Passion City Church: Community Groups

On 7 February 2015,  I had the opportunity to go to Atlanta for Passion City Church's College Community groups for the first time. It was my first time ever entering the church and instantly, I fell in love. When I first came to the building, there was really no sign to the building. The building is a pure white building with the address on the it. Passion has really no sign except a very small one saying that you are in the right place. Mary explained to me that Passion created the building that way because without a group of believers, the building is just a building. It has no significance until a group of believers of Christ are there. 

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. 

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. 

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. :) 

Just a few pwople from a community group: Mary, Victoria and Stephen

Spring Break 2015

We can never take a good picture; for this reason, I love Daisie, Madison and Andrew.

{s p r i n g    b r e a k    2  0 1 5}

Thursday, March 12, 2015, was the start of Spring Break. Mom picked me up from Public Speaking class at 12:30 and then we went to Arbor Place Mall. I have been wanting Johnny Rockets for a few weeks and eventually I was able to get it. We also went shopping in the mall for me to get some new clothes for a trip that I am taking in the summer. After we left the mall, we went to the mall of Georgia to pick up Ariel and Alayna to get them for C12. Now, I was really excited to be able to go to C12  as it was a Night of Worship. A much needed night of worship; there I was able to see many C12 people that I hadn't seen since July of 2014 because of college. It reminded me how much I missed this group of people that I love.

It's been over six months since l last saw Alayna and Ariel at C12

On Friday the 13th, I went to Atlanta by myself and let me tell you this, I was totally afraid of going down there alone. I went to GSU's campus and as soon as I was called in for instant decision day, I was accepted into the school immediately. I am so excited to be going down there in the Fall and I know that God has some big plans for me and even though it scares the crap out of me, I know that I am following his wishes and that he got me on this. 

That Saturday, Mom and I took a trip down to Athens. Since Athens is roughly 30-45 minutes from the house, Mom allowed me to drive down there so that I can get driving experience. We spent the day down there shopping and spending time with my mother. It was quite fun as we went to Willy's for lunch and it reminded me of going to Chipotle or Moe's although it was not too bad. I quite enjoyed it. One thing  I love down in Athens would be that they have a Trader Joe's there. Trader Joes is fantastic and its so fun to be in the store even though it's a grocery store. We also went to Lifeway and I got a new Bible and I absolutely love it. It's a journaling Bible so it has places in the margins to take notes and such, It's a beautiful creation and I love it.

On Sunday, I was able to volunteer with M12 and it was amazing! Being able to see the girls grow in their walk with Christ and spend the time to get to know each and every single one of them, was an awesome sight. I also got to see the leaders and hang out with them after the first service . We went to Taco Bell and just hung out and get to hang out with them as not only are they my friends, but also some of the best people I could be with. After the second service, since it was a nice day out, I was able to Eno and I loved it! It was one of the post peaceful and relaxing thing I've done since I started spring break. I wasn't hot but wasn't cold out either. The wind was blowing making it the perfect day to be outdoors and experience God's creation.

On Tuesday, I went to H12 and helped them set up. We arrived at the Church at 2:00PM and let me tell you this, there is a lot of preparation that happens behind the scenes that many people don't know about and take for granted as it takes hours to make sure that everything is ready for H12. There's bulletins to be printed and put out, there's making sure that there is enough seating in Cafe Theater, there's setting up the check in area and making sure that the games are set up and that the signs are out for the night. Not to mention that we pray over the room and the night before students even arrive. Now there is student-led prayer that happens at 5:30, but there's also a prayer that happens before students even arrive. Let me just tell you this: prayer works. If you don't get anything out of this, know that prayer works. {you might not get an answer that you like, but he answers it: yes, no, wait}

Daisie and Myself

On Wednesday, Rosemarie was sick, so we went and visited her and took her a birthday present as her birthday was the 22 of March. It was such a great time as I got to catch up with her and I missed the laughter and she pointed out a mistake that I made on her birthday present. I gave her a shadow box with a hole  at the top so that she could put her travel memories (plane tickets, tickets to events,etc) in it and in the box I spelled out "Adventure is out there" in stickers as a reference to the Disney move, UP. Only I misspelled adventure by not including the 'n' in adventure....  oops.

On Thursday, I had C12 which I was stoked about as it was Alayna's birthday as well! :) I have known Alayna for almost seven years or so because we met in 6th grade and now we are freshmen and college. Where has the time gone? But It was the first time that I heard the new college pastor, Matt, speak because I've been in Carrollton and it was a little hard for me to come home to hear hm speak. The first time I was able to come to C12, we got free Starbucks and we were "speed dating" because they were coming out of a dating series. It was really fun because I got to meet so many new people that I will be hanging out with this summer and in the fall hopefully. The next time I came to C12, was a night of worship. I quite enjoyed his message because Matt talked about: "what right is right even if nobody is doing it and what is wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it."

On the final day of Spring Break, I was able to volunteer with M12 one last time before summer and even though all the leaders were tired because of prom before, it was still enjoyable and I got to spend time with the students who wanted to learn more about having a relationship with Christ.

Being home this week made me realize how blessed that I truly am and that I cannot wait to be home for the summer. Just four more weeks till summer :)