Thanks for visiting Element Church's website. Our community closed its institutional doors in August 2009. I (Jared) accepted the pastorate of a church in the great emerging mission field of New England in the fall, and as our little missional community did not contain anyone called to pastor, nor could we afford to hire from the outside, we regretfully drew the shades on our fledgling ministry.

We are extremely proud of the ministry God was gracious enough to grant us in our short time together. We baptized converts, served regularly in Nashville's inner city, maintained a 70-80% small group attendance rate, gave 60% of our budget to local and foreign missions and church planting causes, and best of all, gloried in the gospel of Jesus Christ week in and week out.

A year later, our organization continues to empty its remaining assets in supporting missions causes and will do so until our bank account reads zero.

While we have closed the doors on our organization, the members of the Element community, the true church within our church, have been seeded as missionaries for the gospel in other area Christian communities.

If you are looking for a great church in the Nashville area, we cannot recommend highly enough Immanuel Church, a non-denominational church belonging to the Acts 29 Network, which meets in the Brentwood area of town. It is pastored by our friend Ray Ortlund, Jr.

Upon reading this post from Shaun Groves (and the 2 or 3 posts that led to it), I was reminded again of how blessed I am to be a part of the Element community. If you're an Elementer, thank you for "getting it." Thank you for loving your neighbors more than yourselves. We have regularly served the least of these in our community since we started, and we are approaching 12 months of Bold as Love, and not a single one of you has ever complained about or questioned why we don't spend more money or time on ourselves.

You are a rare breed, and I am honored and humbled to be your pastor.

New 5-week Element series begins this weekend.

Schedule:

1. May 10 – Spiritual Rhythms in Suburbia
Acts 4:23-35

2. May 17 – Spiritual Growth in Suburbia
Colossians 1:1-14

3. May 24 – Spiritual Worship in Suburbia
Colossians 1:15-20

4. May 31 – Spiritual Endurance in Suburbia
Colossians 1:21-23

5. June 7 – Spiritual Suffering in Suburbia
Colossians 1:24-29

We just concluded a series on the seven deadly sins that we called "Seven Daily Sins" last Sunday at Element, and I posited that when we commit any of the other 6 deadly sins, we have committed Pride. In the same way that Martin Luther said that if we break the 2nd through 10th commandments, we've automatically broken the 1st.

Isn't pride the original sin of Satan?
What is pride, but self-worship?
And what is self-worship but having a god -- namely, ourselves - before God.

In 1 John 2:16-17, John sums up "all that is in the world" this way:

For all that is in the world -- the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions -- is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

John has given us the three main ingredients of pride -- the DNA, if you will, of pride:

1. Desires of the flesh (the cravings of our appetites)
2. Desires of the eyes (lust for what's attractive)
3. Pride in possessions (finding satisfaction in stuff, experiences, accomplishments, etc)

What's interesting is that we see this three-fold essence of pride in the fall of mankind. Check out Genesis 3 and see that when Eve falls for the serpent's temptations, she sees that the forbidden fruit a) might satisfy her appetite, b) is a delight to the eyes, and c) will allegedly cause her to possess the wisdom of God.

And then as Jesus is faced with redeeming this garden fall in the desert temptation, Satan tempts him with the same three things.
1. Make these stones bread = desire of the flesh
2. Look at all the cities and take them = desire of the eyes
3. Exploit your authority over angels = pride in possessing power

The difference of course is that while Eve caved after the 2nd lie, Jesus didn't cave at all.

The practical difference in responses is that while both Eve and Jesus were responding to Satan's lies with Scriptures, only Eve ran out. Satan said "Did God say you couldn't eat from anything here?" And Eve knew that wasn't true and responded, "No, actually, God said we could eat of anything BUT this particular tree." So Satan threw another lie at her, and Eve was stuck.
Jesus, on the other hand, kept throwing Scripture back at Satan, but he didn't run out.

The antidote for temptation is the written word of God. Satan will keep bombarding you with lies until he finds one you'll believe. So make sure you don't run out Scripture when the lies come.

But we do believe the lies every day.
The good news is that while the antidote for temptation is the written word of God, the antidote for sin -- Pride and all its bastard children -- is the incarnate Word of God.

From the moment of the incarnation to the moment of the ascension, and even now, Jesus has redeemed and is redeeming our sinfulness.

But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. -- Hebrews 7:24-25

Element celebrated another milestone last week: our second engagement!

After the service last Sunday night, Element worship leader and rascally raconteur-about-town Jason Haggard proposed to his girlfriend of, like, 14 years Abigail Davis.

I had the great privilege of baptizing Abigail last year, and now I'll get the great privilege of officiating their wedding in November.

Congratulations, you crazy kids!

Last night's Element message was Part 3 in our series Seven Daily Sins, covering Greed. Click "Read More" to see the expanded notes from the sermon . . .

"Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God."

Francis Chan is the man.