For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. - Matthew 18:20 (NIV)
Once I entered the building, I was completely in awe as the inside of the building was not exactly what I thought of. It was completely beautiful and nowhere near what I thought it would be. It was completely open and there were large shipping crates in the hallway promoting things that were going on in the church. One thing left me speechless would be a large "Jesus is Life' sign on the wall made out of light bulbs, but the decoration wasn't quite finished as there were blank spaces in the in the wall. I learned that each light bulb in the wall of this sign equals one life that was saved. 12Stone has coined the term that "One Matters"; One life matters to God and by showing this on the wall, it's a visual representation of each life that gave their life to God.
Once I entered the building, I was completely in awe as the inside of the building was not exactly what I thought of. It was completely beautiful and nowhere near what I thought it would be. It was completely open and there were large shipping crates in the hallway promoting things that were going on in the church. One thing left me speechless would be a large "Jesus is Life' sign on the wall made out of light bulbs, but the decoration wasn't quite finished as there were blank spaces in the in the wall. I learned that each light bulb in the wall of this sign equals one life that was saved. 12Stone has coined the term that "One Matters"; One life matters to God and by showing this on the wall, it's a visual representation of each life that gave their life to God.
For my first time of community groups, they played "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars and we had a dance party. Then we broke up into community groups. How they broke up into community groups would be you go and find someone and then you two find two more people and then you go and find four more people making us a group of eight. We introduced each other and said where we went to school and something random about ourselves. We then went into saying what God has been doing in our lives and if you know anything about me, I can never listen to enough God stories. Once we shared our God stories with our group, we came together to share some God stories that is happening in the lives of others.
Each time I come to the community Groups, there's always something new. For example, the most recent one that they had (on 24 March 2015), they separated us by school or young professionals. Because I currently attend the University of West Georgia, I would be under the group known as Other. Because Other sounded really bad, we wanted to be known as Team Miscellaneous. Then they split us up in to sub categories, within our large group. Once we were in groups of eight, someone in each group downloaded an app known as RapChat, so that we could create a rap to be played over for everyone to hear. Once we finished working in our sub-group, we picked the best one in our main group to be pitted against the other groups. Our group won. We got Ginny's Ice Cream that we shared with GSU because they were the runners up in the rap battle.
"We've got 99 problems but fitting in ain't one"
Once the rap battle was over, we all read John 12:1-20 by ourselves silently. When I said that it was silent, it was s i l e n t. Literally, it was so quiet that you could hear a pen drop and it would echo. If you know a thing or two about college kids, we are not quiet. There were about 300 people in the room and it was dead quiet. But God was speaking to us. If you have never read John 13:1-20, it is about when Jesus knows that he is going to die and instead of making it about him, he decided to serve the ones who have been with him for three years. He washed their feet and if you know anything about the time period that Jesus washed the disciples' feet, their feet were dirty. They wore sandals (not like the ones we wear but more like Old Navy's Flip flops) and the men walked everywhere so their feet were dusty and gross. To wash their feet was a job of a slave...not a job of a K I N G. Once we finished reading the passage, we went around the group and shared what we saw in the passage. The cool thing about this is that each person who read the passage, saw something different and it was really cool to see how just by reading the Bible, we each can get something different out of the same passage.
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Mary and Kelsie |
Being able to attend Passion City Church's College Community Groups taught me more than what I had ever imagined. He has given me a group of people that I can lean on and trust. Being a Christian, you cannot do life on your own.You simply cannot.You will stumble and fall. You do life together. You hold each other accountable and you share life together. Whether these people are at Passion or not, you must find yourself a group of believers that will hold you accountable.
I cannot see where God is leading me in the future. He has already called me to be at GSU in the fall and I could not be more excited to be in Atlanta for school; I don't know if I will be at Passion in the Fall, but God has put some wonderful GSU students in my life and that I can't wait to be going to school with. :)
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Just a few pwople from a community group: Mary, Victoria and Stephen |