether you are a Christian already or if you are still searching.
And if you are already a part of another church, we want to thank you for coming tonight and please, please stay and enjoy the band, they’ll be playing for a while. And, if this all piques an interest in you and you want to know how you can partner with us, we’d love to sit down with you. We are looking for a youth pastor at the moment and some other volunteer opportunities are open. This may be your mission field. If that’s the case, pray, talk to you pastor about helping us here. Who knows what God will do? We know what He can do and that’s an exciting prospect.
Until then let’s pray…
Now, let’s welcome back Saving Vegas for the second half of their set.
While they are playing, if you have any questions for us or if you are here and you need prayer for anything, come and find me or Andy or Ryan or Monica.
Be blessed, here’s Saving Vegas…
