This is the first in a series of posts by the Mars Hill campus pastors looking at how God has moved across Mars Hill Church during 2009. Pastor Bubba Jennings is the campus pastor from the Ballard campus.

We serve a loving and gracious God, who loves us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for our sins and rise from the grave, conquering Satan, sin, and death (John 3:16). Though we were headed down a path of death and destruction, those who have faith in Jesus are now redeemed and made alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5). In response to this amazing grace and work of redemption, we are sent on mission to glorify God by sharing the hope we have in Jesus with those who don’t yet know him.

From Rebels to Worshippers. From Spectators to Participants.
In the past year, this has been evident in a variety of ways at the Ballard campus. More and more people have become unsatisfied with simply going to church, and are now striving to grow in their understanding of what it means to be the church—a redeemed community on mission for Jesus. Worship has been more passionate, giving has been more faithful and generous, and repentance has been more consistent. Fewer people are consuming and treating the church like a hotel; instead, more people are contributing and seeing it as their home.

Baptisms
Specifically, we’ve seen nearly 350 people get baptized—100 in the last two months—including several kids, whose parents baptized them after being baptized themselves. Some of these people were baptized immediately after becoming Christians. Others finally wanted to publically profess their faith in Jesus. Many of these folks have had amazing stories of redemption, including one guy who met with Pastor Jamie and heard the gospel through a Muslim translator and trusted the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Marriages
As is often the case at Mars Hill, we’ve seen over 100 people get married this past year. One couple, who started attending Mars Hill earlier this year, was living together when they first started attending. The gal became a Christian, which initially upset the guy because he thought she would love God more than him. However, soon after that, God saved him, too. They attended a Considering Marriage Seminar together and became convicted about living together, so they separated. They attended the premarital class and counseling sessions and grew tremendously. During their last counseling session, the guy told Pastor Phil that his hope and prayer for her during their marriage was that she would always love God more than him—the one thing he had once feared.

Repentance, Redemption, & Healing
We’ve also witnessed many people, through the power of the Holy Spirit, turn from sin, repent, and be redeemed. Dozens of people have met with a pastor, deacon, or volunteer after a service to confess sin and pray for forgiveness. In some cases, God has convicted people not to have an abortion, not to commit suicide, or not to get a divorce. People have also been miraculously healed of cancer and other diseases. Others have experienced healing from years of physical, emotional, and mental abuse, including rape and molestation.

Community
God’s redemptive work is also happening in community. In the past year, over 150 people have participated in a Redemption Group, in which they’ve learned to apply the gospel to the sins they’ve committed or the ones committed against them. One woman who was in counseling about her severe past abuse had been recommended by her counseling pastor to attend a Redemption Group. Intimidated by the prospect of sharing her story in a group, she quietly avoided the opportunity to sign-up for a group. The following quarter, the pastor encouraged her again, and though still nervous, she decided to take the risk. God met her there in the Redemption Group and she experienced life transformation, made new friendships with understanding women, and even hopes to lead a Redemption Group herself one day.

New Leaders
The vision of planting 100 campuses and 1,000 churches in the next 10 years to see thousands become disciples of Jesus increases the need for more leaders in all areas of ministry. We’ve been blessed to raise up two new pastors—Pastor Joel Brown and Pastor Matt Jensen—at the Ballard campus this year, as well as hundreds of deacons, Community Group and Redemption Group leaders and apprentices. There are currently almost 1300 members at the Ballard campus—350 just from this past year with 375 more in the process. The members of Mars Hill are the core of the church and the goal is to raise up hundreds of more leaders.

Serving our Community
The 130 plus Community Groups in the Ballard area have started to own the mission of reaching their neighborhoods. Many groups—like one in Greenlake that cleaned up a park, planted some trees and shrubs, and painted a mural—have used MicroMissions funds to serve their neighborhood. Others have participated in the work that’s already being done in their communities by joining neighborhood councils and associations.

The U-District & International Work
Evidences of God’s grace can also be seen outside of the Ballard area. The increase in generosity at our campus contributed to the launch of the U-District service at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall, which now has close to 400 people who attend. We also sent people to help launch the Federal Way campus, which has already added an additional service. And we continue to have an ongoing relationship with four church plants in Acts 29 Network in the U.S. and Canada and the folks at Vision Nationals in India.

What is our legacy?
One of the questions we must continue to ask ourselves is if the Ballard campus were to disappear, would anyone miss it? Would anyone care? Have we as a campus created a legacy of loving people the way God loves us—humbly, sacrificially, and faithfully?

The truth is there are literally thousands of people in our area alone who don’t know Jesus. Thankfully, God chooses to use people like us to make himself known and to demonstrate his love and grace. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we’re called to continue worshiping Jesus, giving generously of our time, treasure, and talent, and living on mission to glorify God and love our neighbors, so that more people will know Jesus.

Give to the Generous Campaign

Give locally or globally to help us continue to proclaim the Gospel, plant churches, and make disciples of Jesus.

Check your mailbox this week for information about the Generous Campaign (if you don’t get the mailer, pick up a copy at your campus this Sunday).

We’re kicking off a church-wide effort to raise funds for a number of local ministry needs and our global effort to see as many churches and disciples of Jesus as possible.

Why? Because God has been generous to us.

As we’ve learned in the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, there’s a biblical pattern of God’s goodness and our response (see Mary’s song in 1:46–55 and Zechariah’s prophecy in 1:67–79):

• Historical – God acts in space and time and people reflect on what he has done.
• Theological – God’s actions reveal his character to us. As we reflect on what God has done and what he has said about himself, we learn more about him.
• Biographical – What we learn about God changes how we live.
• Doxological – God’s actions, who he is, and how he has changed our lives lead us to respond in worship.

We’ve modeled the Generous Campaign after this pattern, and so as we begin I’d like to reflect on the incredible ways God has blessed Mars Hill Church, Acts 29, and the Resurgence in 2009.

Baptisms

As a church we baptized over 575 people in 2009. We saw fathers baptizing their sons and daughters, husbands baptizing their wives, drug dealers leaving lives of crime for Jesus, victims of abuse finding redemption in Christ, and men abandoning prolonged adolescence in order to follow Jesus.

New Campuses

We launched two new campuses and one new service location in September. With the addition of campuses in Federal Way and Albuquerque, and a new gathering at the University of Washington, what started in a living room with a small group of people has grown to nine campuses in two states.

Free Resources

Pastor Mark’s sermons were downloaded 4.4 million times in the last year. Every day we receive encouraging emails from around the globe—Australia, the UK, Africa, Brazil, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles almost daily. Jesus has used the Internet to distribute the Bible preaching we enjoy every Sunday to millions of people worldwide.

New Church Plants

The Acts 29 Church Planting Network is averaging one church plant per week. God has been gracious to bring great men and leaders to the network to further its work. We’ve now planted almost 300 churches around the globe.

Acts 29 Boot Camps

We’ve trained thousands of pastors throughout America and beyond our borders, thanks to the help of Acts 29 and many generous churches within the network. Some of our Mars Hill pastors even got into the mix and helped train pastors in Ecuador.

ReTrain

This year marks the official start to our missional leadership school. An inaugural class of 75 men from around the country have been coming to learn from a top-notch faculty: Bruce Ware, John Piper, Gregg Allison, Bill Clem, Rick Melson, Ed Stetzer, and Mark Driscoll. Each of the 75 men represents future church planters, pastors, and leaders. The global Church is important to us, and we want to train and raise up as many men as possible for the difficult task ahead.

ReLit & ReSound

This past year we’ve published a diverse batch of media, including Vintage Church, Religion Saves, PAC, Pastor Dad, and Rain City Hymnal. God has blessed us with great ministry partners, editors, and musicians that we’re thankful to have at Mars Hill.

All of this is in addition to hundreds marriages, new babies, restored relationships, and thousands little stories that we don’t even hear about.

We serve a hugely generous and wholly gracious God. As I look out over the scope and depth of what God has done and is doing, I can’t help but be completely humbled, thankful, and moved to worship. I hope you are too, Mars Hill.

Find Pastor Jamie on Facebook and Twitter.

Give to the Generous Campaign

Celebrate God’s goodness with us by giving to help us continue to proclaim the Gospel, plant churches, and make disciples of Jesus.

Christian blogger Tim Challies recently interviewed Pastor Scott Thomas about the history of Acts 29, what it does, and how working with Pastor Mark has influenced him. Acts 29 has planted nearly 300 churches and trained thousands of pastors around the globe. If you are a man who feels a call to church planting or pastoring, or if you simply want to learn more about a crucial ministry operating out of Mars Hill Church, then you’ll enjoy this article.

Speaking personally, how has working closely with Mark Driscoll impacted you as a person?

I just told Mark today in an email that I loved working with him and he expressed that he loved working with me too. I know it sounds too emo for Acts 29, but we have mutual respect. He is my pastor and I am honored to serve alongside him. I serve with him on the executive leadership team—five elders who oversee the mission and vision of Mars Hill Church. As a team, we wrestle with big problems and big ideas and we have varied opinions, but we work in harmony with each other by deferring to the person who is most experienced or skilled in a certain situation to lead toward the best solution or strategy. I have never experienced a harsh word with Mark and we work well together acknowledging that neither of us deserve the blessings we are experiencing through Mars Hill Church and Acts 29.

Additionally, I have been blessed by Mark’s passion for the unchurched. I thought I had great passion for the lost. But Mark thinks about the unsaved person constantly and how best to communicate and preach Jesus particularly to the dechurched young male who has no interest in Christianity.

Finally, I am blessed most of all by Mark’s commitment to his family. It is obvious from being in his home that he loves his five children devotedly and he loves his wife sacrificially. I listen to Mark, not because he is a great preacher, but because he is a great Dad and husband.

Giving at Mars Hill

For more information about giving to the church–why and how–visit our secure giving page and check out Pastor Mark’s Generous series.

A Mars Hill Church community group made local news recently when they installed a new mural at a neighborhood community center. This is just one of the ways that we live for Jesus as a city within a city; knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus.

Are you in a community group? If not, there are hundreds that meet all over the city to share food, study the Bible, and live life together. This is where real discipleship and transformation takes place and if you’re going through a difficult time in your life, then a good place to find someone who has been there before is in a community group. If you are looking to grow in your faith or if you have questions about your faith, then a community group is a good place to grow and find answers.

If you are already in a community group and are looking for ways to serve the neighborhood and city around you, then please check out articles from the Generous Campaign and apply for a Micromission grant.

You can read the whole article at the Phinneywood blog.

Community

Live the mission. Serve one another. Pray for your church. Do life together.

Our methods range from collective to fully distributed. To illustrate what I mean, here are some examples from the whole gamut:

Collective Efforts

Sending resources and support to Vision Nationals, helping local schools and community organizations, and building campus partnerships with established ministries like UGM and Bread of Life. Rather than creating our own service organizations, we prefer to partner with existing organizations that are already making a great impact in our community.

Hybrid Efforts

Examples here include MicroMissions (we provide much of the funding through micro-grants while community groups provide the vision, effort, and service to meet a need) and Redemption Groups (we’ve created this infrastructure in part to help people struggling with addiction, abuse, etc.). These are two great ways for small groups in the church to work together for the common good of the people in our communities.

Fully Distributed

Individuals within the church use their resources to love, bless, and serve those around them. We believe every Christian should be an ambassador of Jesus, bringing mercy to all their relationships and throughout the world.

We can track our collective and hybrid efforts fairly well. As for the distributed effort, we share some of these stories in our Changed By Jesus series and elsewhere, but community and life transformation on this grassroots level take place in many ways we’ll never fully know.

It’s exciting to think about the total impact of ten thousand people loving Jesus and serving others—an effect so great and diverse, I pray it remains lasting and immeasurable.

Find Pastor Jamie on Facebook and Twitter.

Community

Live the mission. Serve one another. Pray for your church. Do life together.

On top of fitting over 500 people into the Lobo Theater for their launch this past Sunday, Pastor Dave Bruskas and the Albuquerque campus were featured across three local network affiliates – ABC, NBC, & FOX – that night. In addition to the campus opening, what was the story of note? It was a story about how the church showed the love and compassion of Jesus to their community.

Tragically, earlier this year a young mother strangled her three-year old son and buried him a local playground. Pastor Dave and the church worked to minister to the community around the playground by bringing them food and working with the city to replace the sand in the sandbox.

This is just one of the ways Mars Hill Church loves their cities. If you see a situation like this in your neighborhood or community, apply for a Micromission grant and lead a group to serve. It is in view of God’s mercy  - a mercy that sent His Son to die for the ungodly, sinners, & His enemies (Romans 5) – that we offer our bodies and lives as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1).

We love to see people meet Jesus within our walls on Sundays, we love to see people become disciples of Jesus in community, and we love to see the church taking the love and mercy of Christ into our cities.

You can watch the video from the story at KOAT.

Community

Live the mission. Serve one another. Pray for your church. Do life together.

The only details we have at the moment are from Sarah’s brother below.  You can share communication and coordinate service or generosity through The City, or on a Facebook page set up by a friend of Andrew’s.

As soon as we have more information we’ll post it here.

–

Sarah Marie McConnell Andrew McConnell Info Update

Dear Family and Friends,

Most of you have already been notified, but for some of you, this will be news.

On Monday, the 14th of September 2009, Sarah awoke to the door bell ringing and a visit from the “men in green” (as she refers to them). Sarah was informed that Andrew had been killed by an IED while serving our country in Afghanistan. Today, Tuesday, we found out one other member of his squad was also killed and 6 other members were wounded.

Currently, Sarah is flying with our father to the east coast. There they will meet up with Andrew’s father, and together, they will receive Andrew’s casket from the military plane.

At this time, information for funeral times and memorials is unknown. As soon as we know more we will keep you all informed.

All of your kind words and prayers are a blessing to Sarah, her little one on the way, and our family. Many of you have offered to make food or allow family to stay in your homes when they come for the funeral. I cannot thank you enough for the tremendous outpouring of support!

We know all of you are here to offer assistance however possible. At this time, it is unclear of where exactly we could use your help, but we will definitely let you know as soon as we can.

If you would like to send flowers or cards please direct them to

Ski’s Painting
Attn: Sarah McConnell
7235 S 227th PL STE 103
Kent WA 98032

You might consider waiting until more information is known about the time and place of the funeral and we will direct all of the flowers there.

If you wish to express your sympathy in ways other than flowers, you may do so by making a contribution to the “Sarah & Baby McConnell, In Memory of Andrew McConnell” memorial fund at any Key Bank branch. The memorial fund will be in place by the end of this week. We will use any funds collected to help celebrate Andrew’s life, as well as assist his family while they make the long journey from Germany and Virginia to his final resting place.

Thank you again for all of your support. Words cannot express the gratitude we have felt from everyone. It was amazing to be a part of Andrew’s life, even if it was only for a short time. I knew the man; he loved my sister, and we loved him.

Once a month, the group fires up the barbecue for hamburgers and hot dogs, followed by games and crafts. The project is a part of Mars Hill Church’s MicroMission effort.

The Universal Language of Crafts

“The average age of Elizabeth House resident is age 70,” explains Hannah, one of the members in the community group. “Many are not from this country and have little or no family around.” In order to serve this demographic, the group decided to focus on crafts “by specific request of the residents and because crafts can transcend any language barrier.”

Board games, card games, and the lure of free food also attract residents for a couple hours of socializing. “Our aim is to be agents of God’s grace as we genuinely care for their souls by modeling and sharing the gospel by building relationships,” said Ryan, the community group leader.

Group Effort

While the MicroMission fund pays for all of the craft materials, the community group itself provides the games. Dinner wasn’t a part of the original plan, but the Elizabeth House was so appreciative of the effort, personnel provided access to the barbecue and offered to help pay for the food each month.

The event has been well received by residents, and the community group has committed to keep their MicroMission going for at least a year.

More about MicroMissions

MicroMission grants are available to all Mars Hill community groups to help fund neighborhood projects. Talk to your group leader for details on how to apply.

Join a Community Group

More than 350 community groups serve and gather in neighborhoods wherever Mars Hill campuses are located.

• Bagging trash at the Burien Clean Sweep
• Traffic circle restoration in Rainier Valley
• Landscaping at the Phinney Neighborhood Center park

If you’re interested in organizing a MicroMission project this summer, talk to your community group leader for details.

Community

Live the mission. Serve one another. Pray for your church. Do life together.

After the event, CityTeam passed on an email message of thanks from a resident who had been struggling with finances due to a recent illness: “It’s little things like these groceries that just let me know that the Lord is there and He provides in the most unexpected ways.”

MicroMissions are relational acts of service led by our community groups and funded by Mars Hill. Talk to your group leader to organize a project in your neighborhood.

Community

Inconvenience yourself for the sake of relationships and the gospel. Do life together.