Archive for the ‘church in a nightclub’ Category
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
This Sunday we announced that “Love God. Love People. Take action.” would be our new creed/motto/tag line for actionchurch. Obviously, the “Love God. People.” part comes from these verses that we talked about every Sunday in the month of February.
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37
So where did the “Take action.” part come from? Is it just a clever tie-in to our church name? Not exactly. The name “actionchurch” started out as a joke…a reference to a heated rant about church that I once delivered to my wife after a particularly frustrating elders meeting. Long before I even considered starting a church or being a pastor, I said “if I ever ran a church it would be called action church, and we would actually DO THINGS instead of just having meetings about them.” My wife reminded me of those words when we were thinking about what to call our new church start up. Be careful what you say in anger, because to this day whenever I am tempted to just “talk” about what the Bible says instead of doing something, the word actionchurch reminds me of my words. 
More importantly though, Jesus taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that being religious, knowing the scriptures, even being a religious leader like the priest and the temple assistant is NOT ENOUGH to fulfill Gods commands to “love God with all your heart-and your neighbor as yourself.” The only person in the parable who actually pleased God was the hated Samaritan. He was the one who took action…the one who stopped to help the injured man…the one who took it upon himself to insert himself into a “messy” situation.
If we Love God and Love people…Jesus taught that the only way to PROVE IT is by taking action.
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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Sunday I announced that our new “tag line” for actionchurch was changing from “church for people who don’t like church” to “Love God. Love People. Take action.”. All future advertising, invitation cards, wearables, etc will be tagged with the new line.
How it all started: Two years ago when actionchurch launched at Fat Daddys Nightclub, I struggled to find ways to describe what our little “church in a bar/nightclub” would be like. Some of our early taglines were original (re-think happy hour, No cover charge-no dress code-no joke,) and were funny and/or lame attempts to describe what was going to happen at Fat Daddys on Sunday morning. “Church for people who do not like church” was not original (numerous other churches have used it) and not part of our initial launch. After moving from Fat Daddys to Club 19 in October 2008 we begin to us the “church for people…” tag line exclusively because none of our “bar-related” tag lines seemed relevant to our currently non-alcoholic venue.
Why make the change?: Several months ago our creative team (currently Jerry, Josiah, and myself) met to talk about how we could let more people know that a place like actionchurch exists here in York, PA. Since then we have been working on finding new ways to “explain” and remind people both inside and outside of actionchurch why we exist. Being a “church for people who don’t like church” may describe some elements of our Sunday morning “style/flavor” but it simply does not describe who we are as a church. We needed a new descriptive tag line.
Is this a new direction?: Nope. actionchurch began because we Love God, Love people, and took action when we realized that there was not a place where some of our friends would be accepted, loved, and pointed to Jesus in our area. Because a place like actionchurch didn’t exist we took action. It’s why our great volunteer crew work so hard to prepare for Sunday mornings. Because we Love God and Love People we take action when students in our schools need coats, a family needs a fresh start, people suffering with cancer need our help, etc. etc. Loving God, Loving People, and taking action are in our DNA, in our history, in our name…and in our future. I can’t think of a better way to discribe what we do, who we are, and where we want to “go” as a church!
Tommorow: The ”scoop” about how the name actionchurch came to be.
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Monday, February 1st, 2010
So a preacher and a metal band walk into a nightclub…ok it’s not a dumb joke…thats pretty much every Sunday at actionchurch. This Sunday Pastor Dave Kerrison was with us to talk about “Taking the next step”. WHERE EVER you are at in your “walk” of faith. Whether you are just starting to take first steps…even if you’ve been a follower of Jesus for years…where ever you are…we all need to take the NEXT step. Dave laid out that the next step is different for all of us…but we can all get directions for that next step from the same place- the Bible.
Meanwhile, ionia was tearing up the actionchurch stage all the way from New York City. I am really so thankful that this VERY talented band wanted to spend 8+ hours in a van just to rock us with 5 songs early on a Sunday Morning. I think these guys will go FAR with their sound and work ethic. The guys will be on the warped tour this summer and will be stopping back by actionchurch at some point in their travels. I’ve got some ionia tunes on my hard drive now.
I’m not sure if Josiah and I fully prepared Pastor Dave for what a morning at actionchurch is like…we tried…It’s just something that needs to be experienced. It was fun to hear Josiah on the mic with his former youth pastor…although he was much “gentler” with Dave than the regular guy
On a personal note, this was my first Sunday “attending” actionchurch and it was SUCH a great week for me. Our family has traveled out of town a few times over the last two years…but until now I’ve never been able to have someone else preach and get to just sit in the crowd on a Sunday morning.
THANKS for putting up with my fidgeting and not being able to sit still for an hour (Dr. Eric was watching and laughing at me during the sermon).
SORRY, to whoever the lady was in the table in front of me whose chair I kept accidentally kicking (I’m a spaz).
Most of all, though I am looking forward to being back behind the mic next Sunday, but I really appreciate some down time to rest and “refill”. I really need to do that a lot more.
You do NOT want to miss a single Sunday between now and Easter. Jerry has some amazing bands booked, and we will be “turning up the heat” on the entire actionchurch experience. As I shared with the crew before the service Sunday in a little state of the union address…I believe we are entering a very exciting season at actionchurch.
Speaking of Crew…here’s a picture of what club 19 would look like when you show up on Sunday mornings without the great actionchurch crew. Thanks to all of you for making it happen each week!
Thanks to Garret Snyder for all photos. See more here.
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