The Avenue

We have one!

So from now on look here for more info about the avenue!

AVECHURCH.COM

or contact us @ info@avechurch.com

The Avenue is excited to announce that we are launching home groups all over the city beginning Aug 1st!

There are 3 groups in the Old Louisville area, one in Southern Indiana and one on the east end of Louisville.  We would love for you to join us.  If you are interested we are doing an 8 week study on the heart of the gospel for us, our city & our world.

It will give you a great chance to begin to meet new friends, to experience Christian community & to begin to serve in the area you will meet.

If you are interested email us @ info@avechurch.com or simply post your name below & let us know your age & stage of life.

for example – I’m Ben I’m 35 have 3 kids & want to be in a group – I live in Old Louisville!

Then we will plug you into a group & get you connected.

A Different Way – 2 Thieves

Tertullian once said, “Just as Christ was crucified between 2 thieves, so this doctrine is ever crucified between 2 errors.” Each of these thieves steal the full beauty of the gospel & take the rich, and beautiful grace of God and makes it small.

Tim Keller calls those 2 thieves religion & irreligion.

Religion is my high school!  I grew up going to an ultra conservative Christian high school where moralism ruled the day!  There were more rules than anyone could imagine, rules about how much facial hair you could have, rules about how straight your tie should be, and my favorite rules about how much gum you could chew.  They gave awards to the best Christians at the end of the year and at our prom we couldn’t dance (dancing leads to shinanigans!) all we could do is sit around & eat dinner together.  Sometimes religious circles are just creepy!  Like the time my high school teacher brought in a video of his wife giving birth & thought it was ok to show it to his high school history class.

What religion leads us to is two responses that are completely opposite but have the same root.

• The first is where my high school lead me, it is self hatred.  Scripture tells us, all of us have sinned, it even tells us that the core of hearts is deceitful.  So in this system of belief you get exhausted from trying to live a perfect life when we know we can’t. The beauty of grace is the knowledge that I am completely sinful yet completely loved!
• The second response is Self Rightouesness.   You come to believe that you are better than others because you live up to a certain moral clarity.  So instead of being humble, you become arrogant, loud & embarrassing to those of us who really are seeking to follow the way of Jesus.  Scripture tells us, that our greatest deeds are like filthy rags.  So even when we are at our best we miss the mark!  So why boast of anything other than the cross of Jesus?

The Second thief is irreligion.  As religion values truth above grace, irreligion values grace without truth.  It tells us that each of us create our own standards of living, each of us are free to live how we want when we want.  They speak of a God of love ,if a God exists, but the love of their God costs them nothing.  The beauty of the gospel is that his love lead him to action on our behalf.  That even when we failed he loved!   Because of that love we desire to serve him & desire to be obedient.

Richard Rohr says, “that is the great surprise – We don’t come to Jesus by getting it right we come to him by getting it wrong!”

A different way – The gospel of Jesus teaches us that we are more sinful & flawed than we could ever imagine.  We are also more deeply loved by our creator than we could ever hope!

When we speak of a different way this is the heart of the message!

The gospel is a different way – it sits between 2 thieves who cast stones at each other & it rejects them both and invites both of them to a different way.  The beauty of a life with Christ.

Hey students or friends of students or parents of students or acquaintances of students,

WE NEED YOU!

The Avenue Church, while working with the housing department @ U of L has been given the 3rd floor on West Hall, a dorm in the center of campus.  No other students will be living in the dorm other than students we assign to it and our vision is to create a Christian living environment where students can spend one year living in Christian community & being trained weekly on how to be a missionary on their campus.  The following year they can go out & impact their campus.

Many Christian students & parents are nervous about the dorms at U of L & also are looking for Christian community & relationships their first year on campus.
Our hope is not to lift up the name of our church & ministry in fact we simply want to see Christian students on campus trained on how to influence their campus for Christ!   We want to lift up the name of Jesus on campus.  Imagine what could happen, if each year this dorm was full of students being trained to love & serve their campus with the heart of Christ.  Imagine, if these students then became RA’s all over campus, if they were involved in student government & began leading other students on campus.

The possibilities are endless………….but WE NEED TO SIGN UP 10 more students by JULY 17th or the entire project could be in jeopardy!

Any student living anywhere on campus can switch their housing assignment to West Hall between now & the 17th.  Would you please prayerfully consider encouraging some students to make this a priority & to consider moving into West Hall.  Our fear is if we don’t fill the dorm (20 rooms) 10 male – 10 female than we may lose this opportunity forever.

If you or anyone you know is interested have them contact me @ ben@avechurch.com

This Sunday night @ 5:30 pm @ S Louisville Christian Church 3845 Southern Parkway
Louisville, KY 40214-1756 we are going to be looking at the story of the prodical son in the gospel of Luke.

Much of what we will discuss comes from this terrific essay from CS Lewis, taken from his collection of essays called, Present Concerns.

Very often, when I am having discussions about faith with young adults I find that when they hear someone talk about the gospel there is a struggle to separate the heart of the gospel with religion and moralism.  The assumption is that the heart of the Christian faith is a call to be more moral or to become a pharisee.  Our hope is to distinguish, religion & moralism from the hope of the gospel.

I think CS Lewis says it best here:

There are three kinds of people in the world.

The first class is of those who live simply for their own sake and pleasure, regarding Man and Nature as so much raw material to be cut up into whatever shape may serve them.

In the second class are those who acknowledge some other claim upon them—the will of God, the categorical imperative, or the good of society—and honestly try to pursue their own interests no further than this claim will allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it demands, like men paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left over will be enough for them to live on. Their life is divided, like a soldier’s or a schoolboy’s life, into time “on parade” and “off parade,” “in school” and “out of school.”

But the third class is of those who can say like St Paul that for them “to live is Christ.” These people have got rid of the tiresome business of adjusting the rival claims of Self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting the claims of Self altogether. The old egoistic will has been turned round, reconditioned, and made into a new thing. The will of Christ no longer limits theirs; it is theirs. All their time, in belonging to Him, belongs also to them, for they are His.

And because there are three classes, any merely twofold division of the world into good and bad is disastrous. It overlooks the fact that the members of the second class (to which most of us belong) are always and necessarily unhappy. The tax which moral conscience levies on our desires does not in fact leave us enough to live on. As long as we are in this class we must either feel guilt because we have not paid the tax or penury because we have. The Christian doctrine that there is no “salvation” by works done to the moral law is a fact of daily experience. Back or on we must go. But there is no going on simply by our own efforts. If the new Self, the new Will, does not come at His own good pleasure to be born in us, we cannot produce Him synthetically.

The price of Christ is something, in a way, much easier than moral effort—it is to want Him. It is true that the wanting itself would be beyond our power but for one fact. The world is so built that, to help us desert our own satisfactions, they desert us. War and trouble and finally old age take from us one by one all those things that the natural Self hoped for at its setting out. Begging is our only wisdom, and want in the end makes it easier for us to be beggars. Even on those terms the Mercy will receive us.

So for us the gospel is ultimately the different way!  Its not about religion & moralism or becoming a better me!  Its also not about irreligion and the worship of me, and building the structures of my world to revolve around me.   Its about the grace, hope and love of Christ!

So excited about the Avenue family!

Check out these pictures from our favorite photographer!

This night many months ago was one of the first nights we felt like family

God is doing big things – Please join us for our 2nd preview service @ S Louisville Christian Church on June 27th @ 5:30pm

There is a new term being used in economic circles these days.  The phrase is the “new normal.”  Its an interesting thought, and a complex topic but from what I understand the heart of the issue is that the recession is happening and many are adjusting to what some believe is the new normal.  The new normal means that America is not the center of the global economy, it means that the boom of the 90’s is over and that everyday people must learn to adjust their patterns of buying, spending and selling.  Roger McNamee author of the book The New Normal recently said, “the 90’s weren’t normal, but they altered our expectations.  The 90’s have just made it harder for us to adjust to the new normal.”

My thoughts today however are not about economics…….

I believe as in economics the church over the next decade must develop a new set of rules, a new way of operating…………… a new normal.

For years, we have operated as if the church lives is in the center of our culture, as if the church is operating as a voice that drives and dictates the rules and regulations of our society.  We see it in politics, in believers we meet each day who believe part of their job & the job of the church is to make our society & make our neighbors & ourselves “good.”  To clean them up, to help our culture realize how far they are from morality and also to sometimes pat ourselves on the back for how close we are to morality.    Ultimately, these attempts to be the conscience for our society have left many believers frustrated and our world bitter, angry and frustrated with the church.

We have failed to recognize that the church no longer operates in the center of our culture but on the fringes of our culture.  Just like our economic situation its time for us to adjust.  Its time for us to get outside the walls of institution and to get inside the heart of our neighborhoods.  To learn how to operate on the fringe and how to realize that the true strength of our churches is not our ability to replicate culture with creative teaching series, relevant programs, and laser light shows.  Its not our ability to regulate morality.  Its found in Jesus working through the lives of people!

The people of God set free on the mission of God to GO!

To go and make disciples, to go and love, to go and serve to go & become like Jesus to their neighbors.

So what if there is a new normal that awaits us what if there is a different way?

The Avenue is committed to a different way – to a new normal – - – -  Here are some tangible pictures of what that looks like for us!

• What if Grace & hope became the message & not behavior modification
• What if church was not what we did on Sunday being a Christ follower is what we do everyday
• What if application was more important than information
• What if all of us were ministers dreaming of who God has called us to love & where he has called us to go
• What if passivity was too risky because our neighbors here & around the world are hurting
• What if being fed was not our goal – When there is a hungry world waiting for Christ’s followers to be a light
• What if we stopped consuming church & start feeding the world
• What if  the broken, hurting and lost were received with open arms…and the religious were challenged to repent of their “perfection.”
• What if JESUS was exalted…NOT a denomination, pastor or a political party.
• What if we threw the desire to compete with other churches out the window…and did all that we can to help the body.
• What if we embraced the fact that Jesus originally called “unschooled, ordinary men” to change the world…and He’s STILL doing the same thing with us today.
• What if we  embodied disciple making and not people gathering
• What if we  became the people of God 7 days a week and not just on Sunday
• What if we rejoiced in each others joys & walked beside each other in our present sufferings
• What if  young people who had given up on church & religion find Jesus
• What if  Christ was exalted above all things
• What if we reached outside our walls in such a way that we become a blessing to our community & not a burden on them
• What if we really cared for the orphans & widows
• What if we had  global perspective of how blessed we are & use our resources for kingdom purposes
• What if we become a family & not a congregation
• What if hope was tangible because Jesus is real
• What if we believed that prayer was not just a ritual
• What if God was made big & we are made small
• What if we were so overwhelmed by grace that we couldn’t help but worship him from the depths of our hearts
• What if Scripture, not Robert’s Rules of Order, governed the body
• What if people in the church refused to ignore injustice…and embraced that God has called the church to do more about it than simply pray…but rather to dive in and do all we can to help
• What if we championed the next generation instead of teaching them they are insignificant
• What if we learned that Christ is all sufficient!  Not excellence, not attendance, not leadership or giftedness.  He is everything!

What if we made this the new normal?

Read Luke 6:20-26 – Jesus is calling his world to a new normal, to a different way – We think he still is calling!

What are your what ifs?  What is the new normal?

Love you all – Ben