Tailgating this Saturday

Marshall Football Tailgate
Come on out
Saturday, September 5th @ 2:30
at Tic Toc Tire.

Bring food and drinks to enjoy and share as we celebrate the start
of a new Marshall football season, the new Crossing time,
and another exciting fall at FPC.
Everyone’s welcome!

Why Move to Saturday Night?

It’s a good question. Going to worship on Saturday night is a pretty different idea for most of us. It’s kind of a big change for The Crossing— a change that The Crossing task force spent a lot of time researching, considering, and praying about before making a decision this summer. I want to share with you the reasons and hopes behind our move to Saturday nights.

1. Outreach Potential There isn’t another weekly Saturday night service in the Huntington area, yet in many other cities, it has proven to be a popular worship time for churches. We think (and hope) there might be a number of people in our community who would be interested in this non-traditional worship time. The Crossing has always been a different sort of worship service for people who might be looking for something different. 5:30 on Saturdays is different. Because of that we hope to reach out to new people. (And, by the way, we’d love for you to join us in reaching out. Who will you invite to worship with you? Who do you know that might be looking for a place to worship?)
2. It’s a Good Time to Go Out Saturday nights is the time when most people like to go out. Why not go to church and meet up with other friends for the night? 5:30 is early enough that you can come to worship before whatever else you have planned for the evening. Many people tell me that on Sunday nights they just don’t feel like going out of the house. Saturday night has a different feel to it. Because of this, we can see the potential for friends to meet for church then spend the evening together, or for small groups to meet for worship then stick together for fellowship or Bible study afterwards. It’s not a school night for families, students can still procrastinate by pushing their studying to Sunday night, and since you’ll have already been to church, you can stay out as long as you like and sleep in the next morning.
3. It’s a Fresh Start The Crossing Task force, as part of their work together, reaffirmed the core values of The Crossing worship service: That it be a place where people can hear and experience grace, that the worship would be engaging, modern, and multisensory with uplifting music and a challenging message, and that the environment would be informal and welcoming, connecting people to the broader ministry and mission of FPC. We love The Crossing worship service and community, but felt like it could use some more energy and excitement behind it—the kind that comes with doing something completely new and different.
4. “Why would I think it’s a good idea?” That’s the question one of our task force members raised in a meeting. She was expressing the fact that moving The Crossing to Saturday nights wasn’t, on the surface, anything she thought would appeal to her—she was happy coming on Sunday nights, it’s what she’s used to, she usually does other things on Saturdays, it seems like a kind of risky and weird switch to make. And yet she, along with other members of the task force, was experiencing what we could only describe as “God-tugs” - that odd excited feeling that maybe this was a different, risky, somewhat weird idea that God just might be behind.
   

I remember saying in a sermon a few weeks ago (sometimes my words come back to haunt me), “The danger in daring to discern where God might be calling you is that you never know where you might end up.” We’ve felt God calling us to Saturday nights at 5:30. We hope you’ll end up there too—beginning September 12th.

New Life

I saw this violet the other day. It wasn't looking too hot. Turns out little violet plants don't like twenty degree window sills. No flowers on this one. That's the first thing to go when you enter survival mode, I guess, the part that looks and smells good. (On a side note, I can see a parallel to new mother-hood here. A friend of mine with a one month old reports that she judges the success of her day by whether she's managed to shower or not.)

So, this violet has no violet. But it does have leaves, those velvety ones. and violets kind of grow their leaves in concentric circles. The outer three circles of leaves are white. (This is not normal). As you get closer to the center of the plant, the leaves have a very slight yellow-green tint. But the three little leaves coming right up out of the center are new, and they're green. Real green.

Poor little violet might be barely hanging on, but there's new life there.



I can't wait to watch it bloom.

A New Thing

I find it easy to say, with complete confidence, that God is indeed doing a new thing. That's just how God is (we can see it all over the Bible); he's always doing a new thing - creating, redeeming, restoring, re-ordering.
It gets a little harder, though, when I try to pinpoint exactly what new thing God might be doing in my life, in my world. Joshua has one of those photomosiac jigsaw puzzles, a bunch of tiny pictures of Abraham Lincoln on the individual pieces form one large picture of Abe. Now, I'm not any good at puzzles when they're simple, but this one even frustrated my semi-idiot-savant puzzle-doing husband. It's harder to see how the bigger picture all fits together when I'm so consumed with the tiny pictures right in front of me.
How do you discern what God is doing in/through/with (or without) you?

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm really wondering.

Spies Like Us

Who doesn't love a little intrigue? A good spy thriller? And, of course, no story of espionage would be complete without the woman - dangerous, mysterious, beautiful.
Come meet Rahab. Bond girl of the OT.
Well, sort of. Check out Joshua 2 and 6.

Old Testament Women

Come get to know them:

Eve, Sarah, Lot's Wife, Rahab, Jael, and Hannah

Monogamy = Boring

As a segue between a segment on whether there is such a thing as a "monogamy gene" and a review of a tv series called The Shield, the NPR radio host said, "There's not much monogamy, or anything else boring, in the television series..."
Now, I'm sure it's not the easiest segue to make, but I'm a little put out at the all-but-assertion that staying faithful in a relationship is boring. Tedious. Lack-luster. Certainly not something to be desired. Or admired.
And we wonder (or maybe we don't) why marriages, families, lives fall apart.

On something of the same topic, I'm currently narrowing down the list of ladies I'll use for the upcoming Crossing worship series: "Lessons from the Ladies of the OT" (OT is seminary-speak for Old Testament), and I find myself weeding certain ladies out... "naw, she was too good - boring," or "She wouldn't be very interesting to study; she did everything she was supposed to." And I seem to lean toward the flashier figures... "Jael put a tent stake through a guy's brain - now that's good material," or "She was a prostitute... that's something I can work with."
I'm not saying monogamy's boring. At least that's not what I'm trying to say. Maybe it just seems easier to learn from the ladies' mistakes than it does to despair over the possibility of living up to virtuous examples. I'm also hoping we might hear in a new way some of the stories we don't hear too often.

If you want to nominate an OT lady, monogamous or scandalous, you better act fast.

And by the way... turns out there isn't a "monogamous gene" that definitely predicts behavior, so no need to sign your fiance up for genetic testing quite yet....