Love Others as You Love Yourself
Want to feed needy children in Ecuador? Want a cool t-shirt? For a $20 gift (tax deductible), you will feed a child in Ecuador lunch for a month and get this great ecuadorigins t-shirt. Email jason@originstupelo if you are interested. #nobrainer
40
40
40 days to be filled with His Spirit
Seeking His Face.
Begging God to move,
Confessing our failures,
Embracing His victory,
Fasting weekly,
Desiring God more than food,
Waiting,
Wanting,
Needing,
God.
Join us for 40 days of prayer which will end 11/11/11. Follow us for details at @originstupelo on Twitter and Origins Tupelo on Facebook.
We want to see God move.
We think He will.
Why You Should Join a Village
Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
Good intentions aren’t enough. They are, well, good. But they will fail you consistently and convincingly in your best efforts to follow Jesus–your best intentions to read your Bible more, to pray more, to be a missionary in your workplace and your home and your neighborhood. They will fail you if they’re not coupled with one important thing–discipleship. It’s a word that you won’t hear outside of church circles and probably won’t hear enough inside church circles. It’s the engine that fuels the machine of the church. Without it you may still have a body and wheels, but you won’t be going anywhere.
The Great Commandment + The Great Commission
A disciple (by my definition) is someone who loves the Lord with all of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength and loves one’s neighbor as one’s self. That’s the Great Commandment, and that’s our goal, at least part of it.
The other part is to make missionaries. A missionary is someone who wherever they go, they go making other disciples (people who love God with everything and others as themselves). That’s the Great Commission.
When we are being the people we were created to be and the church we are called to be, we are seeing the Great Commandment and the Great Commission meet. That means lovers of God and people are making other lovers of God and people who are making other lovers of God and people. (This was the heart behind our “Origins Is For Lovers” campaign).
Discipleship Doesn’t Happen by Accident
This doesn’t happen alone and it doesn’t happen by accident. This happens only when people farther along on their journey with Jesus are willing and intentional about pouring into those behind them.
I love our Sunday gatherings and the worship that happens there. I love teaching and being with all the different people who make up our Origins community and love seeing new people come and connect to our community. And there is a certain level of discipleship that happens on Sunday nights, but make no mistake: if the only discipleship in your life happens on Sunday nights at Origins, you are probably not a disciple. Yeah, that’s what I said. Read it again: if the only discipleship in your life happens on Sunday nights at Origins, you are probably not a disciple.
Join a Village
Our Villages are the primary way in which we do discipleship. They are smaller groups of people who meet weekly in homes and other spaces throughout our city to learn better what it means to love and to follow and to be like Jesus together.
We have incredible leaders who have been walking with Jesus and with other people, learning what it means to follow Jesus together. Prayerfully, choose a group and jump in. Notice I did not say, “Prayerfully, decide if you’re going to join a Village. If God’s called you to Origins, He’s called you to be in a Village. He wants you to know Him and to love Him and to love all the people in this world and to more and more look like Jesus. If you want to follow Jesus, you need to join a Village. Trust me. I’m doing it.
“Inspiration Is For Amateurs”
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
Chuck Close
Superbowl Tailgate Party
We’re watching the Super Bowl together Sunday night starting at 5pm (kickoff is at 5:30pm). Bring your favorite tailgating food to share and watch the game (or if you don’t like the game, then the commercials) with us. Prizes will be awarded for most team spirit. Hope to see you there.
You can RSVP here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197398423605257&ref=mf
Incarnational
Getting ready for this week’s message on being Incarnational from our series It Takes a Village (to change a city), check out this video:
Origins is Moving
108 Spring St. Downtown in The Dance Studio. 6pm. Childcare will be provided.
Watch this: http://vimeo.com/14786257
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