Posts by Josh

Meet our city: Old School Cafe

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 31, 2012 | 0 comments

At The Bridge we are “for our city” and are devoted to seeing Spring Hill become the best place to live in America.  One of the ways we can be for our city is by supporting local businesses that both help our local economy and make Spring Hill unique.  Toward that goal we’ll be taking some time on the blog for the next few weeks to “meet our city” by highlight some local businesses. Share the blog posts on your Facebook walls to love our city by helping promote these Spring Hillian-owned businesses.

The local business we visited this week has become kind of a “heart of Spring Hill” kind of place for locals – we headed over to Old School Cafe for breakfast.  Located in the old building for Spring Hill High School at the corner of Duplex Rd and 31, this place has done the city a REALLY cool service by turning a historic Spring Hill landmark into a nostalgic – and EXTREMELY good – breakfast and lunch cafe.  The vibe of the cafe shows you how they’ve embraced its history…

Coolest part of Old School, to me, is the fact that when you’re there you feel like you’re stepping into a nostalgic movie scene in a 1960′s diner.  In all the cool ways and none of the bad ones, it feels like you’re stepping back in time 50 years. Very cool vibe.  The food is AWESOME.  Bill, the owner, has been a high-end chef in multiple locations and apprenticed under a German chef for a few years. Even though the food is classic diner food (eggs, bacon, potatoes, biscuits, etc) it’s seriously incredible. Everything hits the spot and all three of us ‘gents cleaned our plates  Ours was $6/person but you get a LOT of food.

Breakfast is classic breakfast foods and the lunch menu is a solid “meat and 3″ menu.  Old School is apparently renowned by its regulars (of which there are many) for its Derby Pie

Bill Corbett: owner, chef, cool dude

Old School cafe is owned by Bill and Maude Corbett.  One of our favorite aspects of Old School Cafe was why they’re closed for dinner. Bill and Maude have a special needs son with Down Syndrome that they love very much.  Even though it might be good for their business to be open for dinner, they’ve chosen to stick to breakfast and lunch so they can be home in the evenings with their son, who needs extra attention from them.

Other facts about Old School Cafe…

• Located in the old Spring Hill High School building, which closed in 1992
• The cafe closes at 2pm and is closed on Sundays
• It’s cash only, so bring yo’ wallets
• Famous for their Derby Pie… save room for dessert
• You can expect to spend around $7-8 for a REALLY GOOD breakfast or lunch

All in all, we LOVED everything about this place – food, vibe, and ownership – and will be having meetings there in the near future.  Help out “Old School” by sharing this post on your Facebook pages and dropping by for breakfast or lunch!

FROM THE VAULT: 10 important posts

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 30, 2012 | 0 comments

We did this a few posts ago with the most-requested sermons post (which you can see HERE), but there are a few blog posts that seem to either answer common questions people have or that address issues that people often deal with as Christians.  So here’s some posts “from the vault” that will hopefully be helpful to you…

10 FROM THE VAULT

1. How do I decide which Christian preachers, teachers, and authors to listen to and which to avoid? In the over-churched Bible Belt where which Christian author(s) you read is kind of a weird status symbol, this post was both highly-trafficed and highly-important.

2. Profiles of the Religious, Irreligious, and Gospel person. The Bible doesn’t teach – like the church often does – that there are “two ways to live – God’s way and Man’s way”.  This post covers the “3 ways to live” that Jesus talked about and helps you figure out who you are.

3. Some thoughts about church size. I wrote this post for everyone who – like me – has either felt that “bigger churches are better” or felt that “smaller churches are better”.  Some thoughts from the Bible about church size.

4. Suburban Christians: change your fuel. A post about why many suburban Christians seem tired in their zeal for God.

5. Why aesthetics and media are important to Jesus’ mission. I wrote this post to help people understand why our graphics, video, multimedia are really important to us as good missionaries in our culture.

6. Will people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace?  This was a followup post to a sermon that highlighted the scandalous nature of grace. Many people left this sermon wondering, “But won’t people just keep sinning if you preach too much grace!?”  Here’s a Biblical answer to that question.

7. Is church membership Biblical?  Is church membership just a social construct? An organizational necessity? Or is it actually Biblical?  If so, why don’t I ever read about it in the Bible?

8. A third way to read the gospels.  This post highlights why many people read the story of Jesus’ life and come away discouraged instead of hopeful.

9. Why does our staff schedule meetings away from the church building?  For everyone who asks the question, “Why do those guys schedule meetings at Starbucks when they could have meetings at the church building for free!?”

10. What are proper and improper ways to express yourself in corporate worship?  Am I OK to raise my hands during worship? What about running flags down the aisles?  Can I set off M-80′s in response to God’s greatness in worship? This post answers all the questions many Christians have about how they can express themselves in worship.

10 things forgiveness is not

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 29, 2012 | 2 comments

UPDATE: someone asked the very good question, “Well then, what is forgiveness?” in the comment section. Click there to see that definition.

First off – HUGE thanks to our Kids’ Ministry workers (Kids’ Ministry was PACKED today) and another HUGE thanks to the people who stood during the first half of our 2nd WG to make room for guests to have a seat. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH!  I will not be preaching a 45 minute sermon again soon, I promise… probably

After WG’s today, people had a lot of questions about the “10 things forgiveness is not” list. This list is originally from Mark Driscoll.  Because there were so many questions, I wanted to repost here…

10 things forgiveness is not

1. FORGIVENESS IS NOT APPROVING OR DIMINISHING SIN.

2. FORGIVENESS IS NOT ENABLING SIN.

3. FORGIVENESS IS NOT DENYING A WRONGDOING.

4. FORGIVENESS IS NOT WAITING FOR AN APOLOGY.

5. FORGIVENESS IS NOT FORGETTING.

6. FORGIVENESS IS NOT CEASING TO FEEL THE PAIN.

7. FORGIVENESS IS NOT A ONETIME EVENT.

8. FORGIVENESS IS NOT NEGLECTING JUSTICE.

9. FORGIVENESS IS NOT TRUSTING.

10. FORGIVENESS IS NOT RECONCILIATION.

FORGIVENESS AND JUSTICE

Now, in hearing this, some of you, like me, will have strong sense of justice. You say, “But if I forgive them, where’s the justice?” Justice comes, friends, ultimately from Jesus. Either they will come to faith in Christ and you will get your justice at the cross, where Jesus’ blood was shed in their place for their sins as Jesus’ blood was shed in your place for your sin, because Lord knows we’ve hurt people too, or, if they remain unrepentant, your forgiving them does not mean that they are ultimately forgiven. They’ve sinned against you and God, and as you forgive them, you’re leaving them to Jesus. And if they live in a state of unrepentance and they don’t come to Jesus for forgiveness, they will stand before Jesus in the end. And they will be judged and sentenced to the conscious eternal torments of hell to suffer forever for all of their sin, paying their eternal debt to the living God. So, in forgiving someone, we are not neglecting justice. We’re leaving it to the perfect judge to enact perfect justice, either at the cross or in hell, but either way justice will be served. And we forgive in light of that.

Bridge iTunes podcast

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 24, 2012 | 2 comments

As the church has grown, the number of our sermon downloads has increased dramatically with some weeks seeing over 1,000 downloads per sermon as people send them to friends in need or post them through social media outlets.  This volume has left many new or would-be listeners asking where sermons can be downloaded regularly.  For clarification, the easiest way to download sermons is to subscribe to The Bridge’s podcast on iTunes.  You can do so by clicking the link below.

Subscribe to The Bridge via Podcast

This happened.

Posted by Josh Howerton on Jan 22, 2012 | Comments Off

INCREDIBLE day today. Honestly, I’m overwhelmed at God’s grace toward us today. God’s presence was palpable in both WG’s, highest WG attendance ever at 500+, some Bridge members gave up seats for visitors in the 2nd WG where there were (literally) no seats until the kids left, and 94 people were signed up for our “Intro to The Bridge” class.

But in the midst of all of those things, this definitely happened…

Our first ever “worship injury”.  That’s how Spirit-filled WG’s were this morning