Monthly Archives: December 2012

Dec 20 2012
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Atlanta Church Plant Update

A little bit goes a long way.

There is a video helping introduce this blog.  If you haven’t seen it, you can catch it here:  https://vimeo.com/56024545

Emily and I arrived in Atlanta about 2 weeks ago and have spent the last few weeks settling in and getting our family settled in our new land.  Before we left Seattle one of our main goals was raising funds to help move our family and team to Atlanta and launch the process of planting a church.  We were blown away by the generosity of our friends and church family who were so kind to give.  Several times during the process of fundraising people looked at the large need and said to me, “Let us know when you have some specific needs, we will want to give to those.”

I heard it enough that I realized Christmas would be a great place to let you know of some small (and larger) specific needs for our family and team as we plant this church.  So here is a list of some specific needs we have that you may want to help us with.  Thank you for your overwhelming generosity and know that you are loved and missed.  Merry Christmas and may your home be blessed.

1.  The Gift of Bibles, Discipleship and Care Resources | One of the main things that I have found as a pastor that God often leads me into an intersection moments in people’s lives.  Whether they are at a personal crossroads, in the midst of suffering, or at a point of questioning about faith they are often at a point where they are looking for a next step.  One need we have as a church plant is to build up our resources of Bibles, new believer materials, discipleship books and resources for people in need.  A gift you could give is giving towards this or buying some specific books that we often give away or use in discipleship as God brings us people.  (Feel free to email me at philmanginelli@gmail.com if you want to purchase some specific books)

2.  The Gift of Transportation | As many of you know, Emily and I aren’t the only ones moving to Atlanta.  Seth, Megan, Maureen, Annie, Mitch, Marina and Sierra are also diving in with us.  Several of our team members are selling everything to follow Jesus and help us plant this church.  I know they are working and saving as much as they can, but finances are still going to be very tough.  Several of them will need to purchase cars upon arriving in Atlanta and you would be surprised how much a little bit could help them in this.  Consider praying about giving towards helping them afford a car in Atlanta.

3.  The Gift of a Coffee Date with Jesus (and a Team Member) | As we plant this church…there’s going to be a lot of one on one’s in coffee shops.  And believe me…I’m not complaining.  One thing that I learned from the last 6 years in Seattle is the ability to just sit down and buy someone coffee is a huge road to being authentic and sharing the gospel with them.  Truthfully, I’ve ministered more in coffee shops then I ever have in a church building.  A great gift could be as simple as some Starbucks Gift Cards for our team to have the freedom to reach out to people in Atlanta and see Jesus move.

4.  The Gift of the Silver Screen | If you know MC4 then you know that videos have been a huge part of the way we communicate in ministry.  From just being idiots to sharing the depths of God’s love, videos are a medium that will be very central in planting our church.  We need to purchase the materials to get this all started.  Cameras, software, etc.  Consider helping us get this launched and maybe I can make you your own MC4 news. 🙂

5.  The Gift of Caring for Our Kids | One of the greatest benefits of working at MC4 was being able to have Jake in our World Class Preschool. (And if you think I’m just being nice I’m not.  Our Preschool is remarkable and if you have little ones you should get them involved)  With the move, Preschool is a new expense that we are trying to make happen and believe is important for Jake and soon enough Rohan.  We have found that Preschool is a bit more expensive down South and are considering finding a local preschool or doing a home school collaboration to serve our kids and also reach out to families in our area.  Either way…we need resources to make this happen.  Maybe the gift you can give this year is loving on our kiddos.

Thank you so much for your love and support.  There may be something that is on your heart to give that we didn’t write about and know that we would be honored to by any form or act of generosity towards our mission.  Any gifts you want to give can be made out to Mill Creek Foursquare Church.  You can give online at mc4s.org (under the resources tab is online giving and you can select the Atlanta Church Plant and write a specific memo for what you are giving towards) or send something directly to the church.

God bless and have an amazing Christmas.

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Dec 17 2012
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Phil's Blog

Peace. Brought to you by Jesus.

Early this morning I got up with son Rohan.  As we sat and played, my heart ached to be with Jesus and was moved for my family…for my Manginelli and Irvin family.  As Rohan played, I worshipped and read the Bible and just sat with Jesus.  He reminded me of a few things…most specifically of peace, so I emailed my family.  After I sent the email I knew I also just wanted to share my thoughts in my blog.  Because while we are a few days from celebrating the birth of the King of Peace…peace is the very thing evading most of us.

In the wake of the Connecticut shooting, I think many of us are looking at the normal Christmas pace and seeing how pale it is in comparison to what really matters.  Here we are buying gifts, planning parties, stressing our calendars, worrying financially and like usual missing Jesus at a point he just wants to reveal himself to us.  As much as we grieve the horror of the elementary school shooting, I imagine for most of us it is yet again putting life into perspective.  It’s the cruel helper asking the question, “Are you living for things that really matter?  Life can be gone in a moment, are you living it how you need to?”

It also brings fear.  If the things that mean the most to us could be taken so easily and without reason?  What in life is safe?  What can we know will resist the darkness of this world?  Can anything be trusted?

And alas…we have only one answer.  Jesus.  In the middle of a world where free will is so beautiful and yet so possibly evil there is only one thing that never changes.  There is only one thing that can’t be shaken.  There is only one thing that lasts.  There is only one thing that worthy of eternal hope.  His name is Jesus.  And in this season he has gifts for us, not like Santa who brings things to satisfy the external and material, but gifts that are eternal and never end.  He wants to bring us peace.  He wants to bring us joy.  He wants to bring us Himself.

So my encouragement to you today…stop playing the Christmas game and fall more in love with Jesus.  Stop worrying about gifts and money and be a great Dad today.  Be a present Mom in everything you do.  Actually take a moment to celebrate the profound love of God which was found in an impoverished baby in Bethlehem.  Reconcile relationships, work out forgiveness, let go of bitterness and love your neighbor.

Know you are loved.  Here was my letter to my family.

 

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This morning I got up early with Ro.  While he played with blocks, ate some waffles and in general just did his thing I stole some time to worship and be with Jesus.  As I spent time with Him, my heart was simply drawn to prayer for my family.  And as I just began to pray and sit in the presence of God two things happened…my heart ached for peace for us, and peace overwhelmed me.  Today as I sat with Jesus he reminded me that He is the King of Peace.  And this isn’t just a title, isn’t just a cosmic affirmation of his divinity…but the truth that we serve a present, loving, compassionate God who walks out every day with us.

He’s the Jesus who makes my coffee with me.
The Jesus who plays trains with my Son with me.
The Jesus who laughs at all of the things I say in my mind that never make it to my mouth.
The Jesus who has cried all weekend with me over Connecticut.
The Jesus who doesn’t mock my fears.
The Jesus who knows I’m stronger than I think I am.
The Jesus who loves my neighbors and is begging my heart to pay attention.
The Jesus who asking me to slow down and be with Him.
The Jesus who loved me so much he died my death.
The Jesus who loved me even more and gave me His life.
And the Jesus who has peace.  Real peace.  Right now…for those who want it.
I was reminded of the promise of Jesus who said, “Come all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Take my way of life upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.”
Today I’m praying that as a family, we dont’ miss what Jesus has for us.  Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.  That at every moment we can take every ounce of anxiety, concern, pain, frustration and lay it at the cross and receive its gifts.  The cross is not a static moment in history, but an alive reality that I can access when I come to it.  It always requires the letting go of self, but what it gives in return is always worth it…because it gives true life.  When I think about my family, from the Manginelli to the Irvin side, I know that there are things weighing underneath the surface of every one of our lives.  Stuff…lot’s of it.  I pray over you the thing I pray me…that I would have the courage to let go and let Jesus have everything.
I was drawn to Isaiah this morning and read in the 53rd chapter.  As the chapter tells us 600ish years before Jesus came of His death and what he would do for us, I was drawn to one part.
“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions and he was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him and by His stripes we are healed.
All like sheep we have gone astray and everyone of us have turned to our own ways;
but the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
The plan for peace has always been Jesus.  It is Jesus and will always be Jesus.  When Isaiah and Jeremiah saw their homeland destroyed and their children murdered the hope was Jesus.  When Joseph and Mary lived in exile to an evil empire and witness their own king murder a generation of children the hope was Jesus.  And we, when madman murder our children still only have one hope…Jesus.  He bought it for us. We just have to go get it.
I love you.  I miss you Manginelli family.  I am grateful to have you Irvin family.  May all of us know that today that we are Sons and Daughters of the King of Peace.
Dec 11 2012
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Seth's Blog

Discovering Mission: The Hill (By Seth Aichele)

Phil and Emily are moving to Atlanta to plant a church.  Their goal and their role is clear.  And as I prepare to follow them, the most frequent questions I get are in regards to my goal and role.  Why am I going?  What am I going to do there?  What are my long term goals?  These are fantastic questions, and I find I come into more clarity each time I am forced to consider them.  Recently, I have had some clarity on what my goals really are and am writing about the journey of discovery I am on.  I’ve addressed this idea through the lens of a subject we have been talking through as a church plant team, and it has led me not only to realizations of my goals, but to a new discovery in what it means to follow Jesus.

That subject is Mission.

Together we have been reading a book about how Jesus is the lens through which we must view God, church, and the world.  In Jesus, we learn that God is both the sent and sending God.  In other words, mission is not just God’s will, it is part of his very essence.  God sent many messengers in the Old Testament.  They were angels, and they were prophets.  But in Jesus, God has sent himself.  He has identified himself with mission.

We who follow Jesus have also been identified with mission.  It’s written on the wall of Mill Creek Foursquare Church; Jesus says to those who follow him, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21).  How was Jesus sent?  To lay his life down for a people.  I don’t think I can atone for anyone’s sin, but I do think that there is a people for whom God will ask me to lay down my life.

There’s this phrase: “a hill worth dying on.”  I think that Calvary was a hill worth dying on for Jesus, and that following him will always ultimately mean we walk willingly toward our own hill to die on.  Our own city to weep over.  Our own people to give everything we have for.

Our city may not crucify us, but it will be the death of us.  It will demand the full relinquishing of our will.  I don’t mean to be unneccessarily morbid.  Scripture says that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him.  The joy!  The joy outweighed the suffering.  For Jesus, it really was a hill worth dying on because he was in love with the people he was sent to.  We will be too, when our day comes to die.

Truthfully, we all ache for a hill worth dying on.  We want to live a life that counts.  We want to make a difference.  I submit that in it’s purest form, it is a basic drive in our nature, a piece of God’s image stamped on every human soul.  We want purpose.  We want a mission.  But when we begin to move forward in that path, we discover that it is fraught with death to self.  A life pursuing comfort and security becomes more and more appealing and mission is relegated to an afterthought to assuage our seared consciences.  We love Jesus, so we keep saying yes to follow him, but we move so slowly toward the hill worth dying on, weighed down by fears and comforts, that we die before we get to the top.

About two years ago, I became convinced that church planting was the worthiest thing I could give my life to.  I had a deep sense, however vague, that my hill would have something to do with church planting.  I still don’t know whether I will be one sent out to plant my own church.  Maybe I will.  Maybe my hill looks a little different.  Here’s what I do know:  Atlanta is Phil and Emily’s hill.  Phil was born in Idaho, and is honestly a bit out of place in the South.  Recently though, he mused that this move to Atlanta feels like he is being sent home.

Our hills call to us. 

Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, was drawn ever onward to the city he knew would be the death of him.  He inherited the age-old love of the Father for Jerusalem.  A 33 year old man got the download of God’s 1000+ year old heart for the city, saying, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

Yes, I believe Jesus is God, but I also believe that he was subject to all the limitations of a human body.  In this view, he would have felt a deep affinity with the biblical narrative, but would not explicitly remember as having watched the history unfold before his eyes.  His lament over Jerusalem then, was a human response to being overwhelmed with God’s aching heart for the city.  This compels me, because I know what it’s like to get the download of God’s heart for something or someone, on a small scale.  I think when I ascend my hill, I will feel a love too big to be contained in a human body.

This church plant in Atlanta is not my hill to die on, at least, not in the sense that it is for Phil and Emily.  It is however, on the road to my hill.  It is, for me, the next Yes to following Jesus.  We know from the lives of the apostles that journeying with Jesus to His hill changed them forever.  Though they abandoned him the eve of the crucifixion, 11 out of 12 ultimately did follow him, each to their own hill.  I go to Atlanta not only because I believe in the mission of Phil and Emily, but because I know no better or faster way to come nearer my own.

So I have now realized my main goal in moving to Atlanta; to take my next step in discovering the hill Jesus will give me.  A hill worth dying for.

Dec 08 2012
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Phil's Blog

Jesus doesn’t waste anything.

About 15 minutes ago I had Jesus sing me a song.  Here is the story.

Arriving in Atlanta has been…strange.  Even though I had been to Atlanta on countless occasions and was very well acquainted with the sights and the sounds of the South, stepping off the plane on December 2nd was the beginning of a series of days I wasn’t quite ready for.  Every other time Emily and I have come to Atlanta, it has been with the eyes of tourists and the delight of rest from very busy lives in Seattle (and Los Angeles before that).

You know that feeling.  It’s that Disney Romantic Amaro Instagram Lens that you put over your eyes on the places and the memories you love.  The houses are different, the streets are different, the smells are different and on vacation they all become magical.  They become that place you can’t wait to show people and say over to your friends, “You just have to see it.”  Atlanta has been that place for me.  The home of Chick-Fil-A and Waffle House, of Sweet Tea and the craziest accents you have ever heard in your life.  The fireflies glow with this Field of Dreams manner and the crickets add a soundtrack that just lets you know you’re somewhere special.

But on December 2nd, I must have misplaced those lenses, because they were nowhere to be found.  All I had was my Seattle Hipster Mill Creek Spotted Cow Everyone I love is a Thousand Miles Away lenses.  (They are Ray-Bans for everyone who is wondering.)  And for the next several days my magical kingdom of the South has simply been everything that isn’t Seattle.  And not just in the external ways, in the deep emotional and painful ways.

I’ve stared at my phone wanting to call hundreds of people and yet at the same time stared at every phone call that’s come in and let it go to voicemail knowing the lump in my throat wouldn’t make it through a conversation.  Yesterday I went to the Starbucks in Vinings and just cried.  I remember thinking, “This is probably the worst church planting tactic ever invented.”  Could you imagine me talking with someone, “Hi, my name is Phil.  I’m currently emotionally unstable.  Can I be your pastor?”

It hasn’t all been bad, but it has all been hard.  And I’m aware enough of what’s happening to keep speaking to my heart, “It’s only a season.”  But like many of you understand, knowing that something is only a season doesn’t make the season easier.  All it does is force you to answer the question of whether Jesus is enough or not.  He isn’t enough because he always fills me the warm-fuzzy goodies…he’s good enough even in my hardest moments.  No matter what my emotions say, Jesus is enough.  He’s enough.

But getting that from my conviction to my heart takes time…and effort.

Today was a good day.  Zoo’ed it up with my stud brother-in-law Chris (whose wife’s name is Jennifer for everyone feeling ironic).  Had dinner with our family and watched Jake and his cousin Haven run around outside in the freezing Atlanta winter high 60s.  Emily and I got our kids in the car and began to the drive to our home in Smyrna.  I turned to Em and said, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to tell myself today that everything’s going to be OK.  Everything in my gut feels like I’m a mess.”  From there we spent the rest of the car ride home talking about hard this has been and that we were sharing a mutual pain in the gut.

Shortly before arriving home I said to Emily, “I’m just scared it’s never going to feel like home.”  A few seconds later Emily turned up the radio…and Jesus sang us a song.

You see, the night before we left Seattle we sat in a living room with a few of the people that I had the honor of discipling closely over our six years in Mill Creek.  We talked and laughed but before it was time to say goodbye a couple of my closest people played us a song.  Kat shared she had been praying for us and felt like she was supposed to sing us a song.  So right before the goodbyes, Kat and Stephen sang us Home by Phil Phillips (great name).

Link to song so you can listen while you finish this blog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTI4ExONgFs

As I sat and listened to Kat and Stephen sing this song I was moved by two people I love who are remarkably talented and encouraged by their heart.  I valued what they had done, but not because I believed I was sitting in a divine situation, but because I believed in them.  You must understand that I’m not normally in a position of need.  Maybe it’s arrogance, maybe it’s cluelessness, but I often see the value of moments as being for the people around me.  I guess I have a hard time believing something is just for me.  And that night as they sang this song I didn’t really understand what they were about to give me.  And truthfully I don’t think they knew they were taking part in a promise that I needed to hear.  Because tonight, I felt homeless in an irrevocable way.

But a few moments from our house Emily turned up the radio in response to my statement of doubt.  And lo and behold this song was on the radio. A song wrought with understanding as if Jesus knew exactly what he was doing, like a man who doesn’t waste a thing.  As this song reverberated through the car, all I could see was Jesus hearing my doubt and instead of rebuking me or rolling his eyes…he just sang me a song.  A song that spoke to my deepest fear…can Atlanta ever really be home?  This is what Jesus said…

Settle down.  It will all be clear.

Don’t pay no mind to the demons that fill you with fear.

The trouble it might drag you down.

If you get lost you can always be found.

Just know you’re not alone.

Cause I’m going to make this place your home.

What came rushing back wasn’t just Kat and Stephen sitting among some of the closest people I’ve ever had in my life.  It wasn’t just the emotion of the moment or the meaning of the song.  It was the immense love of God that in the most insignificant of moments he cares for everything about me.  It was the overwhelming presence of God that was inside and outside of me.  It was that the Jesus I serve isn’t simply concerned with the crises facing Atlanta; he’s deeply concerned with me.  He isn’t just the Savior of the world, he’s mine too.  He’s mine.

And even though this has been the strangest, weirdest, hardest month of my life that included everything from a hospital scare with my Dad, the death of an close friend’s father and personal hero to the leaving of the greatest home Emily and I have every known…Jesus is with us.  He’s here and listening to whispers of my heart.  He loves me, and I know that tonight as much as I ever have.

So tonight the pit in my stomach is still there.  Atlanta streets still look weird.  This house still feels foreign.  Every cup of coffee I hold isn’t spotted enough.  And a lot of people I love are a long ways away, but I have a promise from Jesus.  A promise from a God who doesn’t waste an opportunity and makes every single moment count.  A promise that Jesus is going to make this place home.  And tonight…that’s enough.