NEWS & EVENTS

MON 5/4		Men’s prayer | 6:17AM
WED 5/6		Gateway | 7PM
SUN 5/10		Mother’s Day Baby Dedications
MON 5/11		The Well | 5:30PM
5/15-17		All Campus Advance

Suncadia All Campus Advance

May 15th-17th we are going to “Suncadia” for an All Campus Advance. This is one of the premiere places to stay in Washington and we are getting a screaming 2-night deal. The purpose of this is to pull everyone together as a family, have fun, learn, grow closer to Jesus and closer to each other, and grow in our sense of mission and vision as disciples of Jesus in Downtown Seattle. We want you all to be there so save it on your calendar. Event check-in and room key card pick-up is from 4pm-7pm on Friday. Meals: Friday night dinner on your own Saturday breakfast and lunch provided Saturday dinner on your own Sunday breakfast provided Register now. $125 singles, $175 couples, $205 families. You don’t want to miss this amazing opportunity!

Mothers Day Baby Dedications | May 10th

At Mars Hill Church we don’t baptize babies, but we do celebrate their birth with their parents by allowing parents to bring their little ones up on stage to introduce them to the church. Each family introduces themselves and reads a scripture that the Lord has given them to be a prayer of blessing, or vision for God’s future work in the life of their child. We pray with them as they dedicate their children to the Lord and dedicate themselves to raising their children according to God’s word. If you would like to dedicate your baby this Mother’s Day please register by clicking here.

The Well

The Well is a series of events aimed to connect, encourage, and mentor women in the downtown business world. The Well meets every 2nd Monday of the month at the Downtown Campus at 530PM.

Neighborhood Events

Whether you are new or seasoned Mars Hill attendee, plan to regularly stop in and say hello

The Community Groups of Mars Hill Church Downtown cordially invite you to regularly attend a weekly Neighborhood Happy Hour near you!

Click here for more information, meeting times, locations, and directions.

Neighborhood Happy Hours are:

• …now the primary location of plugging into Community at Mars Hill Church Downtown Seattle, second only to the Wednesday Gateway event when it’s running.
• …a great opportunity for you to actually invite your friends and neighbors
• …the place to meet and catch up with Community Group leaders and folks who live in your neighborhood.
• …the way to grow your community groups a bit more organically. You should practice making connections with new people and invite them to your group and/or group events.
• …the place to bring others from your Community Group (if you attend one) so they can actually meet (perhaps for the first time) those who you are on mission with for Jesus in your neighborhood!

Gateway

If you are new here or have been around but haven’t gotten connected, join us at Gateway. This is the easiest way to get connected to life at Mars Hill. Come on down Wednesdays from 7-8:30PM at the Downtown Campus. At Gateway you will be able to connect with other new people, have your questions answered, hear teachings by Pastor Tim and other leaders, and find out what Mars Hill is all about. The first event is April 22nd and happens thereafter weekly until May 27th. Email downtown@marshillchurch.org or register on The City to let us know that you are coming.

Featured Articles

Blogs On The Website:

Vlog of the Week, The World Matters
Storyville Coffee Frees Slaves

Mars Hill Church Downtown lives for Jesus as a city within the city of Seattle: knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus. For more information, visit us HERE. For information on community groups and other ministries go HERE. For general questions, you may email us at downtown@marshillchurch.org.

NEWS & EVENTS

MON 4/6		Men’s prayer | 6:17
FRI 4/10		Good Friday Service | 7PM
SUN 4/12		Easter Sunday and Baptisms | 9am | 11:15am | 6pm
5/15/ – 5/17		All Campus Advance
5/2		Belltown Green and Clean | 10AM

Belltown Green and Clean

Come serve the city and participate in one of Mars Hill Downtown’s biggest events of the year. On May 2nd, Downtown will be partnering with City of Seattle, Paint Out and The Belltown Business Association to clean up the Belltown neighborhood. This will be a fun and exciting way to spend a few hours serving your community while meeting your neighbors and building connections at the same time. Last year’s Green and Clean was memorable and produced several opportunities for Downtown to be more involved in the city. The event will take place from 10AM-1PM and lunch will be provided. We will need 25 volunteers to be Wagon Leaders. If you are interested in that, then email downtown@marshillchurch.org. Tell your friends and please RSVP on The City or by emailing downtown@marshillchurch.org so we know how much food to provide!

Suncadia All Campus Advance

May 15th-17th we are going to “Suncadia” for an All Campus Advance. This is one of the premiere places to stay in Washington and we are getting a screaming 2-night deal. The purpose of this is to pull everyone together as a family, have fun, learn, grow closer to Jesus and closer to each other, and grow in our sense of mission and vision as disciples of Jesus in Downtown Seattle. We want you all to be there so save it on your calendar. Event check-in and room key card pick-up is from 4pm-7pm on Friday. Meals: Friday night dinner on your own Saturday breakfast and lunch provided Saturday dinner on your own Sunday breakfast provided Register now. Early bird registration (before 4/30) $100 singles, $150 couples, $180 families. $25 will be added to each cost after 4/30. You don’t want to miss this amazing opportunity!

Good Friday

On Good Friday we celebrate the brutal murder of a good man, the God man, Jesus Christ. For us at Mars Hill this is a somber occasion, its a moment when we reflect on how deep our sin goes and how much God does truly love us to the point of death on a cross. Join us Downtown at 7PM for the Good Friday service followed by a screening of The Passion. For more information click here. Childcare will be provided.

Easter Sunday with Baptisms

The Downtown campus is celebrating Jesus’ resurrection and defeat of Satan, sin, and death during three services: 9AM, 11:15AM, and 6PM. To celebrate, we’ll have baptisms at every service. If you’re interested in being baptized, please fill out the baptism interview form by clicking here. For more information about the Easter service click here.

Neighborhood Events

Whether you are new or seasoned Mars Hill attendee, plan to regularly stop in and say hello

The Community Groups of Mars Hill Church Downtown cordially invite you to regularly attend a weekly Neighborhood Happy Hour near you!

Click here for more information, meeting times, locations, and directions.

Neighborhood Happy Hours are:

• …now the primary location of plugging into Community at Mars Hill Church Downtown Seattle, second only to the Wednesday Gateway event when it’s running.
• …a great opportunity for you to actually invite your friends and neighbors
• …the place to meet and catch up with Community Group leaders and folks who live in your neighborhood.
• …the way to grow your community groups a bit more organically. You should practice making connections with new people and invite them to your group and/or group events.
• …the place to bring others from your Community Group (if you attend one) so they can actually meet (perhaps for the first time) those who you are on mission with for Jesus in your neighborhood!

This Spring

Gateway:
If you are new here or have been around but haven’t gotten connected, join us at Gateway. This is the easiest way to get connected to life at Mars Hill. Come on down Wednesdays from 7-8:30PM at the Downtown Campus. This is an easy way to step into life at Mars Hill. At Gateway you will be able to connect with other new people, get your questions answered, hear teachings by Pastor Tim and meet other leaders, and find out what Mars Hill is all about. The first event is April 22nd. E-mail downtown@marshillchurch.org to let us know you are coming.

What followers expect from their leaders:

Things you need to know as you lead others. All community group leaders current and future are encouraged to attend, as well as anyone else interested in the topic.

This series of classes will be for current or aspiring leaders who want to find out exactly what their followers expect from them. This class will be led by Pastor Dave Kraft. It begins Sunday, April 26th at 4PM and will go until 5:30PM. Class will continue every Sunday until June 7th. E-mail dave@marshillchurch.org to register

Biblical Marriage:
The eight-week Biblical Marriage Class is intended to create a vision for married couples to see their marriage as profound—something created by God as a means to reflect the covenantal love of Jesus and establish a legacy and heritage steeped in the truth and redemptive message of the Gospel. This class is for those dating and thinking of marriage, engaged couples who need to enter pre-marital counseling and any married couple who seeks solid biblical marriage teaching. The class will meet on Sundays beginning April 19th from 1:30PM to 3PM. and will last for eight weeks ending on Sunday, June 7th.E-mail trina.fowl@marshillchurch.org to register

Redemption Groups:
Redemption Groups will kick off this Spring with a weekend intensive on April 17th and 18th continuing through June 17th on Wednesday nights at 6:30PM. For those beset by sin or suffering, these groups offer a season of intently applying the gospel to our deepest wounds and compulsions. Email dtredemption@marshillchurch.org to register. Registration deadline is April 5th.

Biblical Mercy Course
What are the thoughts that run through your mind when a homeless person on the streets asks you for money? Come learn how Christ is our one true motivation for living lives of compassion and the practical implementation of that lifestyle. This will be a seven week long course covering topics such as the call to mercy, the motivation of mercy, the lifestyle of mercy, and much more. The first class starts Monday, April 27th at 7PM. To register, email wesley@marshillchurch.org.

Featured Articles

Blogs On The Website:

Vlog of the Week

Mars Hill Church Downtown lives for Jesus as a city within the city of Seattle: knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus. For more information, visit us HERE. For information on community groups and other ministries go HERE. For general questions, you may email us at downtown@marshillchurch.org.

As you may be aware, Monday night marked the season finale of The Bachelor, ABC’s dramatic romantic “reality” show. Sparing you a recap, Monday’s finale and After the Rose ceremony was brutal.

This season was my first full introduction to the show, and I had the added experience of watching the show with several close buds who are also friends of Jason Mesnick (aka. the Bachelor).

Sitting next to them, watching dramatically edited video footage of broken-hearted Melissa fighting back tears and anger aimed at her ex-fiance moments after being dumped on national television, I couldn’t get over the mix of feeling both undeniably intrigued and grieved for the people involved. I hurt for Jason, who according to people who know him, is a genuinely quality guy, but who came off seeming like a complete jerk as he “followed his heart.” I hurt for each of the women on the show as they put their hope (perhaps foolishly) into a dream and entrusted it to a flawed person (however quality he may be). It also surprised me how much I hurt to realize what the popularity of this show (myself contributing) reveals about our culture and values. According to a recent New York Times article, “with more than 11 million viewers a week, [The Bachelor] is reaching its biggest audience in five years.”

One overarching theme kept coming to mind, though I realize there are many more layers we could glean from the Bachelor phenomenon.

• We are perpetual worshipers and tend to destroy our objects of worship when they disappoint us.

I made the mistake of wandering into a forum that had erupted since Monday and cringed at the fury of heated comments. Bloggers and forum junkies had fully utilized the top row of their keyboard to describe Jason. There was genuine passion, anger, and disappointment in the comment sections of many articles written this week.

• Jesus is the answer to our search for unconditional love and the only one who can handle our hope and deserves our worship.

Okay, that’s two points, but they are interconnected in one theme. Three questions I am wrestling with this week and hope will challenge you as well:

1. How does entertainment bleed into our call to be missional, contextual neighbors?

2. If our intended response to culture is to receive, reject, and redeem, how does that play out practically?

3. What does this show and others like it reveal about the needs of the culture we live and minister in?

Besides, of course, that we all desperately need Jesus.

I am so far from having a Godly response to culture, but my hope and prayer is that Jesus will continue to break our hearts as we see misplaced hope and that we will respond as Paul did in Athens at the original Mars Hill:

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. Acts 17:23

A few days ago I peeked down the back of my infant daughter’s diaper, checking for any signs of filth. Satisfied that I wouldn’t need to change her any time soon, I snapped the diaper back in place. But as I did this, one finger emerged with a small ball of poop sitting atop the finger nail, and I’m pretty sure it was laughing at me.

As a mom of two, I have a fairly high gross-out threshold, but I carried on anyway. My older daughter, almost three, insisted on seeing it, though I did draw the line at smelling it. My finger got cleaned, the diaper got changed, end of episode.

Normally, I wouldn’t reserve such a vignette for polite company, but the point is this: my whole day is filled with little stories like the above, most of which would drive anyone listening to glassy-eyed boredom after about five minutes. And you don’t have to be a mama to concur that most of the daily stuff of life is, well, just not that sexy. We get up, shower, root out ear wax, do seemingly endless laundry loads, fax, file, walk the dog…

Here’s the exciting part. Mothering is a call on my life. And of course I love my girls and want to care for them. But ultimately, these tasks become worship because I love Jesus and want to honor him by loving and serving my family. I haven’t always done such a bang-up job in this realm. When I first married I refused to make lunches for my husband. When my first daughter was born, my heart attitude was very often “I have to do WHAT?!!” Over and over I’ve had to acknowledge, confess, and repent of my hatred of being inconvenienced. And now, through the refining that is both tender and fierce, I am beginning to make Jesus’s joy my joy. Praise Him.

Mars Hill Church Downtown lives for Jesus as a city within the city of Seattle: knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus. For more information, visit us HERE. For information on community groups and other ministries go HERE. For general questions, you may email us at downtown@marshillchurch.org.

Nine months ago, my husband and I pledged to share our lives, our hearts, and our bed (no I Love Lucy twin beds allowed). Slipped into the invisible fine print at the bottom of the document was an unspoken agreement to share dinner entrees too.

Seattle is filled to the rafters with great restaurants, in case any of you are unaware or moved here yesterday. My husband and I have similar taste, so most of the time, splitting meals means we get to explore more flavors, discover more favorites, and be more daring. It was the definition of a win-win. This happy arrangement broke down a few months into our marriage when we chose to do date night at one of our favorite Thai restaurants, however. Let me explain.

We love Thai food. Perry grew up in Texas, where I swear they mix Tabasco sauce in the baby food. In Thai language, he loves stars, lots of them. I am a lame two-and-a-half star on an extremely good day with a conservative chef. We order my way, and he refuses to call it Thai. We order his way, and I look like Old Yeller just died. We are also both firstborns, so this presented a bit of a problem and a small trial of sorts. Why not just each get our own meals? Because. That’s not the issue.

After several unsuccessful attempts to solve our little conflict, and a few prayers for patience, we mentioned it to a wise and neutral third party. They pondered it, nodded thoughtfully and suggested the spice rack. What is a spice rack, you may ask? It’s an invention designed to bring harmony and unity to the table. You order a dish with only a few stars (think mild), mention the code (spice rack) and then a gracious server brings out this little tray with different spices of varying heat with your meal so the partner with the tolerant palette can doctor up his portion to his heart’s desire. Brilliant! We tested it at Orrapin Thai on Queen Anne, a current favorite, and it became an example of love working itself out in the practical.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.

-Ephesians 5:28-29

On the grand scale of “trials” our dinner dilemma may seem ridiculously miniature, but in a small way, it communicated the intimacy Christ desires to have in the details of our lives. Even in the small trials we face on a daily basis, Jesus walks beside us. Pastor Mark preached a sermon that touched on this point this past Sunday on 1st Peter 1:3-9. For those of you who missed it, I recommend catching up.

The past nine months have brought several little trials and a few larger ones as Jesus teaches us how to love each other more than we love ourselves and rank each other’s needs at a higher priority than our own, even when love means sharing our Panang Curry.

Mars Hill Church Downtown lives for Jesus as a city within the city of Seattle: knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus. For more information, visit us HERE. For information on community groups and other ministries go HERE. For general questions, you may email us at downtown@marshillchurch.org.

Later in life Jesus opened my heart and I realized there is no good in me and it is only by God’s grace that I am saved. I fall short in every way and the only righteousness I have is Jesus’ righteousness. Without the grace and compassion that Jesus poured out on me, I would be in the same place as the unbeliever. I went from judging and looking down on non-Christians to having a heart of compassion. All of these years I had wasted, I knew the mission but never owned it with compassion and grace.

Years later I was placed in a specific job and really began to get it. I worked with 65 women, yes all women, there were frequent tears in the office, bad breakups, troubled family relationships, and tons of talking as you can imagine. I wrapped my mind around living for Christ and sharing the Gospel in word and deed. I spoke openly about Jesus in my life rather than my “good works”. The unbelievers around me actually wanted to share their struggles, pain, and tough situations with me. They wanted to hang out and spend time with me, which was quite a shift than my relationships growing up.

It all started with one gal, one breakup, and one office conversation where the word God popped up. This gal mentioned that she wanted to have the peace and hope that she knew only God could give. She had experienced church in her high school years but hadn’t thought about it since. I invited her to Mars Hill and over the course of the next 6 months she had her live- in boyfriend, her sister, and her boyfriends brother all coming with her. I still talk with this gal about Jesus and she asks great questions, she hasn’t fully given her life over to Christ but I know she is close and the Lord is at work in her heart.

I still meet regularly with another gal from the office who is a die-hard atheist and through our conversations it has been incredible to see her heart become more open to Jesus, each time we meet she schedules the next lunch or coffee date. Since leaving my job I still get emails asking for prayer in difficult situations that old co-workers are going through.

It is amazing to know the freedom and joy in Christ. I am no longer in bondage to good works, self-righteousness, and judgmental thoughts. I have been given a new heart, a new mind and a new life and I am excited to share this life saving gift with others. Let’s make a commitment this year as the women of Mars Hill to be intentional with unbelievers and see many women come to Christ and live for Jesus in our city.

Mars Hill Church Downtown lives for Jesus as a city within the city of Seattle: knowing culture, loving people, and seeing lives transformed to live for Jesus. For more information, visit us HERE. For information on community groups and other ministries go HERE. For general questions, you may email us at downtown@marshillchurch.org.