News from around the Ecclesia Network
Ecclesia Network
December 21, 2018

Redemption Church, Bristol PA

Weekly Worship, Meeting God

In September, Redemption switched back to a weekly worship service after six years of meeting in house churches.  We loved house churches, but after a careful discernment process, we decided God was calling us into something new.  We hope the switch is a way to care better for our kids, open the door for the community of Bristol, and take advantage of the talented teachers, liturgists, and musicians we now have at Redemption.  But more than that, we hope the switch is an opportunity to meet God.  While house church specializes in intimacy with one another, in discernment, we discovered a deep longing for intimacy with God – a desire to be drawn into something bigger than ourselves. We are still committed to discipleship, to local mission, and to intimate community.  But all those things are meaningless without a relationship to the Living God.  So we have prayed that God would meet us in worship.  And four months in, God has been answering that prayer abundantly!  Amen.

 

Austin Mustard Seed, Austin TX

At Austin Mustard Seed we’ve had a lot to celebrate lately. There have been many changes in our leadership since the summer. Throughout the process, we’ve had a clear sense of God’s presence and feel gratitude for God’s direction and provision. We believe it is gratitude that gives us joy, and we are thankful to experience shared joy as a community this Advent season.

This month we commissioned four leaders in our church. On December 2, April Karli and Daniel Read were commissioned as pastors, and on December 9, Ashley Blackwell and Shane Blackshear were commissioned as lay pastors.

 

 

Update From The Crowded House

“Central Florida doesn’t need another worship gathering.”

I remember uttering those words to countless people two years ago when Crystal and I decided to launch The Crowded House Network. We believed those words then and we believe those words now.

Central Florida does not need another worship gathering but The Crowded House Network does. Over the past few years we have grown from a small gathering of young adults on Tuesday nights, to an inter-generational church consisting of three house churches throughout Central Florida. Our dream is that The Crowded House be a spiritual family on mission together. This was easy to accomplish with eight people on a Tuesday night. Living into this way of being the church when we are three house churches spread out across Central Florida is anything but easy.

In order for us to live into the dream of being a spiritual family on mission together, our leadership team has made the decision to lead us into a new kind of gathering to complete all the good that is happening in our house churches.

On the first and third Sundays of every month, we will gather as an entire network to sing songs of praise, offer prayers for one another, proclaim the good news, and partake of the Eucharist. While this will have similar elements to other church worship gatherings, our focus on communal spiritual growth, corporate prayers and participation, and sacramental theology will make this gathering unmistakably The Crowded House.

This is an exciting time for us as a church. We are stepping into something new and unexplored for us. Just as we had the audacious dream to start a network of house churches in a land of traditional churches, we are exploring what is next as we continue to develop as a family on mission together.

 

The Renew Community, Lansdale PA

Recently, The Renew Community held a “Blue Christmas” Potluck/Gathering

Blue Christmas is a special service to acknowledge that for many people, Christmas is a time of loneliness, sorrow, alienation, sadness. This service offers a way for people to claim those feelings and still feel surrounded by the compassionate love of God. Afterwards, we will share a meal together. If you would like to provide part of this meal, please sign up for an item to bring.

If you want to know more about this, or even how your church can serve the grieving during the holidays, check out this webinar from Missio Alliance with Ecclesia’s own Kate Blackshear (from Austin Mustard Seed)-  Download/Watch FREE until Dec 31st.

Reminder… 

We encourage all our churches, during difficult or stressful times in their community to remember that they have the resources of a network to draw on.  Your Ecclesia staff members (Chris Backert, J.R. Briggs and Bob Hyatt) are ready and available to help you navigate whatever you are facing!

By Bob Hyatt September 15, 2025
A New Ecclesia Network Benefit! 
By By Jim Pace September 15, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, social media has been filled with perspectives, as is typically the case. I am reluctant to add mine as there seems to be no lack one way or the other. To be clear, this is not just about Charlie Kirk, this is about violence across the board. I did not feel led to write this because it was Charlie Kirk specifically, but rather another in a long and winding line of acts of violence, that my ministering at Va. Tech gives me a bit of personal experience with. But as I have just finished teaching two classes on Christian Ethics, and as I was encountering again the spread of responses from my Christian sisters and brothers, I felt led to look at this event through that lens. Ethics, at its base, seeks to answer the question, “What is better or worse? Good or bad?” As a follower of Jesus, this is what seems right to me… 1. We never celebrate harm. Whatever our disagreements, rejoicing at a shooting violates the bedrock claim that every person bears the imago Dei (Gen 1:27). Scripture is explicit: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Prov 24:17); “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44); “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21). I don’t love blasting verses like this, but you cannot get away from them if you are reading the scriptures. 2. Moral responsibility sits with the shooter—full stop . Saying “his rhetoric got him shot” smuggles in a just-world logic that excuses violence. As a contextual theologian, I have an enormous amount of respect for the impact our various narratives have in shaping our understandings of the world around us. They are inescapable. But that is not what I am talking about here. Ideas can be wrong, harmful, or worth opposing vigorously, but vigilante ‘payback’ is never a Christian category. My primary gig is that of a consultant for churches and non-profits. Today, in my meetings and among friends, I have heard some variation of “He got what he deserved,” and “I vote for some very public justice for the shooter.” Both of these views speak of revenge; the follower of Jesus is called to lay these down as our Messiah did. Not asked to, told to. 3. Grief and outrage about gun violence are legitimate; schadenfreude is not . Channel the pain toward nonviolent, concrete action (policy advocacy, community intervention, survivor support), not dehumanization. Here are four thinkers who have had a profound impact on the Christian ethic I try to work out in this world. As I share them, three things are worthy of mention. One, I certainly do not claim to follow their guidance perfectly, and at times I do not even do it well, but they have all given me what seems like a Jesus-centered and faith-filled direction to move in. Second, I do not claim to speak for them in this particular matter; I am merely showing how my ethical lens has been formed. Third, clearly I am not dealing with all the components of our response to these types of violence, this is not a comprehensive treatment, merely the reflections in the moment. Stanley Hauerwas : “Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence.” It’s part of following Jesus, not a tactic we drop when it’s inconvenient. Stanley Hauerwas, Walking with God in a Fragile World, by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor N. T. Wright : “The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.” Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good. In other words, we answer evil without mirroring it. David Fitch : Our culture runs on an “enemy-making” dynamic; even “the political rally… depends on the making of an enemy. Don’t let that train your soul.” The Church of Us vs. Them. Sarah Coakley : Contemplation forms resistance, not passivity. For Coakley, sustained prayer trains perception and courage so Christians can resist abuse and give voice against violence (it’s not quietism). “Contemplation, if it is working aright, is precisely that which gives courage to resist abuse, to give voice against violence.” Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self. Coakley would say that far too often we react before we reflect. This is the problem that Fitch is getting at in much of his writing, that our culture actually runs on antagonisms, the conflict between us. We need to find a better way.