We recently received some good news from the folks at the Crystal Cathedral – Pastor Mark’s second sermon from the Hour of Power will air on Palm Sunday, March 28th, next year.

If you remember, his first sermon was on who Jesus is. The second sermon is all about what Jesus did as our Savior on the cross and deals with sin, death, hell, and the atonement.

We’re thankful that the Hour of Power has chosen to air the sermon and that they’re doing so on Palm Sunday, the day when the Church has historically celebrated Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem and towards Calvary.

As we get more information about times and channels we’ll post them here.

Death By Love

Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears tackle some of the most serious redemptive aspects of Jesus’ work on the cross. Find out more.

Understanding Silence and Solitude

Silence and solitude is fasting from people and noise for a prescribed time to connect with God and replenish the soul. The opposite of solitude is isolation, where someone is burned out and goes into survival mode by disappearing. Solitude is godly, isolation is deadly, and if we don’t enjoy the former we’ll wind up pursuing the latter.

Despite the constant pressures upon his time from family, friends, and fans, Jesus’ own life was marked by ongoing times of solitude. The following verses speak of how Jesus often practiced the spiritual discipline of solitude:

• “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.” (Matt. 14:23)
• “And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” (Mark 6:31)
• “And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place.” (Luke 4:42)
• “But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” (Luke 5:16)

Furthermore, as we study Scripture we see that Jesus used solitude for a multitude of purposes. Following his baptism, Jesus spent forty days in solitude preparing for his public ministry (Matt. 4:1–11). After his cousin, John the Baptizer, was beheaded, Jesus spent time alone to mourn (Matt. 14:12–13). Jesus also used times of solitude as occasions for intense and focused prayer (Matt. 14:23; Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16). Jesus specifically used solitude as an opportunity to pray and seek the Father’s will before choosing the twelve disciples (Luke 6:12). In addition, Jesus used solitude to rest after a hard day of work (Mark 6:31). Finally, knowing he was soon to be crucified, Jesus spent time alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, coming to grips with the painful obedience that was required of him (Mark 26:36–46).

Other biblical figures also used solitude for a litany of purposes. Moses spent time alone on the mountain with God in order to receive a word from God, namely the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19–20). Isaiah was both saved and sustained by God through his times of solitude with the Lord (Isa. 30:15). In Psalm 62:1–2, 5 David says that in solitude God calmed his fears and encouraged his soul. Paul as well spent some three years in varying degrees of solitude being prepared by the Lord for ministry, according to Galatians 1:17–19.

Clearly, time alone with God serves innumerable good purposes in our lives. Therefore, to help you consider how to enjoy purposeful times of solitude, I would encourage the following. One, you may need to simply schedule a day of solitude to ensure that this is a regular part of your spiritual life. I do this at least one day a month and find it to be the most important and refreshing part of my life; it enables me to function in the other areas of my life because it helps me remain continually connected to Jesus. Two, find a place where you like to go. This may mean that you spend a day in God’s creation hiking or simply resting. Three, if you are a parent, this may mean that you have to get up early or stay up late to get some time to yourself at home.

There are many things you can do during your periods of solitude, including:

1. Nothing
2. Meditate on a short section of Scripture
3. Rest
4. Read long sections of Scripture
5. Pray, including a prayer-walk/hike/bike
6. Read a good book
7. Journal

Acts 29 Network

Pastor Scott Thomas leads the Acts 29 Network, which exists to start churches that plant churches. More information at the Acts 29 website.

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.

In last week’s sermon, Pastor Mark Driscoll looked at four different worldviews and contrasted them with Christianity. These first two clips look at atheism and the old lies of the New Spirituality.

The Bible is All About Jesus

The Doctrine series explains the centrality of Jesus throughout Scripture and the life of Mars Hill. Full-length sermons & 15-minute episodes.

This is the second in a five-part series. The first post can be found here.

Four Ways to Change Your Life

1. Heart change – conviction from God and repentance from you
2. Study – research and fact-finding for how to change your life, which includes reading the Bible and other books, speaking with people you know who have wisdom, etc.
3. Plan – ongoing, detailed, and prayerful life organization
4. Action – working your plan and making changes as life requires:

Moleskine – always keep a journal like this nearby to jot notes, thoughts, and convictions in
Journaling – use your laptop to gather the scattered ideas in your Moleskine and prayerfully and carefully add to and consider them
Calendar – take action items from your silence and solitude day and put them on the calendar, as without being officially planned, nothing ever gets done to completion

Most people are good at one or two of these steps. Some have a heart change and do their homework but do not make a plan and take action to change their life. Others have plans and action but are religiously just doing duties because they have not experienced heart change from God. Others move from heart change to action without research and a plan; they mean well but make their life (e.g., health, finances, relationships) worse.

Take some time and be honest with yourself. List each of these steps in order from the one you are strongest at to the one you are weakest at.

Where is your life getting stuck and what can you do to grow where you are weak? Who do you need to talk to and learn from? What do you need to repent of?

Community

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

These historical facts are very important but they aren’t most beneficial unless we proceed from the historical to the theological. What do they mean? What is God doing? What is God accomplishing and achieving through the birth of Jesus? Why did Jesus come? Those are the theological questions that interpret the historical facts. For that I’ll give you a word: incarnation. It’s a Latin word that means, “in flesh.” So we’ll do a little bit of seminary now. Incarnation, in flesh.

Now, Larry King was once asked, “If you could interview anyone in the history of the world, who would it be?” He said, “Jesus Christ.” Good answer. When they asked Larry, “If you could ask him one question, what would that be?” Larry said, quote, “I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin born. The answer to that question would define history for me.” Larry King is right, not often, but in this occasion. [Laughter] And Larry King says, “I want to talk to Jesus and I want to know if his mom really was a virgin, that would define history.” Larry’s right. That’s the issue. If so, he is unlike anyone and everyone who has or will ever live.

And we mean by that, incarnation, in flesh. It is the Christian doctrine that God, who is spirit, took upon himself human flesh and came as the human being, the Lord Jesus Christ. It comes from John 1:1 and 1:14. “In the beginning was the Word,” that’s the second member of the Trinity, one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. “In the beginning was the Word. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” if you jump down to John 1:14. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He was with God in the beginning, John 1:1. Jump down to verse 14, the Word, the one who was eternally face to face with God the Father, he was with God the Father and he was God and he was Creator God. He was there in the beginning where Genesis says all was made. The one who is the second member of the Trinity, face to face with the Father, eternally existing as God, became a man, the man Jesus Christ. That’s what incarnation means.

The second member of the Trinity entered into history. The Creator entered creation. God who is spiritual took upon himself human flesh, became a human being, entered into life on the earth among us. That’s what it means to call him Immanuel, God with us.

Now, in saying this, I know that it raises a number of questions and I want to answer I think the seven most common questions. I wrote a book, Vintage Jesus, that answers all of these and more, but I’ll give you a short summary of the common questions about Jesus’ incarnation and incarnation in general.

To read the read the rest of the sermon, go to the sermon page.

Mars Hill iPhone App

Instant access to the entire Mars Hill media library—and the Mars Hill Blog. Get the Mars Hill iPhone app for free at the iTunes store.

I am an introvert who is contemplative. This means I crave and desperately need silence, solitude, study, prayer, and journaling because the Holy Spirit uses these moments to connect me to Jesus that I might be more like him. For those like me, organizing days for silence and solitude may come rather naturally. But for those who are extroverted and active, the people and tasks in their mind and life can keep them from having regular and productive times to fast from noise and people and to hear from God, speak to God, and be with God.

So, this blog is the first in a series that will help you organize a silence and solitude day. The series of blogs will culminate in a lengthy template I use to organize my own silence and solitude days. I shared this document with the Mars Hill staff and so many friends on Facebook and Twitter asked for it after hearing about it that I decided to write it up in brief form and give it away in hopes of being helpful.

Four Ways to Live Your Life

In his book Leading On Empty, Wayne Cordeiro says that there are only four ways to live your life:

1. Reaction – passively dominated by urgencies and pushy people
2. Conformity – succumbing to the fear of man and just being and doing what everyone else wants, which is not necessarily following God’s will for you personally
3. Independence – nonconforming rebellion in the name of freedom, marked by doing only what you want and ignoring godly authority over you
4. Intentionality – reverse-engineering your life and living it prayerfully and purposefully, journaling your thoughts throughout the day, and using silence and solitude to hear from God and organize your life

Which one of these four most typifies you? Is your life a frazzled mess because you are in perpetual reaction mode? Have you not really even deeply pondered God’s will for your life but just done what you were told by other people?

Are you the sort of person who is defiant, independent, and self-reliant? Or, do you regularly (e.g., at least one hour a week and one day a month) get silence and solitude with God to work on your life before you work in it?

The Bible is All About Jesus

The Doctrine series explains the centrality of Jesus throughout Scripture and the life of Mars Hill. Full-length sermons & 15-minute episodes.

In addition to preaching at Mars Hill on Sunday and teaching at ReTrain over the weekend, Ed agreed to do a very special free event for everyone at Mars Hill and in Seattle. On Friday night Ed will be spend an evening educating us on mission. In my opinion, there are few better people to learn on this topic from, so if you go to Mars Hill or live in Seattle, then please come join us this Friday from 7-9pm at the Ballard campus.

Dr. Stetzer has planted, pastored, and revitalized numerous churches. He has trained pastors and church planters on five continents, holds two master’s degrees and two doctorates, and has written dozens of articles and books. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USA Today and CNN.

Ed is Visiting Professor of Research and Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Visiting Research Professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at fifteen other colleges and seminaries. He also serves on the Church Services Team at the International Mission Board. He is one of the leading thinkers on the earth in the areas of evangelism, church planting, and movements. Ed’s primary role is President of LifeWay Research and LifeWay’s Missiologist in Residence, where he oversees a large team of Christian researchers examining the health of churches worldwide.

The Resurgence

Resources to equip leaders to live for Jesus, teach the Bible faithfully, and reach their cities with the gospel. Visit theresurgence.com for more.

If you’re unfamiliar with Dr. Sproul, we highly recommend you check out his podcast and radio program, Renewing Your Mind, or any of his number of books.

You can see the first part of the interview over at The Resurgence.

The Resurgence

Resources to equip leaders to live for Jesus, teach the Bible faithfully, and reach their cities with the gospel. Visit theresurgence.com for more.