Church Stories and Updates – Fall 2012
Bob Hyatt
November 22, 2012

Cyd Holsclaw, Life on the Vine
 We’re pretty excited about ‘resurrecting’ our old practice of sharing stories of wonder every time we gather for worship. Each story of wonder highlights a way that God is working in an individual’s life, family, neighborhood or workplace. As people tell stories, our community hears concrete examples of what the inbreaking kingdom might look like in their own lives. At first, it was difficult to convince people that they had a story to tell… now, we run into the problem of having to tell people that our next available date is in the new year! We post the stories on our website each week:   http://lifeonthevine.org/stories-of-wonder/

Amy Graham, The District Church
 The District Church baptized 10 people this past September. The stories of change were wide and varied. Some of those baptized have struggled with addiction, sexual orientation, skepticism, atheism, and even prostitution. All of them have now experienced the love, grace and restoration of Christ Jesus in their lives. Here are testimonies from three of those people whose lives have been changed:

“I sought salvation by worshiping everything but the Lord. My doctrine of moral relativism (“seek and never find” was my motto) led me to drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual depravity, new age practices and more.  Self-sufficiency failed me and I ended up in a literal hell of depression and isolation.  I sought God like only the dying can, willing to abandon my opinions and “beliefs” in exchange for absolute truth. He was the last house on the block I knocked on! Jesus Christ answered and showed me, opened my eyes to the error of my ways and the fallen nature of everything, revealed there is such a thing as the Truth!  Jesus pulled me off of the titanic I had been bailing water on and brought me to life. I trust Him completely today because he is the Truth that set me free in a very real way.”

“Before I knew Christ, I trusted in the streets and my addiction. It led to nothing but hardship and hard times. Through getting to know people from church at the dinner fellowships, I decided I wanted a piece of how these people were living. I wanted God, because He is our Creator and I know He wants me to know Him. Trusting God has changed my life because I’m starting to see many blessings from obeying and trusting in God more and more. I don’t need the things I used to do or rely on. And because of trusting in God, I have more friends. I have more friends who are really there for me.”

“I’m from a Jewish background. Today is our New Year. It’s all about repentance. But this year for me it’s all about following Christ. I was fortunate to be raised by a bunch of different people. Two of the people who raised me – one was a feminist and the other was a gay man. So I was taught to be open minded. But I didn’t get the memo about the grace of God until I was 24. God has brought me from a place where I was agnostic. I was a very angry person. But now God has done a work in my heart. He has allowed my heart to un-harden and come to a place of humility. To come to a place to be able receive and give love. I’m thankful for the work He has started in me.”

These testimonies, and so many more, have demonstrated to us that God is absolutely at work and moving in our church community and in our city. We feel honored and privileged to serve in this community and witness what God is doing. It is humbling and powerful to see the ways God is changing lives here in DC.

Winn Collier, All Souls
One interesting thing that has emerged is Beer & Hymns, on the second Monday of each month at Trinity Pub. We do it with St. Mark Lutheran, and it’s an opportunity for those distant from faith to come and taste (literally).

Bryan Long, Agora Community
 We are in the infancy stage of planting our church, The Agora Community, in Rochester, NY. With everything so new, there are many things that need to happen. I often attack projects head on, and with my head down. However, my coach, J.R. Briggs, uses a phrase that has stuck with me over the course of this season: “If this is your church, you better hurry up and start. If this is Jesus’ church, you better slow down and listen.” When you plant a church, you begin to realize how little you have to bring to the table.  If this thing is to be fruitful, it will be because God is moving.

I had been given a number of a person in the area who might be interested in what we’re doing. I generally don’t like cold calling people as a first point of contact, so while I took the number, I sat on it for awhile. A week later, I was walking a path in the town we are starting the church, and praying for how we could break into the community. I was alone and felt comfortable praying out loud. As I prayed, a jogger snuck up behind me and certainly heard me “talking to myself.”  While I felt funny, in that exchange I also felt the Lord telling me that I needed to call this guy I had been putting off. Right there on the path I gave him a call. I left him a message and waited for a call back. A few hours later he responded and told me he owns a percussion shop in town and invited me to come by to talk. As soon as I walked into the store we both recognized each other.  He was the jogger on the path.  What followed was a conversation about a small group of people who were gathering at his home to explore what a fresh expression of church might look like in their community. This group had formed at the beginning of the summer and had been sensing that they needed direction. Just that morning he had been praying to provide the next step for the group – then he got my call. The result has been a weekly Sunday gathering as we are praying, worshiping, and discussing the potential of joining together. God is moving.

Gary Alloway, Redemption Church of Bristol
 Here is a link to a blog post I just wrote about Hurricane Sandy and Redemption:  http://garyalloway.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/149/

Melba Miller, Crossroads Church
 Like all of the churches in the Ecclesia network, our heart at Crossroads, and our commitment, is to equip our people to live on mission, showing and sharing Jesus’ love in our community and our world. When a church family makes that commitment and sets out to live that out, it’s always a lot of fun to watch how God works to put together partnerships that give a local church the opportunity to be a part of helping build God’s Kingdom is ways that are so much better, and so much bigger, than we could ever come up with on our own!  For Crossroads, one of those God-given partnerships is giving us the amazing opportunity to help make Jesus known in the Haryana state (surrounds Delhi) of India, where fewer than 2% of the millions of people who live there know and follow Jesus.  If you and your church are praying for a partnership that will give your people the opportunity to be a part of building God’s Kingdom and changing lives, please consider joining us in this partnership!

Our partners in India are Karsan and Melia .  Karsan and Melia stepped down from their 22 year ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ in India to answer the call to church planting that God has given them. The ministry is training bi-vocational pastors and their wives and equipping them with both biblical and theological training and practical training in a variety of trades that will help them start a business in the village where they seek to start a church. As the ministry has grown and has been blessed to be part of the establishment of almost 2500 new church plants, Karsan and Melia have also sensed God directing their hearts toward the children who live in the slums around Delhi.

The ministry   started out taking children who had never been to school and couldn’t pass the entrance exams to enter the local public schools and put small local schools and teachers in place to work with the kids to help them pass the exams and go to school, and share Jesus ‘ love with the kids and their families.  Over the past several years God has given Karsan and Melia an increasing burden for starting a completely new work- a school that would take the place of the poorly staffed and funded public schools where the children they’ve been helping get in won’t get a decent education with opportunities to go to college, or to hear about Jesus. The potential  this new school would have to help break the cycle of poverty that children from the slums live with, and to send Christ- followers who are eager to share their faith out into the universities and into trades and businesses through-out the region and the country is simply staggering.  Not to mention the impact the school could have on each child’s whole family.  Definitely a God-sized opportunity!

Crossroads is so excited that God has given us the privilege of partnering with their ministry   to help them with the finances for this new ministry!  It’s hard for us who live in America to believe that $20 could go so far in India, but Karsan and Melia tell us that $20 will pay all of the expenses for one child to attend the new school for one month. In addition to the money we budget each quarter and send to India to help this ministry with church planting, our church family is working together this fall and winter to raise money for the new school and we’d love for some other Ecclesia churches partner with us to support this new ministry. We’re also in the early stages of planning a mission trip to India to help our partners with church planting and in the new school, and we’d love for your church members to join our mission team. If you’d like contact information for Karsan and Milia or more info about any of the partnership opportunities mentioned here, we’d love to hook you up! You can email melba@cafecrossroads.com – we look forward to talking with you about how God might want to use your church in India!

The Magic Power of Encouragement

By Bob Hyatt • January 17, 2025
When I graduated from college, I moved to Alaska and took a job teaching middle school- a job I had zero business doing. I want to give props to those of you who are teachers- it’s a fantastically important job, but also a ridiculously complex one. You must balance pedagogical skills, HOW to teach so others learn, with sociological ones, classroom management, and so much more. It was classroom management where my ineptitude really shone, though. I thought managing classrooms full of middle schoolers would be easy- just call them out when they do something wrong- make sure there are consequences in place, and the place will basically run itself. I learned that year that you cannot punish someone into good behavior. You more often just punish people into stealthier ways of misbehavior. It wasn’t until years later that the light bulb came on for me. I was volunteering in my son’s kindergarten class, and I assumed I was going to be walking into a zoo. Contrary to my expectations, Mr. Waters, the teacher, had that place running like a well-oiled machine. And the most surprising way was how he did it. He called for reading time when all the kids were supposed to get up from their tables and sit on the reading circle. He made this call and like two kids responded. Oh man, I thought- he’s lost the room! Nope. He just stood at the front of the class and said “I see Billy doing what I asked. I see Sienna doing what I asked.” And every time he said that another few kids would look up, leave what they were doing and rush to take their place. In about 30 seconds, he had them all sitting quietly around the circle. Blew. My. Mind. It seemed so simple once I saw it done, but I had never realized just how big a gap there was between trying to motivate with consequences and nagging versus motivating with encouragement. Which is funny, because as I thought about it, I realized my wife had been using this tactic on me for YEARS. I married a woman who liked to dance- swing dance, even. I grew up a Baptist, so… But whenever I would do a little two-step with her in the kitchen or just play-dance with her to music in the living room, she would go OVER THE TOP. “Bob, you are doing that really well! Bob, you’re a great dancer!” I totally knew I wasn’t, but… I sure liked to hear her say it, and so I’d do it more. So, here’s the rule: What you criticize me for, I may stop doing. I may also just try to hide it from you. But- What you praise and encourage me in, I will continue doing. The Apostle Paul was a master at this- just look at 1 Thess. 5:11- ”So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” What is Paul doing here? Yes, he’s encouraging them to encourage each other by encouraging them for how they’ve already been encouraging one another! That’s a lot of encouraging. But he’s doing what he’s asking them to do- demonstrating how it works. I’m sure not everyone in the church of Thessalonica was good at encouraging others- but those who were doing it well were heartened by Paul’s words here, and those who weren’t yet, were… encouraged to be more encouraging. Paul uses the word “encourage” 7 times in 1st Thess. alone. This command to encourage each other is central in the NT. Hebrews 10:24-25 says this: Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 13:11 “Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” How long can you go on one compliment, or one word of encouragement? A few days? A week? Our words have so much power! I once had an orange t-shirt, that had a disturbingly deep V-neck. My co-pastor Dustin would laugh every time he saw me in it. But you know why I continued to wear it? Because it was literally the only shirt I ever owned that had been complimented by a woman I was not married or related to. A barista one time told me she really liked that shirt… So, what I’m saying is, you can get me to do just about anything, if you encourage me. BUT- With great power, comes great responsibility. Notice that these verses on encouragement come in the context of helping others become the followers of Jesus they could and were meant to be. “Encourage each other and build each up.” “Motivate one another to acts of love and good works. Encourage one another.” “Grow to maturity. Encourage each other.” There’s a growth mindset behind the biblical admonitions that we ought to encourage each other. The growth mindset says “I may not be good at this or have mastered it… yet. But if I keep trying…” Unfortunately, most of us get stuck in a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset says “I'm either good at something, or I’m not. So, I’ll give myself only to things where I can show I’m good. If I must work at it, it means I’m not good at it, or smart enough for it, so why try?” Studies have shown that encouragement has a positive effect on performance, while discouragement has a negative effect. Ok- that’s obvious. But… studies have also been done about how TYPES of encouragement affect performance. Encouraging effort, for example, has a positive effect on performance, while praising ABILITY has a negative effect. One study showed that when two groups of students were presented with difficult challenges 90% of the ones who had been praised for their effort embraced the difficult tasks- while the majority of those praised for their ability resisted tackling hard things. I probably don’t have to spell out the leadership lessons here. So, I’ll just leave you with this: I encourage you this season to be thinking about the people you work with and especially those who work under you. They are just as hungry for encouragement as you are. You have the power to give them not only what they need, but through that encouragement to spur them on to the personal and ministry growth you want to see in them. (By the way, while we’re talking about encouragement, if you need some this season, join us Feb 25-27th in Alexandria, VA for this year’s Ecclesia National Gathering . I guarantee you and your team will leave feeling encouraged, equipped, and empowered. And think about how encouraging YOUR presence would be to everyone else!)

Focusing the Gospel Around the Table is Still Important Today

By J.R. Briggs • November 26, 2024
“Food is just fuel for your body.” When the raw vegan enthusiast in my community said it I knew that wasn’t right. I thought of all the great meals shared with family and friends around tables for Thanksgivings, Christmas Eves, and Easter afternoons – among others. I recalled the verse: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” And I realized that if this was God’s vision for food, then he would have designed our bodies with built-in IV ports where we would hook up pouches of food to our sides and let it drip in slowly to our bloodstreams. And Jesus wouldn’t have given us the greatest experiential metaphor of communion around the table in fellowship with others if it was merely physical and transactional in nature. I get his point: what we put into our bodies matters. Food is for much more than just physical energy. It’s also about connection, bonding, and relationship. Storytelling and laughing and crying and interacting. Like former U.S. President Ronald Reagan said, all great change in America begins at the dinner table. But I’ll offer a rejoinder: all great change – no matter the country – begins at the dinner table. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has declared loneliness as a public health crisis and an epidemic . 30 percent of adults say they feel lonely., with 10 percent reporting loneliness every day. 60 years ago the average dinner time was 90 minutes; today it’s less than 12. We are more connected to our devices and less connected to others. Almost twenty five years ago political scientist Robert Putnam wrote the popular book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community . Over the summer, the New York Times interviewed him , inquiring if he saw this crisis of loneliness coming. He stressed the idea of “social capital,” saying it comes in two forms: bonding and bridging. Bonding ties us to others like us and bridging ties us to people who are different from us. Meals together with others at tables have the transformative power to do both. They bond us to other people in our church; they bridge us to connect with others who aren’t yet connected to faith. As my next-door neighbor says when we’re trying to find a time to connect for a meal, “Everybody’s gotta eat.” Coffee tables, lunch tables, high top bar tables, card tables, dinner tables – all have the intent to bring us together with others over food and/or drink. It was Len Sweet who wrote in Tablet to Table that Jesus was killed for his table manner and his table company. Later he stated that the gospel message was Jesus eating good food with bad people. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any gathering in the New Testament that didn’t involve some sort of table. And as Ian Simkins, lead pastor of teaching at The Bridge Church in Nashville, shared with me, the table is the centerpiece by which the gospel is expressed. The church has moved to prioritize the table by asking some key questions: What if we reclaimed the table? What if our tables weren’t for just feeding, but for forming? What if, at the table, foes became friends? What if, every time we sat down, we prayed, “at this table as it is in heaven”? What if we brought the gospel back to the table? These are the questions that must become front and center for the church in North America in the days ahead. In fact, you can view the church’s creative and compelling videos on Instagram here and here . Americans eat, on average, 21 meals a week. Think for a moment: how many meals did you share with others this week? How many meals did you eat alone this week? How many people did you share with those who weren’t your immediate family members? How many of those were with people who are not followers of Jesus? What if the greatest advancement of the gospel in the days ahead occurred not in our churches, but around tables?
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