Element relaunches its weekly worship service THIS SUNDAY, September 7!

Join us at 6:30 p.m. at Immanuel Church (corner of Granny White Pike and Otter Creek Road in Brentwood) this Sunday for the start of our new series, The Supremacy of Christ.

We can't wait to see you!

Yup yup! Element has a new meeting space for our weekly worship gathering!

Beginning with our re-launch Sunday, September 7 -- in two weeks! -- we will be meeting in the sanctuary of Immanuel Church, located in Brentwood on the corner of Granny White Pike and Otter Creek Road.

Much thanks to Ray Ortlund and Immanuel Church, and to Doug Sanders and Otter Creek Church of Christ (who own the building), for extending an extraordinary grace and hospitality to us. These folks are passionate about partnering for the sake of the gospel.

So whether you're a regular or a long-time-no-seer, mark your calendars with our updated locale and join us Sep. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Immanuel Church for the start of new series "The Supremacy of Christ" (on Ephesians 2).

It's gonna be a great fall!

We recently began a study of John's Gospel at PRAXIS, Element's "third place" small group, and something really awesome jumped out at me from this passage this week. Check out John 1:35-51:

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!"

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, "What are you seeking?"
And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?"
He said to them, "Come and you will see."
So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me."
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Philip said to him, "Come and see."

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!"
Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?"
Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."
Nathanael answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered him, "Because I said to you, 'I saw you under the fig tree,' do you believe? You will see greater things than these." And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

This is John's account of Jesus' calling some of his first disciples. The thing that struck me the more I looked at this passage is the changing titles ascribed to Jesus. There are at least 7 titles/descriptors given to Jesus here:

1. The Lamb of God, ultimately referring to his atoning sacrifice
2. Rabbi, ascribing to him the place of teaching and wisdom
3. Messiah (the Christ), acknowledging him as the answer to Israel's expectation
4. Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, which reminds us of his incarnate humanity
5. Son of God, referring to his deity
6. King, which is pretty self-explanatory
7. Son of Man, an earthy title which actually belies its prophetic and apocalyptic meaning, in v.51 connected to his exaltation

Seven titles, seven facets of Jesus' identity. Seven angles at his all-surpassing awesomeness.
In just 17 short verses, in just one short narrative recounting Jesus calling men into the radical life of following him, we see a big picture of all that Jesus is.

And it occurs to me that this is not just a great picture of this call to discipleship, but that it's a wonderful picture of our call to discipleship. We tag along and Jesus asks, "What do you want?" and so many of us answer with a piddlin' amount of expectation compared to the all-satisfying goodness he is actually drawing us into.

In our study last Monday night we talked about the mentors we chose when we first entered young adulthood, and what we would have said if they had asked us, "What do you want out of this relationship?" Our answers varied: guidance, information, affirmation of gifts, encouragement.

And we go to Jesus asking for those slices of wholeness, as well. We saw our needs expressed in these different titles -- he is the Rabbi for those needing wisdom, he is the Messiah for those needing fulfillment, he is the Lamb for those needing forgiveness -- but the truth is we need all that Christ is, and the truth is that in becoming his disciples we actually receive all that Christ is!

We settle too easily. As C.S. Lewis says, "We are far too easily pleased." We want and expect Jesus the information desk, Jesus the ATM, Jesus the boyfriend, Jesus the socially conscious vegetarian, Jesus the culture warrior, Jesus the chest-thumping ultimate fighter, Jesus the tea drinking beatnik, and he is none of that (but perhaps all of that). He is all of God, and he is all of life.

There are two instances of "evangelism" in this account, also. The Baptizer's disciples ask Jesus where he's staying and Jesus responds, "Come along and see what's happening." Philip doesn't just tell Nathanael about Jesus; he says to him, "Come and see."

Clearly it is one thing to impart information about the goodness of Jesus, but the real affect, the real impact upon those desperate for life, occurs when someone "sees" the fullness of Christ in action. If discipleship means embracing the fullness of Christ, the community of disciples should radiate the wonder and worship life in the fullness of Christ really evokes.

We worship an amazing God who supplies all our needs according to his riches in King Jesus.

I've begun writing twice-weekly articles at SearchWarp. These pieces will be exclusive to SearchWarp and (initially) all exploring the notion of the missional church, using Element as a "test case."

My first piece is up now, meager though it is:
The Meaning of Missional

If you're interested in what it can and will mean for Element to be a missional community, you're welcome to follow along. I'll be posting there every Tuesday and Thursday.

Thought I'd point out some places where Element and its "Bold As Love" Initiative have caught some attention.

Michael Spencer, the online provocateur known as The Internet Monk, talks us up pretty well at Jesus-Shaped Spirituality.

He also spends some time on us in the latest episode of his popular podcast (over 1,000 downloads in 24 hours!).

Bill Kinnon, media guru for the Allelon Missional Network, has some fun with our announcement.

Others are weighing in as well.

I'm so proud of you guys in the Element community. You are awesome, and you're even more awesome for truly wanting Bold As Love to be less about Element's renown and more about God's. It's a privilege to serve you.

Last night at our first annual Vision Night, we unveiled a risky new move for Element's next phase of missional ministry.

We are about to do something radical. Something virtually unheard of. As we have reflected on and prayed over what it means to be a countercultural community of Jesus-followers, we have decided that you can’t just preach revolution without acting revolutionary.

We have heard Jesus commanding us to love our neighbors as ourselves and we don’t want to assume this is either a suggestion or a sentiment.

Click "Read More" below . . .

July 13 (6:30 p.m.) Element will be meeting at Immanuel Church in Brentwood (at the intersection of Granny White Pike and Otter Creek Road) for our first ever Vision Night.

If the Element community is at all important to you, you won't wanna miss it. Some things we'll cover:

a. The story of Element
b. The mission and values of Element
c. The way Element's leadership and operations work
d. The financial status and operations of Element
e. The theology and methodology behind Element
f. Element's blueprint for the future

This will be a great time to come together and celebrate what Element has meant to each of us and learn together how we can participate in its future for the glory of God and the good of Nashville.

Also:
July 13 will be our last worship service for the summer. We will be breaking from the service until September 7.

PRAXIS will continue. Service projects will continue. Girls' Day will continue. Bros and Brews will continue. Social events and get-togethers will continue, including some on Sunday evenings. We're just taking a month and a half off from the worship service.

And when we relaunch, we'll be back with gospel guns blazing!

This is something that is important to the theology and methodology of Element, and we're going to be talking about it more in the coming weeks, especially at Vision Night (Element @ Immanuel, July 13).

In the meantime, Bill Kinnon's latest post on "What is missional?" is excellent.

"The long view." Yes.

Bill writes:

A missional understanding of the church places us within a historical context. It removes the ticket to heaven pressure that the Western Evangelical Church has placed upon itself. Missional people recognize that God is on the move in our villages, towns and cities. We need to engage with Him in what He's doing. Rather than building big box church warehouses that "vacuum cleaner up all the surrounding Christians" (to paraphrase Al Roxburgh @ the end of the video, Three Churches and a New Age Mall) and calling that the Church, we are to be the leaven that permeates our neighborhoods with the lived out good news of Jesus Christ.

This is not a two-year, three-year, five-year or even ten-year plan. This is a lifetime's engagement with the communities where we have been strategically placed by the hand of God. We may see a great awakening that happens in our very midst - or we may be like David Livingston and Hudson Taylor - who never got to see the incredible harvest that came from the seeds they planted. But our call is to be the hands, feet and voice of Jesus as we live amongst the people who are our neighbors. I believe that is what missional is.

Not an easy sell, is it?

Leaders, pastors, teachers: We must learn how to inspire and train the folks in our churches to think about church mission in terms of investment, cultivation, lifetime discipleship, long term covenanting with a community, etc. These difficult values are far more important to the biblical approach to "doing church" than any amount of programming or attractional goods and services.

What an awesome thing it is that the radical life of the kingdom of Jesus is countercultural even within American Church culture!
Daunting. But awesome.

We talked about spirits and spiritual warfare at Element last night, and the main takeaway I want everyone to have is this: God owns. He owns it all. He's over it all. Everything and everyone belongs to Him and falls under His sovereignty. This includes Satan and the demons. God can and will do whatever He wants with them, and since Genesis 3 we know their days are numbered.

The devil is not yang to God's yin. He cannot and will not thwart God's plans for this world or for you. So stand firm and walk in confidence.

Even the devil is the Lord's devil.
-- Martin Luther

Last night at the Element worship service we continued in our Coffee Shop Theology series, answering the submitted question, "How do I know God's will for my life?"

I proposed that the answer is not quite as complex as we make it out to be but still as difficult as we feared.

Assuming that we are praying for God's guidance in making decisions, and assuming He has not given us a clear answer, I offered a checklist for making decisions:

1. Is an option a sin?
2. Is an option unwise or conducive to sin?
3. Has God clearly told me not to choose a particular option? (If you're not sure, then He hasn't.)
4. If your answers are "no" to all three, do what you want.

It's that simple. And yet it's that difficult, because it requires that we trust God as we walk into the unknown and the potentially unsafe.
We have this mixed up notion that if we make a choice and it blows up in our face, then it must not have been God's will. Where we get the idea that God never wants us to endure hardship or pain I don't know, but it has seriously messed with our concept of faith.

Here's what I laid out for our folks as God's will for their lives:

1. It is God's Will For You to be Holy
2. It is God's Will For You to be Wise
3. It is God's Will For You to be Faithful
4. It is God's Will For You to be Satisfied