A Thank You to The Ridge from the Fountain City Ministry Center!

Hey, everybody! I had a great time serving with you this Saturday morning at the Fountain City Ministry Center. I'm excited about everyone who came and lived out our core value of Serving Others! I'm proud (the good kind) of all of you who shared your time to help the less fortunate in the name of Christ.

Here's the highlights of a nice email I got from Becky Warwick, the Chairperson of the Board of the ministry center

"Dear Kevin: What a great day we had Saturday! You've got some wonderful church members. I look forward to getting to know them better in the future. I just thought Saturday went wonderfully well... I hope it was a good experience for your family and members.

From all of us, thank you for all the laundry detergent and diapers that you brought AND for all the volunteer hours given. The detergent will be given out this week and the clients will be thrilled to receive it... Your group is to be commended! I can't say enough good things about your members. What a great day we had serving the Lord together.

...Sure do appreciate you and our new friendship! Look forward to working together in the future!

Becky"

Great job giving of yourselves, everyone. Here's some pics of the day for you to enjoy. See you this Sunday for our worship gathering!

MInistry Center Service Project and Sunday Gathering!

Hey! Just a a couple reminders!

First, I hope to see you all tomorrow morning at the Fountain City Ministry Center for our Ridge Church service project there!

We're meeting at the Ministry Center, in the back of Central Baptist Church of Fountain City, at 10 am. We'll serve until lunchtime, and then eat lunch together in Fountain City Park (as long as the weather is OK.) If we meet in the park, everyone can bring their own food and then we'll camp out in a pavilion. You can check out a map to the Ministry Center here.

Feel free to bring your kids, but make sure that you are ready to keep an eye on them, as there is no child care. Also, please bring along some diapers and/or powdered laundry detergent. We're going to give a gift of diapers to the ministry center for their patrons, and also divide up laundry detergent into sandwich bags so it can be distributed to those who visit the center. Whatever else they have for us to do, we'll pitch in there as well.

The Ministry Center does some great work helping our neighbors in Jesus' name, and we're glad to be able to partner with them. It's important that we, as Christ-followers, care for those who are less fortunate or going through tough times. Jesus had alot to say about how we treat the poor and needy in our world, and we do too! One of our core values is Serving Others, and we take it seriously. (But, serving can be fun, too!)

The second reminder: We're having our Ridge Church worship gathering on Sunday! I know it's just been a week since we met, and we've been meeting every two weeks. But, we've got some important things to talk about regarding our Core Values and how they apply to all of us, some future things going on in the Spring and Summer, and also information about how you can become more involved in living out the love of Jesus in our community.

I won't be continuing my preaching on Colossians this week, but sharing some information and challenges for our people. Also, our Children's Ministry will not meet. We want our kids' volunteers to participate in this time with our entire group.

See you tomorrow and Sunday on this big weekend!

Special Guest This Sunday and St. Patrick

Hey, everyone! Just wanted to remind you of a couple things heading into the weekend.

First, we are meeting this Sunday at 10 a.m. at our new location! Join us at the Conference Center at Smithwood Corner at 4901 Jacksboro Pike in Fountain City. It's actually just across Sanders Road from our previous location, Marli's Restaurant.

Our special guest this Sunday is a fellow Acts29 planter. We support him financially as part of our commitment to New Churches (we give 10% of our offerings to church plants). Our special guest sets a great example for us in our town as he serves as a missionary in the culture in Western North Carolina. He'll be sharing some ways that God is working and we can pray more specifically for him, his family, and his church.

Bring a friend or two to connect with God and us and see what He's up to in our midst! Feel free also to join us for lunch... Those who have the time always head someplace together!

Also, here's a little something that goes off the Ridge Church blog into the mind of a guy I really respect, Mark Driscoll. He's the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and the co-founder of Acts29. In honor of the recent celebration about an Irish dude and the color green, here's Mark's cool blog post about St. Patrick. That dude had it right, we'd do well to imitate his commitment and creativity in sharing the Gospel over 1,000 years after he died... Enjoy!

A Full Week!

Wow, what a busy week. I'm beginning to learn just how crazy life can be when you have just one kid, and two part-time jobs, and a spouse! I really feel for those of you out there who have 3+ kids and a job and still have your wits about you... Props to you if you're that person! I can only hope that I learn to manage my life a little better each day with God's help... Emily and I would like to have another child someday, Chloe isn't even old enough to crawl and get into stuff yet, and we're already feeling a little wave-tossed!

I want to keep you all updated on some things going on with us and Ridge Church... Here's a list of some things that went down lately.

• Sunday, we had a great final worship gathering at Marli's restaurant! We have been given a multimedia projector by a generous local church, Knox Life, and we used it in our gathering for the second time on Sunday. I really enjoy teaching God's Word using PowerPoint, and I think we all find it easier to have musical worship with the words on a screen instead of on a sheet of paper. For those who like paper, we still have a "handout" that has our weekly Psalms chapter that we're reading together, some announcements, and an area for you to take notes!

• Two weeks ago, Emily and I met with Becky Warwick with the Fountain City Ministry Center. She's a really cool lady and loves the people of Fountain City! She and I have been trying to get together and chat about ministry since just before Chloe was born (it took about 4 months!). Emily and I finally got to visit the ministry center, and we saw that they are doing some great stuff in Jesus' name for the less fortunate and down on their luck folks in our community. We are looking forward to serving with the Ministry Center (it matches our value of Serving Others). Come join us there on Saturday, March 28 at 10 a.m.! Mark your calendar now and look for specifics about what we'll be doing and some things that you can bring with you soon.

• Many of you have been keeping up with Chloe's several infections and issues... A week or so ago, she had her second trip to Children's Hospital for a test on her bladder and kidneys. It was not fun! They strapped her down to a board to take X-rays of her after filling her bladder full of liquid. She made it, though, and after a visit to the urologist last week, she is over the infection she had and the doctor gave us a good report! Last night, Emily took Chloe to the UT Hospital after-hours kids' clinic and she got a new diagnosis: her first ear infection. Nothing that more meds can't solve! Thanks for praying for Chloe with us through all of her many, fortunately minor, health issues.

• I still work my part-time job at the HoneyBaked Ham Store, which is a blessing in this economy. It's hard work sometimes, but I'm making some good friends and meeting alot of people. Stop by and see me sometime at the store in front of Kohl's at Knoxville Center!

Enjoy your weekend, and since this is an "off Sunday" for us at the Ridge, why not visit another place to worship and see how other churches' Sunday mornings go? Feel free to bring ideas back and email them to me!

See you next Sunday the 22nd at our new meeting location, and on Saturday the 28th at the Fountain City Ministry Center!

Marli's, Becca, and My Friend Jason

Most of you probably have heard by now that Marli's Restaurant, where Ridge Church meets for our Sunday morning gatherings, is closing.  It's been difficult for many restaurants to stay afloat in our current economy as people stop eating out as much and stay home to save money.

In these times, it only takes one problem to be "the straw that breaks the camel's back."  For Marli's, it was a plumbing problem.  A plumbing issue forced them to close down temporarily; now the cost to repair the issue and to restock the food that Marli's was unable to prepare and sell is going to keep the restaurant from reopening.

So, we are losing a great place to eat in Fountain City...  But, God has provided for The Ridge's long-term and short-term future.  Leo Cooper, who runs Marli's, is going to allow us to continue to meet in his restuarant until he leases it out.  This is very generous!  Please pray for Leo and his family, as well as the Marli's employees who are now unemployed.  Like many people out there, the recession is changing their lives in some difficult ways.

Joe McTeer, who runs Frontier Pest Control on the second floor of the building across the street from Marli's, also rents the Conference Center located on the first floor of that building.  Not too long ago, we asked him about using his space as a meeting location for our adults, while our children's ministry would continue to use Marli's. The idea was to expand to two buildings as we grow numerically and prepare for weekly Sunday morning gatherings.  We would also increase our parking exponentially.

Joe, who is a Christ-follower and goes to Corryton Church (in Corryton!), quickly and graciously offered to let us use his facility on Sunday mornings!  That means that we will be moving there for our Ridge Church worship gathering on March 22.  We will still be at Marli's this Sunday, March 8...  So, come on out this weekend! (Make sure to set your clock FORWARD an hour Saturday night!)  We will discuss our "move" a little more on Sunday.

Please pray for our Children's Ministry Intern, Becca Thiele.  Her pickup "died" the other day, and she is without a way to drive to The Ridge on Sundays from Johnson Bible College.  That stinks!  Please pray for transportation to happen soon for her.  She loves Jesus and our children and really wants to serve on Sundays!  If you can help, let me know!

Please pray also for my friend and fellow Acts29 church planter Jason Martin of Journey Church in Austell, GA, west of Atlanta.  He has a passel of kids, loves Jesus very much, and is in difficult shape financially.  The short story is that he is "replanting" an existing church.  That means they have a building (and all the costs that go with it) but they are still numerically and financially small.  Jason is a carpenter and had been paying his bills by making cabinets, since his church can't pay him a salary yet.  Unfortunately, there is no work available in his area.  His family is really hurting financially.  Please pray that God would provide for him.

I could go on about how life can be hard even for those who love Jesus, but that's a different blog post for a different time.  The big thing to take out of this is to pray for Leo and his family, the folks who worked at Marli's and their families, Becca, and Jason and his family.  It's about people.  That's why Jesus dropped into Bethlehem in a stable with a bunch of furry critters.  Because it's about people.

See you and all the people God has blessed me to be the pastor of this Sunday at Marli's at 10 a.m.!

70's/80's Bowling Saturday Was Fun!

Hey! We had a great time Saturday night at the Down Under Rec Center at UT.  Pretty much everyone dressed up as a 70's or 80's character or in retro gear.  That was a sight to see... I wonder if we freaked out any of the other folks there?

It was great seeing all of you at the rec center...  It's fun to worship together on Sundays, but it's also fun to get together outside of the Sunday gathering and share "regular parts" of life together...  It's also fun for me to have student-age people participating with The Ridge.  I love students!  As a student pastor for 10 years, I learned that students are lots of fun, good for giving you funny stories, and love your time and interest.  We want Ridge Church to always be a place where students are welcome to come and worship and learn about Jesus.

The fun night Saturday is important... Get-togethers like that are right in line with our core value of Community.  We plan on always continuing to do things like that together as a part of who we are as a church.  Hopefully the weather will be warm next time, and we can enjoy the outdoors!

Have a great week... See you on Sunday!  Oh, yeah, don't forget that this Saturday night, you need to "spring forward."  That means, before you hit the hay on Saturday night, roll your clock forward 1 hour.  That way, you won't show up for our gathering right as we finish up!  (Although, you'll be just in time to help us "tear down" and can also go to eat with us!)

Here's some pics: